You may suppose a Google cellphone can be the only option to regulate your Google-branded audio system, however that’s not essentially true: Google’s actions have probably opened the door for different producers to do what the Pixel legally can’t, writes Android sleuth Mishaal Rahman at Esper.

Last week, we wrote how “Your Google home speakers are about to get slightly worse because Sonos sued and won.” If you’re utilizing a Google Pixel, that’s true — amongst different issues, you received’t be capable of management the quantity of a multi-zone Google Cast speaker group. That’s as a result of the US International Trade Commission dominated that Google copied Sonos’ know-how and threatened to dam imports until Google carried out 5 particular software program tweaks. One of the Sonos patents particularly handled controlling quantity of a multi-zone speaker group.

But when Rahman dug into the Android 12 code, he discovered that the approach Google disabled distant speaker group quantity management is extremely fundamental: Google merely set a single worth from “true” to “false” by itself Pixel telephones. Rahman writes:

the second patch appears tailor-made to permit Google to ship Pixel telephones with out the flexibility to regulate the quantity of distant speaker group periods. But it additionally leaves a straightforward approach for OEMs to ship their very own gadgets with the characteristic enabled. All an OEM must do is construct AOSP with GMS and depart the default worth (‘true’) for the config_volumeAdjustmentForRemoteGroupSessions flag in place.

It appears like if Samsung or Xiaomi (at present the world’s high two Android producers) need their telephones to regulate the quantity of a whole speaker group (one thing a Google Pixel can not do as of the newest replace), they don’t must elevate any further fingers. They simply must keep away from deliberately turning it off. And Rahman says that — at the very least in beta — the upcoming Android 12L works this manner as properly.

(For the uninitiated, “build AOSP with GMS” merely means to take the essential model of Android that Google affords free to producers, with the Google providers that the corporate usually licenses with it, which is what most Android cellphone makers do anyhow earlier than they pores and skin Android with additions of their very own.)

None of which means that any cellphone maker will essentially take Google up on this risk. For all I do know — I’m not a lawyer — Sonos might simply flip round and sue them, too, utilizing its victory towards Google as precedent. But it’s all very intriguing to consider.