Android is forked. There are so many versions of it around: From stock Android to Google’s own Pixel-first edition to Samsung’s One UI 4 overlay, there are enough variants to overrun the Time Variance Authority (Loki, anyone?). That means that writing a review of Android 12 is a complicated task. With so many branded and device specific tweaks, it can be hard at times to differentiate core Android features from the window dressing.

The land of Android is messy, but we’re going to keep this review of Android 12 simple. If you want an idea of the Pixel-only features, head over to our Pixel 6 Pro review where I covered things like Live Translate and Magic Eraser. Features like HDR Net videos and white balance controls are also exclusive to Pixels, though that doesn’t mean they won’t one day roll out more widely.

Material You everywhere

Functionally, that means there isn’t much obviously different for those on other devices upgrading to Android 12. The biggest change will be the new Material You design, and how much of that makes its way to your particular handset will depend on your phone’s maker.

On One UI 4, for example, you’ll get something similar to Material You by way of Samsung’s “whole host of new Color Palettes,” which like Google’s version will apply to menus, buttons and icons. But these aren’t automatically generated by the phone based on your wallpaper, and have a distinct Samsung-y cartoonish style that Galaxy users will find familiar. One UI 4 and Android 12 both also offer new widgets that look much better and offer more customization options than before.

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

So Android 12 is a nice visual change, but it does go beyond aesthetics and affects how you interact with the system. Sliders and buttons are larger than before, which some might find ugly compared to the cleaner, thinner options of Androids past.

After living with this new style for a few months, I’ve gotten used to the extra chonky navigational elements. In fact, in some apps, like Clock, the bigger targets are easier to see, and I can hit the Snooze slider more easily from bed. They even look pretty thanks to Material You, which beautifully infuses everything from the Settings shade to keyboards and numpads. I also like that the new lock screen clock takes over the whole display when you don’t have any notifications.

There’s plenty of little things that Google added throughout Android 12, like new animations across the interface and updated limits to toast dialogs. Those are the little boxes that pop up at the bottom of the screen when you copy text to your clipboard, for example. I’ll focus on just a few of the more obvious changes, starting with the quick settings panel and notification shade.

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

In general, Google’s been busy decluttering. It removed the redundant “Conversations” and “Notifications” headers from the notifications list that took up extra lines, while using a background color in this area that’s close to the cards, making everything blend more smoothly. The Quick Settings area up top has a black background and just four buttons compared to the six from before, which means you’ll now need an extra swipe to access things like Battery Saver or Auto Rotate toggles. Of course, you can rearrange these to put your favorites first, but you’ll only be able to pick four.

This is a bummer, but at least when you make that extra swipe in Android 12, you’ll see eight settings shortcuts as opposed to just six. The net convenience lost or gained here is… kinda zero.

I also don’t love that Android 12 will default to summoning the Google Assistant when you long press the power button, but at least you can revert it to show the restart, shut down, lock and emergency buttons.

One of the most common ways I interact with my phone is by tapping the search bar at the bottom and typing either the name of an app I want or the show I’m about to watch. Nothing’s changed here since Android 11, you’ll still see your recent entries and suggested apps when you hit the text field. But if you use the search bar in the All Apps drawer, which requires a swipe up, you’ll get Android 12’s universal search. This will let you find things on your phone, including not just apps and contacts, but conversations within supported apps as well.

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

I randomly hit “D,” and was shown a row of suggested apps, like Discord and Discovery+. Below that was a list of people from various apps, like my colleague Devindra on Gmail, as well as conversations with some guys named Dan and Dylan from Hinge. It also showed actions from specific apps, like “Submit a Front Desk instruction” in my building’s portal and “Connect with Mat Smith” on Duo. When I typed “the,” I got suggestions to order from “The Old Spot” on Uber Eats and quickly hail a ride to “The Westin Grand, Berlin” on Uber. Both are places I’d saved as favorites.

Finally, at the bottom, you’ll find an option to submit your query to Google’s search engine. Chances that I’ll scroll so far down the list are slim, but at least it gets shorter the more letters entered.

More privacy and battery information

Most of the changes in Android 12 I’ve described so far are in your face, and you’ll see them as you interact with the system. Others, like the new Privacy Dashboard, are things you’ll have to look for in Settings.

