Cody Toombs
Senior Reviewer
Contributing since February, 2013
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1511articles
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About Cody Toombs
Cody has been writing with Android Police for ten years. While best known for the hundreds of APK Teardowns and breaking news on many of Google’s new products and services, he also covers deeper technical topics about the inner workings of Android, app development, and security. Cody is a software engineer and consultant with two decades of experience developing mobile and enterprise applications. In addition to writing, Cody is a regular podcaster and has made appearances on CNN, All About Android, and Tech News Today. Cody is also an active photographer and videographer, occasional gamer, and an all-around decent human.
What tech products or categories are you most passionate about?
Cameras and smartphones for photography. New technologies are bringing a lot of interesting things capabilities to the worlds of photography and video.
What was your first phone and what do you remember about it?
My true first phone was some old Motorola candybar phone from before the days of smartphones. I started on smartphones with the Cingular 2125 (a rebrand of the HTC Faraday, I think?)
Latest Articles
Android 11 developer preview 1 adds support for soft reboots
You won't use it directly, but it could pave the way for some great features
Major Android updates always come with a host of new features and functionality, but there are countless other changes taking place behind the scenes that set the stage for more significant improvements down the road. Among the additions in Android 11, most of us will probably never care about rebooting userspace, but it may be a first step for several other bigger enhancements to come.
Android 11 continues crackdown on restricted APIs
It's time for the annual purge of private methods
Starting with Android P, Google began slowly closing the door on the use of non-public APIs. The process began with method calls that had little or no known usage among app developers, but things changed when Android Q expanded the list of restricted interfaces to cover a larger selection. Now with Android 11, the crackdown continues as the Android team adds even more non-public APIs to the restricted list.
Project Mainline in Android 11 adds twelve new updatable modules
Totals 20 with expansions into more permissions, scoped storage management, new APIs, and more
Project Mainline was one of the most welcome improvements in Android 10 and it's already credited for delivering some valuable security patches and subtle enhancements. With Android 11, the role of Project Mainline will be growing even more substantial and will introduce 12 new modules that will open up even more potential for Android to improve without the need for full blown firmware updates.
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We're always on the lookout for what's to come with the future of Android, and if you're a developer, you may want to check out Android Studio right now. The Android R Preview SDK just appeared in the SDK Manager, meaning there's likely some new stuff to poke through.
Gmail will be adding travel and purchases labels to the sidebar (APK Teardown)
It's not quite Inbox bundles, but maybe getting a little closer
Gmail is one of the longest lived projects to come out of Google after the success of Search. During its life, the development team has been working on countless projects to make sense of the deluge of incoming email and help users manage it. We've seen everything from smart spam filtering, intelligent interpretations of importance and priority, grouping and categorizing based on sources, and with Inbox, even things like smart bundling. The latest update appears to be surfacing a couple of those automatically detected email types so you don't have to remember any hidden tricks to use.
Stadia's free tier will be available to Pro subscribers when their trials end
General public will have to hang in there a bit longer
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In a recent interview between Protocol and Google executive Phil Harrison, it was revealed that Stadia's free tier will launch "over the next few months," which certainly sounds like acknowledgement it will come well after the late-February timeline many people had anticipated. While this is a letdown for anybody looking to test the waters without forking over for an early access kit, it also brought up bigger concerns for many current members that didn't intend to maintain Pro subscriptions after the 3-month trial ended. Fortunately, we now know a bit more about what will happen for those players that already made game purchases, and they basically have nothing to worry about.
Android Auto can now show local weather, in case your car doesn't have windows
You've heard it before, but this time is real
Back in November, Android Auto gained a cool little readout of the local temperature. It was visible on all screens and could be turned on or off in the settings screen on your phone. While it's hard to knock an addition like this, many people took issue with the fact that the setting to toggle this display was titled "Weather" when it was technically just the temperature. Rather than accept defeat and change the name of the setting, the Auto team chose instead to actually give us the weather.
Moment announces biodegradable cases for Samsung Galaxy S20, S20+, and S20 Ultra
Most Samsung cases on sale for the next few days
After yesterday's presentation for the Galaxy S20 line of phones, many of you may have already made the decision to order one of the three models to be your next phone. Since Samsung is sticking to the glass sandwich recipe for this generation, it may be wise to wrap that (potentially $1400) phone in a case to add a bit of protection. If you didn't choose one of Samsung's options, Moment has a couple cases available that might fit the bill, and they are designed to be very environmentally friendly.
