We need only to look to last year's Android 6.0 Marshmallow release to see why this challenge is so critical for Google to overcome. Take, for instance, standardized system-level support for fingerprint security -- one of Marshmallow's marquee features. Its presence in the operating system allows developers to implement fingerprint security into their apps without much work and in a way that functions seamlessly across devices.

Seven months after Marshmallow's release, though, the number of apps actually taking advantage of that function is surprisingly limited. Even Google-developed apps that'd be obvious fits for fingerprint support have yet to get on board -- like Google Wallet, which requires a PIN upon startup, and Google Authenticator, which certainly should provide a security prompt when opened.

Then there's Android 6.0's custom text selection feature, which gives developers the ability to have an action from their app appear in a menu whenever a user selects text -- alongside basic text selection commands like copy, paste, and so forth. The idea is that such a setup could let you select text and then quickly perform a specific function with it, like translating the words into another language or looking something up in Wikipedia.