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

That means they’ll be less impactful on your daily use, but they are, for the most part, informative. The Privacy Dashboard helped me realize that my camera and mic are activated a ton and showed the apps I most often use that require them. And speaking of, Android 12 also provides new indicators for when your mic and camera are being used (a green dot appears in the top right corner of the screen). This is basically the same as on iOS, except Google requires one more tap on the dot to see which app is accessing the sensor.

While the Battery Usage page isn’t new, it’s now more prominently featured as the first option in the Battery settings panel — you won’t have to tap a separate three-dot button to find it. Google did appear to update the graph showing your power levels for the last 24 hours, with the horizontal axis now poorly labeled with just the numbers 1, 7, 1, 7 and 1 (or 13, 19, 01, 07, 13 on the phone I set to military time) instead of “xx hr ago” and “xx min left”. I found myself ignoring this chart most of the time, since it isn’t all that helpful.

In the months I’ve been using Android 12, I’ve seen more apps ask for permission to access my specific or approximate location. I almost never selected the latter, but it’s nice to have the option for things like the weather app. In general, though, I relied on the “Allow this time” or “Allow while using” choices as a way to grant limited permissions to apps. Google will also tell you, after some time, which apps you haven’t used in awhile. It’ll automatically revoke permissions for those, which is nice. None of these apps were things I used often enough for this to be a problem.

Cherlynn Low / Engadget

That’s… pretty much it for the major new Android 12 features. I’m still waiting to see an app that uses the new audio-coupled haptic feedback, since I enjoy the sensation it adds to games I’ve played on the iPhone 13 Pro. But there don’t appear to be any at the moment. Google is also constantly pushing out security and stability updates for Android 12, so maybe there are still more features to come.

Wrap-up

Ultimately, the biggest things Android 12 brings are Material You design and more privacy tools. That might seem minor on paper, but the visual refresh and faster animations throughout the system make it feel drastically different. Plus, Google continues to drop feature sets every quarter or so, meaning each version of Android doesn’t have to be as major of an upgrade. But if you’ve been looking for a fresh face for your phone, Android 12 is a fun, satisfying update.

Ten years ago Moog released Animoog — a strange departure for a company best known for its old-school analog synths. The company had dabbled in the app world before with the Filtatron, which was an emulation of the classic Moog ladder filter. But Animoog was a different beast entirely. It was a full-fledged software instrument that used wavetable synthesis, often associated with cold and complex digital sounds that are in many ways the antithesis of what Moog stood for. But, the app turned out to be a huge success. And for its tenth anniversary it’s finally getting a proper sequel in Animoog Z.

The core, which Moog calls Anisotropic Synth Engine, is largely the same. Of the dozens of waveforms you choose up to eight at a time from. They range from samples of analog saw waves to decidedly more digital sounds. What makes it relatively unique is the ‘orbit’ and ‘path’ modules which shape the timbre. The way they work is hard to describe, but basically notes you play travel along a path drawn in space, and orbit around that path. You control the speed and intensity of distance of the orbit, as well as the speed at which it travels along the path and that determines how the sound of each note evolves, in a relatively opaque way.

Moog

The big change here from the original app is that Animoog Z adds a third dimension to the path. So instead of just traveling along an X and Y axis, the notes also can move along this Z axis. This gives the new app just a touch more depth and notes a bit more room to evolve. The difference can be subtle at times, but certain presets in Animoog Z take advantage of additional modulation path to create truly wild and complex sounds. (Just check out Downward Spiral and Ball Lightning.)

There’s also a new effects section with a looper, delay, filter, an arpeggiator and a “thick” section. Thick was also in the original app and it just offers a variety of ways to beef up your sound, from adding detune, drive and bit crushing effects. While a few of these are holdovers from the original, the way they’re grouped together here makes sound design a little more fluid and linear.

The whole app has received a massive face lift that not only makes it feel more modern, but also makes it easier to navigate. While the UI can feel a bit cramped on an iPhone, it’s still light years beyond the original. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to test it on an iPad or a Mac, so I can’t speak to how well the interface scales up when it has space to breathe. But, the general layout is clean, logical and consistent.

