Android 16 QPR2 shows Google has finally swallowed the "bells and whistles only" update philosophy and embraced real-world polish.

The post Android 16 QPR2 reportedly improves your Pixel phone’s performance alongside new features appeared first on Digital Trends.

I recently realized that my phone's chaos didn't come from the apps—it came from a lack of direction. It was powerful enough to do anything, so it ended up distracting me with everything. To fix this, I decided to give it a dedicated purpose—turning it into my personal project management system!

Although I've dabbled with the likes of Motorola and Samsung, a large part of my Android journey has been built around Google hardware, from the early Nexus phones onwards. We've now had 10 generations of Pixel phones, and these are the ones that really stand out for me.

Ever recorded a college lecture and found the audio crystal clear, only to have your concert footage from that very day come out sounding like trash? This happened to me, and after some digging, I found the specific setting to blame—and why you shouldn't actually deactivate it completely.

Back in August, Google—and Jimmy Fallon—put on a big show to reveal the Pixel 10 series. A feature called “Magic Cue” was demoed during the event, and it seemed genuinely useful. Well, I’ve been using a Pixel 10 for three months, and I’m still waiting to be amazed.

Last year, Apple finally added support for Rich Communications Services (RCS) texting to its platforms, improving consistency, reliability, and security when exchanging green-bubble texts between the competing iPhone and Android ecosystems. Today, Google is announcing another small step forward in interoperability, pointing to a slightly less annoying future for friend groups or households where not everyone owns an iPhone.

Google has updated Android’s Quick Share feature to support Apple’s AirDrop, which allows users of Apple devices to share files directly using a local peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection. Apple devices with AirDrop enabled and set to “everyone for 10 minutes” mode will show up in the Quick Share device list just like another Android phone would, and Android devices that support this new Quick Share version will also show up in the AirDrop menu.

Google will only support this feature on the Pixel 10 series, at least to start. The company is “looking forward to improving the experience and expanding it to more Android devices,” but it didn’t announce anything about a timeline or any hardware or software requirements. Quick Share also won’t work with AirDrop devices working in the default “contacts only” mode, though Google “[welcomes] the opportunity to work with Apple to enable ‘Contacts Only’ mode in the future.” (Reading between the lines: Google and Apple are not currently working together to enable this, and Google confirmed to The Verge that Apple hadn’t been involved in this at all.)

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