About Rita El Khoury
Rita was a Managing Editor at Android Police. Once upon a time, she was a pharmacist as well. Her love story with Android started in 2009 and has been going stronger with every update, device, tip, app, and game. She lives in France, speaks three languages and a half, and watches a lot of TV series.
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As Google crams more and more capabilities into Assistant, we've noticed a bit of a decline in the virtual helper's "intelligence." Things that used to work well have become hit-and-miss, others that seem obvious to our human brains are handled in a ridiculously dumb way, but at no point in time has Assistant shown off its true cluelessness better than in this latest bug, which is affecting one of our readers. Each time he wants to turn off the lights, he gets a YouTube video of a song about turning off the lights. Genius.
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Last year, all smartphone manufacturers got into a single room and elected a unified rear-facing camera design for smartphones: a rectangular bump on the top left. That's the only logical explanation for the slew of similar-looking devices we've seen in recent months, be it the iPhone 11, Pixel 4, Galaxy Note10 and S10 Lite, or others. We've known for a while that Samsung's upcoming flagships will follow the same trend and now we're getting further proof thanks to real-life images of the S20 Ultra and S20+.
Songs and lyrics come hand in hand, at least if you don't listen exclusively to instrumentals and electronic music. When you're failing to understand what an artist is saying — be it because they're talking too fast, growling too much, swallowing letters left and right, or speaking a foreign language for you — lyrics help you decipher the mess and understand the song's message. Several music streaming services offer lyrics along with songs, like Spotify (though in its own Behind the lyrics flavor) and Apple Music, and now YouTube Music is getting ready to join the fold.
Until recently, the words "Samsung" and "timely updates" were never uttered in the same sentence, unless you were emphasizing the contradiction between them. The Korean behemoth had a reliable, albeit very leisurely update schedule, pushing Android users who valued prompt access to security patches and new features away. With Android 10, things changed drastically, and Samsung has been impressing us more and more, with both major OTA rollouts and monthly security patches. Whether it's due to a different strategy, new team or leadership, Android's Project Treble, or some magical potion, Samsung is quickly becoming the OEM to beat for Android updates and we can't help but applaud its recent efforts.
At launch, the new Google Assistant on the Pixel 4 came with several limitations. Beside requiring the Pixel 4, it didn't work for those who have a G Suite account on their phone, required gesture navigation, and didn't support multiple languages, but worse yet, it was limited to US English only. With time, some of these obstacles were removed, like the navigation requirement, and we've seen the addition of more English variants. Now, the new Assistant is going beyond English for the first time, with official support for Japanese.
The day has come. We knew it was upon us, we prepared for it, we stocked supplies just in case it brought on the apocalypse, and now all we can do is brace ourselves for impact. Tomorrow, WhatsApp will stop working on devices running Android 2.3.7. Your collector Galaxy S, Desire HD, Nexus One, Droid X2, and other phones from that era will sadly become a little less useful from then on.
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I can't imagine having to navigate today's world while visually impaired. From streets to people to items, and even trivial things like preparing a sandwich or knowing the proper toilet sign in a restaurant, it would all be infinitely more difficult without sight, and I have a lot of admiration for those who have to handle these situations every day. Smartphones can make some of this easier, especially with AI at the helm. If Google Lens can identify a dog's breed from a photo, there's nothing stopping it from using the same tech to help visually-impaired people, and that's where Lookout comes in.
This post is dedicated to some of our Android Police readers and the most passionate commenters who have repeatedly argued that dark gray doesn't count as a proper dark mode and that absolute black is the only AMOLED-friendly color that matters. I won't dare discuss this further — I once tried, it was futile. Anyway, just for you, AMOLED lovers, the Google app is now testing a darker shade of gray across the app header, though sadly it still counts as gray and not black. However, if you look closely, you'll notice some full black elements have started popping up in the Google app.
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Along with the new Shield TV and TV Pro, Nvidia introduced a brand new remote for its set-top boxes. It has a triangular profile, plenty of buttons, and shouldn't be easily lost thanks to its built-in locator. But in case you did manage to lose it or you want an extra one to secretly control the TV when your partner or kids think they have the remote, you should be able to buy it in January 2020 for $30.
