Get Google Now back instead of Google Assistant when you long-press the home button.

Android's Google search app was recently updated. When you long-press the home button, it used to show the Google Now screen (where you can see information such as weather before you search), but now it shows the conversational Google Assistant.

I personally did not like the Google Assistant, and wanted Google Now back. After searching the web, I found that it is not possible. There is a hack, though: changing your language to something weird such as "U.S. Virgin Islands". I tried it, and it did work. But that might affect other apps. So I kept look for a better solution.

I could not find a better solution. So, I came up with an idea. What if I create an app that poses as a search assistant and launches Google Now? So I made the app. The app is called Loader for Now, and it is available on Google Play Store. It is a paid app, though. I am sorry for that, but I need some money to live. I wanted to select a very low price like 0.1 GBP or USD, but unfortunately, the minimum allowed price was 0.5 GBP and 0.99 USD.

When you install Loader for Now, you need to set it as the default search assistant. The app itself provide an explanation and shortcut for that, so it is not difficult to use at all. Just do that, and long-pressing will launch the good old Google Now again. Very simple.

Behind stories

I submitted the app 3 times before it was accepted by Google. At first I named the app "Google Now Loader". It was rejected because the app's name started with "Google", which might make the app appear to be endorsed by Google (which is actually not very likely for my case).

So, I renamed the app to "Loader for Now", and put a bold disclaimer at the start of the app description, something like "This app is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google". I re-submitted the app, but it was rejected again. The reason was that it contained "Google Now" in the description. But how can I explain what my app does without the word "Google Now", when the only thing it does is launching Google Now?

Anyways, I had to remove "Google" or "Google Now" in descriptions, blurred the Google logo promotion image and re-submitted it. Finally it was accepted.

The problem is... searching the Play Store does not show my app. I mean, I searched the Store for "Loader for Now", and weird, unrelated apps showed in the result, not my app. Then I tried searching for "Google Now search Assistant". I understand that my app was not showing at the top of the search result, but there were very many unrelated apps like games, and I kept scrolling down but my app still did not show up. Why should completely unrelated games be listed before my app, when my app is actually related to the search words? I shall never know...

After some try, I concluded that it would probably be impossible for users to find my app by searching the Store for related keywords, so I created this post where I can freely use the word "Google Now", which would make it easy for potential users to discover my app.



Footer:  (They made me do it.)

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Android 4.2 Settings Shortcuts Suck. Learn from third parties.

I am very unhappy with the new settings shortcuts with Jelly Bean 4.2. When I first heard that settings shortcuts would be added, I was excited. I thought, "Finally!". But what the hell is this, Windows 8?

Jelly Bean 4.2 Settings Shortcut in Action

There are several problems. Let me iterate them.

1. Needs more taps to get to, and also, confusing.

The existing common implementations of this from Samsung/LG/PanTech or custom ROM makers were usually showed this on the top of the notification menu. All frequently accessed items were just one swipe away, and for seldom used items, just one more swipe.

With the Google's implementation, I have to swipe down then I have to press the settings icon (I do not know what it is called) at the top right of the screen. The problem is that Google removed colours from the notification menu icons so everything looks white and at the very vicinity of the shortcut icon is the clear notifications button. The two icons usually confuses me, so I happen to press the other by mistake.
I know I can open the settings shortcuts using two fingers, I found myself not using two fingers that often for this.

2. Settings cannot be toggled or changed on that screen.

I used to change brightness or toggle screen rotation using the notification menu. It only took one swipe and one more swipe (or one tap). Now it takes one swipe, one tap, one tap, and one swipe (or one more tap). In short they are not toggles, they are just shortcuts to the settings menu. Why, for God's sake? The whole merit of the menu was quick toggle. Google's implementation just lost that.

3. Items cannot be customised.

Items are fixed. They cannot be reordered, changed or removed. Only limited settings are available and there is not even screen rotation lock item -- which I use often. 

