 Hello, and welcome to Android Faithful, your weekly source of news, hardware, apps, discussion of lawsuits, discussion of abandoning the platform that we talk about every week. It's all happening this week. It's insane. I'm Ron Richards, and joining me as always. We're into it now. And of course. I'm Saul Rahman. Welcome, welcome everybody, to our 19th episode. It is November 14th, Android Faithful number 19, and we're super, super excited to welcome a very special guest this week, Mr. Yanko Ruckers. How are you doing, sir? I'm good. How are you? Good. Welcome to the show, Yanko, you are of your newsletter called Lowpass, correct? That's correct. Yes. Yeah. And what can you tell us about Lowpass? What can people get who subscribe? It's a weekly newsletter that's all about sort of the intersection between technology and entertainment. So I write a lot about streaming, I write a lot about sort of the hardware that makes that possible in the living room devices and so forth. I also write about AR and VR and all kind of the fun things. And yeah, it's a weekly newsletter. You can subscribe for free. There's a paid tier as well. Always appreciate people paying for it, but you can also get it for free. Excellent. And of course, the reason why we had you join is because you caused quite a bit of a stir with an exclusive scoop last week as it relates to Amazon and Android. So we invited you on to talk about it. So it was pretty shocking. Michelle shared the news with us last week when it got posted that Amazon is dishing Android for fire TVs and smart displays. So Yanko, tell us what you reported about. Yeah. So this has been a story. It's been long in the making. I actually heard some rumors about that a couple of years ago, but I could never quite nail it down and I wasn't sure if it was real. And stepping back, I mean, people, not everybody knows that people who just casually use some Android device or some Amazon devices rather may not even realize that because it looks so different. But if you have a fire TV or if you have an Echo show or even a fire tablet, all of those essentially ran Android under the hood, right? So they use Google's open source, the open source components of Android, AOSP built their own fire to fire OS on top of it, how they call it, but it's basically Android with a couple of changes and sort of a different skin on top. And that has been going on for a couple of years or basically for a decade, I think, even at this point. So fire TV, the first devices came out in 2014, which was the same year when Amazon tried to make a phone that didn't go so well. So they've been doing a lot of things in Android. And over the years, they had some issues with that with Google and all those things, we might go into that a little bit. But essentially now they're looking to make a queen break from that. And next year, they're going to come out with the first fire TV device that's going to run a completely new operating system. They're going to go for a flavor of Linux, where they're basically adapting Linux with their own changes again, ditching Android completely. The first fire TV device, again, is coming out next year as I reported last week, and now we're even getting word that some other stuff may have come out even sooner. So, Janko, quick question. You reported on an internal development name for this OS. Do you know if this will be branded still as fire OS or fire TV? Or do you know if that branding will change? I honestly have no idea because we haven't heard anything official from Amazon about this and I've asked them and they just didn't comment or didn't get back to me. So these internal product names, obviously, they don't usually get adapted. So the internal name is Vega at this point, Vega OS or Project Vega. Maybe they will still call fire OS and just say, oh, this is the new fire OS. Who knows? They could maybe do a complete rebrand for that. I'm not entirely sure, but everything under the hood is basically changing. And why do you think they're making those changes? So I think there's two big reasons for that. One of them is, and I sort of mentioned that a little bit already, that over the years they had pretty dicey relationship with Google. So especially in the TV space, Amazon was sort of a latecomer. So they did have these fire TV dongles and sticks and all that out like close to a decade ago, starting in 2014. And some of them did pretty well. But when other companies, when Roku and when Google and everybody was trying to make smart TVs or partner with smart TV makers, Amazon was really having a hard time. They announced a couple of partnerships with all these brands you never had heard of, but they never could get any big brands on board. And so I did a lot of reporting about that over the years as well. And it turned out that Google was using their own sort of commitments and requirements that people have to sign in order to make Google devices, whether it's phones or Android devices rather, whether it's phones, whether it's TVs, anything else that's powered by Google's version of Android and has access to all the Google apps. You need to sign anti-fragmentation agreements and basically commit to Google that you will not use a forked version of Android on any of your other devices if you also want to run Google's version on any of whatever devices. And so that's a big issue, especially for some of these bigger companies that maybe make smart TVs, but then also make phones and sell maybe many millions more phones. And they really need Google for that because if you have an Android phone without Google apps, it's basically worthless, right? Especially in Western markets. So Amazon was going to these companies and saying, we really want to make a smart TV and have it powered by Fire TV or FireOS. And they were saying, well, we would love to do that too, but Google just doesn't let us do it. And so for years, that was blocked and was going back and forth and even there was an anti-trust issue or investigation in India at some point. And now it seems like just recently, just over the last, I think, two years or so, these two parties may have come to an agreement or did come to an agreement where now you have Fire TVs from Heisen, from TCL. But this conflict goes back way longer. And I think that was one of the reasons that Amazon looked into maybe just moving away from Android, finding an alternative. So that was one big reason, but there's also technical reasons. Like if you use somebody else's operating system and you have to always wait for them to realize it and then you have to customize it, you're kind of always behind the curve a little bit, right? So and then the last thing is that some of these devices like smart displays don't actually need all the stuff that's in Android for mobile phones, right? So all these like modem code and whatnot, everything that's built for mobile devices, essentially, and it's part of Android doesn't really make sense if you have a smart display that basically doesn't even run any apps but gets everything from the cloud. Right. And you made that point too that even Google had moved away from Android for things like the un-nested Macs and stuff like that, running Fuchsia and that sort of thing. But, you know, big question, a question that some folks were asking in the chat also, which is a question on my mind. So if they're going to make their own operating system move away from Android, where are the apps going to come from? That is a good question. I mean, so I think you have to look at it just as look at these different types of devices. So smart displays don't really run native apps or don't really run many native apps, mostly coming all from the cloud. So it's fairly easy for them to switch to something new. Smart TVs. Again, there is apps on smart TVs, but I think, and Michelle, you might know the exact number or maybe you all know the exact number. I think Google at some point said that they have 5,000 apps in their app store for their TV. That is not a whole lot when you compare to the millions and millions of apps that they have for phones, right? So getting a couple of key publishers on board to maybe support a new operating system if you're going to ship tens of millions of devices is not that hard of a stretch because people make apps for Samsung TVs, maybe Max for LG TVs, and they all run different operating systems. And so that is also a transition that shouldn't be that hard. The biggest thing and the thing that I also honestly know the least about is how is this going to play out for fire tablets? Because obviously they have the Amazon app store on there. There's tons of Android apps on the Amazon app store, games and whatnot. And people have very different expectations. If you have a tablet, you download not just five apps, but maybe 50 and you have 50 people and they all download 50 different apps. So you have a demand for thousands and thousands of apps. So how that's going to look like and what they're