As a reminder, Inbox is the tech newsletter that goes beyond the news cycle. We cover the most important 9to5Google stories from the last couple of days along with a few highlights from around the web. We publish every Tuesday and Thursday, and if you like what you read, please subscribe.
Inbox is written by Daniel Bader. Read previous issues here, and then catch up with Ben Schoon’s excellent Weekender column published every Sunday.
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The through-line in every iPhone Duo review yesterday was this: excellent hardware (though a bit too heavy) and a chaotic software experience. When Apple’s foldable launches on Friday, it will remind early adopters of what Android used to feel like whenever a new form factor was introduced: exciting, janky, and slightly aggravating.
I think 9to5Google readers understand that Android is for tweakers. It’s why so many of you sign up for Android betas on daily-driver hardware; it’s why there’s a thriving community of indie developers filling gaps in the ecosystem. Android’s freedom and flexibility (and cost) make it particularly well suited to the cavalcade of use cases and designs we see in the market today.
That openness confers other, more nebulous benefits; it’s far easier to emulate games on Android along with other legally grey activities that won’t be mentioned here. If there’s something you want to do on Android, chances are you can figure out a way to do it.
It seems like the iPhone Duo’s early adopters will be faced with a similar conundrum: the ability to do more on a device that is likely to frustrate and delight in equal measure. As Ben explains in his iPhone Duo review roundup, “the app situation clearly seems to be running into the same early problems as Android foldables hit. Apps simply aren’t optimized for a radically new form factor yet.”
But as with all things iPhone, app and software improvements are likely to come quickly and consistently over the next few months and years. Ben eloquently sums up the situation: “Apple has a vision for its foldable and, while it’s tripped up on a few things on attempt #1, it’s undeniably a good start.”
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Galaxy S27 might drop to 8GB of RAM; other Android phones could go back to 4GB. Not sure I entirely believe this rumor, but it is true that Google has been making Android more memory-efficient, so maybe it is true?
ModRetro’s Chromatic is more transparent and cheaper than ever; how could I not love it? This product feels like the physical manifestation of using X.
Spotify podcast memberships let you support your favorite shows and get added perks. I support this feature, but the continued fragmentation of the podcast subscription ecosystem is driving me crazy.
Iron Man himself now officially endorses Snap’s latest smart glasses. Because he’s the only person who can afford to buy them.
Older Pixel phones appear to be getting Google’s new 3D emoji. Depending on who you ask, this is a good thing or a terrible thing.
Google says Chrome’s Safe Browsing Enhanced Protection mode makes users 10x safer. Perfect timing with yesterday’s PHP vulnerabilities.
You can cut your cell phone bill to $10/month or get a Pixel 11 for $400 right now – here’s how. Some decent deals from Mint Mobile (#notsponsored).
YouTube starts hiding the dislike button on normal videos. This makes sense to me; dislike buttons used to be there to help shape your algorithm, but there are so many other ways to do that today that its existence feels unnecessary.
Google upgrading Gemini for Android Auto with Personal Intelligence. I can’t wait to ask Gemini about that mole on my back while driving my in-laws around the city.
Android 17 QPR3 Beta 2 for Pixel rolling out with 21 fixes. (Almost) nothing to see here.
Google rolling out minor Nest Hub update
Samsung is rolling out Android 17 updates for some of its most popular Galaxy phones
Google gives Pixel 9 another year of free Satellite SOS connectivity. I have a feeling this isn’t the last announcement of this kind we’ll see.
Google Pixel’s solution to using Face Unlock in the dark seems to be just blinding you
The wide folds are coming; foldable display shipments to increase by 44% in 2026, analysts say. This has been a very good year for book-style foldables, and the momentum is slated to continue into 2027.
Google reiterates missing Fitbit Air sleep breathing quality feature coming ‘soon’
Google TV powers the RayNeo Pocket TV Pro glasses, and that’s exactly the problem
Google Wallet rolling out notifications feed, support for more digital passports
OpenAI GPT models are coming to Google Antigravity ‘soon,’ Cloud ‘in the coming weeks’. OpenAI and Microsoft continue their very public divorce.
Xbox Cloud Gaming’s added playtime costs start at around 40¢ per hour. Who is asking for this feature?
Someone made a Walkman music player for the Galaxy Z Fold 8, and it works with YouTube Music. The app may be an iOS clone, but I’m happy it exists.
Non-folding phones can still be interesting
➡️ FWD:
This section has some of our favorite stuff from around the internet. Great videos, weird memes, fun reads, recommended apps, whatever. Send us your recommendations!
I was the guest on this week’s Sideload episode, and we talked about my favorite thing: AI. In particular, how we use AI in our daily lives.
One thing we touched on that I’m going to delve into in a future newsletter is whether Google is actually behind the competition with Gemini. With the recent release of Gemini 4 Argon, it’s clear the company is close to the frontier, but the more important question to answer is whether Gemini is a good product. I make the argument that it is, especially because Google has its tendrils in every part of my life, from email to search to maps, and that makes Gemini’s answers far more useful when I ask it questions of a personal nature. That it has a 25% market share right now is almost accidental; so many people are forced to interact with Gemini in one way or another through Google’s various products.
It’s also bizarre that Google hasn’t figured out a way to compete with Meta on the personal agent front. On its earnings call, Meta said that Muse has been used by over 10 million people, and 25% of them use it every day. Google has Spark, but it’s not in the same league in terms of functionality or mindshare.
Google is unquestionably behind Anthropic and OpenAI where the money is made: in the enterprise. Antigravity is a subpar harness, and Argon is a capable but unspectacular coding agent.
Nevertheless, Google has the money, the user base, and, most importantly, the incentive to keep going after the top labs. In an interview this week with Alex Kantrowitz, CEO Sundar Pichai said that he is committed to the frontier at all costs, and that Google Cloud compute capacity is being reallocated in 2027 to train state-of-the-art models.
It’s almost Thanksgiving travel season, which means it’s time to re-up one of the best Onion videos about the places our souls go to die: airports.
As mentioned above, Supernatural is relaunching on the Quest as a new independent app with the original owners and much of the same crew. When Meta announced that it was laying off much of its Reality Labs division and shutting Supernatural down, it didn’t look good for the future of what I consider the best VR workout app ever made. But by the summer, it was announced that Meta had negotiated a sale of the brand and IP (but not the code), which allowed the formation of Supernatural Health.
Launching this week in Early Access, it’s now double what it used to cost — $200 a year — but it’s one of the few subscriptions I look forward to paying. If you’re a Quest owner, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
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Thanks for reading, and have a great day. I’ll talk to you on Tuesday.
-Daniel