9to5Google

You can play Flappy Bird and speedrun wearing out your foldable phone’s hinge at the same time.

2026 could be a blockbuster year for Google after some serious success across almost all areas in 2025. What should and could we expect? Here are a few early-year thoughts and expectations.

After a somewhat underwhelming release last year, privacy-focused brand Punkt is back with the new MC03 smartphone, which is based on Android and ships with “AphyOS,” and coming to the US this year.

Coming from the same company that revived a physical keyboard for your smartphone, the “Clicks Communicator” is a dedicated piece of hardware that acts as a phone for your phone and is all about managing your messages.

Asus has seemingly confirmed that it is mostly done with Android phones, with no plans to release new devices in the Zenfone or ROG lineups in 2026.

The monthly “Google System Release Notes” primarily detail what’s new in Play services, Play Store, and Play system update across Android phones/tablets, Wear OS, Google/Android TV, Auto, and PC. Some features apply to end users, while others are aimed at developers.

One thing that I thought we’d see more of in 2025 was how Gemini could control your Android phone. There was the May demo and other underlying work, but we don’t have Google’s complete vision yet.

Is the curtain falling on big-ticket Android updates? Does a yearly release cycle even matter anymore, or is it just a sign of the times that there isn’t much left to really add to our smartphones?

Don’t ask us why, but some Android phones do not come with the best features enabled out of the box.

Just got a new Android smartphone for the holidays? If it’s your first one, it could be a little intimidating, so to get you started, here are a few apps you should immediately install or set up on a new Android device. Alternatively, if you’re not already using these apps, it might be time to give them a shot!

On a Google support page, the company says it is rolling out a new option to let users change their email address even if it is an “@gmail.com” address.

Years after its debut in other parts of the globe, Google has today announced that Android’s Emergency Location Service (ELS) is finally available in India.

Google just released a really cool new Android figure on its merch store that has a built-in 3D maze game.

Google’s parent company Alphabet has announced an acquisition of Intersect, a “data center and energy infrastructure” company that aims to provide additional support for building out its capacity for AI.

Over the last few weeks of staggered rollouts, some users have gained access to Gemini for Home, which adds Google’s AI assistant to existing Nest devices. The upgrade seems to be breaking some automations, though.

According to a new report, the smartphone market as a whole is expected to shrink in 2026 due to the rising costs of components.

One of the lesser-known features that Google offers is a “Dark Web Report” monitoring tool, but it’s about to shut down in early 2026.

Disney announced a billion dollar agreement with OpenAI this morning over use of its characters, and Google’s going to have to pray it doesn’t alter the deal any further.

After launching the “Remix” tool in August in a server-side update, Google Photos is bringing the image-to-cartoon feature to more users in a much wider rollout.

After a multi-year hiatus, popular battle royale Fortnite is now officially back on the Google Play Store.

Ayaneo is no stranger to Android handhelds, but now it’s turning attention towards an arguably less competitive landscape: smartphones.

Google is introducing Android Emergency Live Video today to let users in three countries share their camera feeds with dispatchers.

Google’s various AI tools have been proving their worth as of late, but a common criticism is how Google has built these tools by scraping the work of publishers and creators across the web without explicit permission or compensation, and now the EU is launching an investigation into the matter.

The latest Android Canary build is available today and it features work by Apple and Google to make switching between Android and iPhone devices easier.