Android 17 Drops For Pixel Phones and Watch (phonearena.com)
- Reference: 0183965808
- News link: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/26/06/18/1733258/android-17-drops-for-pixel-phones-and-watch
- Source link: https://www.phonearena.com/news/google-just-dropped-its-biggest-update-of-the-year-and-it-hits-android-17-pixel-and-watch-all-at-once_id181143
> 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 [2]blog post .
[1] https://www.phonearena.com/news/google-just-dropped-its-biggest-update-of-the-year-and-it-hits-android-17-pixel-and-watch-all-at-once_id181143
[2] https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android/android-17-features/
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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Maybe they could start by ripping out all the nagging pop-ups that occur when you are actually trying to use the phone or tablet.
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> 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 speakerp
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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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> 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
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> 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 som
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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:
[1]https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.goodev.volume.booster&hl=en_US
I just want the LTS version (Score:2)
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.
"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.
Excited to manually disable all the new Ai garbage (Score:2)
Hopefully all the new Ai features can be turned off on my Pixel 9, or this might be the first update I pass on.
Dipping out (Score:2)
My current phone is on 13 and my next will be as dumb as possible as long as it'll share connection to a small tablet.
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The summary leads with 'floating app Bubbles'.
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