Good morning and happy October. Today, I’m cringing at this gaggle of billionaires pretending to be human, vibing to the new Tinashe album, Popstar, and heartily dining on all the brutal ‘Digger’ reviews.
As a reminder, Inbox is the tech newsletter that goes beyond the news cycle. We cover the most important 9to5Google stories from the last couple of days along with a few highlights from around the web. We publish every Tuesday and Thursday, and if you like what you read, please subscribe.
Inbox is written by Daniel Bader. Read previous issues here, and then catch up with Ben Schoon’s excellent Weekender column published every Sunday.
⭐️ Starred
After months of waiting, Gemini 4 ‘Argon’ is finally out — sort of. Google unveiled the new state-of-the-art model late yesterday but has only made it available to “a set of trusted cyber defenders” while it undergoes testing. The company says it will get a wider release “as soon as possible.”
This is a big moment for Google. Many users and critics alike wrote it off completely, with one analysis firm saying “for all intents and purposes, we believe DeepMind is no longer a frontier lab.” While the company has released several useful, fast and affordable Flash-branded models in 2026, its latest salvo into state-of-the-art AI was back in November 2025 with Gemini 3 Pro. In fact, it was so good that for a brief time Google was considered to be well ahead of OpenAI and Anthropic, and presaged a “code red” inside the frontier labs.
It’s hard to overstate how important it is for Gemini 4 to succeed. After a massive executive shuffle in August saw Demis Hassabis and Jeff Dean removed from the core management team, most of DeepMind’s operations were shifted from London to Mountain View, where new head Koray Kavukcuoglu reports directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
While there has been speculation that Google, with its entrenched customer base, would walk away from the frontier in favor of cheaper, more product-focused pursuits, Kavukcuoglu has refuted those rumors. Earlier this month, he said, “To put it very bluntly, there’s nothing other than being at the frontier that is important for us. We have the whole full stack… and we are able to optimize to be able to achieve our goals.”
According to benchmarks, Gemini 4 is competitive with GPT-6 Astra and Claude Opus 5.5 in most tests, and is trained to be much better at agentic tasks than any previous Gemini model. It’s also better aligned, with a focus on cybersecurity, and has a massive 1M token output limit, which makes it far more capable of producing large bodies of work in one prompt with less compaction.
The big question, though, is whether Argon will be competitive in the real world. A Bloomberg report published shortly before the embargo lifted on the Gemini 4 news quoted anonymous Google employees skeptical of its coding abilities. From Bloomberg: “While Gemini 4 has performed well on benchmarks widely used to gauge model efficacy, it does less well when employees actually put it to work, according to people with direct access to the effort. The model struggles to handle certain coding tasks, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter.”
Argon is also curiously priced. Its introductory rate of $2/$10 per million input/output tokens matches OpenAI’s Sol 6.1 cost right now, but will eventually double to hit the $4/$20 price of Claude Opus 5.5. While still significantly cheaper than Astra or Fable, it has to prove its mettle with users before Google is welcomed back into the arms of the fickle AI masses.
✉️ Inbox
- Google has fixed an issue that caused thousands of iPhone apps to crash overnight
- Samsung’s Android 17 floodgates are open – updates rolling out for Galaxy S26, S25, more. I got the update on my S26 Ultra and it’s been perfect so far.
- Galaxy S27 Ultra’s missing camera shown in leaks is its 3x zoom. Getting rid of the 3x telephoto is a very good move. Will it bring the price down? Almost certainly not.
- Samsung SmartThings is shutting down support for Galaxy SmartTag in October
- Pixel 11a looks mostly unchanged in first leak, reportedly brings purple color back. Were you expecting anything else from the phone that’s looked basically the same for its entire lifespan?
- Google Play adding Usage-Based Billing subscriptions aimed at AI apps. Google’s making it even easier to spend money on the Play Store. Yay?
- OpenAI launches Dots, new ‘always-on agents’ you can assign tasks to. First Muse, now Dots. The AI Tamagotchis are coming, but they’re still going to kill us all.
- Android 17 QPR2 Beta 6.1 rolling out, including for Pixel 11. Google’s not stopping with the relentless QPR2 beta release schedule, this time gifting the Pixel 11 with some HiLight love (and little else).
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S12 series goes official from $1,199 with Photoshop pre-installed. The price of everything is going up, certainly, but I’ve never understood who spends this much on an Android tablet.
- Some Pixel models reportedly experiencing an NFC bug that breaks contactless payments. Forcing you to take out your wallet like an animal? How dare.
- Samsung’s Galaxy SmartTag 3 works with iPhones, but not Android Find Hub. This would be funny if it weren’t so stupid.
- Amazon’s new Fire TV Stick 4K ditches Android & sideloading for $59.99. Not hot on the new Vega OS, but I am hot for the new remote.
- Google details Gems to skills migration, including free access. This felt long overdue.
- Facer revamps Wear OS watch face library, adding new styles from Timex and more. Anyone else love how Facer has become a proper business? Keep Wear OS weird, friends.
- Apple Music 7.0 beta brings Liquid Glass redesign to Android. Do I love the Apple Music app on Android? No. But I do love that it exists on Android.
- Here’s how much Google is testing paying web publishers for AI Overview usage. I don’t even have to read the article to know it’s not enough to make a difference. Do better, Google.
- Blender, the 3D modeling app, is launching for Android next year; iPad app still on pause. Well, now. Good news for mobile designers!
- Google Home update rolling out with better ‘Find My Phone’ voice commands, smart home improvements. I love how quickly Google is improving the Home ecosystem. It’s actually good now!
- Google Home now lets you preview Nest Doorbell ringtones, just in time for the holidays. This is my pumpkin spice latte. Fall is here, baby.
- Google Antigravity Googlebook app hits the Play Store. I am genuinely excited about using this app.
➡️ FWD:
This section has some of our favorite stuff from around the internet. Great videos, weird memes, fun reads, recommended apps, whatever. Send us your recommendations!
Google has recruited Henry Cavill and his mustache to promote Googlebook. We already knew he was a huge nerd, but I have a hard time believing that he’s going to sit and vibe-code a whole ass video game using an Android app.
In more sensible news, you should run, not walk, to listen to the latest Sideload episode, which features Allison Johnson of The Verge talking to Will about AI agents, fuzzy little guys, and the existential dread of life in 2026.
And if all that introspection makes you angry, you can spend a few minutes destroying this very website with guns, grenades, and giant freaking lasers.
🗑️ Trash
Unfortunately, I have some real-world bad news to share in this section. Android Central, the blog I worked at from 2016 through 2021, was shut down yesterday by Future, the company that bought it in 2020 alongside iMore and Windows Central. iMore was already shut down and turned into…something AI slop-related, and I guess it was AC’s turn to be culled.
While I worked in publishing prior to Android Central, it afforded me a lot of firsts. It’s where I became an editor, a manager, and a specialist. It’s where I learned how to really understand the importance of community, both inside and outside the organization. I made friends there that I still treasure today, and was privileged to hire and train a number of incredible writers and editors who spent many years doing wonderful work. I’m so proud of them, and I can’t wait to see what they do next.
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Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful weekend. I’ll talk to you on Tuesday.
-Daniel
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