All About Android, Episode 572, Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Jason Howell (00:00:00):
Coming up next on all about Android. It's me. Jason Hall, my co-host Ron Richards, Huyen Tue Dao and Florence Ion. That's right. All four of us in the same place at the same time, virtually mostly anyways, jampacked show Flo actually goes hands-on with four devices, the one plus 10 pro the Motorola Edge+, the Xiaomi 12 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy A53. And then we have a whole lot of other stuff to talk about. Maybe a pixel tracker on the horizon, a Google solution for dual eSIMs. Ron's really excited about messages categories. There's a whole lot of other Google app updates, your email and a whole lot more coming up next, on All About Android!

Speaker 2 (00:00:45):
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Leo Laporte (00:00:49):
Listeners of this program. Get an ad free version. If they're members of club TWIT, $7 a month gives you ad free versions of all of our shows plus membership in the club, TWIT discord, a great clubhouse for TWIT listeners and finally the TWI plus feed with shows like Stacy's book club, the untitled Lennox show the GIZ fizz and more go to twi.tv/club TWIT. And thanks for your support.

Jason Howell (00:01:20):
Hello. Welcome to All About Android. This is episode 572 recorded on Tuesday, April 5th, 2022 your weekly source, for the latest news hardware and apps for the Android. Faithful. I'm Jason Howell.

Ron Richards (00:01:34):
And I'm Ron Richards

Florence Ion (00:01:37):
And I'm Huyen Tue Dao

Jason Howell (00:01:39):
And there we go.

Florence Ion (00:01:41):
I'm Florence Ion!

Jason Howell (00:01:45):
See? Okay. So on this episode, we are proving that Huyen and Flo are not the same person just disguised as different people because they're never on the, there were times there were,

Ron Richards (00:01:55):
There were some concerns there were. And, and so now we're dispelling the myth and by no means as one of them actually in AI construct, that's been programmed by the other. So they're both real

Jason Howell (00:02:06):
People. Don't look too closely. You might, you might notice that certain hair strands suddenly disappear. You might notice that on one ear, there's an earring. And on the other ear, there's not the background is strangely blurred. You know, all these things that, that deep fakes do you all actually notice that

Florence Ion (00:02:25):
Appreciate, oh, look, look at our backgrounds when you reverse them, they're kind of the same. And I do have gear off camera. I have my Android statues here off camera, behind my keyboards. Yeah. So you look, yeah, there it is. I, I also have several styling screen, so yes. Thank you. I like your styling. That's nice.

Ron Richards (00:02:48):
Nice. It's good to have the whole gang together. I like this. I

Jason Howell (00:02:51):
Like all four of us' now the next step. It's not too much to ask the next step. We all have to get around this round table at some point. That would be amazing. I don't know when that's gonna happen. It

Ron Richards (00:03:00):
Will take some planning, but I, I firmly believe it can happen. So

Florence Ion (00:03:04):
We have to plan this the only way that people can plan anything in their thirties and beyond, which is to send a Google Cal invite three months ahead of time.

Jason Howell (00:03:15):
No, I'm gonna send y'all a Calendly link, a Calendly. Do I say that right? Call

Ron Richards (00:03:21):
Find a slot calendar here. Click this link. Oh gosh. For you.

Jason Howell (00:03:26):
Hey.

Florence Ion (00:03:27):
Or, or Jason, you could use the new Google workspace feature. Yeah, that's true. People, you know, when they're available in their Google calendars. Thanks

Jason Howell (00:03:34):
For keeping a Google around here. You're right. There is a, there is a new Google feature. The, that basically what

Florence Ion (00:03:39):
Do I live and breathe. Yeah. I live and breathe Google, but also, hold on. Let me tell you what they're also making me do at Gizmodo. Okay. Hold on one

Jason Howell (00:03:47):
Second. Okay. Ready? Brace yourselves. I think I know it's coming.

Florence Ion (00:03:52):
They made me take one of these

Jason Howell (00:03:56):
It's a fruity phone. Yeah. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that.

Florence Ion (00:04:02):
No, there's nothing wrong with this phone. I'm actually

Jason Howell (00:04:04):
With this phone,

Florence Ion (00:04:06):
With this phone, with the iPhone, I know it's, it's the iPhone. There's, there's nothing else in its camp that competes with it, but I am excited to kind of be back on this phone beat and wielding all these different devices and,

Jason Howell (00:04:22):
And holy moly

Florence Ion (00:04:23):
about how their wide angle is and what the battery life is like. And

Jason Howell (00:04:30):
I mean, no, we today's episode of this show that you're listening and watching all about Android is kind of the epitome of that too, because a but later our hardware block is basically all flo because holy cow, when I went to your Gizmodo profile and checked out how much you're writing, you're writing a ton of articles these days. They've got you busy, but not only that, you're also reviewing a lot of devices. So we're gonna hear from you on a few of those devices today.

Florence Ion (00:05:01):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Let's just say there's a lot of Android phones guys. It's still,

Jason Howell (00:05:06):
Yeah. There is still,

Florence Ion (00:05:07):
You know?

Jason Howell (00:05:08):
Yeah. And there's a lot, like, it feels like there's a lot based on, you know, when you get on that kind of like reviewer beat and you know, one phone comes in, you review it the next one. Meanwhile, we, what did we, Huyen, Ron, I, I don't know if either of you remember the number from like a couple of months ago, there was some news story where they said just in the last year alone, there was something like 2000 Android phones or something released. I can't remember what the number was, but we are only seeing like a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction,

Ron Richards (00:05:41):
You know, know what it was funny that you say that because literally last night I was filing a support ticket with the mobile game provider of the only game I play on my phone because the game stopped working after the latest Android 12 update.

Jason Howell (00:05:58):
What changed?

Ron Richards (00:05:58):
Game spoiler I had to, I had to uninstall and reinstall the game and then it worked fine. But in their form where it is like, it's like, what, what platform are you on? I choose Android. It's like what device? And I hit the dropdown menu and I got a dropdown menu that was longer than like picking your country. And it was every, and I'm going through it. And it was like every company of phone that I, I can ever. And like, I wanna find it now because it's it was fascinating because there was like companies that I've never even heard of on this listing, under Android where I'm trying to see here, it,

Jason Howell (00:06:31):
Like you need a nested menu or something like that.

Ron Richards (00:06:33):
Like, it was unbelievable. Let me see if I can recreate this. I, and

Jason Howell (00:06:36):
Even with a nested menu, by the way, that thing, that list would be huge. The amount of manufacturers alone is gigantic. And then you open those up and then you get all of their models,

Ron Richards (00:06:46):
You know? So here we go, platform, Android, smartphones and tablets. Right. And then it then where is it?

Jason Howell (00:06:53):
So start from the top of the list and read every device that's there. We that'll be today's episode reading the list of phones,

Ron Richards (00:07:03):
But yeah, it was just, it was a ridiculous list. And I just like, literally companies I've never even heard about, I'm like, talk about fragmentation, my gosh.

Jason Howell (00:07:10):
Yeah. Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:07:11):
So

Jason Howell (00:07:12):
Yeah, I suppose in a support ticket, like there's probably a, like going too far as far as serving everybody, but I mean, where do you even draw that line? I don't know. You know, where you, your phone is not important, but yours is

Ron Richards (00:07:25):
While we're, while we're talking about just things in general that had nothing to do with the show. I forgot to mention if you're on T-Mobile T-Mobile Tuesday starting this week, all through the next week, this is the annual get mlb.tv for free because you, you are a T-Mobile customer. So that's my annual message for you. If you like baseball, you want free access to mlb TV. It's like $130 a year. You get it for free. If you're a T-Mobile customer this week only make sure you go redeem it. So there's a,

Jason Howell (00:07:51):
So you redeem it and you get just, just this week for free. Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:07:55):
Yeah. So for the next six days, there's a promotion where you can him an offer to get free subscription, MLB.TV. So right

Jason Howell (00:08:02):
On, that's a good tip.

Ron Richards (00:08:04):
Thank God much. So that I, I texted my friend. I'm like, Hey, are you still on T-Mobile? And he's like, yeah, free day today. And I was like, yeah. It's like, wow, it's the thing that we all do every year.

Jason Howell (00:08:15):
I forgot about T-Mobile Tuesdays. I mean, I haven't been on Tmobile in a while, but yeah, it's still kicking. I always thought that that was gonna be one of those things that they oh, hello sorry. There's an earthquake. That was gonna be one of those things that they started as a promotion. And then, you know, ended up disappearing after like a few months, but it's, it's going,

Florence Ion (00:08:40):
I'm sorry. This, the, the MTV handy cam moment

Jason Howell (00:08:43):
That we were just having, this is real world

Florence Ion (00:08:46):
Be able to lean into it.

Jason Howell (00:08:47):
But yeah, this is real worlds. Petaluma is what you're watching actually. Love you Burke. Okay. Oh, here,

Ron Richards (00:08:56):
Here. This. Okay. I found it. I found it here is the dropdown. All right. Sorry. I found it. So if you do sub-issue, where is it? Download installation issue. Crash, freeze loading, sub issues, game crashes that start manufacturer. And there is a list of two boom, 360 mobiles. What? 360 OS seven mobile

Jason Howell (00:09:17):
Two, boom.

Ron Richards (00:09:18):
Wow. A Abra. Oh, you, I don't even AARO

Jason Howell (00:09:21):
I'll tell you. Yeah. Right.

Ron Richards (00:09:25):
AEL, which I guess is AF right? Like this list is like, I, I cannot believe how many I wish I could share my screen. It's like, wow. It goes on. And on logic, long cheer lawn walk, luon, LV mobile, knock speed. Magnus. Like I'm just scrolling

Jason Howell (00:09:43):
Through. Yeah. I've not heard of so many of these

Ron Richards (00:09:45):
Safra Safaricom run, Bo rug gear, Roy queen Rover pad. These are just words. And these are all manufacturers of devices that we all Android.

Jason Howell (00:09:55):
They all start to kind of merge into each other and sound like the same

Ron Richards (00:09:58):
Word van Vanek V a N Z a T E K. Right. And then like, and mixed in there. It's like Vanek Vava Veera Verizon. Oh,

Jason Howell (00:10:09):
Just wait a minute.

Florence Ion (00:10:12):
Yeah, they'll do like the branded cheapy fountain. They'll be like here's

Ron Richards (00:10:16):
Interest Westing house. Wiki said WICO

Jason Howell (00:10:19):
So our joking, we were not too far off. It sounds like they really tried to get every single no,

Ron Richards (00:10:25):
This, this, like, I it's a dropdown. I wish I could pull it out somehow. ZTE, like I'm like it's oh, what is, oh, wait, I wanna see if they have on and on and on.

Jason Howell (00:10:34):
Let's see, of course they have on and on, on, on, and on, on

Ron Richards (00:10:36):
There. How could I, how can I, what, what was that? Burke?

Jason Howell (00:10:40):
Oh, Burke was just saying that if you screen share it, it's called a, a screenshot. That's what? Oh, wait, you're

Ron Richards (00:10:46):
On Mac. No, it's a dropdown too. So I can't I can't screen, I can't screenshot a dropdown. It's

Jason Howell (00:10:52):
All right. We'll take your word for it.

Ron Richards (00:10:54):
Oppo. Oh yeah. And yet, and yet on there's on and Onna onn. There it is. Orange. This is crazy. So anyway, so there it is. So, yeah. So there are a lot of manufacturers out there, sorry.

Jason Howell (00:11:06):
Yes. Long story short. There's lots of people that make an Android phones. All right. Well, I think it's time to actually talk about newsy things at and hardware things and app things. And then eventually feedbacky things, but we're gonna start with the newsy things right now with the news.