ultimately going to do there, I just don't know yet. And you mentioned in your article though that they have been telling, they're doing web forward apps and telling developers to work and react native. Yes, so that's basically the big change here. And my feedback I have gotten is that that's actually could help some developers because especially when it comes to people who maybe it's not just about building phone apps, but really they're targeting smart TVs. And there is all these different platforms and some are web based. Some are native like Roku has their own thing, bright script or whatever it's called. All these things are different platforms. So having an environment like react native where you can target multiple endpoints and then basically build a react native app that's going to be on Android and one on iOS and then one on these new smart TVs possibly with just small changes for those devices. That's going to make potentially the life for developers easier. Well, when you're a resident developer, how do you feel about that? I mean, it makes a lot of sense. And to be perfectly honest, a lot of times even on, you know, proper GSM, you know, contracted phones, a lot of publishers will find it easier just to write a web app, write a mobile web app and just load it up inside of a native shell. And in a lot of cases, that's totally fine and that's all that they need. And so as you said, Yanko, like this makes it a lot easier for them. And also generally speaking, I think when you come out of a web approach, you get a lot more of the form factor adaptability for free because that's kind of just naturally a thing that happens on the web and mobile web is that you just build in adaptive fluid layout. So I think it makes a lot of sense. And, you know, another thing about the Amazon store is that, you know, without having the Google Play services, a lot of those apps get a little bit hamstrung. I mentioned a long time ago at one of my previous jobs, we stopped supporting the Amazon app store just because the experience was worse and it just caused us, you know, extra resources to support it. So I think for Amazon, if they can move people in this direction and create like a viable, you know, user, you know, friendly, user adequate enough experience, it makes a lot of sense because why would you continue to invest and, you know, wrestle with Google for an inherently bad experience, at least for the tablets and at least for the tablets. And I think, as you said, it just makes so much more sense. Yeah, I think, Yanko, you brought up a good point about how Amazon is more likely to be able to achieve this shift, you know, painlessly for users on the fire TV site because when it comes to the TV apps, there's not that many apps that you just actually need. So, and what you really need to convince developers to develop and create apps for TV devices and just device in general is volume. And Amazon has lots of that. They can probably guarantee that we're going to sell tens of millions of these devices because they already do for their current models. The tablet side is a little different story that might be a little tougher sell. And I know like it's, I don't know exactly how popular it is if it's actually a number that Amazon really cares about, but how many users actually buy these tablets and side load Google apps and like whatever apps they want onto it. It must be enough for them to not actively try to block it because they could have stopped side loading years ago if they really wanted to, but they don't. They kind of, it kind of feels like they know it's there and they just let it happen because they know people will at least get into Amazon apps and still use those apps if they wanted to. I kind of want to hear your thoughts on like that side of things, the tinker or the power user side. It's kind of funny once my story was out, one of the first comments on almost every social platform was, but what about side loading? What about Cody and all these things, right? That people do with their fire TV sticks and whatnot. And then obviously on the tablets as well. And it's a good question, but I mean obviously it's, I would imagine that Amazon doesn't care much either way because yes, it helps them probably to sell some of these devices but they're also not going to make any money if you side load something on it. So them not stopping people doesn't mean that they necessarily condone it. I would imagine they just don't care that much about it. I'm super curious what the long tail support for those existing devices will look like, right? So like, you know, there's going to be a transition period where Amazon's going to be trying to roll this out, but then also supporting both. It's just, it's going to be messy and kluji. But you mentioned Yanko and that it looks like, you know, you said this is going to start rolling out next year, but I think report as of today that Amazon is already starting to roll it out on some devices. I don't know if you saw this or what you make of this. Is this rollout actually the Project Vega that you were referring to? Or is this something else or? I pretty much think that it is. I mean, so I, the story kind of copied by surprise. The news itself didn't catch me by surprise. I did go out this weekend to buy an Echo Show 5 that tells you something a little bit about it. So, yeah, well, the news being that the Verge posted that the latest Echo Show 5 is running, not FireOS, but something listed as OS 1.1. Right, right, right. Yeah, so I will write a little bit. I'm in the process of writing a little bit more about that for this week's newsletter, my newsletter. So if you wanna get the full update, subscribe on lowpass.cc. I mean, if you read those stories and Dave Zatz was the first one who found it, he found some pretty good clues. It's not just the OS number, but it's also if you look at the open source disclosures on Amazon's website where they have to publish source code for open source apps and components and whatnot they're using, it looks very different. And once you start to look a little closer at that, you will notice even more differences, but yeah, I'll leave it at that. And I'll give you credit, Yanko, reading your article on lowpass.cc where people can go sign up for your newsletter, which is fantastic. Reading your article, I was impressed by just the combination of it seems as if you spoke to some people, but also looking at job listings and things like that as you piece things together in this age of clickbait and hot takes and reblogging and Michelle, as you know, taking somebody else's tweet and turning an article around it, like I was really impressed. As someone who like went to school for journalism, I'm really impressed to see, oh wow, cool, we can talk to an actual journalist. So bravo. Thanks, I appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, it was one of those things where, again, I had heard about it a long time ago. I talked to a few folks, I think in 2019 about it and everybody was like, yeah, I heard some rumors, but I don't know if it's actually a real thing, but they might be thinking about this. And so I didn't know if it was actually happening or I mean, companies explore all kinds of things. They start projects, they stop them, they kill stuff, right? And very recently, I suddenly heard something again and started to look into it again. And once you hear like one thing and then you look around and you find another thing somewhere, I found a mention of the project name somewhere, I think. And then once I had the project name, suddenly all these job offers came and like filled in the blanks. So it's a fun puzzle piece sometimes journalism. Yeah, it's nice that it works out, right? For sure. Yeah. Well, excellent. Well, Yonko, I know you're short on time and we wanna thank you for making time out of your day to join us. Any other kind of, any other notes on this Amazon story or things to look out for or things to look for in the future aside from your analysis of the show five or do you wanna plug anything else before we say goodbye? No, I think, I mean, it is an interesting story. I'm also looking forward to seeing how that's actually gonna play out because you have to imagine. So if they wrote it out on a device where they don't need to have much input from developers, one of the things that was in the stories today was that there's no Netflix on that device which tells you a little bit about that. Maybe it doesn't work with everything yet. But once they bring it even just to a TV or a fire stick or something next year, they need to tell developers about that beforehand. So right now Amazon hasn't said anything yet and I hope they would change that, but who knows? But I would imagine even months before they ship something they have to tell developers about and they have to really tell the world what they're actually doing there. And that's gonna be an interesting time for sure. So I'm looking forward to reading about