News written by Petteri Pyyny (February, 2022)

Fastest growing phone brand in the world is currently Realme. Realme is a manufacturer that is owned by the same umbrella company that owns OnePlus, Oppo and Vivo, too.

Realme is currently pushing its way to Western European markets with affordable, yet feature-rich Android phones. Company uses its own Android skin, called Realme UI and has been slightly slow to make bold promises about its Android update policy in general.

But they recently clarified how they plan to deliver Android updates for their phones.

Here's the outline:

• Realme GT and Realme GT Pro series will get three major Android updates
• Realme GT Neo and Realme GT Master series will get two major Android updates
• "Number models", such as Realme 8, will get two major Android updates
• For everything else, such as Realme C series, Realme doesn't make any promises whatsoever, so phones might get only one Android update - or none at all.

• Realme phones that will get Android 12 update
• Realme phones that will get Android 13 update (in late 2022 or year 2023)

Google's search results page is arguably the most visited webpage in the world. Due its huge popularity and instant recognition value, Google has been reluctant to change its core appearance. Most of the visual elements of the results page have remained intact for more than two decades.

But as we found out recently, Google is now conducting a limited test on handful of users that would change one very specific thing on its search results page: the link colors.

Company has kept the results' colors in "standard webpage blue" since the searvh itself was launched, back in 1990s.

But with the new limited dark mode test, Google has changed the link color for results from that good olde blue to pale yellow.

Google announced today the first official developer preview of the upcoming Android 13 operating system. The release is meant purely for app developers and not for regular Android users.

The idea behind the developer preview release is to let developer community know what is coming up, so they can prepare their apps for the upcoming, actual release of the Android 13. Not all the new features are there yet - and it is bound be full of bugs and problems.

If you're adventurous, tho, you can download it and install it, provided you have a supported Google Pixel phone (Pixel 4 is the oldest Pixel to support Android 13). But we'd advise very strongly against that.

Anyways, this time around the visuals of the operating system aren't changing as much as they did when Google introduced Android 12. Android is simply taking its Android 12 -based Material You theming a step further, nothing else.

Privacy controls are now better: with various apps wanting to access your photos, you can actually choose which photos you want the app to have access to. So, in case of various social media apps, you don't have to allow them to go through all of your photos in order to upload a new selfie to your preferred social media.

Samsung now is promising to deliver four major Android updates to its most recent flagship phones.

It seems like a distant memory when back in, say, 2016, Samsung was ridiculed by Android enthusiasts by its lack of long-term support for its Android handsets. In past years, manufacturers like OnePlus and Nokia, managed to carve themselves a niche among tech enthusiasts with their promise for long support times and several major Android updates.

Since then, Samsung has totally changed its game. Last year, company committed to provide at three major Android updates to all of its higher-end handsets.

But today, Samsung is pushing the promise even further. For its flagship phones, Samsung now promises to deliver four major Android updates.

The promise includes today's Samsung Galaxy S22 series, but also last year's Samsung Galaxy S21 series and its recent foldable phones, Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3. For other high-end phones, such as pricier A series phones, the three updates policy remains in place.

France has a long tradition of defending its own national culture and language, to the degree of paranoia. For decades now, it has been illegal to air more than a certain percentage of non-French music on radio stations or to show non-French shows on TV channels. As the tide of streaming services has hit the country, new ideas are needed.

One of them is currently debated by the French National Assembly (parliament) that proposes to ban the ubiquitous Netflix button from all TV remotes sold in the country.

Reasoning behind this is that "too easy" access to Netflix (and other American streaming services that have their own remote buttons, such as Disney+ and Amazon Prime) is harming France's TV channels. So, withouth the easy-to-access streaming button on smart TVs, people would simply sit back and enjoy local TV channels instead.

France has already made it harder for TV manufacturers to promote foreign streaming services: since January, 2022 all smart TVs must highlight French streaming services in their menus over other services.

How France is going to force TV manufacturers to obey the proposed legislation is still somewhat of a mystery. Virtually all TV sets sold in France are the very same models that are sold in other European Union countries, too. Thus, in order to comply with the new law, manufacturers would have to make separate packaging - with crippled remotes - to French markets. Alternatively, manufacturers could remove the Netflix button altogether in entire Europe.