Google introduced the Pixel 9 series just last week, and if you’re anything like us, you rushed to get your pre-order in. The first of those orders are just about to start arriving, giving Pixel’s biggest fans their first hands-on look at this new hardware. And while there’s clearly a lot to like about the phones, we’re curious just how far that same enthusiasm will extend to Google’s latest packaging.

For years now, Google’s placed an emphasis on trying to be environmentally friendly when it comes to hardware. That’s involved a lot of recycled plastics, not just in devices themselves, but also for their accessories, like cases. That trend has continued when it comes to packaging, and if you’ve opened any Google products anytime recently, you know to expect a whole lot of cardboard, with minimal plastic.

With the Pixel 9, Google’s taking that approach to its next logical step, and the company shares that all its latest Pixel, Nest, and even Fitbit packaging involves no plastic, whatsoever.

If you’ve caught an early unboxing, though, you might already have some concerns. Rather than the sort of premium-feeling box we had on the Pixel 8, with a top that lifts straight off for a nice presentation, the Pixel 9’s colorful outside packaging slides off like a sleeve. Inside, there’s a much more utilitarian box, which strongly gives off “recycled” vibes.

Google probably hopes that shoppers see that, and understand that it’s communicating the company’s commitment to environmental concerns. But new Pixel 9 owners might also find themselves wondering if there might have been a way to hit those same zero-plastic targets, while also feeling a bit more like there’s something worth $800 (or more) within.

The company goes on to highlight some of the advancements in materials that have empowered it to deliver this packaging design, including new, extra-strong and durable paper for the exterior box, and a reformulated molded fiber pulp formula for the inserts that hold the actual gear.

What do you think about Google’s efforts here? Do you appreciate how it’s trying to be green? Or does this environmentalism feel a bit performative? Let us know in the comments.

Compared to how people got their entertainment 25 years ago, our modern era of streaming just feels so much more civilized. Beyond having access to a greater variety of content than probably any other audience has enjoyed in history, we’re actively in charge of what we’re watching, in a way that feels particularly empowering. But for as far as we’ve come from the days of messing around with rabbit ears to get a weak station to come in, problems still happen, and it looks like Google TV ran into some major issues over the weekend.

In a thread over on the Android TV Reddit sub, user PDPopper shared word of a Google TV outage, ultimately being joined by dozens of voices confirming with their own issues (h/t Johnathan Saunders). Problems look like they first started popping up sometime around Saturday mid-day (Eastern), and we see users reporting the situation resolving by the small hours of Sunday morning.

During that time period, viewers were able to access Google TV services, including both the mobile app and the TV platform. The app basically stopped showing anything at all, while on affected sets, users were still able to stream with third-party apps, but the For you screen no longer worked, and they couldn’t access Google’s Live linear streams.

Some users were able to figure out a work-around to still access their previously purchased media, by way of going through YouTube, which hopefully got them through the afternoon just fine. By Sunday morning, reports had dried up, and it looked like everything was working just like normal.

We’ve reached out to Google to see if we can get any further insight into what happened with this outage, and will update this post to share any statement the company provides.

Google’s next major mobile OS release is on its way, with Android 15 expected to formally arrive a little later this year. That’s going to introduce plenty of tweaks and new additions, like support for Satellite SOS during emergencies. One particular change we’re looking forward to involves the platform’s integration with note-taking apps, allowing users to quickly access their preferred note app right from the lock screen. Today we’re checking out the progress one of those apps is making towards adding support for this new Android 15 feature.

As we mentioned back when first sharing news of Android 15’s note-app lock screen support, this isn’t just going to work by default with whatever app you use to take notes now (and no, saving notes as drafts in Gmail doesn’t count). Developers have to intentionally build support for this new way of accessing their software, including the appropriate steps towards preserving privacy, considering we’re doing all this right from the lock screen. Google Keep has been ready to go for ages already, and now we think we’ve spotted what could be the next major app to do its own preparations.

We’re checking out Microsoft OneNote version 16.0.17928.20054 beta, in which we observe the presence of the following strings:

<string name="feature_notes_role_description_when_permission_disabled">Allow to make OneNote as "Default Notes App"</string>
<string name="feature_notes_role_description_when_permission_enabled">Add Lock Screen Note Taking shortcut from settings</string>
<string name="feature_notes_role_enable_button">Enable Lock Screen Notes</string>
<string name="feature_notes_role_title">Lock Screen Notes - Take notes over lock screen</string>
<string name="permission_notes_role_disable_description">Are you sure you want to remove OneNote as “Default Note Taking App” ?</string>
<string name="permission_notes_role_enable_description">We need permission to make OneNote as “Default Note Taking App” to enable this.</string>
<string name="setting_notes_role_summary">Turn this on to quickly jot down notes over Lock Screen.</string>
<string name="setting_notes_role_title">Lock Screen Sticky Notes</string>

Indeed, being able to choose an app as your default notes app is fundamental to Android 15’s lock screen support, and further strings here confirm Microsoft’s work towards preparing that compatibility. But even on Android 14, we should be able to set a primary notes app (after enabling it in developer settings, anyway) — and despite the progress we seem to be seeing here, you’re still not able to do that with OneNote. That suggests to us that Microsoft’s still working on setting OneNote up with the permissions and roles it will ultimately need.

