Google Pixel

The company is giving 25 Pixel Superfans a chance to attend its pre-launch event in London on June 27th, according to a message sent to Superfans on Friday.

Google’s yet to say anything official about the Pixel 10, but it was recently caught mid commercial shoot on a Vancouver beach by @MarksGonePublic on X. Separately, Mystic Leaks says we should expect color options for the Pixel 10 to include a black Obsidian, blue, purple Iris, and yellow Limoncello, and the 10 Pro and XL models to come in choice of white Porcelain, black Obsidian, green, and gray Sterling.

After the September Pixel Watch update to Wear OS 5 ran into issues, Google released a fix in November and said its wearables would have to wait until March for another update.

Google’s excellent Pixel 9A is suffering from an early bug, but luckily it’s a minor one. The selfie camera’s viewfinder has an unwelcome flicker in dark scenes, as if it’s struggling to find the right exposure — something I’ve spotted on my own 9A. The good news is that photos themselves are unaffected.

That’s according to Soniya Jobanputra, a product management director for the Pixel series. Google’s new blog post highlights some of the behind-the-scenes thinking on the Pixel 9A’s redesign, and there are some interesting tidbits in there about the new camera bar and iris color option, which is apparently inspired by the Pixel 3A’s “purple-ish” hue. Now bring back the contrasting colored power button, you cowards.

The Information reported the layoffs, which struck the Platforms and Devices team, responsible for Android software, Pixel hardware, and more. They follow a voluntary buyout in January, and in a statement Google blames the move to combine those teams in April 2024:

Google’s new affordable phone has survived mysterious component issues and Trump’s tariffs to arrive in US stores today at its promised price of $499. Despite the tariff pause, that’s no longer a given.

Google isn’t shipping the Pixel 9A until April 10th, as 9to5Google notes, but that didn’t stop the PBKreviews channel from acquiring and disassembling one. As phones go, this one looks fairly easy to take apart, although as noted in the video’s description, it may not be easy to replace the charging port.

People on Reddit are complaining they’ve missed work after their Pixel 9 alarms didn’t wake them up. Some claim they told Gemini to “stop” a timer or just to hush it, and it would unexpectedly disable all their alarms, too. This isn’t the only time we’ve heard problems with mobile device alarms recently (iPhone, Pixel Watch), have you noticed any issues?

Until now, you’ve only been able to use the scanner when the display is on, either by waking it or by using the phones’ always-on display feature. Now, Android Authority reports that after testing a settings option to enable screen-off fingerprint unlocking on Pixel 9 phones, Google has expanded that test to other Pixel phones in the third Android 16 beta.

We got some very limited hands-on time with the Pixel 9A before its announcement today. That news came with an unusual disclaimer that the 9A isn’t going up for pre-order yet; Google is investigating a “component quality issue” before putting the phone on sale sometime in April. For now, it seems all we can do is admire this “peony” pink 9A from afar.