 Hello, and welcome to a very spooky edition of Android Faithful, your weekly source of news, hardware, apps, community emails, interactivity, trick-or-treating, everything you've got under the sun about the world of Android. I am Ron Richards, and joining with me as always is Windwit Now, a little bit witchier than normal. And Miss Aramon. All right. We got the gang together again for a special Halloween episode. No guest this week as we, as with Halloween, I didn't even try to book a guest because I was like, I don't want to ask someone to do this on Halloween night. So and for those of you watching on the video show or watching our live stream, you might notice that Wind has got her spooky magic going on with her witch hat, right? Yes, magic as usual. And to be continued from last week, I'm not wearing sunglasses. And you can see my black eye and all of its glory. Yeah. Unfortunately, not Halloween makeup. Not Halloween makeup. It's actually, but it's actually much better than, imagine how it was last week. It's much better. Audio podcast listeners, you'll have to go to the YouTube to see what I'm talking about. I fell down while running and I landed on my eyebrow and I got a big black eye. But yeah. But Michelle is looking A-okay. A-okay. The most sane one of us. Hopefully. Hopefully stays that way. Hopefully, indeed. So we're going to mix things up this Halloween, this Halloween night, because we actually got an email from one of the Android faithful, which I wanted to share with everyone at the top of the show, which Owen from Canada says been loving the new show reincarnate and more Michelle, but missing hearing Jason every week. Since this week's episode airs on Halloween, I thought I'd share my bug droid pumpkin I just carved. And what are all of your guys' scariest Android experiences? Keep up the great show. Owen from Ottawa, Canada, an ex Subaru family member who misses theirs every day. And there is the spooky Android pumpkin that Owen from Canada put together. So if you're listening through the audio podcast, imagine a pumpkin that has carved with the little Android, uh, uh, droid bot dude, uh, in there and you can go onto YouTube.com slash Daily Tech News Show to watch this latest episode. You can see it. Great job, Owen. Love this. Love the seasonal pumpkin. We're setting a, uh, setting a bar for future Halloween episodes, by the way. We're going to need an Android pumpkin every year now, but, um, but going back to his question, what are your scariest Android experiences? Michelle, let's start with you. What do you think of scary Android experience? What do you think? Uh, something that made me lose my breath for a second. After realizing what I had just done. And for me, that would be the time I accidentally bricked my Pixel 6A because I realized right after that I did the one thing that I warned others not to do. And that was to, um, I forgot exactly how it worked, but there was a moment where Google said, don't flash an older version of the OS because they implemented like rollback detection. And then, uh, I think I did the order of the installation wrong when I was updating my phone and then, uh, all of a sudden my phone wouldn't boot up. Fortunately, I had just gotten it, so I just had it back to Google and they, they returned it just fine. But, uh, I was like, oh my God, what did I just do? Please don't tell me I have a paperweight in my hands. So, um, uh, that reminds me of, I would say a scary experience. I want to speak not of my own, but, uh, on behalf of Jason, when we were doing this week in Google, when he locked himself out of his Google account via his phone via two-factor authentication live on air, um, because he was using Google voice as his number, as his number and he couldn't access it. That was scary. But for me, my scariest Android moment wasn't software related, but hardware related when I had my beloved Nexus, uh, no, I think it wasn't Nexus 5, because Nexus 5 had the rubberized back. It was the Nexus 4 that had the glass kind of, the, the, one of the early glass back ones. Um, and I was at a bar with a marble bar and I was just kind of nervously tapping my phone and then I tapped it on the bar and felt it go chink and the whole thing shattered. And that was the first, and you guys know me, I'm very, uh, anti-case. So after many, many years of saying, I don't need a case. I don't break phones, blah, blah, blah. There it was, I broke a phone. It wasn't even like a good phone break. It was literally just nervously tapping it on a marble bar that did it. Now you weren't, you weren't saving someone from a runaway train or something. It was just nervous. So, um, how about you? What, what is your scariest, any dev horror stories? Oh God, too many and too esoteric for this group. Um, I will say as, as a dev, the scariest thing is hearing that people are doing very heavy computational work on the main thread, which is the thread that runs the UI. So basically it's like, you know, the UI, sorry. So this is the dev thread. The UI thread or the main thread is where all of the UI stuff happens. You draw on it, like scrolling happens on it. So generally you don't do anything heavy on it because what happens, then you get janky, then you get dropped frames. That's when your phone looks like it's janky. And then finding out that, um, someone was doing all kinds of things. Uh, I won't say what because it will basically pinpoint who I'm talking about, uh, was doing all this stuff that you're supposed to do on a different thread in the background on the main thread was very scary. I wish I could describe it more. I'm not going to do that. Um, my second scariest thing was leaving was realizing that I left my next five in a taxi in New York city. Oh man. It was so sad. And by the way, y'all, I'm so sorry. I'm literally sitting in front of my front door and we do have a bowl out, but some, some friendly neighbors are probably going to be, you're going to hear trick or treat and my husband behind me. I'm so sorry. I'll try to meet one. That's all right. All good. It's Halloween. That's the part of the game. So all right, cool. Well, so there's our scary Halloween stories and thank you, Owen, for Canada, for sending that. That was awesome. Um, and I'm telling you now, everyone, the bar is raised. I want Thanksgiving emails. I want Christmas. I want Hanukkah. I want everything you guys celebrate, make it Android and send it in cause that's part of living the Android faithful lifestyle. Right. Um, speaking of the Android lifestyle, when you have some tales from the road for us, right? I did. So I just got back yesterday from Nashville, Nashville from my cousin's wedding. This is the only reason I'm dressed up this year, by the way, is that she had her wedding on Sunday. And so she had to cop to a Halloween theme. She wasn't going to do it for a wedding. So we had a party. So that's why I have a hat this year and other things. So we left through Nashville airport. So on the way in, we have clear. So we just did that. But on the way back from Nashville, the clear line was so gummed up. And also because we talked about it last week, we decided to use our Colorado state IDs for a TSA. And it was great in Google wallet in Google wallet. So if you didn't listen last week, we talked about how several states, including, uh, when zone Colorado allows you to load your state ID into Google wallet. And we joked about what is the practical use of that. Um, and right now it sounds like TSA is the only practical use of it, pretty much the only use of it. Uh, so basically when you go to the TSA check in point, you will see the wireless code and it does have a sign that says, Hey, you can scan your electronic ID. And it was so funny because the TSA, I got TSA guard was ready with the spiel of, okay, sir, bring out your boarding pass and your ID to my husband. And before he'd even noted, noted anything, my husband scanned his phone, you know, with the Colorado ID up. And before either any of us knew it, he went through the confirmation screen that said, Hey, you're sharing your, you know, age, gender, yada, yada, and he was checked in. Didn't didn't have to plot anything out of his wallet. It was all done. And the guard, the security officer was super delighted. He was so surprised that we did it. And he said that in the seven months that he's been working there, no one has used it. We were his first go through with the wallet. And I did it too. Right after him, it was easy. Just had to unlock my phone. I did have to use, maybe my husband did the same thing. I have to ask him. I did have to fingerprint ID went through the confirmation. