All About Android 583, 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 Huyen Tue Dao and Ron Richards eventually in the show we talk about probably the biggest news of the week. Nothing Phone's, flashy reveal. But first we also talk about Drake loving Android. I don't know if that was the purpose of his song, but I like to think that it was Nearby Share, getting a clipboard shortcut having your WearOS device unlock your phone. And didn't we already have that? I don't know. We're a little confused about that. Ambient music mod version two. I think it's pretty cool. Plus your email and even a voicemail coming up next on All About Android!

Narrator (00:00:42):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWIT.

Jason Howell (00:00:50):
This episode of All About Android is brought to you by checkout.com. Modern businesses need flexible payment systems that can help them adapt to change, grow and scale fast. Discover how checkout.com can help your business thrive at checkout.com/android.

Jason Howell (00:01:10):
Welcome to All About Android episode, 583 recorded on Tuesday, June 21st, the first day of summer 2022, your weekly source for the latest news hardware and apps for the Android Faithful. I'm Jason, Howell.

Ron Richards (00:01:22):
And I'm Ron Richards

Huyen Tue Dao (00:01:25):
And I'm Huyen Tue Dao.

Jason Howell (00:01:26):
And today we have new artwork. I feel like we did this a couple of years ago. <Laugh> well, we

Ron Richards (00:01:32):
Did, but it's always fun. It's for those of you who are TWIT listeners slash Watchers, you probably know that there's a you know, network wide update going on for the, the show artwork. That's right. It's been, I I've been, I've been on baited breath, waiting for Lisa's next social media post to with the latest show update. And I was delighted when I saw the new, the new, All About Android artwork. It's it's quite classy. I think for video viewers, can we show it to them? Burke? Do we have it?

Jason Howell (00:02:01):
We've got it in the little lower third down

Ron Richards (00:02:03):
That looks like Jason, that looks

Jason Howell (00:02:04):
Like Jason's me. I'm not the logo, but that's okay.

Ron Richards (00:02:08):
<Laugh> but it's, it's got the little Android guy make, I make it disappear. Okay. Make it disappear. Oh, there it is. All right. So video viewers in the lower left hand corner, you can see it blinking. But yeah, love it. And so now if you have to, if you listen to audio, if you refresh your podcast artwork, you can see it. It really, it it's the essence of all about Android. I think. I

Jason Howell (00:02:26):
Dunno. Yeah. I think that was, that was important. I thought when we were kind of going through the process of, of selecting art and everything was, you know, personality, the show has a lot of personality. There's also, I've always loved. And we talked about too

Ron Richards (00:02:40):
Much per, too much personality, too

Jason Howell (00:02:41):
Much, much for our own good. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably entirely possible, but I've always loved how, how the Android bug logo itself and the twit bug logo intersect. They, they really, in many ways look very similar. And so I appreciate that the the new artwork has the little twit bug with the well, there's, there's our twit logo. That's beautiful. <Laugh>, Burke's just having fun at this point. But it has the little ear, you know, it has the little Android ear on it, so it's yeah, I, I really like that about it. So there you go. Nice. That's what I think

Ron Richards (00:03:21):
It's a, it's a, it's nice to refresh to repaint the walls sometimes. <Laugh> yeah, I like it. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:03:26):
I like it. Absolutely. And it's a different hue of green. Like, I, I feel like the green that we had been using before was like a little bit brighter and Hey, why don't we break apart our, our logo changes and, and colors and talk like as if we're designers for the next hour we should,

Ron Richards (00:03:40):
Yeah. There should be some sort of, I want someone okay. Challenge to the audience, the All About Android, community you're. So you're so talented and we love you. I want someone to go back to our original artwork.

Jason Howell (00:03:50):
Oh boy.

Ron Richards (00:03:51):
And do some sort of like animation evolution through the years to the artwork of today.

Jason Howell (00:03:57):
Yeah. Morph. I would, yeah, we, I'm trying to think off the top of my head. We probably have, I mean, God, how many different versions of the artwork do we have? Like, I'm trying to think of what the initial artwork looked like before we started using the the Androidified characters, which was kind of the second phase, I think, was it that no, all my Android drama, I don't know that it was necessarily that, although, thank you for playing that because I always enjoy seeing

Ron Richards (00:04:24):
That, you know, what's so funny is that I don't even know how you could find our original cover art.

Jason Howell (00:04:28):
Yeah. I don't either like,

Ron Richards (00:04:29):
Like the internet, like, you know, like everything stays on the internet, blah, blah, blah. But like not podcast artwork, like you change out its the feed and it's gone. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:04:38):
So true. Fascinating. I don't know. Fascinating. It's a challenge. And maybe it exists somewhere deep in the recesses of Google images search. Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:04:48):
Or like way back machine or

Jason Howell (00:04:49):
Something that someone can do or might actually, or our asset folders or our yeah. Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:04:55):
Probably. But that's really, that's still fun. I know.

Jason Howell (00:04:57):
That's so fun though. Well, I'm the bubble burster. So <laugh>

Ron Richards (00:05:01):
Was it TWIT.TV/AAA? We'll see how far back it

Jason Howell (00:05:04):
Goes. Yeah. That's a good question.

Ron Richards (00:05:06):
Mean that is this, this is great content.

Jason Howell (00:05:09):
<Laugh> when we start the show, like yeah. Diving into our own history. All right.

Ron Richards (00:05:14):
So the earliest the earlies does is April 2nd, 2011.

Jason Howell (00:05:19):
Okay.

Ron Richards (00:05:20):
All I have a screenshot here. Oh wow.

Jason Howell (00:05:23):
I'm super curious.

Ron Richards (00:05:24):
Oh, I, oh, no. It's the Androidified people. It

Jason Howell (00:05:26):
Is from the beginning. Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:05:28):
Beginning. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:05:29):
Yeah, yeah. I guess it is here. I'm gonna share this slack with

Ron Richards (00:05:33):
Forgot to do it too.

Jason Howell (00:05:36):
Okay. That's interesting know, I don't know that I realized that it was Androidified from the beginning,

Ron Richards (00:05:43):
But I guess episode, this is episode one. Yeah. All about Android one. What did

Jason Howell (00:05:47):
You say? Yeah, I, I jumped to episode three for some reason, but still yeah. That's so interesting. I

Ron Richards (00:05:53):
Didn't what I liked, what I liked about our original Androidified people is I have a parrot on my shoulder.

Jason Howell (00:05:59):
<Laugh> yes. Don't don't know why don't know why, but you do

Ron Richards (00:06:03):
Jason. I'm pretty sure you have a ray gun dude.

Jason Howell (00:06:06):
That's

Huyen Tue Dao (00:06:06):
Something or Sonic screwdriver.

Ron Richards (00:06:08):
Yeah. Sonic screwdriver. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:06:10):
Yeah, yeah. That's my Ray gun. Pew pew. Yeah, there we go. Anyways, so that's the, that's the challenge for anyone who is design inclined or animation inclined seek out on the internet, archive all the different variations of our podcast art and do some sort of slowly morphing transition between them to get to where we are right now. That sounds really complicated. I don't know how you be

Ron Richards (00:06:37):
In a week or you next days. Yeah. Tomorrow.

Jason Howell (00:06:41):
Tomorrow. Great. Yeah. Anyways we hope that you like the artwork and don't be afraid of it when you refresh your, your, your podcaster and suddenly it's there. It's not like a different show. It's the same show. You just have a different,

Ron Richards (00:06:53):
Yeah, there you

Jason Howell (00:06:53):
Go. All right. Why don't we get into the news? Yeah. Burke let's get into the news.

Ron Richards (00:07:07):
I was gonna start singing Dr. Z, Dr. Zeus, Dr. <Laugh>. 

Jason Howell (00:07:13):
So, but then, but then you realize that was pre-show. Ooh. Okay. Okay. Now in Discord I'm, I'm realizing something because we had so many versions of the same logo of all about Android, but every year we would have the different graphical accoutrement with it, like the Android guy holding a marshmallow or the Android the Android bug with a piece of pie. Wow. People in discord are starting to throw out all sorts of things. Okay. It's still a challenge. Please let us know what you find. All right, Huyen you got the first one.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:07:50):
Okay. Well in kind of news of folks getting a new kind of coat of paint on things you might have been upset back in April when you thought that Google might be killing smart lock on ChromeOS where you could sign into ChromeOS just by having your phone nearby, but it looks like it really just might be a story in the continuing saga of Google updates, merges, and renames things,

Huyen Tue Dao (00:08:11):
<Laugh>. And so on top of that smart lock might be getting both a rename as well as expanding support to wearOS as well. So in a recent APK takedown, it was revealed in Google play services that there might be something called smart unlock that was eligible for where OS three devices. And it seemed to be okay to kind of making sense here that it might be using your, wearOS 3 devices to unlock your phone. Now, friend of the show, Mishaal Rahman spotted something even more recent. So this is all, so all of these have been like strings, like text strings within google play services. You know, they like to put in messages kind of beforehand. And then that gives us clues. So now we have a thing called nearby unlock mm-hmm <affirmative>. So we had smart lock, we had smart unlock, and now Mishaal found nearby unlock. And including with that was like this little animation that also was in the Google play services where it shows a phone or being unlocked by a watch. So, yeah. Okay. So it's possible that smart lock is now going to add, wearOS as a unlocker and then changing from smart lock to smart unlock to nearby unlock <laugh> and confusing. Yeah. Not confusing at all. I mean, I kind of like the new name. Yeah. Makes more sense, but

Jason Howell (00:09:32):
Yeah, it does. Yep.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:09:33):
Yep. It makes more sense, but it's kind of weird to see again, sauce, how the sausage is made and how the names might progress. So, yeah, but there you go, you may very well in the future be able to nearby unlock your phone with your wearOS 3 device. So there you go.

Jason Howell (00:09:47):
Lock your phone with your nearby smart watch that's on your wrist. That's pretty neat.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:09:52):
Your phone, watch this on your, yeah, it's neat.

Ron Richards (00:09:54):
I, I don't, I don't won't wear a watch and I'm not gonna use this, but I, people who do this

Jason Howell (00:09:59):
Sense of, but you are. Yeah. If you're already wearing a watch and I like, I wonder how, how close the nearby actually is don't we kind of already have, I mean, isn't that smart lock, right? Like if you're connected via Bluetooth, then you can tell it mm-hmm <affirmative> oh yeah. You're connected via Bluetooth. When this Bluetooth connection is made, then deactivate the lock. Or am I mistaken on that? That's my assumption around smart lock. I thought that's the way it was, but

Huyen Tue Dao (00:10:28):
Thought that's up too. Did they retract that at any point? I, I do not own a smart watch, so right now, so I have not kept track either track

Jason Howell (00:10:37):
Yeah. Track either. I mean, I know, I know apple does this, I, you know, the iPhone and, and the apple watch kind of have this this relationship Burke, you're saying NFC in slack. And I guess that's one of the questions, right?