Victor Bognot (00:11:29):
I think we're gonna need a really long dropdown. Maybe what what's wrong with this show?

Ron Richards (00:11:35):
vWhat, what? Oh, my

Jason Howell (00:11:37):
What's different show Burke. Your, your voice sounds much different.

Ron Richards (00:11:41):
What?

Jason Howell (00:11:42):
I don't understand, actually I do studio.

Victor Bognot (00:11:45):
Do I need to start complaining about Something else?

Jason Howell (00:11:46):
Oh, actually I is back here in the studio.

Ron Richards (00:11:54):
Wow.

Florence Ion (00:11:55):
That's my boy,

Ron Richards (00:11:56):
Victor. Wow.

Jason Howell (00:11:59):
All right. I'm giving it back to burke

Ron Richards (00:12:02):
Oh, no. Victor gets the, this's why I

Florence Ion (00:12:04):
Missed the studio. This is why you missed the studio because

Ron Richards (00:12:08):
Anything can happen truly.

Jason Howell (00:12:09):
So I, I will admit I was acting I you all

Ron Richards (00:12:13):
Along. Oh, Jason,

Jason Howell (00:12:14):
You all were being surprised.

Ron Richards (00:12:17):
Jason, did you know about the new Bluetooth tracker in Android that might be coming on Google?

Jason Howell (00:12:23):
Well, yes,

Jason Howell (00:12:25):
Put it on the rundown. Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:12:26):
So first news story is poses the question. Could there be a pixel tag device in Google Google's future? Hm. Nine to five. Google did an APK insight into the Google app and found code that seems to point to tracker detection being built into Android. And if I, as we all know, this follows apples tracker detect app for air track, air tag, tracking, and tiles app launched last month. Not a lot more info than this at the time. But could this be something we hear about at IO maybe as we start speculating about IO? I would not be surprised if they do a tracker flow. What do you think would this surprise you?

Florence Ion (00:13:05):
You know what I think, and what I hope Google does is they come out with a tracker and then they explain how safe it is so that nobody can track you unwillingly against your own, you know, because of all the, the, you know, bad press,

Jason Howell (00:13:20):
Bad news. Yeah.

Florence Ion (00:13:22):
Bad news. It's not even just bad press. It's just really bad firsthand accounts of how people have been using apple air tags in a really nefarious way. And then I guess there's been, you know, people have been talking about like tile and a couple other you know, like putting an earbud in your car so you can track a person. I think that was another story that came out recently. Oh, geez. So I would love to see Google address this and say like, this is, you know, this is something you don't have to worry about. And I also think it's just in response to the fact that apple did it and an needs to have a native way to be able to track, to be able to tell that there's something in your car tracking you.

Jason Howell (00:14:01):
Yeah. Is, is there a way to do this, that, that doesn't end up, you know, going into the realm of like, yeah. Being creepy. Like, it just kind of seems like the tracker devices, like how, how does one actual, like a business Google or apple or whoever, you know, wants to release a tracker? How can any of them put out a device that tracks location of things, but doesn't track like people or whatever isn't used in these ways? Like, I guess, I don't know. I guess I don't, I don't understand how you have both those things at once.

Ron Richards (00:14:35):
You can't have your case too and track it also, you can't have your cake and track it too. Here's

Jason Howell (00:14:41):
The joke there. You

Ron Richards (00:14:42):
It's,

Florence Ion (00:14:43):
I do pay for a GPS tracker for my kid. And, but I guess if somebody were to put that in a car, nobody would know that that was in there with them. You know what I mean?

Jason Howell (00:14:54):
Totally well. Yeah. And I think that's, that's it, like there, there are use cases of tracking technology for people that do make sense, right? Like if, if you have a small child or you have a, a kid that has a phone, like that's, that's touted as a sure. And it kind of makes sense that a parent would want to know where their child is, or at least have the ability to do that. It's the placing the tracker in the ex girlfriend's car to, you know, track where she's going or even, you know, even that's creepy enough, but plenty of other creepy directions. But I don't know, from a developer's standpoint, like when do, do you, from your perspective, like agree, like, is there a way to do this responsibly?

Huyen Tue Dao (00:15:38):
I don't know. This is like the opposite of like the high tide lifts off both the slippery slope makes everybody trip up in the end. So I, I generally, I, I just don't like, I just really don't like this. I think when you open a door, people are gonna go through it for worse, for better or worse. And this is just, yeah, just, just seeing how many people are able to gain the system in bad ways just makes me, like, it just squeaks me out. Just it squeaks me out. Cause like I really do like technology. I like the possibilities and things and yeah, I do agree. There's good use cases, but if someone can do something, they're gonna do it. So, and I totally feels like this is the kind of thing where, you know, as people, like, if you, if you are like, this is just like the same thing as like, you know, automated ways of detecting bad intent are really hard. I just feel like this is just one of those things where it would be really difficult for a automated, like automatic way that to, to be perfectly able to catch bad intentions. Like you maybe like there's, there's ways of like tracking like bad patterns of behavior and bad usage, but yeah. Then a couple, yeah. Few people get hurt and then we're just like, Jesus is awful. So no

Jason Howell (00:16:47):
Undo, undo.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:16:48):
I undo. Yeah. I mean like, if anything, I know what developers are like and you know, we, we be careful and some of us are not that careful, so yeah. Don't trust us with this kind of stuff. I'm, I'm like, I'm actually like kind of serious about this. Like don't trust us with this kind of stuff.

Jason Howell (00:17:02):
Yeah. Sort of think can go bad quickly. And there there's always someone out there that's willing to take it there too. So yeah. Unfortunately,

Ron Richards (00:17:10):
Yeah. Oh, well moving right along.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:17:14):
Yeah. Well in, well, in terms of like added functionality that, that people might use for kind of more, less nefarious purposes, there's actually a, a really interesting Google patent solution to the problem. Well, not the problem, but the limitation of ES IM. So basically, you know, ES IMS have been really awesome. I've had one in my phone for several years and I've love it, but you know, the ESY are basically embedded SIM cards and there's one kind of big limitation of them. And that's basically based on the original spec is that basically you can only have, despite the fact that you can have many different SIM profiles on, on a single EIM, only one can be active at a time. So if you're the kind of person that really loves duals SIM technology, you've had to rely on a phone having either two EMS or an em, and like a physical SIM or two physical SIM, just any of these kind of, kind of double, double SIM holster type phones, but with a Google patented solution called multiple enabled profiles, maybe very soon coming in Android 13, you could have a phone with a single E I be able to have two active SIM profiles at the same time.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:18:20):
So you could have your work number and your home number on the same phone. And yeah, and it's really interesting. This is basically the previous limitation is with that going into horrendous technical detail, which Michelle from last week went into amazing detail in his article. And if you're really interested, you should go read it. But without going into my half an hour deep dive into how E Sims work, basically, it's just like kind of like a physical connection, but kind of in the same way that virtualization and virtual memory and things like, and kind of concepts like this work on computer Google is basically patented this kind of like being able to have virtual SIM pro SIM profiles in saying ES I, and apparently there are, have been numerous patches to AOS P submitted that kind of work with Android's telephone framework that will make room for this.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:19:08):
The, we're not quite sure what it's gonna look like. Yeah. And whether, you know, this, this patented technology, which is actually generic enough that it could work, not just on say a Google phone, but any kind of like windows like iOS device, whether this will be something that Google kind of puts out there free or not feel free. But yeah, if you're the kind of person that loves SIM technology, but wants the convenience and the kind of technological advancements of having a single EIM, maybe you will be in luck soon. So it's really interesting. But definitely check out the article if you're super interested in how this works. And I'm actually really surprised Michelle linked to some articles. Cause I, I mean, I, I don't often use a dual SIM. Like I, I, I generally have my work phone and my personal phone, but apparently a lot of people do and not just for, you know like, you know, I mean, I know like a lot of us who are like in this space, like to review things like to swap out SIM cards and try different phones.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:20:04):
And, but, you know, and, and maybe like the work home case is kind of like, you know, easy to see, but actually in a lot of places will have two separate Sims for their voice plan versus their data plan. Cuz in a lot of places that have a bit more competition, let's say you can pick a cheaper voice plan and then have the same SIM on your phone, like have a cheaper data plan. So this is actually pretty interesting and hopefully will be a boon to many of y'all out there, you know? What's a cool like cowboy term for like you dual gun six. I don't know something

Speaker 9 (00:20:36):
Slings,

Huyen Tue Dao (00:20:38):
All the Sims, all the EINs yeah. This,

Ron Richards (00:20:41):
This was the kind of thing that I knew was out there and I always chalked up to like other countries.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:20:45):
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Howell (00:20:46):
Or, or traveling over traveling to a different country. And I want my, exactly one SIM and then the SIM for the country that I'm, that I'm visiting. Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:20:54):
Yeah. Yeah. So

Jason Howell (00:20:55):
I wonder if this is something that might help actually promote EIM as a technology that we see more often, because I feel like the phones that we get now, like SIM has the potential to really kind of change how phones are designed on the inside. Right? Like if, if we all bought into S I that's less complexity that would need to be built into the phone itself, that's less space inside of the hardware that needs to be made for the S I so removing that would free up space for other things or make phone Slimer or whatever the case may be. But yet we're not there EMMS been around for a while and yet phones come out maybe with EMM compatibility, but then they also have a SIM card slot. And like, I wonder if, or when we will get to a point to where S IM is just kind of the standard and something like this support for dual dual E dual SIM through the EIM, that seems like a step in the right direction. As far as that's concerned, maybe that'll never happen, but that would be nice.

Speaker 10 (00:21:54):
I have a question will there, so you have the dual SIM thing. Can you do like, will that be, will you have EIM and, you know, regular SIM mixture? Can you do that? Or is it just, yeah, you can do

Jason Howell (00:22:06):
That now. You can do that now. That's you can

Huyen Tue Dao (00:22:07):
Do that now. So the, the thing is with the ES I is that so you can, so every time for every network character, for a character network character, for every network carrier for each one of your same numbers on that carrier, you have to have a SIM profile. And so on an ES, I, you can have already multiple profiles, but you can only have one active because the connection between like the modem that is actually, you know, connecting to the network and getting, sending and receiving data and like the SEM there's like, there's just like one road, it's basically like a ONELAN highway. And so basically the profiles kind of have to take turns using that highway. So, so that's why you still need right now, dual Sims. And actually that's one of the solutions that duals Sims, I don't know, offhand any phones that do this, but yeah, you can have an EIM and a nanos SIM, like for example to solve, to kind of get to bypass this.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:22:55):
So it is a thing now, but hopefully with me P multiple enabled profiles that Google has, you could, you don't need the dual SIM anymore. You wouldn't need like two ES IMS, like two embedded chips, or you wouldn't need like a slot and an embedded at chip. So yes, you can do, you can, you can mix and match. Now. It's kind of actually, it's very, it was very interesting to see that, you know, the very, the various ways you can mix, mix and match and EIM with an actual SIM that are available now. And I, I don't, I guess I don't, I can't think of any phones right now that do it, but I suppose maybe in markets where this is a lot more prevalent kind of practice that you probably would see or phones, let's go to that dropdown and kind of go through all the, all the phones

Jason Howell (00:23:34):
And all these great, yeah. Start at the top of the list. We'll we'll one by one, look up their SIM status. And

Ron Richards (00:23:40):
I just like to turn SIM, I just wanna, I just wanna have as many nano Simms in my life as possible.

Florence Ion (00:23:45):
It's so fun.

