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Notifications feeling sluggish? This popular Android game may be to blame
Who needs reliable notifications on their phones?
Last week Niantic announced the global rollout for Pikmin Bloom, a new augmented reality game that functions much like a souped-up step counter complemented by Nintendo's adorable Pikmin graphics. Well, it would appear things aren't so rosy a week from launch now that many users are experiencing delayed notifications. A bug report that called out this issue was initially filed around Bloom's launch. Thankfully this bug report is finally gaining some traction now that many more reports are spreading across the web complaining about similar notification problems. Niantic support has at least confirmed it is looking into the bug, though there's still no confirmation whether or not this is a problem for everyone who has the game installed or simply a select few.
Wow, y'all really hate tab groups in Chrome for Android
A new Chromium bug report hopes to bring back an option to turn them off
Any time a developer releases a new feature, the hope is that users will find it helpful. That isn't always the case. For example: the new tab groups feature in Chrome for Android, which is now the default behavior after being introduced in January. While the grouped tabs initially came with a chrome://flags option to turn it off, that option has been removed, and tab groups are now permanently enabled in all current versions of the browser.
Google is a search company. You'd think that it would be focused on the quality of its search over, well, basically everything. But for the last few weeks (at least), a growing number of users are seeing a frequent lack of results in the main Google app when using its search function. It just returns a blank page under the Google logo.
If you're signed up to the Android Q Beta program, you may have gotten the same email we all did here at Android Police last night just after 5:30 p.m. PDT from a Google engineer. The email was a bug report concerning engineer's Pixel 2 on Beta 4.
When it comes to Android issue tracking, Google has always used Google Code. However, Google started phasing out Code for most users in 2013, and Google's projects are the only active repositories left. Now the company has started to shift to a new issue tracker, hosted at issuetracker.google.com.
Capturing and sending a bug report on Android used to be an inelegant process. Bugs are annoying and bug reports are one of the least exciting parts of a platform, but they are essential to help it and its apps move forward. So it's nice to see the Android team putting some thoughts behind improving the bug report interface and interaction, especially for those of us who tend to actually use the feature.
Update: A Google representative reached out to inform us that the bug report feature only appears if your phone is also in developer mode (tap repeatedly on the Build Number in the "About Phone/Tablet" menu). You may need to enable developer mode on Android Wear as well, as one commenter points out.
Wi-Fi is a staple among most smartphone users. While we tend to talk more about cellular data, it's really just there to sustain us as we travel from one access point to another. We aren't just demanding more data at higher speeds, we're connecting more devices than ever before. The inevitable overcrowding of the 2.4 GHz brought about the expansion into the 5 GHz range. Unfortunately, many Nexus devices (and at least a few others) are having trouble making and maintaining connections to this higher frequency band.
Man, Google. You just can't stop screwing with Christmas, can you? First you cancel December, and now this? In a very real and totally serious bug report over on Google Code, one user is reporting a serious flaw in Android: If you use the Emoji keyboard to enter a Santa face, he looks decidedly unhappy. Emotionless at best. But, as everyone knows, "Santa should be jolly."