Mishaal's Android News Feed

📲Google is making a new gesture to make up for killing a popular Android shortcut When Circle to Search rolled out, it took away the ability to launch Assistant by long-pressing the home button. This new corner swipe gesture fixes that. Video demo can be found in my article.

🎙Android 16 could add a system-wide audio input switcher Google is preparing to add a new section to the media switcher dialog that lets you change which audio device you want to use as the microphone for all apps. Details + screenshots can be found in my article.

🤘Android 16 won't require two fingers to pull down the new Quick Settings, after all When I first discovered Android 16's new Quick Settings panel, the only way to access it was by using a two-finger pull down gesture. Thankfully, that's gone. A video demo can be found in this article.

Google's Quick Share app can finally be installed on Windows PCs powered by ARM64 processors, like the Snapdragon X Elite/Plus! 9to5Googlereported on this change earlier today, and I can confirm that the Quick Share installer now works on my Yoga Slim 7X! However, the Quick Share app itself is not ARM64-native and instead runs via emulation. In my experience, that hasn't been a problem, though.

📱Android 15's virtual machine mandate is aimed at improving security Many Android devices (notably Samsung ones) don't support the Android Virtualization Framework, but Android 15's vendor requirements could change that. Here's why that matters.

🛜Android 15 adds support for Wi-Fi Ranging to improve indoor navigation Apps can now use 802.11az for enhanced location accuracy and awareness on devices running Android 15 with compatible hardware like the Qualcomm FastConnect 7900. More details can be found in this article.

🛜Android will soon make it easier to connect to some public Wi-Fi networks Google is preparing to have Android open Captive Portal pages in an Android Custom Tab instead of an Android WebView Here's how that changes things.

📸Google wants to bring RAW photo support to more third-party camera apps The next version of the Jetpack CameraX library will make it possible for apps using the library for camera functionality to capture RAW photos. More details can be found in this article.

📱You've probably heard that LTPO OLED phones support variable refresh rate ... but did you know that Android hasn't supported true VRR until now? That's right - Google says Android 15 finally enables variable refresh rate support! More details can be found in this article.

OnePlus says that OxygenOS 15 on its next flagship - ie. the OnePlus 13 - is nearly 20% smaller than OxygenOS 14 on the OnePlus 12. How did they achieve that? One big contributor is a reduction in the size of the super partition. Here's what that means.

🔘Android may soon make it easier to bring back the floating accessibility menu The new "Drag to Hide" feature will show a notification that, when tapped, brings back the floating button that opens accessibility menu. More details + screenshots can be found in this article.

Google has rebranded its Data Restore Tool app to Android Switch. There's also a new icon! I'm normally not a fan of minimalist icons, but I think this one is quite clever: The blue bubbles change to green bubbles. H/T Jason Lim