Stephen is Growth Director at 9to5. You can find his current work at 9to5Mac, 9to5Google 9to5Toys, Electrek, and more. If you want to get in touch, follow me on Twitter. Or, email at stephen (at) 9to5mac (dot) com, or an encrypted email at hallstephenj (at) protonmail (dot) com.
Mighty is a new browser project that puts Google Chrome in the cloud and streams it to your PC. While I don’t know if Mighty will end up making sense for my personal situation, it does perfectly resemble a product I’ve found myself hoping Google itself would build as a feature in Chrome. How worthwhile is Mighty itself, though? And will (should) Google copy it?
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The date and weather widget on Pixel devices is subtly bolder than it used to be. You can see this extremely minor change in the image above — on the left is Android 11 while the right is DP3.
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It’s not just you: Instagram and other Facebook apps are down. We’re seeing messages flowing in on social media and the Instagram web app is currently throwing a server error. Messages and posts are not loading in the app. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more.
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If you haven’t heard of Clubhouse, it’s the latest social media fad taking the world — really, mostly just Silicon Valley — by storm. It’s a really cool experiment in live conversations that brings the best of podcasts and social networks like Twitter together into one rich experience. The downside? Up to now it’s only been available on the iPhone. Thankfully, Clubhouse for Android’s release is on the way.
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Google today added a new Google News performance report to Google Search Console. Google Search Console allows webmasters to track the performance of their web pages in Google Search, long offering insights into Google Search rich snippets like Top Stories, and other Google products like Discover. Now it offers extensive information about content performance in Google News.
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Verizon launched its ‘5G Nationwide’ network coverage for most postpaid customers in October alongside the launch of Apple’s latest flagship smartphones. Now, Verizon has now confirmed to 9to5Mac that its 5G Nationwide network is also available for use with 5G phones, including iPhone 12 and 12 Pro, on the company’s own prepaid service…
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Google today announced a big push to make it easy for Google Assistant to control your Android apps, and that includes everything from ordering a smoothie with Postmates to sending a snap with Snapchat. It also includes… tying your shoes, apparently? That’s the nifty demo Google sent us in the form of a pair of Nike Adapts, which I can confidently say is equal parts awesome and a bit unnecessary.
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Google Pixel 5 review units probably aren’t shipping out to tech publications for a week or two and the phone itself isn’t landing in customers hands until the end of October, but someone in the UK managed to get their hands on a Pixel 5 retail demo unit somehow and posted a video of it to YouTube today…
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According to a report this morning out of Japanese newspaper Nikkei, Google is reportedly planning to ship a modest number of Pixel smartphones over the course of the rest of this year on the heels of slow Pixel phone sales last year and COVID-19 related setbacks…
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It’s September 30th and while there’s no formal in-person Made by Google event this year, the time for the Launch Night In livestream has finally arrived. 9to5Google’s Google Event Live Blog + News Hub will be updated regularly throughout the day with the latest announcements from Google. The event kicks off at 11 am PT/2 PM ET, so read on for quick links to our roundup coverage over the last few weeks, tweets from the ground (our homes), and all the latest news as it develops…
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We already know pretty much everything about the Pixel 4a (5G) and the Pixel 5. But just like every year, the Google phones only get leaked more and more as their official announcement nears. Here’s a few more looks at the two new Pixels, some specs, and more before they go official in a few hours…
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Unlike other popular mobile operating systems, Android has always allowed the installation of third-party app stores. In fact, many Android phones ship with multiple app stores out of the box. After hearing feedback from some third-party developers, Google now says it plans to make installing and using third-party app stores easier with the next major release of Android…
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It doesn’t take a genius to see that Google’s latest Pixel ads miss the mark. The production is fine, sure. The narrator? Great. The lighting and art style? No problem at all! But across eight different scenarios, they somehow argue that the Pixel (the phone) is better than Pixel (the dog). This is objectively wrong.
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According to a report this morning from Bloomberg, Google plans to crack down on apps that have long circumvented existing Play Store rules related to in-app purchase billing. The crackdown will come in the form of “updated guidelines” as early as next week, the report says, and developers will be given time to comply.
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Google’s Area 120 incubator launched an app called Rivet in beta in 2018 as a “fun and supportive reading app for kids.” It finally exited beta on Android and iOS in May of 2019, and in its time has grown to be one of the most beloved teach-your-kids-to-read apps on the Play Store. Now Google says that it’s shutting the app down.
