 "Google Now widget leaked in official Nexus support pages")
There’s some mighty good news for all you Jelly Bean-totting Android phone users. Google Now may be getting a widget real soon if a Google Support page is to be believed.
Spotted by Android Central before it was pulled off rather swiftly, the support page documented the arrival of a Google Now widget that you can place on your home screens for easy access on your Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 devices.
The widget apparently “displays a summary of your current Google Now cards either on the Home screen or the Lock screen”. Fans of Google Now will no longer need to open up the service and wait for the tiles to throw relevant information at you. The widget will display all the information you need – we assume the manner will be instinctive, quite like the service itself – on your Home as well as Lock screens.
What the Google Now widget could look like
One look at the leaked image of the widget and you’ll realise that Google is placing a lot of emphasis on minimalism with this widget, quite like Google Now itself. The image showed neat boxes that displayed distance, weather and the stock.
Unfortunately, even before the page was pulled off, there is no real indication about when this widget will hit devices, or if it will at all. While reference to this widget was made on Nexus 4, Nexus 10 and even Galaxy Nexus pages, pages related to Nexus 7 had none. Interestingly, cached pages too show that no reference was made to this device as recently as February 2.
So, will the widget roll out as an update on the Play Store? It looks pretty possible right now. We’ll only have to wait for further details.
Over the weekend, Google premiered a Nexus 4 commercial during prime time Grammys in the United States that spoke nothing about the phone but about Google Now. The ad went into detailing what Google Now can do on your Nexus 4 rather than dwelling on the device by itself. It enumerated Google Now’s ability to predict the weather, inform you about train timings, plan and execute a trip successfully. The ad also showed how the service can be used for translations and video chat using hangouts.
Google Now has long been a favourite with most users who use Android Jelly Bean devices that can run the service. Without being too intrusive, the service in intuitive and learns over time over what information you would need when. Google Now will tell you what the weather is going to be like before you leave home, tell you about your train timings and remind you about your appointments. It is like a personal assistant quite like Siri.
Google Now is evidently the next big thing and even though it has been in the works for a while, Google seems to be keen on pushing it. One important proof of Google’s attachment to Now is that a desktop Chrome version of the service is in offering.
A slew of experiments are being conducted with Google’s open source web browser project Chromium, including an addition of a new notification centre in the beginning of February, paving the way for Google Now cards to be incorporated with Chrome. A screenshot of the new release showed a pop-up with the ability to hold multiple notifications in Chromium.
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