News & Reviews:   Google

Since Huawei was placed on the US Entity list last year, Google was banned from working with the company. Recently, Google has reportedly applied for a license with the US government to be able to work with Huawei again.

By now, you would have noticed that the Google Maps app has a new app look and if you've been living under the rock, that signifies the company's 15th anniversary since the app's debut. Besides Waze, Google Maps is one of Malaysian's most-used apps especially in Kuala Lumpur (even for locals) to get around the city and apparently, the company quietly rolled out some new features. 

Available on Android and Apple smartphones (yes, even iOS users use this over Apple Maps which works terribly in Malaysia), there are five new features to check out - Explore, Commute, Saved, Contribute and Updates. These are already available on the menu so let's check out what can you do with these.

There are a lot of other ways we can interact with our smartphones other than touching the screens or pressing the buttons. With Motion Sense from the latest Google Pixel 4 series, we are able to hover our hands above the screen to control the device by doing some gestures. This time, it is said that Google will be bringing a new way to control your Pixel, which is to double-tap at the back of the device to trigger certain functions.

Turns out Android 11 was on the horizon after all, at least for developers. A preview page appeared a few days ago before being removed, but now Google has confirmed that the first Android 11 preview is available. With the new Android version comes a few features that we want to look at.

Gaming on a smartphone has always been fun and easy. The compact size of a smartphone allows us to launch our favourite games anytime and anywhere. However, the size of some games might not be that ‘compact’ especially those that come with large download files. In the future, Android users might be getting a new feature that lets you play games without downloading the whole app, let’s find out how!

It was just a few days ago when news of a leaked render for a prototype of the Google Pixel 5 XL emerged. At the time, many were doubtful that a new Pixel would appear so soon. But now there's another piece of news that points to the possibility of the Pixel 5 appearing sooner than later.

Apple is facing serious kickbacks since Netflix and Spotify decided to stop all subscription payments from Apple’s App Store and now Youtube TV. So remember to switch your payment method before March if you’re still paying your Youtube TV subscription through Apple’s App Store.

If sources are to be believed, Google seems to have already started work on the next Pixel smartphone. Certainly, it's very early to have rumours of the Pixel 5 floating around but we do have some news on that front this time. Recently, sources deemed reliable have claimed that Google is already working on prototypes of the Google Pixel 5 smartphones.

It seems that someone at Google had a trigger finger on the post button today. Keen eyes spotted the developer preview page updated from Android 10 to Android 11 earlier, suggesting that Google may already be on the verge of releasing a beta for the next Android version to developers.

If you're the type to spice up your text conversations with emojis, you'll probably appreciate the latest feature for Gboard. The default Google keyboard app now has a fun feature that's called Emoji Kitchen and it lets you mix and max different emojis to make new ones.