All About Android 634, 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 on all about Android. We have a lot of fun tonight. It's me, Jason Howell, Ron Richards, Mishaal Rahman joining us. And we talk about the pixel drop. A new pixel drop. We actually give it a, a grade A rating because there's actually a lot in it. It's pretty significant. So check that out. At and t hopping on Google's jbe train for rcs. That's pretty big news. Michelle breaks down the leaked details of the next tensor chip. That's the tensor G three. And why it's actually a much bigger step up than the G two was to the G one. We declare foldable summer is on now with one plus coming into, well, the fold and the messy, messy fallout from Reddit's API debacle. If we, I think we can call it a debacle, right? I'm gonna go ahead and call it a debacle. Plus your feedback and a whole lot more. Coming up next on all about Android

Speaker 2 (00:00:56):
Podcast you love from people you trust. This is Tweet, tweet.

Jason Howell (00:01:05):
This is all about Android episode 634, recorded Tuesday, June 13th, 2023. How do I find them Discords? This episode of all about Android is brought to you by Fast Mail, reclaim your privacy, boost productivity, and make email yours with fast mail. Try it now free for 30 days@fastmail.com slash twi. And by cash, fly Cash Fly delivers rich media content up to 10 times faster than traditional delivery methods, and 30% faster than other Major CDNs. Meet customer expectations 100% of the time. Learn how you can get your first month free@cashfly.com. It's time for all about Android, your weakest source. Latest news, hardware and apps for the Android Faithful. I'm Jason Howell. And I'm

Ron Richards (00:01:59):
Ron Richards.

Jason Howell (00:02:02):
There we go. And q and I'm Michelle Ramon <laugh>. It was a little late going to you. How you doing? Haw. How you doing, Ron? It's good to see you both. Welcome to another episode. Good to be back of all about Android. We do not have wind here this evening. Unfortunately, she couldn't make it, but she, yeah, it's just,

Ron Richards (00:02:23):
It's just, it's just three dudes talking Android this week. That's three

Jason Howell (00:02:26):
Dudes talking to Android. Talking

Ron Richards (00:02:28):
To Android. Three bros, three Android pals.

Jason Howell (00:02:31):
Okay. Don't, don't unsubscribe. <Laugh>. We promise it'll be better than this. Might make it sound like it's going to be. There's actually a lot of really big news that we're gonna talk about. And once again, Michelle, it's a great episode to have you on, because much of this, you have you have what is, what is it, unrolled in thread format on Twitter. So <laugh>, we've got a lot of the things that you've posted there. To dive a little bit deeper, we've got a pixel drop. We've got all sorts of stuff, lots of fun stuff, a little bit of roomy stuff happening in the hardware. But you know, I, I can't help myself. Like, I don't know, did I miss something major that wasn't rumor that we should have in there? You can let us know AAA to do tv, but why don't we just jump right into it and cue the news bumper. Let's talk about some news.

(00:03:26):
I think Gwen is just celebrating the nuggets. The Denver Nuggets win last night. Oh, so, oh, I see. So she's recovering. Yes. Yeah. <Laugh>, that could be possibly, that very well could be. Be that is, that is a realm that I paid no attention to. None <laugh>. Me neither Neith guess. Should I say that? She's from, yeah, she's from there. Yeah, she's, she's from that area, the Denver area. So it might actually be true, but but I'm, I'm guessing it's probably not. Maybe it is though. And if so, you know what you do? You, you do. You all right, Ron, you got first. It's their first championship, so, oh, okay. So then it actually, I, that's actually a really big deal, so congratulations Deborah Night.

Ron Richards (00:04:11):
Is it though? Is it

Jason Howell (00:04:11):
Though? Well, I mean

Ron Richards (00:04:13):
<Laugh>, I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what is a big deal though. Yeah. It is Pixels ju June feature drop, which has landed if you got a pixel phone, so gonna run through this sort of stuff, and there's a lot. So let's absorb it. Now you can use assistant and your voice to initiate emergency sharing or to schedule a safety check. So you could say, Hey, G, start a safety check for 30 minutes. And once that time is up, if you don't respond, your emergency contact will be notified in a realtime location shared with them, which is, like, pretty good if you're possibly gonna meet a serial killer. That's, that's a, that's a very good going

Jason Howell (00:04:49):
Out for a run. Maybe, maybe yes. Maybe you don't know. You know,

Ron Richards (00:04:54):
Safety is important. That's good. Yes, indeed. <Laugh> the and that location sharing with emergency contacts now extends to the car crash detection functionality as well too. So making your pixel that much more safe, it's pretty cool. Additionally, the Pixel seven Pro gets a new video mode called Macro Focus for closeup video shots, which as somebody who often zooms in to take video of my kids across the yard, I like the hear, I like the sound of that. Also for hands, hands free photos on pixel six and pixel six and newer phones, you can raise a palm to fire off a timer triggered photo at three or 10, three or 10 seconds intervals, which is pretty cool. So

Jason Howell (00:05:35):
When you're raising your hand to say, no, don't take a picture, it'll take a picture.

Ron Richards (00:05:38):
It's gonna start the countdown at that point. Yeah,

Jason Howell (00:05:39):
Exactly. No, don't do that.

Ron Richards (00:05:42):
<Laugh>. Yeah. And then with a little bit of a, a call back to Google io pixel six and newer phones get the cinematic wallpapers that were shown at at Google io, which is pretty cool. And also haptics get smarter and adjust based on whether or not they're on a table or not, which, if you've ever had your phone on a table and the haptics go off, and it, it, I'm glad to hear that they're getting smarter and knowing where the phone is and adjusting accordingly. Additionally, there are new assistant voices if you wanna change up what your assistant sounds like, so that's pretty cool. Yeah,

Jason Howell (00:06:16):
I, I didn't pull out the samples. I, I should have found those so that we could play through them, but I heard them on I think this week in Google last Wednesday. They played them and yeah, there's a, there's a solid amount of voices now they're getting rid of the celebrity voices, but, you

Ron Richards (00:06:30):
Know, which I think is fine, the standard

Jason Howell (00:06:31):
Stock. Yeah. I mean, those things are only gonna last for so long.

Ron Richards (00:06:34):
Yeah. And, and lastly, if you've got, if you've got a Pixel watch a couple of updates as well, you can check your oxygen saturation your s p oh two and identify changes in the level of oxygen in your blood while you're sleeping. So if you're one of those people who wanna track that stuff, there's more data to track. There you go. And also you get notifications if your heart rate is unusually high or low during continuous monitoring. And it also supports auto pauses when you're out running. So a little, little more, little, little, some adjustments with Pixel Watch too. This, this June. So Michelle if you had to rate this pixel drop <laugh>, if you had to give it a grade A letter, grade A plus B and the best, and f being a failure, where would you, where would you rank this, this pixel drop this month?

Jason Howell (00:07:17):
I'm curious.

Mishaal Rahman (00:07:19):
I mean, to be fair, compared to pre some previous pixel drops that have been kind of duds, this one's definitely used a lot more substantial than this meaty. I think even the March one was not that. Yeah, the March one was pretty underwhelming. This one is definitely a lot more whelming. So Sam, I think there was one, there was one feature that that, that I was added in this drop that I think you, that you missed that I was actually really excited for. It's the Google Home, the home panel one, the one where you get like a more detailed interface for controlling your Google Home devices from your lock screen. So especially if you're with the upcoming Pixel tablet you'll have like a home button right on the lock screen. You can just tap that and you can even see your cameras. You can change a lot more things right from your lock screen. Previously, the interface, if you're familiar, you open your pixel phone, you tap the, the home button in the quick settings or the lock screen. It's kinda like a bare bones, like just simple on and off toggle. The new interface is gonna be a lot more I guess prettier is the right word to use There. Is

Ron Richards (00:08:18):
That, is that, is that the tech, is that the technical term?

Mishaal Rahman (00:08:20):
The technical term? It's, it's it's beautiful. <Laugh>

Ron Richards (00:08:24):
And on. All right, so gimme a grade, man. You're, it sounds like you, you're, oh, boy, you're, you're, you're appreciating this pixel drop.

Jason Howell (00:08:30):
You are, you are the the teacher this at Android

Ron Richards (00:08:35):
At Android u at Android, Android University. Ok. Michelle, can you stop everything? Based off everything you say, this sounds like the best pissed pixel drop ever. I

Mishaal Rahman (00:08:42):
Would give this a b plus, because if you can consider some pixel, some previous pixel feature drops have included Android OS updates, and I think those always just get an A, because you can't beat an entire OS upgrade like with like a hodgepodge of random Google app features. So this is definitely one of the better ones. But I think once Android 14 is released, and you call that a pixel feature drop, you can't beat that.

Ron Richards (00:09:05):
Well, true. Yeah. I feel like that's another level of it, but that's fair that we're giving a sense a little, a little pi a little window into Michelle's mind here of how he grades these picks and drops. So, all right. So B plus. So pre really good room, a little room for it to be a little better, but which is, which is good. So we wanna

Mishaal Rahman (00:09:21):
Keep it, there's not really much room forget for, for better than this. I mean, they introduce a cinematic wallpaper to the emoji wallpaper, the home panel, all these other features.

Ron Richards (00:09:30):
Now, it sounds like B plus is a little harsh though. Would you, would you knock it up to an A minus now?

Jason Howell (00:09:34):
Or

Mishaal Rahman (00:09:35):
Maybe I'll just adjust my, my grading scale and say, instead of an A being the top an S is the top, you know, we'll go like I don't know, like racing or something, you know, like s is your, is your top rank at some video game, right? We'll say S tier is the OS updates and a tier, is this

Ron Richards (00:09:53):
All right? Fair

Jason Howell (00:09:54):
Enough. I think, I think B plus is, is fair if, if in our in, in our ranking kind of approach, a major OS update, you know, is, is what is required to at least make it into the A round. Then we didn't get that, but we got a almost, we, we got a lot of stuff here. We didn't even mention the fact that this update has has some changes for Fitbit devices as well. So it's not just Wear Os is not just the Android os, it's also Fitbit. So, you know, it's, it's even wider reaching than we were even talking about before. So yeah, I'd say B plus is pretty, pretty darn fair. All right. That's where we rely on that.

Ron Richards (00:10:35):
Android gets a B plus this week on all that Android. There's your, there's your promotional quote, there's your out quote, put it on the, put it on the ad on the side of a bus, gets a B plus all about Android,

Jason Howell (00:10:48):
The the wallpapers. It's not just the what is it, the cinematic, the cinematic wallpapers, either. It's also the emoji wallpaper, if you really care about that. I don't know. I feel like that that got a lot of Snickers from the audience when that was announced. Like, oh, okay, great emoji wallpapers. But so, hey, you know, even more that we didn't mention, there's, you know, they also have some updates to the Recorder app, which is just a really fantastic app. And we're it's doing a better job of understanding speakers and kind of relaying the difference between the different voices within and, and allowing you to kind of generate speaker labeled video clips based on the stuff that you recorded. So I imagine that's like, you know, you could, you could export a certain portion. I haven't tested it, but I'm assuming that means you can export a certain portion of the audio recording, recording as a video with kind of, you know, possibly the waveform and the text of that particular clip playing.