4. Ugly and not utilising the screen.

What is this, Windows 8? If you wanted to be Windows 8, why could you not make it more informative like Live Tiles? For example, the brightness icon shows always the same icon with the same name "BRIGHTNESS". Why not different icons (dark, half-fill, fully-filled icon) and brightness percentage? Why not the 3G icon show the allowed data left till the warning level  (like, 3GB left )?

There are lots of blank space on the bottom... Could you not add brightness horizontal bar as other OEMs did in the blank space?

Learn from the third parties.

It looks like the engineers of Google programmed this in a few days WITHOUT having any feedbacks from users and the UI designer just wanted to make things like Windows 8. I used to be and still have been a huge fan of Google, but recently Google is disappointing me. I am currently very tempted to change to iPhone.

If this shortcut menu were introduced as it is in Android 2.0, I would not have criticised much. But, this is Android 4.2 and the third-party notification menus have been there for at least 2 years. There are different flavours of this notification menus (some called power widgets) and many people showed genius ideas (like normal tap toggles, long tap gets into the settings), horizontal scroll to control brightness and so on. And I believe they are all open-source. Why could Google not learn from them?

Get back to the drawing board, Google.

Android is the best mobile device to type in Japanese.

Before iOS and Android

Dream on. On feature phones, I could not type in Japanese. Actually there was one way... The Korean character set contains some Kanas as special characters, so I could select one by one and insert them. What a pain in the... lower back.

Then, on Symbian... You have to separately buy a third-party Japanese IME, and it was not even good. And to switch the input mode... A real pain in the lower back.

Until 2010, iOS was the King.

Until 2011, typing in Japanese had been agonizing on Android devices. OpenWnn was unusable because it constantly crashed on all of my Android devices, Simeji was a better one, but it got a strange key layout and the candidates were puny and weak. I mean, it could show candidates for a single word,  but it could not show candidates for a sentence. To get that, you have to press the 'social-conversion (I forgot the exact term)' which probably sent the text to a server then got the candidates from it.

There were other multi-language IMEs like Go Keyboard. While it was very convenient for switching between languages, it did not provide good Japanese features. Candidates were also weak and they strangely placed "?" in a wrong position in T9 key mode (I reported the team, but they did not fixed it for a while.)

iOS was enjoying the decent Apple-made Japanese IME. It showed good candidates, it could show candidates for sentences. It even seem to understand the word forms, relations to other words in the same sentence (showing different Kanji for the same Kana, according to other words near-by).

Now, Android is the King. The Google Japanese IME.

I use Google Japanese IME on my MacBook and Windows, so I know that Google Japanese IME is good. The Android version is also great in its conversion performance. I love the T9 mode (like the picture below) and it just works almost perfectly.

It suggests previously typed words and phrases intelligently, so that I can almost type Japanese on my Galaxy Nexus as I do on my PC. The candidates are ample and it can show candidates for a sentence without Internet connection. Now, I have iPad running iOS 5 something, but definitely, Google's one is showing better candidates. I think Google's candidates are more up-to-date. It can suggest famous people's names, places, company names, buzz words... It really does help me.

Yeah, nothing is perfect, but...

There are some downsides, though. First, the English mode sucks. Since I also often need to type in English, I switch to the English mode (because switching the IME itself on Android is cumbersome), but the English mode shows no English word candidates or corrections! It just shows the Japanese words for that pronunciation. What a stupid behavior. At least give me some choice to set the candidate to English.

Secondly, I think it would be much much better if I can log on the IME with my Google account, so that personalised candidates are shared between all my Google Japanese IME instances (spanning 5 devices!). Or at least give me a decent way to export and import the personalised data.

I really hate the Japanese font on WP 7.5, and the IME is not good either.I stolen this picture from a Google Image search, sorry. I did not want to boot up my WP.

But these are just minor inconveniences. On iOS/Windows Phone, you cannot use third-party keyboards. I own a Windows Phone 7.5, and its Japanese keyboard was not good. So I dare say, Android is currently the best mobile device to type in Japanese.