Moog

The LFO, mod and envelope sections are more accessible and more powerful than their counterparts in the original app. In Animoog Z there is an entire tab dedicated to envelopes, with a clearly labeled amp envelope, and you’ll find it in the same place you’ll find the FX, orbit, filter, path and LFO tabs. There’s no need to go searching. In the original some of these features were scattered amongst dropdown menus. There are also just a lot more options for routing modulation in the new app.

Lastly, Moog added MPE support to the app, and even offers a limited version of it through the touchscreen interface. If you expand the keyboard, you can slide your fingers up and down individual notes to add unique modulation to each. You can also bend each note individually by moving your fingers. One of the great ways to add a little character to your playing is to turn down the keyboard correction and turn up the glide which will just by dint of your imperfect and imprecise human fingers add subtle detuning and bends as you play. With the right settings this can simulate everything from subtle analog drift to the tape warbles of a dying Walkman.

Moog

Animoog Z is available as a free download, but only in an extremely limited version. You can play the built-in presets and manipulate some basic parameters, but if you want full access to all its features you’ll need to pay $10. One nice change here is the flat price no matter the platform. Currently the iPhone version Animoog is $10, but it’s $20 on the iPad. Animoog Z is $10 no matter where you’re using it.

Animoog is definitely starting to look and feel its age. So this sequel couldn’t have come at a better time. And Animoog Z is definitely a worthy successor to this groundbreaking app.

If the YouTube TV app on your Roku device isn’t working properly, you’re not the only one. Over on the company’s community forums, there are multiple reports of the latest Roku OS update causing the YouTube TV app to freeze after several minutes of use. In a tweet spotted by Gizmodo, an official YouTube support account said Google was aware of the issue and working on a potential solution.

“Sorry to hear about this — just to clarify, are you having this issue on Roku? If yes, we’re already aware of this issue, and our team is currently working on a fix,” the account said. “We’ll let you know as soon as we receive an update. Let us know if it’s something different.”

At the moment, it’s unclear if the bug is the latest development in the ongoing feud between Google and Roku. Back in April, the two started publicly accusing one another of attempting to renegotiate their distribution deal in bad faith. When we reached out to Google, the company pointed us to the above tweet without offering any additional context. We've also reached out to Roku for comment.

As 9to5Google points out, what makes the situation worse is that one potential workaround to the problem doesn’t exist. Normally, in situations like this one you might uninstall the affected app and reinstall it to see if that fixes that problem. That hasn’t been possible since Roku pulled the YouTube TV app from its store back in April.

The latest version of Google's Messages app seems to fix a long-standing issue for Android users: it finally displays reactions sent via Apple's iMessage correctly. As reported by 9to5 Google, the app now turns Tapbacks into emoji.

Until now, Messages has converted Tapbacks into "fallback" text. So, if an Android user sent a message to an iPhone owner reading "see you in ten?" and their iOS buddy used the thumbs up reaction, Messages displayed that response as its own line of text (i.e. "liked 'see you in ten?'"). That often made conversations far messier than they needed to be, especially in group chats.

Google brought emoji reactions to Messages on RCS-compatible Android devices last year, but there are some differences from iOS Tapbacks. While Apple uses a heart icon, a "ha ha" label and other punctuation, Google uses emoji. So, the Android app appears to convert the heart into a face with heart eyes, "ha ha" into a laughing face and so on. Some nuance might get lost in translation, but it's still far cleaner than Google's previous method of displaying Tapbacks.

Word of the change first emerged via 9to5 Google's deep dive into the latest Messages beta. Google is now rolling out the update. We're not quite at the stage where iMessage is on Android, but at least Google is playing a little nicer with iOS.

Apple's decision to allow ratings for its own apps is producing... mixed results. As developer Kosta Eleftheriou and The Verge have noticed, the official Podcasts app has flipped from an abysmal 1.8-star rating to over 4.8 in the space of just a few weeks thanks to a surge of reviews. As you might have guessed, though, this wasn't the results of a (non-existent) feature update during that period. Rather, the blame appears to rest on app prompts and more than a little confusion.

The iPhone maker told The Verge that iOS 15.1 started prompting users for ratings and reviews "just like most third-party apps." However, many people thought they were rating the show they were listening to, not the app — and that led to a flood of scores and reviews for podcasts.

