All About Android 582, Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Jason Howell (00:00:00):
Coming up next on All About Android. It's me, Jason Howell, and my co-hosts Ron Richards and Huyen Tue Dao, we talk about Android 13, finally, releasing platform stability with beta 3. Although there's this whole back navigation change. That's coming with Android 13. How's that working out? We talk a little bit about that. Also Nothing's new smartphone has an event date. That's coming up next month and they're showing it off with a bunch of birds. There's a lot to figure out there. Google talk. You may have thought it was dead, but now it's really dead, like dead, dead goodbye to conversational actions as well. Plus we have a whole bunch of your feedback and a whole lot more next on All About Android.
Narrator (00:00:43):
Podcasts. You love from people you trust. This is TWiT.
Jason Howell (00:00:52):
This episode of All About Android is brought to you by ITproTV. Finally, you can enjoy getting an IT education with ITPro TV, visit itpro.tv/allaboutandroid for an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription. When you use code AAA30 at checkout. Hello, welcome to All About Android. This is episode 582 recorded on Tuesday, June 14th, 2022. Your weekly source for the latest news hardware and apps for the Android Faithful, I'm Jason Howell.
Ron Richards (00:01:26):
And I'm Ron Richards.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:01:29):
And I'm Huyen Tue Dao.
Jason Howell (00:01:30):
Now. Ah, yes, the three of us in the house. Well, I guess I'm in the house and you're in the TV house.
Ron Richards (00:01:37):
I'm in, in the box. I'm
Jason Howell (00:01:38):
In the box. You're the box and the one in boxes who's in the box. You know what I realized as I was doing the intro for today, we've been saying forever, the latest news hardware and apps. Do we need to add feedback cuz that is technically a thing or is that just kinda like, eh, that's also there.
Ron Richards (00:01:56):
<Laugh>,
Jason Howell (00:01:57):
It's all the latest news, hardware, apps and feedback from you, the,
Ron Richards (00:02:03):
The problem then you need, you need to change it cuz it'd be latest news, hardware and apps for the Android, faithful and feedback from the Android
Jason Howell (00:02:10):
Feature. Yeah. Right, right.
Ron Richards (00:02:11):
Yeah.
Jason Howell (00:02:11):
Latest news hardware and apps for and feedback from, from, yeah, no, this is getting too complicated. I don't, I don't know if it, it doesn't have quite the same ring, which is not to say that we don't respect all of the feedback and wonderful emails that you send to AAA@twit.tv. We love it. But we will continue to honor you at the end with the horns that you just heard. And not at the beginning. Alright. Woo. Well, we have a show for you. I certainly hope so. Cuz we're here to do one. So why don't we jump right in and let's start the show with the news Burke.
Burke (00:02:52):
I don't know if you ever noticed, but we only use proprietary cables here on Android News, only proprietary.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:02:59):
Oh
Ron Richards (00:02:59):
Dear. I mean I would like, I would like first like to applaud Burke for a strong comeback to the Android news bumper after several weeks, I feel like of, of not a great performance. And secondarily, if I had to predict anything about Burke and cables, it'd be proprietary. You're welcome, Ron. I feel like he's got a draw off proprietary cables. Sure.
Jason Howell (00:03:20):
<Laugh> that's how he prefers it to be too. Burke does not like proprietary cables. Yeah. No that makes sense. That makes sense. All right, Huyen you got the top story and boy, it is exciting. Let me tell you,
Huyen Tue Dao (00:03:34):
Yeah, we just finished talking about Android. 12 QP R3 last week and this week we got Android 13 beta three for you drop in June 13. I can't three. Yeah, 1, 2, 3 AV throwing some letters in there. Yeah. And then hope that, you know, eventually you get it on your phone and yeah, June 13th, you got your Android 13 beta three. So if you are already enrolled and looking for those sweet over the year air updates, or if you're kind of looking to get into your Android 13 into the Android 13 beta game, you can certainly enroll now and you'll get that Android 13, which is now,with beta beta two. Wait, sorry. Beta three. Good, good Lord. See, I'm more to confused with beta three, Android 13 is now at platform stability, which means all app facing APIs and behaviors are final, which is great for me.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:04:24):
And devs don't like it when you pull our APIs out from under us. So that makes it easier for devs to kind of start kind of finalizing support for it and kind of interestingly enough you know you might y'all might not have noticed, but Google seems to be kind of hot on tablets this year. Just, I don't know if you kind of noticed maybe like you heard a little bit yeah, a little bit. You can actually get Android 13 beta three on tablets, some tablets. Actually, if you check out the Android 13 beta testing partners page, you can check out whether if you have a Lenovo or some other tablet, whether you wanna get your Android 13 beta three on that check it out. Cause you might be able to nice.
Jason Howell (00:05:02):
I have a lot of partners on the, on the beta
Huyen Tue Dao (00:05:04):
Page. They do actually, I was quite surprised, kept going. I was like scrolling and scrolling and it kept going. So yeah, if, if you are excited about large screens, as much as Google is you go ahead and check out that partner's page and see if you can get on it. And what do you get to get in on? Well, number one is now predictive back. Animations is now in the developer options. We talked about this around IO time, but basically Google is trying to make it easier for folks to tell where the back button is going. At least in some situations, particularly when you're going home. So for us dev this is actually pretty important because back back back, navigation is kind of hard. We've done some janky stuff myself, very much included. And so basically Android or Google rather is giving us Android 13 to figure stuff out.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:05:50):
And then by 14, they're just gonna break our stuff, which is fine because that's kind of honestly how you kind of need to get us to do stuff like this. So if, if you're a developer or if you're just a user one on one to see what the future of back navigation looks like, you can now access the predictive back animations via the developer options in your settings. For devs again, you have two routes if you're, well, I guess three, but really two, if you're supporting Android X, which is the modern compatibility library, there is an Android X library that you need to be implementing if you're not on Android X and you really don't care about previous versions of Android, probably something out there you don't have to worry about that. There is a modern API for that. And I guess the third option is just not to have to do anything and then your back navigation breaks. So that's also an option. So yeah, we got 13 to play around and to get it working and hopefully by 14, maybe everyone will see something new and different for back navigation, hopefully good stuff. Maybe some broke stuff, but yeah, we'll see. But yeah, I'm kind of curious, like, I mean this, this seems to be very specific to gesture nav. I I guess like if you're a three button navigation user you're, you're just gonna miss out on all the fancy predictive back navigations
Jason Howell (00:06:59):
Is, is it isolated to just gesture nav or is the, or is the action tied to like, you know, the, the swiping from the side gesture nav should mirror the function of the back button. If you choose the three button display? I, I would imagine on the,
Ron Richards (00:07:14):
Yeah, on the OS side of things, right? Yeah. But can the, can the app override that?
Huyen Tue Dao (00:07:19):
Yeah. Well, I don't, I don't think that matters. I'm kind of curious because like the whole thing is like the, the point of predictive back animation is that as you're like pulling, it kind of is like, oh, you're, you're kind of doing a back thing. Let me, for example, if you're gonna kick out to home, it'll like show you, but if, you know, but that's like a gesture, so there's kind of like, you know, intermediary, like there's like a middle bit to like a gesture, but with a button it's just a click. So I kind, I mean, I, I think regardless you need to support this. And, and like, you know, the, the brokenness or not brokenness of your navigation will be affected by this, but I, I guess just like this kind of like the predictive part, I wonder if that's just not a thing
Burke (00:07:59):
The Nav is all virtual now pretty much. I mean, no phone has three buttons. They're lucky to have one.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:08:05):
I don't know. I kind of, yeah. I kind of still use it for a while when I was like protesting
Jason Howell (00:08:10):
And actually
Ron Richards (00:08:11):
I stuck with, I stuck with it for a while. I stuck with it for a very long time.
Jason Howell (00:08:14):
It's still an option. I mean, the, the point is it's, it's still in there. If someone chooses to do the three button, like my wife, she hates the gestures. And so she always opts for the, the three button I'm three button. Yeah. and so, yeah, it's, it's still there. I activated the the setting that you were talking about, but it's not really doing anything. When I do my, my back nav, I will say, have you been running Huyen have you been running the betas that have implemented some form of this predictive back nav at
Huyen Tue Dao (00:08:44):
All? No, I should have, I should be. I've kind of like been telling my team, we need to do this. We need to do this, but we haven't quite gotten there yet. We, yeah, we haven't quite gotten there yet. I, I really should though,
Jason Howell (00:08:56):
For, for a team of your size, right. Do you wait for like this what do they call this platform? Stability point in order to do that?