With Android 15 still in beta, Microsoft has at least a few more weeks to get OneNote ready if it intends to have lock screen support ready for the platform’s release. Right now, our best estimate places that as happening sometime this fall.

Wireless charging has been around for years now, and it only keeps getting better. While early days were plagued by slow charging speeds and poor charger alignment, things have come a long way since then, and modern standards like Qi2 are robust enough to compete with wired solutions. We’ve been excited to see phones start embracing wireless charging advancements, so we were a little disappointed when it looked like the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 didn’t support Qi2. As it turns out, that may not be quite the case, and it all stems from some common misunderstanding about what Qi2 really is.

Apple fans have been enjoying the luxury of magnetically aligned wireless charging since the iPhone 12, and with MagSafe working as well as it does, it’s little surprise that the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) developed Qi2 to replicate a lot of that functionality. Now, Qi2 is a whole lot more than just a magnetic ring, and the protocol includes upgrades like adaptive charging that actively communicates between device and charger. But it feels like everyone (ourselves included) got the impression that magnetic connectivity was a baked-in, core component of Qi2. Turns out: not so much.

Over on X, Mishaal Rahman highlights the distinction, and it turns out the WPC even prepared alternate iconography to let shoppers easily tell the difference between Qi2 devices that do, and those that don’t support Qi2’s Magnetic Power Profile (MPP):

This sounds like what could be going on with the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro, with hardware that supports all the energy-transfer and communication standards that make up Qi2, but Google not electing to extend that to the full MPP and give the phones magnets on their back.

For users who are interested in a magnetically attached wireless charging solution, Google tells us that they can always outfit their Pixel 9 with a case that has magnets. Just keep in mind which phone you’re shopping for; while normal cases may swap back and forth between the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro with ease, the charging coils aren’t in the same place on this pair, so you’ll need to make sure you’re buying the right case for your phone.

At least, that’s the best-case scenario here, as while Google has confirmed to us that despite the lack of magnets, the Pixel 9 phones are Qi2-compatible, we have some further questions about just how far that support extends. Critically, the company has used language like “compatible with Qi2” and “work with Qi1 and Qi2 chargers” in its communication with us, but Qi2 chargers are backwards-compatible with Qi1 devices.

That leaves the door open for more ambiguity than we’re comfortable with, so we’ve reached back out to the company for clarification. We’ll update this post with any further information we learn.

This is a developing story. Please check back later for more information.

Of all the Google apps we rely upon day after day, does any go more underappreciated than Clock? Clock does everything from waking us up in the morning to keeping track of how much longer our dinner’s going to take in the oven. It’s even learned how to predict the weather. Today we’re giving Clock a little overdue attention, as we spot a new widget Google’s got in the works.

Right now, Google’s Clock app offers five widgets you can choose to deploy on your phone’s home screen. There’s the usual assortment of clock faces, plus the option to show multiple time zones at once, but the only really interactive widget is one that gives you access to the app’s stopwatch. If you thought that one was a useful widget to have, you’re going to like what’s coming next.

There’s a new update for Clock out today, version 7.9.1, and within it we discover Google’s work towards what should be a sixth widget. Like the stopwatch, this one brings Clock functionality straight to your home screen, giving you shortcuts to start a timer.

Here you can see it defaulting to options for 1, 5, and 10 minutes. Even with one timer already active, you’re free to tap another button on the widget to get a second one going at the same time — which looks perfect for quickly getting tasks going in something like a busy kitchen. We still need to spend some time playing around with the widget’s options, but a quick look suggests this should be plenty configurable, presumably with the option to choose the presets you want.

Considering the existing availability of the stopwatch widget, it’s almost surprising that it’s taken Google as long as it has to match that energy for timers. Better late than never!

Trying to divine Google’s plans from the latest changes to its software can be a bit like reading tea leaves; we can see the actual changes clearly enough, but what were the decisions that caused them to happen, and how might decisions like those impact future releases? Search has been the cornerstone of all things Google for decades now, even as the shape of what Search looks like changes and evolves with the emergence of AI-powered systems. With Google’s interest in Search seemingly going strong, why does the company seem to be downplaying it in its latest work on the Google app?

Just a few weeks back, we were checking out work towards some tweaks to the Google app that would give it some powerful new on-device search capabilities. But now we’re looking at the new Google app 15.32.37.28.arm64 beta, and everywhere we turn, it feels like Search is being moved slightly further away.

In this beta release, Google appears to be testing various new layouts for the app’s bottom bar that no longer feature a prominent Search button. Granted, it only takes a second and a swipe or two to access the Search bar up top, but it’s still a little odd to see the button targeted for removal in this manner.

During testing, we were able to access multiple alternative layouts for the app’s bottom bar, all lacking Search. UI changes like these may be largely driven by data-based analytics, modeled after how actual users interact with the app. And if Google’s tests observe people reaching up top when they want to search, maybe a move like this really does make sense.

That said, Google plays around with stuff like this not infrequently, and it will remain to be seen how the Google app’s bottom bar ultimately ends up after this latest round of fiddling.

