Taking a look back at this week’s news and headlines across the Android world, including Galaxy S25 Ultra reviews, Pixel 9a pricing, China’s growing market, Google Play Protect updates, Nothing (3a) launch, permanent notifications, and the return of Pebble.
Android Circuit is here to remind you of a few of the many discussions around Android in the last seven days. You can also read my weekly digest of Apple news here on Forbes.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
Galaxy S25 Ultra Camera Shootout
Cameras remain one of the key areas of competition in smartphones. Samsung has pushed the new capabilities of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but how does it compare to last year’s model? The team at GSM Arena went on a San Jose walkabout to find out:
“Starting with the main 200MP camera set to its default 12MP mode, the difference in image processing is more noticeable than it was indoors. The older Galaxy S24 Ultra produces sharper images – it can go overboard in places, though. The color rendering is similar enough, even if the two phones don’t always agree on white balance.”
(GSM Arena).
Paying For The Pixel 9a
Google’s mid-range Pixel is expected to debut around the time of its I/O Developer Conference in May. That will be a few weeks after the potential release of Apple’s iPhone SE, and you can be sure the head-to-head comparisons will flow. One of those points will be the price, and we have a strong indicator where Google will set its bar:
“Now, we can exclusively reveal the pricing for the US and Canada, thanks to our sources. In the US, the Google Pixel 9a will be priced at $499 for the 128GB model, and $599 for the 256GB model. That is the same starting price as the Pixel 8a, however, the 256GB model is $40 more expensive. This follows the new pricing structure that Google started with the Pixel 9 series last August, where the 256GB model was $100 more than its 128GB version”
China’s Growing Market
China’s annual smartphone market has grown by 5.6 percent, according to IDC’s latest analysis. Vivo took the top spot in 2004, with Huawei at number two and Apple falling to number three, although Apple has taken the lead for the last calendar quarter with the launch of the iPhone 16 family:
“China’s smartphone market shipped 76.4 million units in 4Q24, a 3.9% year-on-year (YoY) increase. This growth was driven by new product launches and government subsidies initiated in some provinces and cities. For the full year 2024, the Chinese market shipped 286.2 million units, a 5.6% YoY growth, marking a recovery after two years of decline thanks to pent-up demand and innovations like GenAI.”
Google Play Protects
The Google Play Store team have looked back at 2024 to discuss how they protect the app ecosystem around Android (at least for Android devices tied closely to Google Play services). That includes a broad strokes presentation on how it deals with malicious apps, bad actors, and malware:
“Last year, those investments included AI-powered threat detection, stronger privacy policies, supercharged developer tools, new industry-wide alliances, and more. As a result, we prevented 2.36 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play and banned more than 158,000 bad developer accounts that attempted to publish harmful apps.
Nothing (3a) Launch
Rather than jump to the Nothing (3), following the Nothing (2) and subsequent Nothing (2a), the team has moved straight to the affordable handset… an unsurprising move given the iPhone SE and Pixel 9a are due up in the next few months:
“Nothing has always set it up to challenge the leading smartphone brands, including Apple. And numerous reports have said that this Spring, Apple will be introducing its own affordable phone, the iPhone SE fourth-generation (although it could come with an entirely different name).”
(Forbes).
Notifications Are Here To Stay
While some Android apps already have persistent notifications, Google is set to standardise the system in Android 16 and make it cleanly available to all developers. The current beta shows the work in progress with one new notification style available.
“Android 16 Beta 1 only introduces support for progress-centric notifications, a new notification style that shows the progress of something like a rideshare pickup, a food delivery dropoff, or distance until the next turn. Developers can use this new notification style to denote states and milestones in a user’s journey through points and segments on a progress bar.”
And Finally…
Those with long memories will remember one of the early success stories of the smartwatch in Pebble. Google became the eventual owner, while third-party developers worked on Repebble to keep the platform alive. Now they have a boost, as Google releases as much of the source code as they can:
“The OS was built with FreeRTOS, so Pebble’s source code included multiple modules for memory management, graphics, and timekeeping, as well as an extensive framework to load and run custom apps written in C and Javascript. However, Google had to remove some proprietary code from the database before they could publish it. Code for chipset support and the Bluetooth stack is missing, for example, so developers will have to do a non-trivial amount of work to build new firmware updates for Pebble watches.”
Android Circuit rounds up the news from the Android world every weekend here on Forbes. Don’t forget to follow me so you don’t miss any coverage in the future, and of course, read the sister column in Apple Loop! Last week’s Android Circuit can be found here, and if you have any news and links you’d like to see featured in Android Circuit, get in touch!