Android 12

The robot combat game Clone Drone in the Danger Zone is set to launch on iOS and Android on November 12, bringing its arena-style sword fighting to smartphones. Gaming outlets are sharing the release date, and mobile players are discussing what to expect from the touchscreen version of the popular PC and console title.

A developer is asking for volunteers to test PeerSeek, an Android app for searching and watching PeerTube videos on TV without ads or an account. Google's publishing process requires at least 12 testers for 14 days before the app can appear on Google Play, and the developer has shared sign-up links for people willing to join the closed testing group.

A workshop on reducing data collection on Android smartphones takes place on Thursday, 12 November 2026, from 18:00 to 19:30 at the city library in the Motorama Future Lab, Rosenheimer Strasse 30-32, Munich. Organisers will show practical ways to limit what apps collect, aimed at residents interested in digital privacy.

Security firm eShard has published the fourth part of its Android kernel exploit chain research, focusing on CVE-2023-20938, a use-after-free vulnerability in the Binder driver. The writeup demonstrates how, on a Pixel 6 running Android 12, freed kernel pages are reused as epoll objects, allowing two ordinary syscalls to read arbitrary memory addresses.

Security researchers have published a full public disclosure of a zero-click denial-of-service vulnerability in Android's telephony framework, dubbed "SMS of Death". The flaw, affecting Android 12 through 17, can be triggered by a malformed WAP Push message without any user interaction. It was reportedly reported to Google on 5 May 2026 before publication.

Apple's iPhones still offer no option to switch off 2G connectivity, a feature Android devices have offered for years. Disabling 2G is seen as a security measure, since the ageing network standard is vulnerable to stingray surveillance attacks and downgrade attacks. The comparison has renewed debate about why Apple has not matched Google's Pixel, which added a 2G toggle in Android 12, leaving iPhone users without the same control over their device's radio connections.

The Pokémon Company has announced that online services for Pokémon UNITE, the free-to-play team battle game on Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android, will shut down on 23 March 2027. A final content update is planned for 12 November, giving players over a year of continued access before the servers close for good.

A new free, open-source security toolkit called Zero Breach Toolkit has been released, capable of detecting more than 12,100 traces of Israeli and other spyware on devices. It works across Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iPhones, and is the second such tool its developers have published. Early discussion online is focused on making spyware detection accessible to ordinary users without paid security software.

A new explainer is circulating on why dedicated digital audio players, even very expensive ones, ship with outdated chips and old Android versions. The short answer: development costs are high and the market is a niche, so upgrades are not worthwhile. Some makers instead run optimised custom builds of Android 12 or 13 and lock the software down, prioritising audio quality and stability over current specs.