Android: Page 5

T-Mobile and Verizon opened preorders for the Pixel 11 lineup on the same day, and both are advertising offers that sound like a free phone. Not all of them actually are. T-Mobile's top Google Pixel 11 carrier deals are device discounts tied to which plan a customer is on and whether they trade in a phone. Verizon's flagship switcher offer bundles a device credit into a specific 48-month plan structure. Read the fine print carelessly and the two "free phone" headlines start to look...

Samsung has reportedly ordered motherboards for a Galaxy S27 Ultra Exynos 2700 variant, according to MoneyToday. If that plan survives to launch, it would mark the first time an Exynos chip has powered Samsung's Ultra flagship since the Galaxy S22 Ultra in 2022, a stretch covering four straight years of Snapdragon-only Ultra models (SamMobile).

Samsung's One UI 9 rollout is moving beyond its newest Galaxy phones, giving owners of last year's flagships a better idea of where they stand. The stable update began expanding to the Galaxy S26 series on Sept. 16 after debuting on the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Z Fold8, and Z Flip8.

A Google Play Store listing for an app called Desktop Camera now describes a finished interface built for tablets, laptops, and desktop-style screens, naming touch, mouse, and keyboard input directly, Squaredtech reported this week. That update is the latest development in the Googlebook Desktop Camera app leak, and it marks a real shift from the placeholder version of the app that surfaced earlier this year. It's evidence that Google is preparing a camera app for larger, desktop-style screens,...

Six months into the Galaxy S26's life, price has done something spec sheets never could: it has flipped the whole comparison on its head. SlashGear checked retail listings today and found the Galaxy S26 selling for $774.99 at Amazon and Best Buy, and for just $712.50 at Walmart, undercutting the $799 the Galaxy S25 charged at its own launch (SlashGear). Retail pricing shifts by the week, so treat those numbers as a snapshot rather than a promise, and check current listings before you buy. But...

The Pixel 11 Pro Fold cracked along both antenna lines next to its hinge during a bend test, and its outer display popped clean off the frame, Trusted Reviews and Android Authority reported. The test comes from Zack Nelson, who runs the YouTube channel JerryRigEverything and put the phone through a series of scratch, flame, dust and bend tests, according to Trusted Reviews.

A developer known as busung has released an open-source tool called the Root My Galaxy app, which claims to grant temporary root access to select Snapdragon-powered Galaxy flagships without unlocking the bootloader or tripping Samsung's Knox e-fuse, according to an Android Authority report published today. The developer describes the process as one-click and says it leaves user data untouched, per the same report. The conventional route to persistent Samsung root involves bootloader changes,...

Days before Google's Pixel 11 launch event, code teardowns show the company finalizing onboarding screens for a feature called Proactive Assistance, currently gated to Pixel 11 hardware only, according to Android Authority. The discovery gives the clearest look yet at a feature that could become one of the more visible AI additions on Google's next flagship, and at how far the company is willing to let Gemini reach into a user's inbox, calendar, and text messages before being asked.

A newly reported One UI 9 Call Brief time zone feature shows the other person's local time before an international call even connects, according to Android Authority's hands-on report published yesterday. The outlet tested the feature directly on a Galaxy Z Fold 8, watching the recipient's local time appear while dialing an international number, before the call went through.

Google-backed researchers at the University of California, San Diego are building a 2,000-device computing cluster from retired Pixel smartphones, with the full system due to launch this fall. The target workload is narrow and specific: giving university students affordable access to compute resources for coursework in parallel programming and systems classes. A 20-device pilot has already produced benchmark results, and the architecture is set. This has moved past the whiteboard.

Android users spotted something unfamiliar in their Play Store update queues last Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026: an app called "Android Pulse," often showing up as a blank square with no icon at all. So what is the Android Pulse app doing on millions of phones? According to 9to5Google, it's a first-party Google tool built for diagnostics rather than anything malicious, and its Play Store listing shows more than 10 million downloads.

Google is expected to unveil its first Bluetooth item tracker, the Google Pixel Tag tracker, at today's Made by Google event in New York, according to TechSpot. Google has not confirmed the device as of this writing, so everything below reflects reporting published ahead of the keynote. If the tracker arrives as leaked, it closes a gap that's looked increasingly strange: Google has run a crowdsourced device-finding network since 2024 without ever selling a tag of its own (9to5Google).

If you're weighing Waze vs Google Maps on Android Auto, one detailed month-long comparison offers a useful starting point: a reviewer who ran both apps side by side on a Galaxy S25 Ultra and an 8-inch Android Auto head unit found Waze more proactive about rerouting and easier to read on a dashboard display, but still reached for Google Maps on longer or unfamiliar trips. The comparison is really about how these two apps behave once you're actually driving with them, not whether either one works...

Google hasn't even released the Pixel 11 yet, and already four codenames and a chip nickname for the phone after it have leaked online. That's where Google Pixel 12 rumors stand right now: reports about reports, built on a single leaker's Telegram posts rather than anything resembling a product announcement (Android Authority, 3 months ago).

A Samsung Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra 360-degree leak is giving the clearest unofficial look yet at Samsung's next tablet lineup. New video and press renders, published by Android Headlines and NokiaPowerUser, show the Tab S12 Ultra and Tab S12+ from every angle, alongside a separate spec sheet claiming everything from chipset to pricing.

Less than a month after launch, Pixel 11 owners are running into a scattered set of problems: a phone that won't survive its own setup screen, videos full of static, spotty Wi-Fi, and a hit game that refuses to launch at all.

