Cody Toombs
Senior Reviewer
Contributing since February, 2013
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1511articles
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1389News
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7Guides
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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 Auto v4.1 adds widescreen support and UI tweaks, prepares auto-resume, and more [APK Teardown]
Android Auto continues to work toward adding features people really need in the car. The latest update brings a few minor surface-level changes, and under the hood there are some new features that may be pretty useful, including an auto-resume feature for music (or podcasts and audiobooks), a filter to prevent group messages from becoming too distracting, and more.
Google Messages v4.1 prepares Verified SMS support to eliminate spam, Google Assistant integration, and more [APK Teardown]
The latest update to Google Messages hit earlier this week, and while it's featuring a few visible changes, including a new setting to enable Suggested Actions and a new About screen, the most interesting changes aren't intended to go live quite yet. We already know Google is adding Assistant integration to Messages, and now some of that is manifesting in the app. But the most exciting addition is support for a great new carrier-level feature called Verified SMS that may put an end to scam messages (and calls).
Duo has left us waiting on the launch of some big new features, including group calling, but the latest update to v49 doesn't appear to be launching either of those quite yet. However, there are a couple of smaller touches to discuss, including special effects for the Hindu festival of Holi and some type of new video invites.
Playground v2.2 (AR Stickers): AR Shopping, International Women's Day, and animals with answers [APK Teardown]
After a few years of ups and downs with VR and AR, Google has achieved some notable wins, most recently with the Childish Gambino dance off. Naturally, they're not stopping there, and the latest update to the Playground app (formerly AR Stickers) shows some of what's in store. There will be integration to allow for furniture viewing and shopping, an informative life-sized collection of animals, and a special celebration for International Women's Day.
YouTube Music v3.03 and earlier: Device limits, personal audio library, autoplay, and more [APK Teardown]
With YouTube Music set to eventually replace Google Play Music entirely — the last GPM update with any appreciable change was a year ago — the developers are in the process of migrating features so users won't be left wanting for too much. Since the last several versions have only contained minor visual tweaks and some of the signs of feature migration, we've been waiting for something more substantial to cover, and with the version number jumping to 3.0 and adding Android Auto support, this seemed like a good time. This post will contain the collective changes and teardown topics from the last few versions.
[Update: Emoji UI tweaks] Gboard v8.0 brings back the clipboard, prepares tool for helping other users enable languages [APK Teardown]
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A new version of Gboard hit last night and it appears to be taking a second run at enabling the clipboard that began going live a few months ago. Unfortunately, there are still some problems. Gboard is also taking a run at adding a feature to help your friends and family enable additional languages on their devices, and a tool for exporting your personal dictionary. And as usual, there are dozens of new languages supported for people from around the world.
There's probably no other feature that's more often cited as missing from YouTube Music than Android Auto support. Sure, you can manually start and control the app on your phone while it's connected to the car and get music, but this is clearly not what people are asking for. Hints about in-car support were added to the apk a few months ago, but that promise has finally come through. As of version 3.03, you can now use YouTube Music directly through the Android Auto interface.
Google Hangouts v29 adopts notification channels while dropping some ringtone customization, and more [APK Download]
Hangouts "Classic" is set to retire somewhere around the end of 2020, at which point users will be transitioned to Hangouts Chat and Meet. That leaves quite a bit of time that people will get to continue on with regular communications. Unlike Allo, Hangouts seems to be getting more attention now that there's a ticking clock on it. A new version of the Hangouts app is out and it's making some noteworthy changes. In fact, this is more activity than we saw in the last year leading up to this point.
Google Messages v4.0 enables renaming of group chats, changes colors for unpictured contacts, and more [APK Teardown]
Google's Messages app came out with a brand new update this week, and while it's sporting a major new version number, the changes are fairly moderate. It's now possible to give custom names to your group chats, and there's a tweak to the UI that makes Messages look a lot more like Google's Contacts and Phone apps. There are also several things to discuss in a teardown, particularly with regards to RCS.
