With the new version, Google and Levis want to reach more people, and they're doing so by offering more designs, launching in more countries and most importantly, cutting prices. Now, you can get Jacquard in Levis' Sherpa Trucker jackets in addition to plain Trucker, and the price has dropped to $198. That's a pretty steep cut from last year's $350. Plus it's launching in Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and the UK, as opposed to just the US this time.

But, Google also needs to make Jacquard more useful to appeal to more users, so it's continuing to add features. With this update, Jacquard is now able to do three new things: remotely trigger your camera shutter, deliver your daily briefing and you can create shortcut for it to perform one specific task of your choice using Google Assistant.

The updated Jacquard software also works with the YSL backpack that was announced earlier this month, as well as the older Commuter jackets. But this year's garments/backpack use a refined Jacquard tag. This is a module that you snap into the jacket sleeve or a pocket in the lining of the backpack, and connects the clothes to your phone.

It's a lot smaller than before: about the size of your thumb, whereas last year's was more like the size of two whole fingers. It's also easier to attach the tag to the jacket. Last time around, you had to first snap the tag on like a button, then tuck its tail into a slit in the cuff. This time, you just slide the tag into its housing like a cartridge into a tiny Game Boy.

Once you've connected the tag to your phone, you can tap or swipe the left cuff on your sleeve to trigger actions you've set up. You can slide in or out from the outer edge, or double tap your wrist. I set my jacket to skip and rewind a track when I swiped out and in respectively, and to get Google Assistant to play music when I double tapped. Later, I changed double tapping to take a picture.

Lots of these functions are still limited. For example, when you take a picture with Jacquard, you can only use your phone's front camera, and are forced to sit through a 3-second timer each time you trigger it. The pictures you take are saved to the Jacquard app, and you'll have to manually save them to your gallery.

The full breadth of what Jacquard can do is still pretty narrow, too. In addition to the three new features, the system can log places you've been, count the number of taps or swipes you make, find your phone, tell you the time or what song you're playing, read navigation directions and give you a summary of your day. Oh, and it can also toggle noise cancellation for some Bose headphones. There's also a light on the tag that can flash three different colors, which you can set to indicate when you've received important alerts or when your cab has arrived.

Jacquard doesn't offer a comprehensive set of tools, but that's by design. "It was never meant to do everything," Paul Dillinger, head of global product innovation for Levis, told Engadget. "It's meant for those moments of life when you're wearing a jean jacket," he said. Or, for that matter, when you're wearing a YSL backpack. That's mostly when you're out and about, commuting or strolling Fifth Avenue on a shopping spree, for example.