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. It was awesome. And so there's question in the chat from, because I said, wasn't there a problem with the fold camera and the licenses that was registering it, that was registering it. So that was when I went through Google wallet to register my ID from the state of Colorado with the service that was the issue. But in terms of actually using it, no problem. It just needed that wireless, you know, the wireless, the wireless sharing or QR code. So once it's in, it works. It's just getting my license and wallet was the pain in the ass. But it was great. We were all delighted. It works really well, y'all. And yeah, I mean, if you're comfortable with it, it works really well. And you could delight a TSA officer with it. I love the story here that it happened. You loaded it and then you got to use it all in the span of two episodes here. It's been two episodes. Yeah, it's amazing. I wonder how long it'll take that magic to wear off. Like, you know, there was a period where everyone was new to Google Pay and Apple Pay and it was like, what did you just do with your phone? Now everyone's like, yeah, I've seen that a million times already. Yeah. So that's the thing though. And I think with us being savvy, us having to confirm the information and go that flow is no big deal. And also having from me to having to I don't authenticate myself biometrically, I could see it becoming a problem if a lot of people use it and are just, you know, not that savvy or not familiar with doing a lot of scanning of things electronically. I could see it becoming a bottleneck and becoming less cute. I absolutely. But for us, it was great. We just reased on through. So nice. That's my husband. I'm sorry. He's laughing at some cute kids probably. All right, cool. Um, all right. Well, that said, so why don't we dive into the news? And I know the whole Google antitrust thing has been going on and we haven't really talked about it. So we thought this week was a good time to check in, right? Yeah, it's it's kind of a there's a lot of there's a lot going on. And in particular of note is that on Monday, October 30th, Sundar Prachai actually did testify in court. And a lot of his testimony and a lot of what the, you know, the US US were focusing the US's case focusing on Monday was basically the idea of default search. You know, there was a lot of basically asking Prachai in various different ways in various different forms of the question, are do you believe that search engine defaults are valuable and kind of over and over again? There was like a large theme of basically trying to get him to admit to, you know, the of Google's kind of approach and valuing of default search. They talked about the way back in 2005, the Google, you know, I think top top lawyer was talking to the Microsoft then general counsel about, you know, how terrible and user hostile the Internet Explorer search, a default search engine setting was and about how, you know, it was preventing people users from using their preferred Google or search engine of choice, which at then, of course, was included Google. And it's funny to see now 2023 how that story of, Hey, we're just we're in it for the users and letting people use what they want has turned around a bit to, OK, has this become, you know, user advocacy or is it becoming, you know, big business moves and a lot and something that did come out, of course, and you've probably already heard on the news is like the different deals that Google has made to make their search engine default search engine, of course, very notably is there are many billions of dollar deals with, you know, kind of like exchanges with Apple, but something that is most relevant to us on Android faithful is that, you know, part of this default search has been revenue share of, you know, this kind of like, Hey, paying to be the default search. A lot of this is revenue shared with Android OEMs like Samsung, HTC and Motorola, and it's not just like revenue sharing. It's like, Hey, we partner as we, you know, we make we make in y'all, you know, part of the part of the pay day. It actually, as Pichai testified on Monday, part of this revenue share is basically driving is not the right word and I don't want to imply there's some actual legal thing, but you can say strong arming, you can say paying them to do updates. So motivating them. Motivating them. Yeah, like Google motivated their OEMs to stay in line. Yeah, with with with operating operating system updates, you know, and what do you know what he says here, you know, we're looking at article nine five Google and we've kind of been we've been laughing this whole not laughing, but like, you know, chuckling, you know, these past couple of days because, you know, a lot of the obviously a lot of the blogs and the sites and the press are getting very, very creative and click baiting with their terminology and their language and stuff like that. But what it goes down to it and what Pichai said on the stand was, you know, he confirmed that the revenue share that these companies can get from Google or dependent on devices, getting security updates. So in order to get the revenue share, they need to make sure the devices stay up to date with security updates. And he says more effort goes into developing the next version and updates are costly. So sometimes they make trade offs, which refers to the tendency of brands to less frequently push security updates. And I know that's something that we talk a lot about, like, when are you getting this update? Who, what, you know, what, when did this device get this update and things like that? And, you know, while they're still, you know, making Google the default or they have deals to make Google the default search provider and make sure it's got, you know, prop, you know, prominent placement throughout there, the little bit of the revenue share to push those updates was a revelation in this trial, I guess, right? And again, it goes, it goes, I'm sorry, but it goes back to you know, like Google's do no evil kind of motto from 20 plus years ago now is constantly going to come bite them in the ass because they are balancing shareholder value and shareholder expectations and the need to be a business and drive, you know, to be a company that actually delivers value to their shareholders out there, a publicly traded company. And like reading about this and understanding that they provided financial incentives to the OEMs to make sure the device has stayed up to date, like in business that I've conducted, that makes perfect sense. I'm not surprised in the least that I don't know why this has been a fury storm around it a little bit. I don't know, Vishal, you were going to say something? Yeah, I mean, you have to keep in mind that updates are expensive to do. It's not like it's something that they any OEM can just continue to invest in definitely, especially like the one of the reasons why Google's promise of seven years of OS feature and security up it's so significant. It's just because of how expensive it is to do that. You have to pay all the engineers who are actually doing the maintenance, the work to port all the new features and security patches and everything. You have to pay to have a certification testing done. You have to pay the carrier testing to be done. You have to pay for the infrastructure and the rollout. So, yeah, it's expensive for OEMs to update their devices and any incentive they can get to, you know, offset that cost will be helpful. And of course, you know, very beneficial to the ecosystem as a whole. Yeah, yeah, it's always because I think trying to when I was reading the story, I was trying to think about, you know, how I felt about things and obviously we are not legal experts or, you know, you know, CEOs of multibillion dollar conglomerates. But and I know like the some of the clickbaitiness is like, oh, Google's evil. Google tries to say they're not evil. But as you said, Ron, they are having fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. And that's not that's that's not that's always at odds. It's always at odds. And certainly it's easy to also complain to Google on the other side when updates don't happen, when people love using that effort of fragmentation. So it certainly there is there's something to be said for any competitiveness for the inability or the difficulty that other search engines like dot go and smaller players have in encroaching the space because they don't have this kind of revenue share or, you know, power to play with the OEMs or to throw money around to get, you know, get themselves positioned, you know, strategically. But given the economic system that we are in, I don't think it's that black and white to say this is an evil thing. It's also worth noting that it's not just it's not just free money that Google is giving in exchange for, you know, like it's paying them to have them do updates. Right. Right. We don't know the exact terms of the revenue sharing agreement, but there's presumably a lot of other stipulations like say you have to implement this feature. You have to add this app. You've got to roll out this feature. You've got to do this or that. Right. There's obviously something else in it for Google besides just ensuring that devices they update. That's obviously one of the new revelations that we got. Yes. From Sundar's testimony, but there presumably a lot of other things that we just not privy to. Quid pro quo. Quote, HGC, something like that. I don't know. I can't do what I also think is funny is that like they're talking about strong arm tactics to incentivize the OEMs to do security updates. Like, yeah, right at the end user and I mean, and it's like, and I know it's very easy for us. You know, here we are with a show called Android Faithful and we tend to probably be more pro Google. And I hope that and I know a lot of folks at Google are listening and we thank you for listening and we appreciate it and we love you and you guys are the best. We love talking about you. And I would say like we are more we are, you know, like I'm I do I am a fan. We are rooting for Google. But also one thing that we did on our previous show, one thing we'll continue to do on this show is hold Google to tasks to do ultimately what we think is right for