News Weekly: Android 16 finally arrives, Samsung teases its Galaxy Z Fold 7, Galaxy Watch 8 leaks keep coming, and more.
News Weekly
News Weekly is our column where we highlight and summarize some of the week’s top stories so you can catch up on the latest tech news.
This is Android Central’s News Weekly, your go-to source for a concise roundup of the week’s most significant tech stories. This is where we delve into the top headlines that provide the latest developments and innovations contributing to the digital landscape.
This week, Android 16’s stable version finally lands on Pixel devices, Samsung drops another tease for its “Ultra” Galaxy Z Fold 7, alleged Galaxy Watch 8 renders show up online, Google and ChatGPT experienced outages this week, and One UI 8’s second beta arrives on the Galaxy S25 series. Let’s dive right in!
Android 16 takes flight and Pixels catch the first ride
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Android 16 has finally arrived, and Pixel phones will be the first to experience this new stable version of the OS. After multiple Beta releases and practically giving us a hint at almost all the features of the new OS, Google launched the stable version of the software this week.
Android 16 brings with it one of the most awaited features — live updates or real-time notifications, allowing users to track everything from food delivery to ride-sharing, all from the lockscreen or the notification drop-down.
People using hearing aids, thanks to LE Audio, also get a little something with this OS update. With Android 16, users will have the ability to switch to using their phone’s microphone for clearer calls in noisy environments.
Android 16 is bringing additional tools for users to protect themselves from unwanted scam apps, calls, or other online threats. Google’s “strongest mobile device protection,” Advanced Protection, once enabled, activates a range of robust device security features on the phone.
Lastly, larger screen devices also get something out of Android 16. Google says it’s making multitasking seamless on foldables and tablets, bringing a feature called “Desktop Windowing,” which was teased at Google I/O 2025. This feature will allow users to have multiple app windows open, movable, and resizable on a single screen, similar to what you can do on a computer.
Samsung teases AI powered cameras for its upcoming Z Fold
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This week, Samsung dropped another teaser for its upcoming Z Fold 7, and this time it’s hinting at the device’s cameras. In its latest blog post, Samsung previewed a new intelligent camera system that can be more intuitive and understand what users are shooting and adjust itself to match any situation.
“As AI evolves from text-based prompts to multimodal understanding, Galaxy devices are becoming smarter — able to get what you’re looking at and respond to situations. The camera is at the heart of this transformation,” the company explained.
“More than just a tool for capturing images, coupled with enhanced AI-powered features, the Galaxy camera is now part of the intuitive interface that turns what users see into understanding and action.”
The company also adds that these cameras will easily adapt to the users’ needs and make capturing moments more personal and seamless, with the power of AI.
Galaxy Watch 8 shows renders show up online
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Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 leaks keep getting better. This week, leaked renders of the alleged watch showed up online, giving us a good idea of what the actual device might look like.
The renders suggested that the Galaxy Watch 8 would show up with a squircle design, as seen in previous leaks as well. The renders of the device show the wearable in a sleeker design, with white straps, a square-ish silver base, and its circular watch face on top. The Watch 8 is speculated to have only two physical buttons and come in two sizes.
Additionally, someone ended up uploading pictures of the alleged Galaxy Watch 8 Classic on eBay. In the listing, the smartwatch is seen with a leather strap, a circular (more squircle) design, with a prominent crown sitting between two buttons. The speakers are also seen on one side of the smartwatch. The Galaxy Watch 8 Classic is expected to show up with a steel or titanium finish.
The week of outages
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This week saw outages on several online platforms, beginning with ChatGPT on June 10, where users experienced a massive 12-hour outage. According to DownDetector, several reports of the outage began trickling in at around 2:20 am ET, with the spike in outage reports at around 5:30 am ET in the U.S. The outage impacted people across Europe, North America, and Australia as they faced difficulties accessing ChatGPT.
OpenAI took to X to confirm the outage and stated that they’ve identified the root cause and are working as fast as possible to fix the issue.
Furthermore, almost all of Google’s services, like Gmail, Meet, Search, Nest, and Cloud, were all offline for thousands this afternoon (June 12). Along with these platforms, Spotify was also among the platforms impacted.
There were more than 13,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Google Cloud by 3:30 pm ET, and more than 27,000 reports on Spotify via Downdetector. Both Google and Spotify acknowledged the outage and were updating their respective status websites promptly.
Third-party websites that rely on Google’s services have also been affected by this outage. These apps include Snapchat, Discord, and more.
One UI 8 Beta 2 lands on the Galaxy S25 series
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Samsung has rolled out the second beta of its One UI 8 update, that brought several new features, several bug fixes, and the latest June security patch to the Samsung Galaxy S25 series.
The new updates include user feedback feature “to improve interpreter performance.” Other notable changes were brought in, like text alignment issues for Now Brief, and improvements across widgets, and fingerprint unlock errors were also addressed. Galaxy AI, Clock app, and camera app-related bugs also seem to have been fixed.
That said, the first One UI 8 beta seems to be landing on more devices and in different regions. According to SamMobile and tipster Tarun Vats on X, Samsung has opened up the first beta for Galaxy S25 series users in India and Poland. It is also a sizable 3.6GB update that is bringing the June 2025 security patch.
More stories this week
Those are some of the biggest stories from this week. Meanwhile, here are some other stories that are worth catching up on:
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