(00:11:50):
So that could be useful for like social media applications. So yeah, there's a lot of stuff in here. Sometimes these feature drops feel like a, like a random hodgepodge of really minor features that goo that, you know, it kind of feels like Google's thinking, well, if we have 20 incredibly minor features that we release all at once, then that adds up to one major release. And it doesn't always turn out that way. Sometimes it really, like, I interpret the feature drop as like, really these were just like hanging out and you're like, well, let's just release 'em all at once and call it a thing. This one seems a little bit more substantial, at least some of the, some of those things that were talked about at Google io coming to fruition. And, you know, people are looking forward to those, so that's great.

(00:12:36):
Yeah, I like it. B plus, it's a b plus. Now, I think this transitions into Android 14, beta three, which was released last week. And I, I mean, I'm not gonna lie, Michelle, I was looking through the thread and you do a great job in your, in your Twitter thread of saying, you know, I'm not gonna talk about the features that were already available in previous versions. This is just new stuff. And I was looking through it, I was ready to start transcribing and everything, and I was like, God, you know, like this all seems incredibly minor. Like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna ask Michelle, is there anything here that you're really excited about <laugh>, because I couldn't find much. What did I miss? To be

Mishaal Rahman (00:13:20):
Fair, the reason it's, it sounds incredibly minor is because we are nearing like the final release of Ant Android 14. Yeah, totally. Beta three. There's not

Jason Howell (00:13:27):
Gonna be an reach revolutionary changes happening as

Mishaal Rahman (00:13:31):
Closely. Yeah. Cause they, you're right. They, they released, as I says, there's the title right there. Android 14 is Reach Platform Stability with Beta three. And what that means is that all the APIs and any behaviors in the OS that would affect apps have been finalized. So in future betas, none of that's gonna be changing. So everything in intro 14 is pretty much finalized, with the exception for bug fixes and the occasional minor, you know, quality of life change that doesn't really impact applications in any way. Mm-Hmm. So yeah, there's not gonna be very many, you know, impactful changes in future Android 14 betas. But, you know, down the road, once the QPR beta program opens up, again, we'll start seeing more and more user facing changes. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But there are some things that we're look forward to in Android 14, beta three. One of them is like, the first thing you'll notice when you plug in your phone, the charge, there's going to be a little chip on the top right. That shows your percentage, you know, quick, briefly for like a split second. That's probably something a lot of people noticed immediately once they update it, because you know how many people plug in their phones,

Jason Howell (00:14:34):
Right? You plug in a lot. Yeah, totally.

Mishaal Rahman (00:14:36):
The other big thing is, you know, with the Pixel feature drop today, we got some of the features that Google announced at io, but with beta three, we also got some of the other features that Google announced at io, such as the new lock screen shortcut customization feature, the new lock screen clock customizations the new updated wallpaper and style ui. So there's a lot of things there that I think, you know, are pretty exciting to be honest, if you're at, at least if you're a Pixel user, because these features, at least so far, at least the, the clock customization is pixel exclusive. But the shortcuts will likely be available on other devices depending on whether or not the OEM implements them into their respective skin. And there are a whole bunch of other minor tweaks you can, you know, re you can look over my thread if you're interested.

(00:15:24):
There's a new updated gesture navigation tutorial that teaches you how to use gesture navigation, which I'm, I mean, I'm assuming, you know, if you're listening to this show, you know how to use gesture. You probably do by now. Can be, yeah. You probably do <laugh>. If you use a, a large screen device, Google's working on a way for you to change between the two different task bars. So like an Android 14, you have the new, the transient task bar that like you swipe up from the bottom, it shows for a few seconds and then it disappears. They're working on a way for you to switch between that and the older task bar that stays persistent persistently on screen. Mm-Hmm. they once again added the ability to tap on the clock in the quick settings to open the clock app. They change the colors for themed icons. So if you use the themed icons feature, you might notice that the colors that it pulls from are slightly different in beta three, and there's a whole bunch of other smaller minor under the hood tweaks in beta three that, you know, aren't really worth mentioning. As Jason said,

Ron Richards (00:16:20):
They're worth mentioning if you worked on the feature and <laugh>. They are, there are, there are actually, there are actually some, there's actually one more

Mishaal Rahman (00:16:27):
Thing, like two more things that hint at future changes, like improved work continued to work on desktop mode. So like when you resize a window, there's like a new animation for resizing it, it just shows that, you know, they are continuing to work on desktop mode behind the scenes, and we're just waiting for a pixel to finally support, you know, external displays. And then also they're doing new stylist changes. So like there's a, if you have a stylist connected to your Android 14 device, there's like some stylist specific settings you can pick from, like, changing the default notes app or choosing what happens when you press the button on Silas. So other changes like that are also, you know, continually being worked on.

Ron Richards (00:17:07):
So, so if we're close, are, are we ready to start picking a release date? Like, are we ready to start doing the over under, like on August? Like wasn't it, didn't it come out last year? Like July, wasn't it super early last year?

Mishaal Rahman (00:17:20):
It was, I think it was, wasn't it August? Yeah, I think it was August. It was relatively early, but no comment on on release state. Like, I, I, I mean I can't Google this in publicly confirm one and I can't confirm one, but no,

Ron Richards (00:17:33):
Who said not? I'm talking, we're confirming anything, Michelle. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we had to pick a date, do you think we're gonna see? Well, let's say earlier on, just from what I've

Mishaal Rahman (00:17:40):
Heard, just from what I've heard, like Android 14, I guess the beta has been not as stable as previous betas. So I am, I'm wondering if Google will actually delay a little bit in releasing it like they did with Android 12. You know, Android 12 was delayed for, for at least a few weeks compared to when it was expected to be released. So I wonder if they might do the same thing with Android 14.

Ron Richards (00:18:05):
We'll

Jason Howell (00:18:05):
See, cuz we've got tells right now this is beta three, we've got RC one is the next. Right? Doesn't, doesn't that happen sometime? I mean, is or, or do, or do we not even do the RC one s anymore? Just like, yeah,

Mishaal Rahman (00:18:19):
I think beta four and five are the, like they, those have been confirmed. Like those are listed on the timeline. Okay. As coming. We don't know exactly when they'll drop, but they could release a beta six, you know, if they really need to. Like, there's nothing saying they can't release more betas.

Jason Howell (00:18:33):
Right? Right. But if there's at least two more betas, if it were to be a release sometime in the August-ish area, which based on what you're saying, you know, might might end up being August, maybe September, which would bring us closer to what it's been in the past than each month leading up to it. We're gonna have another beta

Ron Richards (00:18:50):
Just to give context lash. And this is what we'll do. This is the game we'll play here. Right.

Jason Howell (00:18:54):
<Laugh> over under. All

Ron Richards (00:18:56):
Right, will, Michelle, will you take a bet on August 15th? Before August 15th or

Jason Howell (00:19:02):
After Ron really wants you to name a date to guess a date <laugh>

Mishaal Rahman (00:19:06):
Definitely after, in my opinion.

Ron Richards (00:19:07):
Yeah. I three. You think it's gonna be after? Okay. So let's see. Android 12 came out in October 4th.

Jason Howell (00:19:13):
Oh boy. Was not gonna be that late. That was not gonna

Ron Richards (00:19:15):
Be that Android 11. Android 11th came out September 8th. So that's more

Jason Howell (00:19:20):
In line with, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where my mind is, and my mind is only there because of what you just said, Michelle.

Ron Richards (00:19:27):
So Jason, you're gonna go, you're

Jason Howell (00:19:28):
Gonna go back after more then? I gonna say sometime in August, but now I've got doubts, you know?

Ron Richards (00:19:32):
All right. So you're gonna say, after I say I'm gonna be contrarian and say before August 15th, just so I can go, NA na na,

Jason Howell (00:19:37):
I'm ready. So, all right. Hey, somebody's gotta do it.

Ron Richards (00:19:42):
Exactly.

Jason Howell (00:19:42):
You know, somebody, when they spin the, the Wheel of Fortune, they've, they've gotta, yeah. You know, yell out one so that they're exactly underneath everybody else. Talk about,

Ron Richards (00:19:51):
Talk about somebody. Gotta do it. Okay. To move on here. Are we good? All

Jason Howell (00:19:56):
Right. I'm so curious about, you're about to say

Ron Richards (00:19:58):
Someone's gotta do it right. <Laugh> and sure enough, who knew it was at and t. At and t has now made the switch from its own rcs platform to Google's jive platform. It was announced last week by our good friend of the show, Hiroshi Lockheimer on Twitter where Hiroshi went to Twitter to say, quote, today I'm excited to share that we're working with at and t to accelerate adoption of the RCS standard, and that at t's default Android messaging will now be via the JDE platform. So their users will get the latest rcs features instantly. Which is great, which I can only assume means that if someone's on at and t and using rcs, whether they're using Google Messages or not, it will still work. Right. Jason? Michelle, is that, is that correct? Or

Mishaal Rahman (00:20:47):
The tweet was kind of vague. I forgot. Does at and t have its un proprietary messaging app? Because if, so I think what they're saying is that they're gonna switch, cause I know at and t is offered, like they called it something specific, like their own RCS implementation was something specific. I don't remember the name, but whatever they're using, whether or not they switch all their default phones to use Google Messages, which already uses jbe from Google on the backend mm-hmm. <Affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, or they're using their own at and t Messages app. The implication is that both will still provide Jive, so it'll be interconnect, interoperable with what pretty much every other Android phone uses for rcs. So

Ron Richards (00:21:23):
It looks as if at and t does have at and t Android messages app so it is on there. Oh, that

Jason Howell (00:21:32):
Sounds like a, a great app.

Ron Richards (00:21:34):
I know, doesn't it? Right. <laugh>?

Jason Howell (00:21:35):
That's the messaging app I want on my phone.

Ron Richards (00:21:38):
Yep. So, a according to, according to Google's generative AI response, if you're looking for a messaging app with a lot of features of functionality, the at t Android messages app is a great option. Oh boy. It's easy to use, reliable and secure.

Jason Howell (00:21:50):
Oh boy. It's

Ron Richards (00:21:51):
Literally just copy minus one,

Mishaal Rahman (00:21:53):
Minus minus one for bar

Ron Richards (00:21:55):
Thumbs down, thumbs

Jason Howell (00:21:56):
Down, <laugh> thumbs down. Believe me, I've used it.

Ron Richards (00:22:00):
But yeah, so it's, it's, it's definitely is exciting to see, you know, kind of at and t stepping up to the challenge and doing all this sort of stuff. But it does leave a lot of users in response saying, well, what about Google Voice?

