The merger of OxygenOS and ColorOS, as part of OnePlus becoming essentially a subbrand of Oppo, has been coming for some time, and the merged OS should begin arriving for all supported smartphones with the upcoming Android 12 release. If you're currently enrolled in the OnePlus Developer Preview program on your 9 or 9 Pro, you can get an early look with a new release now arriving for your phone.

The OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro are getting a new Android 12 Developer Preview was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Users who frequently tweak their homescreens know the pain of widgets that can't be edited after they're placed. (Lookin' at you, Palabre.) Android 12 has a new system for dealing with it in the Material You interface: the "Reconfigure" button. The API was announced this summer, but we're starting to see it implemented for a few apps updated to take advantage of Android 12.

The Reconfigure button is a floating action button that appears when you place, move, or resize a widget, allowing you to reconfigure its settings without making other changes (like removing it).

Check out Android 12's new widget editing tool was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Fossil announced its Gen 6 smartwatches featuring Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear 4100+ chipset in late August. Nearly a month later, the smartwatches are now on sale worldwide. The Gen 6 smartwatch lineup represents a major jump over Fossil's previous smartwatches, primarily due to the switch to a newer chipset.

Apart from better performance and longer battery life, the Fossil Gen 6 supports 0-80 percent fast charging in just 30 minutes. Other hardware stuffed inside the wearable includes a 1.28-inch circular display, 1GB RAM, 8GB storage, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC, a heart rate scanner, and an Sp02 sensor.

You can now buy Fossil's Gen 6 watches running the Wear OS version you don't want was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

The final release of Android 12 is coming very soon, but details have started to drip in on what follows it. While the logical answer to that would be "Android 13," Google is apparently going for an approach it hasn't taken in quite some time: a point release. Recent evidence strongly suggests Google will be releasing a minor revision shortly after Android 12. Now, screenshots of a 12.1 build have surfaced online, and by the looks of it, it's becoming way better for foldable phones.

New Android 12.1 leak shows Google is embracing foldable phones was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Google just released a new software remote for Android TV and Google TV devices. That's a fancy way of saying that you have a new way to use your phone to control your smart TV's Android-powered guts. Of course, Google's had a dedicated app with that functionality for a while, but it wasn't great. In fact, Google recently de-listed and ended support the old app. So, what's this new method like?

How to try out Google's new Android TV remote on your phone was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

You've come to know Nokia for its solid, modern feature phones and its cookie-cutter Android phones that get consistent updates. But will you come to love the company for its upcoming tablet?

The company, which is owned by Finland-base HMD Global and contracts manufacturing to Foxconn International Holdings, is teasing a new tablet to be announced on October 6.

Everything you’d expect from a Nokia phone in a tablet.
Coming 6.10.21 pic.twitter.com/uTssAURMMQ

Nokia set to launch its second Android tablet ever on October 6 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

If you're reading Android Police, it's safe to say you're a tech-savvy person. You might even be the person your friends turn to for smartphone recommendations. Not everyone keeps up-to-date with the latest technology, though, so if you know someone still rocking a smartphone running Android 2.3.7, tell them it's time to buy a new device.

Earlier this year, Google warned us that account sign-ins would no longer be accepted for its apps on devices running Gingerbread, and it's kept good on its promise.

Old Android phones are breaking today, so get ready to play tech support for your elderly relatives was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Forcibly uprooting your entire life isn't easy, just ask me about it. One day you have all the small luxuries of life that you've worked hard to get, the next you're in a strange apartment you don't own, that you have to momentarily share with others, and you're wondering how come you're starting from zero in your mid-thirties. There's also only one TV to share with people whose entertainment taste differs so much from yours.

The big white wall in my apartment just got an Android TV upgrade was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Anker continues to expand its budget electronics offerings. The company already makes a series of projectors under its Nebula brand, and now it's expanding into set-top boxes. The Nebula Android TV Dongle is a video streaming dongle that runs Android TV (aren't you glad we're here to cut through this technical jargon?). It's shipping from Amazon today for $89.99.

Stephen wants me to point out that this isn't technically a dongle, since it plugs in with a standard HDMI cable.

Anker's new Nebula 4K Android TV dongle makes a surprise debut on Amazon was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

About a month ago Google released a new YouTube Music app for Wear OS. But "Wear OS" now means either the new 3.0 version, running on only the Samsung Galaxy Watch4 until at least next year, or more or less every other Wear OS device running older software. Today Google says the YouTube Music Wear OS app is available on some older devices.

The press release says the app works with "select smartwatches," so there appears to be some kind of limit in place.