Ten years ago, a tablet was the thing to have. Apple got everyone excited about this form factor in early 2010 with the announcement of the first iPad, and it wasn’t long before we had Samsung launching its own Galaxy Tab. Options from dozens of brands flooded the market over the next few years, peaking around 2014. Over the years that followed, interest (and sales) began to wane — only for the pandemic to turn the tide in 2020. But those few years of accelerated sales wouldn’t last, and recently tablet sales have found themselves in a slump. Luckily for our big-screen-loving friends, that trend already seems to be reversing.

Tablet sales are up year-to-year basically across the board, according to the latest statistics prepared by the International Data Corporation (IDC). Apple and Samsung, the two biggest tablet players, have enjoyed sales up over 18% in Q2, compared to the same timeframe in 2023. Lenovo’s holding steady as the third biggest manufacturer of tablets, but its share is down slightly, despite shipments up 16.7% — a testament to the growing size of the market overall.

Tech companies are used to pushing boundaries, with everybody looking to become the next disruptor. But especially when it comes to their advertising, sometimes they push past the boundaries of good taste into some seriously cringe-worthy territory. We’ve seen situations like that play out time and time again over the years, and in some of those cases the response is so overwhelmingly negative that the company involved sees no better alternative than just taking their ad down. Now Google is the latest advertiser to find itself in the hot seat, all in response to an AI-focused spot it’s been running for the Olympics.

The video in question depicts a father whose daughter shows an interest in athletics and emerges as a fan of track-and-field Olympian Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The “Dear Sydney” ad continues as the father wants to help his daughter craft the best possible fan letter to McLaughlin. So, what’s next? A trip to the library? An after-school creative writing program? Nope: Gemini AI can just write it for you.

When’s the last time you sideloaded an app on Android? The ability for users to directly install software they’ve acquired themselves (as opposed to finding it through the platform’s approved app store) is one of the core tenets that distinguishes Android from the likes of iOS. But just because it’s possible doesn’t always mean it’s a good idea — to say nothing of easy. But now Google seems to be tweaking its approach to app distribution in a way that threatens to be a serious thorn in the side of sideloading.

Historically, you’ve been able to manually install Android apps by means of an APK file: a single file that packaged up all an app’s resources in an convenient, easy-to-distribute format. Problem is, apps are far from one-size-fits-all, and trying to accommodate everyone all at once quickly becomes unwieldly. Back in 2018, Google rethought this approach and came up with a more modular solution: Android App Bundles.

Android 15 is on its way, and if you’re a major smartphone manufacturer like Samsung, you are already hard at work on preparing updates for your Android 14 devices. With Samsung, we’re used to its development cycle including a public beta period, where interested users are able to sign up to test the next big One UI release ahead of its final, stable, build. So far, though, that’s yet to get underway for Android 15, despite a number of reports suggesting it could get going last month. Now the latest chatter we’re seeing suggests that our wait could just be getting started.

We’re talking about One UI 7, which will deliver Android 15 to Samsung Galaxy phones. The past month has been positively rife with One UI 7 leaks and rumors, detailing possible changes to notifications, icon design, and more. But maybe the biggest question has concerned just when we’d see this beta actually get underway. Dates suggested as possibilities have come and gone with no sign of Samsung pressing “go” on the beta.

Google is on a bit of an AI kick right now, to put it mildly, finding reason to augment every nook of cranny of its software and services with (admittedly, often impressive) AI-powered functionality. The Play Store has been as much a target as any for these experiments, like with the App highlights feature we saw Google start playing around with several months back. For over a year now, Google’s been talking about using AI to summarize Play Store reviews, and after getting to see how that works in the app’s search mode, we’re now discovering how the next phase of those summaries could arrive.

When delivering Google Play’s most recent quarterly address, VP Sam Bright touched on the company’s progress with AI in the Play store, including the desire to get more of this AI-derived content in detailed app listings themselves. Sure enough, digging through Play Store version 42.1.21 we find new text strings for labeling information as “Summarized by Google AI.” And with the right flags enabled, we can get just such an AI-generated summary to appear at the top of user-written reviews:

What’s the best Zelda game? (Wrong answers only.) Chances are, either Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom are right up there at the top of your list, and why wouldn’t they be? The open-world action-adventure games have emerged as landmark Switch titles, earning themselves legions of loyal fans. If you’re the sort of gamers who likes broadcasting your fandom, Nintendo’s got some new Zelda-themed earbuds to check out.

Let’s rip this bandage off early: Nintendo is not making these wireless Bluetooth earbuds available everywhere. Nintendo UK announced their availability there and in Ireland, but just like all the rest of the themed wireless earbuds up for sale abroad, you can’t get these from the Nintendo Store in the US. Why not? Your guess is as good as ours, but it’s worth remembering that the Switch’s relationship with Bluetooth has been shaky at best, with initial support taking over four years to arrive following the console’s launch.

If you’re lucky enough to be in the UK, you can order these Zelda earbuds in white, black or green — although that green option looks like it’s already out of stock. All three sell for about £35 (~$45), the same you’d pay for Nintendo’s similarly branded Mario, Pokémon, Splatoon, or Animal Crossing earbuds. This isn’t the first time Nintendo has sold Zelda earbuds, and a slightly less ornate black colorway has been available for a couple years. Compared to that, the two-toned look of the new white and green options particularly pops. It might have been interesting to see the manufacturer really lean into the Zelda connection — elf-ear earbuds do exist, after all — but something like that’s only going to resonate with really select fans.

