Not really good

Google is making a brand-new weather app for the Pixel 9 - and we've got screenshots.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17993058

Ahead of the Pixel 9 launch next month, Google is expanding the availability of Preferred Care beyond the US to the UK and Japan.

I've been on the fence on the Fold 2 ever since the aspect ratios/screen sizes were revealed.

On one hand, I really like the 0G folds short but wide passport form factor, it's the second biggest reason I held off getting one of those really narrow Galaxy Folds (biggest being, it's still a SamSuck lol) and the Fold 2s upcoming changes means the unfolded form is going to be pretty much a square

But on the other hand, I think it would be better for one of the biggest uses I use my Fold unfolded for: Remoting into various desktops, since the Fold 2 will be more like 2 8/9 regular pros next to each other it should allow for a bit better "widescreen" when rotated (I like to have the desktop screen on the top and the OSK on the bottom "laptop style") and even though it's a square it should be bigger overall

What are your guys thoughts on the Fold 2? Are you upgrading or waiting and seeing what the Fold 3 will look like (and the TSMC 3nm Tensor)

Google is once again extending Pixel Superfan sign-ups to a new nation, as registration gets underway in Germany.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17858716

It’s no secret that Google is working on satellite connectivity for Pixel phones, but amid rumors of the upcoming Pixel..

Google is working on a “charging optimization” page in Android 15 that’ll let Pixel users set a manual charging limit of 80%.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17603768

Code within the Google app beta suggests Pixel 9 Pro phones may come with a free one-year subscription to Gemini Advanced. The standard Pixel 9 will get a 6-month free trial too.

Had similar problems with my P6P. There are multiple areas in my town where I show full / nearly full bars, but my service is terrible or non-existent (!). If I toggle Airplane Mode, I'll get great speeds until it drops out again. Sometimes this is 30 seconds, sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes hours/days. But at some point it will drop out again. Ugh...

I've been having a hard time with my Pixel Buds Pro for a week or so. It is hard to explain but I think the case and the right earbud don't get along anymore. I'm not sure which one is at fault though.

When I have a charge on the case, and both buds in the case, the devices connect and disconnect really quickly to Bluetooth. Sometimes it charges the right one while it is doing this, sometimes it doesn't. It will actually pull down the charge on my phone while it is going on.

Any ideas? I'm 99% sure I need to replace them, but hoping there is something simple and cheap that could fix it.

I've been wanting to get a privacy screen protector so that you can't see it from the sides, but all the ones I've tried have this 'oily' type of look to it. Maybe this is inherent to the technology, but does anyone know of any that do not have this oily appearance, especially on white screens?

I'm backing up my photos from a trip to my computer and have just discovered how frustratingly difficult it seems to be to use a computer to make my selection of a single still from the image sequences the Pixel sometimes takes (forget what it calls them).

I know you can you use the photos app but I want to use my computer (a mac). Preview just considers them stills, so it essentially picks one for me (I assume it's the last still in the sequence), that's usually what I want but they take up more space and if I can't choose a different still then it defeats the purpose.

EDIT: As it turns out, Top shot (the Google name for these 'image sequences' I was referring to), doesn't do what I thought it did. I thought it was just fancy burst mode where the shots in the burst are treated as one file on storage, and where the decision to use burst or not is automated with clever 'AI'. That's not totally wrong except that it isn't an 'image' sequence in the sense that I know it. It records a video and a still when you take a top shot. I'm not exactly sure, but I think basically the last frame is a still and everything you see before is a 'video'. The distinction here is that the video is a video in the sense that it isn't comprised of still images in common stills formats nor at the resolution and other capabilities of the pixel's still cameras. The video is a video file recorded in a video format, using a video codec, at a lower resolution, minus HDR and with the compression techniques of video leading basically to just drastically lower quality images. In essence if you use the photos app as intended to select a still from the sequence recorded as a top shot, you can select between 1 photo of the best available quality (depending on your stills settings) and multiple useless video stills of poor quality. This explains why all the posts I found whilst researching my query were from people who wanted to extract a video and a still, which I thought was odd because surely you would want the constituent stills comprising the video with which you could do whatever you wanted including making a video from them for some reason if it floats your boat. Now I realise it's because there is only a video and a still inside the 'MP.jpg' files and they just want to split those 2 elements apart, in fact I think a lot of those asking were trying to split them apart so they could delete the useless video and save space. Not thrilled to learn this. Definitely switching off top shot from now on as it is both useless in almost ever scenario, but also, due to the automated nature of when its used, taking up greatly increased storage space whilst delivering so much less benefit than I had presumed. Icing on the cake, Google apparently introduced this top shot feature some time ago and replaced an existing burst mode that actually worked as one would expect so now I can't invoke an actually useful burst mode on demand when I want it as one would have done in the past because the function... doesn't exist anymore, great!

Nova launcher is getting more and more incompatible with my Google Pixel 8 and my Google Pixel 6. The Google search bar on the home screen was the reason I started using a third party launcher. have they fixed that yet?

I've got burn in from Spotify being left up 10-30 min twice a day during most week days... I've read the pixel phone help doc with no solution available... I was wondering if I could do something to fix it myself or do I need to contact Google?

Edit: Solved! I forgot I had accidentally opened a VPN app that was not yet configured and it had "always-on" enabled by default. Turned it off and everything worked fine again.

Hello friends! I dropped my Pixel 8 today and everything appeared to be fine until I realized nothing on discord would load and spotify said I was not connected to the internet. It showed that I was on 5G and should have had great connection, but nothing. I tried connecting to my work wifi, which connected, but again there's no internet when I try to use any apps.

Basically my phone is connected to wifi/5G but the internet just doesn't work after the drop.

If y'all could help me figure out what's going on, if it's fixable, etc, that would be lovely. I'd be happy to provide any additional information that could be useful. Also if it matters, I'm using grapheneOS.

I have no interest in playing or emulating on the Pixel 6 Pro, but I am interested in knowing how it performs under emulation (especially under the most recent emulators, like Yuzu), any experience?

It's alive!

Received this today. I thought it was some emergency security fix given the odd update time.