YouTube Music for Wear OS now works on more than one watch was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Google has spent nearly half a decade attempting to make it easier for OEMs to keep their devices updated, most notably with the introduction of Project Treble in 2017. The company has previously proposed efforts to bring Android closer to the Linux kernel, something it's finally attempting with the upcoming release of Android 12. At this week's Linux Plumbers Conference, Google laid out how it's planning to accomplish its lofty goal.

Google plans to bring Android's kernel closer to the Linux upstream was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

The Surface Duo is a contentious little gadget, with a lot of cool hardware and a lot of glaring issues. One of them is slow software updates. Despite it being Microsoft's only mobile product, and an expensive one at that, it's still running the year-old Android 10. A day after announcing the sequel device, Microsoft says it'll have the original Duo upgraded to Android 11 before the end of this year.

Microsoft commits to an Android 11 update for the original Surface Duo this year was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

In January 2020, members of the European Parliament voted to establish a universal charging connection for smartphones sold in the EU. Since then, we've been waiting for this effort to be passed into law, and as of this morning, it's one step closer. The European Commission has now put forward legislation that would establish USB-C as a common charger for mobile devices, finally requiring a universal standard no matter the smartphone.

The EU is is set to mandate USB-C on all smartphones and Apple is predictably pouting was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Google has been ramping up its efforts to get people to stop driving with a wheel in one hand and a smartphone in the other. Many of the things in Google's driving experience are getting an upgrade, if not an entirely new interface, including the classic Android Auto, the phone-oriented Assistant driving mode, and even the upcoming Android Automotive.

Google Assistant driving mode

Drivers reliant on the Android Auto app have known for more than two years that it would eventually be replaced by Assistant Driving Mode.

Hey Google, pay for gas — Android Auto is getting a whole new bag of tricks was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Accessibility is a subject that will affect us all eventually — some of us sooner than others. It's honestly pretty hard to make the topic attractive or marketable compared to Android's bigger, flashier features, But when you're limited from doing something in the "normal" way, accessibility matters a whole lot, and it's also a point of frustration when the very promise of technology is its flexibility and extensibility. To help with that, Google's adding two new features that help those with motor impairments use Android.

Crack a smile, because Android's new face gesture accessibility controls are official was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Today, Google has announced the rollout of a whole pile of "new" features for Android and Android Auto — 16 changes, by Google's count. Of course, this is Google, so "new" in many of these cases means they've been spotted in testing for months, and you may have been using many of them already. The tweaks cover a wide range, including accessibility improvements and Android Auto (which we'll cover separately to help streamline things just a little bit), but highlights include a new remote control for Android TV built right into your phone, an Assistant reminders hub, several time-saving Gboard improvements, and the trickle-down of a few Pixel-exclusive features.

Google brings us up to speed with what's new-new (and kinda-new) for Android was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Pastel color schemes that adapt to your taste and buttons with low-radius corners are the hallmarks of the Material You design scheme for Android and it's been taking over Google's apps one by one. We're now seeing a drip and a drop of its essence coming down to Maps.

The Russian-based Telegram group Google Pixels has picked up on a new navigation bar design with chip-shaped highlights indicating which tab a user is currently on — as seen today, the icons are colored-in.

Material You styling is en route to Google Maps was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

One of the headline features of Android 12, at least on Pixel phones, is the new Material You design language and its core component, the "Monet" theming system. It takes a quite unconventional approach to Android theming, automatically assembling a color palette based on a user's wallpaper and applying it all over the UI. That's fine for Google's own phones, but what about those from other manufacturers? Although this theming system won't hit AOSP in time for Android 12, it now looks like Google is planning to make dynamic theming open-source for a future Android release.

Material You's dynamic theming might not be exclusive to Pixels for long was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

As we get closer to the official launch of Android 12, Google is updating more of its apps to support all of its new Material You themes. Gboard was one of the first to receive a makeover, with its fresh color scheme now available to anyone running the latest Android beta. However, it seems like the look isn't quite complete yet, as new Material You elements are on the way in an upcoming release.

Gboard beta is now more Material You than ever before was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

After Google Calendar, Keep, Docs, Sheets, and Slides, it is now Google Messages' turn to get a Material You revamp. The latest Messages v9.7 beta update introduces a new Material You-inspired design, though it clearly looks like a work in progress.

The search bar at the top gets a pill-shaped redesign compared to its previous rectangular shape. The floating action button for initiating a new chat at the bottom now has a more rounded rectangular look.

Google Messages' Material You design makes it to beta (APK Download) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.