Cody Toombs
Senior Reviewer
Contributing since February, 2013
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1511articles
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1389News
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12Features
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7Guides
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37Reviews
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65Deals
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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
[Update: Normalization Is Gone] Google App v5.8 Beta Brings Back Launcher Auto Rotation On Phones And Now Normalizes Icon Sizes For A Bit Of Consistency [APK Download]
Read update
Maps v9.19 Introduces New 'Driving Mode' With Traffic Updates And ETAs, Audio Toggle For Navigation, And Timeline Settings [APK Download + Teardown]
Read update
Keep v3.2.501 Adds Shortcuts To The Drawing Mode Editor For Quick Sharing And Deleting [APK Download]
Google added Drawing Mode to Keep at the end of October and the couple of updates since then seem to focus on fixing bugs. The recent 501 update did make a small but useful addition: there is now an overflow menu in Drawing Mode with links to Delete and Send (i.e. share) your doodles to other apps.
Android Auto v1.5 Is Adding A Parking Assistant, Prepares Handwriting And Rotary Keyboards For Specially Equipped Cars [APK Teardown]
Google faces many interesting challenges with Android Auto. It seems like a simple task to build an interface that is less messy and more enjoyable than existing in-car systems. Given the low bar set by most existing platforms, this doesn't sound very difficult. However, Google is taking advantage of more advanced technology and clever design so Auto isn't just another small iterative step forward. A teardown of the latest update shows some interesting progress on new input methods that don't require as much attention and a parking assistant feature that remembers where you left your vehicle.