Trending about Android

Apple's EU-mandated energy label has settled a question that used to require teardown videos and guesswork: the iPhone 18 Pro battery capacity comes in at 4,056mAh, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max jumps to 5,391mAh. That Pro Max figure now edges past the Galaxy S26 Ultra's official 5,000mAh typical capacity, with a 4,855mAh rated capacity listed in Samsung's specifications and EU energy-label records.

A sprawling Samsung Galaxy S26 FE leak, made up of renders, spec sheets and apparent hands-on video, has surfaced weeks before Samsung's expected announcement of the phone. The picture emerging is less "all-new phone" and more "known formula, new processor, possibly higher price," according to Android Authority, which published its account of the leak today.

Coverage of the Google Pixel 11 launch event will follow the usual script: chip codenames, camera megapixels, a livestream countdown. The more revealing story about how Google actually treats Pixel owners already happened two months ago, when a routine software update quietly did more to define the brand than any keynote slide will.

Google spent this week's Pixel 11 launch talking up zoom range and sensor size, but the most interesting camera news wasn't a spec at all. It was Google Pixel Camera Looks, a system that lets photographers choose "the exact aesthetic" they want before pressing the shutter, rather than accepting whatever the phone's processing pipeline decides afterward (Google).

Two days after Google's Pixel 11 launch event, buyers are discovering a second Google Play Store Pixel 11 discount tucked inside the Play Points program. 9to5Google describes it as a discount worth up to $175, "hidden just beneath the surface" of the Play Points perks menu (9to5Google, today). Reports describe this as a separate offer from the pre-order codes Google emailed to select buyers before the show, and it covers the entire Pixel 11 family plus the Pixel Watch 5.

Google has expanded its Gemini Pixel football club partnerships to five of Europe's biggest teams at once, naming Gemini and Pixel the "Official Consumer AI" and "Official Smartphone" partner of Arsenal FC, FC Barcelona, FC Bayern München, Liverpool FC and Paris Saint-Germain, according to Google's announcement today. Google describes the arrangements as long-term partnerships built around "personal intelligence" and smartphone technology, aimed at putting fans "right at the heart of the...

Samsung's latest foldable lineup has broken a Galaxy preorder record in South Korea that had stood since 2019. The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold8, and Galaxy Z Flip8 drew more than 1.44 million preorders during a seven-day reservation period, surpassing the roughly 1.38 million recorded by the Galaxy Note10 series seven years earlier.

Most of the coverage around Google's new flagship is fixated on the Tensor G6 chip. That's fair; it's a real chip with real upgrades.

Galaxy S26 owners testing One UI 9 finally have a new build to install after nearly a month without a major beta release. Reports of One UI 9 Beta 5 began appearing on August 12, with the update reaching Galaxy S26-series testers in India.

Samsung has completed multiyear supply agreements with five major data-center customers, including Amazon and Meta, and is nearing deals with five more, according to the Seoul Economic Daily and the Korea Herald.

A teardown of the second Android 17 QPR2 beta has surfaced a hidden feature called Voicecast, according to Android Authority. The Google Pixel Voicecast feature would let Pixel phones broadcast a user's live voice over Bluetooth, a capability their phones currently lack: existing Pixel audio-sharing tools handle music and video, but not a microphone feed.

Samsung's new Galaxy Z8 lineup set a preorder record in South Korea, and the standard Fold8, not the pricier Ultra, carried most of it. That's the story behind the Samsung Galaxy Z8 preorder record set this week: Samsung said the lineup drew more than 1.44 million preorders in South Korea during the seven-day window that ended Monday, Aug. 3, the highest preorder total for any Galaxy phone the company has ever released, foldable or not, according to The Korea Times.

A claim about a Samsung One UI 9.5 connectivity hub built with Google appears to stem from something narrower: a settings screen that lists which installed apps work with a satellite connection. Android Authority reported on the menu five months ago, describing a compatibility list rather than a confirmed platform feature tied to a specific software version or built by Google.

Google raised the price of its standard Pixel by $100 this year, and Engadget still recommends it without hesitation. In its Google Pixel 11 review, Engadget called the phone "a lot of phone for a little more money" and handed it a 9.2 out of 10, noting it "didn't change a ton, but is still one of the best smartphones on the market."

Search "how to get Duolingo hearts back and remove ads" and you'll find posts promising a hidden switch or workaround. There isn't one documented in Duolingo's own materials. Duolingo has been phasing out Hearts in favor of a resource system called Energy, and ad-free access shows up in the company's public consumer materials as a subscription benefit.

Google's Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL launched Wednesday at $1,099 and $1,299, prices Android Authority describes as higher than last year's models (Android Authority, this week). Pre-launch reporting had pegged that increase at $100 over the Pixel 10 Pro line (The Verge, nearly two weeks ago), and the confirmed launch prices match that figure exactly. The base RAM also dropped: 12GB on the entry Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL, down from 16GB across every Pixel 10 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro XL configuration last...

Googlebook preorders opened September 21, and the first laptops now start at $899.

A One UI 9 Watch test build for the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic has reportedly appeared on Samsung's servers, according to Android Central.

