No major event planned for this spring or summer was spared from the coronavirus pandemic. MWC, E3, WWDC, and Google I/O were all canceled due to the global health pandemic, and so companies have had to find creative ways to announce products and services they had planned on unveiling during those events.

Microsoft is holding monthly events to show off Xbox Series X games and features, Apple is taking its Worldwide Developers Conference online, and now Google has made an announcement of its own.

The full reveal of Android 11 was initially going to be one of the highlights of Google I/O at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, but now that I/O has been taken off of the calendar, Google is instead asking Android fans to tune in for “#Android11: The Beta Launch Show” at 11AM ET on June 3rd. Dave Burke, Android VP of Engineering, will host the show and participate in a live Q&A session once the show has concluded.

Google also plans to share talks that were planned to take place during Google I/O “on a range of topics from Jetpack Compose to Android Studio and Google Play.” You can sign up for reminders right here.

Of course, Google I/O was originally scheduled for May, which means the beta is now coming a month later than the Android developer community expected. As Burke explains, the Android team has been working remotely ever since employees were sent home, and so the timeline for the release of Android 11 has shifted as a result. All of the initial milestones have been moved out by about a month, while the public release is still planned for Q3.

The major changes include an unexpected fourth Developer Preview rolling out today, the release of Beta 1 jumping to June 3rd with the final SDK and NDK APIs, Beta 2 and Platform Stability in July, and Beta 3 in August with release candidate builds for final testing. By including the final APIs in Beta 1, Google says that developers will have an extra month to compile and test with those APIs while ensuring they still have the same amount of time between Platform Stability and the final release of the software to iron everything else out.

“The schedule change adds some extra time for you to test your app for compatibility and identify any work you’ll need to do,” says Burke. “We recommend releasing a compatible app update by Android 11 Beta on June 3rd to get feedback from the larger group of Android Beta users who will be getting the update.”

One of the best features that Google ever invented for Android is Live Caption. The feature adds real-time captions to anything playing on the screen, whether it’s a clip found online or a video stored locally.

The feature is now rolling out to the Chrome browser, which means it’ll be available on a variety of platforms, including Mac, Windows, and Linux.

The video transcribing feature can be very useful for watching clips when you can’t turn up the volume and have no speakers, but that’s just an added bonus. What’s impressive about Live Caption is that it can give people who are hearing-impaired access to even more videos than streaming sites that already offered captions of their own. That’s because Live Caption also works on the videos you record on your own and share with others — videos that wouldn’t ever get captions otherwise. Live Caption can also be used for learning purposes, to caption videos in a different language so you can see the words translated on the fly.

It’s unclear, however, whether the desktop version of Live Caption would also work on home videos that may be stored on the Mac or Windows computer. That’s because the feature will work only inside Google Chrome, lacking system-wide privileges. Here’s the feature in action on Android:

Live Caption was developed with support for English, initially, but Google promised support for other languages down the road.

First spotted by TechDows, Chrome’s Live Caption can be found inside the app’s Accessibility section of Settings. That’s Chrome://settings/Accessibility, if you’d prefer to copy and paste it into the address bar. This is the Settings option you’ll be looking for to enable Live Caption on Chrome:

However, the feature isn’t live in Chrome just yet. Rather, you’ll have to download the latest version of Chrome Canary (84.0.4136.2 or later) if you want to check it out right now. If you don’t want to install Canary, you’ll have to wait for the feature to roll out to the stable version of Chrome, which should happen soon. After all, Live Caption for Chrome is the kind of feature that could have been unveiled at the now-canceled Google I/O event.

Live Caption happens directly on-device over on Android, and the same should be true of the Chrome version. Hopefully the feature won’t increase Chrome’s energy needs, which, as the browser is already a battery hog on laptops.

Microsoft announced Windows 10X last year as the key to its dual-screen ambitions, but the company has changed course since then.

Confirming a previous rumor, Microsoft now says Windows 10X will instead target single-screen devices first. The latest tidbits from the rumor mill suggest this is more than targeting traditional laptops — Microsoft may be planning to use Windows 10X to compete directly with Chromebooks. 

Google’s first Chromebooks were sluggish, ugly, and poorly built. Over time, Chromebooks have expanded to every niche in the laptop market, even the high-end. Still, it’s the budget-priced and midrange Chromebooks that have become popular, and that’s taken a big bite out of Windows-based laptops. Similar efforts on Microsoft’s site like Windows RT have crashed and burned, but the company hopes it can strike the right balance with Windows 10X. 

According to a leaked document, Microsoft reportedly adjusted its plans when the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe. Launching expensive new dual-screen laptops in this climate is a significant risk, but demand for traditional laptops has exploded as people seek to get work done from home. Inexpensive Chromebooks, in particular, have been in high demand, but Microsoft has also seen a 75 percent jump in Windows 10 usage this year. So, the company feels it’s the right time to launch a streamlined version of Windows with a focus on traditional form factors.

