Google seems to be bringing in very interesting and new features with every update.
Though most of the times they are minor updates, it still is very useful. It has recently launched the updated version of its Google app for iOS users. On its blog, Google announced that this new updated version of the app for iOS platform will be faster for the iPhone and iPad. The time for download has been drastically reduced and new features to speed up the app have been added. The app is now available for download at the App Store.
Faster loading AMP pages
The most important feature of this updated Google app is that it supports the faster loading AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). Google had previously hinted almost three months back about this launch when it integrated AMP with Google Search and Google News sometime and this was announced at the I/O conference for developers in early May 2016. The AMP pages can be found with a “lightning bolt” icon which is present next to the article exactly like those on Google Search and News. This is displayed in the “Top Stories” section when the users make a search and helps to view news results faster.
Google’s officials claim in a blog post that every time the new Google app is opened or a search is made, everything will be loading up a little quickly. Google says that the app will now load all the articles 10 percent faster. This change might probably not be noticeable to many users. However, these small changes and improvements to the app assure that the users save almost 6.5 million hours in total per year.
Sports highlights with “Now” cards
The users can herewith watch highlights of sports matches instantly by using their “Now” cards. When “sports highlights” is clicked using the “Now” card, the video of the match can be watched within the app itself. Not just the sports highlights, even “real-time” sports news videos can be viewed by using these cards. This update, along with a few more keyboard shortcuts is available for the iPad users.
Offline Translation app
Google had announced an “offline mode” to its translation app early this month. It has reduced the file size of the language program and modules that are used by the app for offline translation. A one-time download of the file is required after which the translations of text or speech from one language to another chosen language can be done even in an offline mode. There are 52 languages available on the app for offline translation.
The imprint of the language modules has been reduced quite a bit in the application. This helps to improve the accuracy and be protective of the bandwidth of the users, in addition to occupying less space on the device. Almost 90 percent of the file size has been reduced brining the whole size of each language translation package in offline mode to just 25MB.
Local Search
Another new feature that has been added is Google’s local search. The local search results will give the results with all the details about the busiest hours of restaurants, shops and other businesses that will be displayed on the search results page. Until recent times, though the results were being displayed on the page, the users had to tap on the results for it to open and give the details. Because of this many users were not even aware that such places existed. Now all the results will be displayed immediately and directly with the details.