Android: Page 4

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.

Google confirmed in December 2025 that it is "enabling third-party speaker devices as well" as part of Gemini for Home, adding "Third-party speakers" to its official compatibility list alongside every Nest and Google Home product, 9to5Google reported. That same month, Walmart's Onn 4K Pro became one of the first non-Google devices to receive the Gemini upgrade, per Android Authority. Walmart has not officially announced a Gemini-powered smart speaker, but a Connectivity Standards Alliance...

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.

Your Nest speakers are on. Tidal can see them. YouTube Music can see them. Google Assistant can even start playing Spotify on them by voice. But open the Spotify Android app and tap the Connect menu, nothing appears. The Spotify Google Cast bug hitting Android users right now isn't a network problem or a hardware failure. The available evidence points to a Spotify-side regression, likely tied to a recent Android app update.

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 has rolled out a QR code-based transfer method for Quick Share that lets any Android phone send files to an iPhone without requiring the recipient to install anything. The Android device generates a Quick Share QR code, the iPhone user scans it with the default Camera app, and the file downloads via a cloud link, Digital Trends reported today. Full rollout across all Android devices is expected within roughly a month, per Digital Trends.

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.

At MWC 2026, Motorola told attendees that pairing the Razr Fold with smart glasses produces Motorola described as a "full laptop experience." Engadget covered the demo in early March, calling it a setup that "turns your Razr Fold into a full-fledged laptop" during Motorola's demo. The claim is plausible. Both halves of the equation exist as real, functional hardware. But the hands-on reports don't establish one critical detail, and that gap determines whether the Razr Fold smart glasses laptop...

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.

ChatGPT screen sharing on Android may be getting a less clunky alternative, and the possible replacement is worth understanding before it arrives. Code discovered this week inside version 1.2026.118 of ChatGPT's Android app points to a different method: instead of capturing your screen as video, the app would read visible text and interface elements directly, using Android's Accessibility API and Android's Bubbles feature, according to Android Authority.

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's late-April 2026 Google Home app update brings a modernized camera interface, consolidated notification controls, redesigned casting controls more broadly, and speed improvements to Gemini voice commands, 9to5Google reported. The changes are unglamorous but cumulative — another round of friction removal from a platform that has been getting meaningfully less annoying to use since October 2025.

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.

Government-brokered talks between Samsung Electronics and its largest union collapsed last week without agreement, leaving an 18-day strike scheduled for May 21 effectively on track, Seoul Economic Daily reported. The National Labor Relations Commission plans to issue a formal mediation proposal, but both sides must accept it for a settlement to take effect. With roughly one week until the deadline, the question for memory markets is not just whether a strike happens it's how much disruption is...

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.

Android Authority's Stephen Schenck visited a Best Buy this week and found no OnePlus phones on display. A store associate confirmed the devices had recently been pulled from that floor space, Android Authority reported today. Multiple Reddit users reported the same pattern at their own locations, with Nothing phones appearing in the slots where OnePlus units used to sit.

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.

Google wants enterprise IT buyers to stop thinking of Chromebooks as school devices. The pitch behind Chromebook Plus enterprise adoption has become markedly more credible over the past eighteen months: ten years of automatic updates, zero reported ransomware incidents, hardware substantially better than legacy Chromebooks and positioned against Windows 11 AI PCs, and Gemini-related features increasingly tied into the platform. That is a substantive offer. It is also the front half of a...

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.

Samsung Upgraded PDF Scanner Comes to Older Flagships With One UI 8.5

Pixel Bluetooth Volume Bug Fix Delayed: Workaround for Now

Samsung Certified Re-Newed Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Flip 7 Cost More Than New Right Now

Google is pulling Groups, Community Feed, direct messages, and badges from the Fitbit app this month, replacing them with a Gemini-based AI coach available at a higher price point. The Fitbit app social features removed in this transition are not returning, according to reporting from 9to5Google and Gadgets & Wearables last week. The app itself automatically updates to Google Health starting May 19, with no new download required, Google announced last week.

Mystic Leaks has shared footage from an early Android build showing Google may be adding a full manual color picker to the Pixel's Wallpaper & style app, Android Authority and 9to5Google reported this week. The Pixel Material You color controls shown in the leak would let users choose any custom accent color directly, replacing a system that has generated palettes automatically from wallpaper since Android 12.

