Google Chrome on Android begins work on a transparent navigation bar.

In one of the latest Chrome Canary builds, there is a new "DrawEdgeToEdge" flag, whose denoscription says, "Enables the Android feature Edge-to-Edge to draw below the Nav Bar". After enabling this flag, the Android navigation gesture bar finally becomes transparent, as many users have requested.

But as stated in the corresponding commit on Chromium Gerrit, this is a basic implementation that is not
a suite for launch but fine for a Dev demo.

From personal observations, I can say that the transparency only affects the home and web pages, while the settings, bookmarks, etc. are still unchanged. It is also accompanied by unintentional gesture pill overlap on sites with bottom navigation bars, and the top bars are overlapped by the status bar by the height of the navbar.

Google News | En

A bunch of new upcoming changes to the Google Contacts app:

• Redesigned Call, Text, etc. buttons, which are now presented as a circle with an icon inside.
• A new 'Google Maps · Location sharing' tile, which when clicked will open a map with the contact's location (if they have shared the location with you).
• A new tile will appear on the 'Highlights' tab with Suggestions for who to add to your favorites. As stated, this is "based on who you interact with most".

These hidden features complement the previous changes I discovered, such as the time and weather tile by contact's home address and the new round-frame photo display.

All of these new features are built inside the latest version 4.9.19.533509922 and require only server-side activation (means, they are not yet available).

Google News | En

Android 14 Beta 2.1 bugfix has been released.

Fixed issues:

• Battery percentage could still display as 0% regardless of the device's actual charge level.
• Issues that sometimes caused audio disruptions with the device's speakers.
• System stability issues that could cause apps or the device to freeze or crash.
• An Issue with always-on-display mode when using a device with Android Auto.
• Google Photos app could crash when trying to open certain photos.
• An Issue with Google TV app that caused the PiP window to disappear when switching to picture-in-picture mode with gesture navigation turned on, although playback continued and sound was audible.
• An Issue that caused the Google Contacts app to crash when managing account settings.
• An Issue where the Google Messages app icon did not appear in notifications if Always-on-display mode was enabled.

Build: UPB2.230407.014 → UPB2.230407.019
Patch: May 2023

• OTAs
• Factory Images

🔗 Register for Android beta testing

Google News | En

Big leak of Google Tensor 3 processor specs.

Android Authority has published the specs of the processor that the Pixel 8 will be equipped with, thanks to a source inside Google:

• Layout: 4x Cortex-A510 @ 2.15GHz + 4x Cortex-A715 @ 2.45GHz + 1x Cortex-X3 @ 3.0GHz.
• ARMv9 architecture
• Support for Memory Tagging Extensions (MTE) by Arm.
• GPU: Arm Mali-G715, 890MHz. Presumably a 10 core 'Immortalis' variant with ray tracing support.
• Potential support for 8K30 video decoding/encoding in H.264 and HEVC. But this is unlikely to be included in the final device.
• The Pixel 8 will be the first phone to support AV1 to 4K30 encoding.
• The TPU, codenamed 'Rio', will run at 1.1GHz.
• A new second-generation GXP digital signal processor (codenamed 'callisto') with a frequency increase from 975MHz to 1065MHz.
• New UFS 4.0 controller from Samsung.
• Modem: A 'slightly different variant' of the Exynos Modem 5300.

Google News | En

Android 14 Beta 3 is out! Pixel 7a is now included in the beta testing program.

With the third beta, Android 14 is entering a milestone of work on platform stability. This means that all of the system's APIs and app-facing behaviour have been finalised. Developers can now publish new builds of their apps targeting SDK34 on Google Play.

Build Number: UPB2.230407.019 → UPB3.230519.008
Security Patch: May 2023

Google has already started distributing the update over the air.

• OTAs

• Factory Images

🔗 Register for Android beta testing

Google News | En

Here are the issues that have been fixed in Android 14 Beta 3:

* Fixed issues that prevented Wi-Fi calling from being enabled for some devices and carriers. (Issue #277964472)
* Fixed an issue that caused Direct My Call interactions to fail in some cases where they would normally work. (Issue #278252154)
* Fixed system issues that caused unnecessary power consumption in some cases.
* Fixed system stability issues that caused UI jank in some cases.
* Fixed an issue that caused the system Settings app to crash while setting the wallpaper.
* Fixed an issue with the system UI that could cause a GPU hang, leading to "Application Not Responding" (ANR) errors.
* Fixed a system issue that could sometimes cause a device's GPS services to stop working until the device was rebooted.
* Fixed issues with the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) that could prevent devices from being able to make Wi-Fi calls in some cases.
* Fixed an issue where a blank screen displays after selecting the "Message" option for a recent caller in the Google Phone app.
* Fixed an issue where while 3-button navigation was enabled for a device, putting Google Maps into picture-in-picture mode made the picture-in-picture window disappear.
* Fixed an issue where locking and unlocking a device while playing a video in the Google TV app could cause the device to freeze.
* Fixed an issue with Android Auto where some users could be asked to re-pair Bluetooth.
* Fixed issues with Health Connect, including the following issues and other API and system behaviors:
* An issue where the system back button stopped working while Health Connect integration was in progress.
* An issue where the Route Permissions screen would sometimes freeze.
* An issue where Health Connect sometimes couldn't be accessed in system settings.
* An issue where the data category page of Health Connect was missing some permission types when a filter was applied.

Here are the known issues with Android 14 Beta 3:

* An issue with the Credential Manager platform APIs causes instability in apps that use them. A fix is available in the latest preview version of the Android 14 SDK, which developers can install using Android Studio. Developers who previously installed a preview version of the Android 14 SDK should completely uninstall the previous version and then reinstall the SDK to apply the fix.
* An issue with the system UI sometimes causes the screen to flicker when a video is playing or an app is using in picture-in-picture mode.
* In some cases, video continues playing in the background even after closing an app if the video was playing in picture-in-picture mode when it was closed.
* A video that is playing in picture-in-picture mode stops playing abruptly if the back gesture is used within the PiP settings screens.
* A system issue can sometimes cause the Android System Intelligence service to crash.
* When using a device with a work profile, the Google Play Store app in the work profile hangs or crashes when launched.

New charging connection effect in the status bar.

Android 14 Beta 3 has added a new pop-up chip with battery icon and percentage of charge when connect the charger, the animation is similar to the privacy indicators. The chip only pops up for a short time.

Google News | En

A demonstration of all the new lock screen clock options Android 14.

Google has really made an effort, and many of them have a nice animation when switching to Always on Display mode.

Google News | En