Will you be importing a pair? Hoping you can find one of your next trip to England? Or just get content living without Zelda-enhanced earbuds in your life?

(The correct answer was A Link to the Past Randomizer, BTW.)

Update, August 2, 2024 (04:10 PM ET): Google has reached out to us with a message of reassurance:

Android users are automatically protected against known versions of this malware by Google Play Protect, which is on by default on Android devices with Google Play Services.

Of course, the key word there is “known” versions, and as the team at Cleafy reported, BingoMod is still evolving and working on new tricks to evade detection. Play Protect isn’t going to rest on its laurels, either, so expect this cat-and-mouse game to continue. And for your own part, keep using best practices when it comes to sourcing your apps.

Original article, August 2, 2024 (11:44 AM ET): Getting malware on your smartphone is just a recipe for a bad day, but even within that misery there’s a spectrum of how awful things will be. Some malware may be interested in exploiting its position on your device to send spam texts or mine crypto. But the really dangerous stuff just wants to straight-up steal from you, and the example we’re checking out today has a particularly nasty going-away present for your phone when it’s done.

A remote access trojan (RAT) dubbed BingoMod was first spotted back in May by the researchers at Cleafy (via BleepingComputer). The software is largely spread via SMS-based phishing, where it masquerades as a security tool — one of the icons the app dresses itself up with is that from AVG antivirus. Once on your phone, it requests access to Android Accessibility Services, which it uses to get its hooks in for remotely controlling your device.

Once established, the malware’s goal is setting up money transfers. It steals login data with a keylogger, and confirmation codes by intercepting SMS. And then when it has the credentials and access it needs, the threat actor controlling the malware can start transferring all your savings away. With language support for English, Romanian, and Italian, the app seems targeted at European users, and circumstantial evidence suggests Romanian devs may be behind it.

All this sounds bad, but not that different from plenty of malware, right? Well, BingoMod, it seems, is a little paranoid about being found out. Besides the numerous tricks it uses to evade automatic detection, it’s got a doomsday weapon it’s ready to deploy after achieving its goals and wiping your accounts clean: it wipes your phone.

While BingoMod supports a built-in command for wiping data, that’s limited to external storage, which isn’t going to get it very far. Instead, Cleafy’s team suspects that the people controlling the malware remotely are manually executing these wipes when they’re done stealing from you, just like you’d do yourself before getting rid of an old phone. Presumably, that’s in the goal of destroying evidence of the hack — losing your personal data is just collateral damage.

That’s a fresh kind of awful that we would be very happy never having to deal with. The good news is that you really don’t have to. Get your apps from official sources, don’t install software from sketchy text messages, and you’ll be well on your way to not losing all your data in a malware attack.

A couple years back, it felt like everything in tech was metaverse-this, metaverse-that. Buzzwords have a way of absolutely derailing the attention of the tech industry, whether we’re talking about AI or NFTs. For a little while in there, lots of players were looking to capitalize on the potential of Web3 — the idea of bringing proper decentralization to the internet, breaking down barriers, and enabling everyone to publish and access content on a level playing field. Fast forward to 2024, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that Web3 has lost nearly all of its momentum. Well, don’t tell that to Telegram, as the service announces the latest updates to its app — including a new Web3-enabled browser.

Telegram is sharing a ton of new functionality coming to its apps across platforms, including the ability to gift Telegram Stars to your friends, choose specific thumbnails for video stories, and even to brighten up your screen for extra illumination when filming with your selfie cam. But the one the company leads with is this new in-app browser, which it feels particularly proud about.

Your phone already has a perfectly good browser? Yeah, ours too. But Telegram seems to be targeting its very most dedicated users here, as the selling points are largely about its ability to keep you deeply enmeshed in its own ecosystem, jumping between tabs, messages, and the service’s mini-apps, all while you avoid distraction from anything that’s not Telegram.

What about that Web3 business? Telegram creator Nikolai Durov is also behind The Open Network (TON), the decentralized network this new browser is ready to tap into. While that sort of integration is admittedly probably exposing the project to more potential users than ever before, we’re still not sure where the demand is — what are they going to be looking for on TON that they haven’t found elsewhere?

Finally, speaking of those mini-apps we mentioned earlier, Telegram has built a new app store to help you find some. Just look for an Apps tab in Search to get started discovering.

Looking at it from far enough away, being a YouTube creator seems like the best job in the world: film yourself doing what you love, share it with millions of viewers who hold similar interests, and watch the views (and those ad dollars) roll in. Of course, in reality, it can be much more of a frantic hustle, where you’re constantly trying to appease not just Google’s ever-changing algorithms, but fickle viewer habits, as well. If the situation weren’t difficult enough, YouTube has a reputation for aggressively going after accounts it perceives as violating it polices, often with a “shoot suspend first, ask questions later” attitude. To the great relief of YouTubers everywhere, Google is finally making some creator-friendly changes to the way it handles suspensions.

