Android

Google has confirmed a new foldable gaming mode for Android 17 that splits a foldable's inner display into gameplay on top and a virtual gamepad on the bottom. The catch: It was not included in the stable Android 17 release that began rolling out to Pixel devices on June 16, 2026.

Google's Gemini note-taker in Meet is now available to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, the company announced today, extending a feature that had previously been limited to eligible Workspace business customers. The Google Meet Gemini note-taker goes live immediately on web and mobile, in select languages, for meetings the subscriber hosts.

Google is rolling out a stable Android 17 OTA to Beta 4 and Beta 4.1 users, designed to move them off the beta program without wiping their data. Some Beta 4.1 devices still haven't received it, and the Android 17 Beta 4.1 stable OTA delay now carries a concrete hazard: Android Authority warned this week that Beta 4.1 users should avoid the latest Google Play System update because it can cause a bootloop, a failure state where the phone cycles through restarts and never fully loads the OS. The...

Last Wednesday, two powerful earthquakes struck Venezuela in quick succession a 7.2 followed seconds later by a 7.5 and many Venezuelans say their Android phones buzzed with warnings before the ground moved. That claim is the center of this article. Not because it proves lives were saved, but because it raises a pointed question: did a consumer smartphone feature just serve as de facto early-warning infrastructure in a country that has none of the conventional kind?

Survey data suggests most mobile users reading this on a phone are doing so against a dark background though the more interesting question is why. A 2026 mixed-method study surveying 215 mobile users found that roughly 68% reported an overall dark mode preference, with the sample skewing young (mean age 24.3) and recruited in Vietnam, so treat the figures as directional rather than universal (Hazadi & Kamaruzaman, Journal of Mobile Studies). What gives them weight is the contextual breakdown:...

Searches for a "Google Signature app for Android" surface a real, documented product just not a standalone app. Google's documented signing workflow lives inside Google Docs and Drive, restricted to Workspace subscribers, handling the full signature request lifecycle without leaving the document environment. The other Android "signature" system is a developer security mechanism for app distribution, unrelated to contracts or PDFs.

Google has begun notifying users that Fitbit app versions older than 5.0 will stop being supported on Android and iOS on July 15, 2026, ending a workaround some holdouts used to avoid the Google Health redesign.

After months of Pixel bootloop complaints tied to Google's March, April, and May 2026 software updates, Google has not issued a universal over-the-air fix for affected phones.

Samsung is ending free access to its SmartThings API in October, and the users who will feel it are not the millions running the standard SmartThings app. They're the technically engaged users who built custom setups on top of the free API, and some of them have no practical way around the new Samsung SmartThings API fees. Android Authority confirmed this week that paid tiers take effect in October, including a $4.99-per-month personal plan for non-commercial individual developers, with free...

A reviewed OnePlus Nord 6 package included an 80W SuperVOOC charger, a red charging cable, and a color-matched silicone case, according to GSMArena's early review unit writeup. That accessory set stands out because the Nord 6 uses OnePlus' proprietary fast-charging system, so the included adapter is the box item most likely to affect day-one performance.

LibrePods for Android v0.2.3: Easier Install, Root Still Required

Google Photos is adding a top-level toggle to disable Ask Photos directly from the Search tab, Ars Technica reported earlier this year. The change follows user complaints about the Gemini-powered search experience, and Google Photos head Shimrit Ben-Yair went on record about it, saying the company "has heard the complaints." Until the toggle ships, turning off Ask Photos still requires navigating three levels into the app's settings.

A Google Play System update currently available to Pixel devices can render phones running Android 17 beta 4.1 completely unusable, trapping them in a reboot loop with no clean way out. The Android 17 beta 4.1 Play System update bootloop issue was flagged today by Android Authority, after multiple Pixel owners reported their devices never recovered after the update completed.

Google began pushing the first Fitbit Air firmware update today, roughly seven weeks after the tracker went on sale, and the timing is not coincidental. The release follows a sustained wave of user complaints about the device's two most fundamental jobs: counting steps and tracking sleep. The update (version 20001.253.2 on iOS, 67.20001.253.2 on Android) is rolling out gradually via the Google Health app, according to Android Authority.

