Releasing an app update just before the start of the weekend is always a bit risky, but here we have an update to Allo v22 that shows that's just how those developers play the game. On the other hand, this looks like a pretty calm update; the only thing jumping out so far is a streamlined UI for setting up solo and group chats. A teardown also brings up some clues about enhancements coming in the future, including transcriptions for audio messages and new camera effects.

What's New

Official Changelog: Group chat controls: Turn on admin controls to remove and ban people from group chats, edit the group name and photo, and give others admin rights.

Selfie clips: Send a video message with a selfie clip, a fun way to capture how you feel, right in the moment.

Bug fixes: Performance improvements for a better chatting experience. Unofficial Changelog: (the stuff we found) Updated adaptive icon

New greeting screen

Streamlined 'start chat' screen

New greeting

If you're a newcomer to Allo, or just setting up a new phone, v22 will now welcome you to the experience with this cute screen.

I normally don't bring up things like a new welcome screen, but I wanted to point out that this screen emphasizes group chats. It's a small detail, but it is consistent with the recent focus on outfitting Allo to work well for chatrooms.

I also couldn't help but notice there might be a little bit of a symbolic nod to sports fans with the dinosaur (?) and giant gorilla wearing baseball caps.

Streamlined options for new chats

There's a slightly revised 'start chat' screen appearing on some devices. Just to be clear, this appears to be an A/B test, as it's only showing up on one of my phones and not the other, even though they are running the same version. I'm not sure if this began with previous versions, but it only just started for me with the update to v22.

In the previous setup screen, you could search for an individual and start a solo chat with them immediately, or tap on buttons to begin setting up a group chat, and there were also buttons for incognito variants of both solo and group chats. The new version does away with the buttons for launching group chats. Instead, you'll simply begin picking people for the chat and hit 'done' when you're finished. If there's only one person in the list, Allo creates a solo chat with just that person, otherwise it opens a group chat with everybody.

Also seemingly missing on some devices is the 'QR scanner' function in the navigation drawer, which was used for quickly adding contacts to Allo. I'm not sure if there's something to that or maybe it's a bug, but it's not happening on all devices.

Teardown

Disclaimer: Teardowns are based on evidence found inside of apks (Android's application package) and are necessarily speculative and usually based on incomplete information. It's possible that the guesses made here are totally and completely wrong. Even when predictions are correct, there is always a chance that plans could change or may be canceled entirely. Much like rumors, nothing is certain until it's officially announced and released. Disclaimer: Teardowns are based on evidence found inside of apks (Android's application package) and are necessarily speculative and usually based on incomplete information. It's possible that the guesses made here are totally and completely wrong. Even when predictions are correct, there is always a chance that plans could change or may be canceled entirely. Much like rumors, nothing is certain until it's officially announced and released. The features discussed below are probably not live yet, or may only be live for a small percentage of users. Unless stated otherwise, don't expect to see these features if you install the apk.

Transcriptions for audio messages

Audio notes are a cool, albeit probably underutilized feature of Allo. One problem with using them is that you might not be in a setting where you can stop to listen to one.

Maybe you're in a quiet library or a loud concert. Either way, you'll soon be able to have Allo transcribe these notes into readable text on your screen. Transcriptions appear to be in testing now, and may be enabled by default once they go live. Once active, transcriptions are probably going to look pretty similar to language translations.

strings

<string name="enable_voice_transcription_title">Audio transcription</string>

<string name="enable_voice_transcription_summary">Display transcriptions for audio messages</string>

<string name="enable_voice_transcription_key">enable_voice_transcription</string> <bool name="voice_transcription_default">true</bool> from /xml/preferences_chat.xml

<com.google.android.apps.fireball.ui.appsettings.FireballSwitchPreference android:persistent="true" android:title="@string/enable_voice_transcription_title" android:key="@string/enable_voice_transcription_key" android:summary="@string/enable_voice_transcription_summary" android:defaultValue="@bool/voice_transcription_default" />



Camera effects: Confused and Bollywood Zoom

We know Allo is going to enable some camera effects in the future, and now it's clear a new one will be joining the list: "confused question marks." It's pretty easy to guess that this will plaster a few question marks in the frame when you take a selfie or selfie clip.



<string name="camera_confused_questions_effect_toggle">Toggle confused question marks effect</string>



There is also a bit of a rename to one of the effects that was already expected. The zoom effect is now referred to as "bollywood zooms" in the text. I'm not exactly up on my Indian cinema, but I believe this refers to the effect where the camera zooms in on a subject repeatedly without zooming back out. Here's the first example I could find (at 9 seconds in).



old:

<string name="camera_zoom_effect_toggle">Toggle zoom effect</string> old: new:

<string name="camera_zoom_effect_toggle">Toggle bollywood zooms effect</string>



Download

The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.

Version: 22.0.023_RC06