Without a doubt, the biggest complaint shared by reviewers of the base Google Pixel 4 was its subpar battery life. Those looking to radically cut back on their Pixel’s battery usage may have reason to celebrate, as new evidence hints at a new “Ultra Low power mode” coming to Pixel phones and possibly Android devices in general.
While originally rumored for the 10/9 Made by Google event, the Pixel Watch obviously did not launch last year. This morning, two codenames for what are possibly Google devices emerged in AOSP with evidence suggesting that they are smartwatches.
In an interesting turn of events this Friday evening, the beginnings of support for the Java programming language has arrived for Fuchsia. Where things get interesting is that this change was found in Android’s code, not Fuchsia’s.
With this morning’s official launch of Android Pie on Pixel devices, it was only a matter of time before AOSP followed suit. The official source code for the latest version of Android is now live for OEMs and developers to read or build themselves.
Sometime in late May, Fuchsia, Google’s in-development OS for mobile (and more), added a loose connection to AOSP in the form of new ‘projects’ in their Gerrit source code management hub, but now the code is being used and we can see what it’s actually for.
Substantial leaks for the third-generation Made by Google devices emerged later than usual this year, with concrete rumors first surfacing at the end of May. In the coming months, there will be more and more rumors with one good source of news coming directly from Google’s Android Open Source Project.
Back in March, we saw a third-party start work on adding official iris scanning functionality to the Android Open Source Project. Now, we’ve found code commits that hint at a more elaborate face recognition feature than the current Trusted Face Smart Lock.
Google’s Material Design language continues its crawl into the nooks and crannies of the Mountain View company’s various web properties today, this time with the Android Open Source Project website. The website has a new, cleaner design that leaves much of the same functionality but makes it easier to access and prettier overall…
While the previous version of Google Glass is dead and dying, it is still an Android device. And that means it’s hackable, mod-able, and will probably be tinkered with for years to come. Similar to how other aging devices still have developer support, Reddit user jtxdriggers has managed to install 4.4 KitKat on Glass.
A couple of days ago we told you that Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP of Android at Google, announced on Twitter that new emoji recently approved from Unicode 7.0 and 8.0 are soon coming to Nexus devices (specifically, it looks like they should be rolling out starting sometime next week). If you’ve been wondering what these new emoji are going to look like, you’ve come to the right place…
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Update 2: And they’re back!
Update: Uh oh. Looks like they have disappeared from the Play Store.
Google has slowly been moving many of its in-house built stock apps to the Play Store for quite some time now, and today two more apps were added to that list. Starting now, you’ll be able to download and update both the stock Dialer app and the Google Contacts app via their Play Store listings…
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Several old Nexus devices just don’t support Android 6.0 Marshmallow (and many never will), and that has left some owners of older phones feeling left out. But now, owners of the 2010 (yep, 5 years old) Nexus S might be glad to hear that one developer has managed to put together a build of Marshmallow for the phone. It’s definitely at your own risk, but you can now install this hacky unofficial build of Marshmallow with a little know-how, and here’s how to do it…
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It wasn’t that long ago that Google opened up its Clock app to be downloaded on just about any Android device, and now a very minor update released today has refreshed the app’s color scheme. While the previous version sported a pink-and-blue look that was reminiscent of cotton candy, the app now looks a lot more like a patriotic red, white, and blue.
Those who weren’t avid users of the previous version might not notice the difference, because in the grand scheme of things it’s definitely not a huge change. But if you were a fan of the light-hearted and unique colors of the app, you might be disappointed that Google has now gone with something more “neutral” in version 4.0.2. The update also packs a few bug fixes.
You can get the latest version of the Clock app over at APKMirror right now, or you should see it rolling out via the Play Store any minute now.
Update: Previous version of this story said the original post was from yesterday, when it was actually from June 11th. The story made its way to the /r/Android subreddit yesterday.
Last night a story bubbled up in the Android community that led many to believe that older Nexus devices – specifically the Nexus 4, 7, and 10 – would be receiving official updates to Android M, Google’s upcoming major release of Android. Artem Russakovskii from Android Police, however, has come out on Google+ to say that the evidence presented shows no indication that these devices will be updated.
Google only ever makes its Android developer preview versions available on its own Nexus devices – these devices are designed partly with developer modification and testing in mind, after all. But Sony has gone ahead and done the necessary legwork to make the preview version of Android M work on those of its devices in its Open Device program, and even has a handy guide on how to install it.
Ensuring a device can run the M Developer preview without too many issues, device manufacturers have to include in the software support (drivers) for all the hardware – the chipset, connectivity radios, etc. Over on Sony’s Open Device page is a list of devices in the program along with two downloads to get M running, the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) – Android M itself – as well as software to get the hardware working properly on M. Only a couple of its smartphones and tablets are currently supported right now.
We recently reported that the launch of Huawei’s first smartwatch, simply called Huawei Watch, was expected to be delayed until September or October in China and perhaps abroad as well. A new story out from the WSJ speaking with Yang Yong of Huawei, however, has the launch in China pushed back as far as early 2016. The smartwatch is still expected to launch in the US and Europe in the coming months.
In a developer blog post this morning, Sony announced that developers can now build custom versions of Android for all 2014 Xperia devices with a Qualcomm processor. This is made possible through Google’s AOSP (Android Open Source Project), a project dedicated to keeping Android open and giving developers the power to build their own custom ROMs.
Many details surrounding the Nexus 6 were leaked in the months leading up to the smartphone’s launch in late October, although one oft-rumored tech specification that proved to be absent was a fingerprint scanner akin to Touch ID on the iPhone. The initial reports calling for a fingerprint scanner weren’t necessarily wrong, however, based on new evidence uncovered in Android’s open source code.
Ars Technica reports that Google was prepared to include fingerprint scanner support for both the Nexus 6 and Android Lollipop, although a commit message filed through Android Open Source Project (AOSP) in late August called for removal of that support on “Shamu,” the internal codename for what ultimately became the Nexus 6. The commit simply read “shamu: remove fingerprint support.”
While the wait continues for Google to release Android Lollipop as an over-the-air software update and post official factory images of the latest operating system version, a number of developers over at XDA-Developers have taken it upon themselves to take the Lollipop source code and create builds for the Nexus 4, 5, 7, 10 and other devices.
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Citing research from Bluebox Security on an Android security flaw researchers have dubbed “Fake ID,” Arstechnica is out with a report today detailing how the vulnerability exposes a long list of Android users to malware threats.
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