Android One

Gone are the days when phone numbers were as commonly memorized as street addresses. While you once had your own phone number, your best friend’s, your crush’s, and the one for the local pizza shop all at the top of mind, the advent of smartphones has rendered this memory exercise moot. Like most people, you probably don’t call your own phone number very often — and if you do, it’s likely listed in your Favorites — so you may not know it off the top of your head. With that reality comes the familiar grip of panic…

Google’s Android operating system has been around since 2008, and during that time, it has been used on a massive array of smartphones, tablets, wearables, and other devices — including televisions and even cars. It can be enjoyed on a phone that costs $100 or $1,000, and because the Google Play application store is installed, it transforms that device into anything from a gaming machine to one for doing your accounting. But the Android that was released in 2008 is not the same piece of software it is today, and not…

How Snapdragon Satellite will instruct you to find a satellite. Photo: Florence Ion / Gizmodo Qualcomm is working with Iridium, a satellite network provider, to bring satellite connectivity to future Android devices. The technology is only capable of two-way messaging. However, Qualcomm also has Garmin’s Response service on board for emergencies since it already uses Iridium’s satellite network.Unlike Apple’s Emergency SOS via satellite, Qualcomm’s is not fully baked. The company took us out to the middle of the Nevada…