Huyen Tue Dao (00:09:04):
Yeah, I think most teams do, just because again, like when APIs change, so like, basically it's literally like the names of things and the way that you call things. I mean, I think everyone's gonna be working up until the end to fix, like behavioral stuff, but when it comes to like API changes, we don't really wanna deal with that. Most of the time we get like a set amount of time to it's necessary time, but, but, you know, we don't have a lot of time to do stuff like this. So we try to wait till the last minute till everything's kind of set in stone and then it makes us not have to like, you know, dance around the changes as much. Yeah. So yeah, for our team of our size, we usually wait until it's until probably this point platform stability is probably is pretty much what we're gonna be waiting for. And then we'll probably start having folks turn on or rather install the beta on their, on some phone, hopefully a couple people always put on their daily drivers and then see what happens. The, the actual back navigation. So, because it's not breaking in 13, you probably, I, I I'd hazard to say that there's a good number of apps that won't be looking all, you know, sexy and predictive backy
Jason Howell (00:10:05):
Yet. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Good
Huyen Tue Dao (00:10:07):
Point. Yeah. So by next year I think I would anticipate seeing a lot more it would be easier to take a survey, like maybe next year of what it looks like for folks, because I think that's when the feet are gonna be to the fire and you really have to do this. So yeah. I don't know. I will install it and let y'all know, but I, I it's kind I'm yeah. I guess can think of that one case with the home, with going to home where it's really, really interesting. And then, yeah, I don't know. I've to look at the API, I will report back to y'all when we decide to actually support things. So, yes.
Jason Howell (00:10:37):
I mean, I've just noticed, I can't really quite put my finger on exactly what the behavior is or exactly what's going on, but I mean, okay. Obviously this changes how back, how the back button operates, right? Like <affirmative>, they're, they're implementing some sort of a change the back button and there are times where I'm in an app and I would say the back button should be taking me to a different part of the app, but instead it still takes me home or vice versa. It should be taking me home or, you know what I mean? It's, it's, it's, I'm still very confused as far as what it's actually doing, but I have noticed a change and it's not a change that I notice all the time. Often the back button does what I expect it to, but sometimes it does something that's very bizarre and that could be just be early release bugs and everything that they're working out.
Jason Howell (00:11:25):
But I'll be curious to see how this operates when when it's like, here's, here's the release candidate. We've got all the, all the things figured out on, on this predictive, you know scenario, but yeah, there are a couple of times where I've been like, no, that's not at all what I wanted. And I'm surprised that that's what you think I wanted. You know, when I think of predictive behavior, you know, like we talked about in the show in the past, it's, it's trying to understand what exactly we expect or what the developer expects should happen when you hit the back button. And right now I wouldn't say that it's hitting a hundred percent, you know, probably more like 75. Yeah.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:12:03):
I would still say the majority of the blame when you get confused with probably as a dev developer, I'm gonna say the majority of the, of the issue is gonna be us. And I think that switching over to a new API is, could, could make things better, but it could also just be, I'm gonna make this so that my app roughly works. So it's, it might just be like marginally better, but yeah, if, if you continue to have problems, I would, I, I, I would say like very likely it's, it's still a dev problem. Just to own up to that. So, okay. So I'll
Jason Howell (00:12:33):
Just point the developers.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:12:35):
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, to be that that's, that's kind of what it is. Like, I mean, it's our responsibility. If we don't adapt, if we don't adopt predictive back navigation and, and especially if we adopt it well, you know what I mean? Like, I think sometimes like, and I, man, it's just sometimes like when you're in such certain situations, it I've had so many weird conversations over the years with different teams about what should the back button do. And it's weird, how many, how many different opinions you can get? I guess it also depends on the complexity of your app and like how things are structured and, and like how you move from like screen to screen. Yeah. It is really weird sometimes when you, when, when you have people on the same team writing the same app and they don't agree on what back should do.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:13:17):
And yeah, that happens. That that's, I mean, that's why I kind of wanna take a lot of responsibility here as a dev that, you know I, I really just do feel, feel like Google is kind of just making us all change to something and hopefully some things will be better. Yeah. Like, like knowing that you're going home, if you're using gesture, I don't know how it's gonna work for, I don't know how it's gonna work for three buttons, so, yeah. But yeah, I mean, for, for, Deb's kinda interesting. I know for, for, for users, maybe everyone's kind of like burned out on bad, but back buttons, but you can have some other nice features with your beta three. You've got battery widgets of varying sizes. And also to kind of roll out the red carpet for pixel tablet they're rolling out a six by five app grid.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:13:59):
So looks like we're getting ready, getting, getting the pixel long as you're ready for the pixel tablet with a six by five app grid. There's some like, you know, things like updating, like kind of all areas to more Android, 12 style with pill buttons, kind of other little, some settings are going and coming and going. There's a redesigned fingerprint unlock set for under display readers only. There's a wider and thick. It's just like a lot of little, like tiny little like incremental changes and something that actually is more substantial and interesting is the pixel launcher web search. If you are using the pixel launcher, presumably you are, if you're using a picture phone, but if in the pixel launcher home settings, you can now see a search setting section, which includes a toggle for web suggestions. So as you're typing into your pixel launcher search bar, you should be able to see web web results now. And also at a glance flashlight is available in beta three. I actually got my June update on my phone and I am very happy to have flashlight at a glance on because I leave my flashlight on all the time. Yeah. And now I have an easy way to turn it off. So
Jason Howell (00:15:03):
I totally, that happened to me the other day. And I had it sitting on the counter and, you know, even the the always on display that was displaying right at the top flashlight on, it was like, oh, you know, and then you pick it up. It's, it's the thing that I've noticed. People make fun of a lot. People make fun. Oh yeah. Flashlight on that. What, what a pointless feature, but it's actually really like, it came in really handy. Yeah. See like, yeah, like Burke's flashlight shining right on me right now. That's a little too bright for me. <Laugh> yes, exactly. Like that flashlight. So it's kind of handy right on.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:15:36):
Yeah. Well I'm, I'm happy. And hopefully beta three folks are happy and there you go platform stability, try it out. And you know, let the, let Android the Android team and us know what you think of beta your beta three features
Jason Howell (00:15:51):
Right on. All right. Thank you for that. This, let's see here, I'm gonna try and understand this, this story. I had to do some reading and then rereading to make sure that I, that I have this right. So correct me if I get any of this wrong last year, Google announced the play integrity API at the Google for games, developer summit. And it was expected at the time that this was gonna someday replace something that's been in place for a long time called the safety net API, essentially. It's like an integrity test. And when we talked in on the show, I don't know how many years ago about things like Google pay, not working on rooted D devices. That's kind of what we're talking about. It's that integrity check. This is an API that's in place to monitor the phone to make sure that the phone is of a certain status of a certain I don't know, build or, or something, you know, integrity's just the word that, that comes to my mind that would enable Google to say, yes, we trust this device to run something as critical as like a personal banking app that might have very, or, or or something that you're using at a pay terminal, you know, at a store so that you, you know, or, or a criminal or something couldn't use a rooted phone and then, you know, maybe steal some something through the same system.
Jason Howell (00:17:15):
I'm, I'm totally guessing on that, but that's, that's kind of my understanding. And now Google has announced that the safety net API is gonna be replaced by the new Google play integrity API. The safety net attestation API is gonna be deprecated by 2024. Google does say that developers need to start in integrating with the play integrity API as soon as possible to get ready for this switch so that they don't end up, you know, in a, in an uncomfortable position down the line. And I think of the stories that I read about this you know, yes, there's banking apps and, and other things like like Netflix, you know, media streaming apps that those, the developers wanna keep those apps secure and make sure that only the right people are using 'em that sort of stuff, but there's the root and the wrong community.
Jason Howell (00:18:07):
That's kind of, you know, concerned about this too. Be what would it mean for the future of modeling devices? And I think that's kind of an open question, mark, although, as we all know, it's, it's always a cat and mouse game, right. The second Google changes something and it changes the playbook for people who like to modify their devices. They're instantly looking for other ways to start modifying the devices and kind of get into that back door. So but this seemed to be getting some, some attention. Did I do it okay. I don't know if you know more about this than, than I do when it's kind of behind the scenes scenes stuff, but yeah.
Ron Richards (00:18:44):
This is like deep under the hood stuff. Yeah. This is, this isn't even like behind the scenes. This is like, yeah. Underlying tech, right. Underlying OS stuff.