Jason Howell (00:23:46):
Yeah. Right on. I'm happy. We talked about that story. Thank you. Your, your explanation of it was far better than I was trying to like grasp it earlier. And for whatever reason, I think I was, I was just, I had done a lot of anger

Huyen Tue Dao (00:24:00):
That point it, and just to be clear, the, this technology's called multiple enabled profiles, because that way it turns a single lane highway into a multilane highway more or less.

Ron Richards (00:24:13):
That's

Huyen Tue Dao (00:24:13):
Great. So anyway, that's

Jason Howell (00:24:14):
A great way to find it.

Florence Ion (00:24:17):
That's

Huyen Tue Dao (00:24:17):
That took me like couple hours to figure that out. Y'all I,

Speaker 9 (00:24:20):
We talked about,

Huyen Tue Dao (00:24:23):
I was like that

Florence Ion (00:24:24):
Metaphor that's is

Jason Howell (00:24:26):
Thank you.

Jason Howell (00:24:28):
Thank you for that. Now. Samsung, I thought this is actually really interesting. This is good in the, in the direction of making our devices more repairable and enabling people to kind of repair their own devices. Samsung's actually working with, I fix it to help some of the last few years devices, their last few years of devices to be more serviceable by the user themselves. So the S 20, the S 21, those are the initial devices, also the tabs seven plus this summer, apparently that's coming a little bit later, but Samsung's gonna produce official parts to tools, guides, all these things for people who are wishing to fix these devices themselves, instead of taking 'em into a shop, of course, flow. I'm reading basically this, these details from your article that you wrote, what, what are your thoughts being the former president of the Samsung fan club,

Florence Ion (00:25:24):
Right? I mean, now that I have an iPhone, that's it it's over

Speaker 9 (00:25:28):
Just kidding.

Ron Richards (00:25:30):
Ousted, ousted. So

Florence Ion (00:25:32):
Just kidding as an aside, by the way, I'm still carrying a one plus nine on my main primary sip. Just,

Ron Richards (00:25:38):
Just carrying it around, not using it, just carrying

Speaker 9 (00:25:40):
It, right.

Florence Ion (00:25:41):
Hey, it's it's right here and, and everything, but you know, I really do. So first of all, when I saw this news come through, I thought a, this is clearly like a, me too. This is clearly a look what I can also do situation from Samsung because apple really excited its user base. When it said that it was gonna give the repairability back into their hands and then, you know, like I fixed it. It is partnering with Samsung on this one. So it's just really good. It looks really good if you're a Samsung user, it's like, all right, I've got, I fix it behind this. Yeah. This means that I'm like taking back the ownership of my devices. I get to like, fix my own thing in my garage or at my desk, but we still don't have the full details on what's it gonna actually be like to replace this thing? Cuz Samsung is saying, oh, you can replace, let's say, did it say you could replace the charging port? Okay. That's it. That's cool. But what, what is that gonna be like for me on the user end? Because I have seen what the fair phone does for people who want a phone that's, you know, perfectly user serviceable. And that thing is easy because it feels like opening up a PC that was made for a person to go in and tinker with it.

Jason Howell (00:26:57):
Yeah. It was created with that in mind. Yeah.

Florence Ion (00:27:01):
Versus a soldered together phone that is, or I shouldn't say soldered I mean glue glue together, cuz that's really what it actually is. I can't imagine taking a heat gun and you know,

Jason Howell (00:27:15):
All you need is

Florence Ion (00:27:16):
I'm so I am so scared to do, like I have the ingredients to do that here at my home. And I'm so scared to work with any thing with heat near a device that I rely on daily. So very curious to see what this is gonna be like. I have

Speaker 10 (00:27:29):
Some possible

Jason Howell (00:27:30):
Insight. Oh yeah.

Florence Ion (00:27:31):
Yes. Burke. So as a DIYer. Yes.

Speaker 10 (00:27:34):
So it's, it's more to do with like the fingerprint sensor and stuff. That's like the things that are integrated into the screen or the touch sensor, like, and like before all this, you could just easily swap out on most phones. And, but the thing is too is now it's like, you don't just replace the screen. You're like replacing the screen assembly or whatever, you know, the sandwich, but I guess maybe they just, you know, make the, the glues less sticky or something or just work. I don't know.

Florence Ion (00:28:03):
It's like when they give you a sandwich and it has a toothpick in the middle and then once you take the toothpick out, it'll just kind of like, oh,

Speaker 10 (00:28:10):
Just spa card. It's like E toothpicks. They're gonna put in

Jason Howell (00:28:14):
Epas now I'm hungry. Now I want a sandwich. I want my sandwich

Florence Ion (00:28:18):
Dinner time in California. That's why.

Jason Howell (00:28:20):
And on top of the toothpick is a, is a, a, a green olive. Yeah. That's what I want. No, I, Hey. I think more repairability, a more user serviceability is a good thing. So the fact that Samsung's actually working with, I fix it to make this happen is a great gesture. Great starting point. And you know, again, love to see that more and more often maybe what this does though, to your point flow is if Samsung's thinking about this with these previous devices, devices that they didn't necessarily, or probably did not design with this kind of flexibility in mind, maybe what this does is hopefully this shows intent for future design possibility. You know, maybe they kind of keep that in mind as they go forward. Like, Hey, but I don't know. I don't know that they necessarily buy into it completely and they, they release a fair phone, but maybe they use a little less glue if they don't have to, you know, with the idea that eventually they're gonna need to do this with those phones too. And how can we make that easier for users?

Florence Ion (00:29:24):
Well, I do think if apple, so Samsung show, cause if it sells, if it sells devices and they see that that's what it's doing, then they're just, they're gonna be like, yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. Here you go. Why are phones?

Jason Howell (00:29:37):
So say we all. Yep. No. All right. Finally, this was kind of a last minute addition here, but when you got this one, yeah.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:29:46):
So finally for all of you folks still rocking the pixels, you're getting your April 20, 22 pixel update. And then we just got the March one recently, but if you're like me, you're gonna see that nice, shiny April update soon in particular for the pixel six, you're gonna get are less charging updates. Some camera fixes, apparently some folks were seeing some bad performance, some unintentional zooming with your front facing camera, which sounds absolutely horrifying depending on the time of day and whether you've woken up and done your makeup or not yet on like me. And sometimes even green screens and previous. So it sounds like there's, there's some buggy issues with the cameras on a camera software and pixel six. So hopefully you'll see it fixed for that. There isn't any mention of the kind of weakened haptic vibration that some folks reported with the March update.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:30:29):
And in fact, in a statement to review geek, Google Tina, more or less say that it was a bug, but not a feature. And that they're basically iterating on, I guess, haptic vibration and like the, the, the, the patterns that a action patterns are working on that. So I guess we'll see I think they recognize that people, some people don't like the new, the new way that haptic feedback works, but you're not gonna get it fixed in it in this April update and for everyone else and by everyone else, I mean, everyone with the pixel three a and above, you'll also get some fixes for problems with live wallpaper, some picture and picture crashing, and apparently some blackouts that happened with notification shades and quick settings, as well as the all important security flaws. The update is rolling out over the next week. If you're not, if you can't wait then of course there's always OTA and factory image, which you can flash. Ah, but there's your April, 2022 Google pixel updates.

Jason Howell (00:31:24):
I'm not the only one on this show doing flash Gordon jokes. Thank

Huyen Tue Dao (00:31:28):
You. Oh, that's the best phone ever, dude.

Jason Howell (00:31:30):
That's a great all. It's a great soundtrack. Good. If, although a lot of pixel six owners are like a little gun shy with updates at this point, it's kinda like, yeah, I guess I'll update hopeful. It fixes things and doesn't just break other things. This is where we are with pixel six updates right now. You never know what you're gonna get.

Ron Richards (00:31:51):
It's it's I like that. I like that. It's like a game of chance

Jason Howell (00:31:53):
Almost, you know? Like, could it get any worse?

Huyen Tue Dao (00:31:59):
Why not? I hit the button. I'm on the I'm I'm on the ride. I'm up for the rollercoaster. Let's go. And I have like, as a developer, I have too many phones anyway, so great. I'm gonna like, just load up something on my, I have like actually the S 22 ultra. So, you know, if anything else we'll just, we'll just let it thunder dome it. We'll just thunder dome the phone.

Jason Howell (00:32:15):
We'll see. That's what I've been living on on the beta track. I keep threatening that I'm gonna move off the beta track, but in order for me to do that, I'm gonna have the wipe, my phone, and I keep not wanting to actually do the things, you know, the preparation to, to wipe my phone. So it keeps not happening. So I just deal with it. Thunder dome. Exactly. All right. Coming up in just a few moments here. We're gonna jump into the hardware.

Ron Richards (00:32:46):
Oh, look at that. Oh, love

Jason Howell (00:32:48):
It. And yeah. Victor flows, hardware shack

Ron Richards (00:32:55):
Talk about for, for our audio listeners, we just got our brand new bumper. Can we see it again? Can we see it again?

Jason Howell (00:33:02):
That was, that was pretty RA that's

Ron Richards (00:33:04):
With the music and everything.

Jason Howell (00:33:06):
Right? We got that. So no wet got,

Ron Richards (00:33:10):
Yeah, we got a keyboard, a call cookie keyboard on there and a

Florence Ion (00:33:14):
Right. This is like really? I mean,

Ron Richards (00:33:16):
There, there is nothing incredibly

Florence Ion (00:33:18):
Now. Oh,

Ron Richards (00:33:19):
Nothing nicer than a customized bumper.

Jason Howell (00:33:22):
You have a customized bumper flow. Wow. You even got not one, but two Samsung devices on there. It's

Florence Ion (00:33:28):
That's really nice.

Jason Howell (00:33:29):
That's really, really nice.

Florence Ion (00:33:31):
He just put so many like of my favorite things on there and it just means a lot.

Jason Howell (00:33:36):
Wow. So the reason Victor to, or did this is because as I Allo, well, a you're awesome. So we know that, but also B he did this because you have not one, not two, not three but four devices. Oh, we're I don't know how we're gonna do this. In a, in a relatively quick fire.

Florence Ion (00:33:56):
Okay. We don't have

Jason Howell (00:33:57):
To got four devices.

Florence Ion (00:33:59):
There's two much just say, I feel like Jason, we can start off this first one together. Cuz I saw that you also have this phone

Jason Howell (00:34:05):
In. Yeah. I've got a war story though, but I want to hear yours first.

Florence Ion (00:34:08):
Did you say you have a war story?

Jason Howell (00:34:10):
Yes. With, with the, with this phone, but I'll get to that in a second. I wanna hear your

Florence Ion (00:34:14):
Take. Okay. Let's see if I can offer you a segue.

Florence Ion (00:34:20):
So first phone that we're talking about and what I'm gonna do first is actually clear the notifications on here because I don't need you all to see yeah. What is happening in my life? Fair. The one plus 10 pro is what we're talking about first. And I, when I got this phone in hand, I was looking at at, so I told you all that I had been using the one plus for the last year and I really like the size. I like how thin it is. I like that. It was just kind of a plain Android phone. I have not been on board with the Samsung and pixel look of this generation. Just for me personally, the phones feel a little bigger than what I wanna wield. I was like, oh the one plus 10 pro like this is it. Let's see what they got here. And they almost, almost got it, but there's still a couple things that they really need to improve about it. First things first, it doesn't come in a lot of options. Like the last couple of one plus family of phones, which is really frustrating because the one thing that I really loved about the one plus nine that I still love about it is is it has 12 gigs of ma of Ram.

