Android’s MWC 2023 announcements bring new features to phones and Wear OS

Android’s MWC 2023 announcements bring new features to phones and Wear OS

It wouldn’t be a mobile-centric conference without updates from the operating system powering countless smartphones worldwide. Today (28 February 2023 SGT), the Android team at Google shared that they are rolling out a massive February update that includes new tools for its users.

New emoji combos

The Gboard (Google Keyboard) now offer new emoji combinations in its Emoji Kitchen. For folks who don’t know – this feature lets you select multiple emojis to ‘create’ a new and unique emoji based on your selection. 

Google Keep single note widget 

You can now pin specific to-do lists to your Android home screen with a new Google Keep feature – the single note widget. In short, it turns your chosen to-do list into a widget, and you can interact with it by simply checking off completed tasks or items on it. The widget also offers reminders, and the ability to customise with backgrounds and images. 

It’s also synced to smartwatches if you own one – in fact, Wear OS gets two new shortcuts for creating notes and to-do lists off the wearable. 

More noise-cancellation for clearer meetings 

Google Meet now offers noise cancellation during calls on Android mobile devices. According to its FAQ, it’s available to Google Workspace users, cloud-based (whereas Pixel phones from Pixel 4 onwards use device-based noise cancellation), and not available to users in South Africa, UAE, and “the immediate surrounding areas” of those territories. 

We’ve asked Google for more clarity about its noise cancellation: the cloud-based nature of this Android feature relies on Google’s expertise in AI to recognise the user’s voice. This recognition is processed and translated to noise cancellation for the user's voice, regardless of your Android mobile device type.

A more animated Google Wallet

Ever wondered if your digital payment has gone through? Google Wallet will make that easier to tell. Android gets new Doodle animations in Google Wallet, showing confirmed in-store transactions with penguins and various cute creatures before transforming into a mundane blue checkmark.

Bigger text, bigger images, bigger controls, the bigger the better

Google Chrome (on Android) now offers a content size increase of up to 300% – and it includes text, images, videos, and controls. It also saves your preferred size by default so you don’t have to keep adjusting it every time you open the app. It’s currently available in beta, and rollout starts in March 2023.

The Android team also summarised its updates here, so if you’re interested to see how it works before using them, do check it out.

Source: Google (blog)