News and Updates about Android

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra vs iPad Pro decision comes down to a simple trade-off dressed up in a lot of marketing language: a bigger screen with a pen in the box, or a lighter pro tablet with a lower starting price and a pile of optional accessories. Samsung's new flagship launched two days ago, calling itself the company's "most capable and versatile tablet experience yet" (Samsung Global Newsroom), and it starts at $1,399 for 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage (Tom's Guide).

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 bend test that JerryRigEverything ran this week threw the toughest thing a durability channel can throw at a foldable: reverse-direction flex, the failure mode that has cracked hinges and popped screens loose on lesser phones. The Fold 8 didn't crack, and nothing popped loose (JerryRigEverything, this week).

Ireland's Data Protection Commission fined Google €403 million, about $463 million, over how it processed location data through three features: Web & App Activity, Location History, and Location Accuracy. The regulator also ordered Google to bring its processing into compliance with GDPR within six months.

Some Pixel owners are reporting laggy, stuttering gameplay in lightweight titles like Clash Royale and Brawl Stars after installing Android 17, with the slowdowns seemingly tied to restricted GPU performance (9to5Google, last month). It's a small story on its own, and the report doesn't pin the blame on any specific Pixel generation. But it's a useful reminder that Pixel 10 GPU performance issues never fully went away, despite months of driver updates aimed at fixing them.

Android apps that ship with home screen widgets do not always make that feature easy to discover. No signal on the Play Store listing page, no prompt after install. For apps that do not promote widgets elsewhere, the launcher's widget picker may be the only obvious confirmation, and that requires you to already own the app and know to check.

Google Photos has added a floating camera button inside its AI editing tools, letting people snap a fresh photo without leaving the app and feed it straight into an edit. The new Google Photos AI camera button shows up inside Photo Remix and Photo to Video, part of a wider push to add camera access to tools in the app's Create tab.

Google closed its Pixel 11 launch event in New York on August 12 the way it opened: with Trevor Noah on stage. Near the end, Rick Osterloh, Google's hardware chief, joined him, apparently to wrap things up, after a lineup expected to include Alex Cooper, Steph Curry, PinkPantheress and Ayami Nakajo, according to Engadget's live coverage of the show. It made for solid television. It made for a thinner night of proof.

Samsung Electronics' phone business lost money in the same quarter its chip division posted the most profitable quarter in company history. The MX and Networks unit, which sells Galaxy phones, tablets, wearables and networking gear, reported an operating loss of KRW 0.7 trillion for the second quarter of 2026, even as the company's chip division posted KRW 89.2 trillion in operating profit and companywide operating profit hit an all-time high of KRW 89.5 trillion, according to Samsung's...

Samsung's stable One UI 9 update is now reaching the Galaxy S25 series, Galaxy Z Fold 7, and Galaxy Z Flip 7, with the rollout confirmed live in South Korea, according to Android Authority. It's the next phase of a staged rollout that started with the Galaxy S26 family, and it puts Samsung's 2025 flagship lineup on the same Android 17 build already running on the newer S26 and Z8 devices.

YouTube freezing on Samsung Galaxy phones is turning into a recurring complaint, and the reports cluster around three recent models: the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, the standard Galaxy Z Fold 8, and the Galaxy S26 Ultra.

Xiaomi has now launched the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max in China, locking in the camera hardware that was being teased before their Sept. 23 debut. Samsung, meanwhile, hasn't officially revealed the Galaxy S27 Ultra camera system yet, and leakers are still disagreeing over parts of its telephoto setup.

Google Photos' Wardrobe feature may be getting fixes for two of its biggest gaps: a way to add new clothes without wiping the digital closet, and a way to redo item images that come out looking wrong. Android Authority found both controls in an unreleased Google Photos build, version 7.95, enabled through manual tinkering rather than any Google announcement, according to its regeneration report and refresh report. Neither control is public, and the cited reports don't describe either as a live...

TechRadar reported Thursday that Google is rolling out a batch of Google Home update fixes addressing errors with Nest cameras and doorbells, Matter device status, Find My Phone, and Automations for Early Access users, based on release notes that TechRadar says come from Google. The cited release-note summary does not mention one complaint that keeps surfacing: wake-word misses and garbled commands with Gemini voice control on Google Home speakers. That issue isn't named as a fix in this round,...

Samsung just introduced the Galaxy Tab S12 series, a new tablet lineup built around Galaxy AI, a bundled S Pen, and a new MediaTek chip. The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra and Galaxy Tab S12+ go on sale October 7 in select and major markets.

The Google Pixel 10a price increase is already showing up at checkout. The phone's U.S. price jumped from $499 to $599 at the Google Store, and that new figure has spread to Amazon and Best Buy too, according to Android Authority, which reported the change today.

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).

Google appears to be rolling out Pixel Live Translate offline mode support for the conversation feature inside the Google Translate app, though the change looks limited to three phone generations so far. According to BGR, Google's updated support documentation lists offline Live Translate on Pixel as available only on Pixel 9, Pixel 10, and Pixel 11 devices.

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.

Hands-on coverage of the Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL from Android Authority has now shown off details of at least one launch color. The Pixel 11 Pro Fold hasn't gotten that treatment. Everything anyone knows about which Pixel 11 Pro Fold color to buy still traces back to retail listings that leaked last month, not anything Google has shown directly.

