Android: Page 2

Talks between Samsung Electronics management and its largest union collapsed Wednesday after marathon negotiations that drew South Korea's labor minister into the room for the first time. With no deal reached, an 18-day Samsung Electronics strike is now underway, the second in the company's history. Union chair Choi Seung-ho confirmed the walkout as he left the mediation session at the National Labor Relations Commission office in Sejong: "The union will proceed as planned and lawfully launch a...

Backing up PS1 saves from DuckStation on Android to Google Drive is straightforward in theory and surprisingly fragile in practice. DuckStation, a PS1 emulator available on the Android Play Store, puts save management entirely in the user's hands. There is no automatic cloud sync, no platform-level backup, and no recovery path if a phone dies or gets reset unless the player has already moved those files somewhere else. Google Drive is a practical destination for that kind of manual backup. What...

Pixel owners are missing incoming calls without realizing it. Phones set to vibrate are staying completely silent, and most users only discover the problem after the fact, when a missed-call notification shows silent mode was active despite vibration being switched on and no automation rules running. If your Pixel isn't vibrating for calls, there are two settings worth checking before you contact support, and one of them takes about 30 seconds.

Google is plugging the Play Store directly into Gemini, and the Gemini Play Store integration is set to roll out in the coming weeks. The change means Android users can ask Gemini for an app recommendation, get results drawn from Play Store listings and reviews, and install the app without ever leaving the assistant. Google reportedly frames the move as part of a broader effort to improve how users search for software.

Google announced Wear OS 7 today. The headliners are familiar: better battery life, a redesigned interface, and AI assistance that can reach into third-party apps. None of that is surprising. What matters for anyone wearing a Wear OS watch right now is whether any of it arrives on their device, and when, and on those questions, the announcement is thin.

Google last week announced a feature that changes what happens after you open a link on your phone. Starting late June, Gemini in Chrome on Android will place an AI icon in the browser toolbar. Tap it, and a panel slides up over the page you're already on, ready to summarize, explain, or answer questions about that specific content, without opening a new tab or leaving the page.

A phone can receive every Android update Google promised and still lose the features that made it worth buying. That's not a hypothetical. The Google Pixel 7-year update promise covers OS versions and security patches. It has never covered AI feature parity. As Gemini Intelligence becomes the defining value of the Pixel experience, those two things are no longer close to the same.

A dormant interface inside Google Password Manager on Android has been activated by researchers, exposing new settings that extend import and export options to cover passkeys alongside passwords. The discovery is the most concrete evidence yet that Google passkey transfer on Android is in active development. Android Authority reported last week that the mechanism has not been switched on for users, and Google has not confirmed the feature in public.

Google Keep's lock screen note-taking shortcut was nearly functional in early 2024, showed an in-app "coming soon" message, and resurfaced in hidden settings in May 2026 without a public rollout. More than two years after the first public evidence appeared in late 2023, Google has not announced a public rollout or timeline, and the feature remains inaccessible to ordinary users without Developer Options. For tablet and stylus owners who were waiting, the gap is harder to explain given...

Samsung's chip division went from KRW 0.4 trillion in operating profit to KRW 53.7 trillion in three quarters. That earnings swing, and what it says about Samsung's position in the AI memory market, is the reason the Samsung $1 trillion market cap conversation exists. Whether the earnings quality behind that valuation can hold is a separate question, and the answer is already taking shape.

Samsung has relisted the Galaxy Z Flip7 FE on its US storefront, with the 128GB model available again for $899.99 and the 256GB model listed at $999.99. SamMobile reported the restock in early May 2026, , after previously noting that the phone had largely vanished from Samsung's US store for months without any clear indication of whether it would come back. Samsung has not issued a public announcement about the return, and the current product page carries the same standing trade-in offer and...