Huyen Tue Dao (00:10:49):
What is it? Wasn't

Jason Howell (00:10:49):
Right. I

Speaker 5 (00:10:49):
Feel like it's just, they're just sort of pretending that they invented something new. And, but when in, in essence they're just sort of branding a yeah. An action, right?

Jason Howell (00:11:00):
Yeah. Google does that sometimes. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:11:03):
I, it seems new. I mean, I don't know.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:11:07):
I mean, yeah. I, I, I kind of sometimes like with the names, like smart locks, like I get it, like, you know, I, I don't know. I, I just feel like sometimes with their branding, it it's like an engineer name things and we're bad at naming things. Yeah. So it, I just feel like maybe they just felt like, okay, smart unlock makes more sense, cuz really it's about unlocking the phone, not locking

Jason Howell (00:11:24):
The phone. Right, right.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:11:25):
But I mean, what's smart about it. I mean, not that it's not smart, but it's, you know, it's,

Jason Howell (00:11:30):
I, they should call it dumb unlock

Huyen Tue Dao (00:11:32):
<Laugh>

Jason Howell (00:11:33):
Yeah.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:11:34):
Maybe they're just trying to get be as CLO. Was it as close as possible? Yeah. Just like literally your nearby thing. Unlock your phone. There you go. No, no questions. No, no. Confus about what it does. Google

Speaker 5 (00:11:46):
Smart unlock next, like next month.

Jason Howell (00:11:49):
Oh, you mean after they name it? Yeah. Add Google at the beginning. Google T and then the following month remove Google from the, the beginning and yeah. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and so on and so on. And so on. It's the game that we play with Google and they're naming things Uhhuh <affirmative> I'm probably gonna talk even more about those, those weird things later on in the show.

Ron Richards (00:12:07):
<Laugh> it's even better. Yeah. Oh, love it. <Laugh> what, what would we do without it honestly like, honestly, like if it was, if there were there wasn't so many naming snafus, the show would be boring,

Jason Howell (00:12:19):
Right? <Laugh> yeah. It gives us a let's be talk about that's true.

Ron Richards (00:12:22):
Yeah. All right. Well it's not so much naming, but it's buttons related. So Michelle didn't stop there. He, he, you can't child, you can, that guy guy's like the Energizer bunny. He activated, he activated a new UI for the upcoming clipboard over overlay rehaul it will include a one tap button to share a copied link via, nearby share. And he points out that this isn't something that couldn't be done before. This just brings the feature further forward and easier to use on the fly. Which honestly, like, I mean, when I just heard you say yes, like, yes, like this is like talk about, you know, E you know, like making something that you use often and is handy and making it less or more frictionless or, you know, easier, easier, like bringing it up higher in the UI, making it easier to use is such a good improvement. So like, this is fantastic. So yeah, I use the clipboard so much now. Can I tell you between copying links and, and all this sort of stuff? Like, I, I think I'm using it more than ever. So have you ever,

Jason Howell (00:13:25):
Oh yeah,

Huyen Tue Dao (00:13:26):
No, no. I just, I laugh like the editor too, because a lot of times when I'm sharing something, I kind of wanna edit, tweak the URL just a little bit. So I'll do this janky thing where I'll copy it. I'll go to Chrome, stick the URL in the, in the nav bar done, done that. I have a space to edit it and then copy and paste somewhere else. So I, I, I really like this a lot. I'm genuinely

Ron Richards (00:13:43):
Pretty excited.

Jason Howell (00:13:44):
<Laugh> that was gonna be my question actually was, have you ever, you know, copied it, pasting it into another app, I've done it into Chrome, but I'd say more often than not the app that I end up jumping to is keep, like, I end up going to keep and opening like a, a note thing and pacing in there, which really is just kind of ridiculous. That's a, that's a long way to go to do that, that simple thing. You know, so if they're baking this feature into the clipboard prompt that you get, when you copy something, that just makes a lot of sense to me just to have it right there, boo. And, you know, be able to send it right on. I like that makes, makes the whole process easier. That's cool. So, yeah, having said that I never use nearby share. So, you know, there

Ron Richards (00:14:28):
You go. Neither do I that's the thing,

Jason Howell (00:14:31):
But neat. Nonetheless enter 13 beta 3.2 that's right. Beta three keeps getting updates, but why, so enter 13 beta three came out at the beginning of the month, and then shortly after there was beta 3.1 and I, I had it in the rundown when it happened and then I ended up taking out cause I was like, oh, this isn't really that important, I guess, but, you know, and I think there were other stories that kind of superseded it, but 3.1 was rolled out because the original beta three failed to offer the beta feedback app for new users, which you kind of want, if you're running a, a beta and you wanna get feedback from people, as far as like what's working, what's not kind of important. So they released beta 3.1 that included that app for new users. And now here we are a couple of weeks later and we've got beta 3.2.

Jason Howell (00:15:24):
And the reason that they've pushed this out, apparently it patches five issues that I was able to read about anyways that were, I, I suppose they were major enough to not wait for the next be beta. They included a back gesture that wasn't working in some apps and attic glance settings page that would collapse inconsistently when you were scrolling. Some apps were actually crashing instantly upon opening, which I, I kind of just see that in betas to begin with, but mm-hmm <affirmative> and beta releases of the OS the microphone would turn on and off unexpectedly during unrelated use of the device, according to nine to five, Google was this no, sorry. According to Android police. And then finally Google photos app would crash frequently. So I guess that just made me wonder, like what, where Google draws the line between let's release an a point update or, eh, save it for the next beta. Like these five things were important enough, but what made them important enough? I, I don't know because I'm not used to seeing Google doing these point releases unless they obviously feel like there's reason enough to do it. So I don't know. What, what do you think when I, I guess you'd be closest to kind of the, you know, understanding the machinations of something like this, what do you think that's,

Huyen Tue Dao (00:16:44):
That's a really good question. I mean, like, for us, it's a little bit different. Like we, like at tr we release every like three weeks Heller, high water. And usually because usually they're just something to put in there. I think with Andrew it's a little bit different just because it's a platform there's a little more anticipation and obviously these are, these are just like new features. So I, I think it's, <laugh>, I did, I did get kind of a Pang though, of like, you know, calling a dot release and then having things like, you know, just some of the very minute, like UI tweaks and things like that. Like, it could be one of the Crashers, I think, like, you know unsurprisingly devs get a little bit sensitive when it comes to Crashers, both making sure that none happen and fixing those that do. So I can't imagine that maybe that, that just depending on how they, I don't know, triage certain things that maybe they just really wanted to get those Crashers in and Hey, these things are done too. And then, you know, maybe some of the UI tweaks, just like they're, they're really, like, I always find it fascinating to see the UI tweaks cuz they're just so tiny, you

Jason Howell (00:17:40):
Know? Yeah. I know, right.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:17:41):
They seem tiny like, Hey, we, they move the sharing on the clipboard editor from the full screen to the overlay, which seems kind of of silly, but maybe it's just them hoping to get even more, you know, last minute user feedback before that final release comes out. But I would say it's kind of interesting. The question of what makes a dot release is a very interesting one and totally philosophical. And also could just be like, just, just, just, just throw this stuff in there just to, I, I mean, we've had many times where a release doesn't have anything interesting and we have this one message that's bug fixes and improvements. I mean, everybody has that message. Yes. Sometimes you just get a little bit tired, you just like, no, wait, we wanted, we want something new going out fine. That little tiny little thing that like took someone like three hours and is really not a big deal. Fine. Just put it out there because we want to show that we're improving. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:18:28):
It, it feels like a feature instead of just a, it

Ron Richards (00:18:31):
Feels

Huyen Tue Dao (00:18:31):
Like a feature. Yeah. Or something like that. So we, we don't just fix bugs around here. We actually have new stuff for you, so, right, right. It's it's it's very interesting. And I don't think there's like a clear answer other than just keep getting, just keep, keep it moving

Jason Howell (00:18:43):
Or, or is it, I mean, what is the next, the next release after the third beta? Are we at release candidate at that point? And if so, maybe the point releases now are like, oh, before we hit release candidate, it's we gotta get these things in. And

Ron Richards (00:18:58):
It's funny, this comes up though, because, because I just, I dealt with this at work the other day there was panicked because was it a couple of, what was it, June 8th? I'm gonna put the link in the, in the slack, so Burke can pull it up. But on June 8th they posted that Android 13 beta three. And basically saying that Android 13 has reached platform stability. Mm-Hmm

Jason Howell (00:19:21):
<Affirmative>, mm-hmm <affirmative> right,

Ron Richards (00:19:22):
Right, right. And so, and, and on that end, so on that post, they have a little graphic of a calendar of where we are in June. And then over, if you scroll down a little Burke you know, they hit platform stability in June and go through July until the final release. And my coworkers were like, it's gonna come out soon. We need to be ready. And I'm like, no, we still got time. Like it's like, it's like, but yes, it, yes.

Jason Howell (00:19:45):
It's, it's one notch away from the end. Right.

Ron Richards (00:19:47):
I know. It's like, it's like, yes, it's the end of June, but I really don't see this coming out before August, if not in that August to September timeframe on track as they've planned. Right. Yeah. So so this, this actually, this is very detailed. Dave Burke friend of the show wrote this article mm-hmm <affirmative> but it goes through and explains where, where they're going from here and what to expect. And it's pretty detailed on, on that, in that regard. But it gives you a sense of where it's coming from and yeah, Jason, I mean, if they need to, I imagine they'll do point releases, but it looks like they're getting ready for the rollout. Yeah. You know,

Jason Howell (00:20:20):
Which just crazy every year. It, it blows me away. How, how rapidly it feels

Ron Richards (00:20:26):
It's too fast. It's too fast. Well,

Jason Howell (00:20:28):
But, but is it because it's still once a year, like, I feel like that's, that's a reasonable cadence. It's just, it's just, we're so much fur like earlier introduced to it now because of all the beta, because of the fact that they've opened it up and allowed everyone to hop onto the beta so early. So it feels fast even though to, you know, the absolute majority of anyone who might ever get this update. Like it's, it's not because they aren't seeing any of this stuff. We're just tuned into it. We're we're we're we are following so closely that what you were saying when all these little things are changed and it seems so minuscule, and it seems so unimportant, the majority of people that ever get this update, they see all of that at once. And so it add, it adds up in aggregate. It adds up to something a little bit more major than what we're seeing on a day to day basis.

