Google Launches Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview for WebDev
Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG) rolls out early access to Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview ahead of Google I/O, supercharging coding for interactive web apps.
In a blog post, Senior Director Tulsee Doshi said the I/O edition builds on overwhelmingly positive feedback for Gemini 2.5 Pro's coding and multimodal reasoning, adding UI-focused tools along with code transformation, editing and agentic workflow development.
Developers can start building with the update today via the Gemini API in Google AI Studio and Vertex AI, while users of the Gemini app will see new Canvas features that let anyone vibe code and spin up interactive web apps with a single prompt.
Gemini 2.5 Pro now leads the WebDev Arena Leaderboard, outpacing the prior version by 147 Elo pointsa clear signal of its improved performance. Google said this positions Gemini ahead of rivals like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Meta's Llama-based offerings and Anthropic's Claude, just as Meta last week debuted its standalone Llama 4 chatbot app. Meanwhile, Google expects to ink an agreement with Apple (AAPL) by mid-2025 to preload Gemini on new iPhones, CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly told investors, extending Gemini's reach beyond Android and the web.
Why it matters: Early access to advanced coding features and leaderboard leadership could accelerate enterprise and developer adoption, reinforcing Google's competitive edge in AI platforms.
Investors and developers will look to Google I/O in a couple of weeks for demos, pricing details and the Apple partnership announcement, which could drive broader Gemini integration across devices.
Google Launches Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview for WebDev
Alphabet Inc. is currently fairly valued according to GuruFocus, with a GF Value of $176.23 as of May 6, 2025. The stock's recent dip puts its price slightly below the estimated fair value line, signaling potential upside if valuation reverts to the mean. The trendline suggests long-term growth remains intact, with pricing still comfortably within the neutral zone. Investors may see this as a consolidation phase rather than overvaluation.
This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
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Tom's Guide
an hour ago
- Tom's Guide
iOS 26's Liquid Glass looks amazing, except for this one glaring issue
WWDC 2025 revealed some pretty amazing new features and developments that will land on Apple products later this year. And certainly the biggest change figures to be Liquid Glass, the new design language coming to all of Apple's different software platforms. I'll have a better idea of how Liquid Glass performs once I get a chance to use Apple's beta software, particularly when it comes to iOS 26 on my iPhone. But watching Apple's keynote on Monday (June 9) and looking at the iOS 26 preview page, I'm concerned that the updated software may not fix one of my big issues introduced with iOS 18. As you may recall, iOS 18 brought a new way to customize your phone's home screen including app tinting. This feature allowed you to change the color of your app icons — at least in theory. In practice, the finished result made it look like you poured sauce all over your apps. Ultimately, I never wound up using app tinting to adjust the color of my home screen icons — except when I wanted to show how weird it looked. I had hoped that iOS 26 would improve things, but everything I've seen so far doesn't fill me with hope. As a reminder, Liquid Glass is Apple's new design language that aims to improve the look of, well, everything. Essentially, Apple wants to create an iconic, stylized design that's uniform across everything from iPhones to Macs to Apple Watches. And from what we saw at WWDC, Apple seems to have managed this, thanks to the new translucent look, expandable menus and a design that works with the contours of the screen of whatever device you happen to be using. During the part of the WWDC keynote that focused on Liquid Glass, Apple gave us a glimpse at what tinting your apps will look like in iOS 26. When you change the color of an app in the new update, the main body of the icon will still be slightly translucent, but will take on a slight hue that matches your chosen color. Meanwhile, the main element of the icon will be brighter, usually close to white, but again with a shade of the chosen color. Initially, I liked the look of the new tints when I first saw them, although that's changed the more I look at them. The final product just looks dull, as the icons don't jumping out at me. Take a look at the screenshot above with the Map widget in the top right corner. The person icon in that map looks really low-res as a result of that tinting. And this is just with Apple's built-in apps on the iPhone. It's third-part apps where the really issues have been with app tinting in iOS 18. iOS 18's app tinting doesn't just look blocky — the real issue surfaces with third-party apps downloaded from the App Store. In the above image, you can see the home screen for my iPhone 15 Pro Max, which includes a mix of Apple's apps and a few third-party ones. Notice how Apple's apps split the colors fine, the background is black and the main element is red. However, if you look at my Warhammer 40,000 app or the MCM ComicCon app, you'll notice that the phone just shoves a red screen over them. There's no attempt made to make them match the other apps, and in fairness, I don't see how you could. So what you end up with is these odd-looking red blotches on the screen. Consider the Kindle app, which features a lovely design of someone reading normally; with the tint, though, it's just a block of color. There's more than just aesthetics at play here. App tinting as it stands makes it just a little more difficult to quickly pick the right app. It can be annoying when you're in a rush and you accidentally tap the wrong icon because they all start to look the same. This is made worse for someone with a vision problem like myself, where images on a screen can be harder to read. We won't really know what app tinting in iOS 26 looks like until the update comes out, and we see how developers tweak their apps for the Liquid glass interface. But there are ways Apple could bolster the chances of icons looking their best. The most obvious answer is to simply make the icons more translucent, while keeping their original color. This isn't a terrible idea, although it would remove the feeling of uniformity that Apple appears ot o be going for. Alternatively, Apple could make sure each developer codes in the same design options for their apps so that they match the look of the native apps. That said, developing an app is difficult enough and I can't see companies making sure each has an option in case someone tweaks the tint of an icon. The final option would be to repeat what was done in iOS 18, but that seems even less likely as it would ruin the sleek look of the new home screen. While I don't think any design will entice me to actually tint my apps, I am curious what you all think. Let me know: do you already make use of app tinting and will you continue to do so, or do you view it as more of an option you won't bother to use.
