Everyone is completely hyped (me included) about what Google might bring to I/O next Wednesday, things like Jelly Bean, Project Glass, The Asus Nexus Tablet, Majel, cross platform gaming and many other things, but what about the smaller (in comparison to the other ones) products and services?

Here’s a list of the thing’s I’d like to see besides all of the above:

• Better first party apps for Android: Don’t get me wrong, I love Google apps like Gmail, Drive, Reader, Maps, YouTube and such, but there’s a lot of work to be done left, and some of it is very important and a few areas are really missing the spot.
  - Spreadsheets on Android, they are probably the worst experience out of the whole bunch, the new text editor is great, but the spreadsheets are still with the old one and it’s virtually impossible to make an edit there..
  - Better offline for Drive, you can save the file for offline but you can’t download the file? what’s up with that? I want to download a pic and I have to open it with QuickPic and then copy it to the phone, there’s no other way to get the file out of the Drive ecosystem.
  - Every app has a different UI, some like Gmail, Maps or Reader have it on the bottom (actually, Reader has both, top and bottom depending on list or article view), Google+, Chrome, Translate have it on top. Please, just pick one and go with it for the whole bunch, I think the bottom is the trend for the latest updates, but still, just pick one.
  
  - Reader still doesn’t have a +1 button like the web version and like I said before, it has 2 different UIs
  - Don’t get me started on tablet versions for some apps, we all know what G+ looks like on a tablet…
• Podcasts: Google has very little in the podcast game, with only the Listen app, which works great, but the UI is completely different to the rest and feels old. They should just integrate a podcast manager into the music app and get rid of this app, or at least make it feel like a Google app and not a third-party barely there app.
• Events for Google+: I know that this is coming but still, I wanna see it, and not just in G+, I want it completely integrated with Calendar and Gmail and Maps.
• Go global, for real: And this one kinda upsets me. Enough with the US only stories, if Google really is a web company, then the web is everywhere. Music, books, movies, everything must go international, or at least get faster updates for every country. We’re just starting to see books in Germany or Spain, but what about the rest of the world? There are many services that are US only and it makes no sense for a company like Google to do that. Especially for something like Google Voice, if it’s a web number on a web service, why is it just for US users? I’m paying for my internet service as well you know?
  I live in Argentina, the default search engine in chrome goes to google.com.ar and not google.com (I found a workaround, but the default is still that) the problem is that .ar is so much worse than .com, there’s no Google Instant, new search features take ages to get to localized search pages, and it makes no sense.

There are more things like this, but this are the ones that I feel more important, at least from the top of my head.
I believe that Google should address most if not all of these items as soon as possible, I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Google as a company, what they do and how they do it, it mesmerizes me how they can do so many things and take technology to the extreme, but from a user side this small things matter, and they matter a lot.

So please, Google, I know you have a lot in your hands with all the big projects and we love you for that, but don’t forget the small things as well.

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About the Author

Leonardo Benveniste

I've been an Android fan for a long long time, even before owning one. My first and current phone is a Motorola Defy which is currently rooted, rom'd and running a beautiful ICS thanks to CyanogenMod. My goal is to share both news and love for this awesome platform that we all have and, hopefully, make it better between us all.

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