Google says you’re deleting it wrong, and RCS gets even more complicated in this week’s news

Back when the iPhone 4 was rejecting calls and Antennagate was in full swing, Apple’s disastrous response was basically “You’re holding it wrong.” Now, Pixel 6 owners are facing broken devices after an update, and Google says user behavior is to blame — well, its advice is something people can actually do, but it’s no consolation to customers, the expensive phones of who were made paperweights through no fault of their own. .

This week’s top Android headlines also see Google throw a wrench into the RCS encryption scene, and we get the latest batch of Samsung leaks just ahead of next week’s Galaxy Unpacked. Meanwhile, Gemini is breaking more Google Assistant functionality than we thought, and CMF from Nothing is taking the stage.

Google says you’re deleting it wrong

Earlier in the week, we reported that some Pixel 6 owners were facing broken devices after factory resetting the phone. Affected users had just finished installing the Pixel Feature Drop in June, which was thought to be playing a role. As it turns out, the root problem was a factory reset, because later in the week, Google acknowledged the problem and offered a workaround: Don’t wipe the data on your Pixel 6 series device within 15 minutes of installing an update.

Google even added a popup in the new version warning people not to factory reset the device for 15 minutes. While this is helpful for people who didn’t already have the update installed, it doesn’t do much for those who were affected by the bug and are left with broken phones. Google hasn’t made a public statement about its plans to make these customers whole, but the right thing to do would be to refund or replace defective units even out of warranty.

RCS takes another standard

The RCS show has been going on for over a decade now, and to say things have been a little messy would be an understatement. First, almost nobody adopted it, except for the occasional operator looking to do it on a proprietary messaging service. Then Google got involved and started pushing for unification, but quickly ran into interoperability issues when carrier versions didn’t use the universal profile. So Google spent years getting everyone into the Universal Profile and actually got all the major players on board, and then Apple decided it was finally going to support the standard.

But the problem is that the “Universal Profile” does not include an end-to-end encryption protocol, only encrypting data in transit. Google works around this by using a proprietary plugin with the Universal Profile that enables E2EE, but companies like Apple would be unlikely to use this proprietary code in their implementations.

Last year, Google threw its weight behind a new messaging encryption standard called MLS, or Messaging Layer Security. This week, code found in the latest Google Messages APK suggests that the company is now implementing MLS and that RCS may soon be the default encryption method for the app. The bad news is that Google is pushing another messaging standard after RCS and Universal Profile, but the good news is that if history repeats itself and more companies adopt MLS, we could end up with an encrypted cross-platform messaging standard of integrated right into our phone numbers.

Gemini breaks the Google Home app

When Google’s Gemini AI chatbot became available as an Android app, we quickly found ourselves making it the default assistant, breaking some features we’d enjoyed in Google Assistant. For example, Assistant routines won’t work at all, though it looks like that could change soon.

One consequence that no one noticed until this week was the fact that the Broadcast button in the Google Home app stops working when you’ve set Gemini as your default assistant. Surprisingly, the Gemini itself can handle streaming to Google Home or Nest smart speakers via the Google Assistant if you ask it to, but that same functionality breaks in the Google Home app the moment you designate the Gemini as your assistant.

Color, Material, Fanfare

You can usually tell it’s a Carl Pei company by how naturally the ad creation process comes. After gaining a cult following with OnePlus and then repeating that feat with Nothing, Pei is attempting the hat-trick with the Nothing CMF sub-brand. And with the CMF Phone 1 due out this Monday, July 8, the company has been dutifully teasing the new budget handset on whatever you want to call Twitter, with close-ups carefully framed to subvert our expectations.

This week, the stunning shots became more revealing and we learned that the camera system will feature a 50MP Sony shooter. The 1 phone was then revealed when a leak showed off the front of the phone on the same day CMF finally let us see the entire back. Turns out those screws will be used to swap out back plates and add accessories like kickstands, and the front of the phone looks pretty much the same as a Pixel 8 with its reasonably sized symmetrical bezels. In case you couldn’t tell, we’re buying the hype.

Galaxy Unpacked is days away

With Galaxy Unpacked set for next week on July 10, you’d think we already knew everything there was to know about the lineup. But it’s more than just foldables and headphones this year, as Samsung has launched two entirely new product lines: the Galaxy Watch Ultra and the Galaxy Ring, which you can think of as a fitness band without the screen. While Galaxy watches aren’t new, a top-of-the-line luxury model capable of rivaling the Apple Watch Ultra is — and this week, we learned that Samsung’s flagship wearable has some beastly specs. Even the standard line of watches has some big performance gains thanks to an updated Exynos-clad chip.

But most eyes will be on Samsung’s foldable lineup next week. We already knew a lot about the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6, but a leak this week basically showed us the entire spec sheet and sales pitch for both. And while it looks a lot like last year’s model, a series of leaked renders gave us a comprehensive look at the Galaxy Z Flip 6. Thankfully, we’ll be seeing the real deal in a few days.