Android 17 Drops For Pixel Phones and Watch (phonearena.com) 27
Google has begun rolling out Android 17, the June Pixel Feature Drop, and Wear OS 7 simultaneously across supported Pixel phones and watches. Highlights include floating app bubbles, improved foldable multitasking and gaming, tighter location and contact permissions, stronger lost-device protections, new Pixel AI tools, and up to 10% better Pixel Watch battery life. PhoneArena reports: Pixel owners are the clear winners, since everything here reaches Pixel first and a lot of it goes back to the Pixel 6. Fold owners get the most toys, with the Bubble Bar and foldable gaming mode built for the big screen. Watch wearers get the quietly important upgrade. Better battery and Live Updates make an everyday wearable easier to rely on, especially if you keep it on overnight. Google's latest Pixel Drop combines several AI-powered tools with a broader slate of Android 17 upgrades. Pixel owners gain Lyria 3 for generating music from text or images, Gemini Omni for creating custom video clips, enhanced call translation and screening, AirDrop-compatible Quick Share, expanded Magic Cue support, and conversational photo editing.
Android 17 builds on those additions with floating app Bubbles, selfie-camera Screen Reactions, and a split-screen gaming mode for foldables, while also strengthening privacy and security with more granular location and contact permissions, improved lost-device protection, tighter PIN-guessing limits, and enhanced threat detection.
Other additions include expanded parental controls, separate assistant volume and app memory settings, and an option to hide app names for greater privacy.
You can read more about everything new in Android 17 in Google's blog post.
Android 17 builds on those additions with floating app Bubbles, selfie-camera Screen Reactions, and a split-screen gaming mode for foldables, while also strengthening privacy and security with more granular location and contact permissions, improved lost-device protection, tighter PIN-guessing limits, and enhanced threat detection.
Other additions include expanded parental controls, separate assistant volume and app memory settings, and an option to hide app names for greater privacy.
You can read more about everything new in Android 17 in Google's blog post.
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floating . . . app . . . bubbles.
If your phone is so bad you think it needs updating to Android 17, all you will have is a bad phone with Android 17...
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Were you expecting bubbles to sink?
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Were you expecting bubbles to sink?
Don't trigger the Guinness drinkers
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I recently bought a new Android phone after shattering the screen on my otherwise perfectly good five-year-old Android. Of course the UI had been totally screwed up, mostly differences for the sake of difference but some things were manifestly worse.
For example, I spent the longest time looking for an "auto-rotate" setting, which has always been a toggle switch labelled "auto-rotate." Eventually I resorted to using the search function in the settings, and still didn't find it. And then I had to resort to
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The other fun change is multitasking. In old versions, you could select 1:1, 1:2 and 2:1 screen ratio for two apps at the same time. Basically all three allowed functionally usable screen space for both apps depending on what you're doing in them.
Google UI designers in their infinite wisdom of drinking alcohold while working remote from the pools as seen in their tiktoks from a couple of years ago, decided to change it to 1:1, 9:1 and 1:9. Apparently since they don't need to work with any kind of efficiency
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No, that's not how Android works. You can run current apps on Android 10 if you want. There is no obligation to run the latest greatest, and typically each Android release since 4.0 is slightly worse than the previous version, making you less inclined to want to upgrade.
What I would like (Score:2)
Fix the small things that just don't seem to work.
One example is when I want to switch from Bluetooth to speaker that it just accept my choice and not switch back. It's a quirk that happens here and there. The same thing happens with Android auto when the button changes color showing me that I pressed it but doesn't accept the input. I have to hold it down for a second more.