Code strings buried inside Samsung's Galaxy Wearable app reference a device called the Galaxy H1, pointing to Samsung's first over-ear headphones in more than a decade (The Verge, this week).

The Pixel 11 Tensor G6 TPU upgrade matters most in the moments when a feature can run locally instead of waiting on Google's servers. Google says the chip delivers 50% more compute power and runs up to 3.5x faster in certain workloads, a figure that's easy to overlook next to the phone's 120x zoom lens and its Gemini-powered camera tricks (Android Authority, published today). The TPU is one of the factors behind both of those flashier features, working alongside a new image processor and...

An unfamiliar app called Android Developer Verifier has been quietly appearing on Android phones worldwide. The package com.google.android.verifier is a legitimate Google system service, not malware, and for most users it still has no effect on normal app installs.

A Samsung Galaxy S27 charging speed leak suggests Samsung's next standard flagships won't charge any faster than the ones sold today. Two unannounced Samsung model numbers have appeared in China's 3C certification database with charging profiles that top out at approximately 25W and 45W.

Samsung's One UI 9 gives Motion Photos a new place to shine, letting supported Galaxy devices turn them into animated wallpapers for the home screen, lock screen, or both. Android Authority, citing SamMobile, reports that the feature is available on Samsung's latest foldables but has not yet appeared in the One UI 9 beta on the Galaxy S26 series.

Two reviews of the same phone landed within a day of each other this week, and they read like they're describing different products. MakeUseOf calls the Pixel 11 Pro Fold "the Google foldable I've always wanted", while The Verge says it "feels like the end of an era." Both verdicts hold up. They're just answering different questions, and untangling why is the point of this Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold review.

The Pixel 11 Pro is a genuinely excellent phone. Google just isn't selling it on the reasons why.

Galaxy Z Fold 8 owners are posting screenshots on Samsung's community forum of a home screen gone sideways: icons overlapping, apps sliding past their assigned grid spots, some landing in the gap between the inner display's two panes. One owner said an icon got stuck there entirely, impossible to select or drag back (Android Authority, today). If you're trying to figure out how to fix Galaxy Z Fold 8 app icon misalignment, there's a specific software update worth checking before you waste time...

Open Google Clock on two different phones and you might not recognize it as the same app. The redesign rolled out across Android last year, but the new timer UI that actually changes how a running timer behaves, not just how it looks, has reached only Pixel owners running Android 16 (9to5Google; 9to5Google).

Galaxy Watch 9 owners installing the watch's first firmware update since launch say they didn't have to set the device aside while most of the update installed. Instead, the firmware downloaded and installed in the background while the watch stayed usable, followed by a short restart to switch to the updated software.

The Google Pixel 11 hasn't launched yet, and leaked details about it are already complicating the case for buying one. Google has confirmed that portions of the lineup will cost more, and says the increase comes from higher memory costs, not tariffs (TechRepublic, last week). At the same time, leaked battery figures suggest the Pro and Pro XL models may actually pack smaller batteries than the Pixel 10 phones they replace (PhoneArena, last week). That's the real tension behind the question of...

Waze points are mainly a visible score: something to check on a profile and compare against other Wazers, not something to spend. Open a Waze profile and progress information shows up in two different places: a point total below the username, and a level plus a set of badges filed under a separate tab called Achievements. It's tempting to assume a formula ties all of it together, so many points per report, a badge every few hundred miles, but the Help pages reviewed for this article don't...

A Samsung Galaxy S26 FE hands-on video making the rounds this week appears to show Horizontal Lock, the video stabilization mode Samsung built for its S26 flagships, running inside the camera app of the company's cheaper Fan Edition phone. Two separate clips, posted to TikTok and apparently filmed at what looks like a Samsung retail display in Malaysia, offer the first real-world look at the unannounced device ahead of a launch expected in early September (Android Authority; Tech Advisor,...

Google Android sideloading rules take effect on September 30, 2026, but only for apps distributed through seven participating stores and only for users in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand.

Google Pixel Now Playing notifications could be coming back. A teardown of the latest Android System Intelligence build has turned up code suggesting the silent song-ID alerts may return, months after Google removed them and broke some third-party music tools in the process, according to Android Authority.

Google's new Search profile looks like the kind of feature every creator should rush to claim: a dedicated, shareable page that puts your work front and center inside Google Search itself. Before spending time hunting for one, it helps to understand Google Search profile eligibility rules, since they set a high follower bar and apply only in the United States for now. This guide walks through who qualifies, how to run a Google Search profile eligibility check on your own name, and what claiming...

Samsung Electronics has finalized long-term supply contracts with five major data-center customers and is in final-stage negotiations with five more, the company said during its second-quarter earnings call, according to The Investor. That's the headline behind Samsung memory long-term supply deals 2031: once those talks close, Samsung expects long-term agreements, known in the industry as LTAs, to cover 60 to 70 percent of its medium- to long-term memory production capacity, not all of it.

Google has begun rolling out its "Take notes for me" tool for in-person meetings, starting with Android, the company said Thursday. Once fully deployed, Google Meet take notes for in-person meetings will let Gemini turn a room conversation into a transcript, summary, and action items saved to Drive, the same way it already handles scheduled video calls (Google Workspace Updates, Aug. 13, 2026).