Google Photos is arguably one of the best Google apps in recent times and it shows off what machine learning can do for the end-user in an experiential and tangible form. By allowing users to back up all their photos for free, Google incentivized a large bunch of Android users to use the service. It then applied machine learning magic to intelligently organize these photos, based not only on location and time, but also based on the people in the photo. Features like Memories serve to send you on nostalgia trips by showing you some of your best moments from the past. Users in certain geographical locations can also order same day prints, granting more permanence and visibility to these moments. In the latest version of Google Photos, Google is now working towards making it easier to order these prints, as well as to expand the scope of the Memories feature.
An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by the developers in a future build.
In Google Photos v4.45, which is already rolling out on the Google Play Store, there exists a new view for the Memories feature. When enabled, it moves the menu and share buttons to the bottom of the screen. It also adds new options to the menu, such as "Order photo prints" and "Order canvas print", in addition to "Settings" for Memories and "View all photos from this day".
There are more features to discover within the app, as these new strings suggest new settings for Memories:
<string name="photos_memories_settings_previous_years_type_description">Photos from this week in previous years</string>
<string name="photos_memories_settings_previous_years_type_title">Previous years</string>
<string name="photos_memories_settings_recent_highlight_type_description">Photos from recent weeks</string>
<string name="photos_memories_settings_recent_highlight_type_title">Recent highlights</string>
<string name="photos_memories_settings_types_settings">Types of memories</string>
<string name="photos_memories_settings_types_summary">Select the types of memories you want to see. The memories carousel above the photo grid only appears when at least one memory type is selected.</string>
<string name="photos_memories_settings_types_title">Memory types</string>
These strings suggest that users will be able to choose which moments will be displayed within memories, ranging from "Previous years" to "Recent highlights".
We also spotted a string that suggests that some upcoming editing features may be reserved for Google One subscribers as a premium feature:
<string name="photos_photoeditor_adjustments_premium_feature_badge">Google one feature</string>
It is unknown what editing feature this is referring to, at this stage.
Thanks to PNF Software for providing us a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-grade reverse engineering tool for Android applications.