Jason Howell (00:21:19):
So at least is that, but that Michelle Ramon man, he's, he's in he's on it on top of it. Yeah. Actually, and I should mention him because he also, and, and you were playing the animation from this just a little bit earlier. Bet. But he he found in this point update predictive back animation kind of in effect mm-hmm <affirmative>. And ultimately what that is, is, you know, when you're in an app and you kind of start the swipe to go back, instead of that arrow, just appearing and then taking you there when you release. Now it's starting to kind of show you a peak into what's behind it. That's what the predictive back animation is gonna do. So you're gonna see this in more apps as more compatibility around this is built out and everything you'll see that little peeking graphic underneath. So Michelle knows how to take this stuff apart and show you everything on the inside. It's pretty impressive.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:22:14):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>

Jason Howell (00:22:18):
All right. When you got the last one, I, I, I went back and forth on whether to include this story. I'll be honest, but I think it's, I think it's good.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:22:25):
I, I almost linked this in our chat over the week, cuz I thought it was hilarious. Well, Google seems to not be able to ignore any opportunity, opportunity to remind apple that RCS exists <laugh> and express desired apple. Yeah. To support the protocol. I know like they just, they just, they just, you know, you can't, they can't help themselves. They get, and so, you know, we, you know, there was a hard to ignore poke during the Google. I own keynote that we talked about when they kind of noted that, oh yeah, we've got 500 million active RC users of RCS and Hey, we hope that other mobile operating systems get the message. Well, <laugh> in, in an absolutely. I mean I, in an AB in a related, but auto left field for me kind of story for sure. Cuz I'm an old now the official Android account used the release of Drake's new album, honestly, nevermind as a, yet another opportunity to remind apple that they should really support RCS <laugh> so so there's a particular song on, on, on this new album called text, go green. And this, it gained and, and Android, the official Andrew require kind responded to it. So if you're an old like me, I didn't quite get it. The

Speaker 6 (00:23:33):
Android team think Drake's new song, text go green is a real banger. Its probably phenomenon when an iPhone user gets blocked,

Jason Howell (00:23:43):
That's a real banger, everybody.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:23:45):
So it's, so there's a whole song that Drake wrote called TECO green. It seems like, you know, kind of a breakup song where, you know, a couple are breaking up. And so in reference to the fact that not just in the case, your recipient, isn't using an iPhone and the bubble Greek goes green. If you've blocked that person, you know, the text can also go green. So just saying that, oh maybe, you know, someone you just broke up with or someone whose heart you broke or broke your heart is blocking you. You might see that te go green. Well in this tweet, as you may have heard the Android account also related that to the fact that again TECO green, not just when you get blocked, but also when you know that other person just doesn't have an iPhone and just the, the tweet kind of the, the Texas speech lady, the Google lady also kind of pondered if only some super talented engineering team at apple would fix this. You know, just, just asking questions, just speculated, just, just positing. Wouldn't that great.

Jason Howell (00:24:39):
Just thinking.

Ron Richards (00:24:40):
Yeah. That's and they,

Jason Howell (00:24:42):
This is exactly what Drake meant by the song, by the way. It's not about, you know, someone blocking you. No, it's entirely about Android.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:24:50):
Yes. It's it's all about,

Jason Howell (00:24:51):
Let's be real here. <Laugh> it's all about Android. Yes, exactly. This song is all about Android.

Ron Richards (00:24:59):
Is Drake a friend of the show?

Jason Howell (00:25:00):
I don't know. Apparently there's an animated J in the, the discord of him on his phone and I think it's an iPhone. So I'm just

Ron Richards (00:25:07):
Saying, does anybody know who Drake is?

Jason Howell (00:25:10):
<Laugh>

Ron Richards (00:25:11):
Because I don't. I do. He's like he said, he's an Oakland artist. I'm just kidding. I'm joking. I in the

Huyen Tue Dao (00:25:17):
Bay. Yeah, this is insane. I saw, I like when I first saw, I saw Ryan Reynolds even like respond to this saying, oh, I learned so much so like that. So yeah, it was, you know, it's, it's funny. It's definitely not what Drake meant, but you know, you know, maybe, maybe <laugh>, you know, the Android account's right. Because you know, if apple would support RCS instead of a broken heart and green messages, maybe you'd get type indicators, read receipts, end to encryption and more, you know, when you're talking to your boo, regardless of whether they're on iPhone or Android or whatever. So Hey, you know, maybe there you go. Maybe the way to love, like true love is through RCS.

Ron Richards (00:25:57):
I don't know. I I'm kinda behind you there. I'm totally with you. I think you could be equal Google. There is your new Mar a free tip from when right there. Free marketing tip. RCS equals true love. True love. True love is true. Love delivered by RCS. There you deliver delivered. That's a great action verb. Yeah,

Huyen Tue Dao (00:26:16):
Exactly. Delivered bridging gas between people, you know, making connections. There

Ron Richards (00:26:21):
You go. Connecting people. True love. I love it.

Jason Howell (00:26:24):
Now. We love we've solved it. Thank you. Thank you for everything that you've given on Android Drake. <Laugh>. Thank you,

Huyen Tue Dao (00:26:31):
Drake. Thank you, Drake. <Laugh>

Jason Howell (00:26:35):
All right. Let's take a break and thank let's take a break from Drake and thank the sponsor of this episode of all about Android. I really wanna keep the rhyming going, but it's just not working for me. This episode of all about Android is brought to you by checkout.com checkout, you know, checkout, if you, if you're making payments online through your favorite sites, through your favorite apps, you know, a lot of them are using checkout.com to kind of drive that technology should be groundbreaking. It should promote innovation, traditional payment systems, as you probably know, or maybe you don't, they're heavily layered. They're disconnected. They're perceived as a cost center to the business. And you know, many modern businesses actually need a flexible payment system so that they can change so that they can adapt to that change and grow and scale fast.

Jason Howell (00:27:22):
And we recently came across a company with the technology that approaches payments through just an awesome new lens. It's called checkout.com. And you've heard of talk about checkout.com on the, on the network before checkout.com is a leading digital global payment solutions provider brands like grabs Sony electronics wise, Henkel checkouts, flexible payments platform is actually purpose built. It has performance, scalability and speed in mind. That's, what's built around it's ideal for businesses looking to seamlessly integrate better payment solutions at a global scale, they've got a dedicated team of local experts spanning 19 offices, five continents, checkout.com actually offers a strategic partnership to help businesses improve their acceptance rates, optimize their payments performance, grow their business on a global scale, do it globally. Checkout.Com exists to enable businesses and their communities to thrive in the digital economy that we're all playing with day in and day out.

Jason Howell (00:28:24):
They deliver innovative payment solutions that flex to your needs and also offer valuable insights that are gonna help you get smart about your payments performance, to really understand how that's going, how it can improve. If you need to make changes and expertise, you can count on as you navigate the complexities of an ever shifting digital world, and you get so much with checkout.com, you're gonna get global optimization. They're gonna provide local acquiring and multiple geographies that improves authorization rates. It also lowers costs. You also get a very transparent fee structure. It's clear, it's straightforward. You also get in depth through reporting. That's gonna give you visibility no matter where you operate and where you operate, right? You want expertise on a local scale. You know, considering this is a global service, their dedicated local teams actually bring regional international and regulatory expertise that allows you to navigate market complexities with confidence.

Jason Howell (00:29:23):
And finally, it's a strategic partnership. They take a collaborative, personalized approach to solving complex problems for their merchants and ecosystem partners. And I mean, there's, there's so much to love about what checkout.com is doing. Of course, we have a lot of developers who follow this show. So you, you developers are gonna love the fact that the API is simple. It's incredibly flexible. It's great for what you're doing, you know, with your apps or your sites. It keeps things just super easy to integrate. And that's what I like about it. Discover how checkout.com can help your business thrive. All you have to do is go to check out.com/android. So remember to do the slash Android there, check out.com/android. That's gonna let 'em know that you heard about it on all about Android. And we appreciate when you do that, we want them to know that you heard about it from all about Android and we thank checkout.com for their support of this show. All right. I think this was one of those weeks where I was like, man, do I restructure the show? Because the, the big news is not the news that we led with

Ron Richards (00:30:34):
<Laugh> I was gonna say, we've gone. We've we've gone nearly a half an hour on the show with talk about burying the lead. Like the main event is finally here.

Jason Howell (00:30:42):
It's it's

Ron Richards (00:30:43):
Jason. We, we need you to send us to the, to the right part of the show though.

Jason Howell (00:30:48):
All right. All right. There, there's something about how this show is structured. When, when this happens, it's like the big news is not really the big news. The big news is later. Maybe I need to rework that, but it's time to get into the big news. It's time for hardware

Speaker 7 (00:31:03):
<Laugh>

Jason Howell (00:31:08):
Was that intense enough, Ron?

Ron Richards (00:31:09):
Oh man. The main event, does it get any better than this really? This

Jason Howell (00:31:16):
Is what we, this is, is what we podcast for right here.

Ron Richards (00:31:19):
The nothing parade continues. Yes. Right. We all know we talked about it last week, the birds the Hitchcock and birds delivered the news that July 12th would be nothing's event. And we started seeing little bits and pieces of the phone. Now I will say when I woke up today, I did not have nothing revealing the entire back of the phone on my bingo card. So Bravo, nothing. I, I didn't see this coming. But here we are, nothing is now something. So the day after last week's show, they revealed the full rear facing design of the device and they showed select media and influencers the design at an event in Switzerland. Then today, former friend of the show, I guess he's still friend of the show. It was just, it was many years ago, marque Brownley of MK PhD got an exclusive look at the design of the back of the nothing phone.

Ron Richards (00:32:13):
And he showed some of the unique features of the trans parent back, which I also did not have crazy L E D lights all over the back of the phone, on my bingo card either. Yeah. it looks like so basically in looking at the phone, it's transparent in the back and you see, you know, a bunch of lines that are lined with a series of LEDs. And when they're off, it just looks kind of like part of the design, but turns out those LEDs have not only formed but function. The light is used to indicate notifications. It glows while reverse wireless charging is happening. The bottom light is an indicator of how much battery has charged. And this is actually rather clever. It does serve as a fill light for the rear facing cameras. <Laugh> so kind of like a, a free install, ring light.

Ron Richards (00:33:08):
Wow. It also has a red light that blinks whiles recording video and all the lights are synchronized and they go Blinky to special ring tones. And when it's lit up, it looks like this kind of like white on white L E D kind of glow. Yeah. And this has sent ripples through the tech industry. Don don't I will give, I will give my friend credit. Yeah, if you can look at the cliff interface while watching the video, I know, I know Berks roll in the video for a video viewers, but for audio viewers, the gly interface looks like kind of like, it looks kind of like a G with a, with a little kind of thing coming into it. But if you look, if you look at it real quickly, it looks like a glowing apple logo,

Jason Howell (00:33:53):
Does it? Oh

Ron Richards (00:33:55):
Yeah, it does. It really does,

Jason Howell (00:33:57):
But it, it kind of does. Okay.