it, looking forward to covering it and it's gonna be interesting time next year. Excellent. Well, we are all subscribed at lowpass.cc and we encourage everybody watching and listening to the show, go to lowpass.cc, sign up for Yanko's newsletter, get all the great content you're putting out. And Yanko, thank you so much for joining us. We really, really appreciate it. Oh sure, thanks for having me. All right, have a great night. You too. All right, well that is quite the news, guys, wasn't it? I did, that Amazon thing was truly shocking, right? It's a huge move, huge move. That's not the only move going on in the world, right? They're not the only ones who are ditching support for Android. Another company that has long been saying that they're gonna be ditching Android seems to finally be going through with it. Huawei is seemingly ditching Android app support with the next version of their operating system called HarmonyOS Next. So for a bit of context, Huawei announced HarmonyOS back in August of 2019. At the time, they said it was gonna be their own operating system for not just their phones and tablets, but also smartwatches, TVs and all their other IoT products. Now, the key difference they said between HarmonyOS and Android was that Android uses a monolithic kernel, in other words, they use Linux. But HarmonyOS is said to use a microkernel, kind of like Google's Fuchsia OS. And as its name implies, a microkernel is designed to be much smaller in the number of lines of code involved. And generally, they're designed such that any processes that need to be run are run in the user space as like normal processes, kind of like regular apps are. And the reason for this is to make things more secure and more resilient to things like drivers crashing. The downside is that this kind of design can be a little more complicated as a lot of message passing isn't done in the kernel mode, the less we like moving between the kernel mode and the user mode. And it's also the fact that, if you're building something based off of Linux, that thing is decades old and it's very mature. So building something from scratch, a new operating system for scratch takes quite a bit of work. And so when Huawei first released the Harmony OS 2.0 Beta back in 2021, developers quickly found out that it was virtually identical to previous versions of EUME UI, which was their name for their previous fork of Android. And in fact, that version of Harmony OS still supported Android's runtime and still supported installing Android APK files. In other words, Android apps. So a lot of people thought, does this mean that Harmony OS isn't actually its own operating system and it's just another scan on top of Android? Well, those claims are finally being put to rest, kind of, because earlier this year at the Huawei Developer Conference, Huawei said that their next version of Harmony OS, Harmony OS Next, is completely dropping support for Android apps. You can't install Android APK files anymore. Instead, you got to install their own version of app install files called HAP, Harmony OS ability packages. We don't really know exactly what architectural changes they made under the hood and exactly how different it is from the previous version of Harmony OS, but the fact that you can't install Android apps at all is a big deal because it means that developers will have to port their apps to this new platform in order to support it. And there's a recent report on the South China Morning Post about how a lot of Chinese tech firms are scrambling to hire software developers so that they can port their apps to Huawei's new Harmony OS Next platform. And as for what implications this will have for the broader ecosystem, right now this is only being tested in China and because Huawei still sells a boatload of products in China. And there's no doubt that they'll entice a lot of mainland Chinese developers to port their apps onto the platform. But as for whether other Chinese smartphone makers like Oppo, Vivo, et cetera, will embrace Harmony OS Next on their own smartphones, I think there'll be some challenges involved because they'd have to, right now, use either Huawei's high-silicon chips, they have to create their own chips that support Harmony OS Next or they have to wait for Qualcomm or MediaTek to add support for the OS. And then another challenge is that Huawei would need to make a major push outside of China to first get market share on devices. They'd have to first sell a whole bunch of Huawei devices running Harmony OS Next to get foreign developers interested in porting their apps to the platform. So I think there's no cost for immediate concern on Google's end in terms of what Harmony OS Next means for the future of Android. But the fact that another major player is abandoning Android is still something to keep an eye out on. I mean, is this the next iteration of fragmentation, right? Like we're gonna see, like now we're gonna see OS fragmentation and we're gonna see multiple operating systems out there and developer, it's bad enough between iOS and Android to now factor in whatever Amazon's doing and then whatever Huawei's doing and then Samsung probably won't because they're so in bed with Google but like if another upstart gets the idea and go, wait a minute, do we really need Android? And is this also a condemnation or a statement on the tech debt? Like the point Yanco made in his article on Amazon that Android over the past decade has built up like is Android just too messy now? You know, this also actually is a potential threat to Apple because Apple sells a boatload of devices in China and there's nothing really tying down users in China to a particular operating system or a platform. Like they're much more likely because everything is done through WeChat as a super app, it's a lot easier for users to switch between devices. So if Huawei goes its own way and ships a whole bunch of devices with this new operating system, it could be a big threat to both Apple and Google in China. As for whether or not they'll take that threat outside of China, I think there's still a huge hurdle to be overcome because of the dominance of Google Play and the Apple App Store. Yeah, so. Well, this is actually an interesting segue to talk about the Google Play Store, right, Wen? Cause some stuff happened there as well. I mean, talking about ditching the Artifice or the business side of Google. So I'll start with a more level headed, you know, communication of a recent post on November 9th from the Android developers Google blog. And this was more from the more or less the Google Play team, which to be fair is very distinct from the Android engineering team. So before I go on to that. So we talked a bit when the chauffeur started about some kind of a lot of moves that and a lot of programs and initiatives and extra requirements that Google Play is going to enact in order to basically ensure high quality apps on the Play Store. So as much as we love Android as an open platform, it has come to light in recent years about the cesspool of app farms, you know, malware and just bad software, bad actors on the Google Play Store. And it's an image that of course is very hard to shake, especially when in comparison to the competition who has their lovely walled garden. And so Google has really been making a push to show that they're working on increasing, you know, security and quality. And, you know, as a developer, a lot of that feels like, you know, if I let it feels kind of, you know, reasonable. We talked about this in July, but so there's like a number of things in this blog post. So we'll talk about the verification requirements. We talked about this in July, about how now, even if you're a little indie dev, you're going to need to get yourself a dunce number, which is basically a business registration number, for instance, and you're going to have to verify information like your legal name and address things like that. Have either of you tried to ever get a dunce number, by the way? I have, I did because I was actually, for my iOS life, I needed it. It is an enormous pain in the butt and I'm actually in the process of just trying to update my address in our dunce number and it's nearly impossible. So whatever, so for those who don't know, dunce is a Dunn and Brad Street, which I don't know why they do, but it's kind of like a external verification that the business is real, it's legit, kind of verification thing. And it's the kind of thing where if you are just, you know, kind of messing around, you're going to hit that and then you're going to get basically hit a wall because you're like, well, I'm not going to go through these hoops to do this, right? To way to separate the real people from the, let's say, fake, but from the not as dedicated, I guess. It feels a little bit like a trans, for, you know, like credit system, like transient, experienced levels of usefulness versus pain in the assness, but I mean, like I said, as an iOS developer, I had