December’s Pixel Drop includes a new feature called Simple View.
Late last week, Google announced the December Pixel Drop in a blog post penned by product marketing manager Mayra Fajardo. The Android software update includes the Expressive Captions feature, which I covered last week by interviewing Google’s Angana Ghosh.
“The latest Pixel Drop brings more intelligent, helpful and intuitive features to your devices, with new ways to use Gemini, camera improvements and security updates,” Fajardo wrote in the post’s lede. “Better yet, it brings some favorite features to more countries.”
Among the new features in this month’s Pixel Drop, which includes emoji updates to Gboard and updates to Pixel Screenshots, is an update to the Lookout app on Android that sees the software gain support for Arabic, as well as automatic language detection, nicer-sounding voices, and notably, help from Google’s Gemini AI models to power its image description and Q&A modes. Google introduced Lookout in 2019 as a way to enable people to “discover [their] surroundings” with assistance from AI. The app was primarily built to help Blind and low vision people better access the world, much in the same vein as Be My Eyes. In fact, Lookout and Be My Eyes are conceptually identical—Be My Eyes sets itself apart by enlisting the support of sighted volunteers to help users better comprehend their surroundings, whereas Lookout relies on AI.
Elsewhere, Fajardo detailed a feature Google calls Simple View. According to Fajardo, the feature is a new way for someone to navigate their phone by “[increasing] your phone’s font size and touch sensitivity, making it easier to see and use controls, apps and widgets.” Google says Simple View, available on Pixel 6 and later, can be beneficial to older adults. Simple View is conceptually akin to Assistive Access in iOS, which Apple introduced as a new accessibility feature in iOS 17. The implementations differ—Assistive Access is far more stripped down in terms of the user interface—but the basic premise between it and Simple view are shared. Both have been designed to make the respective platforms easier and more accessible to navigate. As Google mentioned, this simplification can be a boon to older people, who may be less technically savvy and thus are more intimidated by technology.