Ron Richards (00:33:59):
Yeah. It looks, oddly looks like a weird apple logo, which is strange.

Jason Howell (00:34:02):
I, I mean, there there's, there's some definite iPhone design

Huyen Tue Dao (00:34:07):
Vibes.

Ron Richards (00:34:07):
Yeah. Vibes here, for sure. So, so now my initial impression of this is that Bravo, nothing giving us a little giving a little innovation. Like how can you, how can you use L E D and lights on the back of a phone? You know, the blinking red light indicator for video, the fill light for, you know, for you know, for taking pictures from with the camera. That's pretty cool. The notification stuff. That's all pretty cool, but after mulling on it for a little bit, I realize that these are the type of features that I'm gonna go. Oh, wow. Cool. And then turn off after three days of using them.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:34:43):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>

Ron Richards (00:34:45):
Personally,

Jason Howell (00:34:45):
Ah, I dunno. I'm surprised to hear you say that, Ron.

Ron Richards (00:34:48):
I, I, I, I, I, the thing is, I think that, I think the L E D battery indicator is pretty cool, but it just, it just seemed, this is just a lot of flash.

Jason Howell (00:34:57):
It's very flashy. I mean, literally

Huyen Tue Dao (00:35:00):
Night warning for the video straight now,

Ron Richards (00:35:02):
A little. So what, so, okay. So let's go. So when, when you saw this, what was your first impression? What did you think?

Huyen Tue Dao (00:35:08):
I, I, I, I thought it was neat. I think I, I do like, so as, as like someone who studied hardware, I do always like seeing hardware surfaced. Like, I, I think that's really cool. I mean, I even love that you can see like little sterile numbers and that little, like cross trash can logo on some of the components I do like that. And I do think that is interesting. I'm also just underwhelmed. I don't, you know, I, I, I feel like, yeah, the whole it down to essentials, this is not an essential thing. Like, I don't, honestly, I don't need flashy, gooey lights on the back. I don't, I mean, like, it's cute. It's really cute. And I love the idea of like the cliff interface. And I really do like, it I'm like Yuran, I'm gonna turn it off after three days, because this is just like, when, yeah. Some of them, some of them, like, I, you know, we used to, I used to, I thought I missed you know, we, when, you know, why I had like a blue light for notifications and a green light for something else. And I, I thought I missed that, but I really don't like, I don't really use my phone like that anymore. Mm. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, I think it's cool. Do I? It's cool. It's just about it. It's, it's cool. It's

Jason Howell (00:36:14):
Cute. It's different. It's very different.

Ron Richards (00:36:17):
It's different. Well, so Ja, so Jason, what did you think when you saw it?

Jason Howell (00:36:20):
I mean, yeah. I mean, I obviously, it's very different when I first when I watched the video, I watched Marque's video earlier. Yeah. I, I, I'm trying to, trying to figure out exactly how I felt about it. Like, like it's it's flashy and I, I, I would agree. I don't know that I necessarily need my phone to be so bright and flashy for the world at the same time. I do totally appreciate what they're doing because they basically set because I haven't really seen a phone do this. It's not that other phones don't exist that have lights on the back, but they're really leaning into this idea that like, these lights actually serve a purpose other than looking cool or, or cool. I'll put that in air quotes, cuz I think that's totally subjective. A lot of people are gonna look at this and be like, wow, that's ugly. But mm-hmm <affirmative> but I mean, yeah, they they're using those lights in some, in some of the, the ways that they're using it, it's actually really useful. Like I like that when you plug in the power, that little light right above which you can see in the top, right. The top right image. You see that little straight line that's that's

Ron Richards (00:37:32):
Center, the, the, the

Huyen Tue Dao (00:37:34):
Indicator is cool

Jason Howell (00:37:35):
And that that's cool. That lights up to the degree to which the battery is, is charged at that point. So if it's halfway that line's gonna be less, if it's fully charged, it's gonna be full. That's pretty nice. I set my phone down, screen down a lot and you know, when it's charging as well. So I guess that's, that's nice. The idea that when a, when a ring tone goes off, everything like flashes, like I, I don't know that I would use that, although I, I appreciate that they're doing that. I don't know mm-hmm <affirmative> if this is, if this is the whole crux of the nothing thing, it's okay. I give you points for doing something new, but I don't know that that's enough to really kinda win.

Ron Richards (00:38:18):
Well, this is large amount of praise it's I was gonna say, this is all flash it's literally flash. Yeah. It's like, you know, and all that sort of stuff. And, and it's actually funny. We will, we, we will give a little bit of a tease. Our, our, our dear Florence ion is gonna be joining us next week to share her thoughts, but she did an article today on Gizmoto about it that I feel like, you know, to give you a little, a little sense of where flow's coming from this, the headline was nothing lives up to its name, hypes up, nothing. And the subhead was the nothing smartphones, backlit, exterior is neat, but that still doesn't tell us how it will perform. And that, and that's the real crux of this is that like, they're doing the approach of the, you know, like, and, and this kind of ties back to like phone marketing.

Ron Richards (00:39:04):
And we talk about it with Google and all this sort of stuff with, with the pixels. Like now that we know what the next pixel, the pixel seven looks like already, is that like I thought on ju July 12th, they're gonna unveil it. We're gonna see everything. And, and like the big surprise, but what they're doing now is they're seeding out bits of it. And so today's beat is about the back of the phone and the lights and how that's different and all that sort of stuff. And it's wacky, but like, it, it almost, it, it, at the same time gets us talking about the phone and gets us really interested in it. It also does the phone a disservice, because it says nothing about what's inside the phone or what's on the other side of the screen. Right. Which, which leaves us in anticipation, but Jesus, it's, it's June 21st, we've got three weeks till the whole phone gets thrown.

Ron Richards (00:39:45):
You know what I mean? So like it, like, I get what they're doing here. Yeah. And I get, you know, that, and, you know, they're dealing with this, they dealt with this design event in Sweden and they gave it to marque and they did all did all this sort of stuff. But like, give me a little more than just like what the lights can do, you know? And so I get where flow's coming from. She'll talk more about it next week. So a little, little teaser there, go check out her article. And Gizmoto though, it's a, it's a pretty great

Jason Howell (00:40:07):
Article. I mean, maybe it can do more than, than just lights. We, we don't know. I'm sure

Ron Richards (00:40:10):
Can I'm sure, sure. It

Jason Howell (00:40:11):
Can. Yeah. But, but I mean, design wise, I think we're kind of seeing the, the visual aspect of what it can do. We've seen that, or

Huyen Tue Dao (00:40:20):
It was the hardware side. Yeah. But like, I mean, to your point, Ron, like, I, I just like that when the launcher came out, it was cool. And there were very interesting aspects of it. And there were like small things that I think were good improvements on like say generically, you know, whatever the generic common issues with smartphone, launchers and software is, but it, it was, it, it was like, cool. But it, it didn't really like, as, you know, just like you said, just now with the, you know, this reveal of the back and like the lights and everything, it's like, that's great. That's awesome. It looks really cool, but it says nothing to how the actual software might work. How am it perform? How, how is this going to like, disrupt like the Android market and drive people tour and keep them there, like, and, and keep them right. Wanting to buy nothing products. I don't get it. And I didn't get it with a nothing launcher. And like, like, if you like this, I'm very excited for you. Like, it's really cool. And like, yeah, there's some really great things about it. And like, I, I definitely feel like people should be able to express their style and, and have options like this. O other than that, I'm underwhelmed. I mean, it's cool, but I'm a little underwhelmed personally, but I, I'm not gonna buy one personally, that's

Ron Richards (00:41:24):
This? Yep. Well, if you, if you wanna buy one you,

Jason Howell (00:41:28):
Oh yeah, you

Ron Richards (00:41:30):
He's could you could go to stock X, which is kind of like a eBay. It's a new kind of like bidding platform. And you can be one of the amazing people who get to have one of the first nothing phones via stock X where where's all the details for this. So the first chance to get the phone one limited of the first 100 units, laser and grade from one to a hundred. And so you can bid on stock X on what they're calling drop X <laugh>. And currently right now, yeah. One has the last one sold for $2,600. And the current bidding is over $3,000 to get one of the first hundred, which is just insane.

Jason Howell (00:42:15):
And, and they have a please note, this is a new drop X exclusive release, please allow up to 35 business days for delivery. So, yeah. So no, that if you bid on this and pay $3,000, apparently someone's gonna do that. You're still gonna be waiting 35 business days. <Laugh> not just 35 days. So, you know, it's gonna be a couple of months before you get this sucker, apparently according to their disclaimer. So this is

Huyen Tue Dao (00:42:42):
Just, this just fits in with everything else. Isn't it. And I honestly, I cannot wait for flow to talk about her feelings about this phone, but this just feels exactly. I mean, this is not necessary. Like I I've actually. Okay. So confessional I've actually bought a pair of Nikes off of stock X before, because they were limited run. They were like mock colors. They were like purple and pink. So I had to get them nice. And I, I kind of, you know, like that kind of market where, you know, they're limited qualities of very specific things for limited. I only I get it. Like I get why you wanna go on stock X to buy this. You need to be so freaking hype to go on stock X, to buy this phone, like, and

Jason Howell (00:43:17):
Pay $3,000

Huyen Tue Dao (00:43:18):
For it and pay $3,000 for it. I, I know that you get the engraving. I know that again, if you're really hyped for this phone and, and you really just want that, I cannot judge. You I've bought things off stock Xs before. This is just so interesting to me because like, presumably they'll have just regular retail sales. So, I mean, this is, again, just you're, you're buying, you're buying the hype, you're buying that little bit of exclusive exclusivity and maybe, maybe this'll be gangbusters and they'll sell like all these a hundred phones and I'm going to eat my lunch or whatever,

Jason Howell (00:43:45):
But, oh, so I'm curious. Yeah. How many of these are you actually gonna sell $3,000 a pop? There, there are some people out there who would be passionate enough to do that, but and you know what, it's entirely possible that 10 years from now iPhone is no more and this nothing phone is, and, and these are super valuable because nothing phone, I can't even, I can't even finish that with a straight face. All

Huyen Tue Dao (00:44:09):
Restaurants, all, all restaurants are not taco bell. All phones are now nothing, but

Ron Richards (00:44:13):
Here's all are nothing nice. But here's the, here's the thing about this is that like, there's an attire. Like what baffles me is that there is subculture and communities that eat this stuff up, right? Like all the sneaker heads, like I have a buddy who is like constantly bidding on these like rare sneakers and all this sort of stuff, like, like this underbelly of collector fetishist, you know, which I'm not judging. I'm just saying it just totally exists. I'm not choosing to spend my money, you know, that way. Yeah. but others might and if it makes them happy, cool. You know, like if you wanna have one of the first 100 and you're, you're putting a bet, that's gonna be worth something if you're really into industrial design. And is this the ne you know, like if, if apple had done this with the first 100 iPhones, you know, they would've sold for thousands of dollars, right.