Google Measure v2.5 improves surface animations and offers more unit conversions (APK Download)
The excitement around augmented reality apps may have calmed down a bit, but Google's Measure app is still getting some of the attention it deserves. The latest update adds some nice quality of life enhancements while taking measurements, including a new animation to help with spotting surfaces and an upgrade to the automatic unit conversions. The changes might be simple and subtle, but they could really help out in a pinch.
We've been following the upcoming lineup of Motorola phones for the last couple of months. Most of the specs and renders leaked pretty thoroughly just last week, revealing almost everything about the G8 and G8 Power, and giving at least a good glimpse of what to expect for the G Stylus. While the leaks have been pretty spot on, it never hurts to get a bit more, especially when it's straight from retailers — and thanks to Amazon, we now have more renders and details to peruse for the G8 Power.
The original Google Glass Explorer Edition made a big entrance when it quite literally fell from the heavens during Google I/O 2013. While that model never really stood a chance as a consumer product, it became the starting point for Google Glass Enterprise Edition. It seems to have worked out because a second generation launched last year, and as of today, Google is expanding availability to an even larger audience... of developers.
Google Camera v7.3 prepares for 24 fps video, Pixel 4a codenames, and automatic Do Not Disturb mode (APK Teardown)
The camera remains one of the top selling points for Pixel phones, so it's only natural that updates to Google's Camera app are going to be worthy of a close eye. The latest version bump brings some changes that will save you from ruining a video when new notifications would pop up and tweaks the UI in a subtle way. Diving deeper with a teardown, we get to see that 24 fps recording is on the horizon along with some of the codenames for upcoming devices, most likely the Pixel 4a lineup.
YouTube Music received quite a few improvements during 2019, but it may not have been obvious since many of updates have been fairly subtle or only relevant to small audiences. Let's be honest, most of it is easy to ignore when some big features are still missing. Regardless, the service and app maturing, and that will be important when Google Play Music eventually fades into the aether and YouTube Music is all that remains. With the latest update, preparations are being made to improve the Library tab so it's easier to use and doesn't get in the way of playing music the way you want.
Last year at CES 2019, Scosche announced the MagicMount Charge3, a car mount that hooks into your car's air vent to keep a phone locked steadily in place. Unlike similar products, the MagicMount was designed so neither the mount or the phone would obstruct airflow from the vents, plus it supported wireless charging for your phone. This may sound like the holy grail of car mounts, but this year Scosche added the one thing that was obviously missing: an air freshener.
The venerable Egon Spangler once said, "print is dead." The statement may have been premature, but today it feels a little more on point because Google has begun the process of retiring its print-replica magazine service. Emails are going out to Google News users with active subscriptions to inform them that full refunds are being processed and there will be no new issues coming.
Anker Soundcore Liberty 2 and 2 Pro true wireless buds are down to $60 and $110 ($40 off)
True wireless earbuds are everywhere these days, and if you don't already own at least one pair, you're probably considering some. If you don't expect to receive a pair for the holidays, perhaps you'll want want to pick some up on a pretty good discount. Anker's Soundcore Liberty 2 earbuds are $40 off, bringing them down to just $59.99 for the standard model and $109.99 for the Pro version.
Yesterday's announcement of Project Connected Home over IP promises to pave the way to a standards-driven market for smart home products with easier setup experiences, more compatibility, and flexibility with different ecosystems. While this is good news for consumers, it's bound to shake up the industry. Silicon Labs, the owner of Z-Wave, is already responding with today's announcement that it plans to open the Z-Wave standard to third party manufacturers and development in 2020.
Pixel 3a and 3a XL down to $280 and $360 ($120 off), lowest price ever (Update: 3a XL deal returns)
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A few days ago, Android Police named the Pixel 3a as Phone of the Year for 2019. Praise was given for minimal compromises combined with a very competitive price (at least in the US and a few other countries). Almost as if somebody was waiting for this opportunity, two of the biggest electronics retailers have quietly discounted both sizes by $120, bringing them down to new lows of $279.99 for the regular and $359.99 for the XL.
Google's Flutter v1.12 UI framework adds support for web plugins, building macOS apps, and much more
Flutter turned out to be quite the dark horse in the development world as its approach to building interfaces to run across many different platforms has become quite popular. This concept of "ambient computing" is a big part of the Flutter Interact conference, which is in full swing right now with a bunch of big announcements. New versions of Flutter and Dart have been announced, bringing big performance improvements and new features. Partners have also been a big topic as Flutter integration is appearing in some popular tools. A few apps were even highlighted for their use of Flutter, including Google's new Stadia app for Android and iOS and Splice.