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Google's getting rid of SafetyNet Attestation, but the root and ROM crowd shouldn't celebrate yet
The new Play Integrity API is taking over for SafetyNet in the next two years, and it does all the same things (and more)
Google's new Play Integrity API was first announced at the Google for Games Developer Summit last year. Originally presented as a way to prevent cheating, its utility has expanded in recent documentation to overlap and expand on everything that the SafetyNet APIs did to ensure that an app and device are trustworthy, unmodified, and probably safe from malicious or fraudulent interactions — in short, developers can likely trust that nothing bad or weird is going on. Knowing that, today's news is hardly surprising, but Google has announced that the SafetyNet Attestation API will be deprecated by 2024 in favor of the new Play Integrity API.
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OnePlus makes good on its promise to bring an upgraded 10 Pro to the US
For just $70 more, you'll be able to buy a OnePlus 10 Pro with extra storage and RAM soon
OnePlus is making good on its promise this year to bring the upgraded OnePlus 10 Pro model to the US. Starting on June 15th, you'll be able to purchase the version with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, rather than just the 8/128GB version we were previously limited to. The upgrade won't cost too much either, as OnePlus is merely charging an extra $70 on top of the base model, or $969.
Android 12 QPR beta program ends, Pixels in it will be unenrolled automatically
Or you can opt out manually after installing the June update without a wipe
Google's two-pronged Android Beta Program has been a little confusing for a while, but things are getting a lot simpler now that the Android 12 Quarterly Platform Release Beta 3 is ending. If you're among those that jumped into the program (say, for early Pixel 6 fixes), you'll be opted out of that program in the coming weeks as your device is pushed to the stable June update, and the only beta in town will be the one for Android 13.
Safari is getting a new collaborative feature I desperately want Chrome to steal
Done right, it could work better in Google's ecosystem than Apple's
In the wake of Apple’s WWDC conference, I’m struck by a particular feature that the company announced: shared Tab Groups. Past all the new hardware, the revival of lock screen widgets, Apple’s new love with customization — beyond all of that, this one dumb little feature sticks out to me as something with the potential to be really impactful in a thousand tiny and unanticipated ways. With how minor but potentially far-reaching it feels, I can’t understand how Google didn’t think of it first for Chrome, and I hope we get it soon.
June Pixel Feature Drop adds easy vaccine card shortcuts, Nest Doorbell video from your lock screen, and more
The quarterly update also debuts a new music video mixing app by teenage engineering
Today might be the start of Apple's WWDC developer conference, but Google's also releasing its June 2022 Feature Drop update for Pixels. Included in this new release is an app to "turn everyday sounds into music," made in collaboration with design and audio darlings Teenage Engineering. Other changes to conversation mode, digital vaccine card shortcuts, the At a Glance widget, and even new wallpapers are included. In tandem, the June update is now rolling out with fixes for Pixels.
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Bowflex Max Total 16 review: Your home gym can run Android, too
I love working out on it, but it has issues that make it hard to recommend
You read that headline right. We reviewed a piece of home gym equipment. But this has one interesting detail that sets it apart: It actually runs Android. The software is not what you’re used to on a phone, but a more embedded-type system with a stripped-down experience and a custom launcher. And, of course, this is a cross-trainer and not a smartphone, so its purpose is entirely different.
T-Mobile is the first US carrier to let you make calls on 5G alone
If you're in a handful of markets and have a Galaxy S21
T-Mobile has just announced that it's deployed Voice Over New Radio (or VoNR) for its 5G network in parts of Portland, OR and Salt Lake City, UT. Although this marks the first commercial availability of the technology, which allows you to place a call over a 5G connection without falling back on LTE, the functionality is limited to last year's Galaxy S21 for now.
A Pixel 7 Pro was sold on Facebook Marketplace and this dude used it for weeks
Purchased from the same person that tried to sell one on eBay, it's been remotely disabled now
The Pixel 7 that appeared on eBay wasn't alone. Apparently, the seller also listed a Pixel 7 Pro for sale on Facebook Marketplace, thinking at the time that it was just a Pixel 6 Pro. One lucky (or unlucky) customer snagged it and has been using the phone for nearly three weeks until it started "acting wild" and was remotely factory reset the morning of the 31st.
Google's merger of Duo and Meet fixes one of the company's worst tendencies
What's good for the Google is good for the gander
Google has been widely criticized in the tech blogs for two things in recent years: The “Google kills X” meme, and the company’s seeming obsession with messaging services. If Google isn’t killing a service that customers love like Google Reader, or Inbox, or Play Music, then it’s finding a new way to add a messaging system to Google Maps or Google Photos, or building yet another new one entirely. It’s partly a joke, but sadly all too serious, because Google actually does these things. Or, at least, it used to. Something about the recent announcement that Google Meet and Duo are merging strikes me as different, and maybe the company is starting to see the big picture and begin fixing these issues.
