News and Updates about Android

Samsung appears to have briefly posted a full product page for the unannounced Galaxy A27 5G on its Czech Republic website before pulling it down. The listing, according to Los40, citing SamMobile, makes months of Galaxy A27 5G renders look far less speculative: It points to a cleaner design, a Snapdragon chip, four color options, six OS upgrades and six years of security updates, and one notable durability downgrade.

Tap an app on your Galaxy Watch. The splash screen appears, holds for a few seconds, then the watch drops you back to the app drawer. No error, no explanation, no app. A Galaxy Watch 8 Classic user reported exactly that failure on Reddit, with Gmail, Google Calendar, and WhatsApp all refusing to open. Neither Samsung nor Google has said anything publicly about the Galaxy Watch apps not opening problem.

Google is moving WhatsApp backup controls out of WhatsApp's own menus and into Android's system settings. A Play services update rolling out today, v26.23, will let users manage WhatsApp chat backups in Android settings directly, placing those controls alongside the phone's other backup options rather than buried inside the app, Android Authority reported.

Google started rolling out two Google Vids updates on June 17, 2026: users can now extend existing Veo clips into longer sequences with consistent characters and start multiple video generations at the same time instead of waiting for each one to finish, according to Google Workspace Updates. The features are available across a wide range of eligible Google Workspace, education, consumer, nonprofit, and add-on accounts, though access still depends on Google's plan eligibility rules.

That small green dot in the top-right corner of your Samsung phone is a privacy indicator, not a bug. It means an app is using your camera, microphone, or both. If you also see a faint flicker near the top of the screen during calls, that is usually something else: the proximity sensor.

The Pixel Watch June 2026 update is rolling out now to Pixel Watch 2, 3, and 4, and the most consequential change is one that fixes a problem users have been complaining about since Gemini launched on the watch: Raise to Talk was unreliable. It would cut off mid-sentence, time out before users finished speaking, or simply fail to activate. Google says an improved gesture recognition model addresses that. Three other confirmed changes ship alongside it: a rebuilt Contacts app, Remote Media...

Google began rolling out Android 17 to supported Pixel devices on June 16, 2026, and the update includes a dedicated gaming interface designed for foldable inner displays. The Android 17 foldable gaming mode is confirmed and built into the OS, but it is not user-accessible yet.

Gemini Live App Redesign: What Changes for Android Users

Chrome 150, expected around June 30, removes one of the last internal flags that allowed determined users to keep old Manifest V2 ad blockers alive in Chrome. Chrome 151, expected in July, removes the remaining cleanup code tied to the old extension platform.

Nothing adds cloud backup to Essential Space: what to verify

A Google employee confirmed this week that the company has been investigating a Google Pixel bootloop issue tied to its March, April, and May 2026 software updates, with devices freezing on the G logo or crashing immediately after PIN entry. The acknowledgement covers the Pixel 6 through Pixel 10 series, and the public issue tracker has accumulated close to 800 entries since March, according to heise. Google says updated guidance is now available.

Strava rolled out a broad set of new hiking features covering route planning, offline navigation, off-route alerts, and route following on Apple Watch. The features that matter most on an unfamiliar trail, planning where to go, staying on route, and navigating without cell service all sit behind the subscription paywall. Free users get a more capable recording screen and better social tools. Subscribers get the navigation suite.

Waze is starting to show traffic light icons for some drivers, bringing the navigation app closer to Google Maps and Apple Maps on one basic road cue: knowing when a signalized intersection is ahead. The feature is now appearing for more users after months of testing, but it is not showing up for everyone yet, according to 9to5Google.

Strava was recently down, with the company confirming an outage affecting login, the main website, and the My Routes feature. Investigation is ongoing. No cause or resolution timeline has been provided.

Gemini for Google Home Update: Faster Responses and Privacy Tradeoffs

Pixel 9a Warranty Repair Charge: How a Disputed Quote Closed a Case

Huawei has set a firm date. The company published an official notice today confirming it will raise prices on its "intelligent collaboration products" starting July 1, 2026, citing memory chip shortages, rising component costs, and AI-driven chip demand as pressures it can no longer absorb, according to Huawei Central. That notice covers smartphones, tablets, and other devices across Huawei's lineup, and moves the Huawei price hike July 2026 from executive speculation to a dated, company-issued...

Samsung's June security update for the Galaxy S25 delivers more than a patch. Three Galaxy AI features that were absent from last month's stable One UI 8.5 release are now rolling out to the S25 series, giving owners tools that have been exclusive to the Galaxy S26 since that phone launched. The update is live in South Korea today and expected to reach North America, Europe, and India within the coming week, Android Authority and GSMArena reported Thursday.

Murena launched /e/OS 4.0 today with the company's most direct attempt yet to address the practical obstacle behind most failed attempts to leave Google: not finding a different phone, but untangling a decade of email, contacts, Drive files, and account relationships from Google's infrastructure. The release lowers that barrier. How much, and for whom, depends on what you need from your phone after the switch.

Samsung has added a One UI 9 network speed indicator to the Galaxy status bar through an updated QuickStar Good Lock module, and both Android Authority and Sammy Fans confirmed the feature today through hands-on testing on Galaxy S26 Ultra hardware. The catch: it requires One UI 9, Samsung's Good Lock app, and the QuickStar plugin, in that order. None of that chain is available to most Galaxy owners yet, and the feature is off by default even for those who qualify.