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The last couple days have brought a flood of Pixel leaks, and it’s not stopping yet. Renowned smartphone leaker Evan Blass just dropped the clearest and least-watermarked images of the Google Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a (5G) so far, and this time we’re getting a clear look at the elusive green variant of the former…
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The LG Wing was announced this morning, but as of this writing, only one member of the US media actually has a device for a hands-on (as far as we can tell). That’s Lew from Unbox Therapy, unsurprisingly, and you can check out his full hands-on with the weird new phone — including a deep dive on its camera functions — below…
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Last October, Microsoft unveiled the Surface Duo, its latest — but certainly not its first — attempt to build a smartphone that lives up to the company’s productivity reputation on other platforms. Now, after almost a year, the Surface Duo dual screens (and its reviews) have arrived. And as you’ll be able to tell after reading this review roundup, it seems it probably could have used another year to bake before making its official debut…
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Last year, Motorola announced an interesting phone that was the epitome of taking advantage of smartphone nostalgia. It was a new Razr, but as you probably already know, it changed things up to match modern trends, notably adding its 6.2-inch foldable display. Just about six months after that phone finally started shipping — and suffered a mass of unfavorable comparisons to Samsung’s entry in its reviews — it now has a successor called the Moto Razr 5G. Here’s what people are saying about it so far…
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Remember the Facebook Phone? If you’re a tech blogger, maybe. Anyone else? Probably not. Its real name was the HTC First, and it was an Android smartphone announced as part of a press event held by Facebook in April 2013. Here’s a little more history: One of its headline features, chat heads, has now made its way into the world’s most popular mobile operating system — seven years later.
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After many, many years, you can now initiate a Chromecast stream from the Spotify app for desktop. You’ve long been able to control Chromecast streams that were initiated from the iOS and Android apps (via Spotify Connect), but now you can initiate those streams directly from your Windows or Mac desktop.
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Yesterday, Twitter suffered a severe compromise which resulted in the accounts of high profile individuals — from Elon Musk and Kanye West to Apple and Joe Biden — sharing a scam request for Bitcoin in exchange for free Bitcoin. It appears Google responded swiftly by demoting Twitter-related results in Search and those results have yet to return as of this writing.
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You might think it’s an unlikely source for Google leaks, but the Google Store has accidentally published many pages over the last few years revealing unannounced products and product details. Here’s a full list of every time Google has accidentally leaked a product on its own retail store…
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An official render of the Google Pixel 4a has appeared on the Google Store ahead of launch. See above… and below for more details.
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Way back in February, we started tracking a few Pixel codenames (as we do), and it wasn’t until today — in early July — that we had some sense of what these phones actually are. Google put their retail names in the Google app, and for those of us who have followed the Pixel series for several years, they might seem like a bit of a curveball. Google’s definitely switching things up this year — but here’s how you can start to make sense of the Pixel 4a, Pixel 4a 5G, and Pixel 5…
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Google just sent us a picture of the new Nest-branded smart speaker. See above..and much more below.
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In lieu of Google I/O 2020 (Google opted not to hold a virtual event this year), the various arms of the company that would have otherwise had announcements at the event are trying to hold virtual conferences. That continued this week with the “Hey Google” Smart Home Virtual Summit. The big news was Google bringing Home/Away triggers to Assistant Routines with ‘presence detection’, but another minor tidbit surfaced: a new “Works with Hey Google” brand we hadn’t seen yet. Let’s overanalyze this, shall we?
Every year at WWDC, Apple copies Google. But also, every year at Google I/O (or, this year, nothing really), Google copies Apple. Whatever. It’s a cliche at this point; the two major mobile platforms are so mature that it’s rarely a matter of which features one will have and the other will not, but rather which will get them first. But today, Apple showed off what might be the most stereotypically Android release of iOS yet…
Google is planning to launch a new Nest-branded smart speaker, sources familiar with the matter tell 9to5Google. The device will look unassuming and familiar, we’re told, and will fit in nicely with the fabric-based design language of the Nest Mini, Nest Hub, and the still-not-renamed Google Home Max.
We exhaustively detailed the Google Pixel 4a in a report in April, and at the time, we thought the phone was perhaps weeks away from seeing an official announcement. Now, a pair of new launch date rumors on Twitter suggest that the phone won’t launch until July, and might not be available until August…
For a long time, I’ve hoped for the ability to use a custom hotword/phrase on my Googles Home (that’s plural for multiple of them, obviously). But being stuck at home for the last couple months has even further highlighted just how exhausting it is to repeat the name of a mega tech company when trying to set a timer for my dinner.
According to one little birdie I know, Google is planning to rename Android TV to Google TV.
That’s it. That’s the story.