Google's new Home Speaker is finally here, and the first reviews point to a clear trade-off: this is a Gemini-first smart home device, not a straightforward Nest Audio replacement.

Samsung pushed One UI 7 theft-protection features to the Galaxy S23 series last year, a move that signals the company is still treating older flagships as active hardware worth securing. For S23 owners, the more immediate question is whether the most consequential security feature already on their phone, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Auto Blocker update, is actually switched on. It probably is. But "probably" is worth verifying.

Making a polished YouTube Short used to mean leaving the app. Record, export to CapCut, cut to the beat by hand, add text and stickers, import back to YouTube. The native tools weren't built for that kind of precision. YouTube has spent the past year pushing a sequence of changes aimed at eliminating that round trip, and the updates are substantive enough to map carefully.

Budget smartphones involve a series of small surrenders. Most of them fade. The plastic chassis stops registering after a few days. The middling processor becomes invisible when the phone handles what you actually ask it to do. But a weak screen never stops being a weak screen. Every scroll, every video, every glance at a notification is a reminder of the trade-off you made.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE Plus is currently on sale for $434, down $216 from its $649.99 list price. That discount matters because the FE line's value proposition has always depended on price and at $649.99, the case for buying was genuinely mixed.

A poll embedded in an Android Authority column from last month drew 7,036 votes on a single question: are you satisfied with the Galaxy S26 Ultra Privacy Display? Strip out the 35% who hadn't used the phone, and 68% of actual owners said yes. That's the strongest positive signal yet for Samsung's most debated flagship feature, and it tells a more specific story than it first appears.

The story that the Chrome ad blocker update would kill your ad blocker was wrong. A peer-reviewed study published earlier this year in Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies by researchers at Goethe University Frankfurt tested MV3 versions of four major blockers against their MV2 predecessors, using default settings to replicate what a typical user actually runs. The result: no statistically significant reduction in blocking effectiveness. The MV3 versions actually blocked marginally...

Samsung Display filed a patent in January describing a specific engineering fix for one of the trickiest reliability problems in OLED manufacturing. The filing, US 2026/0136779 A1, covers a groove-and-seal architecture designed to stop moisture from degrading a panel at the camera cutout edge. It is about punch-hole cutout durability, not under-display cameras. That distinction matters, because it arrives as tipster reporting suggests Samsung's UDC program may be running out of road, according...

A leaked Android 17 build suggests Google could be adding two significant upgrades to how Pixel phones handle color: a free-form accent color picker that would replace the current preset system, and a set of system-wide intensity presets controlling how aggressively those colors spread across the UI. Android Authority reported the leak last month. Neither feature has appeared in any public Android 17 build, and when Google might ship them remains unconfirmed.

Google is testing a Chrome behavior that would send every non-URL address-bar search query straight into AI Mode, bypassing standard Search entirely. The Google Search AI Mode Chrome test surfaced in the Canary build earlier this month, and while Google moved quickly to call it an accident, its existence lands at an awkward moment: a federal court has spent the last year dismantling the exact kind of default-setting arrangements that would make such a feature legally sensitive.

Samsung announced the Galaxy A27 5G today with confirmed specs, a July 3 release date, and no official pricing. What does exist on the pricing front is a leak: figures attributed to Roland Quandt, circulated two weeks ago by Notebookcheck and IntoMobile, put the A27 at €349 and €439 for the two main storage tiers. If those numbers hold, that's a €50 increase over what the Galaxy A26 cost at launch. Samsung has not confirmed them. GSMArena's launch coverage published today notes prices are still...

Some Pixel owners running Android 17 are reporting erratic touchscreen behavior, with users reporting screens that stop responding to touch entirely or scroll in the opposite direction of their swipe. Google has acknowledged reports through an official PixelCommunity Reddit account and suggested troubleshooting steps, but has not identified the root cause or provided a patch timeline, Android Authority reported.

Samsung announced what it describes as the industry's first UFS 5.0 storage chip, with sequential read speeds of 10.8 GB/s and write speeds of 9.5 GB/s. That's more than double the throughput of the UFS 4.1 standard found in current flagship Android phones, according to HotHardware. Samsung is framing the chip not just as a speed upgrade but as infrastructure for running AI models directly on a device, without a cloud connection.