This issue hasn't affected many other first-party apps, such as Apple Maps (2.8 stars as of this writing). Even iTunes Store ratings, while high (4.8 stars), include reviews that largely focus on the app rather than the content.

The prompts do bring functional consistency to Apple's apps — it's easy to trash them if you like. At the same time, though, the mixups are inflating Podcasts' value and rendering the scores useless for many people deciding on podcast clients. The shift also underscores the problem with trusting ratings and reviews regardless of platform. It's still relatively easy for misguided users, activists and fraudsters to skew that feedback.

Tesla's app server went down a few hours ago, leading to a worldwide app outage that left owners unable to connect to their cars. For those who've been mostly dependent on their phones instead of their keycards, that means being locked out of their vehicles. Electrek first reported the issue after receiving complaints from Tesla owners on Friday night, and for a while it seemed like the problem only affected drivers in North America. But then, an owner from Seoul, South Korea tweeted at Elon Musk about getting a server error on their app, to which the Tesla CEO replied that he's "checking" it out.

Other tweets show owners calling for roadside assistance and delaying their plans for the night. The outage came shortly after the automaker rolled out an update to its application, which Electrek said includes a feature that Tesla had issues implementing. It's unclear if that was connected to the outage, since Musk has yet to follow up on his initial response. Regardless, it looks like the outage is starting to get resolved. Downdetector received as many as 543 reports a few hours ago, but now they're down to less than a hundred. 

Being locked out of vehicles could be an ongoing problem as automakers move to cloud services and increase reliance on smartphone apps. As this situation showed, however, it's still wise to carry around a keycard/keyfob as backup just in case.

Last week, Twitter’s “premium” subscription service made its debut in the United States. Twitter Blue is a $3 monthly subscription that buys subscribers access to additional features, like an undo button and ad-free news articles.

For now, Twitter Blue comes with a fairly limited set of extra features designed for the people who spend the most time on the service. According to Twitter’s Sara Beukpour, this group includes “verified longtime Twitter users” as well as “news lovers” and other “super tweeters.” In other words: the 25 percent of Twitter’s user base who send 97 percent of all tweets.

“I actually bet many of them are you,” Beykpour said during a briefing with a group of tech reporters last week. Of course I signed up immediately.

And after a little more than a week with Twitter Blue, I’m not sure it’s worth $3 a month for most people. The features are mostly useful, but it’s frustrating that not everything works the same way across Twitter’s app and website. But there are undoubtedly useful features, and I am intrigued by what might come next for “premium Twitter.” For now, though, here’s a look at what $3 buys you.

‘Undo’ tweets

Of all the features in Twitter Blue, the “undo” button has gotten the most hype. Twitter will likely never give us an actual edit button, so this is probably the closest we’ll ever get. And if you’re prone to typos or tweeting-and-then-instantly-regretting, this feature alone might be worth the subscription. I say might because the “undo” can also be incredibly confusing, and doesn’t always work as you expect.

It’s supposed to work pretty much like Gmail’s “undo send” feature. After you hit “send,” you’ll have a few seconds when you can see the tweet you just wrote, but it hasn’t actually been published. If you change your mind for whatever reason, you can hit “undo,” which takes you back to the tweet in the compose screen. Twitter gives you the ability to set how long this window is — it can range from 5 seconds to a full 60 seconds — and you can always opt to send it before the window runs out with an extra click.

Screenshot / Twitter

But undoing a tweet doesn’t always work the same way across Twitter’s app and website. On Twitter’s app, you can use the “undo” feature for almost any type of tweet: original tweets (tweets sent from the main compose window), replies, threads, quote tweets and polls. Essentially, you can “undo” almost anything you tweet, anywhere in the app. But that’s not the case on twitter.com, where the undo function only works with original tweets and replies, but not with quote tweets or threads. Unless you exclusively tweet from your phone, this means you have to remember which tweets are editable undoable and which aren't. A typo-ridden tweet can be undone, but an ill-advised quote tweet cannot.

