On Wednesday, May 18, in an unexpected announcement at Google I/O conference event, the company unveiled two new apps, one for video chatting called Duo and one for messaging called Allo. The two apps were just previewed at the event and will become available for free later this summer, for both iOS and Android.
According to The Verge, Allo is a mobile-only app that is meant to be a fresh start for Google's new communication's division. Allo will not replace Hangouts, Google's other messaging app.
Erik Kay, director of engineering, communications products at Google, said that sometimes it is really liberating to start from scratch and the new messaging app Allo does feel like a fresh new start. The application comes with a clean and easy to understand interface, featuring some innovations not seen in other chat apps like Messenger or WhatsApp.
Droid Life reports that Google is calling Allo a "smart" messaging app. Similar to WhatsApp, Allo is tied to user's phone number. This makes it easier for users to convince other people to use it. As Google puts it, Allo allows users to get easily in touch with contacts in their phonebook.
Allo is mostly a standard messaging client, but the "smart" app tries to learn from user's habits over time in order to show suggestions that allow them to have conversations without typing. The app also brings in the power of the new Google Assistant.
Allo's users can chat with the new Assistant and get things done without leaving the chat app. They can edit photos, book dinner reservations, play games, get sports scores, check the calendar, use Search/Maps/YouTube/Translate, check photos from the last trip, see flight information and more.
As for Duo, this is Google's new one-on-one video chatting app. Google said that the app should work flawlessly across both apps that is supposedly really fast. Google says that the app is really fast and allows video chat at all time, from anywhere.
According to the developer, Duo works flawlessly across both slow and fast connections. The app comes with a Knock Knock feature that shows who is calling on video, sports end-to-end encryption and displays video chats in 720p (HD).
