In writing about how Gemini is not ready to replace Google Assistant on Android, I’m struck by déjà vu. All the features that Gemini needs to be a good phone assistant is something that another Google product already figured out.

The latest redesign of Android Auto brings a useful new “dashboard” view that can show multiple pieces of information at once, but I wish it was better at supporting multiple apps at once.

Google renamed “Bard” to “Gemini” as part of launching mobile apps and an Advanced tier. While I was never a fan of the Bard name, Google might be pigeonholing itself by calling everything Gemini.

Chrome. I need Google’s browser on visionOS even if it’s just the iPad version. That’s the thing I’m missing the most as a heavy user of Google apps since getting Apple Vision Pro.

Over the years, Samsung has made huge improvements to its Android skin, but there’s one thing that’s still pretty awful. Samsung Keyboard is very bad, and it’s honestly a bit impressive just how bad it is in the year 2024.

Circle to Search is great – and very much a continuation of Now on Tap that Google should have prominently maintained as a core Android experience instead of relegating to Assistant for a few years – but how you launch it with gesture navigation is driving me mad.

In a few hours, I’ll get to use Apple Vision Pro for the first time. It’s frankly a moment I’ve been waiting for since April 4, 2012. 

Google ended 2023 with a pretty sizable Pixel Feature Drop where the camera took center stage. There was Video Boost + Night Sight Video for the 8 Pro, as well as Night Sight timelapse for the 8/Pro. All users benefited from being able to turn their Pixel into a laptop/desktop webcam, while the Pixel Fold picked up Dual Screen Preview and customizable app aspect ratios (Tablet too).  

To be blunt, the default Calculator app on the iPhone is really bad. Apple just replicated a standard/scientific calculator without adding any additional features. 

We reported on Friday that Google is working on two sizes for the Pixel Watch 3. That should address people’s biggest complaint about the Pixel Watch line, but what else do you think Google should tackle?

It’s only been a couple of weeks, but AI is absolutely the big buzzword of 2024, and Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series is betting big on the tech. And, somewhat shockingly, the Galaxy AI suite is really quite good, but the problem I’m facing so far is that the Samsung apps they’re tied to are not ones I want to use.

Last week, Apple named some of the third-party apps that will be available for its spatial computing platform. No Google productivity or entertainment services were explicitly mentioned for Vision Pro. For the latter, we got “Disney+, Max, and other services,” while Microsoft 365 and Slack were the big work names. 

Foldable smartphones aren’t “new” at this point, but 2023 was easily the most impactful year yet for the form factor. Two devices in particular stand out amongst the new releases – the OnePlus Open and the Google Pixel Fold.

The best part of Google Podcasts was its simplicity. Google built a service that was fairly basic in terms of layout/navigation and functionality, but the app didn’t feel barebones. It had everything a podcasting client needed and those that wanted something more advanced could easily switch to another application thanks to the openness and portability of RSS.

CES 2024 is underway and Google has a number of announcements across phones, tablets, TVs, and cars:

As CES 2024 kicks off this week, we’re reminded of one of last year’s biggest announcements. The new Qi2 standard was announced last January with support for MagSafe as a universal standard, but we haven’t heard much about support for Qi2 in new Android phones. What will be the first one?

It’s 2024 and the vast majority of Chromebooks don’t have fingerprint sensors. Biometric authentication has become the norm on smartphones, but most ChromeOS users are still typing in a password. (Having to enter your Google Account credentials so often in public seems like a bad idea.)

Google not being at the forefront of augmented reality is a real shame. With Glass, Cardboard, and Daydream in the mid-2010s, Google seemed well on its way to owning the next form factor. All those efforts are dead.

2023 saw Google’s first push into bigger screens in its Pixel lineup and with that, some growing pains. As 2024 beings, it’s the Pixel Tablet that Google has the most room for improvement on out of its current lineup, and arguably the one that needs it the most.

Recorder is for transcribing audio, and that singular focus feels rare in modern apps that are packed to the brim with (tangentially) related capabilities. I almost equate it to a single-purpose physical tool, while the only other equivalent piece of software that comes to mind is Calculator. 

Following the unveil over two years ago, Google continues to bring Material You to its various apps. There were many updates and redesigns in 2023, but here are the most notable ones. 

Seven years into the Google Pixel series, 2023 marked Google’s biggest year yet with six new devices released. It was a year where Google fixed a lot of mistakes, but also introduced some growing pains to the lineup. Let’s take a look back.

This app is now officially just “Google Messages” after years of being called “Messages by Google.” It dovetails with how Google, in February, started referring to “RCS” directly after years of “Chat message” in the compose field. A bigger moment in 2023, along with 1 billion monthly active users, was Google enabling RCS by default and launching end-to-end encryption for group conversations.

In 2023, YouTube Music redesigned a lot of the core UI you use day-to-day. It started with a revamped Library on Android, iOS, and web in January that later gained a grid view. Album pages were also modernized just like playlists.