Google Messages may finally be fixing one of its most complained-about limitations. Researchers at Android Authority enabled a bulk forwarding feature inside the latest beta build, walking through the complete flow end to end: select multiple texts and images, tap a new overflow menu, preview the batch, and send. The feature is not publicly available, is described as a work in progress, and carries no release timeline.

Google is rolling out Google Play alternative billing across the U.S., UK, and EU this June, letting Android developers route payments outside its system and avoid a portion of its fees. Australia, South Korea, and Japan will follow before the end of 2026. The rest of the world comes later, on September 30, 2027, Bloomberg Law reported in March.

Gemini in Chrome can now focus on exactly what a user points to, a chart, a comparison table, or a diagram, rather than processing an entire page and guessing what's relevant. Google updated its Gemini in Chrome support pages this week to document "Select from screen," a new desktop tool that lets users draw a bounding box around on-page content before submitting a prompt. The feature is reportedly rolling out now on supported desktop versions of Chrome to signed-in users who aren't browsing in...

Samsung Galaxy Smart Glasses Leak: Specs, Price, and 2027 Roadmap

Nothing Warp Android to Computer File Sharing Tool: Why It Left Google Play

Retail packaging for the Samsung Galaxy A27 has surfaced through a Kenyan e-commerce retailer's Instagram post, showing the phone in three color finishes alongside a regional price and a printed 24-month warranty. The images are the most recent entry in a leak sequence that now spans official renders, marketing materials, and an accidental Samsung product page publication and together they describe a phone that's being meaningfully repositioned, not just refreshed.

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 has hit its lowest no-trade-in price since Black Friday. Samsung.com currently lists the 256GB base model at $1,499.99, though availability may vary by color/configuration, while Amazon and Best Buy are close behind at $1,649.99, all without requiring a trade-in or carrier commitment. That's over $400 off a phone that launched at $1,999.99 last July and remained near its launch price for months before recent higher-storage price changes. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 deal...

Google released Android 17 QPR1 Beta 5 on June 23 for Pixel phones, less than two weeks after the previous beta. The short gap between releases, combined with a ten-item bug-fix changelog and no new features, points to a cleanup build rather than a feature drop, per Droid Life and 9to5Google. Build CP31.260608.007 carries the June 2026 security patch. None of the ten fixes touch Quick Settings.

Code strings found inside the YouTube Music watchOS app suggest Google is building infrastructure for offline downloads on Apple Watch, 9to5Google reported. The strings reference "clear downloads" and watch-level storage use, pointing to local media management being built into the app rather than simply mirroring what lives on a paired iPhone. If that works, YouTube Music offline downloads on Apple Watch would close a gap that currently keeps the app dependent on an iPhone connection.

Google has a genuine record of pushing AI features to older Pixel hardware, and the pattern across its last several feature drops confirms it. What those drops also show, if you read them closely, is that the most capable experiences are concentrating at the flagship end, and the mechanism Google is using to bridge the gap for older devices carries different privacy assumptions than what the company sold when those phones launched. That shift is worth being direct about.

Dark Green is the only confirmed color detail from Samsung's entire 2026 foldable lineup. It belongs to the Fold 8 Wide. Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Flip 8 colors remain unconfirmed, with a reported July 22 Unpacked event now less than a month away. In a cycle where hardware changes are modest across the board, the absence of color information is itself a data point worth examining.

Chinese tipster Digital Chat Station claims Samsung is testing its Privacy Display technology for the Galaxy S27 Pro, according to SamMobile's report on the leak. The feature currently ships exclusively on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. If the Samsung Galaxy S27 Pro privacy screen rumor holds, it would mark the first time the technology has moved beyond a single SKU in Samsung's lineup.

Code found in Google Photos v7.81 points to an unreleased feature called Moods, an AI-powered styling tool that could restyle a photo with a single tap. Android Authority reported the references in an APK teardown of Google Photos v7.81, and the technical details suggest Moods would work differently from standard filters and many existing editing tools.