fidzu : mobile

The brand clearly knows ball, and is bringing its A-game this year.

02 Mar 2026 1:39pm GMT

You won't have to wait weeks to get your phone repaired.

02 Mar 2026 11:21am GMT

It actually looks great, and we can't wait to see it at the London launch.

02 Mar 2026 9:22am GMT

Today we're releasing the second beta of Android 17, continuing our work to build a platform that prioritizes privacy, security, and refined performance. This update delivers a range of new capabilities, including the EyeDropper API and a privacy-preserving Contacts Picker. We're also adding advanced ranging, cross-device handoff APIs, and more.

This release continues the shift in our release cadence, following this annual major SDK release in Q2 with a minor SDK update.

A new system-level EyeDropper API allows your app to request a color from any pixel on the display without requiring sensitive screen capture permissions.

val eyeDropperLauncher = registerForActivityResult(ActivityResultContracts.StartActivityForResult()) {
  result -> if (result.resultCode == Activity.RESULT_OK) {
    val color = result.data?.getIntExtra(Intent.EXTRA_COLOR, Color.BLACK)
    // Use the picked color in your app
  }
}

fun launchColorPicker() {
  val intent = Intent(Intent.ACTION_OPEN_EYE_DROPPER)
  eyeDropperLauncher.launch(intent)
}

val contactPicker = rememberLauncherForActivityResult(StartActivityForResult()) {
    if (it.resultCode == RESULT_OK) {
        val uri = it.data?.data ?: return@rememberLauncherForActivityResult
        // Handle result logic
        processContactPickerResults(uri)
    }
}

val dataFields = arrayListOf(Email.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE, Phone.CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE)
val intent = Intent(ACTION_PICK_CONTACTS).apply {
    putStringArrayListExtra(EXTRA_PICK_CONTACTS_REQUESTED_DATA_FIELDS, dataFields)
    putExtra(EXTRA_ALLOW_MULTIPLE, true)
    putExtra(EXTRA_PICK_CONTACTS_SELECTION_LIMIT, 5)
}

contactPicker.launch(intent)

// To request the new default relative mode (mouse-like events)
// This is the same as requesting with View.POINTER_CAPTURE_MODE_RELATIVE
view.requestPointerCapture()

// To request the legacy absolute mode (raw touch coordinates)
view.requestPointerCapture(View.POINTER_CAPTURE_MODE_ABSOLUTE)

The Android 17 schedule

We're going to be moving quickly from this Beta to our Platform Stability milestone, targeted for March. At this milestone, we'll deliver final SDK/NDK APIs. From that time forward, your app can target SDK 37 and publish to Google Play to help you complete your testing and collect user feedback in the several months before the general availability of Android 17.

26 Feb 2026 9:08pm GMT

Posted by Matthew McCullough, VP of Product Management, Android Development

User expectations for AI on their devices are fundamentally shifting how they interact with their apps. Instead of opening apps to do tasks step-by-step, they're asking AI to do the heavy lifting for them. In this new interaction model, success is shifting from getting users to open your app, to successfully fulfilling their tasks and helping them get more done faster.

To help you evolve your apps for this agentic future, we're introducing early stage developer capabilities that bridge the gap between your apps and agentic apps and personalized assistants, such as Google Gemini. While we are in the early, beta stages of this journey, we're designing these features with privacy and security at their core as our first step in exploring this paradigm shift as an app ecosystem.

Empowering apps with AppFunctions

Android AppFunctions allows apps to expose data and functionality directly to AI agents and assistants. With the AppFunctions Jetpack library and platform APIs, developers can create self-describing functions that agentic apps can discover and execute via natural language. Mirroring how backend capabilities are declared via MCP cloud servers, AppFunctions provides an on-device solution for Android apps. Much like WebMCP, it executes these functions locally on the device rather than on a server.