Jason Howell (00:22:12):
Which, yeah, I've seen a lot of comments about that. They're like, oh yeah, if it's, that's, if it's so important for everybody, you know, and I see that also in response too, that Google going so hard on apple, you know, using rcs or supporting rcs, and everybody comes back with like, well, why can't you support it with Google Voice? Yeah. Is there a good reason why that that can't be, I, I don't know. Like maybe there's a technological, it's gotta,

Ron Richards (00:22:38):
It's gotta be a tech debt thing. I think just cuz like, when was the last time we've seen any infrastructure update to Google VO voice whatsoever? Right? So like, I, I gotta imagine

Jason Howell (00:22:48):
Updates and stuff, but Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:22:49):
Yeah. It just, it's just, it's gotta be so behind in the, the loop of updates that, you know, hopefully they're working on something to give Google Voice a little shot in the arm, but it just seems like it's another, like, it's in that nebulous zone between are they gonna kill it mm-hmm. <Affirmative> or are they just gonna, or is it just gonna carry on with no updates?

Jason Howell (00:23:07):
So here's a question that, that's kind of coming to me right now. So at and t now basically more or less all in on Google's version of rcs, which is j Verizon and T-Mobile have their own implementation of rcs, that that is interoperable with the Jive platform. If I'm not mistaken, the way at and t was if Verizon and T-Mobile did what at and t did, like, like if this is the beginning of a precedent that is set, and this is the inevitability, let's, let's say in a, in a fantasy world, all three of these networks are using jive for rcs. Is that any more convincing for Apple? Do you think they're like, oh, well it's no longer the carriers doing their own thing and blah, blah, blah. Like they're, they're fully supporting this, obviously, so maybe we should still not,

Mishaal Rahman (00:24:02):
I think they're fully aware of, you know, the backlash and the concern that they're, you know, basically locking teenagers in and I think that's part of the sell for them. Yeah. I definitely think they're aware and they love to take advantage of that.

Jason Howell (00:24:17):
Yeah. Wa wa wa Wai Wawa indeed.

Mishaal Rahman (00:24:23):
Although I did, there was a recent report that said, you know, I think we, in the tech media kind of over hype how important our, or like iMessage lock in really is. I think like there was a survey of Android users, like mm-hmm. <Affirmative> who switched to iPhone and it, I don't even think it was like one of the top reasons, like iMessage wasn't in the top reasons for why they switched. It was just because an iPhone had a feature that their Android phone didn't. And that was it. Unlike, and like price also, like the kind of reasons you would typically assume, you know, any value oriented customer. Mostly it's not because of like ecosystem lock-in that drew them in. It was just because of the, the typical reasons why someone would purchase a piece of consumer hardware because you know, they got a good deal for it. Oh, it offers

Jason Howell (00:25:05):
That up what they want. I want that. So that Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Which is not to say that there's no one that moves over, but but I think you're probably right. We, we put, yeah, put a megaphone in front of these things cuz it's important to us. Is that representative of the everyday average user necessarily? Yeah. Maybe it is. Maybe it's not. It kind of sounds like it's probably not, not as much as we might believe, but Interesting. Okay. And then finally we've got Android TV 13 no longer a thing. Apparently Google is going to quote, retire Android TV 13. Actually this is a, this is a quote from Michelle <laugh> who said this in his tweet. They're basically gonna be increasing their focus on Android TV 14. Yeah. So why is this a big deal? So that's what, what is, so what is the big deal about Google kind of skipping Android TV 13 and jumping right to Android TV 14?

Mishaal Rahman (00:26:06):
Well, I think it's a big deal because Android TV 13 was something they actually dedicated time to at IO last year. Like, it, it had a release, it went through beta programs like it's been given to partners, they've had Wow. Presentations on it. So like, it's a, it's a whole thing. Yeah, it was a whole release. It's not like they just were, were developing it internally and then scrapped it. No, it was already publicly available and there were OEMs that were developers who were actively developing on top of it. But now Google is saying, you know, nevermind, let's just pretend that didn't happen and let's move to Android 14 <laugh>. And you know, it's not as, it's like that, you know, they're, they're saying that they want to focus on Android four TV 14. They didn't really tell a reason. Like they still haven't publicly confirmed this news, by the way.

(00:26:49):
Like this news was first reported on by nine to five Google who saw a code change in, in the Android open source project that basically said, yes, we're retiring Android TP 13, we're no longer gonna be recommending it to developers in Android studio. And then I later reached out to a source who confirmed this news for me, who like told me that Google was telling Android TV OEMs that yeah, we're retiring Android TV 13 and were instead focusing on Android TV 14. And you know, they, they said it in the way that you would expect like a marketing press release to be saying it. Oh, we wanna focus on features and you know, we want to do the best for our users and all that stuff. You know, you, you can imagine like in your mind what a, what a press release version into this would sound like mm-hmm.

(00:27:31):
<Affirmative>, but I'm guessing the underlying reasons might have to do with maybe adoption. Cuz you know, TV industry moves relatively slowly in terms of like updates and hardware releases. So I'm guessing like there weren't that many partners or OEMs who were actually picking up Android 13. So maybe they saw it's better if we just skip a release and just go straight to the next OS platform instead of releasing this and then maybe two years later, only one TV has this. Right? Like, what's the point of releasing a TV OS every year if there's no one who's running it?

Jason Howell (00:28:01):
That just reminds me of Skip release three and it's, and it's,

Mishaal Rahman (00:28:05):
Yeah, like Waro

Jason Howell (00:28:05):
Already does that. It was like one, one watch running war OS three there in the beginning, all that work for one watch for like a year. There was no one else really running the OS for whatever reason on their device. Warehouses

Mishaal Rahman (00:28:17):
Has actually been doing that twice now. Yeah. So were, OS two was based on Android. 11 were, OS three is based on sorry, no, wear OS two was based on Android nine. We, OS three is based on Android 11, and now Wao S four is based on Android 13. So they skipped a release twice now. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So they've went from Android nine to Android 11 to Android 13, and now Android TV is doing the same, going from Android 12 to Android 14,

Jason Howell (00:28:42):
And any which I'm

Ron Richards (00:28:42):
Not, I'm not surprised, honestly, I'm not to to, to everything that we talked about given the OEMs and manufacturing and like lead times and things like that. I mean, hell like, when was the last time you bought a TV that was like, this just came out today and it's a brand new tv. Like even when I got my TV a couple years ago, it was last year's model. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, right? Mm mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Like they, they, because they're manufacturing this stuff. That's a really good point. Putting it out in Best Buy and that sort of thing. So it it moves at a slower pace than phones, clearly.

Jason Howell (00:29:11):
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's a really good point. I hadn't considered that. I mean, some people are buying a, a new tv, you know, near to the moment that it's announced and released and everything, but TV's kind of sit, sit on the shelf. <Laugh>, that's a, that's a tough one right there. Go ahead, throw that down in the notes. Sit on the shelf <laugh> for a lot longer than phones, than phones might, you know, you might have a, a model of a TV on a shelf for a couple of years still selling. And what, what version of Android TV is that one running? The minute you set that up at home, it's gonna do, it's gonna put through an automatic update, you know, to the

Ron Richards (00:29:52):
Latest and this and this, this always this, whenever this topic comes up, I go back to the wise wor words of Mr. Patrick Norton, friend of the show and, and longtime friend of ours who, you know, years and years and years told me, never buy a TV for the software that's embedded in the tv because it will not be the latest, it won't be updateable. You'll be stuck with that. Always. Just buy a dumb, buy a TV for the monitor for the panel and then plug new stuff into it, right? Because, because when you, when you plug in devices into your tv, you have control over what version it is at hell with the price of TVs that they are. If I wanted the latest and greatest Google tv, I'd much rather buy a new 50 $60 Chromecast dongle and plug it in than have to drop the thousand plus dollars whatever for a new tv. Yep.

Jason Howell (00:30:39):
So,

Ron Richards (00:30:40):
Yeah, it's just a reminder of that to me at least, but

Jason Howell (00:30:43):
Yeah. Yes, indeed. All right, well we've got we've got some hardware news coming up. We've got some really interesting app news coming up, so don't go anywhere that's coming up shortly. But first let's take a break and thank the sponsor of this episode of all about Android and then we will get back to the news. This episode of All About Android is brought to you by Fast Mail. This is how you can make email work for you. We, we spent so much time with email, you might as well help, you know, make it work for you. That's what Fast Mail is all about. You can customize your workflow in a number of different ways. Colors, custom swipes, night mode, that's just to name a few. Fast Mail now has quick settings by the way. So if you're using Fast Mail, you can now find some quick settings.

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When you do that, it's easy to download your old data, you can import it into your new Fast mail inbox and make importing a breeze. Fast Mail is moving email forward with new internet standards, open source innovations that power many email services other than their own. So don't get left behind by substandard email providers. You can reclaim your privacy and boost productivity with Fast Mail. Try it now. You can get it free for 30 days to see what you think about it. We know you're gonna love it at fast mail.com/twit. That's Fast mail F A S T M A I L fast mail.com/twit. Check it out for yourself and yeah, you're gonna love it. We thank Fast Mail for their support of all about Android. I know Wizard Ling loves it. Wizard Ling is, is still talking about fast mail in our discord. Thank you wizard link for that fast mail.com/twi. Alright, it's time for some juicy pieces of hardware news. Let's get to it. Juicy, chunky. Oh, what other, what other what other adjectives can we come up with for our hardware news here? Hardy, Hardy, Hardy Hardware. <Laugh> Hardy Hardware News that almost sounds like Hardy Har har. Do do I need to hardy

Mishaal Rahman (00:35:38):
Har effects

Jason Howell (00:35:39):
<Laugh>? No, no. Stay away from the sound effects. We're good. We're good. <Laugh>, please. All right. So right at the top of hardware this week, thought we would have with you, Michelle. We, you and I, well, we were chatting last week before the show, and I think that the tensor G three I think is what it's called, that the Tensor three news had just kind of leaked. And we thought, you know what, let's hold on to this until Michelle comes on so he can really kind of dive deep on some of this stuff. We've got new tensor information. We've got that's coming in the Pixel eight. We've got the pixel eights camera specs, and it all seems to kind of interplay with each other. So let's start with the tensor first. The tensor two was an improvement to the tensor one, but I would say by all accounts, it wasn't like a major earth shattering improvement. Does it seem like the Tensor three is going to be a much larger step forward in terms of what it's capable of in the pixelate?

Mishaal Rahman (00:36:45):
So the tensor g2, as you mentioned, was not an earth shattering improvement over the G one except for the upgraded modem, which was significantly better in many people's experiences. So the 10 of G three will not be making any major modem improvements. So according to this leaked you know, this according these leak specifications from Android Authority actually specifically Camilla Wahaka sorry if I mispronounce that, but yes, this is a new report that details everything they know so far about the Tensor G three chip set. And the gist of it is that while there aren't any earth shattering improvements in the Tensor G three processor, they are making, they as in Google, are making substantial improvements to the CPU performance. So in previous generations, the CPU performance has kind of been generally underwhelming compared to other flagship chip sits at the time. The census of G three, while it's not gonna be using, you know, arm's, latest Cortex X four, all those new CPU U designs that they just announced like a couple of weeks ago, they will be using more competitive cpu. So they'll be using some reportedly one cortex X three four A seven fifteens, and four A 15, A 5 1 0. So it'll be a lot more in line with the current crop of 2023 slash late 2022 flagship devices in terms of CBU performance.