There’s also the fact that it can take several steps to actually undo a tweet. In Twitter’s app, the default setting is that the first thing you see after you mash the tweet button is your tweet and an “undo” button. This gives you plenty of time to give it another read, even if you have a relatively short undo “window.” But on Twitter’s website, you can only undo by looking for a “view tweet” dialog at the bottom of the page and then navigating to the page with your tweet and the undo button. 

Sometimes, "view tweet" doesn't appear at all, and the only way to access the "undo" is to navigate to your profile and look for the pending tweet on your timeline. Not only is this a confusing extra step, but it also makes it harder to take advantage of the undo button at all. Is it still useful to have? I guess, but the unpredictability of it kind of gave me more anxiety than just not having it at all.

Reader mode and bookmark folders

The reader mode is probably the most underrated feature of Twitter Blue, and the one I’d argue would be most useful for all the site’s users, not just those willing to pay. It converts long threads into a much more readable stream of text, much like a browser’s reader view would. I hate those intrusive (and ethically dubious) third-party thread apps that “unroll” tweets into separate websites, but there’s a reason why those services are so popular: lengthy threads are difficult to read. Twitter’s service was never designed for essay-length tweet storms, and long threads are often cut off. Reader mode is a simple solution that is so effective I can’t believe it took them this long to make.

Screenshot / Twitter

It’s even better when paired with another new feature: bookmark folders. Now, when I come across an impossibly long tweetstorm I want to come back to later, I simply add it to my “to read” folder and keep scrolling. Except, again, bookmark folders are for now only supported in Twitter’s app. Head over to twitter.com and all your bookmarks are still a mess.

Ad-free news and ‘top articles’

My favorite Twitter Blue feature — and a large part of the reason why I will likely continue handing over $3 each month for it — is the “top articles” feature. The feature shows you a list of all the most-shared news articles by people in your Twitter network over the last 24 hours. If that sounds at all familiar, it’s because the feature is Twitter’s nod to Nuzzel, a once independent news app that also created feeds of articles based on what was being shared by people you follow on Twitter. But the original app was shut down when Twitter acquired Scroll, the news startup that had previously bought Nuzzel.

And while “Top Articles'' doesn't have all the functionality Nuzzel once did, it’s enough to scratch the itch for former fans of the app (a group that seems to be almost entirely made up of journalists as far as I can tell). But even if you never used Nuzzel, Top Articles is useful. It gives you a quick digest of what the people you follow are reading and tweeting about. Or, you know, you can just use it to figure out who is the main character of the day.

Screenshot / Twitter

Twitter’s acquisition of Scroll also powers another significant part of Twitter Blue: ad-free news articles. Scroll (and now Twitter) formed partnerships with hundreds of news outlets in order to offer ad-free browsing in exchange for a portion of users’ subscription fees. Now, Twitter lets subscribers view how much their own browsing has directed to those publishers. It’s an intriguing concept, and one that won Scroll a lot of praise before it was bought by Twitter.

It’s also the aspect of Twitter Blue I’m most curious to watch. As it stands now, it can feel a little disjointed. While stripping out ads is nice, it doesn’t include access to paywalled content, so it can be jarring to see an “ad-free with Twitter Blue” banner only to hit a paywall. However, Twitter has hinted that it may one day pursue more ways to access paywalled content — and a message in the app says paywall access isn’t included “right now” — so there’s good reason to hope that may one day change.

Early access to new features and customization

Twitter has gotten much more public with the features it experiments with in recent years. The company at one point had a separate beta version of the app it used to try out new tweaks. That app is no longer available, but the “labs” feature of Twitter Blue feels in some ways like its successor. The company plans to make some experimental features available to Twitter Blue subscribers first, before deciding whether they should become full-fledged features available to more people.

For now, there are only two features that fall into this bucket: the ability to pin specific chats to the top of your DM inbox, and the ability to upload videos of up to 10 minutes (these longer videos are not entirely new, but accounts had to be approved by Twitter in order to have access to the feature). I appreciate having the option to do both, though I haven’t used either feature and I suspect most others won’t either.

Screenshot / Twitter

Finally, Twitter Blue also gives you the ability to make small tweaks to the look and feel of the Twitter app. For example, you can change the app icon or set a new color theme (the “theme” only changes small elements like the color of the tweet composer and the dot that appears when you have a new notification). You can also opt to rearrange the shortcuts in the bottom of the app’s navigation bar, which is kind of cool (especially if you want to, say, banish the Spaces Tab). But, again, these are small details that I can’t imagine most people bothering to change.