Florence Ion (00:35:31):
You may not think that that's like super important, but when you have a phone that's getting old, like just having that extra Ram really helps. It's like how you would put an extra stick inside your computer to just kind of give it a little more runway to figure out what it's doing with, you know, it's processing. So I'm really bummed about that. I'm also bummed they have a limited storage offering for this on only 128 gigs, which is the minimum in 2022. Yeah, I agree because although we have all these cloud storage, you know, situations, the pictures we take are bigger. A lot of us are downloading video. Our phones now like gigabytes to watch, you know, on the go or just to like have these high res videos of our children on our phones. And so it just feels really, it feels like OnePlus said, oh, this is a flagship phone we're gonna put in the us, but we're feeling kind of shy about it. So we're not gonna go full torque. And I'm really bummed about that because why did they decide not to do it the, this round, but they've been doing the last couple of generations.

Jason Howell (00:36:40):
Yeah. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Does it? It really has seemed like OnePlus has leaned into its pro to be like, yeah, here's, here's a pro competitor with a lot of the other with the premium flagships and you're right on this one, it kind of steps down in some surprising areas. I totally agree.

Florence Ion (00:37:00):
That's right. I mean, there are good things about it. So it has a really long battery life. This was actually the longest of all the new phones I tested that had 5,000 milliamp battery in it. And that includes by the way, the galaxy S 22 ultra. So something to keep in mind there, I think it might have to do with the slightly smaller screen. And you know, other little details here and there, but good battery life still has that alert slider. That's like my favorite thing that exists on OnePlus and I am so happy. They took that from the iPhone and kept it. It's so nice on the back. We've got three lenses plus this fourth circle, which a lot of people sorry, which a lot of people thought that fourth circle was gonna be a fourth camera. What it actually is just an expertly placed flash. It's a very bright flash.

Jason Howell (00:37:54):
It's free flash. It's nice. Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:37:57):
Again, I know I say it every time, but if anybody, that fear of holes, the strong

Jason Howell (00:38:01):
Is not phobia, I believe is what that was

Ron Richards (00:38:03):
Called. Phobia. Yeah. Not good.

Jason Howell (00:38:05):
Yeah. It's gonna scare.

Florence Ion (00:38:06):
I mean, to be fair, Samsung has the same amount on the, I know

Ron Richards (00:38:11):
All, all they all do is like, honestly, it's like, I, I feel for anybody who has that because walking into a, into a, a carrier store has gotta be a nightmare. Oh my God. Yeah. Yes.

Jason Howell (00:38:22):
Yeah.

Florence Ion (00:38:22):
I will say I liked the cameras. A lot of people didn't like them, but the reason, the way I felt about it is that, oh God, this is so much better than what they did with the nine and the eight. Oh, finally they have figure out their camera algorithm. That's kind of how I looked at it, but you could definitely see the limitations between a one plus 10 pro and a pixel and a Samsung sensor pixel, and Samsung do a lot more AI in the background than, I mean, they, I shouldn't say they do a lot more with, they are tuned differently than the OnePlus algorithm is. So when you're comparing shots, you'll see like, oh, you know, Google pixel is more focused on having a clear photo versus Samsung, which is more focused on having a sharp photo, let's say like in load light. So it's just kind of interesting to see the different there. But I, I was, again, I was happy to see that they finally let you keep that shutter open to get a decent night shot. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:39:24):
That's nice. Yeah.

Florence Ion (00:39:26):
Yeah. Other than that, I think you know, the software is fine. It's okay. Don't,

Jason Howell (00:39:33):
It's fine. I'm not a, I'm not a fan of shell, which I guess I can show you,

Florence Ion (00:39:37):
Turn it off, turn it off. Everything else is fine. I like that. You can add your own icons. You know, I'm like a big one about that. I don't really like to deal with third party launchers, even though I write about them just because for me, I want the experience, the phone wants to give me, so I'm okay with oxygen 12 one.

Jason Howell (00:39:57):
There we go. I've turned it off now. The, I mean the main reason I don't like it, I mean, sure. There, there might be usable features in there that you just saw, but when I'm going up to my notifications half the time, I'd end up pulling down the shelf and I'm like, Nope, that's not what I ever want on my Android's. I always want my notifications when I swipe down from the top,

Florence Ion (00:40:16):
I think they tuned it to be more aggressive in oxygen OS 12 than they did in the last version. So I guess oxygen OS 11, because I still have 11 on the nine and I'm still using the shelf there, but I don't accidentally pull it down the way that I was on the one plus 10 pro. So

Jason Howell (00:40:34):
Yeah.

Florence Ion (00:40:35):
To keep in mind. But overall I was just gonna say, this is my conclusion on this is that I'm not switching to this phone as my daily driver

Jason Howell (00:40:45):
Sticking with the one plus nine pro.

Florence Ion (00:40:47):
Yeah. The big problem

Ron Richards (00:40:49):
I do. Like I do like the decision factor going on with you flow is like, is like, and ultimately I am not switching this as my daily driver. Like, it's like, it's a judgment call that's made at the end of the review. And I like, yeah, I'm here, I'm here for it flow. So

Florence Ion (00:41:02):
Yeah, it doesn't have, mm. Wave, which I really need on Verizon because I, you pay to have that ability on Verizon and I am paying the highest tier. Don't send me messages right now about what I could be paying for. You know, we've been talking about this for years. Anyway, I need a phone that gets me the service that I'm paying for. Otherwise I'm wasting my money.

Jason Howell (00:41:24):
So yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. You wanna hear my war story?

Florence Ion (00:41:28):
Yes.

Jason Howell (00:41:28):
Go. Okay. Yeah. My war story is I got this phone two weeks ago and I can't, I can't really add to your review because I got a device and I, I used a cable to transfer my data for my pixel six pro over to this, the, the device, the OnePlus 10 pro. And once I finally got it all set up, it would just, it would power off and reboot randomly very randomly. There was never any sort of indication as far as when it was gonna happen. Sometimes I swipe down the settings and boo, it would blip off. Sometimes I'd go to like the power menu and it would just, it would just power off. I'd open an app. It was very, very sporadic. So I got in touch with, with OnePlus and said, Hey, you know, this is happening. I don't know why it's happening at this point.

Jason Howell (00:42:15):
I hadn't tried to do a fresh install. I just, you know, had done the data transfer and they said, okay, that's weird. We'll go ahead and send you another device. And you know, maybe it's a flaw in that particular hardware did, and this is the, the backup device. I set it up the same way, curious to know if it was gonna happen again and sure enough immediately it started happening again. So I could never get a stable powered on state out of it. When I finally wiped it and installed it fresh from, from zero, it was fine. Turns out they have now received some information from at least one other person complaining of the same thing and the common, the commonality between my situation and theirs is that they too did data transfer between a pixel six pro over. So there's something happening right now.

Jason Howell (00:43:07):
And I'm, I'm confident that they're gonna fix this in a software update and that that'll happen. So I wouldn't worry too much about it, but that's why I can't actually chip in because I really wanted this to be like a combined review. But I could never get a stable device until like a few days ago when we finally, you know, finally isolated it. So so that's my war story. I don't I'm, I'm assuming that's not going to affect many people. I'm I'm sure they're gonna put out a, an update. At least I certainly hope that they do, but I know that they're looking into it. So something to keep in mind who

Florence Ion (00:43:41):
Who's gonna switch from APIC, just I'm being honest. Someone will switch from a pixel six pro okay. People that's fair. That's fair. It happen. No, I know they should really APA for it. I agree with you, but I'm just thinking in terms of ranking here in my mind. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:43:58):
Yeah. I mean, it might not impact a lot, a lot of people, but it's certainly something they don't want in their build of their phone. So

Florence Ion (00:44:04):
Exactly. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:44:06):
Who knows that might, that might impact other devices. I I'm, you know what I mean? I'm not saying that it does, but if that exists with data transfer from pixel, they're gonna want to know that it doesn't exist. The other phones too. So

Florence Ion (00:44:18):
Yeah. Anyways, exactly. Well, I can tell you what phone I won't be bothering with daily.

Jason Howell (00:44:25):
Okay. What is that?

Florence Ion (00:44:27):
That is the, I'm just gonna hold it up cuz I, I don't think it's on right now. The Motorola edge plus, which is what I have here. It is their flagship device.

Jason Howell (00:44:38):
That's right now, Motorola, isn't going back to flagships again. It's like this little this teeter-totter that they get on never once in a while. It's like, yep. We're doing em. Nope. We're not. Yep. We're doing em. Nope. We're not.

Florence Ion (00:44:50):
I'm really sorry. I'm not in the studio to show this off. I will say the hardware is nice. But it's not like outstanding sort of thing. You know, Motorola, isn't exactly known for its how shall I say stealing the show with its outfit. It's more known for showing up and being prepared for the event. That makes sense. That that's fair. So you kind of have, yeah. Kind of have the same thing going on here with the edge. Plus sadly folks, the case that is supposed to have the included stylist, accessory is still not out yet. It has yet to be there's no timeline on it yet. So I wasn't able to actually try of the previously announced stylist features that the edge plus can do, but I was able to try everything else. And I can tell you that, although I really like the display, the fact that it has the latest processor in it, the Snapdragon eight gen one and a macro camera lens that actually took some decent portrait shots. Everything else about that can camera is so bad.

Jason Howell (00:45:56):
It's not surprising.

Florence Ion (00:45:58):
Yeah. It's so bad. It reminds me of pictures. I took 10 years, sorry. 10 years is a little, it reminds me of pictures. I took, let's say when I first started here at all about Android in 2015, you know? Yeah. Just sensors have come so far since then. We've figured out how to do night vision. We've figured out how to enlarge pixels to get in more detail. And when you look at the photos that Motorola produces with the edge, plus it's almost insulting. Yeah. Especially considering how much they're asking for this phone. And here's the other thing. Even if this phone does turn out to be one of those Verizon, Hey sign up your family for Verizon and we'll give you three free Motorola phones. Okay. Cuz you know how they like to do those things. I am upset for those family members. Okay. Cause the, the camera that gonna have on them while the interface is fine, the phone hardware is fine. There's only IP 57 water resistance, but that's, you know, better than nothing. That camera is just, it's just a real bummer if you are not shooting anything in daylight.

Jason Howell (00:47:11):
So yeah. Those low lights did not look so hot. Motorola. I feel like the Motorola phones rarely were ever like top of the heap, as far as cameras were concerned, it was kind of like the trade off kind of the expectation that I had with most Motorola phones.

Florence Ion (00:47:27):
Yeah. But it's twenty, twenty two.

Jason Howell (00:47:28):
Oh I know. Yeah, no, I agree. Kinda at this, at this point you kinda can't, you know, even, even companies who are never known to have great cameras at this point have kind of figured out a lot, you know? Yeah. So no good.

Florence Ion (00:47:46):
No, you know it is good though. And it's a phone that you can can't buy in the United States. I'm sorry. This phone is so good. And I'm so sad that you can't buy it. The yame 12 pro also I, I charged it, but it's, it's not on right now. Hold on. I'm cleaning it so I can take a real

Ron Richards (00:48:03):
Picture. See that karma. That's the karma, that's the karma for rubbing it in that we can't get it. Right.

Jason Howell (00:48:11):
So before, before you tear into this review, ha have you have you spent considerable amount of time with other Shammy phones? Is this the first one that you've really done this type of deep review with

Florence Ion (00:48:24):
This is the first one I've done a deep review of in my eight, nine years that I've been covering this beat.

Jason Howell (00:48:33):
Yep.

