Google will make sure you know all about its latest changes to Android through Play Services
Every three months, Pixel owners get a handful of updates delivered to their phones straight from Google in the form of a Feature Drop. These exclusive options are designed to make the company’s flagship phone experience even better, but it’s not the only way it brings new content to Android. Updates through Play Services — known as Android Feature Drops — can deliver all sorts of new experiences to any device, and Google wants to verify you know all about them.
As spotted byEsper.io’s Mishaal Rahman, Play Services will start alerting users about features added through \Android Feature Drops. Although the service isn’t live yet, based on these screenshots, it seems like these splash pages will present themselves when the Play Store is first opened after an update. It looks awfully familiar to thePixel Feature Drop prompts that appeared after March’s patch, but for all Android users.
Plenty of your phone’s most exciting changes have rolled out over the last few years through Play Services, and these screens should make it much more obvious when new features are ready to be used. You might not need these cards if you keep up on all of the latest app updates — say, by reading acertainAndroid-focused website. Thankfully, they can be skipped entirely right from the first entry.
It’s not clear when Google will finally break these out for users, but it seems like the next major Play Services upgrade would make for great timing.March’s Android Feature Dropincluded changes to Google Messages, Digital Wellbeing, Gboard, and much more.
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