Android

Only the albums’ owner can make changes, with the option to save the edits just to their own gallery as a copy or also to the shared album, Google writes in a help page. The feature is already live in Google Photos on the web and in iOS, and is now coming to the Android version of the app, as well, as Android Authority notes.

Android whisperer Mishaal Rahman has a thorough writeup for Android Authority detailing some of the potential UI changes he’s found under the hood in Android 16’s beta releases. One that caught my eye: the ability to resize quick settings tiles and a new tile editor organized by category, which is all very iOS 18. There are other visual changes afoot too, like more use of background blur on screens like the app drawer and the multitasking view. No doubt we’ll find out more soon.

Nearly one year ago, Google said it would upgrade its photo picker with a way to search your local or cloud library to find specific photos to share with an app. Now, Android Authority contributor Kamila Wojciechowska has spotted the feature on her device, hopefully saving you from digging through countless photos.

After the September Pixel Watch update to Wear OS 5 ran into issues, Google released a fix in November and said its wearables would have to wait until March for another update.

Apologies to the three people out there nostalgic for Acer phones — the new Super ZX and Super ZX Pro handsets announced in India today are made under license by Indkal Technologies, meaning Acer itself has almost nothing to do with them. The same is true for last month’s two budget Acerpure models.

That’s the new minimum storage for Android 15 devices to license Google Mobile Services, a requirement if you want to support the Play Store, according to Android Authority. In practice you’d have to work pretty hard to find any Android device with that little storage anyway, but it’s still good to see Android’s lowest storage bar raised a bit higher.

The OnePlus 13T will launch in China on April 24th, though we don’t know if or when it’ll launch elsewhere. The design is a little new for OnePlus, and we already know it will ditch the fan-favorite alert slider for a new shortcut button. It’s small, too, though only by modern standards — its 6.32-inch screen is still bigger than the iPhone 16’s.

That’s what the company told Ars Technica when asked about the current pause to the much-delayed update, which brings Android 15 to the Galaxy S24 series and other devices from 2024 and earlier. It was halted following reports of a bug that stopped people unlocking their phones. There’s no word on when the company will resume the rollout.

The Information reported the layoffs, which struck the Platforms and Devices team, responsible for Android software, Pixel hardware, and more. They follow a voluntary buyout in January, and in a statement Google blames the move to combine those teams in April 2024:

Google’s new affordable phone has survived mysterious component issues and Trump’s tariffs to arrive in US stores today at its promised price of $499. Despite the tariff pause, that’s no longer a given.

Samsung’s Android 15 update is landing on phones in the US today, a mere seven months after Google released the OS update to developers, though it’s been available on the S25 phones since they launched in February.

For three years in a row Xiaomi has paired its Ultra phones with a Photography Kit, and now Vivo is following suit. The kit, which will be compatible with the upcoming X200 Ultra, was announced on Weibo by product manager Han Boxiao. Like Xiaomi’s it has a USB-C connection, built-in battery, and dedicated camera controls.

Pleos Connect is the name of Hyundai Motor Group’s next-gen vehicle software interface based on Google’s Android Automotive OS, launching in Q2 2026. Today, the automaker kicked off a new annual conference to accelerate the development of Pleos and its “Cloud Mobility” software ecosystem, where “all forms of mobility are connected through software on the cloud,” including urban infrastructure.

The operating system will still be open source, but Google is now moving all development to a private, internal software branch. It previously worked on some features, like the Bluetooth stack, in public, but now everything is going in-house to streamline development.

People on Reddit are complaining they’ve missed work after their Pixel 9 alarms didn’t wake them up. Some claim they told Gemini to “stop” a timer or just to hush it, and it would unexpectedly disable all their alarms, too. This isn’t the only time we’ve heard problems with mobile device alarms recently (iPhone, Pixel Watch), have you noticed any issues?

The Find X8 Ultra will launch in China on April 10th, joined by the Find X8s and X8s Plus. The X8s is a “compact” version of last year’s Find X8, though its 6.3-inch display is still bigger than an iPhone 16.