Today we’re talking specifically about the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), for monetized creators who hit the eligibility thresholds. Being accepted into and remaining part of the YPP is critical for creators whose livelihood depends on their videos, so getting suspended from it threatens to be devastating. Historically, Google would respond to policy violations by suspending accounts from YPP, and only then offering creators who felt wronged a chance to file an appeal. But going forward, in some cases, at least, Google will give creators the chance to make that case for an appeal prior to actually suspending the account.

Depending on what kind of violation we’re talking about, that sounds like it makes a lot of sense, and for more minor stuff, or situations that feel ambiguous, it may not be worth upsetting a creator’s income stream while an investigation is underway. In its announcement, Google explains that this new practice will only apply to “certain policy violations,” which sure seems to leave the door open for immediate suspension in response to the most problematic policy violations. We’ve reached out to Google in an attempt to learn exactly where that line might be, and will update you if we hear of any specifics.

Google also clarifies that early appeals “won’t be available for all suspensions to start with, but we hope to expand this over time.” We’re not sure if that means that Google intends to expand that list of “certain” violations to include more of them, or that only a subset of creator accounts will be able to make early appeals at all while Google gets this change going. Once again, we’ve asked Google to shed some light on these details, and hope to update you with what we learn.

What’s the best Zelda game? (Wrong answers only.) Chances are, either Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom are right up there at the top of your list, and why wouldn’t they be? The open-world action-adventure games have emerged as landmark Switch titles, earning themselves legions of loyal fans. If you’re the sort of gamers who likes broadcasting your fandom, Nintendo’s got some new Zelda-themed earbuds to check out.

Let’s rip this bandage off early: Nintendo is not making these wireless Bluetooth earbuds available everywhere. Nintendo UK announced their availability there and in Ireland, but just like all the rest of the themed wireless earbuds up for sale abroad, you can’t get these from the Nintendo Store in the US. Why not? Your guess is as good as ours, but it’s worth remembering that the Switch’s relationship with Bluetooth has been shaky at best, with initial support taking over four years to arrive following the console’s launch.

If you’re lucky enough to be in the UK, you can order these Zelda earbuds in white, black or green — although that green option looks like it’s already out of stock. All three sell for about £35 (~$45), the same you’d pay for Nintendo’s similarly branded Mario, Pokémon, Splatoon, or Animal Crossing earbuds. This isn’t the first time Nintendo has sold Zelda earbuds, and a slightly less ornate black colorway has been available for a couple years. Compared to that, the two-toned look of the new white and green options particularly pops. It might have been interesting to see the manufacturer really lean into the Zelda connection — elf-ear earbuds do exist, after all — but something like that’s only going to resonate with really select fans.

Will you be importing a pair? Hoping you can find one of your next trip to England? Or just get content living without Zelda-enhanced earbuds in your life?

(The correct answer was A Link to the Past Randomizer, BTW.)

Update, August 2, 2024 (04:10 PM ET): Google has reached out to us with a message of reassurance:

Android users are automatically protected against known versions of this malware by Google Play Protect, which is on by default on Android devices with Google Play Services.

Of course, the key word there is “known” versions, and as the team at Cleafy reported, BingoMod is still evolving and working on new tricks to evade detection. Play Protect isn’t going to rest on its laurels, either, so expect this cat-and-mouse game to continue. And for your own part, keep using best practices when it comes to sourcing your apps.

Original article, August 2, 2024 (11:44 AM ET): Getting malware on your smartphone is just a recipe for a bad day, but even within that misery there’s a spectrum of how awful things will be. Some malware may be interested in exploiting its position on your device to send spam texts or mine crypto. But the really dangerous stuff just wants to straight-up steal from you, and the example we’re checking out today has a particularly nasty going-away present for your phone when it’s done.

A remote access trojan (RAT) dubbed BingoMod was first spotted back in May by the researchers at Cleafy (via BleepingComputer). The software is largely spread via SMS-based phishing, where it masquerades as a security tool — one of the icons the app dresses itself up with is that from AVG antivirus. Once on your phone, it requests access to Android Accessibility Services, which it uses to get its hooks in for remotely controlling your device.

Once established, the malware’s goal is setting up money transfers. It steals login data with a keylogger, and confirmation codes by intercepting SMS. And then when it has the credentials and access it needs, the threat actor controlling the malware can start transferring all your savings away. With language support for English, Romanian, and Italian, the app seems targeted at European users, and circumstantial evidence suggests Romanian devs may be behind it.

All this sounds bad, but not that different from plenty of malware, right? Well, BingoMod, it seems, is a little paranoid about being found out. Besides the numerous tricks it uses to evade automatic detection, it’s got a doomsday weapon it’s ready to deploy after achieving its goals and wiping your accounts clean: it wipes your phone.

While BingoMod supports a built-in command for wiping data, that’s limited to external storage, which isn’t going to get it very far. Instead, Cleafy’s team suspects that the people controlling the malware remotely are manually executing these wipes when they’re done stealing from you, just like you’d do yourself before getting rid of an old phone. Presumably, that’s in the goal of destroying evidence of the hack — losing your personal data is just collateral damage.

That’s a fresh kind of awful that we would be very happy never having to deal with. The good news is that you really don’t have to. Get your apps from official sources, don’t install software from sketchy text messages, and you’ll be well on your way to not losing all your data in a malware attack.

