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Latest Google Android display Showed new Gemini traits This, for the first time, made me excited about having AI in my device phone -And none of it involves generating soulless images or summarizing things (seriously, can we stop summarizing everything).
New Android 17 features that prioritize customization and thoughtful design. They realize that phone usage varies from person to person. That’s why it’s great to see Google offering features to speed up some useful things and prioritize how I take breaks from my phone.
These three Android 17 features are my favorite announcements, which is why I think they’ll change the way I use my device Android phones.
Watch this: The biggest AI update on Android: Everything to know about Gemini intelligence
1. Rambler for personal speech to text
Speech-to-text has been around for several years, and the new Rambler feature uses artificial intelligence to improve it. Instead of tapping the microphone and dictating verbatim what you want to say, you’ll use the Gemini feature to take the important parts of what you say to create a concise message. But that’s not the best part; Google is using its leadership in translation and language understanding to build this for multilingual people.
As someone who speaks both English and Hindi in everyday life, much of my personal communication is a mixture of the two languages. Google says Rambler can easily switch between languages within a single message. It uses Gemini’s advanced multilingual model, which allows it to understand context and nuances. So, when you mix two speech languages (English and Hindi, in my case), your message can easily be converted into text the way you want.
Wispr Flow can do more or less the same thing as well. But Google’s version is more promising because it contains all my data, which can be used to get more personalized recommendations. Hopefully, this means he can create sentences that sound like the way I speak and messages that stay natural and personal to me.
Personalization is important to me because I don’t want to sound robotic in any of my written communications. I don’t currently use AI speech-to-text services because I want my texts to continue to convey my personality. I hope Rambler can maintain the excitement, excitement, emotion and chaos of my scripts. If so, this might be the first speech-to-text feature I use in my daily life.
The Rambler app should make it easier to tell your phone what to type, as it will use artificial intelligence to deliver a concise message.
2. Pause point to end using the Autopilot application
Google’s new Pause Point feature doesn’t use any AI, but it could be more useful for keeping myself from scrolling. Picking up my phone, seeing a notification, and then getting caught up in social media happens to me more frequently than I realize, and it has made me more aware of my phone use.
Pause Point will give you a 10-second break when you open a distracting app. (I’ll set it up for Instagram and X.) During that time, you can do a short breathing exercise or set a timer to avoid scrolling for too long. You can also use this 10-second pause to look at some favorite photos or go to alternative app suggestions. I want my favorite playlists to be suggested when I tap into Instagram out of habit.
Since our willpower isn’t enough to stop us (I know mine isn’t), Google is making it more difficult to disable Pause Point once you’ve set it up. If you want to turn off the feature, you will be prompted to restart your phone. This is going to be frustrating, but I’m all for anything that helps me stop being on autopilot.
You can now ask Gemini to create a widget for your home screen simply by asking you to do so.
3. Create a My Widget for more custom widgets
Whenever you switch from A Samsung Galaxy phoneI miss having a transparent calendar widget along with a multi-city clock on my home screen. I need it on all my phones, no matter what Android interface I’m using. And Android 17 will finally allow me to create custom widgets the way I like.
Create My Widget is another Gemini Intelligence-based feature that can help personalize your phone more than ever before. You can create custom widgets by describing what you want using natural language. Google’s example includes a meal prepper who can ask Create My Widget to “suggest three high-protein meal prep recipes each week,” and it will create a custom dashboard that they can add to their home screen.
I can see myself creating a dashboard consisting of a multi-time zone watch, travel information, and (maybe) sleep data from my device Oura ring 4all in one place. I hope it can connect across multiple applications to create such tools. Google will roll out Create My Widget across its various platforms, including Wear OS and Google Books.