The long-rumored Google Meet and Duo merger is actually happening
Later this year, the Duo app will become the new Google Meet app
Google, king of seemingly a thousand different messaging and communications efforts, has announced a rare move today: It's not adding yet another new service or chat-adjacent feature but whittling the list down by one. Google Meet and Duo have had overlapping video call functionality for years, and the company has decided it's time to bring the two together under the Meet name, fulfilling the long-rumored merger between the two services. Curiously, the actual path of this merger will favor the Duo app.
According to a story on Korean news site Digital Daily, Samsung is again tipped to supply Google's in-house chip efforts and will reportedly make the updated Cloudripper GS201 Tensor chipset expected to land with the Pixel 7 series of phones.
T-Mobile problems in Northeast caused by power outage
Customers in the East Coast are having trouble placing calls, receiving or sending texts, and connecting to data
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T-Mobile subscribers are reporting issues with service and connectivity today, starting around 12:30 PM ET. Reports at venues such as Twitter, Reddit, and Downdetector indicate the outage might be geographically widespread across the East Coast, though not all customers are affected and, problems may be intermittent. According to T-Mobile, the cause of the issue was a power outage.
The first Android phone wasn't the HTC G1 — it was this weird Google prototype, and I used one
We go hands-on with Google's Sooner prototype
Editor's Note: After a Google Pixel 7 prototype appeared on eBay this week, we took a deep dive into our archive of older Android hardware prototypes. Our Google Sooner post, first published in 2020, brought back fond memories of the early days of Android, so we're republishing it today.
BenQ GS50 review: The perfect portable projector for some summer fun
Watch a movie on the deck or by the pool, take it camping, or just let the kids play with it in the backyard
Some of us wait all year with big, bright plans of summer fun, saving up our time and money to enjoy every minute of nice weather with outdoor activities. Even just watching a movie can be that much better under the stars or in the backyard. But if you plan on watching with friends or family, you might want to consider a portable projector, and the BenQ GS50 is a pretty good choice, with powerful sound and a big, bright picture you can even use during the day (in the shade, anyway).
Every breath you take, Google could soon be watching you (snore and cough from your phone)
Get it? Like Sting? The Android Police? Leave us alone, it's a holiday weekend
Samsung phones can track your sleeping habits and even let you know if you're snoring, and according to a recent teardown, Google might be working on a similar feature for Android to track time spent snoring and coughing at night, though it's not clear where it might end up.
Here's Google's workaround for visual voicemail bug on Android 13 betas
Rolling back to a v81 release of the Phone by Google app can fix the issue
Betas almost always mean dealing with bugs, but sometimes there are workarounds for specific issues. Visual voicemail has been broken in the Phone by Google app for some Pixel owners on the recent Android 13 beta releases, eliminating the ability to see your individual voicemails from the built-in phone app. But, according to an official Google account on Reddit, there's a very simple fix.
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Google's note-taking app Cursive expands to more Chromebooks as some recent models pick up cable warnings
They'll tell you if the cable you're using won't support displays
Late last year, Google launched Cursive, a note-taking progressive web app for Chrome OS that captured handwritten notes and worked offline. While many Chromebook enthusiasts have been using it already (you can manually install Cursive easily), Google has announced that formal support is rolling out to all stylus-compatible Chromebooks. The company is also highlighting other changes from the recent Chrome OS updates, including a resizable screen magnifier with improved panning and alerts if you try to use a USB Type-C cable that won't work with an external display.
Android 13 expands support for a new space-saving read-only file system, but it won't be a requirement (yet)
File system requirement for new phones with Google apps on Android 13 might mean faster update downloads and more storage space for customers
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Though it hasn’t grabbed much attention compared to other upcoming changes, Android 13 is poised to impose a big new requirement on smartphone manufacturers. All devices launching with Android 13 or later will have to use Huawei’s EROFS file system format for read-only partitions if they want to ship with access to Google’s services and the Play Store. But it’s not an arbitrary change, and customers will enjoy some real benefits from it, like potentially faster update downloads and a little less storage space lost to the system.
Chrome's Google Lens sidebar for convenient reverse image searches is now official
Spotted in testing, the Google Lens-powered right-click-to-search tool is now generally available in Chrome
Over recent months, Google has been silently reworking how reverse image search works in the desktop version of Chrome, swapping the old system out in favor of Google Lens. A similar maneuver happened in 2019 for the mobile version of Chrome. While many have been using the new Google Lens sidebar system for months after it silently rolled out, today Google is making Google Lens and its new sidebar-based look in Chrome for desktop official.
How Google taught the Assistant to understand context
Rather than create a whole new model, let's rephrase the question
The way that we can talk to a smartphone or smart speaker and expect an answer would sound like science fiction just a few decades ago, but the Star Trek-like fantasy has been fully realized in the pockets, desks, and counters of millions (if not billions) of customers. Even more fantastically, you can carry out near conversations with follow-up questions thanks to tools like Continued Conversation on the Google Assistant, which take advantage of the context of a follow-up question when answering a new one. And, like many of Google's machine-learning-based software features, how it works is pretty clever.