to get one like years ago. So I had one 10 years ago, which means that if I ever wanted to update it, I probably would have to go to the same pain that Ron did, but I think we all kind of agreed that, okay, it's not as fun anymore, it feels less hobby-ish or enthusiast-friendly or light to get into, but, okay, Android's a big platform now. It's the biggest mobile operating system in the world. Sure, we'll grow up and we'll be responsible. So part of this kind of update is that, okay, they're going to start, you know, along with these requirements, they're going to start letting developers, current developers pick what day by which you would like to, what deadline you want basically to get your information verified. If you don't pick a date, they're going to pick it for you, feel like school. And there's like other things that are reasonable, sort of, they also announced that they're going to have increased investment in app review. And basically the global review teams will not be taking more time to assess apps and basically kind of determine whether an app is trying to provide a experience of quality to a user versus deceiving or defrauding them or, you know, any kind of other nefarious purposes. Hot take on this when I first read this, like, oh my God, app reviews will take forever now. And that was kind of one thing that, you know, again, being an Android developer versus an iOS developer was really fun for years because they have like a week-long review and approval process where we just push, you know, updates up and up to production and things get, you know, pushed out in like a few hours. I say that the second worst thing in app development life experience after a Dunn's number is dealing with an iOS app review. And God forbid it gets kicked back or there's any problems. It's like, oh, it's a nightmare. Like Google has been so much better, you know, through their tools, through their automated tools and things like that. So I get why they would do this, but it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. Yeah, they did try to say, oh, we really don't anticipate any significant changes to the overall app review timelines. And they're, I think they tried to say that they're going to focus on a smaller portion of apps where review is really important, for example, for apps designed for children or that requests certain device permissions, you know, things that are really, you know, very, maybe personal identified in information or just very valuable information or permissions that an app is asking for. So they're going to take a little bit deeper review. So if you're asking more of the user or kind of a bigger risk to the user, the Google app store will just make sure, you know, give you an extra look down and make sure that you're not doing anything you're not supposed to, which, okay, fair enough. But I mean, yeah, promise that they're not, it's not going to take long, but we'll see. And furthermore, a general, you know, connecting users to great trustworthy apps, basically saying we're really committed to making, you know, making sure that we only have as much high quality content slash apps as possible and also surfacing these high quality apps, high quality content and also specifically surfacing local regional content so that they can connect users with what they really want, which is all fine and good. All right, here's the thing that really pissed me off. There is a new requirement for personal developer account. So any of you who do not have an active personal developer account, if you're creating a new app and you want to be able to publish that app to the general public, you will now need to basically have a closed test, which is basically a closed beta where people specifically voluntarily join your beta program, usually with a signup URL or by sending your email, something like that. And you have to have, as a personal developer account, by the way, this is not organizations, this is personal developer account, you have to have a minimum of 20 testers opted in for a continuous 14 days before you can even push your app to production. So I told a bunch of my Android fam this and I think the majority of people were like, this dumb, like this is real dumb, this is real stupid. And I don't know, so Ron, you are a, you have a side business, you have Scorbit. If you were starting Scorbit today, what would your reaction to this be? Well, this is complicated. I mean, I mean, because I feel the, my point of view probably isn't great because we had 20 beta testers and we were testing longer than two weeks before we launched, right? So like we had a pretty good network of people we trusted that we brought in, but it takes time and work to recruit those people. So it seems like the days of coding an app, running it through its paces and then putting it out there in a fast to market kind of method or over based on this, you know? And if you're, I mean, I know a lot of my buddies have kids who like high school kids who in their basement tinkered away, try to learn to do stuff and then publish an app and felt like this like total sense of accomplishment, that's gone now, right? Because no indie dev or a kid in their basement are gonna get 20 people for two weeks to go through a testing cycle. Yeah, this is incredibly hostile to indie devs and you're a company, right? Scorpion is a company. This is for personal dev accounts. This makes no sense. And so, and I think one of the people that gave me feedback was a very good friend who has both been a QA tester and a professional senior dev and she asked in her kind way asked, so is there a process to hook up devs with a pool of testers or is Google planning on just not having much in the way of indie devs? Well, if you thought that Google might be helping out with this, no, if you go to support page, which Michelle linked when he covered this on his Twix account, if you go to the support page, basically they're like, hey, by the way, the most common way to recruit testers is to use your personal professional networks, reach out to your friends, your families, your colleagues, your classmates, basically just get anybody who knows you to beta test your app. So, this is just the most ridiculous thing to me. I am really mad. And yes, this is basically it's either in the best case, this is the most ineffective, performative requirement to get app quality up because I'll tell you one thing, even if you have beta testers, you're lucky if you do get constructive actionable feedback from them. Like some people, I mean, I'm a beta tester on several apps and I'll owe them to it. I very rarely give feedback. I just give feedback when something terrible happens. And the idea from them is that, okay, well, and they say, what did they say? In the blog post they said something like, well, you know, we're trying to increase app quality and quote, in fact, apps that use our testing tools have an average three times the amount of app installs and user engagement compared to those that don't. So that all sounds really well and good, but I call fucking bullshit on this. Oh, I'm sorry. Am I allowed to, that's my one F bomb for the day. There you go. We'll let it go. I'm noting it down for the audio edit. There it is. So our good friend Mateo suggested I say frolicking ferrets. So that's just a bunch of frolicking ferrets BS. And I say that because they present this with actually no correlation. And I would, as someone who's worked at big companies, I strongly believe that if you're telling me that closed testing results in three times the app stalls and user engagement, that's probably because that company already has hundreds of thousands or millions of users. And yes, in that case, you do tend to start relying closed testing because the amount of people that are using your app, you're gonna have a bigger percent hit if something terrible happens, something cat closing happens. So of course, I would guess that apps that already have a significant user base probably do use closed testing and do have so much more engagement in app installs. Again, this is probably mostly talking about big companies, not individual personal accounts. And there's no sense in this article of accountability. Like, yes, I think I was reading through Michelle and Michelle got a lot of really great comments. And one person was like, well, I'm just gonna start up to fake Gmail accounts and 20 emulators, which, sure. But if there is no accountability, then it's just performative. It's just a pain in the ass and just adding load to developers. As you said, Ron, closed testing, if you're actually trying to do it right, the way they want you to, and to identify users that would use your app and actually get good feedback, that takes effort, that takes communication, like triaging certain things. Coordination. Lord knows talking someone through someone who's never been a tester through getting in. Like, that's challenging in and of itself as well too. Michelle, you saw a ton of