But I wasn’t surprised, nor was I disappointed. This is becoming a common occurrence, and it’s made me wonder whether Google should abandon annual updates altogether.
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App Bubbles look like they’re going to be this year’s big innovation
If you haven’t already seen, one of this year’s big new Android features is ” App Bubbles.”
These are akin to Facebook Messenger’s Chat Heads. You know, those bubbles that hang around on your screen and pop out a chat window when you tap them.
App Bubbles are essentially the same concept, only they contain an entire app, instead of a single chat thread.
The way it works is simple.
All the apps you’ve opened as App Bubbles sit as floating icons on your screen. The app you used most recently sits at the top of the pile, and a single tap will open it into a separate window.
The other apps you have open arrange their icons at the top of the App Bubble window, and you can swap between them by tapping each icon.
It’s a simple idea, and I can see how useful it is. This will be a great setup for multitasking, for instance. You can copy-paste from one app to another by tapping a pair of bubbles to jump between apps.
But really, is this it? Google’s big non-AI innovation for 2026 is this? “Yo dawg, I heard you like windows, so I put a window in your window.”
Google is scraping the barrel
I won’t beat around the bush. I hate the idea of App Bubbles.
It’s just such an unexciting feature. Oh boy, I can swap between apps faster? I could already do that by swiping on the bar at the bottom of my screen.
Sure, multitasking is easier, but the smartphone is still the worst possible device for multitasking, thanks to its relatively small screen. And App Bubbles makes that worse because it doesn’t use the whole screen.
I don’t like the concept of bubbles.
We first saw this sort of feature with Messenger’s Chat Heads, which let you jump back into chats quickly without navigating away from whatever you had open.
It was a neat idea at first, but I quickly got very annoyed with having to move the bubble out of the way of whatever I was looking at.
Trying to watch a full-screen video with a bubble of a friend’s face watching me was infuriating, and it wasn’t long before I turned off the setting entirely.
Maybe I need prettier friends, but I can’t see this being any better when it’s an app icon instead of a face. It’s still going to be in the way.
I can live and let live and not use it, but does this not strike anyone else as being quite creatively bereft?
We’ve had Chat Heads since 2013, and you expect me to believe that Google’s only just realized that this could be used for apps? It took them 13 years to connect those dots?
I’m not buying it. This feature was either continuously pushed back because it’s not all that impactful, or it’s the result of some serious barrel-scraping.
In my opinion, App Bubbles only exists because Google needs to justify the next “big” update. Because while it’s dedicated to providing annual updates, it’s clearly running out of ideas.
Do we really need annual Android upgrades?
We’ve accepted that yearly updates are normal in the smartphone space.
We get a new entry in each smartphone range, and major operating system updates, too. They keep the mill churning, keep putting out new features, new upgrades, new reasons to buy, more reasons for stock prices to go up. What do we get? New stuff. It seems like a good bargain.
Except it isn’t working. Companies are running out of steam. Even worse, there were signs this would be the case from the very beginning.
From the start, very few smartphone ranges changed every year. The tick-tock model meant we got a phone with minimal changes every other year, and in recent times, we’re barely getting that.
When was the last time the Galaxy S Ultra meaningfully changed?
But that’s ultimately because smartphone hardware no longer needs annual updates — and the same is becoming true of smartphone operating systems.
For instance, what did Android 16 actually add? A desktop mode that, as good as it is, nobody actually uses. Some new safety features that are, admittedly, pretty great. Oh, and some visual updates.
I’m not going to argue that these aren’t solid additions. But can they really bear the weight of a new version of Android? Is it worth upgrading just to get them?
They’re not. And that makes it clear — Google is struggling to come up with new ideas that don’t revolve around putting AI in stuff.
In an ideal world, we’d give it a break for a year. Let the current version of Android breathe, let Google come up with some fresh new ideas. Take the pressure off.
But that’s not going to happen. Too much is tied to Android’s annual updates, like stock market expectations and phone update promises.
So I guess we’re going to have to get used to the idea that new versions of Android really don’t bring that much. Except for more AI, of course.