Florence Ion (00:48:34):
So

Jason Howell (00:48:35):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean they're gorgeous phones, right? They're gorgeous devices that we hardly ever get the chance to even interact with cuz they don't really, they aren't really us, you know, at all. So

Florence Ion (00:48:46):
This feels like butter. This is so the Matt on this back is, is nice. Yeah. Yeah. Look at this. Look at this rear camera. Look how cool that is.

Ron Richards (00:48:56):
That's pretty cool. The multiple ones, despite the holes. That looks pretty cool.

Jason Howell (00:49:02):
Ah, now that Ron has trip to phobic. Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:49:04):
I, I, I think I've given myself, this, this show has given me trip Toho here. But yeah, I mean that actually that back of that phone is, is pretty darn cool. So

Jason Howell (00:49:13):
Yeah,

Florence Ion (00:49:14):
It is, it comes in a pretty purple color that they, I think it's purple that they didn't send to me, which is a bummer.

Jason Howell (00:49:21):
Yeah. That would go perfectly with your headphones when my everyth and your hair. Yeah. My hair, my

Ron Richards (00:49:26):
Background, it people who love purple.

Florence Ion (00:49:28):
Also my favorite color would love

Ron Richards (00:49:29):
Purple.

Florence Ion (00:49:30):
See, missed opportunities, do this wrong.

Ron Richards (00:49:35):
It's

Florence Ion (00:49:35):
Okay. You want it's okay. $1,000 for this phone as well. It also has a snap and eight gen one in it. It has up to 12 gigs of Ram. Again, you know how much I love having that option. It does not have water resistance, which just seems like a trend. I, I don't understand why. I mean, I'm, I'm sure those are perfectly, I guess. Yeah. Engineering E reason for all of this, but something to keep in mind again, it's not sold in the us. So if you're in the us, you're listening to this and you're like, eh, I don't care. Right. I will say the camera on this thing is, oh good. I am. I am really understanding why this phone makes so much money in other countries. I get it.

Jason Howell (00:50:20):
Wow. So, okay. So good. So T where like where, if you had to like rank out the air right now, like, you know, compared to what, what is your favorite camera on a smartphone right now and how is this compared to it?

Florence Ion (00:50:35):
Oh, I think I, I hate to say this cuz it's so obvious. The pixel six is the best camera because of the algorithm situation that it has going. It's very good. If you wanna shoot pictures and just immediately upload 'em to Instagram, the galaxy S 22 lineup has gotten so much better, but you really want that ultra if you want to have like the 17 different cameras in your pocket the, the zoom on those things are, is incredible. It's

Jason Howell (00:51:05):
Yeah.

Florence Ion (00:51:06):
If you like to do of that, the Ja has a little bit from both worlds. So the algorithm that it's using it is a lot like Googles, which I really like, it's more natural colors and not super saturated. And it also has some of the zoom that Samsung offers, but not the full capability, the full opt capability, because

Jason Howell (00:51:31):
That's,

Florence Ion (00:51:31):
You know, that's what Samsung decided to focus on this year. So

Jason Howell (00:51:35):
Focus.

Florence Ion (00:51:38):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Me. I is not bad. Y'all it's it's really fine. It's also fine.

Jason Howell (00:51:49):
Yeah. Nice.

Florence Ion (00:51:52):
You don't have to use the launcher if you don't like it. So that's true. That's fine. You

Jason Howell (00:51:56):
Can change it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Always change it. Yeah. Yeah. And, and this is a thousand dollars. I mean, obviously you can't buy it U S D in yeah. In us dollars, but so I mean thousand dollars, if it was priced to a thousand dollars in the us, do you think it, it deserves that high price?

Florence Ion (00:52:16):
Yes. because it does everything that Samsung and Google can do and they are pricing their like pro models around the same price point. So it makes sense that that's what it would be. You are converting it overseas. But if we are talking about, if Shami could sell this phone in the us, we know the answer is no for a multitude of reasons. We're not gonna get into right now.

Jason Howell (00:52:38):
Right, right, right. Yeah. Interesting.

Florence Ion (00:52:41):
Which is a bummer because you know, we're missing out on some really good tech, some choice. There's some really good tech. So

Jason Howell (00:52:53):
I suppose we also have a lot of really good tech in other directions, but yes, I would love to, I would love to spend more time with shall me devices. I think the man I have, I have the one shall me device I ever actually received. And I think I reviewed it on, on about Android when I got it. I mean, this was years ago. So I mean, it's, it's from, excuse me. It's from, I it's gotta be like 20 13 20 14,

Florence Ion (00:53:19):
The Hugo Barra era,

Jason Howell (00:53:21):
A somewhere around then. Yeah. I, I suppose it would be, and it was very iPhone. Like it was, it was definitely in the era of Shami, like just releasing anything that looks like an iPhone essentially. And I think even then me, Y was very iPhone, like as well. It didn't do the app tray. Dylan did the, I remember that the, the horizontal kind of app app assortment, similar to the iPhone and stuff. So it

Speaker 10 (00:53:49):
Even went down to like the little separators and the panels, like on the sides of the phone, like it literally had the little bumper, the crumple zones, like were even in the same spot and like,

Jason Howell (00:53:59):
Well, I remember at the time I remember at the time thinking about shall me and the fact that we didn't have show me in the states and kind of the prime talking point was, oh, they could never do that. They could never release phones in the states because apple wouldn't let them apple would Sue them out of existence. And I don't think that's the, I don't think that's the, the limiting factor now, but it may have been, that's not now, you know what I mean? Things have changed a lot.

Florence Ion (00:54:26):
Things have changed

Jason Howell (00:54:28):
And then you have one final device, which it sounds like you haven't you haven't actually like you haven't fully reviewed this yet. You're kind of in the process. But tell, give, give us kind of a little introduction to what this is.

Florence Ion (00:54:41):
Well, this will look very familiar to you. So this is a Samsung. Let me turn this this on and see if you can. This is a nice little Samsung device. It's pretty. And there's some more of those cameras on the bat. Look how many holes there

Ron Richards (00:54:57):
Are wrong? Oh my God. I'm seriously. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. Oh my God, five too many. I have to look away. I have to look away,

Florence Ion (00:55:04):
But I do need to do the full assessment of this phone. I'll tell you, I've been wielding it over the weekend.

Jason Howell (00:55:12):
Is

Florence Ion (00:55:12):
It, did I say galaxy a 53? I get it. The Galax.

Jason Howell (00:55:16):
This

Florence Ion (00:55:16):
Is a Samsung galaxy, a 53 5g. This is what I've got in my hand right now. And I'm still using the phone, so I don't have like a assessment of it yet, but I can say that it's definitely a mid range device. Yeah,

Jason Howell (00:55:36):
Yeah. Price like four 50 ish somewhere around there. Looks like sprint has

Florence Ion (00:55:41):
For it's the same price as the pixel five a and the pixel five a and what else am I thinking of in my mind there was another phone. Oh, the iPhone se is the other one that I'm thinking of. Yep. Those are all the four 50 range of phones that are competing right now for the mid-range. And I will say that this feels like a, like I said, a mid-range device let's see 120 Hertz refresh train on the display though, which is really nice. So it has some like flagship like features, but then when you get down to the processor, it's still a mid to your processor with six degrees of Ram. And when you're playing games like Pokemon go and you go into that little AR mode, things start to get a little dicey. Mm.

Jason Howell (00:56:28):
So, okay.

Florence Ion (00:56:28):
But it's, it's still high performing enough that I can watch Pluto TV in a picture and picture window and edit my Pokemon in my Pokemon.

Jason Howell (00:56:41):
You know, we work just working.

Florence Ion (00:56:45):
This is how I test folks.

Jason Howell (00:56:48):
Yeah. This is a relatively new device too released just a couple of weeks ago, right.

Florence Ion (00:56:54):
Also a 5,000 mill battery. So I'm very curious to see if this outlasts, those flagships with the, you know, they have more processor or to power up and, and all that jazz. But what I'm really curious about is just this mid-range right now, how this is very clearly a ploy to have Samsung compete directly against what the Google has done with the pixel a series. So I'm very curious to see it now. Unfortunately, this is something I overlooked. I don't actually have a pixel five a in possession, so I haven't been able to test it, you know, compared to like what this feels like, which phone is it? I have a lot of phones on my desk, so we'll see. We'll see, we'll see what these $400 phones get you, because I will say after reviewing the iPhone SC 5g, which I just did recently and seeing like what apple does with their freaking bionic, a 13, a 15, yeah. Bionic chip.

Jason Howell (00:58:01):
That's a, that's a hard thing to compete against what their, what are doom their mid Rangers. Yep.

Florence Ion (00:58:07):
Because if I'm buying a cheap phone, excuse me, an affordable phone for my family member, I want the affordable, I want them to not bother me about it for a couple years. Right? Yep. You could do that with an iPhone easily, especially one that's on the latest silicone that apple can control directly. I'm thinking a lot more now about this pipeline, because what is this phone gonna age like, is Samsung, is it gonna be a part of the Samsung repair program? Like what is this, you know, they say that they gonna have three years of, you know, software updates, but like, what is that really gonna look like? And how's this phone gonna age? The six gigs of am.

Jason Howell (00:58:47):
So, yep. Yep. Well, the, a series, the galaxy a series is a pretty darn popular series for Samsung. Samsung makes a lot of money off of that tier of devices. So hopefully that, you know, that level of buy-in results in that level of support, the support that it deserves. So we will certainly find out, especially as, as Samsung has been very vocal about broadening their support over the years, but then again, it comes around to, okay, well, it can go that long, but is it still a workable, usable, enjoyable experience at that time? And unfortunately we won't know that until it happens. It could be too late. By the time we figure that out. Cool. This was a worthy hardware shack worthy. I think we should. Of the, I think we should see Ron close it up. Slack, like going off about this thing, right? Fine. Let's watch it one going

Ron Richards (00:59:47):
Off about it. I'm I'm a little jealous. I'll just say that I'm man enough to admit that I'm jealous of a personalized bumper.

Jason Howell (00:59:55):
Heck

Florence Ion (00:59:55):
Yes.

Jason Howell (00:59:57):
Well, we'll have to, we'll have to figure out what, what we can do with a

Florence Ion (01:00:01):
Wrong it's the 9 0 2 1.

Ron Richards (01:00:02):
No, I don't. Why is, that's the thing? That's the thing. This is, this is great because flow, didn't ask for it. Like I've got now I've gotta wait two years before I forget we did a personalized bumper for flow and then maybe I'll get one. It's just like, it's like you can't pick your own nickname.

Jason Howell (01:00:15):
Yeah. Yeah. Right, right. So

Ron Richards (01:00:17):
Yeah. So no, no, no. I don't want a bumper now. Okay.

Jason Howell (01:00:21):
See you again. See it again. Oh, the music. I gotta say the music's a great selection as well. It sounds so. Oh, 2.0, right on. Thank you for the hardware SHA flow.

Florence Ion (01:00:34):
Thank you guys for allowing me to just talk about all this stuff I've been doing. Cause

Jason Howell (01:00:38):
Absolutely.

Florence Ion (01:00:40):
It gets lonely sitting here writing fors by herself.

Jason Howell (01:00:43):
Well, and we should also remind folks everything that flow talked about there. She has at least one article, if not a full review on already, right. She's reviewed the, the one plus 10 pro Motorola edge. Plus the Shami 12 pro she did write about the a 53 when it was announced. And so you can look forward to a review. I'm sure. Coming up soon, but that's on Gizmoto. So find flow on Gizmoto for all of that big thumbs up. All right. It's time to venture into the app realm. Let's do it up next.

