Android Pay and Fingerprint Sensor: Android M Spotlight

What is Android Pay?

Android Pay will be Google's newest mobile payment app. It will work on devices running Android 4.4 KitKat and up. In Android 4.4 Google introduced  native support for tap & pay mobile wallet apps. In the spirit of open source this was a good thing, it allowed developers the chance to become the next mobile wallet app of choice. The only problem is that mobile payments are extremely complex and the support in Android 4.4 was just to allow apps to work better in instances where multiple mobile wallets were installed and just overall better support. When you create a mobile wallet app you need to have agreements with financial institutions to facilitate those transactions. Android Pay does that by creating a better platform for these apps. It is the same thing as Google Wallet but when something is labeled Android that means it is open source and can be used by other developers where you couldn't do that with Google Wallet. 

The other neat feature that this will allow is for shopping apps. When you go to check out you can use Android Pay instead of entering in all your information. Apple Pay has a very similar (may be the same) implementation and this would essentially allow the user to store their payment information and not have to enter it into every app they buy items from.

Google Now on Tap: Android M Spotlight

Now on Tap

A cleverly worded feature for a equally clever feature. In its extended name Google Now on Tap is a new way to interact with Google Now making the app much smarter. Google Now will become aware of what is on your screen and give you the ability to take immediate action. Thus if you are looking at an email that says something about a location you can hold the home button and Google Now on Tap will show you information about that place. If somebody reminds you to do something Google Now on Tap will detect that and allow you to add that as a reminder. It will even allow you to use pronouns to ask questions, so if you're looking at a picture of an animal and ask Google Now on Tap, "What is that?" it will know you are referring to the image and search for you. When we speak commands to our smartphones users have to be very specific because smartphones typically can't pick up context. This also works with music, the example Google used on stage during I/O '15 was Skrillex. They had a song playing by him and then asked Google, "What's his name?" and Google served a result with Skrillex's real name, it was really cool from a technical stand point. My only question is, will we be able to leverage this feature an any app that happens to be playing music or will the music app need to take advantage of Google Now API's to do that. I'm sure if I watch the workshop video about Now on Tap I could find out for sure.

Why You Should Care

Google Now on Tap is honestly the most useful feature Google has announced for Android M, and although Now on Tap seems extremely gimmicky it is actually unbelievably useful. If I get a text message from my girlfriend asking me to pick something up at the store, I can hold the home button and Google Now on Tap will show up for me to add a reminder to pick something up at the store. The alternative is almost as easy using voice commands but this cuts that part right out of the equation. On top of that if she says she wants to go out to Olive Garden for dinner I can hold the home button and the Google Now card for Olive Garden will show up along with links to call, navigate, get reviews, and reservations. There are tons of uses for Now on Tap and honestly I will probably be writing an entire article about this later. Basically this features gives the average user the ability to take advantage of Google Now and all its features without needing to know what voice commands are required.