Jason Howell (00:18:52):
Right, right.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:18:53):
Yeah. And I think that the, the, the ways in which this can be exploited are kind of like out of my sphere and maybe mm-hmm, <affirmative>, I'm maybe just out of the sphere of most of just at the granularity at which they're checking things like. Right. I mean, I think like a lot of times, like for, let's say your average app, maybe things like, you know, I guess login might be a place of attacks and, and like possibly anywhere where, you know, Mon like purchases and in-app purchases, it might start happening. Or even if, if it's possible for you to like repeatedly do an action and kind of like jam up the server mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah. This is interesting. This is kind of a little bit out of my normal space. It's kind of interesting. And I think there was a, there was a point I think, like on they were talking about the Android bites podcast and, and wondering whether, you know, with the granularity or at least of levels of granularity at which you could do these checks, whether that would mean that Des would make room for people that, you know, are like rooting and roaming, or whether people are just be like, this is too hard, just like, you know, block all the things.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:19:50):
Right. and I, I think it's interesting. I, I don't think I've ever to be fair in my experience. I've never really had a conversation where we talk specifically about rooted or kind of raw users, but again, I've worked on very conventional apps, let's say, so it's not really in my space. So yeah, I I'm, I'm kind of curious who, and for what applications really need to kind of, you know take a look at this. It seems like, was it specific to like the game? Was it was that right? Like, was announced that the game developer something, so
Jason Howell (00:20:19):
Maybe something about game, it was
Huyen Tue Dao (00:20:20):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> is a little bit more exploitable in this kind of manner with roots rooting in rooting in rums.
Jason Howell (00:20:27):
So, yeah, I, I, yeah, it seems to me it kind of covers a lot of bases, right. It could be games, you know mm-hmm <affirmative> figuring out systems to, to, to, I don't know, perhaps cheat on games exploit the games in some way, but that also, you know, that same system could be applied to payments, could be applied to, you know, it potentially, as far as these stories are concerned how, you know, how a user is able to route their device, what kind of access they're able to get from that. So yeah, I guess we'll we'll see what this actually ends up meaning, but it could, could be a big deal. Could, could not be, I mean, it does sound like this new system is just more robust than the previous system, the safety net API. So that could potentially make things a lot more complicated for the community who is really into modifying their devices. But I know they're also very smart. That community is very smart. They often can find a way around, pretty much anything if they look hard enough. So, and you better believe
Ron Richards (00:21:32):
That's part of the game. That's part of, that's part of why they're in that community. Right. Totally.
Jason Howell (00:21:36):
It's a bad of honor.
Ron Richards (00:21:37):
It was easy. They would. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So too funny. Yeah. so moving on at the top of the show, you heard Burke being snarky about cables, but last week we were talking about how the EU passed their order, saying that all mobile device manufacturers need to make need to make their devices with commonly used cables, no proprietary cables, apple you know, basically requiring USBC as, as the cable of choice for charging devices starting in 2024. But you might remember that the UK left the EU thanks to Brexit <laugh>. And now the UK is saying it is not following suit with this decision by the EU. Basically with Brexit, it would this would seem to make things a bit more complicated because like, will apple choose to make multiple versions for different regions?
Ron Richards (00:22:30):
Like, will they make phones that, that are chargeable via USBC in the EU, but then stick to the lightning cable in the UK and the us and other re like, yeah, it opens up all these kind of doors, although, but, but what I find really interesting and that this is somewhat I'm, I'm not, I'm not surprised that the UK's not going along with it, given their Rocky relationship with the EU and all the criticism, you know, our video viewers just saw, you know, Burke pull up a screenshot talking about quote, saying that, you know, this moves stifles innovation and that sort of thing. But you gotta wonder what the long term impact is on companies like apple, where, you know, do you adjust to comply with the EU and just keep that limited to that region, or you change your product completely moving forward? What percentage of sales are reflected from the EU? How big of a hit is it? Do they just stop selling their device in those regions? I mean, I don't think they would do that, but like what, you know, you know, there, there are a lot of, you know, people who are good with spreadsheets and numbers who will run, what is the, you know, the, the, the relative cost impact of making this change. And they can just choose not to do and fine. We won't play there, you know? And then, and then at that point,
Jason Howell (00:23:38):
The huawe, well, I mean, yeah, it was a little different, but you know,
Ron Richards (00:23:42):
A little different, yeah, it was a little more political, but, but you, you, you, if let's say let's play it to the extreme and apple says, you know, it's not cost effective for us to adopt U SBC as a charging cable for the iPhone, for the EU. So we're gonna pull outta the EU. The EU now has just limited their citizens options. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> cause like, what if you want an iPhone? Right. And so like the, yeah, the ramifications of this kind of legislation, the way it was been written is fraught with bumps. So, yeah, wacky that said, I do think everybody should be using USBC, but that's just me. It's universal.
Jason Howell (00:24:16):
Yeah. I mean, my, my guess, like, I, there's no way that apple would make multiple devices. I just don't see that happening. You know, eh, we we'll sell this USBC version of our iPhone in, in the EU and this other, you know, Thunderbolt version everywhere else. Apple's just gonna move over. That's that's my guess anyways, but I mean, the iPhone is
Ron Richards (00:24:36):
Only, I think it comes outta numbers. Yeah. You know, I mean, as of a, so according to nine to five Mac and I'll share this link I can't believe we're talking about, oh my God, I can't believe I'm, we're gonna pull up a nine to five back article. But but so apple saw it's highest growth in Europe as of January 20, 22 outpacing 25% growth year over year. That, but that's just, that's just their percentage of the marketplace. So no idea of exactly how many numbers that is how many units that is, unfortunately a lot,
Jason Howell (00:25:13):
I
Ron Richards (00:25:14):
Mean, it's yeah. According to, according to St. Statista apples, net sales in Europe in 2021 were $89 billion. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So yeah, more, that's crazy. At least more than Samsung. That's true. Yeah. Mm <laugh>.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:25:34):
Yeah. I will say one thing I do like about this is the agreement, including applying to let choose customers choose whether or not they want charging cable with their new electronics, like, excuse me. Oh my goodness. I'm just like, so excited about like, talking about this. I
Ron Richards (00:25:47):
Just kinda choked myself. I get all choked up.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:25:49):
It all choked up. So I, I, I honestly don't, I, I'm not sure the impact of like, and how I honestly feel about the Maning USBC. Like, I, I, I look in it perfect world. Everyone would've migrated there on their own, but also, I mean, I, I sort of vaguely kind of, sort of get the innovation like, and also, it just feels like very restricted to say USBC rather than kind of like trying to like, do it more collaboratively. I think it's a little bit odd, but I do like the idea that in terms of like responding to waste kind of putting like the monopoly and like you know, stifling the, the possibility of stifling innovation because of lightning or not lighting. I do like the idea of letting consumers choose charging cables within new electronics. I do think that that actually is a valid and an interesting part of the agreement because, I mean, yeah, I, I, as, as, as a house with two Android developers and it crap ton of devices, we are swimming in USB cables and trying to like recycle them on this end is a lot harder than say preventing it.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:26:47):
So I do like that. I, I will say that, that, that I'm down for, I don't the rest of it's kind of like, yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I just dunno the impact. We'll see.
Jason Howell (00:26:57):
I agree. We will see. All right. Let's take a break and thank the sponsor of this episode. And then we will get into some hardware news and beyond. But first this episode of all about Android is brought to you by it pro TV. There are a lot of it training platforms that you could go to. The question is, do they actually have the most up to date content, right? Are you gonna find exactly what you actually need for your job in it, or your budding career in it? You can get the best possible it training and certifications with it pro TV. So you don't have to keep searching anymore. That's the place to go get training, get certified on your own schedule. They have virtual labs and practice tests. So you're always gonna be supported and prepared for your exams. And you know, we're so used to binging content.
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Now you can do that here as well, 20 to 30 minute increments. If you wanna binge their episodes, they have over 5,800 hours of it training. It's always up to date with the most current content which is as you know, very important. It's a fast paced technology world that we live in. So you need to be current. One reviewer says most engaging hosts I've ever watched. I highly recommend it pro TV to not only it professionals, but also to people who have interest in it, but don't know where to start very educational and entertaining. That's one reviewer wrote about it pro TV. You can check out some of their newest courses too, CompTIA, a plus core one and core two series that's designed for professionals who support today's core technologies from security to networking, to virtualization and more there's comp Tia's a plus certification.