Ron Richards (01:01:21):
I feel like we should rename the app realm. I like that. I like the, we could do a, we could do a bumper. That's like the beginning of game of Thrones or Lord of the rings or like a map. And it's like the app.

Florence Ion (01:01:31):
I mean, it'll be better than game of Thrones. I'll tell you that.

Ron Richards (01:01:37):
Yeah. anyway, so talking about apps, let me tell you, I got very excited about the app today. If you use Google messages for your SMS texting needs like me you're probably noticing a lot of changes that have been happening. We've talked about 'em here and there. They're all tied into the March Android feature drop, which flow back in March you wrote about. But what's interesting to me at least is how they're slowly rolling this stuff. You know, we talked about the emoji reactions in response with iPhone like iPhone replies, but with iPhone other users that blew my mind when, like I was in a, in a text chain with multiple Android iOS users. And it got a, you know, a laughing at somebody's comment. Like it worked in line no more laughed at, you know, kinda thing.

Jason Howell (01:02:22):
It was awesome. It's so it's so much better. It's so nice to have that.

Ron Richards (01:02:26):
But one of the things that we saw got written about, but when this got tested I don't know when it was a few months ago in India. And Flo actually wrote about it in, in article, back in early March, but message categories, which finally rolled out to me today. All of a sudden I opened up my messages app and at the top of the app, O O of the, the screen there are three buttons to filter the text messages. One button is all, one is personal and the other is business. And let me tell you, it's like Google read my mind with the roll out of this. Cause I was a little really prepared to come this week ranting about how SMS is useless to me now, because I got my, my cell phone number is tied to so many, like give us your cell phone number.

Ron Richards (01:03:09):
We'll give you 15% off and then text you daily about close sales and things like that. Right? So there's so much spam coming into my text messages. That's getting very frustrated. Now, if you tap that personal button at the top, it filters your text messages and just shows you text messages from people you actually interact with. And then if you tap the business one, it filters out all of those business text messages, which is awesome. But then what's even cooler is that they have a setting where it will automatically delete those one time password, text messages that you might get for two factor authentication after 24 hours of receipt. And let me tell you, my, my text messages are just like filled with bank of, you know, my bank of bank of America. We said it, here's my account number bank bank one time passwords, Twitter verification, Facebook, like all the two factor authentication that you have tied to your cell phone.

Ron Richards (01:04:04):
It will detect those and delete them after 24 hours, which is just great for cleaning up spam. And honestly, this is the kind of application smarts and insight I would expect from Google. And if you ask me is a real differentiator to iOS and to other, like I was showing my wife, who's an iPhone user. I'm like, check this out. She's like, oh wow. I wish we had that. Like, this is a real, like a powerful tool and I'm very excited about it. So there you go. There's some other stuff to look at in, in, in this batch of functionality. They've also got no notices to reach out to contacts contacts, if you left that conversation hanging, which happens to be all the time. Like the kind of, this is very Gmail, like functionality. Like it'll bring it back to the top and nudge you to kind of respond. And then if you have your friends and family's birthdays in your calendar, it'll give you birthday reminders tied to your calendar, which is great because I depend on Facebook for that. And that's becoming increasingly useless cuz everyone's leaving Facebook. So

Florence Ion (01:05:00):
Just FYI that relies on you filling in your actual Google calendar for Google to crawl that and send you those reminders. Mm,

Ron Richards (01:05:08):
Sure. That makes sense. It needs the data from somewhere, right? Yeah. You need to, you need to enter that stuff in.

Florence Ion (01:05:13):
It's not gonna just remind you, you know, that your it's your friend's birthday. Like don't rely on

Ron Richards (01:05:17):
That. It's it's like the apex technical school. I can't call you. You have to take the first step, right? It's a, that's a very New York Metro local commercial thing I just did. But but yeah, you gotta enter in those CA those birthdays onto your own calendar and then it will provide it from there. But I'm very, I'm very excited about this. If you can't tell it, it is given me a renewed appreciate of text messaging. So

Jason Howell (01:05:38):
Nice. I have not got this update yet online. I was checking and I went into the play store and did an update or, you know, tried to see if there was an update and it, I didn't have one. So I'm, I'm

Ron Richards (01:05:49):
What, by how that works and why they, why they roll it out so slowly in this way and like, yeah, it's fascinating to me. I know why.

Jason Howell (01:05:56):
Yeah. But I'm looking forward to it. Those are some pretty meaningful updates.

Ron Richards (01:06:01):
I can tell you, man, that filter it. Like literally I got, I mean, you guys saw, I ch I was texting. You were both on thrilled on WhatsApp and on slack. I was so excited. So,

Jason Howell (01:06:09):
And on Twitter.

Ron Richards (01:06:11):
Yes, I did. I did. I, well, cuz now I want it on the web. Like that's the thing is cuz I use messages on the web because I find it much easier when I'm working and to type the text message instead of gonna my phone and typing it. And now I want parody. I want that same functionality on the website. So we'll see if you get it. Hopefully.

Jason Howell (01:06:28):
Well this app section is full of meaningful updates including this one when probably the most meaningful update ever.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:06:36):
I mean I'm not even, you're not even kidding for me. I mean, and talking and talking about Google, using smarts and being able to kind of parse information and, and know what your context is and what you need. Google is actually well, G board rather is rolling out a new feature kind of on the heels of the latest custom text stickers, which I tested earlier by sending my husband an overly early birthday message and also on the heels of 2000 more emoji kitchen emoji, kitchen mashups, which is awesome. You will now soon get motify, which is G board basic basically taking that suggestion strip. And when relevant, there he goes, is Google smarts in there? The, what originally had been the text to microphone will now be changed to a magic magic wand and hitting that magic wand will actually be the well it's called the emoji IE. And then it will basically add emojis within a sentence or a place all text with emojis. So yeah, we're not too many reports and what this looks like and how it works just yet, but you know, motification I kind of awesome. You got it?

Florence Ion (01:07:42):
Yeah. I got it on my messages. It's very cute here. I, I don't know how I'm gonna show this to you, but let me type something real quick. Okay. Let me type hello. So you see, I typed hello and now there's a little like there's a little bond over there.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:07:58):
Magic wand.

Florence Ion (01:07:59):
So I I'm gonna hit that and then it just populated it with those emoji afterwards,

Ron Richards (01:08:04):
Still too

Huyen Tue Dao (01:08:04):
Close. Oh, wow. That's

Florence Ion (01:08:07):
Sorry. I'm just trying to give you a general idea of it. I was not trying to

Huyen Tue Dao (01:08:10):
No, no, just I'm just very impressed by the emojis on there. So I, yeah, it says one relevant. So I'm kind of curious whether this is based on your personal usage. I mean obviously with certain words, like if there's birthday, it probably will insert a birthday cake or like, I mean it already kind of suggests, you know, based on what texture typing, you know, appropriate emojis, but this is interesting. It's kind of taking it one step further and going ahead and inserting it for you. So, so there you go, Google using food. Oh wow.

Florence Ion (01:08:39):
And then it gave me a Kiwi and an avocado and then a bunch of like tasty emoji faces.

Jason Howell (01:08:47):
So I mean, and it is artificial intelligence is making these picks. So there's gonna be some strangeness along the way, too. What I love

Huyen Tue Dao (01:08:56):
Chatbot. Right. It's chatbot.

Jason Howell (01:08:57):
Yeah. Yeah. What I like about this, cuz when you mentioned that for a while now we've had the thing where you're typing it, you know, typing it out and then it gives you the, the emoji symbol that you can tap to insert into it based on what you were typing, the word that you were working on. What I don't like about that implementation is when I do that and maybe this is like, this is a gen, it could be a generational thing. But when I do that, it ends up replacing the word with the emoji. Yes. And like, sometimes I'm cool with that, but sometimes like I just want that to be kind like my punctuation and this kind of treats it like that it's so is we are gonna keep the things you typed and then we're gonna give you some emoji that go along with it. And then I could maybe go in there and delete the ones that I don't want and keep, you know, instead of having to always search for things. I dunno, I don't use

Huyen Tue Dao (01:09:49):
No, I agree. I have that problem too. No, I have that problem too. I, I kind of like this, like I, so I I've been watching a few YouTube channel and I think I was watching one episode of I think like watcher or something and they were talking about gen Z slang and it's starting to include like emojis now and I've never felt quite so old as seeing, you know, a young social media expert. Explain what a, what seemingly to me as an old person now a random, like a random string of emojis, a explaining this kind of complex, like gen Z zeitgeist that a accompanies these emojis. So I kind of just see this as like, oh, I'm just gonna like, you know, hit the button and then I'll just see, 'em like, yeah, 20% cooler, 20% more like, you know, I'm gonna get all Dr. Like hip and you know, with it,

Jason Howell (01:10:32):
They're gonna see right through it though, when they're gonna, they're gonna look at it. They're gonna be like, oh, oh wow. What did an AI create? This? It seems so random. Or, you know what I mean? They're gonna have a, they're gonna have an elevated sense of this stuff.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:10:47):
Ah,

Jason Howell (01:10:48):
Okay. But, but I think it gets us closer. It, it helps us out at least, but yeah,

Jason Howell (01:10:54):
Because I will be right there with you. Cool. Neat feature maps, also getting a pretty meaningful update this week. Maps always one of my favorite apps on the, on my device. I, you know, as far as Google's apps are concerned, I just use it all the time. I use it so often when I don't even need to use it. Like Petaluma's not that big. And yet I use it everywhere I go, because I might save two minutes or whatever. But anyways they're getting the ability now in maps to show toll prices. So you could maps a while ago, got up to eight to where it would show where, you know, tolls are along the way now they're actually, Google's actually working with the agencies to pull back pricing and everything. So you could potentially map out you know, your destination and know in advance the amount of money you're gonna spend on toll at what each toll, you know, costs as you approach that sort of thing.

Jason Howell (01:11:58):
But also, and I think this is, this is one of those, like why did this not happen sooner? Other apps certainly have this traffic lights and stop signs integrated onto the map. So you'll know when an, an intersection that you're coming up to has a light, you know, could, could be useful. But I mean, it's more contextual information. Also some details in the map are getting a little bit more more improvements, a little bit more like outlines for buildings and things like that. So you're gonna see a little bit better kind of resolution, I suppose, as far as the maps that appear while you're are navigating places. So cool. Here you go. Maps is always cool. I always love a good maps update. Although they, they do run the risk maps updates do run the risk of bloating and otherwise really great app. I think updates like this, make me happy. It's when the, the updates lean too far into the discover and all of these other tangential things, which, yeah, I guess it makes sense that it would be in a maps app, but sometimes it feels like the product is either informational or like a, so it's like, they're, they're feeling the tug to go into the social direction. And I don't want my maps app to be social. I just wanted to be really good at location, you know?

Florence Ion (01:13:19):
Oh, Jason, that maps app, you know, I was just thinking about that the other day, because I constantly get pinged. Hey, you were just at this restaurant. And remember that time you uploaded your pictures to that hiking spot that everybody liked that makes you really popular. Will you please leave a review? It started surfacing me like the reviews, my friends leave of other restaurants. And I just, it was like, did I sign up for this? Right. I was trying to,

Ron Richards (01:13:46):
You know, disrupt it's the, the, I mean, I was complaining about the, about the updates to the Google maps app a couple weeks ago. Right. Because when you open it up, now it is very noisy because there forcing the discover aspect of maps, which I'm not going to maps the discover things. I'm gonna maps the find things I already know about. Yep. Right? Yep. Well like I,

Jason Howell (01:14:08):
Well, yeah, I mean,

Florence Ion (01:14:09):
I, I will say, I will say that I have been using Google maps to discover things because over the course of this pandemic, I'm still not eating indoors. So I use the filter on Google maps to find places that are outdoors and that take reservations. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:14:25):
Okay. That helps. That's helpful. Yeah. Yeah. But, but do you open up maps to do that? Like I never open up maps to discover places. That's I end up there when I open up maps to do like a navigation thing or whatever, but if I want to go to a location, like just outta habit, you know, I either just, well usually what I do is I go to the Google search bar on my home page or my homepage, my home screen, and put the location in there. And then it takes me there when it needs to. So I guess

Florence Ion (01:14:56):
The Google maps part, I'm telling you change, change your waste, change your

Jason Howell (01:15:00):
Waste, change my waist. Okay. Right.

