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Your old Android phone is getting better about keeping you safe from barely-used apps
'Those permissions granted to you? Yeah, we're gonna need them back...'
Google is alerting app developers to some big coding changes ahead of the planned expansion of Android's permission auto-reset policy. This means more users will have permissions they've granted to apps automatically revoked starting in December. Here's what you need to know as a consumer.
This Android phone is on its fifth year of OS updates
The Fairphone 2 was just given a new lease on life with Android... 9
Fairphone is one of the only phone manufacturers out there with a mission for sustainability and ethics. Its Android phones are among the most repairable on the market, and the firm is doing its best to support the hardware as long as possible. As such, it has just released a new Android update to its five-year-old Fairphone 2 — Android 9 Pie.
Asus says the 2018 ROG Phone will stay on 2018's Android Pie
$900+ apparently doesn't buy you more than one OS update
Asus has a mixed history with software support, but more often than not, the company slips behind on keeping its phones updated. The original ROG Phone was released in late 2018 with Android 8.1, a few months before Android 9 Pie became available, and finally received Pie a year later. Now it seems the gaming flagship will stay on the outdated OS.
In an effort to forget 2020, Sony brings Android 9 Pie to select TVs
The company plans to upgrade many models released between 2016 and 2019
Android TV is being rebranded as Google TV, but who knows how long that will take. In the meantime, Sony has been working on updating older devices. The company's Android TVs from 2015 got updated to Oreo a few months ago, and now it looks like Android 9 Pie is coming to many devices from 2016 and later.
The Fairphone 2, which launched with Android 5 Lollipop, is now getting a 9 Pie beta
An impressive lifespan for an Android phone
Fairphone is one of a few smartphone manufacturers that manage to build sustainable and repairable handsets. You don't need to head to a repair shop or peel through adhesive to replace individual components, let alone hunt down individual parts — everything is available on the company's website. But repairable hardware is only one part of the equation when it comes to long-lasting devices. As such, the manufacturer has announced that it has just released an Android 9 Pie Beta for the Fairphone 2.
Xiaomi's Mi Box S Android TV set-top box receives a bountiful bug-fixing update
Including a fix for Chromecast functionality broken by the last update
If you own an Android TV set-top box that wasn't made by NVIDIA, there are decent odds that you're using a Mi Box from Xiaomi. This affordable alternative manages to play 4K HDR content at up to 60 FPS for far less than the $150 asking price of NVIDIA's cheapest option. While updates for the Mi Box S haven't exactly been numerous, the device recently received an update to a stable build of Android 9 Pie, and now a major bugfix update is on its way.
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In case you forgot, Nvidia isn't the only game in town when it comes to Android TV. Xiaomi offers a much more affordable option in its Mi Box S — and that device just became a more appealing alternative thanks to an official Android 9 Pie beta program.
LG only recently updated the Verizon and AT&T variants of its V40 ThinQ to Android 9. Now, customers using the unlocked version of the phone are given the same favor, as the company has released the Pie update on these devices, too.
Android's open source nature allows developers to tailor the OS exactly to their needs, and a team of programmers has taken it upon itself to build an Android version for the classic x86 desktop processor environment. The Android x86 project has now hit its next milestone and has published the first Android 9 Pie release candidate that people can run on their virtual machines or desktop computers.
For over nine months now, Android users have been complaining about an issue with backups to Google Drive. The phone simply stops backing up data without a warning and the only workaround available isn't sustainable, while the only potential fix requires some adb commands. Google has yet to acknowledge or address the problem.
Android TV boxes have risen in popularity over recent years thanks to some outstanding products like the Nvidia Shield TV and the platform's general ubiquity among TV operators, so it's no surprise that companies are looking into expanding their business to this device category. And sure enough, Indian e-commerce merchant Flipkart has taken the opportunity to launch its own-brand MarQ TurboStream Android TV dongle for about $50.
The LG V20, the company's last flagship with a removable battery, is three years old now, but the Korean manufacturer hasn't forgotten about it. LG V20s in Korea are currently being updated to Android Pie, with US carrier units hopefully following along shortly, if the past is any indication. LG also announced that its spring flagship phone, the G8 ThinQ, will be updated to Android 10 in the fourth quarter.
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- LG's long-awaited Pie update for the G6 is ever-so-slowly expanding to be available though more carriers. One month after learning of distribution on Verizon, we've caught wind of the update starting to head out to users on AT&T. This new release is only for the H871 model, not H871S.
If there's one aspect of Android that could use improvement, it's the software updates. As OEMs and carriers set their sights on rolling out Android 10, there are still plenty of older devices haven't even tasted a slice of Android 9 Pie. That's why this week's scheduled release of Pie for Verizon and European Union users rocking the LG G6 from 2017 is something of a minor miracle. That LG Software Upgrade Center is finally coming through!
Android tablets, like their phone counterparts, receive periodic Android OS updates — albeit much more slowly. The Verizon Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 tablet — a flagship LTE tablet from 2017 — has now been updated to Android 9 Pie. Sure, Android 10 would be preferable, but that will probably never happen considering the Tab S3 launched with Android 7 Nougat.
ASUS is killing it with updates lately, and this trend just continues. After the ZenFone 4 Max and Selfie received betas of Android 9 Pie, their smaller brother is now getting a similar treatment with ASUS announcing an update to the same OS version for the regular ZenFone 4. It's impressive that the company is committed to updating phones that were released back in 2017.
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Samsung's One UI is possibly the hottest update the company has issued for its devices. Owners of the S9, S9+, and Note9 have enjoyed it for a while, and so have those who bought the new S10/S10+/S10e, but users who have the older generation of flagships from 2017 have had to wait a little longer. After a few months in beta, the S8 and S8+'s update began rolling out in Europe and is now crossing the Atlantic to the US.
Samsung launched the Note 7 in 2016, but the phone was on sale for less than two months before repeated issues with battery fires resulted in its cancelation. The phone came back in 2017 as the Note FE (Fan Edition) in select markets. Even though Samsung would probably prefer to forget this whole incident ever happened, it's still pushing a Pie update today.
LG's update performance as of late has been less than stellar. Despite the formation of a "Software Upgrade Center" several years back, the company is still slow to get new versions of Android out the door. The V40 is still waiting on that Pie update, but it shouldn't be long now. LG has released the Pie-based kernel source for the V40 and LG G8.
Software updates are always a fun time for us geeks. We like diving deep into the changes, checking what's new, what's improved, and what's been taken away from us and is worth complaining about. If you have a Nokia 5.1, you can warm up your hands and get ready for a few days of tinkering, as Android 9 Pie is now beginning to roll out to the phone.
Keeping flagship devices on the latest and greatest software is a given, but updating the midrangers is a lot more complicated and this is where most companies falter. HMD has been good at that so far and now the affordable Nokia 3.1 (or Nokia 3, 2018 if you want) is getting Android 9 Pie... on Pi Day of all days!