Jason Howell (00:28:37):
It's an industry standard for launching it careers in today's digital focused world. And you learn about hardware operating systems, networking, security, troubleshooting, all, all across the board. So much education, so much stuff to be learned from their amazing content. It pro TV will have two free live webinars this month that you can actually check out all things, cyber security hacking your way into the field with Daniel Lowry and Zach hill that's on Thursday, June 16th. So that's this upcoming Thursday at 2:00 PM Eastern. And then there's the future of project management with Chris ward and Kelly Mack. That's Thursday, June 23rd. So that's next Thursday a week from this Thursday at 2:00 PM Eastern. And yeah, what do you, you know, how can you pass up some live webinars from it pro TV? It also gives you an idea of kind of what their content is like. And I guarantee you, if you watch that you're gonna be sold.
Jason Howell (00:29:35):
Don't forget about your it team. Check out an it pro TV business plan as well. If you have a team to support, it's the perfect way to do it, visit it pro.tv/all about Android. You'll get an additional 30% off all consumer subscriptions for the lifetime of your active subscription. So not just at the beginning, the lifetime of your active subscription, when you use code a, a, a 30 that's it pro TV slash all about Android, make sure and use that code AA 30. Don't wanna miss that. That's how you get your additional 30% off for the lifetime of your active subscription. And it also lets them know that you heard about it through all about Android it pro TV build, or expand your it career and enjoy the journey along the way. And we thank it pro TV for their continued support of all, about Android, doing some really cool stuff over there. All right. Let's let's dive into some hardware, the pool of hardware. You don't actually wanna dive into a pool of hardware. Let me just tell you it hurts. Yeah, it's painful. So now, you know, all right, when you got first,
Ron Richards (00:30:47):
It's really just it's, it's just the, it's the corners that get you, it's the sharp edges and things like that.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:30:53):
Yeah. And things like that. Yeah. Well, we talk about Qualcom quite frequently as they are a huge chip manufacturer making, you know, the majority of or their chips being in the majority of flagship phones and quite a significant portion of mid to of mid mid-level phones. But they also kind of got into the smartphone game themselves last year with their smartphone for Ja Snapdragon insiders. And for $1,500, you got an ACEs made Snapdragon 8 88, 16 gigabyte singing bites of Ram 512 gigabytes of storage and a 10 80 P 144 Hertz Ole display. And if you're the kind of person who likes a little bit of character in your OS, you are still rocking the Android January, 2022 security update, which they send out on March 18th and you're still running Android 11. So, you know pluses and minuses, but for flagship phone, this is a little bit a little weird, especially considering that, you know, prior to their March, 2022 update, they previously, before that released a December 9th, 2021 update.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:32:00):
And before that, actually we were having a string of monthly updates with extensive fix lists. So it seems like Qualcomm is shifting to more of a quarterly update rather than monthly updates. So, you know, for 1500 bucks and comparing it to, you know, the Samsung and the Googles of the world, not, not great, not great. Now Qualcomm's actually generally pretty good about helping everyone else with updates to, you know, kinda like the fundamental software and security. So some blame might be perhaps laid on the feet of ASIS because, you know, ASIS doesn't really have a good track record with their own updates and this isn't ASIS made phone. So yeah, if, if you're, if you were kind of all, you know, excited about the snap the snap drag insider phone you might just have to kind of get used to quarterly updates which is not so great, but it sounds like because it is quarterly and it is June, you were probably looking at another update sometimes
Jason Howell (00:32:56):
Soon soonish sometimes soon, soon, although soon, although, you know, I'm gonna put this, this is gonna be the, the call out of the week for anyone to email in. If you actually own one of these phones, if you were one of the buyers of the, what is it, the Snapdragon, the smartphone for Snapdragon insiders device, mm-hmm <affirmative> email, let us know what you think. I have a high suspicion that they did not sell very many of these. And that's probably part of the reason why this is being updated so slowly, but at the same time, it's kind of a, a slap in the face to say, this is a phone that's just for our super fans. And by the way, you're paying a lot of money for it, like $1,500. That's foldable phone territory right there. Yeah. that's, that's, Samsung's premium of premium flagship that's non foldable phone, you know,
Ron Richards (00:33:44):
That's that's foldable phone or like wacky gimmick phone.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:33:48):
Yeah, yeah.
Ron Richards (00:33:49):
That is
Huyen Tue Dao (00:33:50):
Six months behind six months behind on security updates.
Ron Richards (00:33:53):
Yeah. Oh geez. Like some sort of bizarre like subwoofer inside the case or something like that. You know what I mean? Like, like for something, yeah. Some, some type of, you know, some, you know, use it glass from the 18 hundreds or some something to make the price to, to stylist.
Jason Howell (00:34:09):
Yeah. <Laugh>
Huyen Tue Dao (00:34:11):
Well, we may, maybe that's why they're so slow on updates. Like they wanna keep like an antique feel. So maybe like this phone has like, yeah. Antique glass, like pulled from the, like, you know, melted from like sand at the bottom of some kind of like ocean or something. And then like, now that to go with it, you have a, you have an antique OS
Jason Howell (00:34:29):
The, the, yeah. The stuttering of the OS will remind you, you will bring back memories of what it was like to commute compute in the eighties. It's no, like it's made out of Ming dynasty glass <laugh> oh,
Huyen Tue Dao (00:34:41):
There you go. 1500 bucks
Jason Howell (00:34:43):
Words. Ming ish. Deep lash.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:34:46):
Yeah.
Jason Howell (00:34:48):
Okay. Do we, okay. So do you think we're gonna see another one of these smartphones is, is a Snapdragon gonna release another one of these? I mean,
Ron Richards (00:34:54):
No. Cause they found out how many Snapdragon, super fans there actually
Jason Howell (00:34:57):
Are actually are that are gonna buy one of these. Yeah. So if you are one of those super fans, email us, AAA TV, we will, I, I could almost guarantee you we'll put you in the feedback section to let us know what you think of that phone, why you bought it and all, anything else you wanna share about it? Please do I know this is your favorite, your new favorite story
Ron Richards (00:35:18):
Train. I'm
Jason Howell (00:35:18):
Excited, Ron. So you got it.
Ron Richards (00:35:20):
I'm so excited. Cuz guess what? In 27 days, we're gonna have a lot to say about nothing <laugh> so nothing nothing announced that they're gonna officially launch their first smartphone and an announcement on July 12th at 11:00 AM Eastern at an event in London. And since that announcement they've been releasing a few teasers. And I gotta be honest with you, you know, on my nothing bingo card. I did not have marketing campaign based on birds yet. Here we are. Cuz it looks as if the design element for nothing's launch is bird related. So they released one teaser that showed two birds standing on the top of the phone. And you can see it here. Our video viewers can see it, they posted that to Twitter. And they posted with the text curious. So are they and then they recently posted another post to social media of a bird with this little beak on top of the phone.
Ron Richards (00:36:22):
And it says, hello, pretty. And there was also some on their Twitter account, there was some imagery of nothing posters promoting the event, featuring birds. It's very, very weird and I love it. I'm here for it, sign me up for it. But each of these little teasers are just showing a tiny sliver to part of the phone to be announced, just a little piece of it. And of course, you know, fans are taking the challenge as they're trying to piece together. You just saw our video. Viewers just saw, just saw an image from that. Fans are trying to piece together what the phone might look like based on the little bits that are shown from these teasers plus other things that we've seen and speculated. But one thing that's important to note in these teasers the back of the phone doesn't appear to be transparent in both of those shots, but that doesn't worry me cuz I can't imagine that they're gonna have different flavors of the case, right.
Ron Richards (00:37:15):
And they're gonna have different colors. And my guess is one of them is gonna be transparent. That's my guess. But you can go to their website at us.nothing.tech and find information about the event and get notified for it. The landing page for the event is a closeup of a bird bird's wing and feathers and stuff. And it seems like their tagline is return to instinct, which must be bird related. I I'm just, I, I have no idea what's going on here and I'm, don't either excited, so excited.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:37:48):
Great. The phone S south for the winter.