engagement on this post, right? Yeah, something I actually wanted to bring up. Like, I've been following Google Play announcements and regulation changes, their requirements changes for many, many years now. And generally, the kind of reaction I could divide into two categories. There's the kind of user who's always kind of vocally anti-Google, who's on Reddit's Android Dev, who are against anything Google does. I'm not saying they have valid reasons to do that. There's a lot of things that change that you could say are not good for indie devs and they constantly complain that Google is killing off indie app development. But I think this change is like the first time in a long time where I've seen users who I don't normally see complain about Google Play policies start vocally complaining about it. Like, I've gotten so much feedback from users, developers, within companies, with outside of just doing it on their own, just complaining about this change. And it really does feel like a lot of users don't like this. A lot of developers. I don't wanna get to just reading other people's responses, but here they are, like, why Google hate developers so much. That's the feeling. That seems super annoying for young people indie devs starting out. If this is real, new developers just won't release on Android. So now we have to generate 20 fake Google accounts, create 20 emulators and have chat GPT do write up for our testing process. Great. So pay $5 to Fiverr to get this requirement. Got it. Yeah, which basically means that this means nothing. What if I don't know 20 testers? Right? Exactly. It either is just a way to smack down indie devs and they don't care about indie devs anymore. And not only that, but also if you're switching careers, I know a lot of people who went to boot camps that are trying to get into development, a great way to build your portfolio, even if you don't have professional experience, is to release your own damn app and show what you can do. And I mean, certainly you can still do it with a closed beta, but it's different. And now you have to put more effort. If someone's doing this as a side hustle, as changing jobs from a different career, they don't have that much time to arrange 20 testers. Like if it had been any other number, like five, three, two, three, two. So yeah, so when I want to keep this constructive, right? So wave the magic wand. You are now in charge of the Google Play Store. What does support indie developers? Is it another tier of account that enables people to do it? Is it like, how can they achieve the goal that they're going for of making, ensuring high quality apps on Google Play and safety, but also support indie developers and burgeoning beginning developers? How would you change this? That's actually Ron, that's a great question because I'm a little stunned because I have been in Google feedback sessions and without saying anything that I'm not supposed to, they have a lot of great efforts to try to increase app quality through number one automated means. We talked about the SDK scanning where they'll just check on what SDKs are using to make sure there's no malware. They will actually surface. So I think positive enforcement is better than negative enforcement. So we talked actually last year about if your app is well-tuned to large screens, you get higher visibility, you get higher scores. And they're talking about surfacing local content and regional content. I do think that there is something there to elevating high quality rather than, this is not even demoting bad quality. This is just, I would say things like that. And then also like, and it could be something as like, for a new dev, yeah, there's so many tools like various different reports for accessibility, reporting of ANRs, which is freezing of your screen and all kinds of things that, if anything, track whether or how quickly and how thoroughly someone responds to those reports because all this is automated. So you could honestly see like what percentage of report a user, a developer, sorry, rather addresses within a certain period of time, give them a little bump or at least don't block them or don't prevent them from doing. Or some proactive kind of label that says, this is not a, like, this doesn't qualify or whatever or not to neg them, but to make it clear to the users what kind of app this is. I don't know, Michelle, what would you do? Being as close as you are to this stuff too. Yeah, I think one thing that might be constructive would be to have like a different tier. So like, if you're a student, right, and you have a student email address, perhaps when you sign up for Google Play, you can sign up for like an educational account that lets you, you know, publish something like a student project, right? Maybe you might have limited access to publishing it globally. You can only publish it within like one country, maybe even one region in your state. Same thing for like local apps. Like, I was like helping my uncle look for like prayer times in this one local mosque. And I realized that wait, this mosque has an app. And I'm like, who would use this? Only people who live in the city of Houston or like the state of Texas might ever download this app. So maybe like allow these really, really tiny entities you would like have no way to get 20 beta testers to like limit their apps. Say like, okay, if you want full global availability, you have to have 20 beta testers. You have to have a DUNS number, you have to have all this. But like, if you're just publishing for a very small number of people, you're a student, you're a researcher in an academic institution, maybe there should be some kind of ways to get around that. For like verified students. Yeah, student access I think is great. I think, honestly, I think, I mean, if you're an indie developer, make them get the DUNS. That's fine, right? Like I think that still does it. But then have some sort of parameters around like I'm a sole proprietor, I'm an individual. You know, like I need, give me five testers, but then you need a longer testing period or you need to, you know, some sort of barrier to entry. Like this just seems like they built the wall too high. Yeah. And you need a couple of other doors lower to the ground. So, yeah. And I will say just personally speaking, the first thing that I, so it was really funny because in their support section about trying, how do you find, you know, testers? They mentioned, oh, example, if you're starting to try to start a CrossFit app, go to your local gym and find people to test. Okay. Okay, so I'm right now a fun employed and my goal was to actually work on a fitness app. You know how hard it would be for me to find 20 testers, all of my fitness fam, not all of them, but a vast majority of my fitness fam are iOS developers. Yeah. So based in my husband, I gave my hundreds of big grand, he also was very sad about this. And he said, you know what? Unironically, you should just write your fitness app in iOS. And that's kind of, I mean, there's already like a inclination to do iOS first in development circles. Like it's just easier. You'll get more return. And at this point, you'll get less friction. So it just feels like a shooting of one's own foot for nothing. For no, I will freaking eat my hat if this actually has substantive impact on in the personal developer account app quality because there's no accountability. There's no, it's dumb. Is it? Yeah. Well, yeah. So I mean, it's one thing to say that it's dumb and all the reasons why, but like, I think it is important, you know, especially in case anybody at Google is listening to like say, hey, listen, there are alternatives. There are other ways to do this. There are other entities out there that we wanna see being able to develop apps and promote and add to this platform that honestly, after Amazon, Huawei now is bleeding. It is losing. And so it's like, it just seems like it's, and but what could be interesting also is I think some folks mentioned this in the comments that Michelle and your post on Twix and also some folks are saying here in the chat thing is will we see the emergence of testing pools? Like is this a new potential business thing? There you go. If someone looking for a business something they wanna do, build up a way to like get Android testers, right? Like that's actually, I mean, when? Maybe we should talk about that offline. We should just do that. I mean. That's actually really interesting. It is. And I do think that it's actually fun and would be good. So that in and of itself is great for indie and starting out developers. I will say from the Google perspective though, again, unless they're actually following up and making sure that you aren't just again starting 2020 accounts, that for them, this doesn't mean anything. They basically put out a requirement without any evidence or numbers that this will impact indie dev quality. But yes, otherwise, no, that's a great idea. Let's just do that. Actually, yeah, we