Google’s quarterly Feature Drop became available on Monday to users with the Pixel 3 series and later. Updates include Pride Month Wallpapers, the ability to take videos of the stars in Night Sight, and the ability to answer or reject a call using Google Assistant. A new Gboard will let you see key snippets of a phone number, email address, or URL suggested in the clipboard. You can then easily drop them into places like Messages or Maps. The Locked Folders feature, which debuted during last month’s Google I/O Conference, gives specific photos or videos extra protection in your phone by requiring a passcode or fingerprint to access them. A Heads Up feature also has been added to the Digital Wellbeing settings. This feature can detect when you’re walking and periodically remind you to look up from your screen, so you stay alert. As far as security updates and patches go, Android lists 43 security fixes and four functional updates in the June security patch. According to 9to5Google, these fixes include a patch to fix wireless chargers not working, to make motion photos editable (since there were some issues with that), and to address notification sound fluctuations along with videos not playing in some third-party apps. Android also detailed 14 security vulnerabilities affecting Android devices. In Monday’s security bulletin, Android said that the most severe of these issues “is a critical security vulnerability in the System component that could enable a remote attacker using a specially crafted transmission to execute arbitrary code within the context of a privileged process.” Be sure to update your phone to the latest Android 11 to ensure you’re protected from these vulnerabilities and get the latest Pixel features.