the users. And I can't argue a tactic to get more security updates on phones because doesn't that protect the users? Like that's not a bad thing. So if Google is doing something, you know, not great in our eyes, trust me, I'll be the first to call him out on it, you know, like we got the whole thing of this of this whole everything that we do is built on absolute fairness and and treating Google with the utmost responsibility because they're building this ecosystem that we're all playing in. And there's a lot of responsibility comes with that. And we know I know those people over at Google know that and believe in it also. So yeah, so we'll see. But interesting. So we'll see how the rest of this antitrust case continues very dramatic. But when you did say the F word fragmentation, yeah. Yeah, so Michelle, that's a great segue, right? Right. So if you remember many, many years back, Google used to have this online dashboard where you can go and see the distribution of Android versions online. Well, they discontinued that because maybe they got embarrassed by the constant headlines of, you know, many devices that are running older versions. It was pretty embarrassed. I mean, like we used to we used to track it on the old show like monthly, like we were like we were on top of it. So yeah. So now we do still get some updates, statistics, but only once every couple of months. So the last time we got statistics from Google was back in June. And now earlier this month, Google updates, statistics that are available to developers in Android Studio to reflect the latest data that's available as of October 1st. So according to this latest data, Android 13 has finally taken the top spot. It's the most widely used operating system at approximately 22.4 percent. Second place would be Android 11 at 21.6 percent. Third place is Android 10, 16.1 percent. And then fourth place is Android 12 at 15.8 percent. So these percentages obviously change all the time because OEMs are releasing updates. There are new versions rolling out like Android 14 was just released. And it's just a barely a blip on the radar because only Pixel phones run it and now Samsung starting to roll about, which we'll talk about later. So like right now, the percentage of users who are on supported versions of Android, which would be Android 11 later, you know, is now 59.8 percent, which is up from 54.4 percent back in June. And the last time we were tracking the statistics and it is just interesting to see how the movement of OS version just changed over the last couple of months because we don't get these because we don't get the statistics from Google very often. And they're really the only ones who are able to track this kind of data because they have access to every single device that is running Google mobile services or Google Play Store or Google Play services and everyone, etc. And those are installed on billions of devices worldwide. So really, they're the only ones who can give us this kind of insight into what OS versions people are actually running on their devices. Yep. So I'll take a moment to point out the important factors of this chart and all this discussion is that here we are in Halloween and Kit Kat, Lollipop, Nougat are all still present in the charts, which is great on for kids and trick-or-treaters and things like that. I got many, many candy bars in Nougat in there. My kids love the lollipops they got today. I've been munching Kit Kats all day, so that's great to see. And then secondarily to that, after Android version 9 Pie, how depressing does it get where it's just 10Q, 11R, 12S, 13T? Why couldn't just indulge us? We know you use the names, wasn't Q was Quince and R? Like they have dessert names. Let's just bring it back, Google. Come on, guys. Yes, it's like they actually do use them, but they just aren't sharing them, which is weird, which is weird. I mean, it makes sense if when you think about it, like obviously for us English speakers, it's easy for us to guess, you know, oh, this comes next alphabetically, right? But if you're translating it for other languages, like how are you going to translate Quince Tart and then Red Velvet Cake and then like have it make sense? Oh, how are people going to know that this comes after the previous version? Just use the Red Velvet Cake for fun. Why? Where's the fun, Michelle? Come on, can we have some fun with Android again? Like I haven't had any fun since version 9. They should have just had localized versions. I just pick, you know, like local treats. I actually, between myself and my friend, my old job, Vishnu, we were like, we were like suggesting like Vietnamese and like Indian treats too. Just like, come on, just globalize it a little bit or something, you know, but yeah, then we don't want us to have fun. No fun, no more speculating. So, I don't know, boring. Maybe Sesame Street Integrations, sorry, Engineer Brain, Sesame Street Collabs or something, you know, like this version of Android brought to you by the letter U or something, like something like that. Have some fun with it. Come on. Yeah. But yeah, but definitely very interesting. I love seeing this stuff. I love seeing the fact that so KitKat is the oldest version that's still out there. Kiosks around the world still running KitKat and Lollipop. Actually, about that, a lot of those kiosks and stuff that are running Android aren't even counting the statistics because these are all statistics that count devices that connect to Google Play. And a lot of kiosks and embedded devices, they don't have Google apps at all. So, this percentage of users of devices that are actually running those older versions is probably higher than what's actually shown here. Yep. And everyone should go follow Michelle on threads for this. I'm sure you posted this everywhere else, but this just happens to be your threads link. I love how Michelle mixes up his links. But he actually wrote, because it's hard to read in that chart what the actual percentages are, but did, you know, good job on doing the math and the subtraction and stuff like that. So you can see what each version is on his post and what the change to the last time that we saw it was. So, very cool. But this also means that basically large markets like China and even, you know, kind of not non-Google Play store or things like Amazon five tablets, they don't count in this and all. So we don't actually, so you're, as you're saying, we actually have no idea what the, you know, major, another major market has in terms of distribution. This is just the segment that fits in the Google Play box. So things could be totally different in China. Absolutely. Which would be cool to know. You need. Oh, you never will. Cool. And Clinton in the chat said he saw Michelle amassed it on Michelle does hit them all. He's a hardworking man. Hardest working man in Android commentary. We love him. So, all right. So keeping on the topic of Google and Android, a couple of little notes in around Android that we want to make sure everyone was aware of been tracking this story related to issues with Android 14 for some users accessing storage. Google has now in the support area for Pixel phones confirmed this is a known issue. They said they're aware of an issue occurring on some Pixel devices, Pixel six and later that have gotten the Android 14 update and have multiple users other than the primary user. And multiple users include users, guests, child users, restricted profiles. It does not include work profiles. And basically what's happening is that depending on the device, the user, the primary user will be unable to access media storage. They're also seeing a boot loop issue that is happening, which is no fun. The Pixel is starting boot loop. So, they're expecting that there's gonna be a fix for this rolling out soon. So, stay tuned if you're dealing with it. And they're sorry for the inconvenience that appreciate everyone's patience. So, I don't know, Michelle or Win, have you either run into this or have we seen how rampant this is? Goodness, no, that's scary. Yeah, that is a really, really bad bug. Especially to have on the stable release of Android 14, that's not good. I mean, the whole Android 14 journey has been a little bumpy in terms of with the delay. And then now this, it just seems, something, a little gremlin slips through the cracks. I feel for the developers chasing that stuff down. Yeah, and it's bad because I think at a lot of places I've worked, basically losing user data at least should be the biggest sin you can commit. Anything else is fixable, but if you're losing user data, that is no bueno. And I'm, or at least having them lose access to it in a very significant way. It's just, ah! Yep, so. So, if anybody's suffering from this, stay tuned and we hope you aren't, but... Yeah, write in and vent, write in and let us know. So, we can do those right. Additionally, over on the Android developers blog a couple of days ago, they announced some policy updates centered around app quality on Google Play as the Google Play team continues to protect users and ensure that developers are elevating the quality of their apps. And this latest update is basically setting some guidelines for safe generative AI apps, excuse me, safe generative AI apps. And this kind of ties into Google's commitment to responsible AI practices. And we all know that AI is a hot button topic. And so they're introducing some more policies and guidelines if you are developing an app