Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Android 16 QPR2 Beta 2 adds a new Material 3 Expressive look to the Setup Wizard.
- The redesigned Setup Wizard includes thicker buttons and a cleaner card-like UI on certain screens.
- Most users are likely to miss the changes as the Setup Wizard only appears on new or wiped devices, but a refresh was much needed to make a strong first impression.
Google recently rolled out Android 16 QPR2 Beta 2 for supported Pixel phones, packing in many key changes, such as icon shape customization, step tracking in Health Connect, protection from SMS OTP hijacking, and more. If you are installing the update on an existing device, you’d have likely missed that the Setup Wizard has also gotten a Material 3 Expressive upgrade with this Android 16 QPR2 Beta 2 release.
Starting off with the Welcome screen, which has been the Hello screen since Android 16 QPR2 Beta 1, we now get thicker buttons. The Accessibility button is also larger and easier to hit without significantly impacting the Next button. The language selection screen now has a card-like UI, which looks much cleaner than the simple list UI from before. The Device Migration screen looks much more cohesive, and even the Skip button no longer seems out of place.
Don’t want to miss the best from Android Authority?
The Fingerprint Setup screen and Face Unlock Setup screen also look cohesive, with complementary button styling.
There are also splashes of Material 3 Expressive in the other screens, like the squiggly progress indicator and uniform button styling.
Most users would have missed these changes as the Setup Wizard only appears if you start afresh on the phone, like either on a new phone or after you’ve wiped the data of your existing device. It’s a small change, but it’s one of the first impressions of a phone, so it makes a lot of sense to present a polished experience.
Thank you for being part of our community. Read our Comment Policy before posting.
[ad_2]
]]>
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Xfinity Mobile’s WiFi PowerBoost lets your phone access Wi-Fi speeds in excess of the internet plan you’re paying for.
- So far it’s supported iPhones and Samsung Galaxy flagships and mid-rangers, but not Android phones at large.
- New settings for “Xfinity Speed Boost” in Google’s Adaptive Connectivity Service app suggest availability could be improving.
Going online with your smartphone over a Wi-Fi connection can offer a lot of advantages compared to a cellular connection. But ultimately, what you get out of Wi-Fi is limited by the internet connection feeding it; if you’re only paying for a 300Mbps plan with your ISP, you’ve got no hope of your Wi-Fi speeds surpassing that, right? You’d think so, but thanks to the existence of companies that offer both cellular and wired home internet service, there’s a special edge case where this isn’t necessarily true — and we just spotted something that points to Pixel phones getting access to this trick on Xfinity.
Xfinity Mobile offers a feature for its users called WiFi PowerBoost. Basically, when you connect your Xfinity Mobile phone to a compatible Wi-Fi router that’s using Xfinity as its ISP, the router will automatically raise speeds to up to 1Gbps, even if subscribed to a slower plan. That doesn’t even have to be your home router, either.
Maybe the most limiting factor there is the list of supported phones, and while PowerBoost works with iPhones, as well as both Samsung flagship and mid-range models, that list doesn’t include Google Pixel phones. Or at least, it hasn’t so far.
Spectrum Mobile also offers a similar service, branded as Spectrum Speed Boost. And we’ve already seen Google supporting that in the company’s Adaptive Connectivity Service app. With the app’s new p.2025.22 release, however, we’ve spotted a very similar-looking new entry for “Xfinity Speed Boost.”
While we have not yet been able to formally confirm, this sure sounds like it’s talking about WiFi PowerBoost, only carrying over the existing Spectrum branding that was in the app. The description of the functionality included sure seems to align with what we know of the service, and its presence here strongly suggests that we could be seeing PowerBoost expand to support Pixel phones.
Hopefully we’ll get some formal confirmation from Xfinity soon, and maybe learn precisely the scope of this broadening support.
[ad_2]
]]>