Ben Schoon is a Senior Editor at 9to5Google, working for the publication as one of its primary news writers since 2016.
In 2013, Ben helped start an independent tech publication where he learned the skills used at 9to5Google including writing, product photography, and videography. He is located in the city of Winston-Salem in North Carolina where he lives with his wife Melissa. Ben is an avid disc golf player.
He primarily covers Android products, including Google Pixel devices, Samsung Galaxy smartphones, as well as devices from OnePlus, Oppo, Motorola, and more. Beyond just covering news about these products, Ben also spends time using these products himself, speaking from experience with the articles he writes. Some of Ben’s most recent hands-on reviews include; Pixel 8 Pro, Pixel Watch 2, Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5, Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, Motorola Razr+, HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook, and more.
Ben is also a leading source for information about Google’s Android TV, diving deeply into important parts of the platform including its powerful Operator Tier, explaining future changes to the platform, and reviewing its products such as Chromecast with Google TV, Nvidia Shield TV, and more.
In 2019, Ben leaked one of the first in-person photos of the Pixel 4 before later revealing the Recorder and Pixel Themes apps months ahead of launch. In 2020, Ben also reported on multiple upcoming Pixel devices including Pixel 5a and the first report of Google working on a foldable Pixel smartphone. That same month, he was also the first to correctly report the $49 price point of what became the Chromecast with Google TV.
Ben Schoon is active on Twitter, @nexusben, but can also be found on Instagram and LinkedIn. For questions or tips, you can email him directly, and his portfolio is also available online.
Email: schoon@9to5mac.com | Encrypted Email: benschoon@protonmail.com
Notifications from websites are a good idea in theory, but they’re abused incredibly often by sites that try to trick you into flipping on notifications just because they’re not easy to turn off. Google Chrome for Android, though, is working on a way to make it faster and easier to unsubscribe from website notifications.
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Fossil announced this week that it’s throwing in the towel on smartwatches, with no new releases in the pipeline. While updates will be coming for “a few years” still, if you’re looking to move on to a newer smartwatch option, there are some compelling trade-in offers for Fossil smartwatches towards Google’s Pixel Watch 2.
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Gesture navigation became an option in Android a few years ago, but since the classic three-button layout had its advantages, Google kept it around. Samsung, though, offered three different forms of navigation Galaxy devices for a long time, with a custom version of gesture navigation. On the Galaxy S24 series, that custom version has been removed, but it lives on if you put the work in.
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Google’s Nearby Share and Samsung’s Quick Share are preparing to merge together, but the two haven’t become one quite yet. However, Samsung is preparing for the arrival with the latest update to its Quick Share app on Windows.
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Google is testing a new option that improves how you’ll add websites to your homescreen on Android through its Chrome browser.
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Last year, Waze decimated voice command support on Android Auto, and now users are reporting issues with commands not working yet again.
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Foldable smartphones are expensive, and prices haven’t really meaningfully come down over the past few years. According to a new report, though, Samsung is reportedly trying to cut costs on foldable displays with an interesting new method.
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After halting sales in 2022, OnePlus is returning to Germany with its latest devices – OnePlus 12, 12R, and the foldable OnePlus Open.
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Fossil announced this month that it was done with smartwatches, with no more Wear OS models coming. And, according to new data, despite really being the only name in Wear OS for years, Fossil struggled to make any real impact on the market.
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After announcing the feature last year, Google appears to be more widely rolling out support for eSIM transfer across devices on Android.
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Live sports is one of the biggest reasons to use YouTube TV, and the service made it even better late last year with the introduction of an option to reduce the broadcast delay for a limited amount of time. Now, that option can be enabled permanently.
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The era of AI continues, as the technology continues to form the basis of a ton of new features across virtually every piece of new tech. But, as impressive as it all is, the term “AI” already feels wildly overused.
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After over a year of silence, Fossil has officially confirmed that it will not be making any more smartwatches based on Google’s Wear OS, or at all.
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The Beeper saga continues, with the company now disabling the ability to connect to iMessage entirely after Apple banned some of its customers’ Macs for using the app.
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Microsoft is adding support for touch controls in the Xbox app while using Remote Play from your console.
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Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series really isn’t all that different from last year’s lineup, so AI is one of the selling points Samsung is leaning heavily into around the launch. In most of the world, Samsung is using Google’s Gemini models to power Galaxy AI, but that won’t be the case in China.
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One of the problems with Arm-based Windows laptops has been a lack of app support, but there’s big news this week as Google Chrome has unexpectedly debuted its first Windows on Arm build.
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After debuting in China in July 2023, Honor is finally bringing its super-thin Magic V2 foldable to Europe and the UK starting today.
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Nvidia is rolling out a new update to GeForce Now on Android which improves streaming quality at up to 1440p and up to 120fps.
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The appeal of cloud gaming has always been the ability to run extremely high-quality games without needing the hardware to back it up. But, the tough part of getting people to use it has always been distribution, and one particular headache was the iOS App Store, which barred cloud gaming services for ridiculous reasons. Now, though, Apple is finally changing that.
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The whole point of Google Stadia was to play games without requiring expensive hardware, but there was one piece of hardware created for the cloud service. The Stadia Controller hasn’t been on sale for well over a year now, but the design has been reborn as a third-party Nintendo Switch controller.
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Yet again, Google Assistant on Android Auto is getting a major redesign, but this time it also applies to voice replies, and it’s a pretty slick experience.
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The new Galaxy S24 series ushers in a collection of AI features in Samsung’s One UI Android skin, and those features will be coming to some older devices. However, in a new interview, Samsung has confirmed that Galaxy AI won’t be coming to anything released before 2023, and the reason has nothing to do with hardware.
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Samsung makes killer displays for its Galaxy phones, but for a while now they’ve been a bit behind on one lesser-known, but important metric. But, finally, on the Galaxy S24 series, Samsung has boosted the PWM refresh rate of the display.
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