should talk off one about that. We should just do that. Actually, no, they think about it because it's actually not a bad idea at all. So anyway, all right. Well, we're running super long as it is and we're not even through the second news story. So it's just, but I know you can go on and on about this. But when like, I think it's so respectful for you. I have so much respect for you as a developer to like your first reaction is identifying the fact that like, oh, wow, up and coming developers and indie devs, this is bad for them. And hopefully Google makes a change or try to swap it around. So, wow. All right. Already, there's a lot we've talked about already. Crawlicking ferrets, I know. 40 minutes into the show. All right, so real quickly get through the rest of the news here. It's been a while since we talked about messaging and RCS and things like that. But it looks like Google in their effort to try to get Apple to open up iMessage now is turning to what is sometimes a foe, sometimes a friend, the EU. Google is making a complaint to the EU under the Digital Markets app. They co-signed a letter that argues that iMessage should be designated a core platform service under the EU's Digital Markets Act, which would then make it be interoperable with other messaging services. Which, I mean, this could be seen as a loophole, but, I mean, there's enough people with iPhones and on iOS devices around the world that are using iMessage where messaging is a core functionality and therefore should be interoperable. This is exactly what they're talking about. And I was gonna use this later in the show, but we do have a quote, and I'm excited to share this with everybody as we have a special guest, Mr. Hiroshi Lockheimer from Google, who said that Apple's iMessage lock-in is a documented strategy that he posted on Twitter last year. He said, using peer pressure and bullying as a way to sell products is disingenuous for a company that has humanity and equity as a core part of its marketing. The standards exist today to fix this. So that was Hiroshi last year on the topic. And thanks to Burke, to her good friend Burke and Victor, back at her old friend's tweet for providing Hiroshi's talking head. So if you're watching the video, hopefully you enjoyed that. If you're listening to the audio, go back and watch the video, you'll get a laugh. We're gonna hear from Hiroshi later on in the show too. But so, I don't know, Michelle, what do you think? Is this a fair tactic or is this them trying to like, manipulate the EU to doing what they want? I mean, it's absolutely in Google's best interest to pursue this route because really like what besides marketing campaigns, throwing money and trying to convince people to, put pressure on Apple to open up iMessage, the best, the only one that can really do it like right now is regulators in like Europe. And they're the ones who seem keen on actually doing it. Like they are the ones who wrote the Digital Markets Act, which is really forcing Apple to do things they do not want to do, like enabling side loading. The EU is also the one who forced Apple to add a USBC port. Like the EU is really pushed a lot of meaningful change on Apple that they don't want to do. The EU gets shit done. Like say what you want with the EU, whether you agree with it or not. The EU definitely does make change happen for better or for worse. So good for them. While we're on this topic though, our good friends over at Nothing announced that they're bringing iMessage to the Nothing Phone, which may make you say, huh, how do they do that? But Nothing announced that Nothing Chats, their messaging app, will let owners of the Nothing Phone to send iMessages to iPhones. And basically what they're doing is they're building, they're leveraging the architecture known as Sunbird to enable this to happen, which it's basically doing similar to Beeper, similar to other solutions that we've seen by this, routing your messages to a server farm of Macminis that are then routing your messages via their platform. So like it's not like iMessage is now compatible on Android or working on the Nothing Phone only, they're taking the same tactic that we've seen other iMessage kind of circumventing tools have been taking, but doing it in an adoptive on the OS supported by the manufacturer kind of manner, which is a good way to try to reach out to people. So good on Nothing for trying to bridge this gap as well too, so. By the way, a farm of Macminis to make this happen is brilliant, low tech, low rent and awesome, but it's also ridiculous and crazy, very not. Yeah, and also unfortunately, in order for this to even work, you have to sign into your iCloud account, you have to give them access to your iCloud account. So it's kind of something I would not do personally if I had an iCloud account with a lot of stuff on it. Fortunately I don't, so I could just create a burner account and let them have it and just use that for iMessage. But if you have a lot of stuff, I would consider maybe not doing it because Sunbird is, well, messages are entered and encrypted and they promise they're not using your data for anything. But like still, is it a risk that you really wanna take? Hang on, Michelle, you froze up there. Can you repeat that? Oh yeah, sorry. So I mean, in order for this to work, you have to sign into your iCloud account so that the Macmini and the server farm can actually leverage iMessage on a platform using your iCloud credentials. And so if you have a lot of data stored in your iCloud account, all your purchases, your email, your data backups, your passwords, whatever, maybe you might want to reconsider using this if you have a lot of details. Like I can't say, I can't guarantee that it's perfectly safe. Like of course nothing is a reputable company. Sunbird is a startup. We don't really know that much technical details about how their architecture works and how secure it really is. They're gonna say it's secure, of course, but it's a thing to consider. Yeah, well, I mean, it's interesting because like I have an iCloud account that I never use. Right, like I have it because I have a Mac and I don't use it at all. So I have no exposure there. So your mileage may vary. If you have a lot of stuff there, you may not want, you wanna be careful about how you're doing that handling that connection. And I guess we'll see more testing and stuff like that will come with this as we look into what they're doing. But real quickly, speaking of nothing, they also announced their Black Friday event is coming starting November 17th. It's that time of year, everybody. This Friday, in fact, they're gonna be offering their biggest deal, their first ever Black Friday event, running from November 17th and November 27th, getting huge savings on that. And basically, also, if you had purchased a year too or the phone too, anybody who purchases that at full price will get a partial reimbursement once the sale begins. So they're doing kind of retroactive sales, which is kind of crazy. Which is nice to see. But they're not the only ones out there. Google also announced their Black Friday deal start in one day, actually. They're starting on November 16th, one day ahead of nothing. So you've been on the fence for getting a Pixel 8 or a Pixel 8 Pro or Google Pixel Watch 2. They're all gonna be on sale. Not super dramatically, but you can save $150 on the Pixel 8. You get the Pixel tablet for 100 bucks off, 200 bucks off the Pixel 8 Pro. So some deals to be had as Black Friday is looming. So if you're shopping for yourself or for loved ones, you might wanna get in there and get out on it. But this is just never ending, oh my gosh. So there's even more news to be had, isn't there? Absolutely. Yeah, so as we've talked about extensively last week, the Google v Epic trial or Epic v Google trial is ongoing. And this week, we have the big man himself, Sundar Pachai, take the stand, as well as Hiroshi Lockheimer. And to be honest, if you really want to have the play-by-play, the exact details of things that were revealed, things that were revealed, but they weren't supposed to be revealed, and so on and so forth, I highly recommend checking out Sean Hollister's play-by-play over at the Verge because he talks about every single detail. He's actually at the trial covering it live. We pleaded here at home. We're only getting what's being said through a third party. But it is interesting to consider what's really at stake here because let's take Google's side of the argument, for example, right? Like Epic is trying to basically show that Google is a monopolist. They're using their stranglehold on Android to illegally enforce a monopoly and cut out competition from app stores and other app makers and so on. And they're digging through a lot of confidential communications at Google to relay that. Like a lot of things have been revealed about the specific revenue sharing agreements, the specific distribution terms, the specific amount of money