Messaging app Google Allo significantly upped its emoji game with the latest update, adding a smart emoji button, as well as cool stickers and chat themes.
Suggested Emoji Button
The smart emoji button will offer suggestions on what emoji and stickers to use based on what your conversation is about. Most of us are only using a small fraction of emoji over and over again (less than 3 percent, according to Google), which is completely understandable.
Unicode has a slew of emoji and searching through all of them would take a lot of time, not to mention that you'd likely get bored of browsing at some point and just end up using the emoji you already know.
Google Allo wants to help with that by adding its smart emoji button, albeit it only works in English at this point. More languages will join the fray sometime in the future.
The suggested emoji come as an extension of the prediction algorithm within Google Allo, the same one that fires up suggestions for one-tap replies based on your chatting habits. With the latest update, these suggestions will now include emoji and stickers to complete the experience.
"Suggestions for stickers and emojis will change based on the words you write and the sentiment of your message," Google explains. "And if you haven't started typing, Smart Smiley offers suggestions based on your conversation so the perfect sticker is just one tap away."
Fantastic Beasts Stickers, New Chat Themes
Google also added a new sticker pack from the new Harry Potter movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, as well as chat themes that now allow users to ditch the standard background.
Users can also discover new stickers more easily now, as Google added a new feature that's already familiar to Facebook Messenger users, for instance. More specifically, if you receive a sticker you don't have, you can now tap it and find the sticker package to download.
Is It Enough?
While the new additions seem cool enough, it remains to be seen whether they will suffice to make Allo popular. Adding more privacy protections enabled by default or making Allo more widely available on multiple devices could boost its success, but for now all you get is stickers, smart emoji predictions and new chat themes.
Google Allo is available as a free app for Android and iOS and the new features have already started to roll out. The latest update should reach users worldwide within the next few days.