that uses generative AI, stuff that you need to follow to make sure that it is remaining to be a safe app. And then additionally, they're expanding some privacy protections, you know, across app permissions. Per the new policy, apps will only be able to access photos and videos for purposes directly related to app functionality. So apps that have a one-timer infrequent need to access these files are requested to use a system picker, such as the Android photo picker. And it's basically, again, it's like saying, hey, we have all these permissions just because we have them doesn't mean you need them. And if you have an app that doesn't have a need to access media photos or videos, then don't do it. And instead use the system picker, which I think are some good changes. So when as a developer, how closely do you guys follow these kind of guidelines? So if you're at a good shop, you try to follow them closely where your business product people allow you to, but you really do try to, especially in some of these cases, especially you may get warnings or get booted or otherwise get your hand slapped by Google. Yes, you follow them at a bad shop or someone. Let me rephrase. There are companies that will basically not care until they get their hand slapped. So for me personally, it's of the utmost importance to follow these things, mostly because I want to be compliant and I don't want any surprises for my product people. But it happens, y'all. Sometimes the business makes some decisions, doesn't it? They make decisions or they don't give us time to do things and please follow them death here. So it kind of goes both ways. And yeah, it's just like any other person, right? If someone gives you, if you have a little bit of leeway, you might decide to take it. But yeah, good developers care. I think also one thing is good developers are actually keeping track of these changes and policy announcements. Because a lot of developers will only start caring once they get warnings and announcements in the Play Console versus these blog posts that Google put out. Like proactive about it. The media thing you talked about, like that is not taking effect until early 2025. That's when they'll actually crack down and force apps, only apps with core functionality reminding on it to actually use those permissions. But if you're not following this announcement, you're not reading this announcement or like sign up the newsletter, you might not miss this. You might not see this happening until it's like you only have like a month to do it or something. Yeah, and it definitely, as you said, it definitely takes a good developer. And at the same time, it's not like this stuff is behind a hidden handshake behind a lot of lock keys. You just have to pay basic attention and know what you're looking for and be understanding us. To some degree, there are places that just don't have experienced developers to know that and then they have to be reactive. But... And another thing is like, a lot of places where they like hire a developer, like a contractor to work on something, but like the actual company that's using the app is not like logging into the console. They're not getting, they're not keeping up with the news. So then they only get this announcement, like a week before the enforcement goes into effect and they contact the developer. Like, hey, can you fix this? So like there's a lot of complicated things. You can't assume like the company that made the app is always the one working on it at that moment. That's very true. Always possibly. Yeah, it's a very complicated story. And we actually got a great question in the chat, which is basically like from Cousin of Jaw again, says, how do the hand slaps of being booted for dev work on an app, does it ding you personally or only the company? I gotta imagine it just dings the company, right? Not the developer personally. Usually, again, it depends on the shop. A good place kind of recognizes that maybe the first time it happens, they realize, okay, maybe we have a discrepancy or something we're not paying attention to, let's make a plan to figure, you know, for the next, let's pay more attention basically. Let's be more careful next time. And I mean, usually I think we, I've been at places where we made mistakes or we did something wrong. We didn't pay attention. You're human. Yeah. As long as you're upfront about it and you're at a place that understands that and you make, you learn from your mistakes and try again, then you're good. I'd say there are bad shops and I've had friends personally experienced this where they love throwing, there are people places that will, they will throw you under the bus. So it really depends on. You're talking about the actual organization where the developers are, but in terms of Google, it's these things happen on the play console. Yeah, all the time. But against the app and therefore the company submitting the app, Google doesn't know who the developer who did that is, right? They're not calling it. Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, it's always, sorry, my bad. I misunderstood. Yes, it's usually against the publisher itself. So if you are, that's why it's always good to have an LLC y'all for independent people. Well, yeah, I understand. But yes, no. Great example from my point of view. Like, so my app, Scorbit is, you know, in the Google Play Store, I've hired developers to work on it, but the app is in the Google Play Store against our company. And so if there's a problem with it, we see it on the company level, then it's up to us to go talk to the developer who made the change and figure out why and figure it all out. It's the organization. It's who the app publisher in the Google Play Store is not the individual developer. Yeah, so yes, 100% publisher responsibility. Got it. Cool. All right, interesting stuff. So with that, we're gonna move right along and wanna take this moment to kind of remind everybody that you can support Android Faithful over on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Android Faithful. We love our supporting patrons. They're fantastic. We've got multiple levels that you can sign up for. Five bucks a month gets you access to our Discord and that's the base level where you can help us choose a story to talk about on the show. And for $10 a month, you get all that plus an exclusive sticker and access to our ad-free podcast feed. And then of course at $20 a month, you get the sticker, the Discord access to ad-free podcast feed, but you also get a t-shirt, which is pretty awesome. And then if you're crazy, if you wanna pay 500 bucks a month, you can come on the show and be with us, which I'm daring somebody to do. But no matter what level you do, everybody gets to participate in helping us pick a new story to talk about on the show each week. And this week we had, we always have three stories, a little bit of a slow news week. Brian commented, gotta say a week set of choices this week. It was a slow news week. But so coming in last was Samsung's 2025 phones could be pricier than ever. Talking about a rumored price increase about Samsung as it relates to Qualcomm, that only got 11% of the vote. 23% of the vote coming in second got, yes, Google search bars, search bars and Google apps have gotten bigger, specifically talking about Gmail and other Google apps and how the search bar has gotten bigger. But the winning story that we're talking about this week got 66% of the vote is the Pixel 8 Pro display is more power efficient than its competitors. And this is coming out of a report after digging in with the Pixel 8 Pro that its display is, you know, as it says, quote unquote, leaps ahead of Samsung and Apple, at least according to here on 9 to 5 Google, Michelle's reacting. It's a quick note on that. When you said leaps, I actually talked with Dylan, Raga, who's the guy who is doing the display analysis for XA Developers. Just a quick note, a lot of places have misinterpreted what he said when he said leaps ahead. He didn't mean that as in, it leaps better than Samsung and Apple. It's just slightly better. They have leaps ahead in place of Samsung and Apple. English is fun, isn't it? Yes it is. Right? So the Pixel was behind Samsung and Apple and with the Pixel 8 Pro, it leapfrogged over them. But only marginally ahead as opposed to the connotation of leaps ahead where the Pixel 8 Pro now is like several yards down the field away from Apple and Samsung, which is not the case, right? Right, that's a great clarification. Thank you for that, Michelle. And here we've got Dylan's post on X where he's talking about the display power efficiency comparing it to the Pixel 7 Pro and Apple and Samsung. And here you can see how it leaps ahead, walka-walka. But yeah, the Pixel Pro at 960 nits at 3.0 watts which is above the Pixel 7 Pro at 960 nits at 6.4 watts. So yeah, so here you can clearly see that it's ahead of Samsung and Apple, but not leaps ahead, so. I think the real takeaway is just how power inefficient the Pixel 7 Pro's display was. It was really bad. That's the real story here, is how bad the Pixel 7 was. That's the real story, look at it, yeah. Too funny, so. I think Dylan also mentioned it, like he called it out as being really power inefficient. Yeah, well, that's great. Good job on Dylan. I don't know, I've been using the Pixel 8 Pro. You know, I think the display is super, super nice. It continues to be my daily driver, it continues to be doing well. You know, I don't