Android

TL;DR YouTube says it has fixed an issue that caused blank spaces and missing thumbnails in mobile feeds. The bug affected Home, Subscriptions, and profile feeds on both Android and iOS. If you still see blank gaps, YouTube recommends force-quitting and restarting the app. YouTube hasn’t exactly had the smoothest few days on mobile. Just last week, some Galaxy phone owners reported videos freezing after switching away from the app and returning. Then, over the weekend, another problem began causing parts of YouTube’s mobile feeds to look as if someone had forgotten to load content. But the good news is that YouTube now says it has fixed that issue. YouTube had acknowledged that some Android and iOS users were seeing missing video thumbnails and large blank spaces while scrolling through the Home, Subscriptions, and profile feeds. In some cases, videos, Shorts, and posts were replaced with black gaps or gray placeholder boxes, even though the app’s navigation bars and icons continued to load normally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj0-9_8uHgc There’s no sugarcoating it: recent Pixel flagships have been rather disappointing for gamers — especially emulator fans. Switching to Imagination’s PowerVR series didn’t deliver meaningful gaming performance improvements on the Pixel 10, leading to several early driver issues and glitches. The move to the seemingly even older CXTP series in the Pixel 11’s Tensor G6, while seemingly not outright worse for gaming, hasn’t moved the needle in a positive direction for Android games either. Part of the problem is that some games, like Genshin Impact, suffer from significant jank and microstutters that didn’t affect the Pixel 10 series.

TL;DR Samsung has officially confirmed the stable One UI 9 rollout for more Galaxy S26 series models in the US. T-Mobile, Metro by T-Mobile, and US Cellular variants now have official Samsung firmware listings, while unlocked models are also starting to receive the update. Samsung has published the full stable One UI 9 changelog, detailing new Galaxy AI, Samsung Health, privacy, Bixby, accessibility, and DeX features. Samsung’s One UI 9 rollout for the Galaxy S26 series in the US got off to a slightly slow start. Last week, the first signs of the stable Android 17 update came from Galaxy S26 Ultra owners on T-Mobile, but Samsung itself hadn’t provided official confirmation. That picture is finally getting clearer, as Samsung has now updated its own support pages to confirm the stable release for more US carrier variants — and we’re also seeing signs that unlocked phones are joining the party. Samsung’s firmware pages now list stable One UI 9 builds for the Galaxy S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra on T-Mobile, Metro by T-Mobile, and US Cellular. The Galaxy S26 series’ US firmware carries build number S94xUSQU4BZID and includes a September 5, 2026 security patch. Samsung’s support pages for these models are now live.

TL;DR HONOR is launching the Magic 9 Pro Max for China. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6-powered handset features dual 200MP cameras. HONOR worked extensively with ARRI to fine-tune image processing and its video pipeline. It’s tricky to make your new smartphone stand out in an era that’s less and less about hardware, but HONOR sure seems to have created nice little niche for itself when it comes to advanced photographic solutions. The gimbal-equipped Robot phone might have sounded like some kind of fever dream at first, but HONOR has actually managed to follow through on its lofty goals there, delivering a smartphone camera experience that’s quite literally like none other. Now the manufacturer is trying to capture that lightning again, with the dual-200MP Magic 9 Pro Max. Imaging hardware feeds the pipeline

Credit: OnePlus TL;DR OnePlus has announced that the OnePlus 16 will launch on October 12. The brand also revealed that the phone will have a Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 processor. OnePlus previously said the phone will also have a 200MP main camera, a 50MP 3x tele shooter, and a 185Hz refresh rate. OnePlus has been drip-feeding OnePlus 16 details over the past couple of weeks. We’ve already heard about the phone’s impressive (for OnePlus) camera hardware as well as the rear LED, but we haven’t heard launch details. Until now, that is. OnePlus has confirmed on Weibo that the OnePlus 16 will launch in China on October 12. That means we’ve got exactly two weeks to go until the phone is fully revealed. Check out the machine-translated image below.