Jason Howell (00:38:17):
Okay. All right. So that sounds very promising. But this also ties into some of the camera news. I know that the part of the leaked camera spec for the Pixel eight had to do with 4K video, right? 4K 30 30 frames per second. And that's enabled by the tensor G three. Am I getting that right? No, sorry, not 4k, ak, sorry, I got that wrong. Eight K 30 frames per second video capture. And that is enabled because of the tensor G three. Did I get that right? So

Mishaal Rahman (00:38:51):
A little, a little caveat on that. Like, as the report says also from Camilla for Android authority, both the Pixel eight and the Pixel eight pill will reportedly upgrade to the Samsung ISO Cell GN two image sensor for their primary. This is a much larger sensor that supports up to 35% more light intake, so better low light shots. And as you mentioned Jason, it does support eight K video at 30 at frames per second video capture. Wow. but what's unclear is whether or not the Google Camera app will actually allow you to take eight K video. So just because an image sensor can process that doesn't mean mean that the camera app will let you do that. I mean, maybe, maybe it won't because maybe Google is concerned, maybe the device will overheat.

Jason Howell (00:39:33):
I was gonna say, that device is gonna get darn darn hot. Yeah.

Mishaal Rahman (00:39:36):
Yeah. So I wouldn't be surprised if it's not actually available to users just because the sensor supports it,

Jason Howell (00:39:42):
But it's there, but it's capable, you know, at at least a developer option for those of us who like to, you know, fly close to the sun. I guess what else do we need to know about this camera set up? I'm looking at the the diagram here. We had heard that there was gonna be some sort of a thermometer sensor, and it turns out, you know, at least according to this article it looks like that's gonna happen on the pro on the eight Pro. So if you need a thermometer,

Mishaal Rahman (00:40:12):
Well, it is worth noting that this, you know, the, the author of this article is the same person who also previously leaked the existence of that temperature sensor. So it's not like this corroborates that.

Jason Howell (00:40:24):
Yeah, yeah. Right. That's a good point. A

Mishaal Rahman (00:40:26):
Good indication that it'll probably happen. But the other notable, the other noteworthy upgrade in the pro model at least, is the upgrade from the 12th megapixel ultra wide camera in the previous generation to a new 64 megapixel Sony IMX 7 87, which I believe many have noted that the Pixel seven A uses that I believe for its main camera mm-hmm. <Affirmative> whereas the Pixel seven Pro Pixel, sorry, pixel eight Pro will reportedly be using this sensor for its ultra wide angle camera.

Jason Howell (00:40:54):
Oh, okay. And I've gotten really used to the pixel seven a main camera. I'm still actually on the seven A, I keep meaning to kind of transition to my next phone. I've got so many phones right now. I can't really talk about 'em, but <laugh>, so I have the transition off of this, but that's what keeps me there. Like the, the Pixel seven A, like, it takes really great pictures and so, so I guess I will continue to, you know, not that I would doubt that with the Pixel eight, that the, the camera system and that the pictures that it would take would be any less awesome than what I'm used to with pixels. That's one of the things I love about the pixels. So that's good news. That's the 64 megapixel, but bending down, right?

Mishaal Rahman (00:41:41):
Most likely. Yeah. I'm, it's, it's unclear if Google would allow you to take full resolution 64 megapixel shots. Yeah. it's not something they've done in the past for their you know, they're high resolution sensors, so it's unclear if they'll do the same or they'll actually allow it for users this time.

Jason Howell (00:41:58):
Yeah. another new piece of news about the camera, it, the time of flight camera that's included on the Pixel Aid is going to see some improvements, an eight by eight time of flight sensor.

Mishaal Rahman (00:42:13):
Yep. There's a lot of details in both this article and yeah, there absolutely. The article, like, so I highly recommend you read over them if you're interested in the Pixel eight series.

Jason Howell (00:42:24):
Yeah, indeed. Good stuff. Good exclusives coming from Android Authority. Way to go, Camila. That is some good stuff. Thank you. You, Michelle. All right, Ron. So this is, this is the two, two stories that are pretty exciting.

Ron Richards (00:42:41):
Yeah. Two, we got, we got Devices Twofer coming up for you. Yep. We got a twofer coming up. So woke up this morning to a lovely email in my inbox from the fine folks at nothing announcing that the Nothing Phone two launch event is on the horizon, July 11th at 11:00 AM Eastern. You wanna mark your calendar 1111, make a Wish seven 11, there you go. Get, get a S Slurpee and then dig right in for it. <Laugh> you can go to nothing.tech on the web and you can sign up to be reminded for the event and you too can attend the virtual event where they will roll out the nothing phone too. Very, very exciting. And Smart Pricks worked with on Leaks to provide an exclusive look at device renders based on pictures taking of taken of a testing stage unit.

(00:43:29):
And the LEDs on the back are redesigned, so they're broken lines when compared to the one which were like, you know, kind of a singular line and design and produced with sustainability in mind with a hundred percent recycled materials in the aluminum frame and a hundred percent renewable energy used. So it's, it's, it's looking like nothing is, is gonna up their game with Phone two. And as we all know, this phone is gonna be, I mean, they're, they're angling towards it being available in the US for the first time. So whereas the nothing phone won wasn't well it was, but it was, it was a pain in the butt to do. But so yeah, so big moment for nothing. Phone two they, they will have the stage on on July 11th. I'll be there to watch and we'll see we're, you know, we don't want to spoil anything but working on getting our hands on this phone. Right. And so, hope so. We'll, we'll be, look, we'll be looking forward to playing with it if, you know, knock on wood, if all goes well, right.

Jason Howell (00:44:21):
Yeah, I hope so. Victor, if you go back to that smart pre, or is it Smart pricks or Smart pre, I'm not sure how they pronounce that, but that site and you scroll down, you'll get shots. They, the thing in the, the hero image where they had last year's, and then the actual shots are down below the air quotes fold. So that's, so you kind of see if you, if you zoom in on that, you can kind of see how those LEDs are broken into more stylistic kind of segments as opposed to Yep. It's subtle, but it, I guess it's not if the lights were out <laugh>

Ron Richards (00:44:54):
No, I would, I, no, I, I would say like, I'm, I'm curious as to like design paradigm wise, according to these renders at release, not much different from the phone one, right? No. And so, like, yes, they're breaking up the, the LEDs a little more, but like, I would've expected a little more, not dramatic, but at least a little more of a less than subtle change in the look just to differentiate the two. But yeah, I guess they, I guess they, they don't have, I mean, it's only a year later how many phone ones are actually out there in the world, I guess they don't have to really overcome it, you know,

Mishaal Rahman (00:45:23):
To be fair, you know, even though it might not differentiate itself very much from the first phone, it still differentiates itself from pretty much every other

Jason Howell (00:45:30):
Phone. Every other phone. I can't

Mishaal Rahman (00:45:31):
Count the number of phones that actually look up anything close to

Jason Howell (00:45:34):
This. Totally good point. Totally. Yeah. It's, it's in its own league as far as the design is, is concerned. You certainly look at that if you at are at all in the know on Android devices, you look at that and you immediately know exactly what it is, as opposed to a whole lot of other candy bar phones that, that look very, very similar to each other, which,

Ron Richards (00:45:54):
Which is what I've been rallying against for years. Like, I don't, that's why I love the Pixel wine currently, right? Yeah, totally. The Star Trek phone and like, you know, like, this looks like some wild weird like prop, you know, like, you know, I, I definitely want, I don't want just a regular candy bar, black ba, you know, but that's why like good, good on you with the OnePlus with those big old big circles. Right. You know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> like good, you know, like go for it. I, I love, I love differentiating the look of these phones. And speaking of OnePlus, Jason

Jason Howell (00:46:20):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, go ahead and give me the easy segue one plus, there you go. This eagerly awaited foldable might actually be coming sooner than you think. Price. Baba Daley says the one plus fold will get a New York event during the first half of August is what they wrote, expected to get a global release. But initially us and India for the one plus foldable. So if you're, you know, if you're waiting, it sounds like you're not gonna have to wait more than a couple of months. This is like foldable summer. Getting foldable

Ron Richards (00:46:59):
Summer. I love it. It's like, there you go. We should make a t-shirt <laugh>. Cause it's foldable summer and it is, and it's like a beach scene and like, people are sitting on foldable phones and like No,

Jason Howell (00:47:10):
They're the, the, the beach. I love the beach chairs are foldable phones.

Ron Richards (00:47:13):
Yes, exactly. That's what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. I love,

Jason Howell (00:47:16):
Oh, this is a, this is a great for ai. Yeah. Foldable.

Mishaal Rahman (00:47:20):
And as we head into foldable summer, are you guys team book or team Flip? Cause I saw an article by The Verge, I think it was published earlier today that said like, every phone should be a flip phone. And I was like,

Ron Richards (00:47:32):
I was just gonna say, I'm, I'm, I haven't got, I haven't got to use one as a true Daily driver, but based on the thickness alone, I think I'm Team Flip because I feel like Team book went folded. Like, I like the idea of book being taby, you know, like when it's opened and you kind of a good reading device and that sort of thing. But the expense of the folded, you know, in it being this thick, long kind of thing versus going compact little square that opens up to the size of a regular phone. I, I think I'm gonna go flip. I don't know. Jason, where, where do you, where do you land? I,

Jason Howell (00:48:09):
I, no, I, I'm right there with you. I think from a practicality standpoint, anytime I've had the folds and I've had, you know, and I just, I carry my phones in my pocket and I, that fold goes in my pocket and it feels like I'm carrying a brick around with me. And it's really hard to ignore the way that I'm used to ignoring, you know, and it probably took me a while to get used to this. I, I've been throwing these, you know, large phones in my pant pocket for a long time now, so I'm just used to it. So maybe I'd get used to it with a fold, but it still just kind of feels like a, a brick versus the flip that really feels like compact and like, I'm already used to this as the form factor of the thing that I do when I'm out and about anyways. If I can get this smaller most of the time, then I'm, I'm game. But I do, again, like you, I like the idea of being able to have a tablet on a whim, but imp practic in practical terms, I don't enjoy having a brick in my pocket while I walk around everywhere.

Ron Richards (00:49:07):
So, Michelle, where do you, where do you land? Yes.

Mishaal Rahman (00:49:10):
So I think actually, you know, eventually in a few, you know, maybe in a couple years once we've ditched the candy bar or phone entirely and everyone's using some kind of foldable, I think we'll see like two kinds of users. The, the average casual user for them, the candy bar will be replaced by the flip phone because it's basically a flip phone that just folds in half exactly. Compact. But for the pro users, the ones who wanna multitask with two or three apps, the ones who wanna read things on the go, you know, I think that kind of user, like, you know, the users that Samsung used to appeal to with the note line, and they still kind of do with the ultra line, like those kind of users I think would gravitate towards the, the book style multiples.