A "Remember this with Gemini" shortcut buried in Gemini's app code could bring an early version of the Gemini Remember this image feature to Android's share sheet, letting users save details from photos and screenshots without typing anything. Android Authority found the code three weeks ago, enabled it manually, and got it to run (Android Authority). Google hasn't announced the shortcut, and it isn't available to regular users yet.

Chrome Canary is testing a Gemini-powered option that would replace weak or reused passwords automatically instead of just flagging them. It does not work yet. In hands-on testing on Windows 11, clicking the new "Change it for me" button left Chrome's password manager stuck on "Attempting to sign-in..." before it threw an error saying the password could not be updated, Android Authority reported this week after confirming the feature in its own build.

New code inside the Android Canary 2608 build suggests Google is considering a narrower set of Android lock screen Quick Settings restrictions than what its earlier work pointed toward. Rather than locking down nearly every tile, the strings now single out four: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Mobile Data, and Airplane Mode, according to an Android Authority code teardown. Flashlight and auto-rotate would stay usable without unlocking the phone, based on the same code.

A full set of press renders for the Lenovo Googlebook 15 surfaced this week, giving the clearest look yet at Google's new Android-based laptop category before either company has said a word about it. The images, first shared by Digital Citizen, show a 15-inch laptop built for Google's Gemini-first computing push, complete with a new Google 'G' key that leak reports identify as a Gemini shortcut.

A Samsung device with model number SM-X848U appeared in the FCC database today, with Notebookcheck reporting that the identifier reportedly corresponds to the US 5G variant of the Galaxy Tab S12+, citing 91mobiles. That mapping comes from third-party leak reporting, not from the FCC filing itself. The listing arrived eighteen days after two related variants cleared Safety Korea certification, and together the three filings across two regulatory bodies point toward a fall 2026 release that...

Samsung's Memory Manufacturing Technology Center stood up a task force this month to build a commodity DRAM end-fab at its Hwaseong Campus Complex 1. An industry official says the move will lift Samsung DRAM production capacity roughly 15% by December relative to the start of 2026, according to Seoul Economic Daily. The cause is a market running critically short: commodity DRAM prices climbed more than 80% in the first half of this year, a move that makes a capacity investment easy to justify...

For months, the Galaxy S26 FE existed only in leaks and certification filings. That changed this week, when Samsung put the phone on record for the first time, and an executive's own hedge suggested the reveal isn't far off, sharpening the question at the center of the Samsung Galaxy S26 FE release date into something closer to an answer (Android Authority, today).

Google's Pixel 11 series is set to be unveiled on August 12, continuing a design that looks a lot like last year's Pixel 10, according to a 9to5Google leak from three months ago. What's changing, if that leak holds up, is what's inside: a Tensor G6 chip built around a modem swap aimed at Pixel's most persistent weak spot. Pixel 11 battery life is the question hanging over this launch, and the leaked battery figures suggest Google isn't trying to answer it by simply making the cell bigger.

A poll of 6,310 Pixel readers published earlier this year found that 62.7% say Google Tensor's performance gap doesn't affect their purchase decision. That sounds like a comfortable majority. It isn't a mandate and more importantly, it's the wrong number to focus on.

Google's September 2026 Pixel Feature Drop redesigns the Pixel VIP widget so people can call or text favorite contacts straight from the home screen, skipping the bottom sheet that used to stand between a tap and an actual phone call (Google; 9to5Google). Google announced the update yesterday, but hands-on testing published today by Android Authority found the new Pixel VIP widget isn't switched on for most users yet. Google still needs to flip a server-side switch before the buttons actually...

A December 2025 Chromium commit adds support for chrome.tabGroups.get(), an extension method that lets developers query tab-group data, on a surface the commit itself calls "desktop Android." That term doesn't appear defined anywhere else in the supplied commit, so every claim in this piece about where it applies stays tied to that exact phrase (Chromium commit). It's a narrow addition to the list of Chrome for Android features extension developers might want, and it's worth being precise about...

Google is rolling out a redesigned icon for Pixel Recorder, the first change to the app's icon in the seven years since it launched on the Pixel 4 in 2019, according to 9to5Google. The Pixel Recorder new icon update swaps the familiar white waveform on a red square for a red waveform on a white background.

An Android 17-based Pixel Tablet is showing the Quick Share interface for sending files to Apple devices, according to a tip from Joe Lenington that Android Authority reviewed today. It suggests Pixel Tablet Quick Share iPhone transfers may have finally reached Google's 2023 tablet, even though Google's published device list for the feature currently names phones only.

Google's two launch posts for the Pixel 11 lineup repeat the same unadorned line: Pixel Search on the Pixel 11 devices is "way more powerful than it used to be." Neither post explains why. The phones carrying that claim went on sale Thursday, so buyers now encounter a Google-documented search claim the company has not explained.

Several Pixel owners say Recorder has captured audio normally but then failed to show the saved recording afterward, and Google still hasn't explained why.

Google confirmed today what happens when a Pixel 11 owner maxes out the Gboard Rambler usage limit, and it's less dramatic than it sounds. The AI dictation tool doesn't shut off. It downgrades (Android Authority).

Google Drive now supports timestamped comments on videos, letting reviewers pin feedback to the exact frame it applies to instead of writing a note and hoping the recipient finds the right spot in the timeline, according to Digital Trends and The Verge. The feature is live now for Google Workspace accounts, Workspace Individual subscriptions, and personal Google accounts, and it arrives switched on by default, according to ThreeVector.