Android N and upcoming Android features

It's obvious that some version after "Android M" (later dubbed "Marshmallow") will be "Android N," but we've already heard Googlers reference Android N's existence. This makes it sound like N will be the next immediate version.

The last two major versions—Lollipop and Marshmallow—are a good predictor for Google's typical Android launch schedule. Both OSes had developer previews released in the middle of the year at Google I/O, and both later saw release that year in October or November. Normally, we'd expect Android N to repeat this pattern in 2016.

There is a lot of chatter about Android and Chrome OS merging, though, so does this throw a wrench into the usual schedule? Reports expect a preview of the Chrome/Android hybrid OS to be released sometime in 2016 with a final merged OS out sometime in 2017. Are Android N and the hybrid OS the same thing, or is Android N a stop-gap OS while work continues on merging Chrome and Android? The two possible options we see are:

N and the hybrid OS are the same thing, and the larger project is given extended development time and is pushed back into 2017. The final version of Android N and the preview version of the hybrid OS are separate products, with N being released at the usual time and a Honeycomb-style "Android for PCs only" releasing in 2017.

Regardless of whether or not the next version of Android gives birth to the Chrome/Android hybrid, we do know a good amount about future features that are headed to Android. Thanks to the way Android is structured, it's a toss-up as to whether these features are locked into an OS update or get parted out to one of the many components in the Play Store. That won't stop us from trying to guess what goes where.

A new messaging app—Goodbye Google Hangouts?

Instant Messaging has always been a sore spot for Google. The company has produced a ton of texting and IM apps: Google Talk, Google+ Messenger, Google Voice, Google Hangouts, and various Android SMS clients. None of Google's solutions has ever taken off or been loved the way iMessage, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat are. Other companies are investing billions of dollars into instant messaging, but Google has never really taken IM as seriously as we think it should.

A recent report from The Wall Street Journal claims that Google is working on yet another entry into the space by building a "new, smarter messaging app." The report says Google "plans to integrate chatbots" into the client, which would let people ask questions inside the messaging app. These chatbots will then "scour the Web and other sources for information to answer a question," according to the report.

The project is being led by Google's VP of communications products, Nick Fox. Fox is currently in charge of Hangouts, Project Fi, and Google's WebRTC efforts. The report states that in October, Fox offered to buy a company called "200 Labs," which made a chatbot rating service for the IM app Telegram. The company declined to join Google, but Google is apparently still building a similar service.

WSJ is calling this a "new" instant messaging service, which implies that Google Hangouts is going away, and we'll have yet another Google Talk to Google Hangouts-style transition. The report says the current timetable is "unclear," but given that Google was just looking to acqui-hire people for the project a few months ago, we'd guess it's still a long way away. Like with Hangouts, we'd expect most Android users to get this via an app update.

Split Screen

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

We definitely know split screen is coming—not just because all of Android competitors already have support for it, but because an experimental version is already hidden in Marshmallow. It's buggy and unfinished, but it allows for two side-by-side apps in a horizontal or vertical configuration or four apps in a 2×2 configuration. The design needs a lot of work. Right now, there's really no way to close or manage open split screen windows.

In a Reddit AMA about the Pixel C launch, Andrew Bowers, a director of product management at Google, said, "We're working on lots of things right now for [Android] N that, of course, we wish we had, you know, yesterday. But we'd spoil the surprise of N if we shared all of them. Split screen is in the works!" If you read carefully, this doesn't definitively state that Android N will have split screen, but it is very suggestive.

Window management is a core OS feature, so the finalized version of split screen will definitely require a full OS update.

Rich Communications Services (RCS) Adoption

Rich Communications Services (RCS) is a new standard created by the GSMA as an upgrade to SMS and MMS. The standard brings a lot of "instant messaging" features to basic carrier texting, like the ability to see when someone is typing, contact presence, message delivery status, location sharing, and higher caps on photo and video sizes. It also allows you to easily transfer video and photos to the person you're calling, and the spec even includes screen sharing. Once the marketing departments of the world got ahold of RCS, it grew a lot of alternative names. T-Mobile was the first US carrier to implement it, and it calls RCS "Advanced Messaging." Sprint calls it "Messaging Plus," and the GSMA calls it "Joyn."

In September 2015, Google officially announced its intention to bring RCS support to Android, saying it has acquired a company called "Jibe Mobile" to get the job done. Jibe actually built the custom solution for T-Mobile and Sprint, and it also ships RCS solutions on Samsung and Sony devices. As part of Google, the group will work on integrating RCS into Android, allowing the extra features to be supported in the stock SMS apps. There's also a potential to integrate some of the features into the phone and contact apps.

SMS is popular not because it is good, but because it is ubiquitous, which makes replacing it with something new a difficult task. Integrating it into the world's biggest operating system is a good start, though. With the GSMA and just about all of the telcos onboard, a transition seems inevitable. Presumably this will be invisible to the end user—RCS will be used if both clients support it while SMS will exist as a fallback.

Considering RCS is already supported in some Android distributions, we'd guess that an app update could bring some of this functionality to the stock SMS app.

Google Photos gets a video editor

Google previously shipped a stock Android video editor way back in Android 3.0 Honeycomb, and it was awful. The editor officially died when it stopped shipping in 4.4 KitKat. It looks like Google will be jumping back into mobile video editors soon, though. In November 2015, it acquired Fly Labs, which makes a whopping four different video editing apps.

There isn't a lot of mystery here. In Fly Labs' going away message, the company announced it was joining the Google Photos team. The apps were all mostly single use: one allowed you to change the speed of the video for slow-mo or time-lapse video, another let you crop vertical videos and move the crop window around as the video progressed, and the last two were more traditional video editing apps that let you splice together clips with transitions and effects.

We'd look for all of these features to make it into the Google Photos app, which already has a photo editor. Will they still call it "Google Photos," though?