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- Plenty of apps have taken their sweet time in implementing a proper dark mode, but this week we're finally seeing some progress for a couple of the biggest apps around. On Tuesday we spotted the arrival of dark mode in the latest Whatsapp beta, and today we're getting multiple reports of a more broadly available dark mode for Facebook.
As more and more apps are adding a dark theme, some outliers have started to stand out with their lighter colors and designs. Facebook is one of these, but we've known for a while that the service would soon implement it. It's already rolled it out to the Messenger app, the Facebook website, and is now starting to test it on Android.
For years now, I've lamented the lack of an easy way to share and collaborate on bookmarks in Google Chrome, which would streamline researching and saving relevant webpages for any couple, family, group of friends, or colleagues. Unfortunately, the option was available in 2015 but was later removed never to surface again. Given Google's prowess at making much more complicated things shareable, like Play Store family purchases or Drive documents, it was and still is surprising that Chrome doesn't support collaboration. But Google has just added a way to collaborate on bookmarks, you just won't suspect where it's located: the Google search app's Collections.
Little by little, Google Podcasts is adding essential features that any podcast player should have. From multi-selection to auto-download, dark mode, and a web interface, we've seen small but significant improvements in the service, the latest of which is an option to time stamp the episode's link before sharing it.
Android's story with the share menu is long, messy, and complicated. Things have gotten relatively better in Android 10, but that hasn't stopped some app developers from implementing a non-native share sheet. This is especially true for Google's own apps, like Photos, YouTube, Maps, and News. Chrome might soon join the fray with its own sharing hub.
A few days ago, a new Labs section showed up in Google's search app on Android. In it, users are able to choose which upcoming features they want to enable and which ones they're not interested in. At first, only two options were there: Pinch to zoom on search results and Screenshot editing, sharing, and actions. Now, a third one has joined them: Search Widget Doodles.
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Despite getting lots of extra features, G Suite users often feel like they've drawn the short end of the stick when it comes to any of Google's general consumer-facing options and services. Over the past year alone, we've seen G Suite users get shafted with code redeeming and app reviews on the Play Store, Stadia access, and several Assistant features like reminders, messages, and the new UI. Here's one more to add to the list of inaccessible features: Google Duo.
Assistant's features are far from consistent across platforms and have been like that since the service's launch. Some commands work on phones but not speakers, others vice-versa, not to mention smartwatches, TVs, cars, Bluetooth headsets, and other types of devices. Here's another example of this fragmentation: Routines aren't working on Auto. In fact they haven't been supported for over a year and there's no solution on the horizon.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook has halted its plans to introduce ads in WhatsApp's Status feed. Talk of advertisements in WhatsApp, and specifically interspersed among ephemeral statuses, has been going for over a year, with the service's VP confirming that in October of 2018. But those plans seem to be paused, for now at least.
YouTube is one of the few video services and apps that didn't offer a playback queue until recently. The feature first showed up in testing in August then rolled out to everyone in November, but so far, it's remained limited to the web and may not be very easy to spot. In this tutorial we'll look at how YouTube's new queue system works and discuss some of its advantages and limitations.
Google introduced the Advanced Protection Program more than two years ago as a series of measures meant to safeguard the accounts of those who may be the most at risk, like journalists, activists, business and political leaders, or celebrities. Thanks to 2-factor authentication, some common sense, and security keys, most regular users have enough protection without needing to join the program, but in case you did and noticed your Google Home speakers completely stopped recognizing you, you're not alone. It seems to be a bug and we have two possible culprits.
Guest mode is one of the Chromecast's relatively unknown but very handy features. It uses location proximity and WiFi availability to allow guests to cast content to your speakers or TVs without logging in to your WiFi network, provided they have the specific PIN code for that device. Whether you're throwing a party or have temporary visitors and you don't want to bother with sharing WiFi access, you can simply give them a 4-digit code and let them choose the media that gets played. The feature launched in December of 2014 on Chromecasts and carried over to Google Homes — because they're essentially cast targets. However, it now seems to have disappeared from all devices but Chromecasts.