Google I/O 2026 runs May 19 and 20 as a free livestreamed event, with keynotes and sessions open online, per the official Google I/O site. Two questions dominate the pre-conference evidence: whether Gemini actually landed on the smartwatches, cars, and TVs Google committed to a year ago, and how prominently Android XR which received its most substantial platform update six weeks before the conference figures into the keynote.

New leak details suggest the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide will ship with just two rear cameras, skipping the telephoto lens that the standard Galaxy Z Fold 8 is reported to keep. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide camera specs, surfaced this week by SamMobile citing GalaxyClub, describe a primary wide and an ultrawide, both at 50MP. No telephoto. Both phones are rumored for a late July launch, per Android Authority two weeks ago. Samsung has not officially confirmed either model.

How Google Wallet Real-Time Flight Updates Work on Android 16

Google is rolling out a redesigned Gemini overlay for Android, and 9to5Google reports it's showing up on stable Google app version 17.8. The update brings an expanded Tools menu directly into the floating UI, putting Deep Research, image and video generation, Canvas, and Guided Learning within reach without opening the Gemini app.

Google's Android Identity Check anti-theft feature has expanded to cover third-party banking apps and password managers, closing the gap that previously left financial accounts exposed even when system-level protections were active. Apps integrating Android's Biometric Prompt API now automatically require biometric authentication outside trusted locations, meaning a thief who has both the device and the PIN still cannot open a banking app or access saved passwords without the owner's...

Google Search was not down on May 5. What actually happened was narrower and stranger: a cryptographic error at Germany's domain registry made bahn.de, spiegel.de, and dozens of other .de websites unreachable for users on Google DNS, Cloudflare, and Quad9. The fault was at DENIC, the authority that manages the .de top-level domain. Google DNS users saw a "Google Search outage" because Google DNS was the service telling their browsers the site didn't exist but Google DNS was doing exactly what...

OnePlus Ace 6 Ultra Launch Date, Specs, and What's Still Unknown

Galaxy S27 Ultra Battery Upgrade: Why a Dual-Cell Design Is Most Likely

The short version: Pixel Watch 4 is still the better all-day wearable.

Google added Pixel 10 Comfort View to its flagship lineup two months agoa s part of the March 2026 Pixel Drop, a display feature designed specifically for users whose eyes struggle with the vivid, high-saturation rendering that modern OLED panels are built to deliver. The mode uses refined color filtering to pull back the intensity of very bright or oversaturated colors. It's available on the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL, and Pixel 10 Pro Fold, but not the Pixel 10a. The independent...

The WearOS 5.1 update that rolled out to Pixel Watch 3 owners earlier this year broke sleep tracking for a large number of users, and Google had not published a formal advisory or confirmed a patch timeline as of last month, Android Digest reported. The fix, confirmed across user reports, is straightforward: re-grant Health Connect permissions and remove battery optimization restrictions on both the phone and the watch.

Samsung's headline number from the S26 launch was a 29% sales increase over the S25 series in the first three weeks. The number that tells the more interesting story is 71%. According to Counterpoint Research data reported by Android Police last month, seven out of every ten U.S. buyers who purchased a Galaxy S26 in that window chose the Ultra, a share that grew by 10 percentage points compared to the S25 Ultra's cut of its own lineup. Galaxy S26 Ultra sales success was visible even before...

A peer-reviewed clinical study has validated the Galaxy Watch6's ability to predict vasovagal syncope up to five minutes before an episode occurs. That's a real finding, published this week in a credible cardiology journal. It is not, however, evidence that the watch on your wrist can warn you before you faint and Samsung's "world-first breakthrough" announcement does little to draw that distinction.

If you're searching for a new Chromecast, Google has an answer: the Google TV Streamer, priced at $99.99. That's roughly double what the Chromecast with Google TV cost. The price gap is not incidental it reflects a genuine product category shift, one worth understanding before handing over your money.

How to Encrypt Files on Android: CryptoContainer Guide

One UI 8.5 Galaxy Glasses Leak: What the Changelog Reveals