Gear News of the Week: Google Drops Another Android Update, and the Sony A7 V Is Here

it was only Android 16 in June delivered a number of new features to Google’s operating system, but the company announced another bumper package of updates, including more customization options, better parental controls, and smart notifications.

You can now create custom icon sizes, consistent themes, and extend dark mode to apps that don’t have their own dark theme. Revised parental controls let you manage screen time, downtime, app usage, and rewards directly on your child’s device, while AI-powered notification summaries give you the TL;DR of long messages or group chats. Related notifications are also now grouped, and lower-priority notifications like promotions have been silenced.

It also has great new accessibility features. Expressive captions now have relevant emotion tags, and they run on English-speaking YouTube videos as well on Android. Configurable autoclick reduces stress for mouse users, Guided Frame is now more descriptive of what’s in the camera view on the Pixel Camera app, and you can launch Voice Access with a voice command to Gemini. Fast Pair for hearing aids is also expanding (now available for preorder, with Starkey support coming in early 2026), and improved voice dictation with TalkBack is coming soon. These features are coming to Pixel devices first, but will also come to third-party devices over time.

Google is also showing some love towards older versions of Android, with features that aren’t 16-specific, like emoji kitchen stickers, the ability to leave and report group chats in Google Messages, the option to investigate scams with Circle to Search, and pinned tabs in Chrome just like on desktop. My favorite new feature is Call Reason, which enables you to mark your call as “Urgent” to any saved contact. -Simon Hill

The long-awaited Sony A7 V is here

courtesy of sony

Sony has released the A7 V, an upgrade to the prosumer full-frame Alpha 7 camera. The Mark 5 version of the A7 brings a new 33-MP partially stacked CMOS sensor and the BIONZ XR2 processor, which brings an AI processing unit to the processor. In-body image stabilization (IBIS) has also been significantly improved in this update, now up to 7.5 stops. It also has 16 stops of dynamic range, 30-fps shooting with full autofocus, and Sony’s remarkably good AI subject and eye detection.