YouTube v14.06 prepares to raise the limit for offline video quality, and more [APK Teardown]
If you're just about to leave the comfort of Wi-Fi to risk expensive data fees and dead zones — or, you know, get on a plane for 2 hours — you might plan ahead and download some YouTube videos to kill some time. If you're like most people, you still want to see the highest possible quality, so you might have been disappointed that YouTube caps offline downloads at a measly 720p. That may be changing as it looks like the cap will be rising to a cool 1080p in the future.
Google Duo v47 prepares a drawing mode to doodle on your video messages [APK Teardown]
Google's video chat app Duo has always been a pretty lightweight app, seemingly focused primarily on keeping the interface simple and prioritizing video and audio quality over flooding it with features. We've seen a few features slowly emerge over the last couple of years, and just about as many have been implemented and subsequently removed before launching. While we wait to see the eventual launch of a favorites list for contacts, there's another new feature in development that may liven up your video chats: Drawing mode. There's also another reminder that group calling is on the way.
Google app v9.10 beta update reveals Face Match for Assistant-enabled devices with multi-user support [APK Teardown]
At this point, it's no mystery that Google is digging deeper into facial recognition technology. Earlier today, XDA posted details found in a leaked Android Q build that contains code related to facial recognition, and now a beta update to the Google app adds its own details to the story. It's safe to say that Google will not only support per-device recognition, but will also support it across Assistant-enabled devices with the proper hardware and even allow detection for multiple users where appropriate.
We don't hear much about new technology making an appearance in email, which makes it all the more interesting when it happens. The latest Gmail update includes a sign that Google has begun testing a feature called Dynamic Email in the Android app, and once it goes live for regular users, this may be effectively turning email into an app platform.
Google Duo v46 adds partially working 'Favorites' list, prepares Valentine's Day video effect [APK Teardown]
An update to Google's Duo app began rolling out earlier today, and unlike many other recent app updates, there's actually a brand new feature that doesn't appear to be locked behind a server-side switch. Unfortunately, it also appears that it may not be working properly, and might have been left enabled by accident. Duo is also preparing a special video effect in honor of Valentine's Day.
Google app v9.0 beta is working on account detection with third parties, adds bits for CES announcements, and says hello from the lab [APK Teardown]
If you've been living on the beta distributions of the Google app, you probably spent the weekend (and a couple days into the week) with a broken At A Glance widget that couldn't display the weather. The issue has been resolved with yesterday's update, and it seems like things are running smoothly again. Bugs aside, not much changed in the jump to 9.0 for users, but a teardown does show some of the things to come.
Google Photos v4.8 is preparing a new suggested sharing feature based on your interactions [APK Teardown]
In a busy week of updates, Google Photos is joining the pack with the v4.8 release. As is fairly usual, the visible changes appear to be limited mostly to minor tweaks to wording. However, a teardown does point to some of the things we might expect in the future, including a new or enhanced feature for automatically suggested sharing, a new option for photobook cover imagery, and more.
The holidays (and CES) are over and the many of Google's app teams are back in the full swing of releasing updates. Gboard's latest version hit this morning few directly visible changes outside of minor wording and color changes. However, there are some interesting things that can be gleaned from wandering through a teardown of the apk.
Google app v8.91 beta prepares Continued Conversations in German, tweaks to Slices and Collections, and more [APK Teardown]
Ever since the Google app moved to weekly releases, often with several minor updates along the way, notable changes have been spread out. This update brought the rollout of Android Auto integration for Google Podcasts, but aside from that, the last few updates have been pretty conservative with their changes. As a result, teardowns from the last few versions are getting bundled together in a single post to keep things cleaner for our readers.
Things are really happening for Android Auto this week. They're not necessarily big things, but they are things, and that's pretty cool. In addition to yesterday's news that Google Podcasts is finally integrated with Auto, meaning we can stop fiddling with our phones to listen to podcasts and start fiddling with the screen built into the car, there's also an update to the Auto app itself that brings its own helpful change to the source picker.
When Google released the all new Podcasts app (again), many people were surprised its stark lack of features. Many things were missing, like auto-downloading, Cast support, and Android Auto integration. While many of these things have either trickled in, or are obviously on the to-do list, Google v8.91 is finally checking Auto support off of that list.