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In this week’s top stories: Android 12 leak reveals radical new design, Google Pixel Buds receive their first firmware update of 2021, Samsung continues to put ads on its Galaxy flagship phones, and more.
The biggest news from Google this week is that Android 12 mockups have been leaked, with the leak revealing a major operating system design overhaul. In the images, we see confirmation that Android 12 has an in-depth theming system, as well as a curious new “Conversations” widget that continues to focus on people.
On the privacy front, Google will alert users when the microphone or camera is active. There will be a green pill in the upper right corner of the condition that shrinks to a point. When you tap on the notification sheet, more information is provided with links to settings. A new unified privacy settings page will allow users to “turn off camera”, “turn off microphone” and turn location on / off at a higher level. This latter control is currently its own preferences page.
This week, Google released a firmware update for the Pixel Buds from version 552 to 553. At this time, Google has not released any information on the content of this update.
[…] the [update] The process begins with connecting the Pixel Buds to your phone. Over the course of ten minutes, the new firmware is transferred to the headset. After placing the headphones in the charging case, it takes another 10 minutes for the upgrade to occur. All components must be sufficiently charged.
On the Samsung side, our Ben Schoon took the time to show how frustrating it is that even Samsung flagship phones display advertisements for Samsung devices and services. Fortunately, you can turn off many of these ads, but not all of them.
All right, let’s start with the bad news. Samsung never lets you fully turn off advertisements. The most effective way to get rid of advertisements is to turn off notifications, as detailed below. The rest, however, are not so easy to eliminate. If you want to use Samsung’s Weather app, there is a good chance you will see ads while doing so. The same applies to many other Samsung apps.
In Google Nest News, both the Nest Hub and the Nest Hub Max received a firmware update to version 1.52 this week. With the update, smart screens have gained a new wake-up experience – including the ‘Sunrise Alarm’ which was originally exclusive to Pixel phones on the Pixel Stand accessory – a family tab, and much more .
Google rolled out a Zoom preview to the Nest Hub Max in December. At the start of this month, @MadeByGoogle tweeted that Zoom is “now available”. The wider launch could coincide with this firmware, although Google’s support document – with full setup instructions – still mentions that the integration is “only available to a limited number of users.”
Fitbit, now part of Google, shared some improvements to its app this week, with the addition of blood sugar tracking to help people with diabetes. In addition, the ECG features of the recently released Fitbit Sense will soon be available in Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
Fitbit Load 4 similarly gets an update that shows on the device SpO2 readings, as well as measurement and skin temperature data in Health Metrics. This New Fitness Tracker Firmware “Coming Soon”
The rest of this week’s top stories follow:
Android |
Android TV / Google TV |
Applications and Updates |
Chrome / OS |
Made by Google |
Stadia |
Wear OS |
Videos |
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