The Samsung Gallery integration with Gemini on the Galaxy S26 series showcases AppFunctions in action. Instead of manually scrolling through photo albums, you can now simply ask Gemini to "Show me pictures of my cat from Samsung Gallery." Gemini takes the user query, intelligently identifies and triggers the right function, and presents the returned photos from Samsung Gallery directly in the Gemini app, so users never need to leave. This experience is multimodal and can be done via voice or text. Users can even use the returned photos in follow-up conversations, like sending them to friends in a text message.

Enabling agentic apps with intelligent UI automation

While AppFunctions provides a structured framework and more control for apps to communicate with AI agents and assistants, we know that not every interaction has a dedicated integration yet. We're also developing a UI automation framework for AI agents and assistants to intelligently execute generic tasks on users' installed apps, with user transparency and control built in. This is the platform doing the heavy lifting, so developers can get agentic reach with zero code. It's a low-effort way to extend their reach without a major engineering lift right now.

To get feedback as we refine this framework, we're starting with an early preview on the Galaxy S26 series and select Pixel 10 devices, where users will be able to delegate multi-step tasks to Gemini with just a long press of the power button. Launching as a beta feature in the Gemini app, this will support a curated selection of apps in the food delivery, grocery, and rideshare categories in the US and Korea to start. Whether users need to place a complex pizza order for their family members with particular tastes, coordinate a multi-stop rideshare with co-workers, or reorder their last grocery purchase, Gemini can help complete tasks using the context already available from your apps, without any developer work needed.

Users are in control while a task is being actioned in the background through UI automation. For any automation action, users have the option to monitor a task's progress via notifications or "live view" and can switch to manual control at any point to take over the experience. Gemini is also designed to alert users before completing sensitive tasks, such as making a purchase.

Looking ahead

In Android 17, we're looking to broaden these capabilities to reach even more users, developers, and device manufacturers.

We are currently building experiences with a small set of app developers, focusing on high-quality user experiences as the ecosystem evolves. We plan to share more details later this year on how you can use AppFunctions and UI automation to enable agentic integrations for your app. Stay tuned for updates.

25 Feb 2026 11:47pm GMT

Posted by The Google I/O Team

Google I/O returns May 19-20

Google I/O is back! Join us online as we share our latest AI breakthroughs and updates in products across the company, from Gemini to Android, Chrome, Cloud, and more.

Tune in to learn about agentic coding and the latest Gemini model updates. The event will feature keynote addresses from Google leaders, forward-looking panel discussions, and product demos designed to showcase the next frontier of technology.

Register now and tune in live

Visit io.google and register to receive updates about Google I/O. Kicking off May 19 at 10am PT, this year we'll be livestreaming keynotes, demos, and more sessions across two days. We'll also be bringing back the popular Dialogues sessions featuring big thinkers and bold leaders discussing how AI is shaping our future.

17 Feb 2026 8:00pm GMT

I've mentioned some of my various retronetworking projects in some past blog posts. One of those projects is Osmocom Community TDM over IP (OCTOI). During the past 5 or so months, we have been using a number of GPS-synchronized open source icE1usb interconnected by a new, efficient but strill transparent TDMoIP protocol in order to run a distributed TDM/PDH network. This network is currently only used to provide ISDN services to retronetworking enthusiasts, but other uses like frame relay have also been validated.

So far, the central hub of this OCTOI network has been operating in the basement of my home, behind a consumer-grade DOCSIS cable modem connection. Given that TDMoIP is relatively sensitive to packet loss, this has been sub-optimal.

Luckily some of my old friends at noris.net have agreed to host a new OCTOI hub free of charge in one of their ultra-reliable co-location data centres. I'm already hosting some other machines there for 20+ years, and noris.net is a good fit given that they were - in their early days as an ISP - the driving force in the early 90s behind one of the Linux kernel ISDN stracks called u-isdn. So after many decades, ISDN returns to them in a very different way.