Credit: BOOX TL;DR BOOX’s smallest e-reader is now available for pre-order. The BOOX Picco comes with a 3.97″ ePaper touch display. It doesn’t get Android but comes with a few handy apps, such as a countdown and a Pomodoro timer. It’s now up for pre-ordering at $99.99, including shipping options for the US. Over the last several months, tiny e-readers have become more common, especially the ones that stick to the back of a phone with built-in magnets. The allure is simple: tiny e-readers, such as the Xteink X4, take up minimal space in your pocket or backpack while also offering a break from frantically refreshing hi-res displays on phones. BOOX (officially Onyx BOOX), one of the biggest names in e-readers, is entering the tiny-screen segment with an entire “Tiles” series. The first, BOOX Picco, was teased in July, revealed at IFA 2026, and is now up for pre-orders. While BOOX Palma has been the smallest device from the brand, the Picco is shrunk further down to a screen size of under four inches and a footprint no bigger than a credit card. More accurately, it features a 3.97-inch ePaper touch display with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. For a screen of its size, that’s fairly sharp. Like BOOX’s bigger models, it lets you adjust the frontlight’s warmth for more comfortable nighttime reading.

Nowadays, you can’t avoid phones that boast AI features. Smartphone launches are becoming more AI-centric; hardware frequently takes a back seat, and each brand has its own flavor of AI assistant. Nowhere is this more apparent than when phones come with dedicated AI buttons. My phone’s AI button was its least attractive feature. However, when I realized I could program it to perform a range of non-AI tasks, it became the button I use most on my device.

It’s no secret that the Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel brands get a lot of attention from the media and Android fans alike. There are several reasons for this, including better software update support than the competition and a large selection of exclusive hardware and software features. For those in North America, it’s also because these are the two largest Android brands left. While it’s true that Samsung and Google have many exclusive features, they aren’t the only ones. Below are a few features that both brands either miss entirely or don’t do as well, all of which I would personally love to see come to more devices.

I’ve defended Pixels for a few years now. Not because I’m beholden to any manufacturer, but because I genuinely appreciate the effort Google’s made to improve its phones. At one point, I was kicked off Team Pixel because I didn’t appreciate the early Tensor performance and thought the company was headed in the wrong direction. The Pixel 8 Pro changed that perception for me, and it was the first time I felt Google could actually deliver on its vision for Pixel. I’ve been a fan of the phone ever since, and I’ve told people to resist the temptation to upgrade.

Just as they have with their inner screens, foldables have divided the user base into two camps — either you find regular phones too simplistic to go back to, or you just don’t want to see your phone fold in half anymore. There is no other realization you have after living with a foldable. And the title must’ve given away that I fall under the second category. I used to be a book-style foldable die-hard, but as the novelty wore off, its flaws became glaring by the day. And no, I’m not concerned by foldables coming with one less rear camera or a more fragile exterior. My problem is more fundamental. I just can’t fathom the very idea of a device deploying complicated and delicate (not to mention expensive) mechanics to do two things at once when I’m not convinced it excels at either.

Google Lens is a powerful tool that makes it incredibly easy to understand the world around you. Just point your phone’s camera at a subject, and it gives you the relevant information. And because Google Lens is deeply integrated with Gemini, you can follow up with any doubts or questions to get answers. You may already know about Google Lens or use it on your phone to identify plants and animals, translate text, solve Math problems, or even find what’s on your screen. But its usefulness doesn’t end there. Google Lens has plenty of other use cases that you should know about.

Credit: Ryan Haines / Android Authority There was a time when the best apps and games were mostly exclusive to the iPhone and iPad family, but that has been less true over the last few years. Nowadays, many of the most popular games and apps end up on Android, even if they often appear much later than on iOS. Unfortunately, many apps have held off on adding Android support for so long that it is pretty much guaranteed they will never make the move. Below are some of the best iOS apps out there, and ones I would highly recommend if only they would come to Android. While most on this list likely never will, let’s look at nine apps that I wish would come to Google Play.

I couldn’t contain my excitement when I heard that Motorola plans to bring its Signature 27 phone to the US. For the last few years, Motorola has teased a return with a traditional slab flagship, but each time it turned out to be an overseas release. Thankfully, Motorola seems serious this time, and the phone is shaping up to be a true flagship. It’ll run on the new (wonderfully named) Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset, with a premium camera system and excellent sound. We don’t know many details about the phone yet, but I do know it has a legitimate shot at success in the US.