Ron Richards (00:49:48):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And yet you didn't answer the question. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:49:51):
So which, which side of

Mishaal Rahman (00:49:52):
This? Yeah, I'm looking, look at this fence sitter right here. <Laugh>. Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:49:54):
Which, which one right now looking at, looking at two foldables on the, on the table, un unknown, like Samsung One plus whatever you think they might be. Which one, which one do you grab? Which one do you use, or Pixel or whatever. Assuming that they're the same, do you go book or do you go flip, flip? Put me on the spot. I'll

Mishaal Rahman (00:50:11):
Go book only because I use my phone too much already and I think it would just save me like from staring at a smaller screen. If I'm gonna use my phone all the time, I might as well do it on a slightly bigger screen. That's how I'll justify it to

Ron Richards (00:50:23):
Myself. There you go. Yeah. That's all good. Yep. So,

Jason Howell (00:50:26):
Well, Ron, think this is a great question for us to throw out to our audience. I

Ron Richards (00:50:31):
Agree.

Jason Howell (00:50:31):
Email us aaa twit tv. This is your challenge this week. Send us an email, let us know. Are you team fold or team Flip, or is it Team book? I, I'm so used to it being fold, but I guess book is probably, yeah, book

Ron Richards (00:50:44):
Probably more folder flip, I mean folder. Let's go. Yeah. Or book or flip or whatever, whatever you wanna

Jason Howell (00:50:49):
Book or flip. Team book or team flip, aaa, Twitter tv. Let us know what and why

Ron Richards (00:50:53):
You are, and not to spoil next week. But you're not gonna get email of the week unless you respond to that question. So, oh, it's the, and one answer from this question will be the email of the week. I'm, I'm up in the stakes there, Jason. So

Jason Howell (00:51:05):
<Laugh>, thank you. So make sure I like it. You

Ron Richards (00:51:08):
Make sure you email us and let us know whether your team book or team flip and why give it, give us, give us, you know, do do your, do your math. Do show us your work.

Jason Howell (00:51:17):
Love it. Yes, <laugh>, definitely show us your work. <Laugh>. Awesome.

Ron Richards (00:51:22):
All right, cool. All right, so let's take a pause before we talk about some apps and thank our next sponsor the Evening, cuz this episode of all about Android is brought to you by the fine folks at Cash Fly. And listen, we've learned that viewers don't hang around for videos that Buffer that's so years ago, shoppers abandoned Carson e-commerce on sites that are slow and gamers leave bad reviews when the latency is high. So be ready for those fluctuations with cash Fly customers expect the faultless experience when engaging with content on any device anytime, anywhere in the world. Building trusted CDN relationships since 1999, cash Fly has held a track record for high performing, ultra reliable content delivery for two decades. In fact, cash Flow pioneered the use of TCP anycast in 2002. An innovation that CDNs continue to build upon quality of experience is the single most critical metric when serving content simultaneously to a large and distributed audience on a global scale.

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Jason Howell (00:53:29):
Thanks for keeping the data flowing, data flowing with the audio and video data flowing into all of y'all. Thank you. Cash fly. Alright, and with that we've got some some pretty interesting app news coming up next. Boy, it's getting real out there. Are you, are either of you like read it? Well, no, I, I know the answer to this with you, Michelle. You're very active on Reddit, right? You're usually pretty active on Reddit in the Android sub at least. Yeah. Yeah. What about

Ron Richards (00:54:09):
You Reddit? I, I am, I I am, I am a, I'm a lurker. I'm a Reddit lurker. I, i I don't have the time or the patience to engage in the conversation. Yeah. But I need to be there for work and, and monitoring some stuff. So I'm familiar with the Reddit. But man, this is, this is a, this is a pickle, as they say in the

Jason Howell (00:54:27):
Business. It's getting, it's getting nutso and I don't think, I don't think it's gonna end the way anyone who's participating in, you know, the big backlash hopes that it will, I honestly think Reddit's gonna stick to its guns and and not be swayed. Which

Ron Richards (00:54:40):
I think they have to. We're talk, we're talking about this as if everyone knows what we're talking

Jason Howell (00:54:43):
About. Oh, yeah. This is, this is all preamble setup to get you intrigued. What are we talking about? We talked about it a couple of weeks ago on the show initially, but Reddit is in the midst of a major revolt by its users. We talked about the API changes. They made the announcement a couple of months ago I think it was a couple of months ago that they were gonna, they were, they were gonna chart start charging for access to the api and then a couple of weeks ago they released the actual amount of, of charge for developers and people who want access to their data. Ultimately, it basically means the third party apps are, are dead in the water. No third party app could afford to run their, their their browser, you know, app for Reddit, given what they'd have to pay.

(00:55:30):
Apollo, Reddit is fun sync and that's just a few of 'em that I've noticed have all announced they're gonna shut down on June 30th. That is the day before the price changes go into effect. They've been very, very vocal about not wanting to shut down, of course, because they've built a business around this stuff. It's quite something. More than 8,000 subreddits right now are inaccessible. They're set to private or browse only. And this is to signal their displeasure with the API changes and the wide-reaching impacts of those things. Some of those subreddits have said, yes, we're going dark. This, I think it started yesterday but we'll come back on Wednesday. This is, you know, to show our support other subreddits, you know, some, some of the moderators have said, we're going dark and we're staying dark, and until changes are made. So it'll be really interesting to see how many of those revert, how many of those are just done? Because I don't know, I just, I don't have, I have a good a good feeling. Let's see here. I have a strong feeling. There we go. That Reddit is not going to sway from their decision. So I it could happen. But Michelle, what do you, what you got?

Mishaal Rahman (00:56:42):
Yeah, so just to make this a little bit more, I'm getting some feedback there. Oh, sorry. Just to make this a little more relevant to AA listeners. So some of the largest subreddits on Reddit that specifically relate to Android, such as our Android mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, our Android apps, the R Google Pixel subreddit, for example. Those all went dark Yep. In protest of the p i changes. And they said they were going to be going live, you know, starting later tonight. You know, the 20, they only announced that they were going dark for 48 hours and that 48 hour time period would have run out, you know, tonight. But just a couple of hours ago, they all announced, at least those three that I mentioned announced that they're going dark for a whole nother week. So on June 20th, now, is there a tentative eight for when they'll go public again or they might extend their blackout and continue indefinitely like some other subres have announced they'll be doing.

(00:57:35):
Who knows? And as you mentioned, Jason Reta does seem like they are just trying to hold on and hope this all blows over. There was even an internal memo that the Reta CEO sent out to employees earlier today, which was of course leaked to the Verge. Yeah. And they published it all for everyone to see. And that's gotten yet more back from users who, you know, don't like the approach that Reddit seems to be taking, which is just the hope. It all blows over and everyone forgets. And you know, this is just a temporary thing that, you know, no one will care about within two days. Well, so yeah. In response to that, a lot more sub Reddits have said, we're gonna be taking this blackout ex indefinitely and cannot come back on online. I tell,

Ron Richards (00:58:16):
I tell you, I tell you who's gonna be the winner in all this. You want me to predict it right now?

Jason Howell (00:58:20):
Who?

Ron Richards (00:58:22):
Discord?

Jason Howell (00:58:23):
Oh yeah. No, I think you're absolutely right. I've seen a lot of that actually kind of looking through comments that the articles and everything, and they're like, you know what? I've already left read it. I hadn't prior to this. I have now, I'm now in Discord. The quite, here's the question I have. I realize we have a Discord, we have a club twit Discord, and it's very easy for me to know what, you know, what the deal is about Discord through that. But if I wanted to find like an Android discord, <laugh>, I feel so stupid saying this, but how do I like discover that

Ron Richards (00:58:53):
Old, old man hows trying to get onto Discord? Everybody <laugh>, he

Jason Howell (00:58:57):
Wants to tell you. The thing is I'm on Discord, but I'm on a very curated discord thing. It's our discord. Right. That is a good mine. And how <laugh> that

Mishaal Rahman (00:59:05):
Is is a good point though. Like, how do you find Discord? How do you find something on Discord? It's, it's kind of a terrible experience. Like if you wanna search right now, like a lot of people have mentioned, you wanna Google search something, you just add Reddit to the end and you'll find something useful. Right? You can't do that with Discord.

Ron Richards (00:59:21):
You can't search Google. Yeah. The problem, the problem with Discord is, is a bunch of little closed gardens that you need to find the door. You need to find the, the the, that's

Jason Howell (00:59:29):
The problem and that's the good thing about it. Yes. <laugh>.

Ron Richards (00:59:32):
So, so so to help old man, Hal here, thank you, I

Jason Howell (00:59:35):
Went Thank you. Please. I wish. Help me.

Ron Richards (00:59:38):
I did go to Google to get their janitor of AI search results and tell me, oh good.

Jason Howell (00:59:41):
I said, good, I'm happy. Find you went to the lowest hanging fruit, Ron.

Ron Richards (00:59:45):
I, I said, well, no, it, it's not that bad. I said, how to find disc, how to find Discords. How do I find these Discords <laugh>? And how, how

Jason Howell (00:59:52):
Do find their discords?

Ron Richards (00:59:54):
So what what I do think is funny is that there's, like, it gives it, it gives five answers and two of them are extremely helpful and, and three of them are very funny. So the extremely helpful advice it says is use the Discord app. There's actually a Explore Public Servers icon on the Discord app where you can explore, like similar in the way that where you can just browse Reddit, you can browse public servers that are like, Hey, we're open to anybody. And you could probably, you could type into Android or whatever thing and find, now you might not know what you're walking into, but that's a way to find them. The other the other advice he gives is to use Discord directories like dis board Discord Me or Top Dot Gigi, which I guess are websites that are aggregating directories of Discord. So you can go find them again, your mom may vary. There's no thing to say, like, there definitely is a white space here in terms of discovery of Discord, because the other three advice it gives is use social media, look for Discord links on social media. Just look for them. Or

(01:00:54):
My favorite one and relevant to this topic, use Reddit. Oh, search for Discord servers on Reddit. Oh

Jason Howell (01:00:59):
Boy. It's an infinite loop, isn't it? We would be caught in an infinite loop.

Ron Richards (01:01:04):
And the last one I think is the best because it's almost as if it doesn't realize the nerds that are out there and the old people use your friends. Some of your friends are probably already on Discord. Oh boy. Which honestly is true. I mean, like Jason, you would talk to Michelle and be like, Hey, I wanna get on a cool Discord for Android and Michelle probably can rattle off five of 'em or whatever it is. And, and, and you know, I'm probably, Michelle, you probably have your own Discord that you're op that you're running. Right. I, I wouldn't, wouldn't be surprised. But, and that's the thing, Jason, you could open up your own, like that's what Discord, discord is so decentralized and so kind of like in that way that it's both extremely powerful, but it's also extremely limiting because unless you have that magic key or no, because personally I would be afraid to just wander into a discord where I don't know, I don't have, I don't have a referral or a context. Right, right. You know? Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:01:48):
It's a lot more personalized. Well, personalized, maybe that's the wrong word. Yeah. It's, it's a long, a lot more specific to the people that are in there, like Reddit, you know, a subreddit. Anyone can find our slash Android, but certain Discords, like you said, you only get access to them if you kind of know how to get access to them. You know, a lot of them, a lot of them happen, like like might be supported by Patreon, like it might be this person Yeah. That's has, has a show about this thing and they have a Discord. And so all

Ron Richards (01:02:20):
The, and that's what we do. That's what we do with Iam Boy, is that we go our I Amboy patrons get access to our patron and only the paying patrons. Right, right. You know, so it's, yeah.