Samsung's mobile division is reportedly exploring BOE as a possible OLED supplier for the standard Galaxy S27, after ZDNet Korea reported on May 11, 2026, that Samsung had sent BOE a request for information related to the model's display. If it happens, it would be a first for Samsung's Galaxy S line: ZDNet Korea reports that BOE has received Galaxy S-series OLED RFIs before, but has not yet secured final supply. The base S27 may also stick with an older OLED material stack rather than...

The Google I/O 2026 keynote starts tomorrow, May 19, at 10:00 a.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET and streams free at io.google. No special software, no paid subscription. The developer keynote follows at 1:30 p.m. PT, and the full event runs through May 20 with on-demand content dropping May 21.

Extensive Pixel 11 specs leaked early May 2026 via the Mystic Leaks Telegram channel, with Android Authority reporting details across all four phones in the lineup. The core finding from this Pixel 11 Pro leak: a genuine internal upgrade wrapped in a chassis that will look nearly identical to what Google has shipped for the past two years. Whether that's a problem depends almost entirely on what Google charges for it, a number that has not leaked.

Samsung is offering a free Withings Body Smart scale with select full-price Galaxy Watch purchases in the U.S., but the fine print matters. The promotion applies to Galaxy Watch Ultra, Galaxy Watch8 Classic, Galaxy Watch8, and Galaxy Watch7 purchases made through Samsung.com or the Shop Samsung App from May 4 through July 19, 2026, while supplies last. Samsung lists the scale at $129.95 MSRP, but the offer excludes trade-ins and cannot be combined with other Samsung, carrier, retailer, coupon,...

Google Messages' app manifest now contains a receiver component explicitly tied to custom backgrounds, and that single implementation detail separates today's findings from the text strings that surfaced last month. Current reporting indicates the feature remains unavailable to users, but the engineering work has moved to a qualitatively different stage. This is credible beta evidence of a feature under active development, not a launch announcement.

Before touching a single setting, open Settings > Battery > Battery usage and review the breakdown by both apps and system processes. A misbehaving app can consume more power than all the Google Pixel battery drain settings you're about to change, and no system tweak will fix that (Android Police reported this in early 2026). Check it after a full day of normal use, not right after charging.

Some Pixel Watch 2 owners are waking up to a message that shouldn't be there: "No recent data. Wear your watch to sleep." They wore it. The watch tracked them. It just won't show them anything.

Google last week unveiled Noto 3D at The Android Show: I/O Edition, a ground-up rebuild of its entire Noto Color Emoji set into what the company's emoji lead Jennifer Daniel described on Instagram as "hand-modeled 3D emoji" that are "actually true 3D objects," according to Emojipedia. All roughly 4,000 designs were rebuilt by hand. Pixel phones get them first, with a broader rollout across Google products planned for later in 2026, per Google's announcement.

Google is working on a sweeping redesign of its Workspace app icons, and the Google new app icons rollout covers everything from Gmail and Calendar to Drive, Meet, Chat, Docs, Sheets, and Slides. The goal, according to sources who provided images to 9to5Google last month, is blunt: make apps that currently blur together on a crowded home screen identifiable by sight alone. The Verge and Android Police covered the leaked designs shortly after.

Samsung is now shipping a Device Care feature that can automatically put apps sending frequent ad notifications into deep sleep once the setting is enabled. Called "Block apps with excessive ads," it appeared in Samsung's Device Care update, version 13.8.80.7, 9to5Google reported on May 11, 2026. Samsung has not published a full device-eligibility list, and current reporting says the feature appears limited to the Galaxy S26 series for now and may depend on One UI 8.5.

In November 2025, Google shipped Gemini 3 with a new model, a refreshed app, and something quieter underneath both: for certain prompts, Gemini can move beyond a plain text reply and generate a custom user interface instead, according to Google's product blog. That shift is what the Gemini app redesign is actually about. The visual cleanup is real but secondary. The more consequential work is architectural.

Android 17 Beta 3 introduced visible blur and frosted-glass effects in the widget picker and app launch transitions, while Android 17 Beta 4 has since arrived as Google's last scheduled beta. The broader direction became clearer in Android Canary 2605, which shows Google testing blur across more Pixel system UI surfaces, but the stable Android 17 scope is still not fully confirmed. What remains unclear is how much of the broader Canary blur treatment will reach the stable Android 17 release, a...