Ron Richards (00:44:58):
So, you know, maybe this is viable, but to me, it's, it's not, it's not the way I choose to spend my money. That said, I wanna be absolutely clear as we're, as we're winding down on the nothing parade. I, I, I, nothing, if you're listening or watching, I want this phone, like, I want to buy, I wanna prove me wrong. Like, I wanna fall in love with the innovation of the back of, of those lights and, and show me, you know, show me that it's not a gimmick. Let's see what the rest of what the phone can do and see how things change. But you know, I am still intrigued. I'm not, I'm not turned off from it. I'm not, you know, like, I'm not saying, oh, it's so dumb or whatever. I'm like, hell, I'm the guy who wanted the, the, the, the modular phones, right. Like, that's right. I want this sort of dumb mm-hmm <affirmative> I do kind of like that it, that it kind of looks like a hard drive with its little.

Jason Howell (00:45:45):
It really does. That's exactly what it looks like. That's like a

Ron Richards (00:45:48):
Hard drive. I do like that aspect of it. You know, I, I'm not a big wireless charger. I don't use it. I'm not gonna use those nothing earbuds. So putting it on it, knowing when it's lit up and charging or not. I do think that the light on the phone for camera use is clever and, and it's usable, you know? Yeah. Like, so, you know, so I'm, I'm still engaged. I'm still, I'm still, you know, curiosity peaked. I wanna hold it. I want to use it. I want to get running through his paces. But my whole thing with this is just the rollout three weeks out, leaning on how the lights are, is just a, is just a bumpy is a bumpy marketing road, but it's Carl pay. I mean, we know the bump bumpy road that OnePlus went on. So he's,

Jason Howell (00:46:25):
He's a, yeah. Marketing is his business. That's kind of what he leans into and, and trying to market in a way that is different from others and sometimes succeeding and sometimes not. I don't know, this is necessarily a failure, but, you know, it's weird. It just really depends. Yeah. It's weird. It's different. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. That's also one of the things that makes Android great is that phones like this do exist. There's a market of some sort who knows how big that market is for a phone that looks like it's been turned inside out and flashes a lot at you. Like someone <laugh>, you know, you can't get that on iPhone. So at least there's that I will say when I first saw the etchings, like the, the underneath stuff we did and we didn't know, see have the the full, you know, back panel to know that there was glass there. I was concerned that it was exposed and that there wasn't glass there, and it would pick up pocket LIS. So I'm happy that they've got a cl you know, they cover that up with some glass, so that it'll be a little sleeker and nice. I really, this is definitely a phone that I have to imagine benefits from seeing it in person as opposed to on a screen. That's my guess. So,

Huyen Tue Dao (00:47:36):
Yeah. I mean, I, I think that there is a lot of Marin saying, like trying something different. Like, I, I don't wanna, like, you know, actually that's, you know, that's definitely clever trying stock X. I would like to see, like maybe if anything, they should have taken this a little bit farther, kind of like with a little, little, little NAZA shoes. And they had like, you know, faint shoes, there were like some, you know, like kind of underground ed shoes with like blood in them. Like, like, I, I would, I, I would actually would've liked this stock extra a lot more if it had been like a real special phone, like, I don't know, like it has, like, I don't know, like some kind of,

Jason Howell (00:48:06):
Some kind of like design, special artwork, etched, like BA they got Banksy to do 100 limited edition etching or one that said all about Android,

Huyen Tue Dao (00:48:15):
Or yeah. Or they had a bird feather in there or something, or just something that tied into, I mean, like I I'm offer like them trying to experiment and make it artful, make it interesting and, and go for the design. If you're gonna put it on stock X for 3, 3, 3 grand, just do something real nuts with it. And I, I, I think that would be more, even more hypey like that, that would've gone with the stock X for me. So I feel like there's definitely a lot of hype and I appreciate that. And I appreciate the hustle and I appreciate the out of the box. I feel like, again, just like Ron said, it's a little bit, eh, like maybe they should just done all this stuff at once and we could have just gotten like a billion and how things to talk about

Jason Howell (00:48:48):
Yeah, yeah. All in one swoop or maybe this is all they have maybe a couple of weeks from now. They're like, yeah, you saw the Blinky thing and you see, that's not didn't you see the lights on the back of the phone. Come on. Yes. Okay. Okay. I don't think you understand here. Hold on. Let me do the ring tone here. One second. Okay. You know, pull up the, let me show you the battery indicator. <Laugh> yeah.

Jason Howell (00:49:09):
See it. It's only a three quarter lit that's that's pretty cool. Right? well, what do y'all think about this then? Changing gears, Samsung galaxy fan edition in the last couple of years? Well, let's say the last three years, the fan edition had kind of come outta nowhere. Samsung started releasing this as like a, it's almost like a step down from their flagship release. So the S 21 Fe would be the S 21 fan edition. It would be kind of a step down in their portfolio, but still offered enough for critics, especially to be very excited about people seemed, you know, who were writing and reviewing the fan edition phones seemed authentically like excited and happy about what Samsung was doing with these devices. Well, last year we never saw one, we were expecting one actually I, I said it a second ago. It didn't actually happen last year.

Jason Howell (00:50:03):
The S 21 fan edition ended up actually releasing this January instead. So 2021 went by no fan edition. That was actually a few months before the S 22 series hit. So it was kinda like really close, a little awkwardly timed, but whatever had happened now, Sam mobile is hearing from multiple sources that the fan edition might actually be, be done. They were, you know, like I said, they were kind of hits with critics. But apparently Samsung might be killing the fan edition. How do we, how do we feel about that? I mean, Samsung as a company is just a phone company that throws a ton of stuff against the wall. And so I guess, I guess I'm not surprised, but I'm kind of surprised because the fan edition did authentically get a lot of really good press.

Ron Richards (00:50:52):
I never I'm gonna make a confession. I never understood the fan edition.

Jason Howell (00:50:55):
Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:50:57):
I mean, I, I, I understood it generally, but I didn't, I didn't like just by the phone. I don't understand why, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know. I just, I, it never really connected with me. So I can't say I'm surprised here.

Speaker 5 (00:51:07):
It's kind of like the opposite of the fan edition, cuz it's like, there's nothing special about it. It's just like, what's, it's like should be like the vanilla edition or something.

Ron Richards (00:51:16):
Yeah. Or like the, the, you never wanna call like, like negative, I guess you don't wanna call it basic or like

Jason Howell (00:51:22):
Whatever,

Speaker 5 (00:51:23):
Not like the milk, the milk toast or middle of the road.

Jason Howell (00:51:26):
Yeah, the S 21 light. And when you see that light word, which is kind of what it was, right. It was like, it was like a step back.

Ron Richards (00:51:33):
Yeah. So I don't know what made it a fan. I don't know.

Jason Howell (00:51:37):
Just marketing it never, the name is weird too. It never felt right. Yeah. What about it makes it a fan addition phone of, yeah, it's a good point. So I, I feel like we've had a lot of guests on the show who have been really big, like fans of the fan edition. It, Mateo may have been one of them. I'm not really quite sure. I know we've had a few guests

Ron Richards (00:52:00):
Come on. Well, you can't, you can't judge Mateo. I mean Mateo, like, so Makadi

Jason Howell (00:52:04):
<Laugh> okay. Fair enough. <Laugh> fair enough. I wonder if he heard that? Just like

Ron Richards (00:52:09):
Somewhere he just got,

Jason Howell (00:52:11):
He was wherever he was. He was like, oh, he woke up from a nightmare or something. He definitely heard it. He definitely heard it. All right. So goodbye fan edition. Probably, maybe. I don't know. Well, when we'll get the word on that, but that seems to be the word right now. Goodbye. All right. When he got the last one.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:52:29):
All right. Well, if you're a smart watch fan, that'd like to jazz up your wrist with custom watch bands like to go with your smart watch. You might be in luck when it comes to the pixel watch. So sources tell nine to five people there at least seven bands in development for release with the pixel watch. Of course, the default that we've seen in all the reveals is this really nice to the clown band, but you might have some of those higher and lower and options as well from a high end Melans Melans style band, which has like a woven steel sale mash and a magnetic class to kind of like more chunky link bracelet, which you might imagine would be on a Rolex or an omega. Of course, these might not come cheap. Similar ones for the apple watch shirt at like 3 49 U S D.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:53:11):
But if you really want to kind of give your pixel watch a high end edge, you might get it. And I think let's see, we also might get some leather bands. If you wanna go for something a little classy and classic, you might have those options as well. And if you're more looking for something affordable and resilient, you're gonna get some fabric and stretch bands as well. So look to those, to come out, look for those to come out with the pixel watch whenever that does. But I mean, I, I like options. I definitely the last time I had a, I had a smart watch. I definitely was a bit of a, a band hog, a band hog because, you know, just, I, I mean, cuz I wanted like the super red one, like cuz I wanted like a lot of flash and funs and I also wanted something kind of sophisticated for when I actually had to go to a meeting or something or like go to a, a fancy dressup affair. So I, I think this is great. It is gonna be proprietary band system, but that hopefully will provide more options for bands. And, and hopefully you won't have to just resort define in something that kind of sort of works off Amazon. You'll get first party bands if that is important to you. So there you go.

Jason Howell (00:54:13):
Yeah. I mean with first party bands it's at least has that kind of quality quality control coming directly from Google or yeah, they're probably gonna have, you know, third party kind of partnerships I'm sure as well for some of these bands and everything, but I don't know. I haven't, I haven't shopped Amazon for, for bands to know how hit or missed that actually is. It's probably, it probably is pretty hit or miss as many things on Amazon are when, when you shop like that. So cuz when I, when I, when I heard that the pixel watch was, you know, using a proprietor, a proprietary watch band approach, I kind of saw that as a negative because it kind of, yeah, I always see when new smart watches are released that being a benefit when, you know, they say, oh yeah, it fits all the, the bands you probably already have. And it's very easy to find new bands, but knowing that Google is producing a number of potentially higher quality, you know, first party bands maybe that means that the quality's gonna be better. I don't know. But I do like the look of the watch, look at that. Look at that, watch it does look nice. It's all rounded and slick and stuff. I just hope they don't make any fabric ones <laugh> well I think, well they are. Yeah, I think they are. I think they will. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> just, you know, keep it clean.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:55:33):
Yep.

Jason Howell (00:55:34):
You're gonna have to clean it from time to time. Maybe they'll make some denim ones. <Laugh> my denim

Huyen Tue Dao (00:55:38):
Watch band. My goodness. That'd be kinda awesome.