Is it worth it?

Whether or not you think all that is worth three bucks a month largely depends on how much you use Twitter (and how willing you are to pay for apps). While I don’t think it makes sense for most people, I think it’s pretty compelling for anyone who depends on Twitter for their job or otherwise falls into that extra-dedicated “super tweeter” category.

And while Twitter hasn’t offered any details around how many subscribers have signed up, the app has made about $180,000 since it first started offering Twitter Blue this summer, according to data provided by analytics firm Sensor Tower. That’s not much money for Twitter, but it does suggest there is a not-totally-insignificant number of people willing to try it out (and the service is still only available in four countries).

At a broader level, Twitter Blue raises important questions about how the company will prioritize new features. While the company has maintained that there will always be a free version of Twitter, it’s not difficult to imagine that the most exciting and useful updates could end up being locked behind a subscription. Twitter spent much of the last decade not really creating any meaningful new features at all, so it still stings a little to see the company add the kinds of features longtime users have long hoped for, only to restrict them to those willing to pay.

Apple has rolled out iOS 15.1.1, and you may want to install it if your iPhone 12 or iPhone 13 has been dropping calls. The update comes with bug fixes specifically for Apple's more recent phone models, including one meant to improve their call drop performance. This release comes almost a month after the tech giant launched iOS 15.1, which enabled its long-awaited SharePlay feature. SharePlay lets you watch movies and shows or listen to music with friends on a FaceTime call. You can also send whatever you're watching on the iPhone to an Apple TV. 

While iOS 15.1.1 is a fairly minor update — unless you've been having major issues with dropped calls on your phone — iOS 15.2 is expected to bring some more significant features. As MacRumors has reported, the upcoming software will add playlist search to the Apple Music app and the capability to bulk rename tags in the Reminders app. It will also show when a game is from Apple Arcade if you search for it and will tweak the Macro mode toggle. 

iOS 15.2 is still in beta testing, but you can now get iOS 15.1.1 by going to Software Update under General in the Settings app. 

Following accusations of plagiarism and copycat naming schemes, Streamlabs has announced that it's removing "OBS" from the name of its popular livestreaming app. At first glance, the move is a direct response to the developers behind Open Broadcasting Software (OBS), who claimed that Streamlabs used their naming scheme against their wishes. The fast response, though, is more directly tied to criticism from top streamers like Pokimane and Hasanabi, who threatened to stop using Streamlabs's software if it didn't address the copycat concerns. 

Streamlab's apology comes across as defensive, since it's arguing that its software is also open source like OBS, one of the first tools built specifically for livestreamers. Streamlab's app, which has been praised for being well-designed and feature-rich, is also based on a fork of OBS. Despite those shared beginnings, though, Streamlabs has always been a separate project. It also offers premium services on top of its free core app, so you could argue that Streamlabs was partially fueling its business based on OBS's popularity.

Instagram will shut its standalone Threads messaging app by the end of the year. Following reports of the potential shutdown last week, the company confirmed it was moving forward with the decision in a statement to TechCrunch.

“We’re now focusing our efforts on enhancing how you connect with close friends on Instagram, and deprecating the Threads app,” a spokesperson for Instagram told the outlet. “We’re bringing the fun and unique features we had on Threads to the main Instagram app, and continuing to build ways people can better connect with their close friends on Instagram.”

Instagram will start notifying users of the impending sunset on November 23rd. The notification will direct those individuals to use the company’s mainline app to continue chatting with their friends. When Instagram discontinues support for Threads, it will remove the software from the App Store and Google Play. It will also log users out of the experience.

It’s not a surprise to see Threads join the Meta (formerly Facebook) graveyard. Despite some interesting features and the fact it’s been around since 2019, it never attracted a dedicated user base. What’s more, Meta’s messaging ambitions have evolved significantly since the app’s debut. In 2020, it started unifying Instagram and Facebook Messenger, allowing users on the two platforms to message one another. At that point, there wasn’t much of purpose to Threads.