Google has launched a new messaging app called Allo, it has the much anticipated “google assistant” service built into it, the app does all the thing you expect a modern messaging app, like sending texts, sending pics / audio and stickers etc.
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But the real question is, does it have what it takes to make people ditch the already popular and familiar messaging apps such as whatsapp, facebook messenger,Line and imessage etc,
Lets try to figure it out together
Whats special about Allo
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Well the USP of this app is the “Google assistant service”, “Google assistant” is a AI bot powered by machine learning capabilities, you can just open a chat window and start asking questions to the assistant. (More on it later)
Avability
The app is only available on phones, you cannot even use it on tablets, same goes for web also, this is kind of a grey area, as we dont know how much of a turn off it is for the larger population, since we are on a “Mobile first” world, many people may not even recognize that the service do-sent works on bigger screen.
Login & ID
You cannot use the same account on multiple phones (mostly like whats app), i think this makes sense since the primary id is your phone number and not your gmail id, you can choose to associate or dis-associate your allo account (Phone Number) with your google account, Its totally upto you, and yes the google assistant is only available in English language as of now, but i am sure going forward if this app / service does good than we can expect many more languages support “Google Assistant”,
Messaging
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Well the app uses you phones contact list and it just places the contacts with allo installed on top and the remaining contacts below them.
In terms of messaging something really interesting is going on in this department, and its different for both ios and android
For iOS
If somebody sends a message from Allo to a number on a iOS phone which dosent have Allo installed then the user will recieve a SMS message from a google shortcode with sender name, sender phone number, senders message and also a link to download the messenger.the catch is the sender & reciever dosent have to bear the SMS cost and they can continue to chat through the “shortcode” for free
For Android
Its completely different mechanism, well if somebody sends a message from Allo to a number on a android phone which dosent have Allo installed, then the user will receive the msg as a notification with Allo look and feel, this is called “app preview notification” by google, the user will be able to reply through the notification itself or install the app to continue the chat.
However its up for debate if this tactice will help allo to gain a stronghold in todays world of whatsapp, facebook, line etc messengers.
Google assistant
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Well google assistant is a AI powered chat bot, you can ask anything to the bot on the chat window and you will get a written reply, you can either write your query or do a voice input, however the reply will be in terms of text (not voice) only,
Currently the assistant can only qurate information from the web and display it to you, it cannot act on it such as opening apps or sending sms messages (like siri), well it makes sense since “Google assistant” is a chat bot not a full fledge voice assistant such as siri or cortana.
Watch the video review below