Jason Howell (00:37:50):
Yeah's the feature? Yeah. Flies away. Fantastic. This flies away home.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:37:54):
Okay. Okay. Hear me at, hear me at, I, I, this, for some reason I'm getting like a Hitchcock vibe because remember when we looked at the, the nothing launcher and it had that really creepy wallpaper, that was like something from psycho, like with a hand on like a shower curtain and now there's birds like everywhere. Ah, there's like a vertigo or like some kind of reference to like, is it, oh shoot, wait, what? What's what's this Hitchcock movie. And what's like not south by north,
Ron Richards (00:38:19):
By north, north by Northwest.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:38:21):
Thank you. If there's, if there's more Hitchcock imagery, don't, we'll buy this phone, but be careful like, you know, be careful with this phone
Ron Richards (00:38:28):
<Laugh> I would, I would would've loved it if Hitchcock was a founder of south by Southwest though
Jason Howell (00:38:34):
Who maybe they'll bring Hitchcock out as a hologram to announce the
Ron Richards (00:38:39):
Phone maybe. Yeah, maybe so mm-hmm <affirmative> I mean good on them. I mean go to their Twitter account, go to twitter.com/nothing. And like you can see, you can see what they've been doing and like their, their, their tagline on their Twitter account is we're here to make tech fun again, bird emoji, which is like, it seems pretty fun. Right. You know, it's pretty cool. Very pretty. I don't know. I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm digging this. I'm liking it. So yeah. So in London they put up posters for the event and there's pictures of birds it's is phone one on it. So
Jason Howell (00:39:13):
<Laugh> birds. There's gotta be some sort of explanation about the birds thing.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:39:18):
Oh, maybe for the launch event, birds will fly in and drop phones down from the sky. Oh, you know, I mean I'm sure like some animal it's probably not very S BCA
Speaker 4 (00:39:27):
Sounds like the boss hasn't been pet.
Jason Howell (00:39:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, the they're superstars. Just trust me, put 'em in the promotional material they're superstars.
Speaker 4 (00:39:38):
They meant their own money. It ma you know, how can you lose money?
Jason Howell (00:39:41):
<Laugh> I'm a, I'm interested. I think the the little, the, the like puzzle pieces fitting into the artwork. That's interesting that people are starting to kind of draw those connections. I don't know, you know, from a marketing standpoint, if this is nothing's strategy is feed out a few little things with those interconnected pieces that someone's going to recognize, and then that becomes the pursuit. It's actually a pretty smart smart campaign. Oh, oh, okay. Now is this the leaked image?
Ron Richards (00:40:15):
This, this is, I dunno, what the source of this image was.
Speaker 4 (00:40:18):
Well, I don't know either, but it's on the nothing phone. One page.
Jason Howell (00:40:22):
Okay. Oh, take a look at that. So what you're showing there on the right, and that's the overlay that we're seeing, where people have taken those promotional images that were just released and finding how they fit on that device and everything kind of flows into it. So maybe what we were seeing there is roughly what the kind of transparency quality looks like. Maybe we won't actually end up seeing circuit boards and everything, but we'll be seeing through the plastic to some sort of underneath kind of or at least stylized covering like that at least of the stuff. Yeah.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:40:56):
Is that a person? I mean, is, is this puzzle, is that a puzzle of a person on the right on the back? That's like a person.
Jason Howell (00:41:01):
It does look like a person. It kind of does look like a person going like this.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:41:04):
Yeah. With
Jason Howell (00:41:05):
Like I got nothing. I don't know. I got nothing. He or she, I don't,
Ron Richards (00:41:14):
I got nothing.
Jason Howell (00:41:15):
I got nothing. This
Huyen Tue Dao (00:41:16):
Person there nipples are showing that's. I'm sorry.
Jason Howell (00:41:18):
That's
Ron Richards (00:41:18):
True. Oh, Hey. Ooh. Hey,
Jason Howell (00:41:21):
That's true.
Ron Richards (00:41:23):
Hey,
Jason Howell (00:41:23):
Yo, I got something
Ron Richards (00:41:24):
Everybody's got 'em return. Listen, return to instinct, return to instinct. That's all
Jason Howell (00:41:29):
I'm saying. Okay. This is gonna be interesting. I I'm getting very very intrigued by what this is all leading to. Oh my
Ron Richards (00:41:38):
Gosh.
Jason Howell (00:41:39):
Sure. Is.
Ron Richards (00:41:40):
<Laugh>
Huyen Tue Dao (00:41:40):
It's, it's definitely fun. I mean, I, I, I, it is fun. It is nice to have, I mean, like definitely, you know, the hype is there, the interest is there. I'm so sorry. I said that
Jason Howell (00:41:50):
I can got some cut abs too. I mean, those are some apps. Yeah. Right, right. Work works out whoever that is. Yeah. Whatever phones, <laugh> phone, nothing person works out. All right. And then finally, if you, and I, I, I will re I realize when I put this in here, I was like, you know, my sister qualifies. If you have a Samsung phone and you have a broken display on it, and you just, you never fix it because like, oh, I've got a screen protector and it won't actually hurt me. Or I don't wanna spend the money to fix my display or whatever now might actually be the time to get it repaired because Samsung is offering screen repairs for many of their flagship devices for $50 right now, which is actually a pretty good deal. I, I thought that, I thought this is worth throwing a little bit of attention to, even though I realize I'm fully doing Samsung's marketing for them, but a lot, I know a lot of people do crack their screens and they never, they drag their feet getting it repaired because it's expensive and, and everything <affirmative>.
Jason Howell (00:42:53):
And so here, Hey, here you go. That's I don't know, you know how cheap it gets, but this seems pretty inexpensive to me. It only applies to the front glass. So you can't get, you know, other damage fixed for that $50 cost it's, you know, no water damage or the rear glass or anything like that. It does have to be mailed into, to Samsung. And foldables do not apply. That makes sense. Foldables is a different story, right? Yeah. but anyways, if you've got that broke phone, everybody's like making fun of you all the time. Cuz you got the broke glass. Why don't you ever get that fixed? You're like, Ugh, because I don't want to right now. Well now you can and you can pay the glass for it. So thank you, Samsung. Thank you.
Ron Richards (00:43:33):
Look at that. They got a heart
Jason Howell (00:43:35):
<Laugh>
Huyen Tue Dao (00:43:36):
<Laugh>
Jason Howell (00:43:37):
Samsung has a heart and it's not afraid to show it. So there you go. Oh yeah. They've got a heart for $50.
Ron Richards (00:43:46):
<Laugh> yeah, exactly. There's a price. There's a price to their love price for everybody.
Jason Howell (00:43:51):
Look, you can't have this heart. Not for everybody. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> it's not Valentine's day.
Ron Richards (00:43:57):
That's too funny. Speaking of that, that just reminded me. I watched this week's episode of John Oliver on HBO Uhhuh. And the, the main topic was tech monopolies and they, they, and it was fascinating and there was a whole rabbit hole that he went down about Googling about dolphins and finding out the dolphins that are capable of love, but also capable of evil and yada yada. But but it was fascinating to see like a mainstream audience kind of thing, try to distill down and explain to a mainstream audience, Google, apple, Amazon. Yeah. You know, app store like and all, you know, and like, and at one point, you know, and I'm, I'm sitting there kind of nodding and I'm, I'm, I'm agreeing with it or whatever. And at one point it's like, you know, well apple and the app store they've dealt with several lawsuits and I thought they were gonna go down the epic route. And I was like, oh, epic. But he never, he would never went into that level of detail. Yeah. but it was just very funny cuz it, it gave me an opportunity to talk to my wife to be like, this is what we talk about on the show. We talked about this stuff.
Jason Howell (00:44:52):
<Laugh>,
Ron Richards (00:44:53):
It's too new, like apps, app store policies and things like that. But yeah, but so, so if you have HBO or HBO now, or HBO or max or whatever, the hell's called, go check it out. Cuz it was interesting. Comedic look at the potential tech monopolies of Google and apple and Amazon.
Jason Howell (00:45:10):
I'd heard that he had done that. I haven't seen it yet
Ron Richards (00:45:11):
Though. Yeah. Yeah. He does good. And it was funny cuz it was funny cuz they did, they did. It was, I mean, I dunno it's funny or sad, but like at the top of the piece they lumped it in talking about like the world's most powerful tech companies and how they provide things and you know, and and they showed Google, apple Amazon and Facebook logos, but they never talked about Facebook or meta. Like they didn't nice. Just, you know, they just talked about Apple's hardware dominance and Google's dominance and search and Amazon's dominance in the marketplace and then ended the show. So sorry, Facebook. So
Jason Howell (00:45:46):
Facebook and meta they're they're so irrelevant now.
Ron Richards (00:45:49):
Yeah, exactly
Jason Howell (00:45:50):
Sad. They're like a, they're like a second or third tier player at this point. We don't need to worry.
Ron Richards (00:45:55):
No, really, really what problem do they solve
Jason Howell (00:45:57):
Dwindle. And Chad actually just pointed out that the clip you're talking about, the whole thing is free on HBO's YouTube channel, so oh yeah. If you don't have HBO, max go check it out there. Thank you for the
Ron Richards (00:46:07):
Check it out. Does that definitely worth the watch for sure. Yeah.
