The Latest on Android: Page 3

Google may be preparing a new Phone Unlock feature that lets an already-unlocked Android phone unlock a nearby Googlebook automatically. Strings discovered in Android 17 QPR3 Beta 1 describe the feature, along with setup screens showing a Googlebook laptop. However, Google hasn't announced Phone Unlock or confirmed when it might become available.

The Google Phone Contacts tab is returning to the bottom navigation bar for beta testers, reversing a change that buried the shortcut inside a sidebar menu last year.

For months, some Android Auto users have been glancing at their car dashboards only to find that the familiar cellular signal bars have disappeared. Their phones may still have reception, and navigation and music may work normally, but the indicator that once showed their connection strength is nowhere to be found.

Open the Together tab in Samsung Health and spot a string of asterisks where a friend's name should be, and the first thought is usually that something broke. But Samsung Health friends shown as asterisks can be the result of a privacy feature introduced in version 7.1, rather than a glitch or missing contact.

A new leak claims four Samsung Galaxy S27 price points: $899 for the base model, $1,099 for the Plus, $1,299 for a new Pro tier, and $1,399 or $1,499 for the Ultra, according to PhoneArena's October 9 report.

Saying "stop" to Gemini for Home used to be a gamble. Sometimes it killed whatever was playing; sometimes it just ended the back-and-forth while an alarm kept blaring in the background. Google's October 14 release notes for the Google Home app describe a fix for that: say "stop" now, and Gemini immediately ends the active listening session without a follow-up response, and it's supposed to correctly halt active music, a timer, or an alarm instead of just wrapping up the conversation. That's the...

The first wave of Samsung Galaxy A38 5G leaks shows a phone moving through early certification reports, but the only concrete hardware detail attached to it so far concerns its batteries.

Anyone googling "YouTube testing hidden dislike button on videos" is running into a policy that's been live for almost five years, not a new experiment. YouTube started hiding the public dislike count on November 10, 2021, while leaving the dislike button itself fully visible and clickable. The sources reviewed for this article do not establish that YouTube is conducting a new test to hide the dislike button itself.

A missing Wi-Fi icon can make it look as though your Galaxy phone has lost its connection, even when the internet is working perfectly. For some users who updated to Samsung's One UI 9, however, the problem isn't Wi-Fi itself. It's how the phone displays its status bar indicators.

Twelve South's AirFly Drive wireless CarPlay and Android Auto adapter went on sale Oct. 1 for $39.99 in the US, promising to erase the daily cable plug-in for drivers whose cars already run wired CarPlay or Android Auto.

Open an app on a tablet or foldable and get a stretched, phone-sized window with blank space on either side, and that's the problem Google's Play Store large-screen labels aim to address.

Google wants Android users in parts of Canada to check their phones before November 1, the day several provinces and territories stop turning clocks back for good. The guidance, posted this week, amounts to an Android Canada daylight saving time update of sorts: a fix for phones running outdated software that could roll the clock back an hour on a day when local law says nothing should change (The Verge; Android Authority).

Google Photos may be renaming one of its video-creation tools. Android Authority found references to a "Video maker" label inside version 7.98 of the app, where the existing Highlight video feature appears. The change isn't visible in the regular app, and Google hasn't announced a rebrand, so it remains unconfirmed.

Pixel's Face Unlock has one well-known weak spot: it struggles in the dark because its camera-based system needs enough light to recognize a face.

Anyone who delayed a flight purchase waiting for a "magic" weekday can stop checking the calendar. Google's latest breakdown of its booking data answers the best time to book holiday flights question: buying on the cheapest day of the week saves about 1.4% compared with the most expensive day, a gap much smaller than the savings associated with choosing different travel days or taking a connecting flight.

A new Android app called Foldy turns the prop-and-fold trick on book-style foldables into a lock-screen dashboard. When a supported phone like the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is locked and set down in tent mode, it can automatically launch a Foldy Android StandBy display showing the time, a calendar, or other widgets, without unlocking the device.

A working fork of the open-source Aves gallery app, posted to GitHub about a month ago, demonstrates something readers trying to search Android photos without cloud upload have been asking for: typed description search and visual similarity matching that run entirely on the phone, with no photo, video, or query ever transmitted anywhere (GitHub discussion, posted about a month ago).

Google is testing a redesigned Android voice search button that turns the familiar mic icon into a swipeable toolbar with four modes: Search, AI Mode, Search Live, and Song Search, replacing what used to be a single-purpose transcription tool (9to5Google, reported this week; corroborated by Android Headlines).

Four months ago, Google Messages for web began warning users that "QR code pairing is going away soon." The prompt urges people to sign in to Google Messages for web with a Google account "to avoid interruption," an early warning of a removal Google has since completed in the United States.

Pixel Watch 4 owners who feel left out of the Pixel Watch 5 launch have a workaround. According to Android Authority, Reddit user m0rr0ng0 found that sideloading a newer build of the Pixel Watch Faces app unlocks five Pixel Watch 5 faces: Weave, Chronograph, a Steph Curry edition, Multicolor Reveal, and Multicolor Modular.