Jason Howell (00:55:43):
There you go. There's an idea. Google make it all right. Coming up next some app news, actually one one piece of app news that I'm really excited to talk about. Let's do it.

Speaker 8 (00:55:55):
Thanks for listening to TWI in a crowded field of digital products and services, you can stand out by advertising on the twit network. We offer customized host red ads that elevate your services and products to our tech savvy affluent audience, twit ads are authentic specialized and all of our shows include video, which means we can show off products, websites, and customized videos visit twit.tv/advertise and launch a tailored campaign. That's

Jason Howell (00:56:24):
Twit.Tv/Advertise.

Jason Howell (00:56:35):
So one of my, I would say one of my favorite pixel features in recent years is the now playing functionality. I just think it's really cool that like the phone, like with me not having to do anything just as constantly like recognizing music that's playing around me and then they added the history to it. So I might go somewhere and song plays and then later I'm like, what was that song? Then I look on my now playing history and it's like keeping track in real time and you know, logging it all the music that's playing around me. So I've just thought that, and it's kind of magical because it's like stored on the device anyways. Ambient music mod is an app that you can install on a device that is not a pixel in order to have that functionality. And that's that's initially it required root it.

Jason Howell (00:57:29):
It was first released a a year ago, version one was released a year ago and it required root in order to do this. Now version two is out root requirement is gone. And I think what's interesting to me about this is yes. I mean the, the, the feature's really cool if you don't have a pixel phone and you want that kind of nearby you know, music recognition functionality, you can install this now without root and you can get it. And actually more features it's like the feature set is more than what Google offers, but I appreciate that the developer posted to medium about the process of making this work on non pixel phones and it kind of shed some light on the details of how the original now playing feature actually works. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I just thought it was interesting. So I'll, I'll just kind of read to you what, what kind of stuck out to me he wrote that the pixel's dedicated signal processor, all it's actually doing all that, that dedicated signal processor that DSP is doing is recognizing that some music is probably playing.

Jason Howell (00:58:28):
So when we think of this feature and we like, as I've thought of it is like, oh, the DSP on the phone is doing something really unique and really powerful to, you know, analyze and blah, blah, blah. No, all it's really doing is like analyzing to recognize, oh, I think that's music and it's probably playing right now, once it does that, it tells the Android system intelligence app. And if the user isn't on a phone call at that point, or isn't actually playing music on the device itself. So in other words, you know, kind of feeding into its own system, which it wants to avoid doing, then it takes an eight second recording of what's playing the music that's playing. And then it runs into that through the track recognition system. And this is what's actually stored on the device. It's that 250 megabyte file, which blows my mind that that it can contain 53,000 tracks of fingerprint data in order to identify.

Jason Howell (00:59:26):
And that's as of June 20, 22, 50 3000 tracks, 250 megabyte files stored on your phone, if you have a pixel and different countries have different databases. So, you know, what's popular in the us might be different than what's popular in another country. So different phones, you know, have different songs inside of that database. I just thought that was kind of cool to get some clearer understanding as far as how that all works. It's pretty neat and it's pretty cool and pretty cool that, you know, the developer has figured out how to bring this to other phones as well.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:59:59):
So I really, I really like the technical detail that it goes into, especially, especially since there is a dedicated digital signal processor just for the recognition part. Yeah. And that's to save battery. And I, I love that idea cuz it kind of reminds me of back of when I used to be a computer engineer and do hardware stuff about how like hyper optimized circuits, like this can be very efficient. Cause it does one thing and it does it really well. Yeah. And so it's able to like, you know, and like the idea of like, yeah, like if you had to write an app that just worked kind of like on the regular, like CPU of the phone that just knew to listen, it like that, that amount of like polling and analysis of data is just like so complicated along with like the other general purpose stuff that a CPU has to do.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:00:36):
Yeah. That it kind of makes sense that that wouldn't be very efficient mm-hmm <affirmative> and then the, and like this is a, like, what is this feature? Right. It's like telling you that music is playing. It's not necessarily like the, the, a fundamental, like feature of a phone mm-hmm, but they've, they've actually made a, a dig, a digital signal process or a dedicated dig, digital signal processor for this. And I, I think that's so good. It's, it's, it's the feature that's so delightful and that people have found. So like, you know you know, like people just use it so much that they, they they've dedicated hardware to this. And I absolutely love that, that, that, that this, that this feature is so important that they, they created DS DSP for it. And, and yeah, like the details are really fun that, that there's like two sec, two parts of it. And that, you know, like the, the actual like sound matching or pattern matching of the music is one thing. But that, yeah, actually just being able to tell music is playing is, yeah, it's a hard challenge. It's it's really cool. It's, it's a really geeky, but very, very fun article. So,

Jason Howell (01:01:34):
And I think, I don't, I'm sorry, Ron.

Ron Richards (01:01:36):
I was gonna say, I don't see how anybody that isn't remotely interested in either music or technology or the cross section that both isn't completely fascinated by this,

Jason Howell (01:01:43):
By how this works. Yeah, yeah. Is

Ron Richards (01:01:45):
Pretty impressive. This is such a wonderful, fine, Jason I'm I'm so I'm delighted by

Jason Howell (01:01:49):
This. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty neat. And, and you know, he goes on, he shed some light on the fact that the detection like we've talked about doesn't really need that special pixel DS P but right. Because as, as we've said, that DSP is really just recognizing that some music is playing right. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And so it's keeping battery usage and, and CPU usage low as a result of that. And then it does the processing to, to kind of, you know, fingerprint the music and, and does that all on device. All that stuff can happen on any phone. He's figured out a way to do this, you know, so that this works on all phones. It does take a little bit longer because it's pull, it's pulling on a different kind of, I, I don't know, I don't know frequency or, or repetition is, is a little bit longer between, you know, checking if there's music playing or not or whatever.

Jason Howell (01:02:38):
But he did show, you know, he did a lot of tests according to his medium article showed the very minimal battery was used for the feature. But it was hard for him to get an exact count on the battery usage because the app that it's tied into the Android app that I mentioned earlier, what was it? The Android system intelligence app is an app that you can't track battery usage on from my understanding. So but anyways so, so, you know, your mileage may vary, but it's, it's cool that he, that he did this. And actually I should give him credit by name instead of keep keeping, referring to him as the guy who wrote this Kirin Quinn is the developer of the app. And I just think it's, it's really neat. It's a cool feature on pixel phones. It's, it's a feature that I love and continue to use and continue to respect. And the fact that anybody can get it now, go for it, check it out for yourself. It's it's worth installing and checking out. All right. When you've got the next one.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:03:40):
Okay. So remember how I said at the beginning of the show that Google seems to be repackaging smart lock and calling it smart unlock and like maybe nearby lock and you know that Google has a history of yeah. Recycling names and repackaging things. Well, guess, guess who else is getting into that game as well? Samsung?

Jason Howell (01:03:59):
No way Samsung's doing a Google thing. No,

Huyen Tue Dao (01:04:02):
Yeah. I guess what they're doing. They're they're, they're taking Samsung pay and Samsung pass, and guess what? They're gonna call it

Jason Howell (01:04:09):
Samsung wallet.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:04:11):
Yes. They're, they're, they're, they're, they're doing the same thing.

Jason Howell (01:04:16):
Google

Huyen Tue Dao (01:04:17):
Just did a little while ago and they're repurposing pay and pass to be wallet. Okay. And so Samsung wa Samsung wallet will be a place primarily for your credit and debit cards, allowing you to tap, to pay via NFC unsurprisingly, but it's also a place for your loyalty cards, your airline tickets in particular with partner Korean air UNSU, surprise there, and also your digital car keys for now BMW Kia and Genesis will be supporting this, but they will be hoping to expand to more partners and coming soon, Samsung wallet seeks to support official IDs like your driver's license or student ID. And on top of that, there's also support for crypto wallets. So yeah, there, there you go. You just, that just seems to be the trend this year, getting wallet, getting your wallets out, getting rid of your pays and your passes and rolling out your wallets. Samsung wallet actually did roll out on the Google play store on June 16th and just today, June 21st became available on the galaxy store, replacing Samsung pay. And it will be in fact, rolling out automatically to galaxy smartphone owners and supported regions. So pay apps are passe and wallets are what's new.

Jason Howell (01:05:28):
Yeah. 20, 22, the year of the wallet,

Ron Richards (01:05:31):
It seems like ironic timing given the state of the economy right now. <Laugh> things like that, but you know, who are we to, who are we to judge or question? Yeah,

Jason Howell (01:05:41):
No. It's times like these, that you, that you clean house and you tidy up, right?

Ron Richards (01:05:44):
Yeah, exactly. Yep.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:05:45):
And you rename things, ream, you merge things

Jason Howell (01:05:47):
Together, merge things together, squish 'em together, and

Speaker 5 (01:05:49):
Then you rename them next

Jason Howell (01:05:50):
Month. Yes, exactly. And

Huyen Tue Dao (01:05:51):
Then ream again and hope. No one notices <laugh>

Ron Richards (01:05:53):
Wait till the next IO or next big event. <Laugh> that would be

Speaker 5 (01:05:57):
Paid wallet next

Jason Howell (01:05:57):
Week, next month. Or, or, or you get rid of them entirely, Ron.

Ron Richards (01:06:01):
Right? You, you could do that too. And so Burke, I hope you've queued up the, the, the funeral music for us. And you just heard Burke just curse under his breath. He's,

Jason Howell (01:06:14):
He's humming it even though he is not on Mike he's he's, he's doing

Ron Richards (01:06:17):
His best. Oh, wait, so really? I mean, is that the Imperial March? What

Jason Howell (01:06:24):
Is that? Yeah.

Ron Richards (01:06:27):
<Laugh>

Jason Howell (01:06:29):
You know what, I, I co-sign on that. I totally made that mistake too. Like, oh, it's time for taps. And then news, you play the, and then you

Ron Richards (01:06:37):
Wait,

Jason Howell (01:06:37):
We've

Ron Richards (01:06:37):
Had a Chas goes,

Huyen Tue Dao (01:06:38):
Wait, what's the difference? 

Ron Richards (01:06:41):
There it's they?

Jason Howell (01:06:44):
Yeah, that one.

Ron Richards (01:06:46):
So

Speaker 5 (01:06:46):
By the way, there's not an unlimited amount of buttons and sound effects. I wish there was,

Jason Howell (01:06:51):
They, they,

Ron Richards (01:06:52):
They sell those little things with the buttons. I've seen them, all my friends who, who do the streaming have 'em yeah. The little buttons

Jason Howell (01:06:58):
They're unlimited

Ron Richards (01:07:00):
Fully deck. Right.