Florence Ion (01:15:03):
Come and because, well, I, again, during the course of this pandemic, I had to figure out how to use Google maps so I can get outta the house and do it safely. So I started, you know, I'll pan to a location and I'll go restaurants near this area and I'll keep panning and panning to see like what's on the road that, you know, we're taking on the way theres there's something good. What are other, what are the people saying about this restaurant? That's there? I

Speaker 10 (01:15:25):
Wish you could just turn it on or off though. Like only give it like, if you want it. Cuz I agree. It's like distracting and annoying.

Ron Richards (01:15:32):
Hmm.

Florence Ion (01:15:33):
When you just want directions,

Jason Howell (01:15:35):
I just want to go there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there you go. That's the map's update. And finally flow. You wrote about Plex and a feature that has you happy. I'm sure Ron is listening for sure. Ron's a big fan of Plex. What a what's going on with the universal search?

Florence Ion (01:15:55):
Well, it's a little more than universal search. So what they did is they launched this new like discover feed. And what it does is you go in well, okay. The universal search is all over the entire UI. All you have to do is go into the search icon and look for something and it will return it, you with all of the places that you can watch it. And so that part is what's in beta right now. And that beta feature is a part of this discover feed, which includes a couple other things as well. And so that discover feed not only helps you find new content to watch across the different services that you stream, but it also helps include your Plex library. So it really is like Plex just wants to be your one stop shop. I wanna watch something. What, you know, what should I go look for? And which app will give it to me.

Ron Richards (01:16:48):
That's pretty cool. Cause I gotta tell you like, so I use, I use just watch mainly for that kind of function. The app just watch where if you, you wanna watch something, that's a great kind of like independent app that will tell you all the different services it's available for if it's available for rental subscription or whatever. But I've been trying to switch over to the Google TV app because that has the watch list and, and I'm using Google TV with my TV now, you know, I've moved off of Plex for the main TV watching. And I'm, and I wanna leverage that watch list thing, but because of Google being Google and its agreements and things like that, you can't add shows from Netflix onto your watch list.

Florence Ion (01:17:26):
Yep.

Ron Richards (01:17:27):
Yep. You can't add and not TV shows like you can't like cuz because it's dependent on the deals Google has with the streaming providers, which is BS. Totally. So this is good to see an independent way to have universal search. That's great.

Florence Ion (01:17:42):
Yep. And it's not just like the streaming services, the, the big ones that we all know. It's also the little guys, so C stream, which I think was a advertiser here

Jason Howell (01:17:53):
Mile back at one point. Yeah.

Florence Ion (01:17:56):
Lifetime movie club, which is one that I belong to. And that's of course you do love the lifetime movie. Yes, of course. You know, you know even YouTube will be in results. Youtube TV is not because of what Ron said. That's definitely like we wanna keep this on Google TV kind of thing. Yeah. And I really, I really love it, but I already have a Plex server at home and I've had one, four years. So I don't know how this is going to really touch like mainstream users Just yet

Jason Howell (01:18:32):
Only time will tell.

Florence Ion (01:18:34):
I know it's just Plex is like, I think about it like win amp. Okay.

Jason Howell (01:18:38):
Yeah.

Florence Ion (01:18:39):
It's this utility that really anybody can use. I know really whips the LO's ass. I, I think about it as a utility really? That is just really, sometimes people will find its way to it, but it's really the nerds that are keeping it alive.

Jason Howell (01:18:56):
Yeah, for

Ron Richards (01:18:57):
Sure. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:18:58):
Yeah. You're you're right.

Florence Ion (01:19:00):
And they have a lot of competition in streaming, but by being able to offer this, like we'll just we'll sink in anything pretty much anything we'll let you find it. I, I kind of,

Jason Howell (01:19:12):
I kinda love

Florence Ion (01:19:12):
It. I feel like I'm just gonna default to this for a while and see

Jason Howell (01:19:16):
And

Florence Ion (01:19:17):
See how it feels

Jason Howell (01:19:18):
Right on. Well, I was, I was happy to see Plex that you had written about Plex, cuz we used to, I feel like we used to talk about Plex on this show a lot and actually go back far enough. Plex was actually a sponsor of of TWIT for a while as well. If you go back,

Florence Ion (01:19:35):
Can I plug something very quickly? Sure.

Florence Ion (01:19:38):
I have to say in my discord, which you can find a link to join the community@florencescience.com. We actually have a Plex channel that's just called Plex updates because people are in my, in the discord are constantly working on their servers at home and trying to like fix things or migrating libraries to new Nast drives and all that. So this is like, it really is a common thing that you have to upkeep, which Plex is very clearly moving away from that. Because if you are a Plex user now and you were one before they did this huge changeover, you'll recall your library used to be the front and center thing in the UI. Now it is hidden away in the overflow menu. It is not the main, you know, it's not the main event of the app. The app now is about content discovery. Where can I watch things for free a and now B where can I watch this other thing from a service that I subscribe to?

Jason Howell (01:20:34):
Hmm, interesting. Excellent. Plex keeps on. Rolling. All right. We are going to jump next. The feedback section that is up next. AAA twit TV 3, 4, 7 show AA. We heard from a lot of you this week when you got the first one.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:20:59):
Yeah. And the first one is us kind of closing the loop and closing that's right. Coming full circle with the, with the saga of raw and Dublin, who was trying to figure out how to make live poll papers and material you worked. And we, it, it went, it went to the far beaches, not far beaches, but the close reaches of Twitter. And now we're back again because I know like a couple weeks ago we had Thomas Heger suggest for us that maybe Rory might find music. And in fact, Rory is telling us this week I installed Muay and the photos source and the results are quite good. You need to lock the screen and wake it for the material youth theming to take effect, but it works a charm one little ni is that on the lock screen, the photo is panned all the way to left, which is a bit crap.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:21:47):
If your photo has a subject, thanks for finding this for, thanks for finding this for me. So thank you so much again to Hanser and yeah, it, I did notice that as well. I, I actually looked into the GI, like I looked into the to the code deposit to see if there's like anything obvious. And like, I don't honestly know because I was kind of looking in, it seems like even Muay dimensions that they get for at least I think the wallpaper is launch or dependent. So basically mu has to rely on the launcher to kind of give it the canvas on which it like drops your wallpaper. And this is about the lock screen. So I don't know if that is the case. And like, according to like some of the issues, what they do by default is if something doesn't quite fit the launch or screen, it will center crop it.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:22:29):
And this is not under undergoing RO is saying that they're actually like just taking the left hand. So I kind of wonder whether it's just something that the, that maybe hasn't found it way to the lock screen, especially lock screens are generally, you know, not pable. So it might be something good to kind of drop on their issues issue section of the GitHub. But yeah, definitely glad that mu worked for you and really happy that we came full circle and finding you a solution to your material U slash wallpaper live wallpaper saga. So that was awesome. Love.

Ron Richards (01:22:59):
This is, this is why, this is why we're here. This is why the community's here. This is everyone comes together. We find a solution and it's great. So look at that international too, which is even better. Love it. Yes. Well, speaking of international, our next email comes from Andy from Melbourne Australia who says I would like to add my support for Juan of Columbia. I think a recent email or to all about Android and throw some love Toyota Android tablets. Just for a moment before I continue on, we just had an email from Rory in Dublin. This is from Andy, in Australia talking about Juan in Columbia. This is pretty cool. Like honestly, can we take a step back for a second? I know. I mean like, you know, flow, I know you're talking about that, that phone not available in the us and stuff like that, but we are truly an international show.

Ron Richards (01:23:45):
Yeah. With international listeners like that, that just blows my mind. That's awesome. So thank you Juan. Andy RO everybody. So Andy goes on to say, as part of the Android faithful, my daily driver is a pixel six pro, but I often find a tablet better for productivity tasks as well as consumption more screen real estate than a phone, but more portability than a laptop. I I've used both an iPad apologies for using a four letter word and Samsung tabs, the S four, the S six and now the S eight plus and find the two systems interchangeable. Really. They have their foibles and the Android experience is certainly not inferior overall. I prefer it, but Android is what I'm most familiar with. It must be said, I tire of hearing, even from some of TWITs own luminaries, that quote Android tablets are crap because there, there are no good apps for them. And all you get are stretch phone apps, which don't don't display correctly, cetera, et cetera. I wonder if such commenters have actually used an Android tablet in the past five years, cuz my experience is very different. Hu and TLE PIP signed Andy TLE PIP by the way, TLE

Jason Howell (01:24:47):
TLE PIP is very, very the email inbox by the way, everybody seemed to have TLE PIP and God, even what was his name from last week was you know, thanks for reading my email and I appreciate my new name. You Knowle John Tule, PIP,

Ron Richards (01:25:04):
John, that that's the bad bit. John is perfect. But anyway Andy, you're absolutely correct. And I think that assumption of anybody who dismisses and or tablets really hasn't probably used them recently. I'm right there with you. I love my tablet. I'm using it all the time. It's fantastic. I think it's you know, I, as we enter the year of the tablet as I've dubbed this year hopefully the momentum will just pick up a more people will join us in our tablet appreciation club that we have, even though flow is skeptical. I

Jason Howell (01:25:34):
One of us, one of us, yeah.

Florence Ion (01:25:39):
I gave up on tablets.

Jason Howell (01:25:41):
You

Ron Richards (01:25:41):
Gave up on it, missing the boat. You're missing the boat.

Florence Ion (01:25:44):
Actually. That's not true. That's not true. I do use a tablet if you, you know what it is, it's the surface go three.

Ron Richards (01:25:53):
Wow.

Jason Howell (01:25:53):
How does that compare? What, what is, what is your reason? Like what, what is your reason behind that?

Florence Ion (01:26:01):
Because I just got Chrome on there and it's super small and I just go into Chrome and all my extensions are there and my auto fill and you know, it's the windows. It's fine.

Jason Howell (01:26:11):
It's fine

Florence Ion (01:26:13):
For doing research.

Jason Howell (01:26:15):
It, it serves your purpose. Well

Florence Ion (01:26:17):
It's I didn't buy it guys. It's a review unit. Come on.

Ron Richards (01:26:20):
Is it even better? It's not

Florence Ion (01:26:21):
Likely story

Jason Howell (01:26:25):
Right on. Thank you for writing in Andy. Appreciate your perspective on, on tablets. All right, Flo, I figured it's been a little while. So you, you have the honors this week.

Florence Ion (01:26:37):
You guys are making me cry. I swear to God. Alright. Well what I I'm today I'm crying over the

Ron Richards (01:26:49):
Crickets. Sounds

Florence Ion (01:26:53):
Of the, you know what up Burke, I'm sorry. I did not cue that very well. You're

Ron Richards (01:26:56):
Right. I was, I mean, I was gonna actually you pointed bumper, but the cue

Jason Howell (01:27:05):
Wrong button.