Samsung launched three foldable phones at its Unpacked event in July, but the Galaxy Z Fold 8 caught my eye and commanded my attention at the company’s pre-briefing. The new foldable differed from the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and previous Galaxy Folds thanks to its short yet wide form factor. It’s not the first wide foldable phone on the market, as Google, OPPO, and HUAWEI have all offered them before. But Samsung’s is clearly the most popular one running Android, and it comes just as Apple is getting in on the scene, too, with its first-ever foldable and the Galaxy Fold’s de facto biggest rival, the iPhone Duo. I came extremely close to pre-ordering the Z Fold 8, but couldn’t bring myself to hit the checkout button. Now, after two weeks with Samsung’s long-rumored “Wide Fold,” did I make a mistake by not buying the device? It’s time to find out in our Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 review.

I’m a big fan of the Pixel 11 Pro. I’ve been using Google’s flagship Android phone for over a month now, and there’s so much about it that I love — be it the excellent cameras, gorgeous design, or clean software. I talked about a lot of these things in my Pixel 11 Pro review, but there’s one feature I didn’t mention: Face Unlock. Since the Pixel 8 Pro launched nearly three years ago, every Google Pixel phone has launched with Google’s Face Unlock feature.

Qualcomm is talking a big AI game with two flagship chipsets this year, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. But a closer look at the differences between these two chips reveals that the Extreme nomenclature is doing quite a lot of heavy lifting. Rather, it might be more realistic to call the regular version of the chip the 8 Elite Lite Gen 6. While the two flagship processors share the same 5GHz peak clock speeds, new GPU architecture, and many of the same new AI features, the “regular” version of the Gen 6 misses out on a few of Qualcomm’s most impressive technologies. The list includes cutting-edge video codecs, Matrix cores for AI graphics, and 50% more local memory to support on-device AI models.

My Google Pixel 3 XL’s hardware has aged pretty well. To this day, it can still handle messaging, web browsing, and most of my other basic tasks — just at a noticeably lower speed. That’s why I wanted to push it beyond what it was designed to do, making it useful in a different way. I know smartphones work best as smartphones, yet giving my eight-year-old Pixel a second wind is far better than simply watching it limp to the finish line.

TL;DR Google Health 5.09 is rolling out now for both iOS and Android. The update delivers the new Pixel Watch Health Guardian features already announced yesterday. We also get a few updates related to activity logging and custom food items. With Friday quickly coming to a close, what’s your weekend looking like? Will you be camped out on the couch, catching up on some all-important reality TV? Or will you be out and about, staying active and working up a good sweat? If your idea of good weekend leans a little more towards the healthy side, we’ve got some good news for you, as we learn about the latest upgrades arriving for Google Health. We’re looking at the release of Google Health 5.09 for both Android and iOS, and the big news here is something we’ve already talked about earlier this week: new Pixel Watch Health Guardian features. Owners of the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5 will find their wearables picking up the ability to track blood pressure, chart insulin resistance trends, and offer new sleep breathing quality data.

The Pixel 11 Pro is objectively a very good phone, but at a cool $1,100, it’s hardly a no-brainer in the current market. Indeed, it has plenty of competition. Some of that comes from the usual Android rivals, while Google itself offers a couple of compelling alternatives if you don’t need the latest Pro model. We recently picked out five phones that we think are worth considering instead of the Pixel 11 Pro, including the Galaxy S26 Plus, Nothing Phone 3, and even last year’s Pixel 10 Pro. We then asked which of the five you’d choose if you were looking elsewhere. More than 2,200 of you voted, and the results made for an interesting comparison.

