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Google is making sure future Android phones offer users these safety and emergency options
Required options for GMS access
Google Mobile Services — or GMS — is such an essential suite of apps for Android users, devices without it often have a hard time finding an audience. With Chrome, YouTube, Maps, and more all bundled together, some of today's most vital apps are all included in one single package. To qualify for GMS, manufacturers have to meet a set of standard requirements. A new rule for Android 12 puts a focus on the "Safety & emergency" settings page on your phone, ensuring every Android user has a baseline level of protection against allergic reactions, earthquakes, and more.
Honor phones are getting the apps they need to matter in 2021
Good news for competition in the mid-range market
Huawei's unfortunate US sanctions cut the company down in its prime, and we missed out on some of the best Android camera phones ever made because of it. Its sub-brand Honor was putting out products almost as good for a fraction of the price, too. Thankfully, it looks like Honor's next flagship smartphone is going to mark the return of Google apps and services.
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Huawei got caught in the middle of the US/China trade war and has been cut off from Google's apps and services for more than half a year now. That forced the company to quickly create a Google-less Android variant to ensure phones like the Mate 30 Pro could ship. Even though it looks like the US and China are coming to terms with each other and Huawei's ban might be lifted soon, the manufacturer has told Austrian newspaper Der Standard that it still won't return to Google's services.
Google will no longer "work with" Turkish business partners on the release of future Android-powered phones, according to a report by Reuters. This change in policy follows a fine and judgment imposed against Google by the Turkish government as a result of perceived anti-competitive behavior. This won't affect any currently-released Android devices, but it may prevent domestic Turkish device makers and companies explicitly targeting the market from including Google's apps and services on future phones.
Smartphone addiction, like nicotine addiction, is real and it has several negative consequences, such as adversely affecting your social life, your ability to work or study, and even messing with how your brain functions. In response, some companies have created apps to help you find a good balance, like Google's Digital Wellbeing. Starting from September 3rd, 2019, Digital Wellbeing will no longer be an optional phone feature but a requirement for all Android manufacturers to implement into their devices.
The mobile gaming industry is big and projected to generate about billion by 2021. With 2.4 billion people expected to play mobile games in 2019 alone, many companies have been releasing devices branded as "gaming" phones, such as Asus, Razer, Xiaomi, and more. Going along with this rising trend, Google has started a new program called Gaming Device Certification that will ensure future gaming phones perform smoothly, predictably, and support the latest gaming APIs.
Google has struggled to devise a new navigation system for Android over the last few releases. No one much liked the two-button design from Pie, and the new full-gesture setup in Android 10 has its critics, too. However, a leaked copy of the Google Mobile Services (GMS) agreement for OEMs suggests you'll be seeing a lot of Google's gestures on upcoming phones. Google will apparently require OEMs to bury their custom gesture navigation systems in the settings in favor of the stock implementation.
Earlier today, well-known developer John Wu — the name behind Android's current go-to root solution Magisk — penned an explanation over on Medium for precisely how the Mate 30's Google apps workaround worked. It was a pretty interesting read for folks interested in the minutiae of Android, as parts of it are a bit concerning from a security perspective. Based on the timing, it seems like it may have also worried some other folks as well, as the site hosting the installer APK for the Play Store workaround has been taken down.
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- According to Nikkei Asian Review, Huawei's folding Mate X may also skip out on Google apps and services when it goes on sale, expected to happen later this month. The phone has already suffered delays pushing the release from June until September. If it had launched on time, it may have been able to sneak in the release before the Google's ability to license software to the company expired.
According to a report published today by Reuters, Huawei's upcoming Mate 30 series of phones may have to eschew Google's apps as a result of the trade ban imposed by the U.S. government. While the phone should still be able to run Android, given the free and open availability of the software, deeper integration with Google's apps and services like the Play Store and YouTube will be missing if an exemption can't be secured.
Yesterday, it was announced by the US Commerce Department that ZTE had violated terms of its settlement with the government and was being subjected to a seven-year ban of the export of any American goods or technologies for use in its products. Today, according to Reuters, a source familiar with discussions between Google's parent company Alphabet and ZTE says the two are still very much undecided on whether the Chinese smartphone maker will be able to continue using the Android operating system.
Hardware design is a tricky subject. Some companies take risks to define their own aesthetic, while others borrow, in varying degrees, the design languages of more popular brands. What I have in my hands is the latter; the Meizu Pro 6 Plus borrows heavily from Apple's style, especially when viewed from the front. Its software is also an attempt to mimic iOS, for better or for worse.
I must reiterate that some of the fields above may be more complicated than they sound and expect quite a bit of information while others may be fairly simple. It's also possible many of them will not have a user interface in the Fit app for either editing or even viewing, so third-party apps may still be the only way to make use of these.
One of the more interesting features shown off at Google I/O last year was Instant Apps, a new way to run Android applications without any installation. For example, during the presentation it was shown how tapping a Buzzfeed video link would play the content in the Buzzfeed app, only downloading the parts required for video playback. Keep in mind that this is different from the streaming apps functionality Google introduced in 2015.
In October of last year, Cody found strings in his teardown of the Play Store 7.1 that hinted at a mysterious "Device Certification" label. Back then, he theorized that it could be an indicator of whether your device was indeed GMS certified and thus supposed to have the Play Store or it could be a SafetyNet check to see if your firmware was modified in any form. The correct answer turned out to be the first one.