Ron Richards (01:27:05):
Anyway,

Florence Ion (01:27:06):
This is it. This is it. Let's do that one more time though. Just

Ron Richards (01:27:14):
Love it. I love it. This is great. Yeah. It's

Jason Howell (01:27:16):
Fantastic. That's an interesting little twist I've I? Yes. Okay. Sure.

Florence Ion (01:27:24):
Well, this one comes from Daniel.

Speaker 11 (01:27:28):
Moving on.

Florence Ion (01:27:31):
Thank you, Daniel. You are not a chicken by the way. It is just that this show is based in Petaluma and people have chickens in California. So that's why, right? That's that's why there was a Chi again. Anyway, Daniel wrote in, in regards to your conversation about Google tablet, docs, smart home device and episode 5 71, there is something on the market that has tried to do this already. I think the concept will be fantastic if flushed out properly, I think fleshed out properly with good specs and actually utilizing the full Google home interface. I as a wider range and I just triggered her. It's a wider range of hardware that it works on. And I think something like this would be a great multipurpose solution on the Google assistant side. All right. So that link

Jason Howell (01:28:20):
The smart it's the Lenovo smart tab. M 10 F H D gen two with built in.

Ron Richards (01:28:28):
Ooh, no, no,

Florence Ion (01:28:30):
No. Don't do this. Don't no,

Ron Richards (01:28:33):
Don't

Florence Ion (01:28:33):
I can't, I cannot endorse this. I'm sorry. Okay. I'm sorry, Daniel. I'm so sorry. We gave you the email the week and now I'm telling you that I can't

Jason Howell (01:28:41):
Sometimes the email of the week is good opportunity.

Ron Richards (01:28:44):
Thank you. Sharing knowledge. They sent it twice there. So we need two fanfares.

Florence Ion (01:28:50):
I have this tablet for my kid and I can already tell you it is very slow.

Jason Howell (01:28:57):
Oh, okay.

Florence Ion (01:28:58):
It's just in terms like, I, I don't deny that Daniel has made this work in their favor to the way that fits for their particular situation, but I just, this tablet is very cheap.

Jason Howell (01:29:15):
1 77 99. So that cost on that. And

Florence Ion (01:29:20):
All my kid does on her Lenovo tablet is she plays Lego. Dulo she's a very fun game for toddlers. And she watches now Disney plus unfortunately we opened that gateway to her and I will tell you that those are the only two things that it can do, because if you try to do anything else on it, it's like waiting for a very old computer to load a browser page. That's what,

Jason Howell (01:29:46):
Like,

Florence Ion (01:29:47):
So I, I worry about the long term use of a $200 tablet.

Jason Howell (01:29:56):
Yeah.

Florence Ion (01:29:57):
As a smart home controller, because of how frustrating in my get trying to like make, let's say you wanna make action buttons for people to use when they come over to your house. Like, this is how you turn off the slide, blah, blah, blah. I don't know what that would be like on a tablet that is Really just made for watching video.

Jason Howell (01:30:18):
Do you have more faith in, in Google and pulling off this, this sort of form factor, if this is kind of what's in the, on the horizon potentially, this is at least what we

Florence Ion (01:30:27):
Expect. Yes. Because of what Samsung announced The Samsung's home hub.

Jason Howell (01:30:34):
Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay.

Florence Ion (01:30:35):
Yeah. Yeah. And just based on like the cuz I wrote about that rumor situation I wrote about no, it wasn't a rumor, whatever I wrote about that, I think last week it was the news about the

Jason Howell (01:30:50):
Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was kind of a, a leak about the nest hub with Android and then coupled with Michelle's article about finding code that seemed to support that function.

Florence Ion (01:31:04):
Now let me say something else controversial. Oh since we're at the end of the show here, so Victor actually had a great suggestion of a cheap fire, Amazon fire tablet. Now the reason I'm okay with you doing that is because Amazon has actually built out the interface for a smart home controller. I am using right now, a Amazon fire crap. What's it called? The 15 inch big tablet that you put on the wall. I forgot which one that is. I forgot what it's called.

Jason Howell (01:31:40):
It's an Amazon fire tablet.

Florence Ion (01:31:42):
Yeah. It's it's not the tablet. It's like the big photo album thing that you put on the wall.

Jason Howell (01:31:47):
The echo show.

Florence Ion (01:31:49):
Yeah. Is it, I think it's the show 15. Yeah. I think it's the echo show 15.

Jason Howell (01:31:54):
Oh the echo show 15. There we go. We got there. That's it?

Florence Ion (01:31:58):
Yes. The Wal echo. And so I really, even though it's limited in what it can do, I like that it just has the interface built in the, the Amazon interface for controlling the smart home. But if you wanna control things through Google, obviously that's not conducive to your situation. So I do think Daniel's suggestion fine if you know what you're getting into. So let's leave it at that.

Jason Howell (01:32:24):
Yeah. Right. If you, if you kind of have the expectation going in kind of knowing a little bit more about the tablet itself, that's, that's fine. I mean, I think what this shows is there are other, there are options. There are ways to do this. I am very curious to see how Google chooses to do this, but you know, I'm a Google fan. I'm always curious about that.

Florence Ion (01:32:46):
Well, Daniel, I wanna thank you for sending in your email your Email of the week. I,

Jason Howell (01:33:01):
Can I say Burke had to use two hands for that one? The DJ

Florence Ion (01:33:11):
Daniel. I just wanna say, I'm sorry that I, I, I took that as far as I did and I, I didn't mean to,

Jason Howell (01:33:16):
No, I didn't

Florence Ion (01:33:18):
On your suggestion.

Jason Howell (01:33:19):
Don't think you need to apologize.

Florence Ion (01:33:21):
I just really felt a responsibility as a, as a service journalist to offer a service in this instance. So sure. Please don't be afraid of writing for when I'm on.

Jason Howell (01:33:31):
Yeah. The email of the week is not an instant, like everything you say is right. Oh yes. Thank you. Thank you. It's just, it's like a great time for discussion and that's exactly we delivered on the promise of the email. Thank

Florence Ion (01:33:45):
You, Daniel. You facilitated that.

Jason Howell (01:33:47):
Thank you, Daniel. All right. We've reached the end of this episode of all about Android and what can I say? It's awesome. Having all four of us here. Well, actually all six of us in total, there are of us in the studio right now and we have all made our presence known on this show. So many

Florence Ion (01:34:05):
Tvs that's around Jason.

Jason Howell (01:34:08):
I've got a couple of real people in here too on the other side of those TVs. So that's good. He's talking about Victor and I back here. That's right. Be thank you. Be Burke and Victor on the other side of the screen there. All right. Let's start with you, Flo, what do you wanna leave? What do you want 'em to know?

Florence Ion (01:34:24):
Well, I work@gizmoto.com and you can find my work there at a very special link called very called a very special link flow, writes.tech. It'll take you to my homepage over@gizmodo.com. So you can see all of the articles that I've written starting with the most recent. You can also check out my podcast that I do for Gizmoto called gadgets, where we dive into the latest news and the latest devices that are out that is at PCA dot slash GATS. I have to use my podcasts, vanity URL because it's great. And then lastly, if you wanna hear me talk more about Google, I am also on the relay FM network. I host material podcast over there with Andy, not co who you all know and love. So please come check us out over there. That's another great podcast that I do. So thank you guys for having me. Thank

Jason Howell (01:35:21):
You. Flow. Always. Great to get you back on. Thank you. All right. When, what what's you keeping busy with

Huyen Tue Dao (01:35:29):
What's oh, just, oh my God. Excuse me. My phone just decided to just cream out. Cause I hit it with my anyway. What the heck was I talking about? Yes. Hi. I think I'm an Andrew developer. At least that's what my day job is, but occasionally I talk about Android development things at conferences and otherwise online. I guess they're online conferences a lot now, but yeah, that might be changing in the future, but you can find most of my technical talks, including videos and code at the, my website, randomly typing.com and for just general, everyday babble and other things you can find me at queen code monkey, queen code monkey. Yeah. That's what it is. Queen code monkey. I am really thrown off to sit right now on Twitter and Instagram. Yes.

Jason Howell (01:36:13):
Thank you. And always appreciate you at queen code monkey on Twitter.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:36:18):
That's a long one. Yeah,

Jason Howell (01:36:20):
It is. I know that Twitter has like a, oh my goodness. Has like a length restriction on that's. That's gotta be pushing it. Queen code monkey.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:36:29):
It is. It is it, it I've run into that quite a few times. And also I've, I've had to figure out cute ways of like shortening it when I've run into like screen name limits. So

Jason Howell (01:36:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, indeed. Well, thank you. What about you, Ron?

Ron Richards (01:36:43):
Yeah, so everybody can follow me over on Twitter and on Instagram at Ron XO as usual. That's where I've been for far too many years, excuse me to count. But if keeping track of what I'm doing over at score bit in the world of pinball us on social media at score it pinball on Instagram and on Twitter, we made a great announcement last week that we have had over 1 million scores logged on the score it platform since we launched the 1 million score was by user Clark, M U 22, who got it on guns and roses. And so it's kind of pretty amazing. I never thought that we would, you know, like that's a milestone that you would never, you know, like it's hard to fathom millions scores that's yeah. But yeah, very, very proud of that. So yeah.

Jason Howell (01:37:27):
Yeah. That's, that's proof positive that it's, that it's working for people. Right. Indeed's

Ron Richards (01:37:32):
Connected. So yeah. So, so it's in the Google play store. If you wanna download it, check out the app, go play some pinball, have fun,

Jason Howell (01:37:37):
Right on. Good to see you. Ron also very good to see, well, Burke been pretty, you know, seeing you regularly recently since I've returned to the studio anyways, and then now I never left by the way. Right? No Burke was here. He's he's like the OG during, during COVID Burke was here still coming into the studio, making these shows happen. So I can't thank you enough for that. And then now, today who walks into the studio into the office, but Victor in person. So seeing Victor, not on a screen has been really great as well. So he, yeah, this was fun. Yeah. Good to have you back, Victor. Good to see you Burke and you both make this show happen. So without you folks watching and listening wouldn't watch and listen it, listen to it. So thank you for that.

Jason Howell (01:38:28):
You can find me on Twitter at Jason Howell. Also do a show with Micah Sergeant called tech news weekly. So that's twit.tv/tnw. And we have club TWIT for those of you who like your shows without ads just go to twit.tv/club TWIT it's seven bucks a month. You get no ads in your shows. You get an exclusive TWIT plus podcast feed with lots of extra content. That's exclusive to TWIT to club TWIT. And then you get a member's only discord all for $7 a month. And it's just a whole lot of fun. So check it out, go there. As for this show, we publish every Tuesday evening, just go to twit TV slash AA, and you can find all the ways to jump out to your podcast, catcher of choice, or go out to YouTube and subscribe there. Or you can just use your podcast, catcher of choice, do a search for all about Android and you will find us subscribe. And then you don't have to think about it. The awesomeness of all, about Android delivered to you every Tuesday slash Wednesday, let's say, all right, thank you so much for watching and listening. We will see you next time on all about Android. Bye everybody.

Speaker 12 (01:39:39):
Hey, I'm Rod Pyle editor of Ad Astra Magazine and each week I'm joined by Tariq Malik the editor in chief over at space.com in our new This Week in Space podcast, every Friday, Tariq and I deep dive into the stories that define the new space age: what's NASA up to? When will Americans, once again set foot on the moon? And how about those samples from the Perseverance Rover? When are those coming home? What the heck has Elon Musk done now? In addition to all the latest and greatest in space exploration. We'll take an occasional look at bits of space flight history that you probably never heard of and all towards having a good time along the way, check us out in your favorite podcast app