Windows 10 is a feature-packed operating system with a lot of baggage from decades of ongoing Windows development. With 10X, Microsoft will feature UX improvements across the board, including a new Start Menu and window management system. It will also feature a new application container system that promises better security and performance. There’s also talk of cloud-based app virtualization technology that could make light-weight Windows laptops more capable. 

This is a tough environment to launch any product, particularly new form factors that inevitably demand a premium price. We’ve seen the same problems in the mobile space with foldable phones that cost well over $1,000. It’s just a bad time to ask people to spend that much. With all the work already done on Windows 10X, repositioning it for traditional laptops might be the best option available to Microsoft. It’s clear it needs something to go toe-to-toe with Chrome OS. Hopefully, this goes better than all the other times Microsoft tried to pare back Windows.

When will Surface Neo and all of the other dual-screen Windows 10X devices launch? That’s a question Microsoft will answer another time.

Microsoft’s Windows and Devices boss Panos Panay penned a blog post that explains the various innovations coming to Windows 10 in the near future. In that post, Panay confirmed Microsoft’s “pivot” from dual-screen Windows 10 use to single-screen Windows 10X use:

With Windows 10X, we designed for flexibility, and that flexibility has enabled us to pivot our focus toward single-screen Windows 10X devices that leverage the power of the cloud to help our customers work, learn and play in new ways. These single-screen devices will be the first expression of Windows 10X that we deliver to our customers, and we will continue to look for the right moment, in conjunction with our OEM partners, to bring dual-screen devices to market.

It’s unclear how Windows 10X will benefit Windows 10 users with traditional laptops or two-in-one devices. However, earlier in the blog post, there’s this gem about the upcoming Windows 10 May 2020 update:

We are bringing practical improvements in the bigger things, like an improved tablet experience when you detach your 2-in-1’s keyboard, allowing you to keep the familiarity of your desktop while at the same time optimizing for touch.

That suggests Microsoft is more interested in the tablet experience of Windows 10, and that must be related to Windows 10X. That said, there’s no indication on when Windows 10X will be available on existing Windows devices, or how that transition will work. Hopefully, the upcoming Build 2020 conference that will be available for free to anyone looking to attend it virtually might reveal more details about the Windows 10X rollout plans.

As for the Surface Neo, the device is expected to launch at some point next year, assuming work on the device will not be hindered by the current health crisis. Like other tech companies, Microsoft employees have been working from home for the past few weeks, a process that could lead to product launch delays. The Surface Neo isn’t the only potential victim of the novel coronavirus pandemic: The Xbox Series X might also be affected by the pandemic.

The most recent reports have said that iPhone 12 mass-production has been pushed back by at least one month. If true, that means one of two things: either Apple’s iPhone 12 models will be released on time in September and they’ll be in very short supply, or Apple will push the release back to sometime in October or November. Whatever the case, we still have at least four months and change before Apple reveals its new iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro designs. Unfortunately for Apple and luckily for us, however, the new designs have already leaked.

Apple’s iPhone 12 release timing might still be a mystery, but the iPhone 12 series itself hasn’t been a mystery for quite some time. In fact, we’ve known plenty about Apple’s iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro models since even before the iPhone 11 series was released. Top Apple insider Ming-Chi Kuo of TF International Securities told us back then that Apple was working on a redesigned iPhone 12 series that would usher in some big changes.

Between September and December last year, Kuo told us that Apple was working on four new iPhone 12 models, two lower-end versions with dual-lens cameras and two Pro models with triple-lens cameras. He also said all four phones would support 5G, and he said that they would have OLED displays as well as a new design with flat metal edges like the old iPhone 5. Little tidbits have been added into the mix from Kuo and from other sources since then, and now it appears as though the iPhone 12 design has been finalized. What does it look like? A new set of renders from PhoneArena gives us a good idea.

Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max design can be seen at the top of this post, and the design of the iPhone 12 models is directly above. They’re quite similar with the exception of the camera array on the back of each phone. In addition to the two lenses on the back of the iPhone 12 phones, the Pro models get a third lens and the LIDAR sensor from the most recent iPad Pro tablets.

PhoneArena did a pretty good job of sticking to reliable leaks when creating these renders, so they should be a very good representation of Apple’s upcoming new iPhone. That said, there are some mistakes. Several of the renders like the one below have a notch that isn’t shaped properly. Also, the blog mocked up a Project(RED) iPhone 12 Pro, which is highly unlikely. Finally, you’ll notice that the rear camera setup in all the images in this post is color-matched to the back of the phone, as is the case on the iPhone 11 series. The iPhone 12 is indeed expected to maintain that trend, but for some reason, most of PhoneArena’s other renders have black around the rear camera lenses.