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It was a balmy September evening in 2016, and my friends and I thought it the perfect evening for a night-time hike up Cape Town’s popular Lion’s Head. Placed right in the city’s center, the panoramic views from the peak would no doubt be spectacular, and we had our bags packed full of liquid nourishment for when we reached the top. Two hours later, we got to the summit, and with the city’s sprawling lights glimmering through the still air below us, I spied the perfect photo opportunity. So, I grabbed my little Joby tripod, mounted my phone to it, set the exposure to 15 seconds, its ISO to its lowest possible value, and waited. The resultant shot remains one of my favorites I’ve ever captured. That phone was the LG G4.

I’m no doubt looking back at this phone through rose-tinted glasses. After all, nostalgia is one hell of a drug. The best Android phones have come a long way since then, improving almost every facet. I could (probably) capture that same shot with modern devices without too much fuss. However, looking past its problems, the LG G4 was the phone that sparked my interest in photography.

I think it’s safe to say that Samsung’s Good Lock is the most powerful customization toolkit in the Android ecosystem for those who want even more control over their One UI devices. Good Lock modules unlock the lock screen, tweak themes, and extend Routines far beyond their initial capabilities. It’s grown so much since its early days that I couldn’t imagine using a Samsung phone without it.

However, there are still several areas where Good Lock falls short. Existing modules leave these elements untouched and unchangeable, but this shouldn’t be the case. Here are five customization blind spots I’d like Samsung to address with Good Lock or through One UI directly in the future.

I’ve been using Canva for years, mostly for simple designs. So when I saw that Canva had rolled out a new photo editing tool, which is more advanced that the simple tweaks you can make in a design, I was interested in trying it out.

I stumbled across a useful feature that’s not in my favorite photo-editing app Snapseed, so I wondered if Canva could actually replace the free app’s place in my workflow. I tried out the Canva app’s new tool to see just how effective it would be at replacing Snapseed, and whether many of its features were locked behind a paywall.

When you’re interested in customizing the look and feel of your Pixel phone, there’s probably nowhere better to start than Google’s own Wallpaper & style app. It already offered a ton of control over setting up both your lock screen and home screen, and it’s only been getting better as of late, thanks to some smart UI updates in QPR1 Beta 1. With this week’s release of QPR1 Beta 2 we’ve been digging around in search of everything new Google’s managed to cook up, and have identified some further improvements hitting Wallpaper & style.

In Android 16 QPR1 Beta 2, when you go to select a wallpaper in the Wallpaper & style app (or simply accessed through system settings) you’ll discover a new Wallpaper Studio section up top.

After more than 16 years of development, the Android OS is packed with features. If they weren’t organized, navigating them would be a mess. For a long time, that’s exactly what Android’s sound settings page felt like, but Google is finally cleaning it up in the next quarterly release of Android 16.

After installing Android 16 QPR1 Beta 2 on our Pixel device, we noticed that the Settings > Sound & vibration menu has received a major cleanup. Instead of presenting every setting in a single vertical list, the latest Android 16 QPR1 beta separates them by category. For instance, the “phone ringtone,” “default notification sound,” and “default alarm sound” options are now grouped under a new “sound patterns” section. Meanwhile, the “Spatial Audio” and “Media” items are under a new “Audio” section. The five volume sliders remain at the top of the page, but they’ve been updated with the more modern Material 3 Expressive design seen in the volume panel. Furthermore, the “audio will play on” entry no longer sits awkwardly between the media and call volume sliders but has been moved to the very top.

People were understandably upset when Google revamped its weather app and removed its lovable weather frog. Rain or shine, froggie was always ready to greet visitors looking for the day’s conditions. However, with the launch of the Pixel 9 and the introduction of Pixel Weather, the frog moved to the old weather interface accessed through Google Search. While that’s a suitable home, having to perform a search just to see the frog has become tiresome for many, including me. Thankfully, there’s a third-party app that can help.

Weather Master is an app I’ve grown to love over the past few weeks, and not just for its pro-frog stance. If I could redesign Pixel Weather, it would likely look like this. The app offers a perfect balance of clean aesthetics, playfulness, and useful information, creating a successful weather app experience. Unlike Pixel Weather, it makes efficient use of space without sacrificing these values. The use of Product Sans and Google’s design language throughout the app makes it feel like an official Android app, but it gets many things right that Google’s official app doesn’t.

This Monday, June 9, Apple is getting set to make some of its biggest announcements of the year. We’re only a few weeks removed from Google’s own I/O 2025, and now Silicon Valley is getting ready for its next big platform event of the summer. Whether you’re an Apple die-hard, or just an Android stan who wants to stay on top of what the other side’s up to, tech fans everywhere are going to be interested in tuning in. Let’s check out how you can watch!

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is a week-long event that runs June 9–13. And to kick things off in proper fashion, Apple will get things started with its keynote announcement at 1pm ET.