have an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy S5 3 to compare it to, nor am I looking at the wattage usage of the displays, but hey, it looks pretty for me, so. I did use the Pixel 8 as my camera at my cousin's wedding. Oh, phew, good, real good, real good, y'all. I gotta admit, I've been getting some really good pictures on that phone. It's been, you know, to the point where is that my kid's soccer game this past weekend and it was like picture day, and I snuck in there, took a picture of the team, and I sent it to the other parents, and someone's like, oh my God, your camera's so good, right? Like it came out really, really well. I would show that photo, but it's like 10, five-year-olds, which I don't think is appropriate to show without permission, so, yeah, but. It's good, y'all, I mean, I mean, we're biased, of course, but I'm hyped. I'm taking this camera to Japan, hopefully I have some good Japan pictures to show you when I get back. All right, well, so go to patreon.com slash android faithful, and we can vote in the Patreon pic for next week's show, and we're gonna have some cool other stuff coming up for Patreon coming very soon, so those of you who are on board Patreon, we thank you and expect cool stuff coming soon. Those of you thinking about it, hopefully you'll take the leap and support us. We really appreciate it, guys. We'll come back. But we're talking about cameras in the Pixel 8 Pro, and I feel like that's a great segue to go right into hardware because there's a new player has entered the stage. How's that, Michelle? I don't know if I called it new because. No, but a new device, a new device has entered the stage. Yeah, so Xiaomi announced the Xiaomi 14 series, which is actually the first smartphone to feature Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 that we talked about last week. And of course, the phone is more than the chips that it has a new display, tech, new cameras, new charging, stuff like that. So overall, there's so many things Xiaomi's package of the Xiaomi 14 series. It's their flagship, their highest end device series. They have a lot of devices, and this is their top end device series. So the Xiaomi 14 has a 3,000 nit brightness display. I don't know what it is with the smartphone makers this year, but they're all going in. All in on the net. Super, super, duper bright displays. It's all about the net. We have the Pixel 8 series with 24. Did I just disconnect? No, you're still here. You're good to test. Pick it up from there. You're good. Okay, yeah, so I don't know what it is with smartphone makers this year. Like we had the Pixel 8 with 2400 nit ultra-bright display. Now we have the Xiaomi 13 series with a 3000 nit brightness display, maximum brightness. Both the Xiaomi 14 and the Xiaomi 14 Pro have an LTPO display that goes from one to 120 Hertz. They also have new camera sensors. They have a light fusion 900 image sensor. On the non-pro, you have a one to one over 1.3 image sensor size. On the pro, you have a variable aperture lens that goes from F 1.42 to F 4.0. You also have an upgraded ultra-wide camera to 50 megapixels. You have Xiaomi loop liquid cool technology. You have, of course, super fast charging on both models, 90 watt wire charging on the non-pro, 120 watts on the pro. And both of them have ultra-fast 50 watt wireless hypercharge. Other features that they both have, they have four microphone arrays with stereo Adobe Atmos speakers. And interestingly, the non-pro has a USB 3.2 port that maxes out at five gigabits per second versus the pro that has a 10 gigabit per second transfer rate. And I thought that was interesting because it kind of mimics what Apple did with the iPhone 15 series. The non-pro has like a five gigabit per second USB two port, the pro has a 10 gigabit per second USB three port. And so like these phones, of course, they were only announced and they're only available right now in China. So, you know, if you are listening to this show somehow and you live in China, you can go pick one up right now from one of the stores there. Or if you live in Hong Kong, you can go to that store that everyone seems to get every phone from that's available on like immediately after, I don't know why it's skipping me off the top of my head, but Ben, I saw he already has one in his hand. And I'm like, how do you guys get these devices so quickly? We have to wait months. Like I don't know when Xiaomi's gonna release this globally, but we gotta wait a couple of weeks at least before we can get our hands on the Xiaomi 14 series. They also announced the Xiaomi, they went the full like lifestyle approach here because the Xiaomi Watch S3 got announced as well as their Xiaomi S Pro mini LED TV, right? And they're built in refrigerator door. Yeah, you gotta keep in mind, Xiaomi makes literally everything. You can fit a house full of stuff that are only made by Xiaomi. They're washing machine, right? Which is cool. But yeah, you know, Xiaomi with the major update to the 14 line and with that also came OS updates, right? Yeah, there is some interesting software related stuff. Unfortunately right now, because we don't really have our hands on a Xiaomi 14, we don't really know what they mean by a lot of the words they're saying because as you'd expect, if you read Xiaomi's press release on HyperOS, there's a lot of, I'll just say it buzzwords in it. Cross and intelligent connectivity. Like, for my understanding, basically HyperOS is a rebranding, but not just a rebranding of MIUI, but they're trying to basically come up with a new branding for their entire operating system suite across their devices. So HyperOS is not just their Android based OS for their smartphones, but it's also their OS for their IoT products. It's their OS for their smart watches, their OS for their TVs. It's the unified branding for their operating systems for all the devices they make. And yeah, it is basically just an evolution of MIUI. It's not like a, it's not Android. It is still Android on the Xiaomi 14 series. It's running Android 14, but it's just a new branding and presumably some new features and some new UI changes. We just don't know what because we don't have our hands on the phone. Well, it's exciting. Nonetheless, good job to Xiaomi. I love the buzzwords. That's always fun, right? So looking forward to somebody getting their hands on it and telling us what it's like and what all those buzzwords actually do. But yeah, so. In other phone news, and listen, you know, everyone knows we love foldables. Everybody, I think we talked a little bit about rollables, right, the rollable phones. I'm absolutely loving the next stage of phone, which hopefully Lenovo is bringing to reality. And this actually came up during last week's show, but we didn't have time to talk about it. It wasn't truly breaking news, but Lenovo and Motorola displayed their adaptive devices, which are basically flexible screens. And if you're listening on the audio show, we're looking at the visual, the photo that they show, imagine a Android phone vertically oriented, as usual, but wrapped around a wrist like a watch, right? The whole display, like a wristband, right? Like an 80s wristband almost, right? So, and you know, this is a concept device that Motorola's developing, and they've got a video that shows that where, you know, the user is wearing a watchband or a wristband and clearly the phone attaches to it through somehow through some sort of clip or magnet type thing and then wraps around the wrist and then it goes on to show the phone sitting on its own kind of easel or kind of its own kind of stand, which is the foldable display, right? The, I don't even know what to call this. Foldable doesn't feel, bendable, bendable, bendable feels more accurate here, right? But it's got a bunch of different configurations, you know, in addition to the watch version where it wraps around the wrist, it's got one where the bottom third is folded down, so the phone is up kind of showing that. Another one where it's folded in half, almost looking like a flip phone. I don't know, what do you think this is? Is this the future of phones or? Maybe. What's this thing on your wrist? No, right, I want that person to turn their wrist over and then shake their wrist a little bit to see if it actually stays on. Look at the clip, do you see the little clip that you see right there? Like there's a little pad there, right? Oh, wait, for real? Yeah, so we're doing back into the left, like the Zapruder film from JFK here, but the person is wearing a watch band that has a flat panel on it, and then the phone kind of snaps onto it and wraps around it, so I bet you it's staying connected that way. I was hoping it was like those little slap bracelets we had like in the 90s, you know, where you just kind of- It's a slap bracelet, that's what it is, it's a slap bracelet phone, that's how they should be marketing it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but then of course, parents are sort of worried about slap bracelets like cutting kids' wrists, I'm so sorry, not to imply any soft harm or anything, but yeah, could you imagine the safety? But yeah, I like it, like, I really like that there's one formation where it almost looks like a snake, kind of like almost a cobra, where there's like an S-curve in it, and I like the idea of it, and of course, everything is ridiculous until it's not, so it does feel very sci-fi, which is where we'd like to see things go, right? Just