Samsung is starting to roll out the stable release of One UI 6.0 (based on Android 14) to the Galaxy S23 series, as reported by Sam Mobile.

With Android 14 now reaching Samsung's flagships, we should start seeing a noticeable uptick in the number of users on the latest Android OS release.

Porsche has announced that it's integrating Android Automotive with Google Automotive Services into its future infotainment systems. Production of this updated infotainment system will start "in the middle of the decade".

"This integration of the Google ecosystem will include Google Maps, Google Assistant, and a wide variety of apps available through the Google Play Store."

Porsche says that the UI of its Porsche Communication Management (PCM) system will remain familiar to existing customers, and that in the future, "ecosystems from different providers that are relevant for customers will be integrated directly into the vehicle via standardized interfaces and platforms."

Google has provided an update on the status of RISC-V support in Android.

- Work on a fully optimized backend for the Android Runtime (ART) is still a work in progress

- AOSP, external projects, and compilers haven't generated fully optimized, reduced code that also takes advantage of the latest ratified extensions, such as the one for vectors.

- Later this year, Google expects to have the NDK ABI finalized and canary builds made available on Android's public CI soon, as well as RISC-V on x86-64 & ARM64 available for easier testing of riscv64 Android apps on a host machine.

- By 2024, the plan is to have emulators available publicly with a full feature set to test apps for various device form factors. Wearables are expected to be the first form factor available (see: Google and Qualcomm's recent announcement).

- Google is working with the community and the RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE) Project to provide a way to accelerate the availability of software for high-performance and power-efficient RISC-V processor cores running high-level operating systems. Google is also continuing to invest in RISC-V International.

If you're interested in contributing, you can go to the android-riscv64 GitHub project to discuss, submit issues, and stay up-to-date on the current progress. You can also subscribe to the RISC-V Android SIG mailing list. Finally, you can also build, test, and run an Android RISC-V image as a CVD. Just select the aosp_cf_riscv64_phone-userdebug target in the lunch menu.

Google has once again updated the Android version distribution statistics shown to developers in Android Studio to reflect data up to October 1, 2023.

Here's how the % of (GMS Android) devices has changed since May 30, 2023 when the stats were last publicly updated.

- Android 13: 15% -> 22.4%
- Android 12: 16.3% -> 15.8%
- Android 11: 23.1% -> 21.6%
- Android 10: 17.8% -> 16.1%
- Android 9: 11.9% -> 10.5%
- Android 8.1: 6.1% -> 5.4%
- Android 8: 2.2% -> 1.9%
- Android 7.1: 1.5% -> 1.3%
- Android 7: 1.5% -> 1.3%
- Android 6: 2.3% -> 1.9%
- Android 5.1: 1.5% -> 1.2%
- Android 5: 0.3% -> 0.2%
- Android 4.4: 0.5% -> 0.4%

Android 13 leaps from 15% to 22.4% of all devices. The Android OS version with the second highest install base is now Android 11 at 21.6% followed by Android 10 at 16.1%. Android 12 is installed on 15.8% of all devices.

The % of devices running an Android OS version that Google actively supports through security patch backports (ie. Android 11+) is 59.8%, up from 54.4%.

H/T GizChina

Last year, a Googler said that "we are actively working on this feature." The feature being support for importing .pkpass files into Google Wallet.

(Thanks to Xander for the heads up!)

The latest loophole that third-party file manager apps were using to get access to files and folders under /Android/data and /Android/obb has been patched.

As part of Android 11's Scoped Storage restrictions, apps that use the Storage Access Framework (SAF) to launch the documents picker are not supposed to be able to get access to files and folders under the /Android/data or /Android/obb directories.

However, third-party file managers figured out that if they set the initial directory when launching the documents picker to either /Android/data or /Android/obb, the documents picker lets the user grant the app full access to directories. This loophole was patched in Android 13, but then another loophole was discovered that got around this.

Since Android 13 only blocked apps from setting /Android/data or /Android/obb as the initial directory when launching the documents picker, it was quickly discovered that you could set the initial directory to one of the subdirectories under /Android/data or /Android/obb, thus the user could grant access to individual subdirectories one-by-one.

However, this latest loophole was patched with a recent Google Play System Update. The latest version of the DocumentsUI app, the Project Mainline module that comprises the documents picker, now restricts the initial location for the ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT/_TREE intent so that apps cannot request the initial location to be one of /Android/data, /Android/sandbox, /Android/obb, or one of their subdirectories.

If the DocumentsUI app (AKA 'Files' app) on your device is on version 14-10492947 (version code 340916000), then this loophole is patched.

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If you still want to read/write files under /Android/data or /Android/obb, there are no restrictions if you connect your phone to a PC or use ADB shell commands.

The AOSP Files app also lets you browse files in those directories, though you're limited in how much you can modify.

scrcpy just keeps getting better and better. Version 2.2 was just released with support for camera mirroring. This lets you mirror the device camera instead of the device screen.

I tried it out, and it worked pretty well at 1080p even when connected wirelessly.

There are a couple of other minor changes, such as:

* "[Phone] New design on the app details page to help you discover and learn about apps for your non-phone devices" (available with Google Play Store v37.8+). On the Play Store listing for apps that are available on multiple form factors, you might see a chip beneath the "install" button that lets you change which form factor's screenshots are shown.

* "[Wear] Warning messages are now visible on detail pages for apps that are prone to crashes" (available with Google Play Store v38.2+). This brings a feature that is already available in the Play Store for phones over to watches.

As a reminder, the Google System Updates changelog is comprised of Google Play System Updates (ie. Project Mainline updates) plus updates to a variety of Google system apps like the Google Play Store, Google Play Services, and more recently Android WebView and Android System Intelligence.

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You may have seen articles about how the Flipper Zero can be used to easily spam iOS, Windows, and Android devices with bogus Bluetooth device connection requests, which in the case of iOS 17, can crash them. Here's how to protect your Android device from these spam attacks.

Many outlets are telling users to disable Nearby Share on Android to block these spam attacks, but that's the wrong setting to disable. Instead, you need to go to Settings --> Google --> Devices & sharing --> Devices and turn off "Scan for nearby devices". Above is a graphic that shows these steps.

This is the setting that controls the Google Fast Pair Service (GFPS), or Fast Pair for short, which is Google's Bluetooth device pairing request feature these DoS attacks are spamming.

Fortunately, Fast Pair seems to have some built-in protection against this kind of attack. According to mobile-hacker, Fast Pair seems to ignore excessive pairing requests. Thus, it may not be necessary to disable this feature, so only do this if you really want to be safe.

Note: Some OEMs have their own Fast Pair-like implementations that need to be disabled separately to mitigate this kind of attack. It may not be possible to disable these without turning off Bluetooth entirely, though.