Jason Howell (00:46:10):
Alright. Coming up next. We've got some app news that's up next
Ron Richards (00:46:22):
And it's not just app news. It's shocking app news. Shocking. So I, I want to make sure everybody's sitting down that nobody, you know, if you have a weak, hard or weak constitution that don't, you know, like you know, you know, clutch your pearls, get ready for this. Do you remember Google talk by any chance?
Jason Howell (00:46:41):
Oh yeah. That, that, that's the messaging thing that Google killed, right?
Ron Richards (00:46:46):
Right. No, it's still, it's still alive and now they're killing it
Jason Howell (00:46:52):
Crazy. I thought they killed it
Ron Richards (00:46:54):
A long time ago. So what happened, what happened was is that while they did kill Google talk as a front end product for us to use in favor of 19 different messaging applications over the years they did keep the Google talk basically system alive through third party apps. And this is a blast in the past third party apps like pigeon or guy gym or GA gym. I remember using pigeon back in 2005 to like I had G talk and I had aim and I had the Hotmail chat and all that stuff all on one platform. So apparently if you were one of the four people still using pigeon pigeon, hold
Jason Howell (00:47:34):
On. Yeah.
Ron Richards (00:47:35):
In, in 2022, which I feel bad, we should, pigeon is probably active and there's probably a whole big there's probably a whole big community that are, that are still using it. I should be mean. Yeah. So they're PI pigeon.im there it is. It's a chat universal chat program. They, you know, they're still, they're still alive modify
Jason Howell (00:47:53):
Web modify January, 2020, so right.
Ron Richards (00:47:58):
But hell still, you know, that's that's at least it's more reason that I thought it would be. But anyway, so Google did announce that they're finally gonna close the Google talk service on June 16th, which just gives you two days to adjust everyone by the way, today's June 14th. After June 16th, Google talk will be dead, dead, dead. So poor one app out for Google talk. Maybe we play some taps. I don't know. I'm not gonna borrow one out for this. <Laugh> all right. And it's actually, if you wanna go back in time and remember, I forget when Google talk started. Oh yeah. When
Jason Howell (00:48:34):
It
Ron Richards (00:48:34):
Was like 16. Yeah. Let's see. Google talk.
Jason Howell (00:48:37):
We, we can figure this out.
Ron Richards (00:48:39):
We can definitely figure this out talk record 2005. It started and then they shut it down the front end side in 2013 in favor of Hangouts.
Jason Howell (00:48:51):
Yep. Oh, oh, okay. They sure did. We're gonna pause on that point. Wow. Yeah, that's what you
Ron Richards (00:48:58):
Get Ron.
Jason Howell (00:48:59):
<Laugh> in favor of Hangouts. And now here we are. Well, so 2013, so we're nine years later and they're finally killing it off apparently. Who is it? A cousin of Ja in chat or actually in the discord says that pigeon comes with Ubuntu. So apparently it ships by default with, with a Buntu Linux. So that's, that's why the, you know, that they were holding on, I guess, or I don't know. I was very surprised to see this story, to be honest, I thought the talk was completely gone at this point. All right. So we've we've said goodbye to our good friend, Google talk. Now it's time to talk about a different chat app. And so speaking of messaging, WhatsApp, which I still use WhatsApp from time to time, I know you use it actually a decent amount. Right? Ron?
Ron Richards (00:49:54):
I, I live and die by WhatsApp. I've got, I've got all my friends and family in there. Yeah, no, seriously. It's, it's a major, major, major tool for us.
Jason Howell (00:50:02):
Yeah. And I mean, we have something all about Android communication in there. Do you use it for anything other than all about Android win? Just outta curiosity. Nope. Nope. That's it for? Y'all that's that's
Ron Richards (00:50:11):
It? Yeah. We'll probably what's up friends.
Jason Howell (00:50:14):
That's fine. We'll probably keep most of our communication through slack then, cuz I'm sure you use the slack for
Ron Richards (00:50:18):
Other things. I didn't know that <laugh>
Jason Howell (00:50:20):
Yeah, that's good to know. That is good to know. Well, last year meta rolled out a a message and account transfer feature that allowed you to go from IO from the iOS version of the app to Android. But at the time the reverse direction was unavailable. Now after long last this is available. And in fact it, it was such exciting news. Apparently that now you can go from Android iOS that Zuckerberg himself posted on his personal Facebook page to announce it, it's going to include chat histories. However, it doesn't include everything. No P no P2P payment information, no photos, videos, or voice messages, which that's, I, I don't know a lot of those happen in messaging. I'm surprised that that doesn't transfer and no call histories. But now if you really wanna switch away from Android and you want to take your WhatsApp chats with you to iOS, I suppose you can do that now. So congratulations. Go home.
Jason Howell (00:51:26):
Well, then <laugh>, I'm just kidding. I'm just sad that, you know, that, that you might be thinking about doing that. Don't do that. And if you just cause can doesn't mean you have to doesn't mean it doesn't mean you have to, right. That's true. That's true. Or if it's right. Well, that's right. Yeah, exactly. Just cuz Zuckerberg said it was cool. Doesn't mean that you have to think. It's cool. So there you go. So yeah, that's, that's all I have to say about that. I don't know if y'all do and if you don't, we could talk about assistant. That's fine too.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:51:55):
Will you talk about assistant? Yeah. So it looks like if you are in desktop hub user and you've really liked using your third party boys experiences, including games, like things like trivia puzzles and picture books for the kids, you might be really disappointed coming soon because Google is getting rid of an API call or a, like a, a feature called conversational actions. Conversational actions was kind of a way for third party apps to create conversation experiences. So kinda like a back and forth, you know, with your with your smart display to allow you to like kind of expose different services of your app to the user. And it was announced in 2016 and I actually find this really interesting cuz I remember when I first heard about conversational actions in 2016, I was kind of interested, but I, I am honestly, I really know very, I think I know next to no devs that have actually used it.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:52:49):
And actually I did go to a talk by a friend of mine, Andrew Kelly, about conversational actions. And it's really interesting because yeah, the idea was like, you know, with a smart hub, you tend to have conversation with your smart hub, right? Like, and, and, and that's kind of like a feature that Google has been working on to make that as natural language as possible, but this, this kind of like feature set will be deprecated as of June, 2023 in preference for app actions. And yeah, it it's, it's interesting because the way that you made conversational actions worked was that rather than kind of like doing normal Android dev stuff, there was this whole kind of website where you would build a conversation flow and it, it was kind of just totally separate. So rather than doing this most people these days, if they are kind of like trying to do like assistant integrations are using app actions for Android, which is announced 2019 and from a developer standpoint, for me, it was just way more straightforward.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:53:41):
It basically is a way for you to introduce voice enabled features into your app. So the user can basically kind of, you know, do things like you know send a payment to this person or like search for this thing at my favorite shopping place, kind, the, there, it was all intent based. It was all about quick, simple voice commands rather than this kind of like conversational back and forth. And that is what, and that, and that particular kind of I guess way of creating these features and specifically for Android is what Google is focusing on. So conversational actions is out app actions with Android is in and yeah, I mean, I, this makes a lot of sense to me as a dev. Like I said, like the app actions are a lot more straightforward to build. They're also, I think a lot more straightforward to understand like you, you know, like there's things like shortcuts and favorites, where if you kind of just have something you do over and over again, you can have like a little short phrase to keep doing it with your, you know, Android assistant.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:54:38):
So I get it. But it also means that if you were using your nest hub for some of these third party experiences, you're gonna be at a luck and kind of with this conversational actions, you know you know, feature set was something called the interactive canvas, which was a way for developers to build applications that had both touch and voice input for these smart displays. And people kind of did some cute stuff with it, you know, like doing trivia and doing like, like simple, like smart display games. You're not gonna have those anymore. Unfortunately once the, once the API gets deprecated. So I, I think, I think it kind of makes sense to me and they're trying to like kind of focus their efforts on assistant and kind of, you know, these app actions, which again, I, I think are easier to build and a little more intuitive for me as a dev, but that's kind of sad because I, I, I do feel like, you know, especially with the nest hub and smart displays and the kind of apps that took off, there was a lot of like, you know, focus on like, you know, experiences for kids, you know, with picture books and, and like, kinda like the game.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:55:38):
So, yeah. Sorry, it's, it's, it's gonna be on its way out and but you will, but, so, so, so that being said, you will, there will also be lots of third party smart home, smart, smart home integrations or media that's not going away. It's just this very particular conversational actions type like API that, that is going away along with, unfortunately the smart or what was it called? The, the interactive canvas. So
Jason Howell (00:56:07):