A couple years back, it felt like everything in tech was metaverse-this, metaverse-that. Buzzwords have a way of absolutely derailing the attention of the tech industry, whether we’re talking about AI or NFTs. For a little while in there, lots of players were looking to capitalize on the potential of Web3 — the idea of bringing proper decentralization to the internet, breaking down barriers, and enabling everyone to publish and access content on a level playing field. Fast forward to 2024, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that Web3 has lost nearly all of its momentum. Well, don’t tell that to Telegram, as the service announces the latest updates to its app — including a new Web3-enabled browser.

Telegram is sharing a ton of new functionality coming to its apps across platforms, including the ability to gift Telegram Stars to your friends, choose specific thumbnails for video stories, and even to brighten up your screen for extra illumination when filming with your selfie cam. But the one the company leads with is this new in-app browser, which it feels particularly proud about.

Your phone already has a perfectly good browser? Yeah, ours too. But Telegram seems to be targeting its very most dedicated users here, as the selling points are largely about its ability to keep you deeply enmeshed in its own ecosystem, jumping between tabs, messages, and the service’s mini-apps, all while you avoid distraction from anything that’s not Telegram.

What about that Web3 business? Telegram creator Nikolai Durov is also behind The Open Network (TON), the decentralized network this new browser is ready to tap into. While that sort of integration is admittedly probably exposing the project to more potential users than ever before, we’re still not sure where the demand is — what are they going to be looking for on TON that they haven’t found elsewhere?

Finally, speaking of those mini-apps we mentioned earlier, Telegram has built a new app store to help you find some. Just look for an Apps tab in Search to get started discovering.

Looking at it from far enough away, being a YouTube creator seems like the best job in the world: film yourself doing what you love, share it with millions of viewers who hold similar interests, and watch the views (and those ad dollars) roll in. Of course, in reality, it can be much more of a frantic hustle, where you’re constantly trying to appease not just Google’s ever-changing algorithms, but fickle viewer habits, as well. If the situation weren’t difficult enough, YouTube has a reputation for aggressively going after accounts it perceives as violating it polices, often with a “shoot suspend first, ask questions later” attitude. To the great relief of YouTubers everywhere, Google is finally making some creator-friendly changes to the way it handles suspensions.

Today we’re talking specifically about the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), for monetized creators who hit the eligibility thresholds. Being accepted into and remaining part of the YPP is critical for creators whose livelihood depends on their videos, so getting suspended from it threatens to be devastating. Historically, Google would respond to policy violations by suspending accounts from YPP, and only then offering creators who felt wronged a chance to file an appeal. But going forward, in some cases, at least, Google will give creators the chance to make that case for an appeal prior to actually suspending the account.

Depending on what kind of violation we’re talking about, that sounds like it makes a lot of sense, and for more minor stuff, or situations that feel ambiguous, it may not be worth upsetting a creator’s income stream while an investigation is underway. In its announcement, Google explains that this new practice will only apply to “certain policy violations,” which sure seems to leave the door open for immediate suspension in response to the most problematic policy violations. We’ve reached out to Google in an attempt to learn exactly where that line might be, and will update you if we hear of any specifics.

Google also clarifies that early appeals “won’t be available for all suspensions to start with, but we hope to expand this over time.” We’re not sure if that means that Google intends to expand that list of “certain” violations to include more of them, or that only a subset of creator accounts will be able to make early appeals at all while Google gets this change going. Once again, we’ve asked Google to shed some light on these details, and hope to update you with what we learn.

YouTube long ago evolved to become so much more than a place for entertainment, and whether you use it to get your news, discover fresh recipes, or learn how to complete projects around the house, it’s an invaluable repository for millions of users. Sometimes you don’t realize how much you rely on something until you lose it, though, and that’s exactly what we’re thinking about today as some YouTube viewers find themselves confronted with a confusing bug that prevents them from skipping ahead in videos.

Affected users have been sharing their woes over on Reddit, with an experience just like the one StormerJack describes: you go to advance your video by clicking on the timeline, and instead of jumping ahead, the player rewinds all the way back to the start. When mousing over the timeline, instead of seeing the actual position in the video, you’ll get a bizarre “-NaN:NaN” label.

Early observations noted that the problem behavior seems tied to particular accounts, and logging out, or going incognito, temporary resolves it. But if you log back in to the affected account, that -NaN:NaN business comes back.

Maybe the most promising advice we’ve seen so far comes from Miidoriin, who suggests that setting up these lines in your uBlock Origin config will get YouTube working normally again:

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.enable_gameplay, false)
youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.enable_playables_deeplink, false)
youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.EXPERIMENT_FLAGS.kevlar_disable_preemptive_player_reset, false)

Of course, we’re not going to recommend you try using such software to block YouTube ads, but a targeted approach of stopping these particular flags from full-on breaking YouTube playback seems plenty reasonable.

The nature of that fix sure seems to cast blame on new functionality YouTube is trying out — and something locked behind a series of flags like this would very much explain why the behavior is tied to particular accounts. We’ve reached out to Google for comment, and to see if we can learn anything more specific about the cause of this glitch — and ideally, find a more graceful way to resolve it. We’ll be sure to update this post with any information we learn.