different. I do love the sci-fi element of it. The other video that they showed is like a, you know, kind of slice of life video where a woman folds the phone in half to set it up to take a picture of herself, and she takes a selfie of her top, and then selfie of her shirt, you know, the top that she's wearing, and then it uses AI to generate a theme based on her shirt's print for her phone. So like we've got the merging of the form factor of the phone folding and being able to do it with the AI elements of Motorola to generate, ooh, and we get a great shot of her snapping the phone onto her wrist bracelet to then make the wrist version of it, and this is probably the best example of it where we see it snaps right on there and then folds around it, which is just ridiculous. I'm sorry. It is. You know, honestly, matches her outfit. If it actually like is sturdy enough for you to take it on like an outdoor run, because you know a lot of people get those straps to like put their phone in like a waterproof. If it's actually like somewhat water resistant and able to hold on while you're running, I could see action people like to use. You know, I would like that, Michelle. Actually, as you said, because that's already a use case that we have today is like your wearables and your fitness things on your arm. I do think that's interesting because then it's out of your way. It's not, because that's the one thing it looks very bulky, and I think most people would not like that past like 15 minutes of novelty, but being out of the way on your arm even would be super interesting. I like, I do like that. Yeah. So all of this came from, all of this came from Lenovo's Tech World 2023 presentation, which you know, now I kind of wish I had watched live if I'd known that it was gonna have this kind of crazy stuff happening with it. So, and you can go find it, just search for Motorola adaptive display or foldable and you'll find it on there. I love it. Motorola, you're crazy. UBU continue on. It's fantastic. So. Love it, love it, love it, love it. Well, to go with something new, we have something old, and not necessarily old. Let's call it retro. Retro is a little bit kinder. So there is gonna be a new version of the Galaxy Z Flip 5. For those of you who miss your SGE 700s, this was an old phone back in the day. It was an iconic phone for Samsung because it was one of their first that was a built-in antenna. So if you kind of remember the old flip phones, the little, you know, one horn sticking up on the side, which was your antenna. Some of them actually did have the antenna that pulled out. I remember mine. I broke it really fast. But yeah, the Samsung SGE 700 was a big step up. And it was pretty, I think it was pretty sexy phone. It had like a very distinctive front display and a very nice kind of blue. What did they call that? Like their indigo blue color. Well, if you had one and you missed it and you are noticing that Samsung is getting back into obviously flips these days, there is the Galaxy Z Flip 5 Retro for you, which is specifically a homage to this phone. It uses the same indigo and silver colors, color ways as the original phone did. And in fact, the front display, the flex window is styled to be like that old front cover of the SGE 700. Same colors, same font. They even have like pixel art style, just to kind of give you that retro vibe. And yeah, it's an attractive version of the phone. And I think, you know, that phone, the SGE 700 did end up with having over 10 million units shipped, which is kind of amazing for any phone, especially of that era. So just a celebration of a very, you know, very attractive and successful Samsung. So I think that's kind of goes in with the branding that and marketing that Samsung has done. And they did open their Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event with a look into the past to be like, hey, we've been doing, we've been innovating and succeeding forever. And so this seems appropriate to kind of dress up their new hotness with the old hotness. So if that's you and you miss your SGE 700, there's a flip out there for you, a Galaxy Z Flip. I do think, I think it's fascinating that they're doing this. I think it's genius. And I also want to applaud Samsung for maintaining, for establishing and maintaining their own Samsung tomorrow Hall of Fame, highlighting the 10 million seller club and like showing the nine phones that have sold more than 10 million units across their history, going back to 2002 to 2011, which the audacity of doing this to put whoever put this together is just like, and this is a great, if you can go, if you're listening to the audio show, go find it online, you can find, just look for Google Samsung 10 million seller club. You'll find the graphic we're talking about, but it's this little info graphic with all this information about the various phones. You know, and I love it's like after five other phones, they get to 2008 SGHJ 700. And the description is another great phone with superior function design and price. That's it, no other real features or function of it. Yeah, it's another great phone. We're so great. We're patting ourselves on the back. We're Samsung, look how great we are. It's like, oh my God. It's like that SNL joke, the five time club where it's about Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, and they start congratulating each other. It starts to feel like that. Like, yeah, we know, you Samsung, you probably have many, we get it. You're a star, you have many notches in your belt in regards to successes, but you know, it's cool. They run in with it. But hey, if you're a Samsung enthusiast, this is cool. This is cool as heck. It is a cute phone. And if Google came out with a G1 version of a Pixel, I would be all over it. Oh dude, I would buy that in a second. I would buy that in a second. That is true. Google, if you do that. What is the one thing that even Android is not susceptible to? It's that everyone loves nostalgia. Nostalgia always works. And I think this is gonna be a trend that we'll see with other phones picking up in terms of like, you love this phone 20 years ago, now here's the new version. And we saw it with the Motorola Razr, right? When it came out, it was, you know, it was like, you love the Razr, here it is, here's the new one, right? So. They even had the iconic, the Motorola Razr dialer, like just that. Oh yeah. Throwback dialer. Yeah. Oh, as Techno mentioned in the chat mentioned, yes, I would buy also a nostalgic Nexus phone. Oh God. If you could do me a revamped or reincarnated Nexus 5, also buy in a heartbeat. I also forgot to, oh, sorry, go ahead, Michelle. No, I mean, I was just actually like cleaning out my closet. I discovered my Nexus 5, my Nexus 4, my Nexus 6 and 6B. I'm like, I forgot I still had these. You should mount them. You should make like a shadow box with them all mounted. And then, yeah, so yeah, that'd be great. I should do that for my background. I need you to read you my background. That's a great idea. That's a good idea. Shuttle box. All right, cool. Well, we got one more hardware story here about a little bit, a little more future forward, right, Michelle? That's right, Ron. So, you know, we've been talking about the OnePlus Open a lot because both Ron and I have one. We got it for review. And a couple of details that we're missing that we didn't know about when we first got the phone during the briefing was that the OnePlus Open actually supports stylus input. And this is something we asked, like I think someone had during the briefing, does the OnePlus Open support stylus input? And they said, no, it doesn't. But lo and behold, a couple of weeks later, one user on Reddit decided to try out the Oppo Pen, which is a pen that's exclusively available in China and was released for the Oppo Find N2 as well as the Oppo Find N3, which if you'll recall is identical in hardware to the OnePlus Open. So, lo and behold, it works. It works on both the inner display and actually the outer display, which is a new feature of the Oppo Find N3 slash OnePlus Open. And not even the Z Fold 5 supports pen input on the outer display. So that's one leg up. That's one thing that the OnePlus Open slash Oppo Find N3 has over the Z Fold 5. Although there's no way to actually buy this Oppo Pen outside of China. Like I said, it's exclusive and it's like over a hundred bucks. So if you wanted to take advantage of pen input on your OnePlus Open, you're gonna have to import this stylus from China. I don't actually know what stylus technology, like what digitizer technology Oppo shipped on this device. So I couldn't tell you whether or not the stylus you wanna use is compatible. I know that someone tried the Surface Pen, the pen that comes with the Surface Laptop Studio and that doesn't work. The OnePlus Pen that comes with the OnePlus Pad, that doesn't work also because that has to be paired by putting it on the side of the device. And there's no way to do that with the OnePlus Open. But yeah, it's surprising that this device does support pen input. And there are a couple of other things that are also surprising about this device. Like the other day, someone discovered that you can actually put this device into a tent mode. OnePlus didn't tell us that that's possible, but another user on Reddit figured out that if you just fold your device like a tent, I'm showing you for video listeners like this, and you put it down and you open a YouTube video, if you