Google's Allo is a Weird Champion, Covered!

So, Evleaks was right about Allo coming today and it arrived with a huge Internet talk. Without wasting any time let's jump directly into the world of Allo.

Allo is the new member of Google Apps after Duo and both were announced at Google I/O 2016. Allo has been the most anticipated app of the year because of its new cool features that really excited audience when it was showcased in a demo at Google I/O. Today with the final release, experiencing all those exciting new features was fun. Let's talk about them one by one.

Google Assistant

Google Assistant is the best thing about this app. It's a clear win win situation as it is one of its kind. Having the most advanced search engine directly into your app is a very! very big deal and that too with Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing. You can ask it about nearby movies, restaurants or to even show you some videos about anything. It will reply in an instant with so much ease, but yes sometimes it does provide wrong answers but those replies from Assistant are still relevant but as we said before, some results are disappointingly not to the point. 

          

Here, the Google Assistant is still in Preview Edition so maybe this is the reason for some of those unpolished results that it gives. Future updates should fix the thing. Well, you can use this assistant to converse with your contacts too. To pull up the Google Assisstant any time, you just have to type "@google", followed up with your query ahead. Just simple as that. Here's an example below:

Here we asked the assistant for the cast of the movie Pink and it showed the precise results, just as Google search does.. The processing is so advanced that we can interact with results too. Tapping on Taapsee Pannu result card, Assistant itself understood the query and showed particular result for Taapsee Pannu. Great there Google!

Not just this,  you can also ask this bot for many other thingslike asking about the weather, playing games like Tic Tac Toe, Solitaire etc. But apart from all this, to know what more the Google Assistant can do, all you need to do is type the following phrase (without inverted commas): 

"What else can you do"

We can also witness the Intelligence of Assistant here with the example shown in the right, where we told the bot that our favorite team is  the Indian Cricket Team. Keeping our favorite team in it's artificial mind, Assistant answered all the further queries that were thrown at it. Next, we queried Assistant about the next match  India without mentioning India in the message and Assistant was able to understand the context and replied to us with all the upcoming matches that the Indian cricket team will be playing in the near future. Super Cool!

Well, i guess we have had enough of Assistant for this post as it is very vast and if we go deep and cover every aspect of it, we might need a series of posts. Actually, these might come in next few days! Keep reading here.

Smart Replies

Smart Replies is a great thing to have in a chat. These preloaded quick replies range from Yes to No, Wow to Sad and Congrats to various stuff, Smart Replies has it all to save your time in conversation. Just tap on any desired choice of reply and you're good to go. Super easy and convinient. Not to mention that the smart replies will always give you relatable options to send, that too in texts and emojis both. You can see a live demo in the GIF above.

And for another example that we tested this:

Here we asked the Google Assistant about William Shakespeare and it replied with the desired result. Under it we got some Smart Reply choices that are relatable to the result being shown. Cool! Just tap Books and you will be provided with list of books written by the great William Shakespeare.

Shout and Whisper

Shout and Whisper is again a new feature that allows users to show emotions in a excited and not so excited way, Just type your message and drag the send button up to shout out the message which will increase the size of the message, or drag down the send button to say it all silently and secretly which will decrease the size of the text you entered. It looks neat and this gives us another way to express our emotions. So, this gives us another reason to love Allo

Doodle Up, Emoji's and Stickers

Allo has a hefty amount of emojis and stickers that helps you express your emotions better and makes your chats a lot more livlier. You can easily find the characters and emojis you want to from different categories. Characters will surely fun up the conversation. Another not to miss feature is that of the live animated stickers. While this is not a big deal, but it surely does set Allo apart fom WhatsApp, which still doesn't have stickers. Here in Allo, users can also Doodle on the images they are sharing, so it is another plus point for the app. WhatsApp has recently incorporated this feature. 

Incognito Chats

Incognito Chats is another great feature if you care about privacy even a bit. Incognito Chat has been introduced right with the release which takes care of your private chats that are self destructible and have an Expiration Time Limit. Yes, users can set the time till the chat will remain in the app and once that limit is reached, the chat will be deleted automatically! Also, the Private Notification won't show the contents and contact details in notification, so you really don't have to worry coz your conversation is safe in Allo's Incognito Mode.

User Interface and Conclusion

   

                         

What sets Allo apart is its simple and clean design and not much hassle and hush hush interaction. Google has kept things simple and quick to use but still app seems to lack in some parts like no customizable options in Settings. Contacts are not properly organised as they are in your contact list. It is also confusing to find contacts who use Allo as well. Contrastingly, finding contacts is very easy in Incognito Mode as this mode shows only those contacts that have Allo.

Some users have also been wondering whether Allo supports sending SMS or not. Don't worry, we have the answer to this question for you.

The answer is YES! Allo supports SMS but it's not the time to say goodbye to Hangouts or Messenger yet as the SMS sent through Allo goes from another number  (or some Google server) and not yours. The receiver still can reply on that number and you will get the message in Allo itself! Complicated, right?

So, yes, Allo seems to be incomplete, yet a champion in its own genre and we do hope that with further updates, we would be able to witness greatly improved features as hardwork of Google team really shows up in this app! Overall, Allo is a nice app to try, especially if you're bored of those regular messaging apps, Allo won't dissapoint you.

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Rajat Kapoor

Rajat Kapoor is a self confessed tech geek. Always up to date with what's going on in the tech world, he is currently pursuing MCA and prefers Android over iOS. You will see his articles here and we do hope that you find them useful and informational.