Android developers

A project called SMS of Death demonstrates a zero-click, remote denial-of-service attack against Android devices, meaning a phone can be crashed or frozen silently without any user interaction. The disclosure is drawing attention among security researchers and developers, who are discussing how such attacks could work, which devices may be vulnerable, and what mitigations exist, with few technical details publicly confirmed yet.

A developer is recruiting testers for an upcoming Android app called Erdentage before its release on the Google Play Store. Volunteers are asked to send a direct message to join the tester group, install the app, and keep it on their devices for about two weeks. A version for F-Droid is also mentioned.

An indie developer is recruiting Android testers for DunkBall, a free 3-on-3 arcade basketball game. The 14-day Google Play closed test requires joining a Google Groups mailing list and opting in via the Play testing link. The developer is reaching out to gaming and game-development communities to gather enough participants to meet Play Store testing requirements ahead of a wider release.

A complete interview with the five developers behind DroidDeck has been published. DroidDeck is an open-source project that brings the actual Steam client and Linux gaming to Android devices. The developers discussed the project's origins, its technical details, and how they are making desktop Steam gaming work on mobile hardware. The full chat supports a recent feature article, and the release is drawing attention from the Linux gaming and Android enthusiast communities.

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.

Match Group, the company behind dating apps such as Tinder and OkCupid, is hiring a full-time Android Engineer III at its New York City office. The role calls for Java and Kotlin skills and focuses on Android app development. The opening is being shared across developer job listings and is drawing attention from mobile engineers watching the job market.

Backbase is recruiting a Senior Platform Engineer for a full-time position in Hyderabad, India. The role spans Go, Python, mobile development for Android and iOS, cloud platforms including AWS, Azure and GCP, and DevOps tooling such as Docker, Kubernetes and Terraform. The posting is circulating among developers tracking senior engineering openings at the banking software company.

A German developer has described a concept for automating expense reports: a web app for Android and iOS would capture receipts as photos or PDFs, then use AI image pre-processing and data extraction to pull out relevant figures. Users would review and correct the AI's output, with corrections feeding back to improve results. The idea is drawing modest attention among German-speaking tech followers interested in practical AI applications.

Google is requiring Android app developers in the EU and UK to display a phone number on their Google Play Store listings. The change, documented in Google's developer support pages, means independent developers must make contact details public, which many worry will expose them to spam and abuse. Developers are debating the privacy implications and whether alternatives such as voicemail-only numbers satisfy the requirement.

Babylist, the baby registry company, is recruiting a Staff Software Engineer for a full-time position in the United States. The listing points to a broad modern stack, including Kotlin, Swift, TypeScript, React, Android, iOS, AWS, Kubernetes, MySQL and Terraform, suggesting work across both mobile and infrastructure. The posting is circulating on developer job boards among engineers tracking new senior openings.

Momentic, a startup founded by Wei-Wei and Jeff and backed by Y Combinator's winter 2024 batch, has launched AI agents that catch bugs by autonomously planning, exploring, and bug-bashing user flows in web, iOS and Android apps, with desktop support planned. The launch is being presented to the developer community for feedback and discussion about automated software testing.

Google will stop most Android apps from writing directly to users' contact data under Android 18, tightening access to the address book in the name of better security. The change means apps that currently add or modify contact entries will need new approved pathways or user permission, reducing the risk of misuse of contact data. The move is being discussed as another step in Google's broader effort to lock down sensitive permissions in Android.

A developer running Claude Code on their Android device says the AI coding tool found 14,219 photos of their face that they never took, raising questions about how those images ended up on the phone. The claim is drawing attention to smartphone photo storage practices and the unexpected discoveries users can make when AI agents scan local files. Details about the photos' origin have not been verified.

The Castle Game Engine project has published new documentation on developing games for Android and iOS with Delphi, its Object Pascal-based open-source engine maintained by Michalis Kamburelis. The post walks developers through building and deploying mobile games from a single Pascal codebase, targeting both major mobile platforms. It is being shared among game developers interested in alternative, non-C++ or non-JavaScript toolchains for mobile game development.

An independent developer is recruiting Android testers for DunkBall, a free 3-on-3 arcade basketball game. The developer is running a 14-day closed test through Google Play and is inviting players to join via a Google Group before the game's public release.

Google has acknowledged that Gemini 4 Argon ranks well behind Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's GPT-6 when it comes to coding for Android. The admission, reported by 9to5Google, is drawing attention for its unusual frankness about the model's weaknesses. It comes amid intense competition among AI labs over developer tools and coding performance, where rankings are closely watched.

A developer behind PeerSeek, a search app for PeerTube, is asking for help getting the app onto Google's Play Store. They still need testers using Android TV who can sign in to the app before the release can move forward. The appeal is being shared across the fediverse, with supporters boosting the call for volunteers.

A developer has published an autonomous rooting tool for Tcl Android TV sets exploiting CVE-2022-22706, a known vulnerability in the MediaTek chipsets used by the devices. The tool, hosted on GitLab, lets owners gain root access without manual steps. The release is drawing attention on Hacker News, where users are debating the security implications for Tcl televisions and whether such flaws should be disclosed and patched.

MicroG, a free and open-source re-implementation of Google's proprietary Android user-space components, is drawing attention from developers interested in running Android without Google's proprietary software. The project, hosted on GitHub as GmsCore, provides open replacements for Google Play services, letting users run apps on de-Googled Android systems while retaining compatibility. Discussions centre on privacy, software freedom, and how well the reimplementation works in practice.

An independent developer in Mikkeli, Finland, is searching for the first 20 real users of Sepamo, an Android launcher currently in development. The invitation is open to people in the EU or EEA with Android phones who want to use their device more intentionally. Making plans by hand is free, and in return the developer asks testers for honest feedback on where the app needs improvement.

Google is rolling out new functions to Android devices via its Play services, including support for Android XR headsets now arriving on smartphones. The update means phones can interface with Google's extended-reality glasses platform without a full system update, as the German tech site Heise Online reports.

Mozilla has reportedly developed a new revenue stream that commentators say might actually work, a rare bright spot for the organisation amid its ongoing funding challenges. The same roundup notes that GNOME OS is moving closer to a stable release, Raspberry Pi OS for x86 machines is returning, and Amazon has launched expensive new Android tablets that ship with the Play Store installed. Open-source enthusiasts are also discussing repurposing old Echo Dots to run with Home Assistant.

A developer has introduced Parakeet, an open-source Android messaging app built as a fork of Molly, which itself is based on Signal. Unlike Signal, Parakeet makes privacy features compulsory rather than optional: all traffic is routed through Tor via Orbot, and users cannot disable this in the app. Early reactions online focus on whether forcing anonymity features by default offers better protection than leaving them as settings.