Jules Wang | Android Police

Google Health is having a field day today — the company is dubbing it as "The Check Up" — and part of it means checking up on what artificial intelligence has enabled in and out of doctors' offices around the world: using ordinary equipment to quickly generate accurate results.

Phone maker Honor has slowly eased back into mobile market relevance since it was spun off from parent Huawei in late 2020. It made its way back to western regions with a new flagship offering at MWC. The company is now setting sights on the budget end of the spectrum with a new "X-series" phone, the Honor X8.

We're well into the age of Android 12 and if you own any of the select devices that have already been updated, you can count yourself lucky. For the rest of us with relatively new phones, there's only one question: when will I get it? We've dug for the answers, all you need to do is click through to find them out.

Just because Android 12L, out for public consumption right now, is tailored for large screens doesn't mean some of its features wouldn't make sense on a smaller form factor. And with Android 13 Developer Preview 2, Google may be ready to spread some of that love.

We're covering another in a series of design tweaks that Android 13 Developer Preview 2 has brought about. It concerns shrinkage.

How does a user use an Android device? They usually interact with the user interface. Ideally, they should be comfortable using that interface and a major factor in that comfort is how elements are sized. With Android 13 Developer Preview 2, the OS is looking to make it just a bit easier to do by killing two birds with one stone.

T-Mobile is reportedly working to join AT&T, Verizon, and other carriers in offering a security measure that will prevent scammers from stealing your phone number and gaining access to numerous other online accounts.

Alongside its new Galaxy A-series Android phones, Samsung is opening up pre-orders for its Windows-powered Galaxy Book2 laptops and 2-in-1s which it introduced at MWC. The doorbusters period is opening up with a big bang and a ton of free monitors.

If you don't already have it turned off in your app, prepare for YouTube's "Playback in feed" feature to become more obnoxious in the near future.

As Russian troops continue their invasion into Ukraine, Moscow's crackdown on protests against the war — dubbed a "special military operation" in propaganda — and domestic independent media has come into full force. Today, the Putin administration has clamped down on one of the remaining sources for those seeking uncensored outside information: Instagram.

On Friday, stakeholders approved the $43 billion merger of AT&T's spun-off WarnerMedia division with another multimedia giant, Discovery. Of the many consequences this deal will precipitate, we're learning of one that will have major impacts on subscribers to Discovery+ and HBO Max.

Life in wartime Ukraine includes the frequent wail of air raid sirens ahead of Russian artillery shelling. But as the politics swirling around this situation continues to heat up and the threat assessment expands, Google seems prepared to deploy another in a series of responses to the crisis that could save people's lives.

If you want over-the-top streaming TV, you'll know that procurement is an adventure in and of itself. There's the question of platform — Roku, Google TV, the like — and which providers you'll add on top — YouTube TV, Netflix, everything else. For those in search right now, we'll make it easy: Amazon is selling its Fire TV devices on great discount and is bundling two weeks of Sling TV for free in time for March Madness!

If life is like a box of chocolates in that you never know what you're going to get, trade shows such as Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, well, they're more like a sack of potatoes — for the most part, you know what you're in for. Take the Android Garden that Google set up between halls 2 and 3 at the Fira Gran Via. It's a veritable tuber showcase for apps on the Google Play Store, Android Automotive, and every bit of automation you can program from Google Home. If you've never been to one of these big conventions and want to know how these potatoes taste, then sit back and let us do the chopping and frying. No, seriously, we're having french fries.

Ukraine is entering its fifth day fending off the invasion of Russian aircraft, artillery, and troops. War turns many priorities upside down: businesses are shuttered and shelters with bread lines take their place. In response to those rapid changes, Google Maps has made a few of its own in the country.

Android Police is back in Barcelona for MWC 2022 and we've had a chance to go beyond the press releases, peruse the booths, and talk to some polite people in dresses and suits about their latest phones, tablets, laptops, smartwatches, earbuds, and more. The pool of developments is admittedly a bit shallow this year compared to others, but even as such, there are still standouts that arouse intrigue and make lasting impressions. So, between this writer and our Europe Editor Manuel Vonau, we've picked out our "Best of MWC." Shall we compare our list with yours, then?

This far, and no farther: plans for Oppo and subsidiary OnePlus devices to sport a unified Android-based UI have fallen through as both intend to continue developing their own treatments of ColorOS and OxygenOS, respectively.

As an Android brand, Nokia has found its own rhythm with phones — make them cheap without looking or feeling so, make them easy to maintain, and then (try to) maintain them. It's a strategy that has helped its parent company, HMD Global, achieve its first profitable year in 2021. And it hopes to continue that winning streak with a second batch of aggressively budget-minded products for 2022.

The mobile landscape went under a pandemic-accelerated overhaul in the past couple of years. Huawei is no longer the foreign juggernaut it used to be, Honor is with new ownership, Oppo and OnePlus are in slow-motion homogenization, and LG is a complete non-factor in 2022. You'd think these developments would suck all the air out of Mobile World Congress, which is being held on-time this year as opposed to in last year's sweaty Iberian summer. Well, prepare for your breath to be taken away.

From the way Chinese phone makers are once again building and emphasizing their global presence and performance, it seems as though 2022 might be the year for a post-Huawei wave of new opportunities. In jumping the pre-MWC queue of announcements, Oppo (apart from its subsumed corporate cousin, OnePlus) is looking to strike a convincing impression ahead of an assured retail campaign targeting more of Europe. The new Find series devices — with the Find X5 Pro leading the charge — do just that with hard specs in competitive areas.