Kyle Bradshaw joined 9to5Google in 2018 with a special interest in Google’s Fuchsia OS, rooted in his experience of being the first to offer a visual preview of the revolutionary design of the in-development operating system. Since then, his attention has broadened to include the secrets hidden within other areas of Google’s public codebases.
By reading the public Fuchsia code, Kyle was able to prove the existence of the Nest Mini and the Nest Hub Max months ahead of their respective announcements. With evidence from Chromium, he reported on Google’s since-canceled efforts to create an offshoot of Android designed for “touchless” feature phones.
In 2018, Kyle reported on three distinct Made by Google Chromebooks in development, the Pixel Slate, the Pixelbook Go — a full year before its release — and “Meowth,” the original version of the Pixel Slate that was canceled due to Intel’s delays that year. For ChromeOS itself, Kyle was the first to demonstrate the upcoming light theme redesign in action.
Looking at the early evidence of the Pixel 5’s specs, Kyle accurately predicted in February 2020 that the Pixel 5 might not be a traditional “flagship” phone. In 2021, he reported that Google’s next headset would be the “Pixel Buds A.”
Kyle was the first to report that the Pixel 6 would mark the debut of Google’s in-house processors, later revealed to be the Tensor chips.
He can be reached for tips or just friendly chat by Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, or email. If you’re looking for his other works or side projects, head over to Kyle’s personal portfolio.
Late last year, Google decided to take a new approach with updates to their Google Pixel phones. In addition to the monthly security updates, every three months Pixel phones will get a larger “feature drop,” with the first drop bringing helpful features like automatic call screening. Pixel Tips got an update today, which lays outs the new features coming in the March 2020 feature drop, including dark mode scheduling and the long-anticipated “Cards & Passes.”
Gaming platforms live or die based on the games they can offer, and thrive on their exclusives. So far for exclusives, Google has only managed to nab a handful of timed exclusives, branded “First on Stadia,” like Orcs Must Die! 3 and Get Packed. Otherwise, Stadia’s library of games primarily consists of AAA titles both old (Tomb Raider) and new (Borderlands 3).
According to a new report, the reason that library may not contain more indie titles is that Google isn’t offering enough “incentive” for some developers and publishers to bring their games to Stadia, along with fears that Google may shut the service down.
Once every four years, we get an extra day in the month of February, which we’ve come to celebrate as Leap Day. Today, Google is celebrating Leap Day 2020 with an animated homepage Doodle.
In software development, and especially Google’s development cycles, there’s usually a point where the developers “eat their own dogfood” or use their own work, before letting normal users try it. It seems that Google’s long-in-development Fuchsia OS may finally be reaching this “dogfood” stage.
To an extent, each gaming console or platform is judged by its library and especially its exclusives. To that end, Google is announcing five more games coming soon to Stadia including three “First on Stadia” games.
Google Stadia received an update today, bringing it to version 2.7, and introducing a few minor tweaks to the UI. Below the surface though, we find that Google is preparing to launch Stadia Base with a Stadia Pro free trial, as well as YouTube live streaming and more.
When you Google someone’s name, if they’re famous enough, a full Knowledge Graph card will appear with their description, social media, and more. In India, Google is testing letting far more people create their own “profile card” to appear in Google searches for their name, as well as in Chrome.
Whether settling in for movie night or catching up on your latest binges (just starting Better Call Saul, here), Chromecast is one of the easiest ways to watch Netflix with the convenience of picking a flick on your phone. Today, Netflix has given their Chromecast interface a major overhaul, with a new design and ambient TV and movie recommendations.
Today, LG announced the latest in their V series of Android enthusiast phones, the absolute mouthful that is the LG V60 ThinQ 5G, and gave some reviewers special early access to the phone to compensate for the cancellation of MWC 2020. From what we’ve seen in hands-on takes so far though, the LG V60 doesn’t improve enough on last year’s equally dual-screened V50.
The ideas behind foldables like the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip and dual-screen phones like the upcoming Microsoft Surface Duo have been pushed further into the forefront over the last year or so, with LG crafting their own “foldable” from last LG V50 ThinQ. Today, the company is formally announcing their next-generation dual-screen capable phone, the LG V60 ThinQ 5G.
Last year, Google and Lenovo partnered to launch a developer competition to create new clock faces for the Lenovo Smart Clock using Google’s cross-platform Flutter SDK. Today, the winners were announced, showcasing not only the developers’ capabilities but also those of Flutter.
Google’s flagship Pixel 3 and Pixel 4 phones both have extra features exclusively used when docked on the official Google Pixel Stand wireless charger. Google is preparing to launch another such feature for the Pixel Stand in version 1.4.0 of the companion app, bringing convenient smart home controls via the Google Home app. Expand Expanding Close
With Google constantly pushing for the “Next Billion Users,” there’s great need for web apps to run well on all devices and have good accessibility, and Google has provided the Lighthouse auditing tools to help developers accomplish that. To put Lighthouse in the hands of more web developers, Google has released it as a new Mozilla Firefox extension.
As it stands, to play Google Stadia on your phone you need to connect a game controller via USB or Bluetooth, but what if you’re in a pinch and all you have is your phone? An indie developer has created TouchStadia, a way to play Stadia with on-screen controls from any Android phone via Google Chrome.
In this week’s top stories: a retracted report suggested Verizon would stop carrying the Google Pixel line, the “Pixel 5” appeared in the Android Open Source Project, Pixel Buds briefly offered for pre-order at a retailer, and more.
Of the growing list of discovered features in Android 11 Developer Preview 1, one area that Google seems to be putting a focus on is the notification shade and especially its Quick Settings area. One such discovered change is the ability to individually recolor your Quick Settings tiles. Here’s how you can try it out on your own phone!
While the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip went on sale shortly after the Galaxy Unpacked event, pre-orders for the Galaxy S20 were spaced out by a few weeks. As a reward for the patient, here are the many, many ways to pre-order the Samsung Galaxy S20 & S20+, and the best deals for each of them.
Beyond the monthly free games and access to 4K 60FPS streaming, Stadia Pro offers its members exclusive discounts on games. Starting today, the Google Stadia store is putting a steep discount on Red Dead Redemption 2, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, Borderlands 3, and more.
For those of us on the Android 11 Developer Preview, if you open the Developer Options page, you’ll find a new option amidst various Bluetooth settings offering to “Enable Gabeldorsche.” Of course, that leaves a burning question of “What’s Gabeldorche?”
The first Android 11 Developer Preview arrived for our Pixels today, bringing a variety of updates, and preparing for things to come in the later betas. In an example of the latter, the Google Pixel Launcher has been updated with references to a smart hotseat of app shortcuts and a back gesture tutorial.
Google’s 2020 Pixel Buds are just around the corner, and while they’re slated to have solid battery life, sometimes you need just a little bit more play time. Phones like the Galaxy S10 and S20 have offered the ability to give a Qi wireless charge to other phones or to their Galaxy Buds line. It appears Google may also be developing this feature for the Pixel 5 under the name “Battery Share.”
With each year’s upgrade to Android, folks are normally looking for exciting visual changes, and to an extent, Android 11 delivers, with the new Bubbles API and changes to conversation notifications. That said, a great deal more lies underneath the surface of Android 11, with Google putting significant focus on privacy and security.
If you do a lot of different kinds of document and office editing, it can be frustrating to constantly switch between applications to get things done. To counter this, Microsoft has launched an all-in-one Office application on Android that puts the best of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint under one roof.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s only February and Pixel leak season has already begun. Today, a mention of the Google “Pixel 5” has appeared in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).