I remember when, when all the conversational actions well, all of the announcements that happened 20 16, 20 16, I believe was the first pixel year mm-hmm <affirmative>. And it was, you know, assistant moving into the smart home year. Like that was a big year for hardware announcements and features and everything like that. And I remember hearing about conversational actions and thinking, oh my goodness, the sky is the limit. Like, just think of all of the integrations that this Google home is gonna have and be able to do. And the way it, it turned out, it was just, it was so overwhelming. Like the amount of like the syntax that you had to remember, Hey, G talk to blank. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and that's like the, the syntax leading into whatever your command is. So it wasn't very intuitive to say that, although, I suppose if you did it a number of times, you probably get used to it for the service that you just had to have. But anytime I opened up the list of all the different, you know, providers that had programs, something with conversational actions, like none of it stuck, like it never stuck. Yeah. It, yeah, I wanted for it too. Cuz there was so much potential there, but it just didn't,
Ron Richards (00:57:16):
I mean, given my experience with the assistant in Google home and stuff like that, I'm not surprised by any of this. Right. It's it is, it is, it is a most frustrating conversation with the Google system, no matter what. So <laugh>
Jason Howell (00:57:28):
Yeah.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:57:29):
Yeah. And just to reinforce, like from the dev side, I was like using, I was like actually super excited to see if we could do some cool stuff with this mm-hmm <affirmative> I was like, oh, is a conversation that's so cool. And then yeah, just the fact that it's it, it's almost like building a whole different spirit experience on top of your Android app. So in that way, like I've mentioned before, like when things are a little bit, not in our normal flow of development, it, it gets even harder to kind of put it on a roadmap because then now we gotta invest time on someone learning how to do this thing. And like there there's like a whole bunch of like, you know, things that we're not used to, that we have to consider in terms of like, I don't know, like legal design branding, all that kind of stuff that someone has to figure out, you know, for us.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:58:06):
And then, yeah. I mean, and then with the new app actions, it's just easier. It's just part of your Android app. So it's it just, it, I think once I heard, I got really confused actually when app actions came out because conversational action was out, but it didn't seem to get traction and then app actions came out and it seemed like it kind of was what I anticipated conversational actions would be like, like, like the way that you make app actions is kind of what I'd been thinking at first, what conversational actions were. And so it was really confusing. So again, I'm not surprised and I mean, app actions just makes, makes more sense. It's a lot more likely for me to just throw in an app action. Maybe I'll do that too. Just ninja that in. But yeah, no, it's, it's just a lot more or less friction for us to add these in. So yeah. Hopefully hopefully there'll be continue to be a thing. I mean, that being said, we still haven't done it because it's still not nothing to do it, but yeah, mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. Same kind of like UN what is it? Unmet pro unmet promises. Unmet potential, unfortunately. So yeah,
Jason Howell (00:59:03):
Yeah, just kind of was any, any time I looked into it, I was like, I like the idea of this. There's something about it though. Like it's very overwhelming and it doesn't quite deliver exactly what I was hoping to get. So let's see what it morphs into. I have to imagine Google also has some sort of plan or, or will if they don't already to enable developers to continue to create like child focused things for, for these smart displays. Yeah. Because they've been so popular. So it would be real, real bummer if a lot of these disappeared because they suddenly just didn't support the underlying technology anymore and didn't replace it with an alternative, although this is Google and they do that all the time with their apps. So why would they do that here? I don't know, but <laugh>, hopefully they don't Google don't do that. So, all right, coming up next, your feedback. And we don't have a bumper for that. So envision the 1980s, what was it that we were playing in the pre-show the 19, the
Ron Richards (01:00:10):
CBS special presentation drum roll.
Jason Howell (01:00:18):
Yeah, there you go.
Ron Richards (01:00:19):
We were talking about that during on the pre-show and I found it on YouTube and I, I sent, I sent it to my sister and she just wrote back, said random.
Jason Howell (01:00:29):
There we go.
Ron Richards (01:00:29):
That noise that nice. Very nice. If, if you, if you grew up, if you were born in the seventies or eighties you know what that noise sounds like. So alright. So first email comes from Ryan from garden Grove, California, who says, Hey, triple a fam. I wanted to add my support to the amaz fit, smart watches. I had an amaz fit B for years after father Roberts recommendation. It had a month long battery and notifications from the phone. I recently replaced it with the amaz fit GTR three, which is the round version. GTS is the square. The size is great. The screen is beautiful and it's packed with features, but the best is probably the weeks of battery life. I was saving for the pixel watch, but changed my mind after hearing the expected battery life was gonna be around a day.
Ron Richards (01:01:14):
And so thank you. And he sent along a photo of his amazed fit watch that he clearly loves. And Ryan, a couple of notes here first off in our conversation about amaz fit. I did not know they had a product called B and because of that now their stock has risen. In my point of view, I think that's a great product, Dan, the, the maze fit BI secondarily I totally understand where you're coming from. It sounds like the amaz fit phone's doing what you, what you need. You like it month long battery is hard to, or weeks of battery. Life is hard to argue. Keep in mind our conversation about the pixel with pixel watch, not the pixel witch. That's a different thing. <Laugh> the pixel watch? The pixel watch has all been speculation. We don't know yet. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> right. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, so while I'm glad you're happy with your maze fit. Yeah. Wait until you, you actually see confirmed specs about the, the pixel watch before you'd make a judgment. So that's just, that's just my cautionary tale.
Jason Howell (01:02:10):
Yeah. But it does look nice. I looked up the you know, the photo that he attached on his wrist and it's got, it seems at least from this angle to have that kind of like rounded display, like the curved display on the top, similar to what the mm-hmm <affirmative> the pixel watch should have. So yeah, it's not bad. And it actually, that that actually looks like a low, lower profile watch, but I guess we're looking at a head on and often they look a lot thinner that way.
Ron Richards (01:02:36):
Yeah. It, that looks like a solid watch. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Howell (01:02:41):
So lots of lots of amaz fit love coming from folks who, who follow this show. So who you knew, keep it coming triple a to a.tv.
Ron Richards (01:02:50):
Yeah. Maybe they should. Maybe they should call the pixel, watch the Google pixel watch B
Jason Howell (01:02:54):
Oh, there you go. Oh. Or the, the pixel watch maze fit. No, that,
Ron Richards (01:02:59):
Yeah. Well that might be a problem.
Jason Howell (01:03:01):
So that's stepping over the line <laugh> yeah. Yeah. But we know what they meant if they did that. Yeah. Ian hall from Wantage UK proud previous receiver of the email the week, by the way. So you get that little bonus there. Ian wrote in to say, since working from home most lunchtimes, I walk to visit my elderly mother and take her for a walk around the nearby park on the way with my pixel for a locked in my pocket. I use the Google assistant via my pixel buds, a series to call my mom to tell her I'm on my way. When I do this, the phone unlocks in my pocket and the phone screen is displayed often when I'm walking the phone detects screen presses, as I guess it moves in my pocket next to my leg and can cause problems like disconnecting the Bluetooth or hanging up, et cetera.
Jason Howell (01:03:49):
So I have to remember to take it outta my pocket or have it in there with screen facing outward. When going to see my mom, do you know how to have the assistant be able to make calls via the earbuds without the phone automatically unlocking to the phone screen? I've had the pixel buds since the beginning and I've made a ton of calls on them. And I don't know that I've ever had my phone unlock when I make a call. The only thing that I can think after poking around is that there is a setting that maybe you don't have checks. So if you go into your assistant settings and you can get there either through the Google app, that's Google app settings, Google assistant lock screen, or you could just say, Hey, gee, open assistant settings. Now you can do that. Go to the all settings and tap personalization.
Jason Howell (01:04:36):
And then under personal results, look for on headphones. Make sure that is activated. With that I believe anyways, I have this checked, unlocking the display shouldn't be necessary. It basically just allows you to, to make the calls with the headphones. I don't know why it's unlocking your phone and turning the display on. That's so weird. I'm also wondering if maybe, maybe your smart lock settings is doing that. Like when it's co when it's connected via smart lock, like if you have smart lock synced to your pixel buds, then basically what you're telling the phone is anytime my pixel buds are connected via Bluetooth to my phone, disable the locking mechanism or dis disabled the lock screen. And maybe if that is happening and you're on, you know, I definitely had times where the phone's in my pocket and what something happens, either touches my leg or whatever that wakes the screen. And if you've got smart lock, unlocking your device, maybe that easily takes you to the home screen as a result. That's total. Guess if I was trying to figure this out, I'm like, I don't know. It's gotta be one of those two things. I don't know if anybody else has any better suggestions, but that's kind of what came to mind for me
Huyen Tue Dao (01:05:45):
Now, this more like, sounds like actually a half decent con conjecture. Like that would be where my money was, would be not that we're betting Ian on your, on your, on your plate, but oh, I'm betting.