Jason Howell (01:02:28):
And it keeps, you know, conversation. It's, it's a, it's a little bit more kind of specific to the people who are actually there and the reasons why they're there. You know, the support that they've given to be there. Just being a random person suddenly showing up, you're like, oh, hey everybody, I'm here. <Laugh>. I don't know, I don't know what kind of trouble you would get into in Discord, to be honest. But there you go. Something to consider. I don't know. Do we think that Reddit's gonna, I mean I, this is obviously gonna be good for, for Discord. Do you think Reddit is, is kind of going the di the direction of dig right now? Or are we witnessing the dig diversification of Reddit at this moment?

Mishaal Rahman (01:03:08):
I don't think people are gonna be leaving like Reddit on Mass, if that's what you're referring to. You know, the dick, the, the infamous Dick Exodus mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I think, you know, the most likely thing is like, people have speculated, and it's most likely the reason why Reddit is doing all this is because they want an I P O. You know, if investors, you know, see this backlash and decide we're gonna, you know, we're not gonna back I p o red effort, it's I ipo and that actually, you know, that's probably what actually would change things. You know, that would be a game changer for the direction that Reddit is going. If the backlash actually, you know, makes investors say, Hey, we don't wanna touch this with a 10 foot pole. Right? Yeah. And then maybe they'll say, we made a mistake, you know, we gotta think things over. And you know, I think probably the api, some of the API changes are probably inevitable raising the prices, but not to the level that they did, you know, they insert 20 x level or whatever.

Ron Richards (01:04:01):
Yeah. And, and I, and I have a couple more points. And we, we, we were, we've been talking about this behind the scenes back in the, in the, all that Android coffee in the, in the staff break room while we were in, in between meetings. But we were talking about it, and, and all this reminds me of, you know, the lesson that we learned that I, I learned, I saw happen in real time years and years ago when there was this entire economy built on Facebook games, and then Facebook just yanked just yanked it. They just shut it down. And, and all these companies, Zynga and all these companies just went, you know, kind of like in, in, you know, upside down directions because anytime you build a business based on someone else's service, you are at the whim of that service. And we literally just went through this with Twitter, the same thing.

(01:04:43):
Like, Twitter didn't even, you know, like Twitter just shut it off, like, and didn't tell it. Remember when Talend shut down? Like it was just like, wait, it stopped working? What happened? Right. Yeah. So like in Italy, we all know what's going on over there, but anytime you build, you know, and like, and that's the thing. And like, you know, discord to a certain degree is, is also a potential risk. Cuz there's people building stuff around Discord. Roblox is a big one. There's all these developers building in the Roblox kind of like, you know, kind of thing. And like you, you, you have to play by the rules of the, of the sandbox you're choosing to play in. And now the, the Reddit sandbox has decided that to start charging you where they weren't. And I get why they're doing it. We talked about it already.

(01:05:20):
I think we've talked about it, we did a couple weeks ago. Like yeah, they're looking, they're looking to monetize, which, which totally makes sense. And, and if they, and we, we speculated Michelle, to your point, like they didn't have to raise the price as high as they did. Maybe they did it to ensure people wouldn't do third party apps because they want to control the experience in their app. And that way they can monetize that app and do stuff with that. Like, I can hear the, I can hear the MBAs explaining what the strategy is here. Yeah. and sadly, and as embarrassing as it as it is, when the CEO's memo gets leaked and everybody goes, haha, they're, they're gonna, you know, you know, shut down their Reddits for another week or whatever and protest. And all joking aside, I do think Discord cu, you know, discord is gonna get a burst from this, but I also think it's gonna be fine and it is gonna blow over. And ultimately they're gonna, if they stick to their guns, the people wanna leave are gonna leave. And the great thing about the internet, the great thing about this world is that there are millions and millions of people, and for like every user who steps out there might be a brand new user who joins a new Reddit or starts a new Android subreddit, and that builds up from there. And it just kind of self perpetuates. So like, I also don't think it's the end of the world for Reddit either. So

Mishaal Rahman (01:06:25):
Yeah, to be fair, I think this is slightly a little different because I think Reddit, at least, you know, they kind of didn't properly assess the kinds of users that would be affected by the API change because I think it was like an old internet dodge that like most social media is like broke, broken down into a 90, 91 breakdown. Like 90% of users are lurkers, they never post or do anything. The, the 9% of users are like the makeup, the, the whales, vast majority of comments, you know, are the one the whales like Yeah. The power users, the ones who actually comment, who make submissions that the 90% actually consume. And I think probably an outsized proportion of that 9% probably uses third party credit apps or tools. And that's why there's so much backlash because a lot of those users are like moderators or power users. They're the ones with the control because unlike other social media platforms, right, it gives a lot more control over communities to the users. Mm-Hmm.

Ron Richards (01:07:19):
<Affirmative>. Yep. Yeah, I think you're right there too. Yeah. Yeah. So

Jason Howell (01:07:24):
I totally agree.

Ron Richards (01:07:26):
It's a mess.

Jason Howell (01:07:27):
Well, I I should mention that this Thursday on Tech News Weekly, Micah Sergeant is gonna be interviewing Christian Sell, who's the developer of Apollo which is one of the, one of the big Reddit apps. Definitely on iOS. Is Apo Apollo's on Android as well, right? I, I didn't,

Mishaal Rahman (01:07:45):
No, Apollo is just Apollo, is

Jason Howell (01:07:47):
It just iOS,

Mishaal Rahman (01:07:48):
The main iOS app? Yeah. Okay. All right. There are several on an on Android

Jason Howell (01:07:51):
There, there are, yeah. Like Reddit is fun and sync was another one I remember using Sync back in the day. Anyways he's been, you know, a, a big voice in all of this, so if you're interested in hearing what Christian has to say that's this Thursday, TWIT TV slash tnw. Thursday, June 15th, we'll be having an interview with Christian Sig about all of this. It should be very, very interesting stuff. Okay. And then Ron, this is big news for you if you still had a Pixel. Yeah,

Ron Richards (01:08:24):
We're, and we're running long. Just a quick footnote here. But hey the, the time has come, pocket cast for Android wear is finally here in beta. The, there you go. You can, you can enroll in the beta now with them, and you can get it on your Pixel watch, galaxy Watch, tick Walks and other Wear Os Wear OS devices right now. And it is compatible with Wear OS three and older versions of Wear OS two. But you will need Pocket Cast plus, which costs $4 a month or $40 a year. I'm a proud subscriber to Pocket Cast Plus, so I would've gotten it had I kept the dang watch, but it's now June and this watch came out in October, so a little too late for me, but I'm glad that, I'm glad that they, they, they got with it. So Good. Good job. Pocket check. Pocket cast. So maybe I'll revisit it with the next watch. We'll see. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:09:09):
And if you're out there and you have a, you have a Pixel watch and you finally got your pocket cast do a little very short review for us. Aaa, TWI tv. Keep it short though. Yeah. Sometimes we get videos or we get emails and they're just massive or like four or five minutes and we, we can't play those. Keep it under two minutes at the very, very most, but even a minute is, is better. So Trip AAA twit tv. Let's see here. Our good friend JR Ray Feel is back. He's got a tip for an app that will turn pretty much anything into a podcast for you.

JR Raphael (01:09:45):
Good day team. Lovely to see everyone as always. All right, so all of us here are fans of podcasts, right? Even if maybe we don't necessarily care for all of the hosts of some particular unnamed program.

Jason Howell (01:10:01):
Hey,

JR Raphael (01:10:02):
I've said too much. In all seriousness though, Google's got a great new feature that lets you take anything you're reading on your phone from practically any source imaginable and turn it into your own personal on demand podcast. Let me show you how it works. So this is part of an out of the way Android add-on called Reading Mode. It's an official Google app that you can download from the Play store and get on any device this minute. At its core reading mode, let's you transform any article into a clutter-free ad-free delight, which is a single swift button press or an on-screen gesture. I like to use the option to press both physical volume keys together myself. And it's not just articles either. This thing will work in email, social media, almost anything on your phone where some manner of text is involved. And as of an update that's rolling out right now, you can also start playing any texts on your phone out loud, and then have it keep playing even as you do other things on the device. Or shut off your screen entirely here. Check it out.

Jason Howell (01:11:10):
15 Android settings that'll strengthen

Speaker 6 (01:11:12):
Your security. Some of the most important Android settings are also the most buried, and they're absolutely worth your while to uncover.

JR Raphael (01:11:21):
Yeah, how about that? All you gotta do to get started is install the free Google Reading Mode app from the Play store. Open it up, follow the steps to activate it for the first time. Make sure you pick your preferred way to trigger it. Again, for me, the pressing of the two physical volume buttons together has been the most easy, natural, effective option that's there. And then anytime you've got texts on your screen, just perform that action. Then press the play button in the reading mode panel that pops up. After that, you can go back to your home screen, head over to another app, turn the display off entirely. Your phone will keep on reading to you until it reaches the end of that article or whatever type of text you were using. Not bad, right? Remember, you can get tips like this and tons of advice that doesn't appear anywhere else in your inbox every Friday with my Android Intelligence newsletter. Three new things to try each week and gobs and gobs of other goo goodies along with it. Just head over to android intel.net/twit to sign up for free if you haven't already. And I'll send you a trio Awesome bonus tips as an extra special welcome. That site, again is android intel net slash twitch. Well, that's all for today. I'll see you over in the newsletter and I'll see you right back here next week.

Jason Howell (01:12:42):
The, the reading voice is a little, little stiff, a little robotic. It'd be hard for me to listen to a really, really long thing with that voice. But, but I have before, because there are other apps that do this. A pocket, I think does this right, where you can kind of have it read an article to you. So there are some, yeah, I've

Ron Richards (01:13:01):
Heard this in other apps for sure.