they're giving to Apple or to Samsung, et cetera. And Google is trying to basically say, we need to make money off of Android in order to justify the thousands of engineers that we employ to work on it because yeah, Android is open source, but if you don't have a single company working on it to ensure that the app ecosystem is consistent, there's a single app market, all the APIs and all the devices that are running based off of AOSP are compatible with one another, then you might have like the fragmentation that we all complain about would be way worse. Like way, way worse is Google's like main thrust of the argument. And they do kind of have a point there. If you talk about open source software and a lot, you might have seen that one XKCD comic where there's like a giant pillar and like it's all held up by software written by one guy in Nebraska. And imagine like if that one guy in Nebraska just stops developing that software, the entire infrastructure just crumbles. So basically you have this giant company that's behind Android and making sure it is well tested, all the security bugs are patched out, they're working with carriers, they have this app distribution model, they have the app store, they have all these tooling and all that stuff. Like what would Android look like if it wasn't led by Google? If it was led by a conglomerate of companies that are all competing interests, like sure they could band together, Linux gets things done, but like there's a lot of operating systems that are based on Linux and they don't all have apps that are compatible with one another. So like what exactly would that look like? Would that be good for the consumer? That's kind of like the argument that like Google is pushing forward. What they're doing, them making money off of Google Play is necessary to fund the future of Android and them losing access to that would be detrimental. And as evidence, so going to the verge and looking at Sean Hollister's kind of coverage, he does provides some great quotes from Mr. Friend of the Show, Hiroshi Lockheimer, who Hiroshi said on the stand, when you side load, the user has to understand they're taking a risk. We want users to understand that the apps they're about to side load haven't gone through the same level of security checks as the apps we run through the Play Store. And so he was very kind of pushing that message. He also in a little bit of court theatrics while on the stand pulled out two phones. He pulled out the Samsung Z Flip and the Pixel Fold. And he was trying to use them as an example to show how Google is attempting to innovate on Android compared to Apple. So really interesting stuff, fascinating. We're watching this with Bated Breath. We're watching the Antitrust case with Bated Breath. Google in the courtroom, it's got to be a tense time over in Mountain View. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, so all right, cool. Well, good thing that we're on top of it. All right, so that said nearly an hour to the show. It's time to check in with the patrons. Yes, and every single week, every Monday we put up three stories for our patron pick of the week and we let our lovely patrons like this week's patron shout out recipient Mark Biggie vote on which store you want us to cover. And this was a banner week for Android faithful because we had a tie. We've never had a tie before leading us to wonder what do we do? So we're going to talk about it both, right? Exactly, we've got to be fair. So the one story that did lose out, unfortunately, is that is the end of the road for the original Samsung Fold, the Samsung, the OG Samsung Fold is basically past its prime. It hasn't shuffled off the coil, but it certainly won't be receiving any more security updates. But that received 12% of the vote with the remaining 88%. We split between two stories. One actually I'll talk about first, which is very relevant because it is something that came out of the Epic V Google. And that is about Google offering Netflix a pretty sweet deal way back when. So way in the way back before, when Google actually allowed alternate payment methods and systems in their playground in Google Play, Netflix was I think paying Google only 3% of its subscription revenue. Of course, things are a lot different now. And there was a video testimony from Netflix VP of business development, Paul Perryman, who kind of cataloged what happened from those, Halcyon 3% subscription days to now when you can't even manage your subscription or sign up for Netflix in app. You can still do it on your phone, but it kicks you out to a browser like a lot of different places. And again, that is because of the restriction on Google Play billing being more or less, it's kind of changing a little bit, but more or less the way to go in terms of transactions on the Android system. So Perryman basically testified that yes, originally it was 3%, but eventually Google did for some time, basically ban all alternate forms of payment. And for a little while, Netflix was paying that 15% of in-app subscription cut to Google. And of course, Netflix being everywhere on every single gaming device on multiple media devices everywhere, they could afford to take their ball, go home and open their own ball store, which is what they did, and in an effort to keep all of that shared. I think even Perryman testified that if they had gone global Google Play billing, like they were kind of encouraged to, they would have lost $250 million a year on sign-up. So that's kind of why they just said, at that I'll take my ball out of my own ball store, but Google knew how valuable Netflix is. I mean, it's not really hard to see, right? So kind of again, showing that, yes, Google is just paying for their own bills and making things happen, but sometimes they give a discount depending on who you are, what you make, and how much they like you. Between the time when Netflix was going ahead and eating that 15% service fee to basically saying, nevermind, we'll just kick the users out to a browser, Netflix was offered by Google, a 10% discounted rate on the condition that Netflix have a quote, full commitment to Google Play billing globally. And obviously Netflix being who they were and us knowing how Google Play billing can be, that was less than desirable. They're gonna take that $250 million and inconvenience users just a little bit, but that was something that came out of the testimony and goes along with, again, this idea that Google is just trying to be relevant, be there and play with all the big kids in an effort to kind of maintain their monolithic play, Google Play billing efforts. Yeah, I mean, this got a lot of hay coming out of it because before this, it was revealed that Spotify had a sweetheart deal of their own. I mean, this is just business development, right? Like I don't fault Google by doing this in any way, shape or form. They see a hot app and a lot of, you know, like a market leader, and this was back in 2017, right? Which is like half a decade ago at this point, but it makes sense to be like, okay, great, we know that Apple's taking 30%, we're gonna get off for you 10%, like you're trying to be competitive in that way and good on Netflix for running the numbers and realizing that like, oh, actually, they'll still lose money and it's not good for them. And nothing says you need to take the deal, but I don't fault anyone for offering the deal. Yeah, I don't feel struck that this is evil by any means, but you know, and to be fair to Google, and we covered this on the old show, there are ways of getting reduced discounts to like 10% now with their weird ecosystem flowchart of like, you know, whether you're part of this program and whether you're a developer that has less than X million in sales. So again, it's just something that came out. And so all the, we're seeing all the strings and all the business dealings, like you said, Ron. Nothing better than a public trial to get stuff out. To bring all that out and stuff. Okay, well, to go into something a little more positive and less litigational, the other winner this week with the other 44% of the vote was a story about Gboard with the great new feature, which I actually tried out on my phone because if you are a Gboard beta tester and you've kind of noticed that on phones, when you happen to turn your phone into landscape mode, maybe you're playing a game and you want to use the game in chat, you'll notice that a phone landscape keyboard is a thing of unbelievable inconvenience. It's usually this long stretched out keyboard at the bottom, very hard to use. And it's been that way for a really long time. But if you're using the latest Gboard version 6.6, oh, I think what will happen now is if you're on a phone and in landscape, rather than having that really stretched out, very inconvenient to use Gboard at the bottom, you'll now get the floating Gboard panel that you can move and resize a little bit, I think. And there you go. So you don't have to kind of, you