Jason Howell (01:05:54):
We were we're betting now in slack. <Laugh> so check slack. Everybody
Huyen Tue Dao (01:05:59):
Is my bet. <Laugh>
Jason Howell (01:06:02):
So yeah, hopefully one of those works for you. I'm sorry. You didn't get email the week, this time around we gotta spread the love, you
Speaker 4 (01:06:09):
Know, there's also, if he uses developer settings, there's all kinds of settings that might apply to those, that situation, if he's
Jason Howell (01:06:16):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 4 (01:06:17):
If, if he goes, if he, if he has ever even turned those on.
Jason Howell (01:06:20):
Yeah. Like like related to lock screen and
Speaker 4 (01:06:24):
Bluetooth and Bluetooth
Jason Howell (01:06:26):
And yeah. There's a lot of kinds of
Huyen Tue Dao (01:06:27):
Things.
Jason Howell (01:06:28):
Yeah. There's a lot of hidden gems in developer settings. But yeah, I'm, I'm guessing it's, it's one of those. So check those out and let us know how it goes. Hopefully we've solved your Phantom touch problem. There you go. Nothing worse, nothing worse than a Phantom touch. Ooh. Yeah, I know. Just really, just in general, you don't want a Phantom touch problem. I mean, that's, that's doesn't need to sound good. Doesn't Nope. Nope. Nope.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:06:52):
Not anything not nice. Nope.
Jason Howell (01:06:55):
No, thank you. I think we have a title. Alright. When you you've got the honors.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:07:01):
Well, so from Ian, who was our previous email of the week we go to,
Jason Howell (01:07:07):
There we go.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:07:09):
We go to our current email of the week from Glen and Glen answered our call for dark sky love and gun writes us saying you asked. So here it is. As a bicycle commuter every day, the hyperlocal forecast for rain was great for me. No other app I tried was as accurate as dark sky. I was a fan of dark sky since it was called forecast.io. When they actually used to show you all the forecast data that used, I also paid for the API to plug into my weather app on my Linux box, but also apple has taken texture, prime, phonic, and dark sky away from me.
Jason Howell (01:07:47):
Oh, that wa
Huyen Tue Dao (01:07:48):
W wow. Well, that makes a lot of sense though. So the hold dear,
Jason Howell (01:07:55):
I don't know what all that was. The Caty
Huyen Tue Dao (01:07:58):
I'm like waiting on my anticipation.
Jason Howell (01:08:00):
Are you blowing your nose? Burke?
Speaker 4 (01:08:02):
<Laugh> hating and it's and it's right next to the
Jason Howell (01:08:05):
Background bone <laugh>
Huyen Tue Dao (01:08:07):
<Laugh>
Jason Howell (01:08:08):
So there you go. Bicycle commuter used it. It was the most trustworthy or accurate app. I can also app weather
Speaker 4 (01:08:17):
As a motor, as a former 24 7 motorcycle rider, like for the rain, like, or
Ron Richards (01:08:23):
On the app, you rode motorcycles for 24 hours. Seven days a week straight. Yep,
Speaker 4 (01:08:28):
Exactly.
Ron Richards (01:08:29):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (01:08:30):
I mean, at work, I just drove it right in and
Ron Richards (01:08:34):
<Laugh> yeah. That
Jason Howell (01:08:35):
You like,
Ron Richards (01:08:35):
Okay. That's
Jason Howell (01:08:36):
Fonzi lot. You're likeon coming, coming to work and I'm like, we're trying to do all we hear is we're over there while you're sitting at the TriCaster on your motorcycle, switching the show, it's like, it was, it was inconvenient and don't do that.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:08:51):
So instead of a treadmill desk, Burke has like I don't know, like kinda like a, you know, when you get your admissions tested and they have that little like thing that kinda locks with wheels in place and they kind just it's like a D yeah, like a Dino, but like, but was your, for what reason? Because I feel like exactly. That's that's cool. Yeah. Just like that. Just so you can constantly,
Speaker 4 (01:09:12):
That's what
Huyen Tue Dao (01:09:13):
It is.
Ron Richards (01:09:15):
Be biking.
Jason Howell (01:09:16):
Always be bike, always
Huyen Tue Dao (01:09:17):
Be biking,
Ron Richards (01:09:17):
Always
Jason Howell (01:09:18):
Be bike. If your Burke always be biking,
Huyen Tue Dao (01:09:20):
Bike, always BES. Oh, Burkes, always bike all the way around my bad then.
Jason Howell (01:09:27):
All right. Rounded out for Glen. He deserves one more horns. When
Huyen Tue Dao (01:09:33):
Thank you, Glen, for our email of the week
Jason Howell (01:09:37):
Or two more horns. There we go. See
Ron Richards (01:09:39):
All the
Jason Howell (01:09:40):
Horns, all the horns. Yeah, lots of them because E Ian also. Yeah, I think Ian cracked the code. Ian brought it into his email and whether he made it into the email of the week or not, it still got played right. There we go.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:09:56):
Okay. You to remix this a little bit. Yeah. I'm kidding. Kinda
Jason Howell (01:09:59):
Like, all right. Well, we have reached the end of this episode of all about Android, always a lot of fun. When, what do you wanna leave people with what you got working on? What's going on with you?
Huyen Tue Dao (01:10:11):
Yeah, well, my day job is an Android dev and occasionally I talk about stuff. I do my day job and you can find these technical talks, the code and video on my website, randomly typing.com. And you can hear me not, no, it's not. It's not a her it's, it's not a hard thing you can. Well, I guess if you use Texas speech you can find me on social media. <Laugh> at queen Cove monkey on Twitter and Instagram. So yeah,
Jason Howell (01:10:34):
Rad. Oh, thank you. Win. Always a pleasure to have you on welcome. And then Ron, what's new in your world.
Ron Richards (01:10:43):
Ray, not much go follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Ron XO. And you can see all my, whatever I'm up to and go, if you're into pinball, go check out, score bitt to an app in the Google play store, lets you track your pinball scores as well as challenge friends to play, find places to play pinball it's in the Google play store for Android. Check it out. So check it out a lovely conversation today about DevOps and hosting and AWS and Heroku and things like that. So yeah,
Jason Howell (01:11:12):
So, so good times in Gobi land. <Laugh> fun. Fun stuff. Yeah. All right. Gobi.Io. Thank you, Ron. Thank you Burke for all of your behind the scenes work and occasional uttering into the microphone. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah. Also thank you Victor. If Victor was here, he might even utter into the microphone, but he's not here right now. He's you welcome. He's more behind the scenes. Burke will say you're welcome for Victor. But he, you know, you wouldn't get the show if it wasn't for Victor, he's, he's pushing out the feeds. He's editing it after the fact. So thank you for all you do Victor with the plan. That's right. And you can find me add Jason Howell on Twitter, also doing tech news weekly every Thursday at TWI TV slash TNW with mic Sergeant. So look forward to that. Don't forget club TWI, if you like your shows, but you, you want them add free.
Jason Howell (01:12:07):
If you like your shows add free and you wanna participate in a member's only discord. If you like your shows ad free and you wanna participate in members only discord and you want exclusive TWI plus podcast content in the feed of its own with lots of extra stuff there, then you probably want club TWI, twi.tv/club TWI $7 a month, go there. And you get all that, that I just said not a bad deal if I do say so myself, but that is it for this week's episode. Don't forget. You can find everything you need to know about all about Android. By going to our show page twi.tv/aa. There, you can find all the ways to subscribe to the podcast to YouTube. You can, you can play the episodes on the webpage if you prefer really it's up to you. So go there twi.tv/aa. And thank you so much each and every week for checking out all about Android. We really do appreciate you and we'll see you next time on the show. All about Android by everybody C chow,
Speaker 6 (01:13:11):
Hey, I'm rod pile editor of ad Astra magazine. And each week I'm joined by Tark. Mallek the editor-in-chief over@space.com in our new this week in space podcast, every Friday Tark. And I take a deep dive into the stories that define the news bay age what's NASA up to when will Americans, once again set foot on the moon. And how about those samples from the perseverance Rover? When do those coming home? What the heck is Elon must done now, in addition to all the latest and greatest and space exploration will take an occasional look at bits of space flight history that you've probably never heard of and all with an eye towards having a good time along the way. Check us out on your favorite podcaster.
