While some people noticed a lot of changes, including a new “Engineering settings” menu within the app, this isn’t by any means a major overhaul of Android Auto. What users actually received was a “dogfood” daily build accidentally released by Google through the Google Play Store.
The Android Auto beta programme is now playing a much more significant role in the development of new app features, and fresh builds go live for the registered testers every few weeks. However, earlier this week, users found themselves being offered a completely unexpected Android Auto update through the Google Play Store. This is because Google is working around the clock to improve Android Auto, and the company is now shipping beta builds at a faster pace than before.
Highlights
To answer the question on everybody’s lips, no, Coolwalk isn’t included in the internal build. The Mountain View-based search giant is still tight-lipped on the ETA of this highly anticipated feature, so for the time being, nobody knows for sure when it is supposed to go live.
These builds are only supposed to be used by the Mountain View-based search giant internally, so they are compiled for testing even before the beta updates go live for public testers. This means they shouldn’t be published on the Google Play Store anyway, so someone at Google clearly pressed the go-ahead button too early.Most likely, the company will resolve the blunder with a new update in the coming days.
A new Android Auto update should go live later this month, but as said before, the Coolwalk debut isn’t tied to a specific app version, as it all comes down to a server-side switch to enable the feature.
Google originally planned to release the Coolwalk update in the summer of this year, but this deadline has clearly been missed, so now Android Auto users are eagerly waiting for a new ETA from the company.