Call recording is legal here but not available. I'm told my supplier doesn't permit it and yet it's a phone I purchased. The implied a
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Re:What I would like (Score:5, Interesting)
One example is when I want to switch from Bluetooth to speaker that it just accept my choice and not switch back.
iOS does the same thing. Constantly. A Bluetooth device goes out of range and the back in, and the iPhone is like "Squirrel!" and switches. But on iOS, it is even more obnoxious. I have a home phone system that can take calls from your cell phone, but only if you pick up the handset and answer the call. Otherwise, when it tries to send the call over to that Bluetooth "speaker", the handset rejects the connection request and the audio switches back to the device. But worse, it switches OFF the speakerphone mode and switches back to phone-to-the-ear mode. So not only do you completely lose five seconds of audio during the failed handshake, but you also end up not being able to hear afterwards until you manually turn the speakerphone mode back on.
I filed a bug about this at least five years ago and Apple still hasn't fixed it. And it pisses me off so much that if I had more free time, I'd develop my own whole f**king mobile OS just so that I could have full manual control over when the device switches sound outputs. The number of times I have wanted my device to switch automatically to Bluetooth is EXACTLY zero, because the device has no idea if earbuds are actually in my ears or headphones are on my head. It has no idea whether I'm actually in the same room as the speaker or ten feet away. It has no idea if I want to use the earbuds with my Mac or my iPhone. It has no idea if I want my device to connect to the sound system in our rehearsal room, or if one of my colleagues is about to use it with her phone. The phone should not be in control. The user should.
How hard is it to just have a f**king headphones icon at the top of the screen that the user can tap to switch to a different audio input/output, and make that button show a list of sources, including silently discovered (but not connected) Bluetooth sources, and automatically connect to the Bluetooth device in the background when you select it, and wait to change audio over to that Bluetooth device until after it has successfully connected and verified that it can actually pass audio to the device?
Hell, at this point, I'd settle for a setting that disables automatic connection to a specific Bluetooth device. We can turn off automatic association for WiFi. Why the h*** don't we have that for Bluetooth? What a**hole thought to himself, "This Bluetooth device is suddenly just barely within range; let's switch to it and see if we can make the user so angry that he throws his phone across the room so we can sell him a new phone?"
Seriously, this is something that should have been 100% solved twenty-five years ago, and sure as h*** should have been solved before companies started ripping the headphone jacks off of devices, and instead, the entire f**king industry has a user experience that can only be described as absolute garbage because nobody at any of these companies who is making bug prioritization decisions apparently has any Bluetooth gear that is paired with more than one f**king device. How is this simple and obvious design pattern still so badly broken across every major mobile platform? Why do users tolerate such actively user-hostile behavior from their devices? And why isn't fixing this s**tshow a P1/P0 bug?
I just don't get it.
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I just don't get it.
Sadly, Apple and Google don't care whether any of us "gets it" anywhere other than up the you-know-what.
Regarding Bluetooth woes, recently my wife's iPhone connected to my mother-in-law's hearing aids. And when my wife went to remove the hearing aids from Bluetooth devices, the aids didn't even show up in the list! Broken functionality, much?
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I just don't get it.
Sadly, Apple and Google don't care whether any of us "gets it" anywhere other than up the you-know-what.
Regarding Bluetooth woes, recently my wife's iPhone connected to my mother-in-law's hearing aids. And when my wife went to remove the hearing aids from Bluetooth devices, the aids didn't even show up in the list! Broken functionality, much?
I'm not sure how it's even possible for an iOS device to connect to an unpaired Bluetooth device unless the device is designed wrong (not asking for authentication). So for that one, I'd put at least half of the blame on the device manufacturer. On the flip side, it is mainly designed for elderly folks who usually aren't tech savvy, so I can at least understand why they might do that, so there's plenty of blame on Apple for auto-connecting without asking as well.
I would even argue that this is a potential
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Things like this are why I prefer a wired connection.
Except that isn't solved by a wired connection. The context switching problem remains using wires as well. The OP postulates a scenario where a Bluetooth device being on doesn't mean it should be used, the same scenario exists for a wired device, cable in but doesn't mean it should be used.
In fact it's clear that Bluetooth here is copying the previous behaviour of the wired devices.
