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.
In this week’s top stories: Android Q Beta 1 arrives for all Pixel phones with a plethora of new feature, LineageOS Nightlies give the original Google Pixel an extended life, we learn about teens using Google Docs as a way to mask talking in class, and much more.
On most desktop platforms, when you put Chrome into fullscreen, you can access your tabs and the omnibox by moving your mouse to the top of the screen. Unfortunately, since last July, this simple gesture has not worked on Mac, but Google is finally getting around to fixing Chrome’s fullscreen mode.
Excitement is building as Google’s big gaming announcement at GDC 2019 next week approaches. An interesting, potentially related development has cropped up now in Google Chrome, with the browser picking up native support for Nintendo Switch controllers.
The Android Q beta comes with a significant number of new features, some closer to ready than others. Buried in the Settings app, there’s a variety of other, more experimental features you can try out, hidden in the “Feature flags” menu if you’re feeling brave. Here’s a rundown of what they all do.
If you’re like me and treat your notification shade like a to-do list of things you’ll come back to later, you’ll know that sometimes the “newest” notification gets lost in a sea of recent ones with higher priority. Google has managed to solve this issue for Android Q in the simplest way possible, by adding a notification bell.
Among the many surprises of today’s Android Q announcements, such as releasing later in the day than expected and skipping from Developer Preview right to Beta, came another welcome surprise for owners of the original Google Pixel and Pixel XL.
Have you ever found an article on your phone, but wanted to read it later on your laptop? Or maybe you found something while at work and wanted to read it later when you got home? Google Chrome is getting a new “Send to my devices” option, which makes this common task of sharing a tab much easier.
In this week’s top stories: Android Slices appear in the Google app for Pixel users, Google Duplex expands to 43 states, the March security patch arrives on Pixel and Essential phones, and much more.
In this week’s top stories: the Bixby button became far more useful, passwords became a little more irrelevant as Android got FIDO2 certified, Google’s budget-friendly Pixel phones passed through the FCC, and much more.
Google has been hard at work bringing Fuchsia to a wide variety of devices ranging from IoT devices like the Google Home Hub to more traditional computers like the Pixelbook. According to a new code change, the next devices to get the Fuchsia “tap” will be the newly released Chromebooks built with AMD processors, like the HP Chromebook 14 and Acer Chromebook 315.
During Day 1 of the 2018 Chrome Dev Summit, among the other announcements shared, one seemed to slip under the radar. Squeezed between the announcement of Web.dev, a new developer resource website, and a demonstration of VisBug, a browser-based visual development tool, was a minor note that registration would soon be open for the .dev top-level domain.
Update 2: Registration is now open for .dev domains without any additional “Early Access” fees.
Linux apps have added a new level of utility to Chrome OS, enabling programs that go beyond the typical web and Android apps. However, Chrome OS wasn’t quite ready for certain tasks like video editing due to a lack of audio in Linux apps. That’s changing as of Chrome OS 74, now in the Dev channel, which offers audio playback for the Linux apps support.
At last year’s MWC, Google announced that their Flutter app development SDK was ready to move from alpha to beta testing. Today at MWC 2019, Flutter is getting its second stable release, version 1.2, combined with the release of version 2.2 of the Dart programming language.
As ARCore grows in adoption and sees fun new functions like Google’s Playground app, it was only a matter of time before more serious uses of the technology began to appear. It seems the time has come, as, among other new devices like the Motorola Moto One, ARCore is picking up support for its first enterprise-specific devices from Zebra.
Google is on a possibly never-ending mission to make sure every bank in the US supports Google Pay. Already in the month of February alone, Google Pay has picked up over forty new banks.
Qualcomm has a strong presence at MWC 2019, with their chips powering many of the biggest newly announced devices. As phones are continuing to shift away from traditional wired charging to wireless charging, Qualcomm is also updating their Quick Charge technology to be compatible with Qi and other wireless chargers.
In this week’s top stories: Google Contacts app receives the latest version of the Google Material Theme, Gmail’s Material Theme on Android rolls out to everyone, Google Chrome’s dark mode on Android aims to also darken web pages, the Samsung Unpacked event showed what Samsung has to offer in 2019 and much more.
Have you ever used your laptop or desktop to look up a business’s phone number, then manually dial that number on your phone? Some Googlers are looking to simplify this minor inconvenience with a potentially upcoming click-to-call feature that works between desktop and Android Chrome.
Last month, we covered the strong possibility of Android Q providing new APIs for RCS messaging to third-party app developers, based on some evidence in Android code. It appears that Google’s plans may have changed in the intervening month, according to a new commit.
Most accessories don’t have the honor of being chosen by Google to give to employees. When Moshi told us that their “Made for Google” Umbra privacy screen protector was included with the Pixelbook in the Google employee welcome kit, we knew we needed to get our hands on one.
Samsung’s Unpacked 2019 event occurred today, with the company unveiling all of its latest phones, wearables, and accessories. Their latest and most affordable smart watch, the Galaxy Watch Active, didn’t get quite the full amount of attention it deserved on stage today. So here are some extras you may have missed.
Samsung is no stranger to the trend of truly wireless earbuds, having released two editions of the Samsung Gear IconX, but have yet to reach the level of greatness seemingly achieved by Apple’s AirPods. At Unpacked 2019, Samsung announced their latest attempt, the Galaxy Buds.
Many companies are eyeing the market for more budget-friendly devices and releasing slightly lesser versions of their premium flagship phones. At Unpacked 2019, Samsung is the latest to try and tap into the success found by the iPhone XR, with the Galaxy S10e, the first budget-friendly phone in the Galaxy S series.
Google’s Digital Wellbeing app, currently an exclusive to Pixel phones, allows you to set usage timers for your apps, which block you out of the app when they expire. A similar usage timer feature is coming for Android Q devices in Google Chrome’s first Digital Wellbeing integration.