As a platform and ecosystem, Wear OS is in a good place right now. That wasn’t the case three years ago before the Samsung partnership. Wear OS 3 reinvigorated the operating system with the Galaxy Watch 4 serving as the flagship device until the Pixel Watch over a year later. The next hardware milestone was the Snapdragon W5 in mid-2022 giving manufacturers a more capable chip to work with. Also, keep in mind how Google and Qualcomm are working on a RISC-V chip for Wear OS.

The Google app on Android handles a lot of common information requests throughout your day, and I’m not just talking about Assistant, Lens, or Gemini.

Smartphone glass has gotten much better over the years, but Corning’s new Gorilla Armor feels like the first truly big upgrade we’ve seen in a while. I want it on everything.

The service people most want from Google One is YouTube Premium. That is the holy grail for a Google subscription and calls for it will only increase now that Nest Aware and Fitbit Premium are coming — starting in the UK — at no extra cost.

YouTube Music is my streaming service of choice followed by Apple Music. Music is important to both companies given YouTube’s role in music videos and the iPod, but it’s far from the core business.

Biometrics have made it way more conveinent to unlock our smartphones, but there’s a debate on if face, or fingerprint unlock is the better solution. Many Android brands have taken the approach of “why not both,” adding both face and fingerprint unlock to their devices, but Google’s Pixel is the only one that’s done it correctly.

Even before generative AI, it was clear that Google Assistant was in retreat. Now that Google is in its “Gemini era,” what’s next for Assistant? 

Android TV has been replaced, but it’s apparently still getting new, unique features of its own. Why?

My reservations about Google calling all of its AI features “Gemini” remain, but most users seem to like the branding change. One thing I’ve seen people speculate about is a “Hey Gemini” hotword in the future. 

In testing the Gemini app over the past week, my usage of Google Assistant through Pixel Buds Pro has skyrocketed, and I’m actually liking the balance.

Using a navigation app when out on the road is what just about everyone does nowadays, but these apps are useful for more than just getting directions from point A to point B. Google Maps has supported incident reporting for quite some time, but as we keep moving forward, the feature is becoming essentially useless due to neglect.

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.