Android's new translation feature is a great reason to switch from iPhone

There's a nifty feature in Android 6.0 Marshmallow called "Now on Tap" that not a lot of people know about or use. 

When you press and hold down on the home button (the circle icon), Now on Tap activates and essentially does a Google search of the screen, scanning for relevant information to serve up like website links, directions to places, options to share to social networks, etc.

It's the future of Google search for apps, but it isn't exactly super useful and doesn't always work well.

Google's expanding Now on Tap's usefulness with an instant translate feature. To translate a page, long press on the home button like you normally would, then tap the "Translate this screen" card.

This is exactly the kind of thing that Now on Tap was made for. It's frictionless and doesn't require any copying and pasting from one app to another. It just works.

The translation feature is currently limited to Android users with their device's language set to English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese and Spanish. Hopefully, more language support will soon be on the way. 

In addition to the translation feature, Google's also introducing a "Discover" section for Now on Tap with a stream of visual content related to what's on the app's screen. 

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Google cites an example where related videos, news articles and more will pop up under the Discover icon if you're reading about, say, Pluto.

The other new feature for Now on Tap is the ability to scan barcodes and QR codes. With the camera app, you can scan a barcode or QR code and Now on Tap will display related information on the object, such as user reviews. Google says the feature will work on books, DVDs and more.

Overall, it looks like Google is slowly adding healthy features to Now on Tap. At least with the translation feature, I think more people will start using it.

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