Android Authority
an hour ago
- Android Authority
After three days with iOS 26, I'm amazed by Apple's Liquid Glass redesign, but I have concerns
Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority The biggest buzz at WWDC 2025 was around Apple's spanking new Liquid Glass interface. From a unified year-based naming scheme for its platforms to what might be the most extensive visual overhaul to iOS in years, iOS 26 marks a significant shift in Apple's software approach. But is there substance beneath the divisive shiny sheen? I dove into the developer betas to give it a try. Let me preface this by saying this first beta is very buggy, and I wouldn't recommend installing it on your primary phone. Still, if you're eager to explore it, just go to the 'Software Update' section under Settings and select 'Beta Updates.' That's all it takes. Since last year, Apple has dramatically simplified the beta sign-up process. Regardless, I'd highly recommend waiting for next month's public beta before installing the update. With that said, here are some of the most significant additions to iOS 26. Liquid Glass: The most dramatic design overhaul since iOS 7 Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority Apple's biggest change this year is the introduction of a new design language called Liquid Glass. If you're a design enthusiast or have experience in web design, you're likely familiar with glassmorphism. Liquid Glass builds on that aesthetic and makes extensive use of transparency and floating elements. More importantly, this redesign spans every Apple platform from the iPhone to the iPad, Mac, Watch, TV, and even Vision Pro. It's Apple's first real attempt to unify the visual language across its entire ecosystem. Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority In practice, Liquid Glass means layers of translucent color, soft reflections, and depth that shift as you interact with your device. It's playful, dramatic, and distinctly Apple — for better or worse. The Home Screen shows this off best. App icons appear like digital glass, glinting based on the background. You'll notice bubble-like UI elements across the Photos app, the Fitness App, and even the Camera. On the Lock Screen and in Control Center, most flat backgrounds are now translucent layers. It's a subtle but impactful shift that makes everything feel like it's floating rather than just sitting on top of your wallpaper. Readability suffers under all that transparency — especially in Control Center. In day-to-day use, not everything works perfectly yet. Transparency can hurt readability, especially in Control Center when it overlaps busy apps like the music player. The Lock Screen has similar issues. Some animations also feel inconsistent. The interface tweaks continue on to the browser, where you now get a near-full-screen view of the webpage with glass-inspired elements that pop out. Similar to the rest of the interface, there is ample reason to be concerned about readability (especially for those with accessibility needs), and your experience is entirely dependent on the background. Still, this is early beta territory, and Apple typically refines this by the time of public release. Despite the mixed public consensus, I quite like the general direction that Apple is taking here. The interface looks futuristic to a fault, like something straight out of an Apple TV science fiction show, and I'm personally here for it. But even at this early stage, it is clear that a lot of pain points need to be addressed before the public rollout this September. The new camera experience Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority The Camera app, too, has received a major, and much-needed, overhaul. In fact, this is the first time in years that Apple has rethought the camera UI from the ground up. While the basics remain the same, Apple has refined the layout to provide quicker access to controls. The refreshed interface makes it easy to swipe between modes like photos, videos, portrait, and more with a single swipe along the bottom edge. This feels intuitive and much more useful when composing shots. Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority Similarly, a subtle but welcome touch is how Apple now surfaces adjustments. In some ways, the Camera app has finally gained the 'Pro' mode users have been waiting for. Features such as switching between different recording settings, LOG video, and camera resolution are infinitely more straightforward to access. While it's nowhere close to the level of Pro mode features in the best Android camera phones or dedicated third-party camera apps, it's a good compromise for casual enthusiasts who desire more control without sacrificing simplicity. A side effect of these changes is that the overwhelming amount of animations and floating elements makes the interface feel slower than it is, with everything taking just half a second too long. I can't say for sure if Apple will allow for toned-down animations, but as it stands, the floaty feeling of the UI wears you down pretty quickly. Apple Intelligence everywhere It's fair to say that Apple's initial AI push has been somewhat underwhelming. When Apple Intelligence was announced last year, well behind the competition, it distinguished itself with a strong promise of privacy. A year later, a large portion of last year's promised features are still unavailable, making it difficult to take Apple's 2025 claims entirely seriously. Regardless, among the newly announced features is deeper integration with the entire suite of on-device communication apps. Moreover, this year, Apple is opening up access to its on-device LLM to third-party developers. That is bound to open up some very interesting and innovative use cases. In