Gadgetory

hey guys this is Lauren good from the verge Android marshmallow Google's newest operating system for mobile devices starts rolling out today to Nexus phones and tablets first and then other Android devices in the coming weeks and one of the most buzzed-about features with android marshmallow is something called now on tap we've seen now on tap before in a couple demos one was at Google i/o earlier this year and some of our verge colleagues have also gotten demos of now on tap but Google's made some major strides with this since it was first announced in May we're going to take a look at what it can do so the premise here with now on tap is that basically you're going to access much more information directly from within an application and this is all part of Google now so it's all part of Google's attempts to make this smartphone even smarter here's an example I'm going to go into messenger here where someone named Fred has asked me if we should go and see the Martian this weekend now this is what's really cool about this the Martian is both a book and a movie but given the context clues that the word see is in here Google now on tap knows this is referring to the movie so when I hold down this button here these results come up you see there's an IMDB page if you go to YouTube it takes you to the movie trailer because what do people like to do when they're considering going to a movie they watch a movie trailer but Google now on tap also works with voice search so if I was curious more curious about the book I could say something like okay Google who wrote the book and now I know who wrote the book in addition to information about the movie okay so that's just one example let's take a look at Instagram Hillary Clinton's page here what happens when I hit Google now on tap Hillary Clinton of course is a pretty well-known public figure so there are a lot of results here google twitter facebook instagram new images and more go to her Twitter there you go and go back and I stay within Twitter in this instance and other instances other apps you might be taken back to the app you're in before another cool example go to viber and Fred being very persistent once again asking if I want to go see Lane eight now I would hear that and I would probably think is that a bowling alley this is where Google now and tap comes in handy it's actually a musician and from here I can listen to Lane eights tracks just as I would if I went and googled him and googled Lane eight songs something like that but I just get it directly from the conversation that we're having so that's supposed to be the value of now on tap it doesn't require any kind of updates from third-party app developers in order for it to work properly all the work is being done by Google here it's also completely voluntary you don't have to opt into Google now and you don't have to opt into now on tap within Google now but if you're on a quest for a smarter smartphone that's what Google's trying to do here