Hands-on footage of the OnePlus 16 has been circulating all week, and one detail keeps stopping people mid-scroll: a glowing pattern built into the back panel. OnePlus calls it the Interstellar Lighting Effect, a rear LED array wired into the phone's Tomorrow's Starlight colorway, and it looks striking enough on video that it's easy to miss how little is actually confirmed about how it works. Reservations for the OnePlus 16 are already open in China, T3 reports, which puts the OnePlus 16 LED...

Google Photos is rolling out two separate updates this week: a set of vintage-style Moods filters for Android and wider availability of its AI-powered Wardrobe feature on Android and iPhone in Brazil, India, and the US.

Leaker Ice Universe says Samsung is preparing a split-screen Privacy Display upgrade for the Galaxy S27 Ultra that would dim only one app window in split-screen mode, even as that window gets resized.

Google AI Studio can now turn a plain-language prompt into a native Android project and push that build directly into Google Play testing.

Most Galaxy tablet problems, including freezing, laggy apps, or a screen that stops responding, don't need a factory reset.

The Galaxy Z Flip 8's outer FlexWindow does more than preview a selfie. Turn on Mirror View and the cover screen becomes a mirror-like, real-time reflection that Samsung says can run at up to 120 fps, with zoom and edge lighting available for a closer look.

Chrome can now preserve more than the URL when you send a tab to another device. Google confirmed Sept. 24 that its cross-device handoff can save the exact state of the tab, including your scroll position and partially filled forms, so you can continue where you left off on another device.

The Galaxy S26 FE now has its own teardown, and it earned a 9/10 repairability score from PBKreviews.

Google's Android chief just handed Apple a compliment wrapped in a competitive jab. Speaking about Apple's newly announced iPhone Duo, Android Ecosystem president Sameer Samat called it "wonderful" that more people are realizing "the foldable space is the place to be," while adding that Android is "usually where you see the future first," according to Tom's Guide.

Samsung has confirmed that the Galaxy Tab S12 series is coming in the second half of 2026, but it hasn't announced the exact lineup, specifications, pricing, or launch date.

The best time to charge a Samsung Galaxy Watch comes down to timing: pick whichever stretch of your day you can afford to lose tracking data, charge during that window, and make sure whatever charge you end up with covers your next sleep period or workout.

Millions of drivers glance at the price under a gas station pin in Google Maps before deciding where to fill up.

Google Drive's "Organize My Files" tool lets Gemini scan loose files sitting outside your folder structure and suggest where they belong. Nothing actually moves until you review the recommendations, select the files you want moved, and approve the batch.

Samsung says the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Z Fold 8 Ultra can charge from empty to 65% in 30 minutes. In preliminary testing, the Fold 8 Ultra actually beat that mark, reaching 67% in the same window, according to Android Authority testing three weeks ago. That's a real jump from what the Fold line could do a year ago, and it raises the obvious question for anyone hunting for the best charger for Galaxy Z Fold 8 devices: which one actually gets you there?

Google is quietly building a major Google Messages search redesign, and it surfaced not through an official announcement but inside the code of a beta build. A teardown of Messages beta version 20260917 shows the app moving its Search button off the top header and down to the bottom of the screen, handing Gemini the header spot Search used to occupy, and rebuilding search into a visual archive of chats, shared media, links, and places, according to Android Authority.

The Samsung Galaxy SmartTag 3 leak that surfaced on September 11 centers on one detail that changes how the tracker works in daily use: the built-in loop for a keyring, carabiner, or lanyard appears to be gone.

Google Play services now extends Motion Assist, the bubble overlay built to ease motion sickness, beyond Pixel to other Android phones. Android Authority reported the expansion after Google added Motion Assist to its Play services v26.37 release notes this week. Google's support documentation separately says the feature works on Android devices running Android 17 or higher with updated Google Play services.

Google's September Pixel Drop scam detection features are live now, alongside a redesigned Pixel VIPs contact widget for calling and texting the people you talk to most. Both started rolling out on September 15, 2026, as part of the September Pixel Drop.

By the end of this guide, the regular Gmail Inbox does the sorting itself. Priority senders stay visible, receipts and newsletters get labeled and archived automatically, and subscriptions that just add clutter get canceled at the source. None of it runs through Gemini, Smart Reply, or Gmail's own tab classification, since this is a guide to Gmail inbox automation built entirely from rules typed in by hand.

Google Photos has grown well past a backup app. It can search your library in plain English, answer questions about a single photo, edit images from a text description, and create new AI-generated images through templates.

Google has confirmed the Made by Google 2026 keynote for Wednesday, August 12, six days from now, kicking off at 6 p.m. ET / 3 p.m. PT, notably later in the day than usual (9to5Google, last month). This is a practical guide to how to watch the Google Pixel 11 event: exactly when it starts, where the stream is expected to show up, and what Google and outside reporting expect to land on stage.

Samsung set August 7, 2026, as the general availability date for the Galaxy Z Fold8 and Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, but some customers have seen estimated arrival dates extend well beyond launch day.

Google Meet's web homepage now displays conference room and physical meeting location details directly on upcoming meeting cards, so in-office workers can see where they're headed without opening a Calendar invite first. Google confirmed the change, saying it lets in-office users see where they need to go directly from the Meet landing page.

Chinese regulatory filings are giving the clearest look yet at Galaxy S27 Ultra charging speed and battery capacity, with the rumored Galaxy S27 Pro showing similar charging hardware.