This week, Pixel VIPs became the latest (exclusive) app made for Google phones. It follows the big trio we got last year with Screenshots, Studio, and Weather, as well as Camera, Magnifier, Recorder, Thermometer, and Tips.
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Pixel VIPs does not have a homescreen icon and the way you set it up is through Google Contacts. That reliance on the Contacts app feels a bit strange and makes VIPs feel like an extension of sorts.
Afterwards, a widget is how you access the Pixel VIPs grid of circular contact photos. (Nitpick: Three of my VIPs have longer names that span two lines. The fourth is shorter and does not do that for a very annoying look.)
Tapping on a person brings up a half sheet, with their circular contact photo protruding. The slide to go fullscreen is pretty smooth, with the feed visually interesting thanks to different card shapes. Overall, it’s a well-designed experience.
Pixel VIPs brings together various services:
- Last connection: Google Phone, Messages, and WhatsApp
- Local updates: Google Maps/Find Hub, Google Weather
VIPs is directly responsible for Notes and “Things to do together,” which uses Google Search and presumably Maps. The ability to leave one-off notes about a contact is great and something I’m already using. It’s replacing how I use Google Keep to jot down things I want to talk to friends about in-person/over the phone. The card layout is quite nice and like Keep.
Meanwhile, the content, location, and food recommendations remind me so much of a social network, with Last connection and Local updates fitting right in.
It’s also reminiscent of Android’s Conversations widget. In 2020, Google made “People and conversations” a tentpole of Android 11, correctly identifying how “communicating with your friends and colleagues is the most important thing many people do on their phones.” This manifested as the “Conversations” section of the notification shade that could open chat heads, as well as specifying which ones were “Priorities.” It was all in the vein of webOS Synergy and the Windows Phone People Hub.
Google said People and conversations was a “multi-year Android initiative that aims to elevate people and conversations in the system surfaces of the phone.” Android 12 saw the Conversations widget to “promote user interaction by allowing them to easily open chats on the home screen.” Instead of just your last chat, Google imagined the widget showing various activities:
- Anniversary: “representing that the conversation user and the device user are celebrating an anniversary today.”
- Audio: “representing that the conversation user is listening to music or other audio like a podcast.”
- Birthday: “representing that today is the conversation user’s birthday.”
- Game: “representing that the conversation user is playing a game.”
- Location: “representing that the conversation user is sharing status with the device user.”
- New story: “representing that the conversation user has posted a new story.”
- Video: “representing that the conversation user is watching video content.”
- Status: Whether a person was available, busy, or offline
This saw minimal developer buy-in. The lack of third-party support is understandable since apps want to own the entire experience, but Google should have leveraged Maps and YouTube.
VIPs accomplishes a lot of what Android wanted to do in 2021 on a smaller scale for just the Pixel. We’ll just have to see how long this initiative lasts.
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