Jason Howell (01:13:02):
Yeah, yeah. But this, but this is way more like streamlined for just that that feature. So that's neat reading mode. I didn't realize that Google had that as like a, an actual app to download from Google. So check that out. They, that was, I think, yeah, yeah. What's that? They, they just announced that, that's why probably Oh, did, they didn't realize. Oh, yeah, I was announced. I didn't realize that this was like topical news. I thought it was just one that he was, he had discovered. I hadn't even heard of that. So, okay. Neat. Well, there you go. Check out JR releasing the news, android intel.net/twit. And for any viewers of the, of the show who may have noticed JR was wearing a normal shirt this time. I did check with him and ask him why, and he said he thought it was Halloween. So <laugh>

Ron Richards (01:13:51):
<Laugh>,

Jason Howell (01:13:51):
There you go. Maybe next week he'll be back on the, the funny shirt train. I'm sure he

Ron Richards (01:13:57):
Will. I think, yeah. Doing this weekly run outta the Trust me, as someone with, with a closet full of t-shirts. It is totally, it is hard

Jason Howell (01:14:05):
<Laugh>. There's only so many crazy shirts you can have before you start recycling through them. It's fine. Go on, go on a of wearing just normal shirts. It's fine. JR. We won't judge you that much. You

Ron Richards (01:14:14):
Be you, you, you

Jason Howell (01:14:15):
Be you. Exactly. coming up next, your feedback and only your feedback, AAA twit TV 3, 4, 7 show a a a, we actually, this week was a big week for feedback. Thank you everybody. We got <laugh>, we got a lot of 'em. I've what I do when we get a lot of 'em is I put 'em into a page in our doc for the weeks that we get less. And so if your email or your video mail, cause we did get one of those, and it's not in today's show. If it didn't, if if it's not being played today check out future episodes, it might get played in the, in the coming weeks. So there you go. All right, Ron, you got the first one.

Ron Richards (01:14:55):
All right, well, this first email is one of my favorite kinds of emails because it is a follow up and a end of the story. You might remember two weeks ago, two episodes ago, we heard from Tim Benson, Tim Benson, and Chattanooga Tennessee who had some issues with his Pixel Pro wire wireless charging and had bad experience with Google in terms of customer service and trying to get it solved. And they were considering jumping. Remember we had at, we had challenged the audience to write in. Tell us if you're considering leaving Google and why. Well, Tim writes in and boy is this a sweet, sweet end of the story. So Tim says, A couple weeks ago I wrote in with my issue regarding wireless charging issues to Pixel six pros. I was, and this was in episode 6 32 for you listeners.

(01:15:44):
So two weeks ago, two episodes ago, he says, I was in the middle of multiple calls to Google Fi after the initial response of being out of warranty, can't do anything for me, and ending the call, I called back twice more, the first redial, I was disconnected while waiting for, for him to see what to do. You might remember, by the way, insert here. We told him to keep trying, like give goo like, call Google back and say, Hey, I'm gonna leave you. What can you do for me? Remember that was the advice we gave him. Yeah. Remember? Mm-Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jason Howell (01:16:07):
<Affirmative>, mm-hmm. <Affirmative>.

Ron Richards (01:16:08):
So he tried once the guy was trying to help him, but it got disconnected, which is infuriating when that happens.

Jason Howell (01:16:13):
Oh, hey.

Ron Richards (01:16:15):
Especially if you're making headway. Yes.

Jason Howell (01:16:16):
That's worst. Yes. You get, you get right to the point that you want to and then it connect disconnected like, nah,

Ron Richards (01:16:23):
Butt. Tim calls back and he says the second call representative was super helpful and more importantly, empathetic to my plight. She said that the issue was escalated and I would receive an email within a day. I didn't believe it. And then I actually got an email within a day stating they were making an exception for my two pixel six pros. Nice. I immediately ordered, I immediately ordered the two new phones with a hold, with a hold for both of my credit card, the wireless charging works and everything is installed. Yeah. My wife wouldn't install the security updates until I prove mine would still charge with them installed, which I don't blame her. She wasn't ready to jump to the fruit company, but she was definitely wanting a Samsung. As for now, she's just happy having her wireless charging back. Aw,

Jason Howell (01:17:06):
Aw.

Ron Richards (01:17:07):
If anything deserves a round a of applause for both Tim and his wife and Google. Look, they made it, they made it right. Ah, it warms my heart. So

Jason Howell (01:17:17):
They didn't, sometimes you just gotta keep trying. I mean, that's really good advice in general when it comes to customer service. You call customer service. You don't get the, the reception that you are hoping for or that you expect or that you deserve. Sometimes just call back, you'll get somebody else and they're having a better day or whatever the case may be. I've certainly experienced that. So that's a good lesson in that. So Tim, congratulations. That's awesome. That's great news. Good stuff. Mike in Dubai wrote in to say, I appreciated Jason's Pixel seven a review. Thank you, Mike. He said, and largely agreed with it, except for one key issue, the battery, I'm upgrading from a pixel five that has, that was fine other than the battery. So imagine how disappointed I was when my pixel seven A was lasting about as long as my pixel five because the battery is so bad, I keep my phone at 60 hertz and try battery saving techniques.

(01:18:15):
I, I feel like I mentioned like the battery was wasn't anything to write home about. I guess I didn't say the battery was awful because of my experience. The battery wasn't awful, but it wasn't great either. It was very middle of the road for me. So I think, I think we're kind of in similar realm here. Mike says the other issue is how slow the wireless charging is. Now. I know I did mention that the other night I went to bed with my phone at 15% or less battery, and when I woke up six to seven hours later, it was under 90% charged. I wouldn't be too worried about it if the phone didn't already have an underwhelming battery. I otherwise enjoy the phone. But having a battery that doesn't even last a day with moderate usage is leading me to warn people away from it.

(01:18:59):
As far as the wireless charging is concerned, it is, it is slow. Six to seven hours on a, on a wireless charger. That's, God, I think that wireless charging, what was it, something like seven watts. It's, it's pretty slow, but I still think that it would, it should charge your phone to fold that. What that leads me to think is that maybe this is one of those, Google has a feature on their pixel phones where it learns your sleeping habits over time and it doesn't charge to full until it thinks you're about to wake up and then it tops it off. That could be happening. Yeah. I dunno. That's my guess. What about you, Michelle?

Mishaal Rahman (01:19:35):
Yeah, they have a feature called adaptive charging. That's it. That like charges to 80% until I think like an hour before your alarm is set to go off and then it charges to a hundred percent in the meantime. So maybe they picked up their phone, like ahead of their alarm just happened to wake up, like, or

Jason Howell (01:19:54):
It had to learn then a little

Mishaal Rahman (01:19:55):
More information. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Howell (01:19:57):
Or learn or learned when, when they get up.

Mishaal Rahman (01:20:00):
Yeah, maybe.

Jason Howell (01:20:01):
And I do think that that's a feature that you can disable in settings. You can turn off adaptive charging. It is. So it just goes straight to a hundred as fast as possible. The wireless charging is slow though. No question. If you, if you just have a short amount of time to charge, you are much better just plugging it in than you are throwing it on the wireless charger. But it should, it should bring it up to full overnight would be my guess. So take a look for that adaptive charging setting. Yeah, and see if that helps. I mean, I think the longer term outlook for on your battery is that it might have a shorter lifespan because of that. At least that's why Google implemented adaptive charging was to improve the, the longevity of your battery health. But that's a then problem, not a now problem. So, you know, it's a horrible way to look at it, but it's true. <Laugh> <laugh> live in the now. Give yourself as much battery as you can right now while you can. So thank you Mike for emailing. Appreciate it.

Ron Richards (01:21:05):
All right. And that brings us to the email of the week. Oh

Jason Howell (01:21:10):
Yeah.

Ron Richards (01:21:12):
And this week's email of the week comes from the far up north. Hopefully not the burning up north, but yeah, Steven Cron writes in from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Hopefully everything's safe there. Oh geez. Don't get me started on the hate on the smoke in New York, although I know it's nothing compared to the West coast. I don't wanna go down this rabbit hole. I'm sorry. Anyway so Steven writes in from Canada and says, I got a pixel seven, eight or replace my pixel five, not because I needed it, but because with the security updates ending this October on my Pixel five and the deal's going on right now, I thought I'd snap one up. It wasn't just a sale price, but I also got a free pixel, a earbuds, which I then properly sold on Facebook marketplace because I didn't need 'em. That fur, this further reduced the price of my phone. Heck

Jason Howell (01:21:52):
Yeah. Great strategy annuity.

Ron Richards (01:21:54):
Love it. Yeah. so Steven says, overall I'm really happy with it. I did notice there are a lot of bugs in the Google version of Android on it that don't exist in other AOS P versions of Android, like graphene os These would include apps not loading, freeing, crashing. And I would notice a lot more call drops with 5G enabled versus 4G LTE e and I'm in a heavily saturated 5G area with lots of coverage. This doesn't happen on the aosp version of Android when traveling in the same areas. So perhaps Google messed something up with their, with their modem code. I always load Graphos and then I add the Google Play Services framework on top because I find I get a far better battery life out on my pixel phones with graphene because it's sandboxes. The Google Play Services and Google Play framework so drastically cuts down on all the telemetry going back to Google.

(01:22:38):
Mm. I have confirmed this with wire shark sniffing what is coming out of the phone on my network and there's a lot of background information going back to Google on the stock os that ships with these, that's Surpris, that's said with the stock os I can get down about 30% charge after my day of actively being on the phone with graphene loaded, I get down to about 58%. So you can see a huge difference. Wow. Eliminating the Google telemetry. And Steven, this is not only email of the week. This is like email of the month. This is like mind blowing, right? <Laugh>. So for, for those you who don't know what he's talking about Graphos you can find it@graphos.org and it is a private and secure mobile operating system with Android app capability and it is developed as a non-profit open source project.

(01:23:22):
So as you can clearly see here, what it is is it, it's it's a mobile OS that sandboxes Android and allows you to still have the Android experience and use Android apps, but allows you to have a little more security around what data's coming outta your phone and what you know and how often you're using it, that sort of thing. And this was actually formally, and, and I, I hadn't heard of Graph, but I did hear of his predecessor this, this actually started back in 2014 and it was known as Copperhead Os and Jason, do you remember Copperhead os? Yes. We talked about that, right? Yeah. Yeah, we

Jason Howell (01:23:53):
Did. Absolutely. Yeah. At one time I think we were gonna have someone from Copperhead on the show. We may have even. We did, we did. I think we did episode 2 79. There we go. Gina Choppa joined us and also James Donaldson, CEO O of Copperhead at the time.

Mishaal Rahman (01:24:09):
There we go. Yeah, there are some things the sandboxing has more to do with the privileges and permissions that are granted to Google Play. So this is Graphos is Android. It's not like a, like it's, you're not like running Android in a, in a virtual machine or anything. It is Android, it is A O S P and it's just a more secure version of it with like a bunch of security features and implementations and features added on top of A O S P. The modem code though, that's still the same modem code from Google, like Graphos isn't actually modifying the modem code like in the tensor processor or anything like that. So that's still the same modem code. So I'm kind of, I'm kind of curious how it's less like some of the bugs that you had with apps freezing, not loading and crashing. That's kind of curious to me. Cause I don't think, I can't imagine Graphos would significantly change that aspect of just using day-to-day apps, but you know, that is your experience. So I can't really say, you know mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that's not what you're experiencing, but Right. Yeah. If you are the kind of person who wants the most secure, you know, experience with your device, then definitely it, this is one of the options to consider to, to install on your device. Well,

Ron Richards (01:25:20):
What, what I think for most users is what I think is interesting though, Michelle though is it's, it's there's one corner of the world which is like security conscience and like, I don't want my data going and blah, blah, blah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, but what what Steven's ma argument here is making is that he's saving like 30% of his battery on a day-to-day basis by limiting that telemetry go on all that data going out there. So if you, if you are battery conscious, this could be an option too. So,

Mishaal Rahman (01:25:45):
So there is an aspect to it. Yeah, it is well known that if you just install Android from source without Google apps, you can save a lot of battery life because those Google apps do a lot of heavy lifting. They're doing a lot of stuff. Telemetry scenes. Yeah,

Jason Howell (01:25:58):
Absolutely.

