Gear Information of the Week: Google Drops One other Android Replace, and the Sony A7 V Is Right here

It was solely again in June that Android 16 delivered a raft of recent options for Google’s working system, however the firm simply introduced one other bumper bundle of updates, together with extra customization choices, higher parental controls, and good notifications.

Now you can create customized icon shapes, cohesive themes, and prolong darkish mode to apps that don’t have their very own darkish theme. The overhauled parental controls allow you to handle display screen time, downtime, app utilization, and rewards straight in your child’s units, whereas AI-powered notification summaries offer you a TL;DR of lengthy messages or group chats. Associated notifications are additionally now grouped, and lower-priority notifications, like promotions, are silenced.

There are nifty new accessibility options too. Expressive Captions now have the related emotion tags, and so they’re rolling out in English-speaking YouTube movies in addition to throughout Android. Configurable AutoClick for mouse customers reduces pressure, Guided Body is now extra descriptive about what’s within the digital camera’s view on the Pixel digital camera app, and you may launch Voice Entry with a voice command to Gemini. Quick Pair for listening to aids can also be increasing (now accessible for Demant, Starkey help coming in early 2026), and higher voice dictation with TalkBack is coming quickly. These options are coming to Pixel units first, however will observe to third-party units in time.

Google can also be displaying some like to older variations of Android, with options that aren’t 16-specific, equivalent to Emoji Kitchen stickers, the power to go away and report group chats in Google Messages, the choice to examine for scams with Circle to Search, and pinned tabs in Chrome similar to on desktop. My favourite new function is Name Purpose, which lets you flag your name to any saved contact as “pressing.” —Simon Hill

The Lengthy-Awaited Sony A7 V Is Right here

Sony has launched the A7 V, an improve to the prosumer full-frame Alpha 7 digital camera. The mark 5 model of the A7 brings a brand new 33-MP partially stacked CMOS sensor and the BIONZ XR2 processor, which brings the AI processing unit into the processor. Additionally notably improved on this replace is the In-Physique Picture Stabilization (IBIS), which is now as much as 7.5 stops. There are 16 stops of dynamic vary, 30-fps capturing with full autofocus, and Sony’s remarkably good AI topic and eye detection as effectively.