Jason Howell (01:07:00):
We've got that on there, but we don't have,

Ron Richards (01:07:03):
Well, you could you

Huyen Tue Dao (01:07:03):
Put two next to each other. Right?

Ron Richards (01:07:04):
You could remap that one to TAFs. I feel like we get more usage outta that. Yeah. So anyway. Oh. But there it is. But not beating around the Bush. I'm sorry, everyone. Somewhere Florence is screaming. I know Jason, when you guys, you, you both agree with that. Mm-Hmm Android auto is now only available for car screens.

Jason Howell (01:07:25):
It's official

Ron Richards (01:07:26):
The day done. The phone version has shut down for good. So if you used Android auto on your phone no more, sorry, that's it for car screens.

Jason Howell (01:07:35):
You're gonna launch that app. And it's gonna tell you, quote, Android auto is now only available for car screens, and you're gonna be like, but I wanna hear, it's gonna be like a, it's only available for car screens and you're just gonna have to listen to it.

Speaker 5 (01:07:51):
It's gonna cut you

Jason Howell (01:07:52):
Off. Yeah.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:07:54):
Da D

Jason Howell (01:07:57):
Maybe, maybe the Imperial March is the right song for this. Oh, see, you had it all along. That's

Speaker 5 (01:08:04):
A, a sat trombone dude.

Ron Richards (01:08:05):
Cause the sad trombone, not

Jason Howell (01:08:06):
The, oh, that's true. It's not

Ron Richards (01:08:08):
Taps, not taps.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:08:09):
I will say this week that I did use the Google drive. What is it called? Google assistant driving mode. Because I, I just had to test it cuz we talked about it. I have used it before and it

Jason Howell (01:08:19):
Sucks.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:08:20):
Oh, I, I actually messaged slack right away. I was like, y'all

Huyen Tue Dao (01:08:24):
Stick it. My shorts. Like why? Like, yeah. I, I was trying to give it a chance. I, I actually have Android auto in my car, like on the screen and I hope I didn't hurt its feelings, but I, I, for science and for the Android faithful, I did it and I did not like it at all. Like it, it seems like it could be, have so much potential, but like for example, all I did was like wanting to navigate home and then like Google assistant driver was like, Hey, would you like to go somewhere? And it listed home and a bunch of other common places. And I said, and it asked me, where do you wanna go? And I said home and it proceeded to read to me my address and do something else.

Jason Howell (01:08:56):
<Laugh> nice. And that was, and your

Huyen Tue Dao (01:08:57):
Home address

Jason Howell (01:08:58):
Just wanted you to know where you live?

Huyen Tue Dao (01:09:00):
Yeah. I was like, yeah, that's where I live. Can we go? Hello? And

Jason Howell (01:09:04):
Then I followed up with, how did we do, did we give you the information you were looking for? You, you didn't,

Huyen Tue Dao (01:09:13):
It didn't even ask me that it didn't gimme a chance to give it feedback. I just was like, haha,

Jason Howell (01:09:17):
Thank yeah. It's piece out. I was just not happy. Yeah. I've had similar experience or Android auto. Yeah. There you go. There's your error message that you'll see. Next time you try. There we go. That works too. All right, coming up. We've got some of your feedback, including a voicemail. That's up next? AAA twit TV 3, 4, 7 show AA. And when has the first email?

Huyen Tue Dao (01:09:51):
Yes. And this is from Rojalio Cruz from Manila. Philippines. Thank you for writing in and letting us know that Rojalio actually was one of those folks that was kind of interested in that snap drag in snap, dragon insider phone. So we had the fan edition, but we did talk about the snap drag insider phone last week and Rojalio tells us hi guys encouraged to Jason's encouraged by Jason's plea to please do let you know if there are any snap drag, insider home, super fans out here. Well, I am nowhere near being a super fan, but the fir but the thing is when I first heard about the phone, I kind of liked the idea of having a sort of snap drag and reference phone as it were. And I did read about how it was basically a generic version of the raw phone five in terms of specs, but cost quite a bit more. That part turned me off. Yeah. Agreed. All that said that snap drag and insider phone, like so many other great tech products I've been waiting for is oh, that other, that other, sorry, like so many other great tech products I've been waiting for. Isn't available in my country to begin with. So struggles, struggle, struggles. Thank you, Qualcomm for not making it. My problem.

Jason Howell (01:10:58):
<Laugh> that's

Huyen Tue Dao (01:10:58):
Excellent.

Jason Howell (01:10:59):
Excellent.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:11:01):
Very excellent. Yeah, I, yeah, I'm a super fan of yours though. Oh, thank you. And look forward to your shows every week.

Jason Howell (01:11:07):
Nice. Aw, thank you.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:11:09):
Thank you so much for Helio. And I actually looked at the rock phone RO is Republic of gaming Republic, Republic of gamers, gaming Republic of gamers rock. I am a big rock fan. My, the last PC I, I built was rogue everything. I probably shouldn't have complained about the nothing phones led so much cuz I like me some led. So I agree. It would've been nice to have something like raw, like, but there you go. Someone was very much anticipating the snap drag insider phone, but you know what call call me. You messed, messed up. You everywhere. You messed up,

Jason Howell (01:11:43):
You did it. You messed up. And messed up just, just for the record. Cuz I do go through all the emails. This was the only response we got from our call for anyone who got the Snapdragon insider phone to email us. So I'm guessing that if someone did, they probably would've taken the opportunity to send us an email and say it because you know, you're, you're like one of few and you're very passionate about it said, well of course I wanna tell them. But we didn't hear from you if you did get it. So I'm assuming no one who watches the show actually got the Snapdragon insider phone. And I kind of wouldn't be that surprised to know that either. So there you go. But I'm happy that we heard from someone on the topic. And I'm happy that you, it sounds like you dodged a bullet. So congratulations <laugh>

Ron Richards (01:12:34):
Man. Well, so we always put out a call every week for you to send in your emails@aaatwit.tv, but we also love to get voicemails and video mails and things like that. And this week we got it all about Android voicemail from Frank, from New Jersey. Let's hear it.

Speaker 9 (01:12:53):
Hi, triple a show. Great show today as always was listening to you, installing the virtues of Samsung only offering $50 to replace a crack screen. Just wanna give you a little perspective. The reason people don't replace crack screen has nothing has very little, I should say to do with the cost. It comes down to, you have to give up your phone for like two weeks to mail it in. Yeah. And of course you have to wipe your phone cuz you're not gonna send in your phone with all of your data. So how many people actually have a spare phone that they can take their SIM card out of, put into upload that data from their current phone, into this new phone, wipe their phone and send their phone away for two weeks. My wife cracked her Samsung phone screen on her Samsung phone last year. And fortunately I had an old pixel that she was able to use. Otherwise there's no way she would've sent in her phone for two weeks and been without a phone for two weeks. So just wanted to give you guys a little perspective, keep up the great work. Thanks again. Oh, by the way, this is Frank from New Jersey.

Ron Richards (01:14:00):
Nice. Love it. Frank. Thank you for calling in. Yeah. And that, and that's the thing, like I'm not surprised to hear this. It's like yes. $50 screw your place, but that's great. But you're gonna not have a phone for a while, which is something a reality. I don't think anybody can deal with in our world. Is it? Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:14:16):
No, absolutely not. And I mean there, there are screen repair places you could yeah. Take it to like there's God, what phone did I? I did. I did replace the screen. I think on my wife's phone at one point, you know, number of years ago here in Petaluma that didn't take two weeks at least, but still thought

Ron Richards (01:14:33):
Everybody has that. I I'd laugh because a phone repair place in my old neighborhood in Queens opened a couple years ago called you break. I fix. Yeah. And, and then I realized that that is actually a very widely popular and, and rampant chain across the us. It is. And it's actually like official, like, you know, Samsung, Google, apple, all that sort of stuff. So, so look, look in your local area. If there's a youre eye fix nearby near

Speaker 5 (01:14:57):
You, you think they'd be able to turn around turn 'em around a little quick.

Jason Howell (01:15:00):
Yeah.

Ron Richards (01:15:01):
Samsung you think? No,

Speaker 5 (01:15:02):
No. If they're like, if they do warranty repairs, you know?

Ron Richards (01:15:05):
Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:15:06):
Oh the, the store like fix yeah. Going in there. Yeah. Literally

Speaker 5 (01:15:10):
Same day they were, you know, pay extra for it.

Jason Howell (01:15:12):
Yeah. It's it's a good point. Mail mailing it off. Yeah. If you're gonna wait a couple of weeks for a phone, like not many people, if that's the only phone they have could be without the phone, they're gonna put that off and put that off until they don't need to. Which is what I think a lot of people end up doing. And then they end up, you know, getting to the end of their, at least here in the us, into their contract. It's time for a new phone time for a new contract. They just do it and trade it in and get, you know, get some sort of trade.

Ron Richards (01:15:36):
Speaking of speaking of new phone, my poor sister came over over the weekend. We had a barbecue and she's like, when can I get a new phone? And I looked it up. I'm like, well the pixel six a is coming out and for Verizon on what it was like July 29th or something like that. And she's like, oh, but I'm going on vacation on the June 20. And

Jason Howell (01:15:52):
I need it before then.

Ron Richards (01:15:54):
Yeah. So I feel, I feel bad. And I was like, I held, I gave her my pixel six. I'm like, feel this I'm like, you could get that phone today if you want it. And she's like, ah, it's too heavy. It's a, you know, she, for you to the six a is the phone for her. It just it's taking forever. So yeah. It's yeah.

Jason Howell (01:16:09):
Frustrating. It's right around the corner. Just wait a little bit longer when you get back from your trip, it'll be ready for you.

Ron Richards (01:16:16):
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's what I told her. Like there you

Huyen Tue Dao (01:16:17):
Go, like going to the bathroom and coming back to your food at a restaurant kind of

Jason Howell (01:16:20):
Thing. Exactly. It's

Ron Richards (01:16:24):
A great example.

Jason Howell (01:16:25):
That's it? That's it all right. It is time for the email of the week. Scott, the geek got the email of the week

Jason Howell (01:16:42):
Says I have to say, I do not understand the need for safety net or anything similar for decades. There have been no problem. There has been no problem. Running financial apps on devices with effective root windows, PCs by default and almost all the time. A user of a home windows PC has root administrator access. And yet we've been running financial apps quick in QuickBooks, that sort of stuff and accessing financial websites just fine. So why is it suddenly so dangerous and unsafe to run them on a rooted phone? To me, this is simply an excuse to lock down the ecosystem to be more like iPhone. And honestly, if I wanted a lock down ecosystem, I'd already be on an iPhone instead I'm a longtime Android user while I'm not currently rooted, it's not for a lack of desire. Unfortunately it's become now impossible on latest model phones. I used to be rooted all the time until my current model and I missed the functionality that gave me such as system level ad blocking as well as the ability to perform a true, full backup of my phone. Along with other capabilities Android has certainly become a lot less to me with lack of root access. Thank goodness. I still have my laptop PC, which doesn't treat me like a baby that needs coddling and bumpers Scott, the geek <laugh> I like a good rant. So you got the email of the week. Scott

Jason Howell (01:18:08):
Wait a rant. That was some good rant energy. That was good. Scott threw some spice on that. That

Ron Richards (01:18:13):
Was some good spice Scott. That was excellent. I spice. I like it.