get it at the right angle, you can actually have YouTube video playing on the outer display while the inner display is turned off. And that's something we didn't know about either. Google, like OnePlus didn't point it out during the briefing or during launch event. OnePlus is so wacky, I love them. No wireless charging, but tent mode and stylus support, which I know some people love styluses, so. I love it, yeah, it's like, it works with a stylus, but you can't get the pen, so that it works with. Oh, that also, yeah. I mean, you can, but you're just gonna pay for it, but yeah. Yes, OnePlus always full of surprises there. Good stuff. All right, cool. We got some apps news going back to Samsung land. Yes, if you have been eagerly waiting for OneUI 6.0, which is of course the flavor of OneUI built on Android 14, well, if you are in Europe, specifically Germany, the UK, sorry, I've lost my list all of a sudden, but yeah, if you're in Europe, you will probably be getting the OneUI 6.0 beta rolling out soon, if you are very interested and wanna check numbers, the firmware version is 6916BXXU3BWJM. Go outside your car, outside your car lights are on, just kidding. But yeah, it's been a while, and of course, it's a big surprise given that we just got Android 14 on October 4th and here we are on Halloween 9 October 31st and people are getting the beta program rolling out with the stable release, but there you go, OneUI 6 on the train, rolling out the station, coming to a country, a European country near you very soon. I believe Germany already had the rollout going and let me see, let me try to find my list. Is it UK, Norway? I'm sorry, I've just totally scrolled past my list, but yeah, if you're in the EU, look to be getting that OneUI 6.0 beta roll out soon. Come on, all those features. Ron, I think you're muted, I'm bad. Yay, Samsung users, enjoy. Yes. All right, go back to Google land, Michelle, what do we got with maps? Oh, back at IO, Google announced a new immersive view for routes feature that basically gives you a really beautiful, detailed view of the route you wanna take, say you wanna bike along the water to the Palace of Spine Arts in San Francisco with the new immersive view feature that's rolling out in a couple of cities, including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dublin, Florence, Las Vegas, London, a bunch of other cities that you can read about on the Google blog. You can see a multi-dimensional view from start to finish of your route and you can scroll through in the timeline, basically seeing what the real-time weather conditions will be like, so you can plan whether or not it's gonna be raining or what you should wear based on the weather conditions on your route. And this feature, Google says uses AI. I don't exactly know how it's used to AI, but I wanted to point that out, everything uses AI. The next feature that they announced is lens, Google lens integration in maps. This was previously called search with live view and this also uses AI to help you acclimate yourself whether you're navigating a new city or looking up local gems. So all you gotta do is tap the lens icon in the app and then you can lift your phone up to find information about you by ATMs, transit stations, restaurants, et cetera. I'm sure if you're like navigating a new city, you've probably done this before, the new live view where you like just point your phone up to like look around and identify things. This is basically just a supercharged or more smarter version of that. And they're expanding this feature to more than 50 new cities, including Austin, Vegas, Rome, South Hollow and Taipei. And then they're also rolling out new detailed maps to everyone. So if you notice in the past couple of weeks the colors of the maps app have gotten like bluer and like a more like a different tone. I think Ron is showing that right now on the video feed. This basically helps you more easily distinguish the roads from the grass and all the other stuff. And also they're including more realistic buildings so that you can help better orient yourself as you're driving downtown or like you need to find where you're going next. There's all sorts of other things that are coming in the Google Maps app that are available on phones and iOS, Android and also in Android Automotive. And there's also some changes related to EV information. They're, I think they're rolling out more helpful charging station information. So like, you know, if you rely on finding charging stations through Google Maps, you'll be able to find out whether or not the chargers are fast, medium or slow. And you can also see when the charger was last used so that you don't go to a broken charger accidentally. And these are rolling out globally this week wherever they already show charging information. If we can go back to that first one, the immersive view. This is super cool and looks great and it's completely impractical if you're actually trying to get somewhere, right? And like they've been tweaking maps in a way and like this reminds me like my maps kind of complaint. They've recently adjusted, I don't think they show it here in this blog post but they recently adjusted in Google Maps in the app the split screen between the photo of Street View plus the directions, which when I'm driving in the car and I'm trying to look at my phone for directions is completely clutters the screen. I'm like, I don't want to see the Street View. I just want to see left turn on this road, right? And you're making the screen, I can see that even smaller. Now I know I'm supposed to have my phone hooked up to the car and have it telling me and stuff like that but like sometimes you just, I don't want all this stuff. I just want a list of directions. So it is very funny how they're doing really cool stuff with AI making it look beautiful but it's also impractical at the same time if that makes sense, so. I think it really depends on your familiarity. Like if you're in a totally new city and you're going by foot and the place you're like going through is like a maze maybe like a park or like you're going around some, like a mini, like a forest or something. You want to go through and like there's a lot of things like the turn, left turn, this might help. Just getting a visual see like, oh, I saw that on the map and this place in real life that looks like that. Now I know how to go right. Yeah. So I don't know, it's neat to see it evolve and of course the UI is, the AI stuff is always fun and the UI aspect of seeing the weather and all that sort of stuff is neat. But again, it's like, I just want to know where I'm going. I just want to get there. Fair enough. So and sticking with Google one last one we were talking about Google Wallet and when with your state ID but they posted to the Google blog recently about the things they're doing with Google Wallet to make commuting easier. And I got to admit myself being a New York City commuter and riding the subway and using Google Wallet to pay for my transit costs. No more metro card, no more anything like that. Just tap my phone on the terminal and it does the check mark and I go through is a delight and it's wonderful. And it's like, the fact that they say they're rolling it out to 500 cities across the world, integrating across the various different systems in every different city here. The example is the Orca card, depending on where you are. Orca is used in Seattle and Puget Sound and there's the Oyster card in London and Metrocard in New York and all this sort of stuff. So it's great that they're making it all work with everybody. You can also store those digital transit cards, QR codes and bar codes in your wallet. And then this is really neat. They've integrated that you could buy tickets straight from maps. So if you're looking at a map in terms of where to get somewhere and it says in order to take that bus, if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, you need a Clipper card. In order to do that, you can actually buy the Clipper card directly from Google Maps and have it go in your wallet. So you just go on your way, which is really, really handy. So very, very cool. That is super useful because one thing when I'm traveling is figuring out where to buy the card. Sometimes it's like an online portal and just figuring out where to do that and then going through all the steps involved to actually buy the card can be a hassle. So just having it right there in Maps will be super useful. Yeah, and also having to fumble with your wallet and take things out in a strange city where you don't know anyone, especially big cities a little bit, not so great, but so just being able to pull out your phone and tap it is awesome. My bad also, I just wanted to correct. By the way, the one UI 6.0 stable is only releasing out to Galaxy S23 beta users. I'm so sorry. I miss that detail, so I bet. Actually it is rolling out for stable users. Oh, is it? Okay, great. So it's everybody? All right, because I had that in my notes. Okay, good. So it's everybody. All right, well then. Just not in the US right now. Just not in the US. Okay, so I retract my correction. All right, there you go. EU beta users period. Thank you, Michelle. All right, well, it's gonna wrap it up for apps. And now we want to hear from you, the Android faithful. So you can email us at contact.androidfaithful.com and we continue to get a bunch of emails you guys are delivering. It's fantastic. And here is our first one. Responding