In this week’s top stories: Pixel 6 is programmed to run on a chip made by Google, the existence of “Pixel Buds A” has leaked and Samsung’s April 2021 security update has been released.
The biggest news in the Android world this week comes from our exclusive report that Google’s autumn 2021 phones, including the alleged “Pixel 6”, will run on Google’s Whitechapel “GS101” chip. This breaks the standards of the Pixel line, which until now has worked exclusively with Qualcomm Snapdragon processors.
From the references, it appears that Whitechapel is being developed with Samsung Semiconductor’s large-scale systems integration (SLSI) division, meaning that Google’s chips will have some similarities to Samsung Exynos, including software components.
Elsewhere in Made by Google leaks, we reported this week that the next Google headphones will be “Pixel Buds A”. These new headphones will come in two colors, white and green, and are visually identical to last year’s Pixel Buds, except for a few changes in the color scheme.
The price of Pixel Buds A is currently unknown, but the designation “A” suggests that we might be looking for a more affordable set of Made by Google headphones, just as the Pixel 4a is an affordable alternative to Pixel 4. With the second Pixel Current generation buds for $ 179, there is plenty of room for a more affordable set in the Made by Google line. That said, it is unclear what cuts Google could make to offer these buttons at a more affordable price.
On the Samsung side of things, the company started releasing its April 2021 security patch as early as March 29, for its primary and intermediary phones. Given that Google does not release the monthly Pixel update until the first Monday of each month, this puts Samsung’s April 2021 security update a full week ahead of the competition.
Samsung’s true flagship series is generally among the first to see monthly updates, and this month the launch started on March 29 with the current flagship family, the Galaxy S21 series. The download on S21 devices weighs more than 1 GB and started in India, but has since expanded on a global scale. The update was expanded to the S20 FE and S10 series, and on April 1 it appeared on the Galaxy S9 + in Germany.
Chromecast fans with Google TV had the opportunity to see a fun new accessory this week, the “SideClick”. As the name describes, SideClick attaches the standard buttons for a universal remote on the side of your Chromecast with the Google TV remote.
What is the use of this accessory? SideClick is essentially a miniaturized universal remote control that must handle vital functions of your TV or sound bar without keeping multiple reports out. It can duplicate the infrared output of the original remote control, adding it to the “new” remote control.
The developers of Lawnchair – the third-party Android launcher app that replicates some of the best aspects of Pixel Launcher – shared the Alpha version of its next release, Lawnchair 11. The main feature is that the launcher now supports Android 11, but there was an effort meaningful to do a complete rewrite of the application’s functionality.
At the moment, the team behind Lawnchair 11 has only confirmed support for Android 11, but support for older versions is about to arrive. You may experience crashes or problems if you try to sideload on a device that is not running the latest mobile operating system. We should also mention that you shouldn’t expect the same feature set as the current public version of Lawnchair Launcher. This is a very early construction, with some basic features still missing.
The rest of this week’s main news follows:
Android |
Android / Google TV |
Applications and updates |
Chrome / OS |
Google |
Made by Google |
Wear OS |
Videos |
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