Credit: Richard Priday / Android Authority TL;DR A new category of laptops, called Googlebooks, was recently launched. The laptops share a very similar name to the company’s index of actual books. When searching for these notebooks on the company’s search engine, the first page of results is for Google Books. This has been a big week for Google, as pre-orders for Googlebooks opened up on Monday. Googlebooks are a new category of laptops that combine ChromeOS and Android into a single desktop operating system, for those unaware. So far, it seems these notebooks are selling like hotcakes, as the laptops are already out of stock on the company’s US store. If you’re interested in learning more about these computers, don’t bother turning to Search, as you won’t find what you’re looking for. As it turns out, Googlebooks have somewhat of an SEO problem. Spotted by The Verge, typing Googlebooks into Google Search will instead get you results for the tech giant’s index of actual books. The company’s digital database for full-text books and magazines just happens to share a very similar name with its new laptops, Google Books. An oversight you’d think the Mountain View-based firm would’ve caught.

TL;DR Users of several Samsung phones are reporting YouTube playback issues. Navigating away from YouTube and back while a video is playing can cause the video to freeze. Most reports come from Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra users. Even the most expensive devices are subject to bugs. Case in point: a number of users of the $2,100 Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra have reported that the YouTube app isn’t working correctly on their phones. A post on the Korean-language Samsung community forum has been racking up comments from users of the Z Fold 8 Ultra and other Galaxy phones for weeks now, with many echoing the initial post’s point that YouTube streams have been freezing up.

TL;DR Back in 2024, Google first started working on swipe gestures to view timestamps in Messages. That new interface is now widely rolling out to users. Messages also now supports swiping right to directly reply. When you’re looking back on your text message history, it’s not just the texts and the GIFs you care about. The metadata also tells a story, too: when messages were sent, if they went out with encryption, and whether or not they were even received. If you’re opening up Google Messages this week but suddenly are having trouble finding some of those details, worry not — Google’s just tweaking how you access them. So far, when you’ve gone to tap on a message in your chat history, Messages would pull up its metadata right below: timestamp, delivery status, encryption — the works. But 9to5Google has now spotted a new design that’s been rolling out to more and more users, changing up how we see this info — and it’s not without its improvements.

Credit: Andy Walker / Android Authority TL;DR Users can now configure Google Calendar to display up to three time zones. You’ll be able to add custom labels to each time zone that’s displayed. This update will be available to Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts. In late August, Google rolled out a much-welcomed feature to the Calendar app. The change gave meeting organizers and their delegates the ability to choose whether or not to receive RSVP emails and automatic responses. This month, Calendar is getting another update that should prove convenient for team members in other time zones. While converting time zones isn’t the hardest thing in the world to do, it is inconvenient. Especially so if your meetings are frequently set to a time zone other than yours. Fortunately, Google is addressing this problem by allowing more time zones to be displayed on Calendar.

TL;DR Google AI subscriptions now include premium Colab benefits, giving users access to faster computing resources without a separate Colab subscription. Google AI Ultra subscribers get additional perks, including premium GPU access and uninterrupted background execution. Existing Colab subscribers can stack benefits, with the new perks rolling out to eligible paid Google AI subscribers over the next few weeks. If you’re a power user who utilizes Google’s services for daily tasks, you’re definitely missing out if you haven’t already subscribed to a Google AI plan. Beyond giving you increased access to Google’s most capable AI models, the plans also bundle benefits across other Google products, cloud storage, and even the option to share your subscription with family members. Now, Google is adding another perk to the mix. Google announced that its AI subscriptions now include access to premium Google Colab perks.

TL;DR An update to the Nintendo DS-themed Nitrodeck Launcher is set to make the launcher compatible with dual-screen Android handhelds. Developer Mr. Rubik has posted a video of the launcher running on the Anbernic RG DS handheld. Mr. Rubik says the update should be available on the Play Store sometime either this week or next. Affordable Android-based gaming handhelds have been gaining in popularity lately, and they come in a wide range of shapes and sizes. A handful have two screens, making them ideal for emulating games that originally appeared on the dual-screen Nintendo DS. This week, the developer of the DS-themed Nitrodeck Launcher announced that an update to make the launcher compatible with these dual-screen devices is coming soon. As brought to our attention by Retrododo, developer Mr. Rubik has been showing off an update for Nitrodeck Launcher that makes it compatible with Android handhelds that come with two screens. He’s also published a video showing the launcher running on the Anbernic RG DS handheld, and the software certainly looks the part.