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The number of times I have wanted my device to switch automatically to Bluetooth is EXACTLY zero, because the device has no idea if earbuds are actually in my ears or headphones are on my head.
That is a very strange situation. The number of times I've wanted to switch to Bluetooth is exactly 100%, because my headphones and earbuds aren't on unless they are on my head and I find auto-switching a godsend.
Not that I'm gaslighting, I fully support the idea of this being a toggle feature so it can accommodate everyone. But really I find your complaint perplexing.
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Call recording is legal here but not available. I'm told my supplier doesn't permit it and yet it's a phone I purchased.
There are legitimate reasons to record some phone calls, and Google took this feature away in an update during a time when this was very important for me. Not only can you not record a call, but if you try using a sound recorder while on speakerphone, the part of the recording during the call goes silent.
It's legal where I live, and it's none of their business either way. In my case, I had an attorney telling me I needed to record certain phone calls.
Same thing with YouTube on Android Auto. They nannied
Re:What I would like (Score:4, Interesting)
Fix the small things that just don't seem to work.
One example is when I want to switch from Bluetooth to speaker that it just accept my choice and not switch back...
And also, if I connect to a WiFi network that has no internet, like a config network for a router or IOT device, fucking STAY connected to it until it goes away or I say otherwise. Don't make me go through and explicitly disconnect from every saved wifi network within range, turn off mobile data, etc. There is the "This network has no internet, stay connected?" popup, which works sometimes, but not always.
I get it, Google wants Internet access at all times for full telemetry tracking, but it does make some things rather inconvenient.
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Volume seems to choose when to work. I don't touch the volume so it's not that I lowered it.
Volume is definitely an issue. I went from a Pixel 4a to a 9a and now I can't get the volume loud enough on Bluetooth headphones. When walking, traffic noise is enough to overwhelm my headphones so that I can't hear a podcast or phone call. I have read that this is a deliberate choice to stop people damaging their hearing, but I don't think it is going to be loud enough for use on a plane.
It's so bad that there are apps to increase volume:
https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
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It wouldn't be Android if you weren't fighting the UX.
I'd like it to:
- Honor autoplay off settings when hooking up to Android Auto. It doesn't. It always loads the music player, even after a reboot, and no matter what player it is, and how many "Do NOT fucking play my music unless I hit the play button" settings I've selected, it blasts music the moment I start reversing out of the drive way.
- Either put the navi buttons on permanently, or at least not hide them within 5 seconds of me sliding up from the bo
I just want the LTS version (Score:3)
There hasn't been a single improvement to android i needed/wanted since my Nexus 5 back in....2013. I just want vanilla android, no changes, particularly to the UI, and security updates, for the next 60 years. I just don't give a fuck about whatever feature the UI/UX designer trying to justify their job, is trying to squeeze into a mature product at this point. Go fuck yourself, UI/UX dude at google. I hate you, you actively make my life worse.
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Bold of you to assume it's going to be a dude, when it's clearly done by an artsy, ditsy arts major that reacts to word "efficiency" with horror, spilling her drink into the pool from which she's remotely working from.
(See infamous "women in tech work day" tiktok trend from a trend a couple of years ago.)
"Features" (Score:2)
I've been waiting for bugfixes for 2 years.
Maybe now my Pixel will stop trying to protect my hearing by turning my tunes all the way down while I have bluetooth speakers connected.
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That shit has been in for a better part of a decade.
Hell, I remember even an old nokia phone from early 2000s doing this when you connected a different audio output than its speaker.
Excited to manually disable all the new Ai garbage (Score:2)
Dipping out (Score:2)
more is less (Score:3)
I don't need more features, and I don't need updates to break what I already use and disrupt my workflow.
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What has an update broken for you recently? What "workflow" do you have on your phone that is breaking? I'm genuinely curious here, because 99% of the time I apply an update and can't even figure out if anything has changed at all (mainly because I hit the skip button when the popup asks if I would like a tour of new features).