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

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

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

There are nifty new accessibility features too. Expressive Captions now have the relevant emotion tags, and they’re rolling out in English-speaking YouTube videos as well as across Android. Configurable AutoClick for mouse users reduces strain, Guided Frame is now more descriptive about what’s in the camera’s 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 Demant, Starkey support coming in early 2026), and better voice dictation with TalkBack is coming soon. These features are coming to Pixel devices first, but will follow to third-party devices in time.

Google is also showing some love to older versions of Android, with features that aren’t 16-specific, such as Emoji Kitchen stickers, the ability to leave and report group chats in Google Messages, the option to check for 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 flag your call to any saved contact as “urgent.” —Simon Hill

The Long-Awaited Sony A7 V Is Here

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 the AI processing unit into the processor. Also notably improved in this update is the In-Body Image Stabilization (IBIS), which is now up to 7.5 stops. There are 16 stops of dynamic range, 30-fps shooting with full autofocus, and Sony’s remarkably good AI subject and eye detection as well.