Only a couple of weeks after the South Korean government passed a bill that will force Google (and Apple) to allow app developers to receive payments via third-party systems, the country's regulator has dealt another huge blow to the Mountain View company. The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has announced that it's fining Google's parent company Alphabet the modest sum of $177 million for abusing its dominance in the smartphone OS market.
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Google and Jio joined hands last year to co-develop entry-level smartphones in a multi-billion-dollar deal. There were speculations that the two companies would launch a cheap 5G smartphone in India, but today’s announcement doesn’t live up to those rumors. Instead, what we’re getting is a 4G smartphone, called JioPhone Next, running a special version of Android.
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Android Studio is the primary tool developers use to make apps for Android. After being in beta for months, the latest version of the SDK — Studio 4.2 — is available to download through the stable channel.
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Before face unlocking technology became the security metric of choice for OEMs, Pixel phones boasted a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor that also supported swipe gestures. When the Pixel 4 opted to remove that sensor, rear-mounted gesture support went with it. Luckily, the Android team has a new way to make the back of your phone great again with a double-tap gesture in Android 11 Developer Preview 1.
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The first Developer Preview of Android 11 didn't just reveal a barrage of new system features and tweaks to pore through. It also ushered in a dogfood version of the Personal Safety app that can enable crash detection on Pixel phones outside of the 4 and 4 XL. Here's how to sideload the app and get it running:
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Android's notification shade has been getting a lot of attention in the first Android 11 Developer Preview. In addition to some cool new updates like conversation grouping and enhanced long-press options, a hidden feature uncovered by XDA Developers separates quick settings from app notifications into their own distinct menus.
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Last year, the Android team introduced bubble notifications as a native option as it was developing Android Q. However, as Android Q progressed through various betas, the feature became hidden away within developer settings where it has remained as an experimental feature ever since. Now bubble notifications finally look ready for prime time, as they're being integrated into the core Android 11 experience.
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While many people are enjoying — or lamenting — the upgrade to Android 10, there are some out there that are just as interested in the final source code. With each major release of Android, a huge code drop is made to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) with everything a developer needs to build the latest version of the OS. As of this morning, the code is now fully available and ready for consumption.
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Those of you who usually swipe your notifications away to the right (like me) may have taken some time to notice that expelling them to the left is no longer an option in Android Q. As is this case on some Chinese phones, swiping left gives you only snooze and alert settings. Thankfully, it looks like this is going to be customizable by the time the final Q release comes around.
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Samsung (and others) have been teasing the concept of foldable phones for a short while, and that flexible dream has been a science fiction-level goal for years. But up until today, it was anyone's guess exactly how that might have worked when it came to software implementations in Android. But fret not, Google has just revealed at the Android Dev Summit that our favorite operating system will have native support for folding form factors.
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