The past week was not as exciting as others have been at Techspace Africa, however, in the general world of tech, the week was packed to the brim. Two of the biggest OS launches of the year took place this week, and Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram faced one of their major outages yet.
If you’ve been caught up with something else and missed any of it, here’s a brief recap of all the significant developments in the tech world this week.
Google officially announced Android 12
After months in beta, Google finally announced Android 12 earlier this week. While the company didn’t roll it out to its Pixel lineup, it started uploading the Android 12 source code to AOSP and confirmed its dessert name. A few OEMs also started rolling out beta releases of their latest Android skins based on Android 12, giving us our first look at the changes included in the latest builds.
In addition, Google rolled out Material You redesigns for more apps; the company shared info about all the security vulnerabilities it patched in the newest release, and the first games to support Android 12’s Game Mode were released. Developers on XDA forums also rolled out the first Android 12 custom ROMs for various devices.
Microsoft started rolling out Windows 11
Windows 11 also officially started rolling out to users this week. However, unlike Android 12, Microsoft’s latest software update is now generally available to all users.
Facebook faced a massive outage
Earlier this week, Facebook faced one of the most extensive outages of recent times. The outage affected all of the company’s services, including Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, and it even had a huge impact on other businesses that rely on Facebook services.
A few days later the services went down again for a brief minute. While we’re pretty sure you didn’t miss this development, if you’re wondering what caused the outage, a source from the Facebook recovery effort said the outage was from a routine BGP update gone wrong. But the update blocked remote users from reverting changes, and people with physical access didn’t have network/logical access.
Pixel 6 Release
After weeks of speculation, Google finally confirmed that it would launch the Pixel 6 on October 19. Ahead of the launch, we saw even more leaks about the upcoming Pixel devices. We saw photos and video samples from the Pixel 6 Pro, and a German retailer accidentally revealed the pricing and launch offers for the devices.
Leaks also confirmed that the Pixel 6 series would feature Face Unlock capabilities, and Google would offer a new Pixel Stand with the devices. In addition, we got our first look at Gboard’s Assistant-powered voice typing feature that will debut with the Pixel 6 series.
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