Top Stories

This week’s top stories: EMUI 9.0, Android Q Beta 4, Stadia Connect, and more

Kyle Bradshaw | Jun 8 2019 - 9:00 am PT

In this week’s top stories: Huawei continues to update their Android phones with EMUI 9.0, Google releases Android Q Beta 4 to Pixel devices, Stadia Connect reveals all the hot details of Google’s game streaming service, and more.

For the last two weeks, we’ve been following the aftereffects of the US placing a ban on Huawei’s use of US-based technology. A key moment in the story thus far is that Huawei was granted a temporary license to continue providing updates for three more months.

Huawei wasted no time in putting this update license to good use. Just this week, seven more devices have received Huawei’s Android Pie-based EMUI 9.0 update. And in a move that seems almost confident in the ban’s reversal, fourteen devices have the option to test Huawei’s second EMUI 9.1 beta.

Huawei has a micro-site dedicated to the EMUI 9.1 beta — and full release — which lists all of the upcoming features and new additions. Some of these add-ons include the new GPU Turbo 3.0 for 25 of the most popular games on the Google Play Store. This new mode optimizes SoC power consumption by 10% and is said to improve overall gaming performance.

Right on schedule, Google released Android Q Beta 4 to Pixel phones this past Wednesday. By Thursday, however, Google had paused the rollout of the Android Q Beta 4 OTA due to issues with the update failing to install.

Being the fourth beta of six, there’s not quite as many changes to be found as in the previous Android Q releases. Our Abner Li has collected all of the various changes we’ve spotted in Android Q Beta 4 into one place for your convenience, but here’s a few highlights:

This week, we also got our first look at Google Stadia from the consumer’s standpoint (the original GDC unveil covered the developer’s perspective). In a livestream event very clearly inspired by Nintendo Direct, the first ever “Stadia Connect” told us what games we can play on Stadia, how much Stadia will cost, and what hardware we will need to play.

Many had hoped that Stadia would have full support for Android phones, but this appears to only be the case for Pixel phones at launch. Instead, while the Stadia app will be available on all Android devices (Marshmallow and above) at launch, only the Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, Pixel 3a, and Pixel 3a XL will be able to Stadia games via this app. The Stadia app will be available for all other Android and iOS users for the purposes of setting up Stadia controllers and presumably managing your account.