Side note: In case you're curious, a reconstructed partial release history of the u-isdn code can be found on gitea.osmocom.org

But I digress. So today, there was the installation of this new OCTOI hub setup. It has been prepared for several weeks in advance, and the hub contains two circuit boards designed entirely only for this use case. The most difficult challenge was the fact that this data centre has no existing GPS RF distribution, and the roof is ~ 100m of CAT5 cable (no fiber!) away from the roof. So we faced the challenge of passing the 1PPS (1 pulse per second) signal reliably through several steps of lightning/over-voltage protection into the icE1usb whose internal GPS-DO serves as a grandmaster clock for the TDM network.

The equipment deployed in this installation currently contains:

• a rather beefy Supermicro 2U server with EPYC 7113P CPU and 4x PCIe, two of which are populated with Digium TE820 cards resulting in a total of 16 E1 ports

• an icE1usb with RS422 interface board connected via 100m RS422 to an Ericsson GPS03 receiver. There's two layers of of over-voltage protection on the RS422 (each with gas discharge tubes and TVS) and two stages of over-voltage protection in the coaxial cable between antenna and GPS receiver.

• a Livingston Portmaster3 RAS server

• a Cisco AS5400 RAS server

For more details, see this wiki page and this ticket

Now that the physical deployment has been made, the next steps will be to migrate all the TDMoIP links from the existing user base over to the new hub. We hope the reliability and performance will be much better than behind DOCSIS.

In any case, this new setup for sure has a lot of capacity to connect many more more users to this network. At this point we can still only offer E1 PRI interfaces. I expect that at some point during the coming winter the project for remote TDMoIP BRI (S/T, S0-Bus) connectivity will become available.

18 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT

Almost one year after my post regarding first steps towards a V5 implementation, some friends and I were finally able to visit Wobcom, a small German city carrier and pick up a lot of decommissioned POTS/ISDN/PDH/SDH equipment, primarily V5 access networks.

This means that a number of retronetworking enthusiasts now have a chance to play with Siemens Fastlink, Nokia EKSOS and DeTeWe ALIAN access networks/multiplexers.

My primary interest is in Nokia EKSOS, which looks like an rather easy, low-complexity target. As one of the first steps, I took PCB photographs of the various modules/cards in the shelf, take note of the main chip designations and started to search for the related data sheets.

The results can be found in the Osmocom retronetworking wiki, with https://osmocom.org/projects/retronetworking/wiki/Nokia_EKSOS being the main entry page, and sub-pages about

• Node Control Unit

• 16x BRI Uk0 Line Card

• 32x POTS Line Card

• Line Measurement Unit

• Shelf

In short: Unsurprisingly, a lot of Infineon analog and digital ICs for the POTS and ISDN ports, as well as a number of Motorola M68k based QUICC32 microprocessors and several unknown ASICs.

So with V5 hardware at my disposal, I've slowly re-started my efforts to implement the LE (local exchange) side of the V5 protocol stack, with the goal of eventually being able to interface those V5 AN with the Osmocom Community TDM over IP network. Once that is in place, we should also be able to offer real ISDN Uk0 (BRI) and POTS lines at retrocomputing events or hacker camps in the coming years.

08 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT

If you have ever worked with Digium (now part of Sangoma) digital telephony interface cards such as the TE110/410/420/820 (single to octal E1/T1/J1 PRI cards), you will probably have seen that they always have a timing connector, where the timing information can be passed from one card to another.

In PDH/ISDN (or even SDH) networks, it is very important to have a synchronized clock across the network. If the clocks are drifting, there will be underruns or overruns, with associated phase jumps that are particularly dangerous when analog modem calls are transported.

In traditional ISDN use cases, the clock is always provided by the network operator, and any customer/user side equipment is expected to synchronize to that clock.

So this Digium timing cable is needed in applications where you have more PRI lines than possible with one card, but only a subset of your lines (spans) are connected to the public operator. The timing cable should make sure that the clock received on one port from the public operator should be used as transmit bit-clock on all of the other ports, no matter on which card.

Unfortunately this decades-old Digium timing cable approach seems to suffer from some problems.

08 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT