Android

The Apple TV app is available in Apple’s ecosystem, Windows, and some smart TV platforms, and that’s about it.

But now Apple is seeking an Android engineer to “help build an application used by millions to watch and discover tv and sports.” Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman believes company is preparing to bring Apple TV Plus to Android phones.

Last week, Google announced that it’s bringing Gemini to the Gmail mobile app, and now we have a glimpse at how it might work. Android Authority contributor AssembleDebug found references to the new Gemini button in the Gmail app on Android, and showed off how you can ask for help summarizing emails and writing responses.

The Unicode Consortium has proposed adding these seven additional emoji to the standardized catalog referenced by iOS, Android, and other devices.

The beta review period for Unicode 16.0 lasts until July 2nd, after which the new emoji should be officially approved. It can, however, take several months for companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google to make their own designs so don’t expect to see them immediately.

Android Police spotted that as of the April 30th Hue Android app update, you can change what all the lights in a zone or room do after they regain power by tapping the three dots menu for that room or zone, then Edit Room > select all > Edit.

You can also just tap “Move to” and move them somewhere else. The iOS app works the same way.

As promised, owners of older Pixels are starting to see Magic Editor features unlocked and free to use in Google Photos. Other Androids and iPhones will get them, too, but you’ll need a $9.99 Google One subscription to save more than 10 edits per month.

The editor lets you make complex photo adjustments automatically, such as removing people from scenes.

Android 15’s second public beta introduced customizable vibrations for notifications for different apps.

9to5Google notes Pixel phones go a step further, using the phone’s microphones and sensors to adjust vibration intensity based on your surroundings. Pixel phones are particularly noisy when they vibrate on a hard surface like a table, and this feature seems to address that problem. Now that’s what I call a good vibe.

In response to malware and social engineering attacks that work by snooping notifications or activating screen sharing, Google says Android 15 will hide notifications with one-time passwords (with some exceptions, like wearable companion apps).

They’re also automatically hidden during screen sharing, and developers can enable their apps to check if Google Play Protect is active, or if another app might be capturing the screen during use.

At Google I/O 2024 today, Google announced a multimodal version of Gemini Nano, allowing the on-device processing-powered AI model to recognize images, sounds, and spoken language in addition to text.

Those multimodal capabilities are also coming to the Android accessibility feature TalkBack, using AI to fill in missing information about unlabeled images, without requiring a connection to the internet.

Starting June 10th, a Google support page says the digital wallet app will start requiring Android 9 or higher and Wear OS 2 or higher to work, as earlier versions no longer get security updates.

As 9to5Google notes, it only required Android 5.2 when it fully rolled out in 2022.