Messages, FaceTime, and the Phone app, Live Translation now enables real-time language translation of both text and audio. It functions within message threads and during calls, providing quick responses without requiring you to leave the app. I couldn't find a way to activate the feature in the beta. Apple Intelligence still lags in effectiveness despite the interesting platter of system-wide integrations. Similarly, Visual Intelligence now understands what's on your screen and can surface related results, links, or suggestions. For instance, if someone sends you a product image, you can ask the on-device intelligence to show you similar items from the web or pull up information about it without ever leaving the thread. Think of it as Apple's take on 'Circle to Search' but leveraging the power of Apple's on-device LLM and ChatGPT. This is one of iOS 26's more exciting features, but once again, it is not yet available in the developer beta. Genmoji and Image Playground are also part of this AI layer. You can now combine emoji, photos, and descriptive phrases to generate custom stickers and images. While these tools feel like fun party tricks for now, their true power lies in deep system-wide integration. The feature works exactly as you'd imagine and lets you combine existing emojis, photos and text-based prompts to create custom emojis. The results are pretty good, as you can see in the screenshot above. It's not really something I'd use very often, but better on-device image and emoji generation is effectively table stakes, so an improved experience is very welcome. Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority The other feature that I found exciting was deeper integration of AI into Apple's on-device scripting service. Apple Intelligence is now available to the Shortcuts app, enabling you to create smarter automations. This means you can integrate Apple's on-device LLM or even ChatGPT into a shortcut and use it to parse data before passing it on to another app. I can envision use cases like instantly splitting a tab or summarizing any on-screen content, such as an Instagram post. In fact, it took me minutes to get a shortcut up and running to automatically create a note based on a shared Instagram post after passing it through the on-device LLM. That's very cool. A smarter battery dashboard Talking about everyday use features, Apple has finally overhauled the Battery section in Settings. The new interface replaces the 24-hour and 10-day views with a more digestible weekly breakdown. It then compares your average battery consumption to your daily usage, highlighting which apps are consuming power and why. Tapping into any given day reveals a split between active screen time and idle background use. It's very similar to the battery insights available to Android users and is a welcome addition. Dig deeper, and you'll also find a new Adaptive Power Mode. Unlike the static Low Power Mode, Adaptive adjusts in real time based on how aggressively you're using your phone. It can dim the screen or scale back background tasks without requiring user input. You still get the manual 80% charge limiter and battery health metrics, but the focus here is on smarter defaults. Settings, Keyboard, Messages, and other subtle improvements In addition to the big hits, numerous smaller quality-of-life improvements are sprinkled throughout the OS. The keyboard feels chunkier and more precise, with better haptic feedback. There's a new preview app that lets you perform a wide range of file-based functions, including previewing files, of course. The Settings app has undergone minor restructuring. While not a radical shift, the app feels cleaner and faster to navigate with its revamped font sizing and kerning. In Messages, you can now set custom backgrounds per conversation, adding a bit more personality to threads. Apple has also added a polls feature for group chats, something that arguably should have existed years ago. The Phone app has also received some attention. It now unifies the Recents, Favorites, and Voicemails tabs into a single, streamlined interface. The most significant addition is Call Screening. It screens unknown callers by gathering context and offering options to respond or dismiss them without ever answering. Hold Assist is another helpful tool. If you're stuck in a call queue with customer support, your iPhone can now wait on hold for you and alert you when a human finally joins the line. iOS 26 also introduces a dedicated Apple Games app. It acts as a central hub for all things gaming on your device, effectively serving as a lightweight but genuinely useful Game Center replacement. The app pulls in your installed games, offers personalized recommendations, and allows you to see what your friends are playing. Achievements, leaderboards, and Game Center invites are now neatly tucked into this space. Apple is clearly trying to make iOS gaming feel more like a platform and less like a series of one-off downloads, but it remains to be seen if there's significant adoption. So, is iOS 26 worth the hype? Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority It's hard to say definitively at this early stage. There's no doubt that Liquid Glass gives iOS a bold new face, and updated Apple Intelligence features feel like the beginning of something genuinely useful. But right now, it's mostly potential. iOS 26 is playful, dramatic, and distinctly Apple — for better or worse. Many features are buggy or half-baked, and even improvements like those in the camera app require further polish. To be fair, this is a developer beta. I'll reserve judgment until the final release rolls out later this year, but what is undeniable is that this is the most ambitious update Apple has shipped in years.