to an email from last week where Hilton who wrote in was having difficulty with wiping his device and installing the beta, not installing the beta. First email says, sorry Hilton, but I think you've misunderstood the nature of beta testing. The beta testing of a new operating system might start with the expectation that users will be able to move forward to a new production OS or back to an older OS without losing data and or configuration. But in the real world, this is not always the case for all sorts of reasons. If you're not prepared for the possibility of having to do a nuke and pave of your device, I suggest you avoid beta software and beta operating systems in particular. This comes from Peter who says, PS, if you remember me and are wondering what my current number of open Chrome tabs is on my Pixel three. The answer is 37. And yes, Peter, how could we forget you in your insane amount of open Chrome tabs? And heed your warning, your mileage may vary, the road can be dangerous if you're playing with beta software. So Hilton, we hope you were able to navigate that and maybe take Peter's advice. So there you go. All right, onto our next email. Yes, and our next email is from Will in Tigard to, sorry, Tigard, Oregon. If I'm saying that wrong, write in and correct me to guard. So Will writes and says, hi, Android faithful. You asked for pictures of car mounts. So I figured I'd show you my setup. I use a pro clip mount with an ESR halo lock MagSafe mount for my S23 Ultra. I have the Gala Apple case for MagSafe to work. This car is my 2021 Camaro SS. Ooh, my first V8 has been a great car so far. Sounds fun, dude. The pictures were taken on my Galaxy Tab S9 Plus and my S23 Ultra. Thanks for the great show. I've been a fan of you guys since the buzz out loud days and appreciate all the work you put into the show. Will in Tigard, Tigard, I don't know, Tigard, Oregon. Regardless, Will sent photos and all right, everybody. So audio listeners, I encourage you to go check out the video show to see these photos but we'll do our best to describe them but it is a sight to see. And there is his Camaro. Dang, pretty inside, pretty beautiful. Lots of red and highlights and things like that but you can see on his dashboard, on his display in his car is the video version of our show which is just insane and he zooms in a little and you can see his phone is attached to the MagSafe device there that has got the cable plugged in and that's what's driving the video which is just insane. And he also provided a photo of the car which is a very pretty white Camaro but he also provided links. So this is the ESR magnetic wireless car charger mount with cryro boost halo lock available on Amazon for just 29 bucks. And then he also provided the pro clip that he's using, the best phone mount for your car. Yeah and the pro clips are you choose the exact year making model for your car and so that they generally tend to fit well and are not destructive or loose fitting or ill fitting. So I keep meaning to get one for my Subaru and I just keep forgetting but it is a good reminder there is a very specialized car mount company out there. And then he also provided the Gal Apple Samsung Galaxy S23 ultra case magnetic clear with black line reinforced magnets compatible with MagSafe accessories. So it's a strange new world where MagSafe and Android are living in harmony but here we are, I think it's wild. So very cool stuff. And we have the P2 to where we finally get real MagSafe on Android. Yeah. Word. Yes, please. All right and then finally our last email comes in from Adam in San Diego who actually he wrote in a couple of weeks ago and we cut the email because the show was running long and so he actually sent in an update. So his original email says, hey crew, just a PSA to share a problem I started having recently that apparently is plaguing a lot of Android users from the Nest community forum I posted on in case any other people are having the issue. There's a new bug where if you have a Nest doorbell you can't talk to the person at the door and hear them through your speaker phone at the same time. The visitor can hear you but when they talk the audio only comes through the phone earpiece speaker not the phone's downward firing speaker. So essentially you have to put the phone to your ear to hear them which means you can't see them and talk to them at the same time. No acknowledgement from Google yet to confirm the bug. It's still happening to me. If anyone knows anything more we'd love to hear Adam in San Diego. And he follows up with an update and literally emailed I think it was today and he says Google still hasn't addressed or acknowledged the issue from what I can see. It's still affecting me and every other Android user I know with Nest cams and doorbells rendering core functionality of the product useless. I've been so disappointed with Google's product support lately especially with cams and doorbell. I may abandon them completely. It feels like they just don't care anymore. And that's from Adam in San Diego and in the Google Nest support forum he settled on the link to the issue that apparently has been happening since May of 2023 and there's a lot of people talking about it but no acknowledgement from Google or Nest as of yet. So if you were like Adam in San Diego and you're having a problem with your Nest doorbell right in let us know. Well hopefully we can try to anyone at Nest listening to the show or Google please escalate this issue. Please help Adam out. I always hate it when people hear that they're losing faith in product support of any company not just Google. Like the core of doing business is providing that support to their customers. So yeah. Anyway, thank you Adam for writing in and thanks to you to everybody for writing in. Emails at contact.androidfaithful.com. That's gonna wrap up the show for this week. It was a fun one. Happy Halloween everybody. Happy Halloween. Hey, happy Halloween. Surprise I didn't get nearly as many trick or treat as I thought I would. I did get a couple during the show. Are you disappointed? Were you watching them on your doorbell cam? Oh yeah. I was getting the alerts on my phone and my watch as they were like picking up candy. Oh we got way less. Also we got cleaned out last year and I mean we have a lot of candy left we might just leave it out for the teenagers to feast upon. Which my sister was sending updates during the show and they have a cam and just a lot of people not in costumes, a little bit too old to be out just like locusts around the boat. We got a lot of, I noticed we got a lot of repeat visitors which I think is a good, like which is good because we had good candy then. So there you go. I'll take it. Like I've seen that kid before so anyway. All right. So let's wrap this sucker up. Michelle, where can people find you on the internet? So I am available on all the social media platforms including Twix at Michelle Ramon, Mastodon, Threads, Reddit. Did I miss anything? Telegram, Discord. Although all the social media's at Michelle Ramon. I'm also on Patreon at patreon.com slash presserallramon if you wanna follow and support my work. There's multiple tiers that the lowest is $3 a month and you can also get access to my Discord where I talk a lot with the community about things I'm working on, things I find and just generally chit chat about various things really at the Android and Pixel and Google and all that jazz. Cool. All that jazz. Now I picture you in a Fosse musical about Android. So there you go. All right. Wynne, how about you? Hi, yeah. I'm an Android dev normally and I like to work my magic on various things, Android-y. Usually UI, Jetpack and Post-Up but all aspects of it. I do speak about my Android magic and you can find my talks associated to code, video and other things on my website randomlytyping.com and otherwise you can find me on social media places at green code monkey except if you were talking for the Fediverse then I'm at queen code monkey at mastodon.social. Right on. And I am Ron XO across the internet whether it's Twix or Instagram or mastodon or blue sky and all that sort of stuff. I'm most active on Instagram so definitely go follow me there. But if you're looking for more podcasts to listen to I was recently on my other podcast iFanboy where we were talking about our monthly movies and TV discussion where we talked about killers of the flower moon the new Martin Scorsese Leonardo DiCaprio film a great conversation there about the film I'm a big Marty fan spoiler I really like killers of the flower moon despite it being nine weeks long. So you can go listen to that over at ifanboy.com and thank you to everybody who listens to that show and listens to this show because you are all the best in the world. Head over to androidfaithful.com where you can find our website with links to all the different platforms we're on where you can subscribe to the show you can see show notes for this episode watch the video go get a link over to go check us out on Patreon where you can sign up to support the show it's all there at androidfaithful.com we appreciate everybody who visits that and listens to the show the show records every Tuesday night on youtube.com daily tech news show and on twitch.tv slash good day internet and then it releases immediately audio feeds on the podcast every Tuesday night and we just love talking about Android and we'd like you to do it with us so until next time we're androidfaithful