The fact that smartwatches are at all practical is something of a small miracle — literally (well, the “small” part, anyway). Manufacturers squeeze the power of a smartphone into a package not much larger than a square inch. Problem is, this kind of form factor doesn’t have a ton of room for a big battery, so there are always going to be trade-offs in terms of endurance. We’ve come to expect limitations like that — within reason — but sometimes the sort of battery life we end up getting is just nothing short of disappointing. After following reports of some issues right along that line with the Galaxy Watch 7, we’re happy to see Samsung finally start getting a potential fix out to users.

Last week we asked you about your experiences using and charging the Watch 7, and whether or not you found your new wearable delivering the sort of battery life you expected. As we quickly learned, the majority of respondents were very much unhappy about Watch 7 battery life. And while sometimes problems like this are a matter of expectations getting too high, this time we saw a Samsung representative acknowledge the issue and offer that a software fix should be arriving “soon” to address it. Sure enough, new updates are out this week for the Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch 7 Ultra.

Over on Reddit, we spotted user OscarLimaAlpha share a screenshot of the notice accompanying their own Watch 7 update, where Samsung announces that both “battery stability” and “battery charging stability” have been improved.

Now, those aren’t too far off from the sort of “nothing” throwaway lines you might expect to see in pretty much any software update (just like the non-specific “stability improvements” also listed here), but in the wake of this specific issue and Samsung’s earlier comments, the pair of them here feel like a direct response.

Of course, it’s easy to say “your battery performance is getting more stable” — does this update actually deliver? There’s no substitute for hard data, so let’s get us some:

If you haven’t gotten any notice about an update yet, sit tight; it’s coming. In the meantime, just keep a charger for your Watch 7 nearby, we guess?

Relationships are much more than about who you know. The surface-level details — things like name, phone number, and where they live — don’t matter nearly as much as how this person has come to be in your life. Is this a work colleague? A relative? As we expect our smartphones and the apps that run on them to automate more and more tasks, the details of these relationships can really start to matter — an email being drafted to an academic advisor should probably care more about grammar and formality than one going out to your bestie. How’s a phone supposed to tell all these people apart?

Google already gives you a few ways to define relationships. In Contacts right now, you’ll find a menu that lets you choose from a bunch of relationship types: parent, child, spouse, generic “relative,” and a few more. But you’ve got to dig quite a bit to even get to that field, and we wonder how many users bother going through their contacts and populating all this info.

We’ve also got the ability to put a label on relationships in Google Assistant, letting you tell your phone “call mom,” when she’s in your Contacts list under her actual name. A couple years back, we saw Google start connecting these two, as it integrated this Assistant data into Contacts. So where does that leave us now?

Looking through Google Contacts version 4.37.39, we’re able to access a few screens that deal with people you’ve identified as your “Besties.” 9to5Google was able to trigger a besties widget in Contacts about a month ago, which just looked like a rebranded version of the favorite contacts widgets. We’re now able to get the app to show a bestie reference on individual contact cards, and access a link to “Besties Onboarding.”

Problem is, right now, that just crashes the app. But even in failure we can find room to learn, and looking at the crash dump we find reference to a mysterious com.google.android.apps.pixel.relationships package. That’s not the first time we’ve come across reference to that in Contacts, and its presence here makes us wonder if Google is planning to introduce some new, overarching way of keeping track of relationships in the near future.

Finally, just a note, Google: “bestie” is superlative. You literally cannot have more than one best friend.

Update, August 1, 2024 (08:15 AM ET): We have managed to activate some of the UX of the upcoming feature.

As you can see, the user will be asked to choose between reporting the call as spam or as a scam.

Original article, July 25, 2024 (12:19 PM ET): Are you sold yet on the potential of AI? Smartphone features powered by AI feel like the only thing manufacturers are talking about anymore, but how many of those are actually useful tools you’re interested in, and how many seem more like fancy tech demos? Even if you’re still waiting for that killer app, we’ve got reason to be optimistic, and have heard about a few compelling projects in the works, like Google using Gemini Nano to keep you safe from scammers on voice calls. As we wait to get full details from Google on how that will arrive, we’re already seeing some early evidence of it in the Phone app.

Opening up the new Google Phone 138 beta release, we spot a number of text strings that sound related to this incoming functionality:

<string name="report_call_as_scam_action">Report call as scam</string>
<string name="report_call_as_scam_details">Unknown callers asking for your personal, financial, or device info</string>
<string name="report_call_as_spam_action">Report call as spam</string>
<string name="report_call_as_spam_details">Nuisance calls, irrelevant or unsolicited promotions, offers, etc.</string>
<string name="block_or_report_details">Information reported will only be used by Google to improve spam & scam detection.</string>

The first takeaway there is the distinction being drawn between scams and spam; right now, the app’s formal focus is only on spam (though we could see scams counting as “unwanted calls” in general). But going forward, Google Phone is preparing to be explicit about the difference.

We also notice that this seems to describe a system for manually reporting calls. The way Google talked about it back at I/O, it sounded like Gemini would be making the decision about characterizing the call as legitimate or not, so it’s interesting to consider that we may also be able to flag calls that Google misses.