Some new Google accounts may now default to 5GB of free storage, with the full 15GB available after phone-number verification, as part of a test Google says it is running for new accounts in select regions. The change was first documented by 9to5Google through account-creation tests and Wayback Machine analysis, and Google later confirmed the test to Android Authority.

Google shut down the third-party forum that hosted its smart home support community this week and launched a replacement on its own support domain. The Google Home and Nest Community migration transferred no login credentials, no earned status, and no previously published content, according to Android Authority. Everything on the old platform gets permanently deleted on June 30, 2026.

Nearly two-thirds of Pixel fans say the Tensor G5's weaker gaming performance doesn't factor into their buying decision. On its face, that sounds like a clean win for Google. It isn't, and understanding why requires reading past the headline number.

Your Gmail inbox might already be broken. Not crashing, not showing errors. Just silently failing to receive mail while you go about your day, none the wiser.

Code buried in the latest Google Phone app beta suggests the Pixel Take a Message expansion could reach India and roughly 17 additional countries across Europe and Asia, Android Police reported this week, citing an Android Authority analysis. Google has not confirmed the rollout, the country list, or any launch timeline. Everything here flows from beta code, not an official announcement.

The debate over Galaxy S26 Ultra design identity is really a debate over what Samsung thinks the Ultra should be. A halo product for power users who want the most purposeful Android device on the market, or the premium size tier in a mainstream lineup? The commercial data and the enthusiast data currently give different answers, and both are worth taking seriously.

Reports from late April and early May 2026 describe an internal reorganization combining OnePlus and Realme's back-end operations, but Oppo has not issued a detailed global statement explaining the full scope.

Google has released Android Canary 2603, a public testing build that adds a blur filter to the app-launch transition, among a broader set of UI changes. Android Authority reported the blur addition about two months ago, noting that tapping an app from the home screen or app drawer now triggers a progressively intensifying blur layered over the existing pinch zoom animation. When you return to the home screen, the effect reverses, icons sharpening back into place. The whole sequence moves fast...

Google introduced Google Private AI Compute in November 2025, three months after the Pixel 10 launched with on-device AI features built around a simple premise: the phone should surface what you need before you ask. That gap between launch and the cloud architecture announcement is worth understanding. It defines what the Pixel 10's proactive AI actually is, how it works, and why the privacy question it raises has not yet been answered by anyone other than Google.

Exceeding the Google account 15GB storage limit locks your Gmail, freezes Drive uploads, and stops photo backups all at once. What it does not do, at least not right away, is delete anything. That distinction is worth understanding, because Google's own warning system tends to blur the two.

Google now lets Search users across supported languages favor specific outlets and sites in Top Stories. The feature, called Preferred Sources in Search, expanded worldwide for English-language users in December 2025. Google then expanded the feature to all Search languages it supports on April 30, 2026, per Google's announcement, per Google's announcement.

Google treats AI Overviews the same way it treats knowledge panels: as a core Search feature that cannot be turned off. That same support page acknowledges, without much ceremony, that "AI Overviews can and will make mistakes." So you're getting a feature you didn't ask for, and it isn't guaranteed to be accurate.

Android users can already choose where new passkeys get stored. Moving the ones already inside Google Password Manager to another provider is a different story and that capability does not exist yet.

Samsung is reportedly planning to unveil its first AI smart glasses at Galaxy Unpacked in London on July 22. The rumored Galaxy Glasses would run Android XR with Gemini as the built-in assistant, carry a 12MP camera, speakers, and microphones, and offload all processing to a paired phone — no display, no onboard compute.

Code embedded in the latest Google Translate Android update suggests that Google is building offline support for Live Translate, its real-time spoken conversation feature. Right now, attempting to use Google Translate's live translation feature offline throws an error. But that may be about to change, as per reports.

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