We first told you about a new Settings pane called “Battery Share” in Android 11 back in mid-February. Today, in the 3rd Developer Preview of Android 11, Google added a nice animation to go along with the feature. It’s a nice animation. But it tells us nothing new of substance about Google’s plans for device-to-device wireless charging…
It’s Earth Day 2020, so there’s no better time than now to think about how your Google Pixel or other Android device will affect the planet when they reach the end of their life. It might be an original Google Pixel sitting in your desk that you want to recycle, or maybe even a Pixel 3 that you’d like to sell to upgrade to the another phone. Whatever the case, here’s how to ensure your devices get recycled well.
Jane Manchun Wong is something of an app teardown extraordinaire, and today she’s back with a little tidbit about Google Photos. According to her findings in the latest version of the Google Photos app, users will soon be able to easily remove audio from videos…
Hangouts Meet just got its much-needed rebrand to Google Meet amidst the surging popularity of videoconferencing tools in general. Alongside a trademark for that term, there’s another Hangouts product whose fate has yet to be decided. Hangouts Chat, the teams-focused Slack competitor from the Mountain View company, might also be getting a rebrand that does away with the troublesome Hangouts branding.
According to Google Trends, searches for ‘good news’ have reached all-time highs on Search. In fact, searches for good news have reached levels that are more than double that of any time since Google began publishing search data in 2004.
Google has secured a Proggy 2020 (froggy… proggy… progress… get it?) award from PETA for its 3D animals augmented reality feature in Google Search, the non-profit announced today. PETA’s “Proggy” awards typically recognize people and brands that are helping to create a more humane world.
It’s April 14th, and that means the latest OnePlus event has arrived. 9to5Google’s OnePlus 8 Live Blog + News Hub will be updated regularly throughout the day with the latest announcements. The event kicks off at 11AM ET/8AM PT, so read on for quick links to our roundup coverage over the last few weeks, tweets, and all the latest news as it develops…
Last week, a sketchy rumor surfaced on the web suggesting that Google had collaborated with Samsung to build its own silicon — presumably for future Pixel devices. Now, a report from Axios corroborates some of those details, adding that the chip, codenamed ‘whitechapel’, could appear in Google’s flagship smartphones as soon as next year and, eventually, Chromebooks.
We don’t know the real sales figures for the Mountain View, California company’s Pixel line of flagship smartphones, but we do occasionally get hints. For one, Google reported “declines in hardware” sales during its Q4 2019 earnings this past February. We went digging into 9to5Google’s own analytics to see if maybe we could glean some insight for ourselves, and found similarly pessimistic numbers… Expand
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Yesterday we told you everything there is to know about the Google Pixel 4a. There’s only one size this time around, and it’s going to be very fundamentally similar to the Pixel 3a — albeit with some spec bumps, of course. So are you planning to buy the Google Pixel 4a?
By now you’re well aware that Google is launching its latest mid-range smartphone, the Pixel 4a, in the coming months. Originally scheduled for Google I/O 2020, exactly a year after the Pixel 3a, the new phone now sits in waiting — and, as usual, leaking — before making its official debut. We’ve now confirmed all of the Pixel 4a’s specs with our sources, and all the details are below…
With the spring consumer hardware announcements — read: mid-range Pixel 4a — set to arrive sometime in the coming weeks, there are likely some Googley phones coming up that you’re interested in! So what are you to do with all your old Pixel 2? Or Pixel 3? You should trade it in, and we’ve put together all the best trade deals for Google Pixel, Samsung Galaxy, and more below…
The branding around Hangouts — in 2020, that means Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet — is a mess. Those two brands are derivatives of a pre-existing brand that never made much sense in the first place. In today’s suddenly-video-conferencing-centric world, Google needs to simplify things, and a new support page update suggests that change is finally coming.
In mid-February, B&H Photo briefly put up Google’s forthcoming Pixel Buds 2 for pre-order, and just a couple days ago, another listing for the headphones came from Chicago-based retailer Abt. The product was priced at $179, but no actual release date was provided. Now, buyers are being notified by Abt about a potential shipping date.
Last week, as the popularity of Google’s 3D animals was surging across the web, we posted a couple polls asking which of the animal kingdom AR objects you liked best. We also asked you which animals you wanted to see the most — the ones Google needs to add to its ‘View in 3D’ feature in Search ASAP. Here are the results…
Google’s 3D animals have exploded in popularity across the web over the last couple weeks, and it’s likely the result of a perfect storm of circumstances. People across the world are stuck indoors, parents are teaching their grade school children from home, and the Tiger King documentary has dropped on Netflix. Regardless of the reason, people everywhere are making 3D animals an incredibly fun quarantine activity.