SHARPIE_USER_DISMISSED_SCAM
SHARPIE_USER_CONFIRMED_SCAM
SHARPIE_SCAM_DETECTED
SHARPIE_SESSION_STARTED
SHARPIE_PRECONDITIONS_SUCCEEDED
SHARPIE_PRECONDITIONS_FAILED
SHARPIE_SETTINGS_UNKNOWN
SHARPIE_SETTINGS_AUTO_ENROLLED
SHARPIE_SETTINGS_MANUALLY_ENROLLED
SHARPIE_SETTINGS_OPTED_OUT

“Sharpie,” if you haven’t surmised just yet, is Google’s internal codename for this system. All these functions and variables present in the app code shine further light on how Phone’s AI scam detection will work and arrive. The first two you see here appear to correspond with the user interaction options Google presented back when announcing the feature in May:

Even though all the processing for scam detection will take place on your phone, limiting the privacy implications of using it, Google’s been clear that it’s not forcing this on anyone, and the system will be opt-in when it arrives. That has us raising our eyebrows just the slightest bit at what appears to be a flag for automatically using AI scam detection — perhaps it’s intended for managed devices, or for use with Family Link?

While we still have plenty of questions about how Phone’s scam detection will arrive, and exactly how it will operate once it does, we’re hugely excited about the idea of it getting here. Scam calls are a serious problem affecting some of society’s most vulnerable members, and it’s not always easy to teach people how to recognize when they’re being taken advantage of. If we can offload some of that burden onto AI-powered systems, there’s the real potential to help protect a lot of people.

Hopefully the progress we’ve spotted indicates that Google is well on its way to getting this system running. Will it debut with the Pixel 9 in just a few more weeks? We’ll know soon!

Google’s upcoming August 13 event may not be solely about the Pixel 9 series and other new mobile hardware. Over the past couple months, we’ve been tracking work on a fourth generation Nest Learning Thermostat, which may join a new Nest Temperature Sensor for a little smart home flair at next month’s festivities. Now we’re getting out best look yet at actual hardware, thanks to the arrival of a detailed unboxing video.

Maybe our first inkling of a new Nest model in the works arrived courtesy of a Google FCC filing, which disclosed the existence of a device with the same kind of 60GHz Soli radar the most recent Nest Thermostat uses for person-sensing.

It wasn’t until last week that we finally got a good sense of what to expect, with a leak revealing both the 4th-gen Nest Learning Thermostat and 2nd-gen Temperature Sensor, and just the other day the leak of some marketing materials seemed to fully open the book on this new hardware and its feature set. Now TikTok user FranklyHonestManReviews has gotten his hands on the Thermostat in black, white, and gold, and is showing them all off (via 9to5Google).

Just as our last leak suggested, these come packaged with one of the new Temperature Sensors. We also get a much closer look at the Thermostat’s wiring base, which looks like the most elaborate from Nest to date — while the 2nd and 3rd gen models supported up to 10 wires for HVAC systems that used them, this new plate has connections for a full dozen. Odds are you might not touch the vast majority of those, but their presence here should at least speak to the work Google’s been doing to expand the functionality of this series.

Our source here doesn’t offer any new insight into possible pricing, but last we heard, Google might be thinking of charging around $280 for one of these units. Considering the 3rd-gen sold for $250 when it launched all the way back in 2015 (and that this model comes with a remote Temperature Sensor), that might not be too bad. Keep checking in with us as we head into August to see what else we learn in the days leading up to Google’s hardware event.

The way some companies with big AI dreams are thinking, smartphone users want nothing more than to get advice from, be entertained by, and interact with virtual chatbots. Meta is betting so big on this concept that it just launched a major effort to let people design custom AI chatbots, tailored precisely to their preferences. But as firms like Meta try to zero-in on the kind of AI interactions that are most engaging, they’re also picking up a lot of lessons about what doesn’t work. And as Meta apparently learned the hard way, that includes chatbots based on celebrities.

Meta introduced its celeb chatbots last September with a total of 28 accounts, all featuring the likeness of a famous person and given specific personas. The whole thing was a bit weird, not even using actual celebrity names: you might interact with “Lorena” the travel expert, based on Padma Lakshmi, or chat with Charli D’Amelio’s “Coco” the dancer. At least those track tonally with the people they’re based on, but others felt like wild swings: Paris Hilton as “Amber” the detective “for solving whodunnits,” or Snoop Dogg not as the resident cannabis sommelier but “Dungeon Master,” ready to help plan your next tabletop adventure.

Fast-forward ten months, and Meta is taking these chatbots back behind the shed for some Old Yeller action. The Information reports that the Facebook and Instagram pages for all these bots went offline earlier this week. The company confirmed to the site it had discontinued the feature, highlighting what it picked up from the experience, explaining, “We took a lot of learnings from building them and Meta AI to understand how people can use AIs to connect and create in unique ways.”

Based on the timing, we’d certainly hope that many of those lessons became the foundation for Meta’s new AI Studio offering, where rather than choosing from all these pre-packaged disparate personas, users can take the time to craft a custom experience. Maybe that one won’t last, either, but sometimes you have to learn what doesn’t work before you can figure out what does.