OnePlus launched the Turbo 6X and Turbo 6X Pro in China this week, and the pricing structure between them is hard to ignore. At the entry tier, the OnePlus Turbo 6X and 6X Pro are separated by just CNY 100, roughly $15, with the Pro adding a larger battery, an AMOLED display, faster charging, and stronger water resistance for that gap, according to TechCabal. Both phones stay under CNY 2,400 ($354) across all configurations, with the base Turbo 6X starting at CNY 1,899 ($280).

Some YouTube Shorts users have opened the app this week to find the dislike button gone from the right-side action rail. No thumbs-down, no error message, no explanation. Recent reporting indicates it's not a bug but a live interface experiment, one that pulls the YouTube Shorts dislike button out of plain sight and routes it through an extra menu tap.

Google began notifying users this week that a new setting called Google Search Services History will govern how the company saves and uses the media submitted through Search. The change affects photos taken with Google Lens, recordings from the real-time Search Live tool, voice queries, spoken phrases entered into Translate, and uploaded files and video, The Verge reported Wednesday.

Samsung Wallet can now store a passport-backed digital ID accepted at more than 250 TSA checkpoints across the U.S. For frequent domestic travelers on Galaxy devices, that's a genuine convenience upgrade. It is not, in any practical sense, a passport replacement. The gap between those two things is exactly what's worth understanding before you set it up.

Google is rolling out a Gemini for Home smart display update in Google Home version 4.18, adding visual hourly weather forecasts, natural-language media browsing, and conversational news to Nest Hub displays. The changes are rolling out to Early Access users and may not be available to everyone immediately. Performance improvements — making responses faster — are included in the same release.

The OnePlus 15 can now transfer files directly to an iPhone, iPad, or Mac using Quick Share, with no cable, no third-party app, and no cloud upload required. Android Authority reported that AirDrop support via Quick Share has reached the OnePlus 15, extending the direct transfer capability that Google first launched for Pixel 10 devices last November.

A new Samsung Galaxy S27 Pro battery leak suggests the rumored flagship could pack a 5,000mAh cell matching the Galaxy S26 Ultra's capacity in a noticeably smaller body. Tipster kro (@kro_itnyang) shared display and battery details via Digital Trends this week, adding to reports suggesting Samsung may expand its Galaxy S27 lineup from three models to four when it launches in early 2027.

Samsung's Galaxy Watch 9 and Watch Ultra 2 have cleared China's 3C database, with both devices appearing in an official regulatory filing issued June 3. The Galaxy Watch 9 and Watch Ultra 2 3C certification confirms the first concrete hardware spec for either device: 10W charging at 5V/2A, matching their predecessors exactly. Android Police and Android Authority both covered the filings this week under model numbers SM-L3550 and SM-L7150.

Google announced at I/O last month that Search will automatically generate interactive visual tools, including diagrams, graphs, simulations, and custom interfaces, directly inside search results for all users, free of charge, later this summer. This is not a separate app or a paid feature. Search itself will assemble these outputs in response to ordinary queries, according to Google's I/O announcement.

Samsung's stable One UI 8.5 rollout began last week in South Korea, covering the S24 and S25 families, 2024-era foldables, and the Tab S10 and S11 series. The S23 generation and anything older are not on the confirmed stable release list. If headlines describing this as a rollout for "older Galaxy phones" left you checking your S22's software update screen, that's the correction this article exists to make.

Some Pixel 9 and Pixel 10 owners are reporting eSIM failures ranging from activation problems to severe lockouts, and Google is reportedly aware of the issue, but has not confirmed a fix timeline.

Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel 8a owners are finding the Quick Share Extension installed on their devices after recent system updates — the component required for Quick Share–AirDrop interoperability between Android and Apple devices. The feature itself isn't active yet. Google still needs to flip the switch on its end.

Apple is reportedly building a photo reframing tool for iOS 27 that would let users shift the apparent viewpoint of a spatial image after capture, not by filling in synthetic pixels around the edges, but by working with actual stereo depth data recorded at the moment of shooting. That's a materially different operation from anything Google Photos offers today, and it points to a category Google has not yet publicly addressed. If Apple confirms it at WWDC this month, Google's answer to the...

Samsung is working on a "Gesture Wake-up" feature for Bixby that would let users trigger the assistant by lifting their phone close to their mouth and speaking directly into the mic, no wake phrase or button press required. The feature is taking shape in One UI 9 builds, Android Authority reported today. It isn't in the second One UI 9 public beta for the Galaxy S26 series yet, which means Samsung has not confirmed it for the stable release.

Three separate data trails now point to the same unreleased Samsung product: a clip-style open-ear earbud that, if the Samsung Galaxy Buds Able leak holds up, would be the company's first entry into a form factor where Bose, Sony, and Anker already have established products. It could also be a mechanical answer to a fit problem that has followed the current Buds lineup since launch.

Both the Nest Mini and Nest Audio have gone out of stock simultaneously across the US Google Store and Best Buy, with international stores showing the same pattern, 9to5Google reported this week. A Best Buy Canada listing, first spotted by 9to5Google last week, shows a June 25 release date for the replacement Google Home Speaker. Google has issued no formal end-of-sale notice for either device, but the retail evidence points toward a product handoff already in motion.