Jason Howell (01:18:16):
Spice

Ron Richards (01:18:17):
Ranch energy. Yeah, it drive. It drives the fandom, doesn't it? Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:18:22):
Yeah. I mean, and you know, has a point, I mean, I think of, there are a lot of enthusiasts who are, have been in on Android for a very long time who feel the same way that Scott feels that year after year Android is becoming kind of diluted from its former self. You know, it used to be incredibly customizable, very, very nerd friendly, right? Like we could get in there and do so many things with it because we knew how not, because it was easy. It was actually very difficult, but we were willing to do the work and get in there and maybe break a few things along the way, but that just kind of made it even cooler when we finally got to the other side and actually did the things that we were going for to begin with. And now, you know, devices are getting harder to, to penetrate essentially to get past the protection, the security layers. So it's not as easy to root devices. There isn't as much of a community kind of behind it. And Google does continue to make changes to the OS that in many people's regard seems to be you know, more I iOS the, the the ecosystem as opposed to embracing the openness of it, contrary to what they have, you know, continue to say about Android being very open, which I guess by comparison it is, but still not quite as open as it used to be

Speaker 5 (01:19:43):
Ex I would like to add though, there are a lot of features now available to people without having root. Like all the developers totally are super powerful. You can try, anybody can turn 'em on, you could break your phone in lots of other ways without having to root it.

Jason Howell (01:19:57):
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a really valuable point. I think that's kind of part of why we are, where we're at right now is that Google has continued to improve Android and see some of the things that you did get through these alternative methods and say, oh, well maybe there's a way that we can bake this feature in or make this more customizable. And, you know, in a way that isn't quite as deep and detailed that's you used to get, but, or, but covers most of the bases that most people would want anyways and ends up being good enough. You know what I mean?

Huyen Tue Dao (01:20:32):
But I wonder if there's a factor of, with great power comes great liability and maybe <laugh> like, wait, like, and Scott, I completely agree with you. Like I, and I agree with you, Jason, that I, I miss kind of like the early scrappy days of Android and I miss what it is as someone who like has loved computers and, and technology and, and like tinker in their own. I, I totally get it. I just also think that as Androids become you know, in the early days when we, you know, we weren't, I wanna say we, we weren't like, you know, like the number one mobile operating system, you know, it felt a little bit scrappier, but now that, you know, there's a lot of financial success, success and market share that, that there's more to protect and more kind of nervousness around certain things.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:21:12):
I don't know if it's right or wrong. I just wonder if that's partially it as well. Just yeah. Someone maybe someone's complaining whether it's OEMs or whether there's like a, a thought of like consumer perception of Android. Because I mean, actually I've been in several. Oh, that that kinda reminds me, I'm gonna talk once. And someone was, was like talking about what was that show? What's that show with Rammy ma like, oh my Mr. Robot and phone Mr. Robots. Yeah. And I, I remember sitting there because that, that this person was saying that Android, that, that iPhones are just inherently safer than Androids. And I think I was a little bit miffed sitting there in the audience just as an Android developer. And I mean, he, he had fair points, but maybe I can't help, but think there's also perception there cuz people hear things like that. And, and like, see things in pop culture are just on the news. And maybe that's just like, I mean, I don't know what the real risk is, but it just feels like, I don't know, everyone's got everyone's feeling they're just like short thins up tightening belts and like locking all the doors and stuff. But anyway,

Jason Howell (01:22:11):
I mean, there is something to be said, said about security on a mobile device versus like a computer. Although lap laptops are also very mobile, but you know, like, like if we carry so much of our lives on our mobile device, that if we aren't keeping them secure, this, this device is probably more likely to fall into the wrong hands than my laptop. I, I dunno, maybe I'm wrong in that, but I just think, you know, these, these smartphones are far more portable. Therefore more people are taking these out and about in the world and they're gonna be more likely to, to be misplaced. They're, you know, lot less obvious to lose track of than like a computer. You know, that that is wide open. I'm probably not gonna leave my laptop somewhere. I could totally see myself leaving my phone somewhere. So maybe that's why the, the greater need for security on mobile versus something like a, a laptop. So any who Scott, the geek you've given us something to think about. And I appreciate your rant. That's why you got the email of the week. Congratulations. I wish I had an award to give you, but you'll just have to save this podcast episode for eternity and play it for people say, see <laugh>, that was my <laugh>

Ron Richards (01:23:30):
Make it your ring tone.

Jason Howell (01:23:31):
Yes. There you go. The whole episode, your is your ring tone. All right. We've reached the end of this episode of all that Android. Before we wrap things up, Burke, take a look at the doc right underneath the signoff area. I want to thank Gallia in our discord because earlier in the episode, we put out a challenge to morph our logo. This will, this will mean nothing to audio listeners. And to be quite honest, it will mean very little to video viewers because it's, it's a good start, but anyways, Gallia took the took the challenge and morphed our initial artwork. I think with our current artwork, I can't remember this and, and okay. Not our current artwork, it's our, our marshmallow artwork. And my goodness. You can definitely tell the, the craftsmanship of this. I mean, that's

Ron Richards (01:24:20):
A morph.

Jason Howell (01:24:20):
That's exactly

Ron Richards (01:24:21):
What we're, that's amazing what you could do now with computers. It really

Jason Howell (01:24:24):
Is. It's fascinating. So I think this is a great start. We'll see where this leads but thank you for taking up the challenge, SCO

Ron Richards (01:24:31):
It, this is almost like watching that Michael Jackson video.

Jason Howell (01:24:35):
<Laugh> almost exactly. Yeah.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:24:37):
Almost

Jason Howell (01:24:38):
Like that. Black, black, and white, right? Which one? Doesn't matter if you black go white, you're talking about thriller different didn't have thriller. That was all practical effects. Tom Savina. Yeah,

Huyen Tue Dao (01:24:51):
Totally. No computers anyways.

Jason Howell (01:24:54):
So thank you gall. We appreciate you throwing that in there and thanks to you. Win always a pleasure to get to do the show with you. Tell us what you got in the cooker right now.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:25:06):
Get some stuff brewed, but for now you can find previous stuff I've done on my website, randomly typing.com. I sometimes give technical talks about Android development and you can find the talks code and videos there. And otherwise just find me on Instagram and Twitter, just talking sometimes about Android stuff sometimes about other stuff at queen code monkey

Jason Howell (01:25:28):
RA on thank you. Win. And Ron, what you got? I see a link here. Yeah.

Ron Richards (01:25:34):
This, you can go. Well, first off you can go follow me at, on Twitter and Facebook, not Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and Ron XO. But you can also download, score it in the Google play store which if you like pinball, it's a great app to let you that me and my friends have made that let you track your scores and earn achievements and things like that. But I dropped a link in the doc and very excited cuz the BR newest game out in pinball is toy story four from Jersey, Jack pinball. And just today we announced that with their latest code update version 1.05 you can connect your machine to score it with no hardware needed at all. And you can start, that's awesome tracking your scores and earn achievements and things like that. It is very, very cool. So yeah. So I know, I don't know if there's anybody listening this stuff, but if you are, you know what I'm talking with, you know, you know, so

Jason Howell (01:26:22):
If you know, you know, <laugh> and you, you know, right on Gobi pinball on Twitter to, to find that at Gobi pinball, right?

Ron Richards (01:26:32):
Gobi.Io, you go to the website.

Jason Howell (01:26:33):
There we go. The website's probably better than your

Ron Richards (01:26:35):
Twitter. Yeah. Yeah. Or go to Gobi pinball on Twitter or Instagram,

Jason Howell (01:26:40):
Right on. Good work, Ron. Thank you. Thanks. Big, thanks to Victor working hard behind the scenes, creating some graphics for the show, doing all the, the new visual stuff to, to get it over to Burke who I also wanna thank who's here in the studio at the TriCaster, bringing all that stuff in and making it happen in real time. Couldn't do the show without both of you. So thank you. You can find me, there we go. That was Burke. Nice. You can find me at Jason Howell on Twitter, also doing tech news weekly every Thursday with Micah Sergeant fun interview show that we do. So check that out. Twi.Tv/Tnw tech news weekly, and then club TWI, twi.tv/club twit. That's our subscription based ad free tier. Essentially, if you want all of our shows, no ads. Well we've, we can hook you up.

Jason Howell (01:27:32):
It's called club twit. If you want exclusive access to a TWI plus podcast feed with shows that you don't get outside of the club. Well, we can, we can do that as well. That's club TWI. And finally, if you want access to our members only discord club, TWI $7 a month twit TV slash club TWI. Also one more thing before I wrap things up I realize I haven't said this in a while, but I, no, I'm not gonna say I love you, although I do, but help us with the end of year, best of episode, TWI TV slash best of and let us know if there are any moments from the show now, earlier in the year, it feels early to kind of start thinking about best stuff.

Ron Richards (01:28:16):
It really does. I just got panicked. That is the end that we're talking end of the year, my God,

Jason Howell (01:28:20):
But we've done this so many years in a row that I know that like, as early as this feels, it's never too early to start asking for these things because we get to October where we start planning these things. And it's like it's, that's when the panic hits. It's like, oh no, I've got so much work to do before the end of the year. And I'm telling you, I'm gonna blink and it's gonna be here. So Twitter, TV slash best stuff. Let us know. Just remember that URL. If something really cool happens on the show, hit that URL. Tell us as much as you can that'll really help us out. That's it for this week's episode, Twitter TV slash AA is the show page on the web where you can go to find all the ways to subscribe to this show. Audio, video formats, jump out to YouTube. It's all there. Twitter, TV slash AA. Even with the new artwork. I love it. It looks so good. It's pretty good. Thank you all so much for watching and listening. We'll see you next time on all about Android next week with Florence joining the, the crew as well. We'll see you then. Bye everybody.

Ant Pruitt (01:29:28):
Did you spend a lot of money on your brand new smartphone? And then you look at the pictures on Facebook and Instagram and you're like, what in the world happen to that photo? Yes you have. I know it happens to all of us. Well, you need to check out my show hands on photography, where I'm going to walk you through simple tips and tricks that are gonna help make you get the most out of your smartphone camera or your DSLR or mirrorless, whatever you have. And those shots are gonna look so much better. I promise you so make sure you're turning into twi.tv/hop for hands-on photography to find out more.