Android Authority
an hour ago
- Android Authority
AOSP isn't dead, but Google just landed a huge blow to custom ROM developers
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority TL;DR Google has made it harder to build custom Android ROMs for Pixel phones by omitting their device trees and driver binaries from the latest AOSP release. The company says this is because it's shifting its AOSP reference target from Pixel hardware to a virtual device called 'Cuttlefish' to be more neutral. While Google insists AOSP isn't going away, developers must now reverse-engineer changes, making the process for supporting Pixel devices more difficult. Earlier this year, Google announced it would develop the Android OS fully in private to simplify its development process. By focusing its efforts on a single internal branch, Google aimed to streamline work that was previously split. The news initially spooked some in the Android development community, but the controversy quickly subsided. The impact was minimal, as Google was already developing most of Android behind closed doors and promised that source code releases would continue. Now, however, a recent omission from Google has rekindled fears that the company might stop sharing source code for new Android releases, though Google has stated these concerns are unfounded. As promised, Google published the source code for Android 16 this week, allowing independent developers to compile their own builds of the new operating system. This source code was uploaded to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), as usual, under the permissive Apache 2.0 license. However, multiple developers quickly noticed a glaring omission from the Android 16 source code release: the device trees for Pixel devices were missing. Google also failed to upload new driver binaries for each Pixel device and released the kernel source code with a squashed commit history. Since Google has shared the device trees, driver binaries, and full kernel source code commit history for years, its omission in this week's release was concerning. These omissions led some to speculate this week that Google was taking the first step in a plan to discontinue AOSP. In response, Google's VP and GM of Android Platform, Seang Chau, refuted these claims. In a post on X, he addressed the speculation, stating that 'AOSP is NOT going away.' Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority He also confirmed the omission of Pixel device trees is intentional, stating that 'AOSP needs a reference target that is flexible, configurable, and affordable — independent of any particular hardware, including those from Google.' Instead of supporting AOSP builds on Pixel devices, Google will support the virtual Android device 'Cuttlefish' as its reference target. Cuttlefish runs on PCs, allowing Google and platform developers to test new hardware features. Google will also continue to support GSI targets, which are generic system images that can be installed on nearly any Android device. On one hand, this logic is sound. Google wants to move away from using Pixels as the AOSP reference device and is making changes to that effect. As Seang Chau notes, 'AOSP was built on the foundation of being an open platform for device implementations, SoC vendors, and instruction set architectures.' In that regard, Cuttlefish is a more appropriate reference target because it isn't a heavily customized piece of consumer hardware like a Pixel phone. However, since Cuttlefish is a virtual device, it can only simulate how hardware features behave, making it an imperfect reference in some ways. The more significant issue, however, is the impact this decision will have on developers who build custom ROMs — the community term for hobbyist forks of AOSP. Nolen Johnson, a long-time contributor and reviewer for the LineageOS project, says the process of building these ROMs for Pixel phones will become 'painful' moving forward. Previously, Google made it simple for developers to build AOSP for Pixel devices, but that support is now gone. Developers simply had to 'pull the configurations [that] Google created,' add their customizations, and then build. Now, however, they will need to take the old device trees that Google released for Android 15 and 'blindly guess and reverse engineer from the prebuilt [binaries] what changes are needed each month.' This is because making a full Android build for a device — not just a GSI — requires a device tree. This is a 'collection of configuration files that define the hardware layout, peripherals, proprietary file listings, and other details for a specific device, allowing the build system to build a proper image for that device.' While Google previously handled this work, developers must now create their own device trees without access to the necessary proprietary source code. Furthermore, Google's decision to squash the kernel source code's commit history also hinders custom development. The Pixel's kernel source code was often used as a 'reference point for other devices to take features, bug fixes, and security patches from,' but with the history now reduced to a single commit, this is no longer feasible. While Google is under no obligation to release device trees, provide driver binaries, or share the full kernel commit history (in fact, it's one of the few device makers to do these things), it has done so for years. The company's reason for doing so was because the Pixel was treated as a reference platform for AOSP, so developers needed an easy way to build for it. Google's decision to now discontinue the Pixel as an AOSP reference device is unfortunate, as it has pulled the rug from under developers like the teams at LineageOS and GrapheneOS who build Android for Pixel devices. These developers will still be able to build AOSP for Pixel devices, but it will now be more difficult and painful to do so than before. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
