Android

Out of all of Google's major Android apps, the Play Store is the one that perhaps sees the most number of redesigns, most of them coming without warning. Long before even the likes of Gmail and Calendar embraced it, the premier Android app marketplace began toting Material Design elements and principles, sometimes not to users' satisfaction. Google Play Store is undergoing yet another redesign, perhaps in the name of cleanliness and visual simplicity. Unfortunately, it could actually end up being more cumbersome to use with everything hidden behind groups and menus.

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LG's official exit from the smartphone market has been one of the biggest and perhaps saddest news in the mobile market, especially considering LG's history and lineage. For owners of its phones, however, the announcement also brings with it worries about the future of their devices as far as software updates are concerned. To allay those fears, LG is making a very public commitment to continue supporting some of those phones for up to three years, of course with some important caveats to take note of.

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Although it was really inevitable, the foldable phone train was, at least for a while, delayed by last year's more pressing global events. Things seem to be moving forward now, though, with Huawei finally launching its true second-gen foldable and Xiaomi finally jumping on board with the Mi Mix Fold last month. Those, however, aren't the only phone makers with foldable ambitions, and, according to some sources, OPPO and Vivo will also be joining the fray sooner rather than later.

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Google may have skipped its big developer event last year, but I/O is returning for 2021, though with an online format as you might expect. Announced today, the three day event will kick off on May 18, and as always we're expecting to hear about the latest in Android, Chrome, and some of the more unusual moonshot ideas that Google is known for.

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Samsung has unveiled its 2021 A-Series smartphones, and if you've been waiting for affordable 5G then Android handsets like the A52 5G, A42 5G, and A32 5G might fit the bill. Launching across various US carriers from later this s week, the three new 5G devices - and two even cheaper 4G LTE A-Series phones, the A12 and A02s - significantly undercut the Galaxy S21 family, despite grabbing a fair few of their features.

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The latest update for Pixel phones has landed quite a few treats for owners but even more so for the latest models. According to the changelog and user reports, the Pixel 5 and the Pixel 4a 5G, both of which share the same Snapdragon 765G chipset, have received optimizations for their graphical performance. Unfortunately, it seems that some owners of those phones are now also having trouble with playing Netflix in HD quality, and, at least at the moment, the exact cause of this issue continues to elude users and developers.

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The week's biggest and perhaps saddest news for the mobile industry is LG's acceptance of defeat in the smartphone rat race. In addition to questions about its future software support for existing phones, however, there may have also been thoughts about the phones that would have made it to stores in what is now an alternate reality. At the top of that list is, of course, what would have been the world's first commercial rollable phone but both the LG Rollable and a "normal" LG V70, a.k.a. the LG Rainbow have now appeared in real-world photos to show what could have been.

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Virtual and augmented reality, collectively known as mixed reality (MR) or, more recently, "extended reality" or XR, always had the potential to make life not only more fun but also more productive. Most applications, however, may have focused too much on the "fun" aspect, making most people presume the technologies are mostly just for entertainment. These experiences can, of course, be quite interesting but Google's latest WebXR experiments for smartphones try to prove how they can be educational as well.

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Google's April 2021 security update has started landing for a variety of Pixel handsets dating back to the Pixel 3, and while the update seems fairly innocuous when described by Google, there actually could be a major upgrade lurking within for Pixel 5 users. In fact, some are reporting that so-called performance enhancements in GPU-heavy apps are actually very dramatic in nature, blowing benchmarks from early in the Pixel 5's lifecycle out of the water.

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Microsoft has revealed a new slate of games headed to Xbox Game Pass in the first half of the month, and there's a big name leading the charge. April's Game Pass additions will be led by Grand Theft Auto V, which is making a grand return to Xbox Game Pass this week. Aside from Grand Theft Auto V, it's going to be a fairly quiet April for the service - or at least it will be until we get into the latter half of the month.

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Sony can't be pleased with case and accessory maker Olixar after it leaked images of some of its cases for Sony's coming Xperia 1 III smartphone. The rub for Sony was that not only did Olixar show off its clear cases, but the renderings show the Sony smartphone essentially naked ahead of the official launch. Reports indicate that the images leaked by Olixar look the same as some previous renderings of the device leaked in 2020 with at least one change.

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Although it has long been playing in the PC gaming market, Lenovo's Legion brand arrived late to the smartphone game. While the likes of the ASUS ROG Phone is already at its fourth major iteration, Lenovo will only be announcing its second gaming phone this week. The Lenovo Legion 2 Pro, however, has a few tricks up its sleeves that keep it distinct from its peers, including a different spin on the built-in cooling fan design, no pun intended.

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