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.
Kyle contributes to the APK Insight column at 9to5Google, discovering the hidden changes in Google’s apps. These efforts have revealed hotly anticipated features, details about upcoming devices, and unexpected connections between companies.
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.
Have you searched Google today and felt like you weren’t seeing the newest information? You’re not alone. At some point yesterday, Google’s search indexing seems to have stopped processing new pages from many of the internet’s largest websites.
Among the other various updates included with Android Q Beta 6, Google has also thrown in a minor update to the UI on the Pixel Stand, greatly simplifying the ambient experience.
Google has been taking a lot of feedback on gesture navigation from the brave folks who have been testing it in the Android Q Beta releases. With Android Q Beta 6, Google is making gestures just a little bit more seamless by hiding the navigation bar on the home screen.
Last year, OnePlus shared its intention to break into the smart TV market as early as this year, without sharing too many of the specifics about how such a device would work. Now it seems the OnePlus TV is a real Android product line that has begun to reach regulatory bodies, revealing details such as screen size and availability.
In May, Samsung announced their line of massive 64-megapixel ISOCELL camera sensors for smartphones. Now, only three months later, Xiaomi has confirmed that an upcoming Redmi phone will feature this 64 MP camera and shared some details.
We’ve already gotten a pretty decent taste of what’s coming at this year’s Made by Google event, between official Pixel 4 teasers, Pixelbook 2 leaks, and early evidence of a Google Home revamp. It seems at least one more device is on the horizon, new Google WiFi hardware with WiFi 6 support.
When it comes to Android’s monthly security updates, some months can be more important than others. With the August 2019 Android security patch, Google and Qualcomm have fixed a set of “critical” vulnerabilities in their Snapdragon chips, dubbed “QualPwn,” that could allow hackers access to your phone’s underlying Linux kernel over the air.
Last week, we learned that Google is beginning to experiment with potential improvements the Chrome OS shelf, starting by offering a smaller version for clamshell Chromebooks. We’ve now learned from an internal doc that Google is making some changes to the Chrome OS app shelf and its icons, specifically in preparation for the Pixelbook 2.
Outside of the rare early release like we saw from OnePlus last week, security patches and Android Q Beta builds arrive on Google’s Pixel devices first, with other OEM devices following some time later. Almost a full month after the release of Android Q Beta 5, HMD Global is now rolling out an updated developer build to their Android One-powered Nokia 8.1, one of the best affordable Android phones on the market.
With Android Q, Google has been affirming that dark mode is important to them on mobile, even allowing apps like Chrome to darken websites. This same dark mode for web is now coming to Google Chrome on desktop and Chrome OS.
In this week’s top stories: Google shows us the front of the Pixel 4 and accounts for its bezel, Nvidia releases Android Pie for the Shield TV, Android Auto rolls out a fresh redesign, and more.
As fans of fitness smartwatches are eagerly awaiting details on the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2, it’s easy to forget that Samsung just released another fitness product, the Galaxy Fit. We took some time to get better acquainted with Samsung’s more affordable fitness band in our Galaxy Fit review.
While Chrome has long been customizable via themes from the Chrome Web Store, it’s not been easy for the average person to personalize their browser to their own unique tastes. Google is looking to fix this with a built-in easy-to-use custom theme generator for Chrome.
With the release of Android Q Beta 5, Google announced that they would be hosting a Reddit AMA, to answer our burning questions about Android Q and almost everything else Android related. That AMA took place this afternoon, with the Android engineering team providing fun and interesting tidbits about, among other things, Android Q and what may be coming with Android R.
Google is under investigation by Germany for possibly breaking GDPR requirements following reports of the company using humans to quality check recordings of private voice queries to the Assistant. While the investigation is underway, Google will reportedly cease listening to recordings from EU customers.
Shopping for a Chromebook is a fairly subjective process, but my personal favorite and daily driver has been the Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630, as it’s the only Chromebook on the market with an optional 4K display (for now). Since its release, other Chromebooks have bested it for performance, by offering more RAM and a faster processor. Lenovo appears to be responding by preparing a new model of the Yoga Chromebook C630, with an i7 and even higher performance than before.
Early this year, we found evidence that Google was integrating Digital Wellbeing with Chrome for Android, starting with Android Q. Now, as of the latest Chrome Canary for Android update, the Digital Wellbeing features are live, offering per-site usage data and site timers.
Since the big unveiling of its “Chat” initiative, Google has been investing heavily into RCS, even directly handling the rollout of RCS messaging in the UK and France. At one point, RCS was supposed to be deeply integrated with Android Q and made available to third-party developers, but this sadly ended up not being the case. Now Google is already looking ahead to the next version of Android and adding more RCS APIs.
Late last year, we uncovered evidence that Huawei was working with Google’s Fuchsia, even working to bring the OS to their own Honor Play gaming phone. Over two months after the company was hit with sanctions preventing them from working with US tech, the Chinese giant is apparently still interested in working with Fuchsia.
In this week’s top stories: evidence of a revamped Nvidia Shield TV appears, three Google Pixel phones get see-through wallpapers, the Google Assistant can now quietly turn down the lights, and more.
In the latest Chrome OS Canary, Google is testing a smaller design for the Chrome OS shelf and its app icons, currently hidden behind a new flag.
Over the past few weeks, details have slowly been leaking out about a Chromebook codenamed “Atlas,” which we believe to be the next iteration of Made by Google Chrome OS hardware. We’ve now uncovered Geekbench benchmarks for Atlas, showing that the Pixelbook 2 candidate’s underlying hardware will be almost identical to that of the Pixel Slate.
Since the advent of Linux apps on Chrome OS, what makes a device one of the best Chromebooks on the market has been changing. Now, more than ever, performance matters, and OEMs like Acer are beginning to meet the demand by bumping up specs across the board. Today, Acer has posted specs for a souped-up version of their Chromebook Spin 13 with a top-of-the-line Intel i7 processor.
A new device has been submitted for FCC certification today, having many of the hallmarks of a Made by Google Chromebook, further hinting at the arrival of a Pixelbook successor this year.