Mishaal Rahman (01:25:58):
They do a lot of stuff with like push notifications, location services and all these, those things that apps rely on. And when you get rid of all that, all of a sudden, you know, a lot of that stuff doesn't work, but you save a lot of battery life and I mean a lot of battery life in the process. So the sandbox, Google Play Services that is implemented as an optional add-on in graphos. It allows you to use Google apps and a lot of APIs that are provided by Google apps, but not everything is working like, like Android Auto for example, doesn't work with sandbox Google apps. So maybe there's some Google

Jason Howell (01:26:31):
Tape probably doesn't work. Some of that

Mishaal Rahman (01:26:32):
Going on, like some of the stuff that isn't working maybe is like really battery heavy and because that stuff isn't working with the sandbox implementation, maybe that's why the battery life is significantly improved in this person's experience. Or it could be cuz of the telemetry. Like there is telemetry being collected by Google apps, you know, for analytics purposes for, you know, improving the updates or tracking, you know, what users are using what features and so on. Maybe that is contributing significantly to battery life. Like I personally don't think that's a big contributor. It's probably the push certifications, the location access and all those other things. So I mean yeah, all if you do install yeah, all the above the, it's, it's really hard to pin down what exactly is draining the battery on such a, you know, complex OS as Android, all the kind of things that are going on in it. Yeah. But if you do install something like this, then you experience better battery life, you know, more power to you.

Jason Howell (01:27:29):
Well that's a, that's yet another, that's another nice benefit on top of what probably most people are using Graphos for, which is the privacy and the security aspect, right? Of it being able to sandbox things, being able to kind of control what's happening from a data perspective. When, when, you know, when that happens and that sort of stuff. Getting the battery improvements is, you know, obviously I think for most people that's probably a secondary benefit. But I've not used Graphos. I'm, I'm certainly curious about it. So that's why when I saw this email I thought, oh, great opportunity to kind of shine a light on it. I know we've talked about it in the past at times, but, and I'm assuming that there is no Google Pay on something like graphing and os right? Because it, that's like from a security standpoint, that's an API that is really rigid as far as Google is concerned.

(01:28:26):
So, but I, but I don't have the, the data points to know this specifically. Oh no, actually. Okay. Cousin UJA in our Discord posted <laugh>. Well, all I have is a, a subreddit clip from the Graphine OS subreddit that says Google Pay does not and likely never will work for NFC payments on Graphine OS because Google chose not to allow it to work on any operating systems that they have not explicitly whitelisted and they won't whitelist Graphine os that makes, I mean, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. So, so there are certain things that you don't get certain conveniences that you don't get, but as we know in the world of security, convenience and security don't always travel together. Usually if you have a high, a higher security things are less convenient. And so there's a reason for that. So there you go. But yes, Steven, congratulations. I'll let Ron do the honors of closing.

Ron Richards (01:29:25):
It is the email the week <laugh>.

Jason Howell (01:29:29):
I don't wanna steal that from you. It's your opportunity to get the, the music after you Appreciate it. Thank you, Steven. Thank you Ron. Thank you Michelle. Thank you everybody for watching and listening. A wonderful episode as usual. So much fun. Hanging out, hanging out with the Android bros, talking Android until Wind comes back next week. <Laugh>, it's about bros, stay

Ron Richards (01:29:52):
Out. Android bros. Trying to find Discords. Everybody gotta go out on the street and ask the kids where the, where the Discords are, where they're

Jason Howell (01:29:59):
Hanging out. Old man Android bro,

Ron Richards (01:30:01):
Old man Android bro wants to get on the Discord, wants

Jason Howell (01:30:04):
To know how to get on the Discords. I

Ron Richards (01:30:06):
Got all these gifts and I don't know where to share

Jason Howell (01:30:08):
'Em. How do I find them? Discords, <laugh> Michelle, thank you so much for being on. This is a perfect episode to have you on. What do you wanna leave people with today?

Mishaal Rahman (01:30:19):
Thanks, Jason. If you wanna follow me to find out what's new in Android, as always, I'm posting on Twitter at Michelle Ramon. I would be posting on Reddit, but with the subreddits Gone Black I'm sorry, with them on their blackout process right now. You'll find me on other platforms in the meanwhile, such as Macedon on Discord, et cetera, at Michelle Ramon. So all I need to find out what's coming in Android.

Jason Howell (01:30:45):
There you go, Michelle Ramon. Anywhere good social media is found or something like that we can, we can workshop that one a little bit behind the scenes. Yeah, we

Ron Richards (01:30:56):
Can, we we take that back into the writer's room, we can take that back into the,

Jason Howell (01:30:59):
Into the, yeah. So we can make that better. What about you Ron? So for what have you hopped? So for,

Ron Richards (01:31:04):
For me, I gotta, I gotta tell you, listen, like I love the idea of Discord, even the Club Twit Discord. I, I love that everyone gathers there. I love the, the functionality of it. Like, I just, I actually had a meeting with Discord earlier this week about some stuff for my day job and like, you know, like I just love the whole thing. I just can't, I can't bear the weight of another platform. Like I've already, like, I'm sitting in front of my computer all day in front of 11 email inboxes Slack with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 active workspaces, right? It ju and it's like, and just thi like I want to be, I so wanna be, and it's the same feeling I get because I was like, what am I gonna plug tonight? It's like, oh, well I'm all excited cause I'm on Blue Sky and I found out that Blue Sky has a web client.

(01:31:51):
So like, cuz my whole thing with Blue Sky is I wasn't posting to it cause I'm not on my phone as much, but I'm being in front of my computer. Cool. He use Blue Sky, but like, I just don't have the, it's so much, so much messaging, so much. Yeah. I'm not even counting all the active WhatsApp or conversation that had, right, the actual message, the text messages. Yeah. Oh my God. And Instagram dms. And the worst is that I have friends who are messaging me in multiple places throughout the day on Slack in Instagram, dms and text messages and WhatsApp. And it's like, oh, just stop the noise. So I, I love it in theory, I want to be in Discord, I want to be in Blue Sky. I just, I just, I just don't, I'm, I'm tired, I'm old and tired. But this, I dunno where this rant came from. <Laugh>,

Jason Howell (01:32:30):
I said, you could follow me. Old man Richards,

Ron Richards (01:32:33):
You could follow me on probably the, the platform I'm most active on is Instagram. I'm at Oxo there, I am also on Twitter. I am also on Macedon, although I don't really check it, just search for Ron so you can find me. But I am also on Blue Sky, which today I just found out that Blue Sky has a web client. And so I'm gonna try posting there more often. So if you're on Blue Sky go find me there. But in the meantime, also you can go to i amboy.com and subscribe to that. Listen to the guys talk about comic books. Listen to me every month, talk about movies and tv. And if you're into pinball, do check out corbi.io where you can find out all our cool stuff that we're doing. Pinballs, including our, our app for Google Play Store and the Google Play Store you can get for Android. We work very hard in it. So yeah. Thank you.

Jason Howell (01:33:16):
Love it. Thank you Ron. So much fun week after week talking Android. So tiring. <Laugh>, just so tiring.

Ron Richards (01:33:25):
I wish I had, I wish, I wish I had your energy or or

Jason Howell (01:33:31):
Resilience.

Ron Richards (01:33:32):
I don't, I don't mean this to sound negative, but lack of responsibility, <laugh>.

Jason Howell (01:33:37):
Well that does sound a little negative.

Ron Richards (01:33:39):
No, but I just mean like, you don't, you don't have to chase two, two toddlers around and make sure they're fed all day. So like, yeah, that's,

Jason Howell (01:33:44):
Got it. That doesn't help.

Ron Richards (01:33:46):
It takes a lot outta you.

Jason Howell (01:33:47):
<Laugh>. You

Ron Richards (01:33:48):
Are very responsible. I I will give you that. It just, you don't have important

Jason Howell (01:33:51):
Clarification there. Now I

Ron Richards (01:33:52):
Understand. Without your dependencies. There you

Jason Howell (01:33:54):
Go. You right. There we go. That's, that's better. That's better. Big thanks to JR Ray Field Android intelligence. Just go to android, intel.net/twi. Subscribe to his newsletter. That'll keep him throwing us the the segments that he does cuz you guys learn a lot. I learned something today. I didn't even know that app existed until today. So there you go. Thank you JR thank you Victor for everything you do behind the ones and twos over there. Thank you Burke behind that door over there. Cause he's not in here right now, but he helps out with this show as well. I, let's see here. Like Ron, I'm not doing a whole lot of social these days at Jason Howell on Twitter social slash at Jason Howell sometimes on Reddit, but, you know, Reddit's doing its thing definitely in the Discord, a pop in the Discord from time to time.

(01:34:44):
So you can find me in those places. Discord, you might ask, where do I find this? Discord? Well, club twit TWIT tv slash club twit. You get exclusive access to the members only Discord that we've talked about a number of times. Discords cool. This is a great way to experience Discord and get it into your life. You also get all of our shows with no ads. It's an ad free subscription tier that's really the basic, that's really the foundation of Club Twit. And then you also get exclusive TWI plus podcast feed content. Tons of extra content shows you can't find outside of the club, pre and post show discussions broken down and, and, and put into this feed so that you don't, you know, if you miss the live show, it doesn't matter. You get it there. Anyways all for just $7 per month Twitter tv slash club to, and not to mention it helps us out directly.

(01:35:33):
You know what else helps us out directly is why don't you go to our website, twit tv slash a AA and subscribe to the show. If you have not subscribed already, that is the most important signal that you can send from our site about this show that that will, you know, make sure that you get every single episode that we ever put out. Automatically. It's, it helps the numbers that we translate to our subs, to our our auto sorry. Suddenly I can't talk to our advertisers. That's the information that they need to know. They need to know that you're out there and how they know is you subscribe, you get the episode, it's really important. So Twitch on tv slash a a a, you can find everything you need to know about how to subscribe. You can also find all of our, our audio and video content there as well. Thank you so much for watching each and every week to this episode of all about Android and to all of them to come. We'll see you next time on All About Android. Bye everybody.

Rod Pyle (01:36:42):
Hey, I'm Rod Pyle, editor in Chief VAD as magazine. And each week I joined with my co-host to bring you this week in space, the latest and greatest news from the Final Frontier. We talk to NASA chiefs, space scientists, engineers, educators and artists, and sometimes we just shoot the breeze over what's hot and what's not in space books and tv. And we do it all for you, our fellow true believers. So whether you're an armchair adventurer or waiting for your turn to grab a slot in Elon's Mars Rocket, join us on this weekend space and be part of the greatest adventure of all time.