can kind of make typing a little bit more convenient. This is specifically for phone landscape. So on my pixel fold, if I, using Gboard beta, if I turn landscape, I do now instantly see as the phone starts to rotate everything, the Gboard just pops up into a nice window and then kind of docks again when I turn back to portrait. If I'm on a tablet-sized landscape screen like the inside of a pixel fold, it still does like the big huge like split keyboard thing. So for those of you who just need to use your phone in landscape mode, Gboard beta has got something good for you and hopefully saving you some stretching in your fingers. My main question is, it's 2023, why did it take this long? That's a great, I don't know. There's, I don't know. I could have sworn they were testing this before. I could have sworn like I saw a flag for this like years ago. I guess it's just now rolling out. It is really weird how we had a really good, we had a really good test on our team, Eric, who was always good at testing this stuff. And then it, not all PMs, but some PMs just like pushing that stuff back because it's just not important, not important, not important. Who's using the phone in landscape mode and typing? Some of these. In the chat, Cousin of John in the chat room recalls a keyboard app that I looked at years ago called Minium that was like a minimal, very minimalist keyboard app that took up a lot less of the screen. I forget how Minium handled landscape though, but even though, despite how it was, but yeah, I miss keyboard apps. I feel like Gboard came in and just killed that whole, you know, like when you had a clever, like there were the keyboards that were like circles and like they're all different kind of takes on keyboards, those are fun. And that's an Android special, by the way, based on the IMM6 system, you know, so. Exactly. So go over to patreon.com slash android faithful, sign up to be a Patreon patron to help support the show. We thank everybody, but we especially thank as when, as you mentioned, we want to thank Mark Biggie. This week's patron shout out. Thank you for supporting the show. We're starting at the beginning, the people who signed up first. So if you signed up back in the summer, you're going to get thanked first. If you're signing up this week, you have to wait a little bit, but we'll get to everybody. So thank you, Mark. So that's going to wrap up the news after an hour. So let's get into hardware. And I got to say, I felt like on any other week, the Humane AI pin was going to be the thing that we were talking about the most on the show. But I got to tell you, this was something that I was so excited about when I saw it come out because it's just bonkers. And I'm sure everyone's seen it at this point. But basically a company called Humane, which is made up of former Apple employees and Apple designers developed a device called the AI pin, which is essentially a display list smartphone that you wear on your chest similar to a Star Trek communicator. This is the first step close to the Star Trek reality I want to live in. It costs $699 in addition to like a 24, I think a $24 a month subscription fee or like service fee through T-Mobile to service the device itself. And you clip the pin to your chest like the Star Trek communicator and you can use it to take photos. There's a little camera on there. You can use a virtual assistant. You can use gestures and actually send messages and talk and things like that. And it's all done via this pin, which is mind blowing because you're like, well it doesn't have a display. What does it do? And I'm trying to find on our video show, I'm trying to show up an example of it, but essentially what you do is it has a green laser. There you go, I found it. It has a green laser that when you hold your hand out in front of the display, it projects the display onto your hand that you can then interact with via a pinching. They don't like to call it pinching though. They had a different term, but through a pinching mechanism. And there are all these different hand gestures that basically show how you get through the UI. And in the video show here, we're showing the example of someone changing the song that they're listening to. It connects to your headphones wirelessly. You can talk to it. It's a way that you can handle through phone calls and things like that. It is just bananas and bonkers. And if it wasn't $700 and $25 a month, I'd be all over it, but it's a little expensive for my taste. When you take a picture, the little light goes on to show people that you're taking a picture because we wanna be respectful in that regard. But why are we talking about here? Because when I saw this news came out, I was like, oh man, I wanna talk about it on the show, but I'm not sure that we'll be able to. But lo and behold, as we found out, Marvin Bernal posted on threads that Humane is looking for a senior software engineer for a job listing in San Francisco. And one of the job requirements or the description includes work alongside our system software team to tightly integrate and customize our usage of Android OS AOSP. So Humane is running Android. And therefore we can talk about it on the show. All Android always has me. I don't know, what do you guys think of the AI pin? Do you think that this is the future? Or do you think it's, no? I think it is. I think we are moving in this direction, but we're way too early. We're way too early in the LLM phase to be able to have a device pin to your chest and relying on the information that it gives. You gotta start somewhere, man. We already saw in their announcement, it made two mistakes. Like they got the trajectory of the next, I think solar or lunar eclipse wrong. And they also like scanned, like they scanned like some almonds and they tried to tell you how many grams of protein is in it and like they estimated incorrectly. So like it's already, you shouldn't be relying on the output of LLMs right now without at least verifying the output yourself. And through that, you kind of need a smartphone. And another thing that I've always argued on the show in the past is that, like the way we're interacting with generative AI is through apps and services that we already use. This kind of relies on you just, you know, talking to chat GBT and kind of using whatever information it gives you. How is it interacting with your Google Calendar? What if you're using Outlook? What if you're using YouTube music? What if you're using Gmail? What if you're using like Uber? You know, like it's not really integrating with all these services. And because it's all auditory and like a limited visual dataset, right? There's a lot that you can't do right now with it. And like, I believe there's even like a web interface that you have to access on your phone to get some information that can't be shown on this display, which kind of defeats the purpose of replacing your smartphone. Yeah, like you take pictures with the device, but then you need to go to the web to look at the pictures that you took with the device. I guess it's like, I feel like if this was a complimentary, similar to a wearable to a watch, if this was complimentary to a smartphone, that it was a way for you to interact with your existing smartphone as an extension of it when you don't want to take out your phone, when you don't want to be in a situation, you know, like that sort of thing. You know, so I agree with you. I think it's missing a piece of it. And I think the AI thing is a little overblown, but I gotta say the green laser projection and the hand gestures, like this is like, we joked about foldables like five, six years ago about the idea of like a display that will roll up and go in your pocket. And like, now here we are, they're real. So it's gotta start somewhere, I said. Yeah, I would like to see something work. I mean, maybe this is inherently inaccessible or bad for accessibility, but people with, you know, mobility issues or with reduced vision are not gonna have a good time with this, but maybe this is the start of something new. And again, like I agree, I'm not gonna buy it, but this might inspire or just lead the way to something that actually will change the way we interact with, you know, information data and our technology. So who knows. Gotta start somewhere. That's what I say, innovation's gotta start somewhere. So I'm Bravo to them and hey, it's running Android, so. Absolutely. All right, so moving on to some more realistic art. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So for things that we actually have in this day and age and that people do actually buy, we saw a little bit of a teaser, but now we've got a leaky-peaky at the OnePlus Watch. We've got full 5K renders based off of images from a testing prototype of the OnePlus Watch 2. And we can tell a few new things about it. Number one, it's got a 1.43 inch AMOLED display. It's got a circular dial, metal chassis and some buttons to the right. It will be rocking apparently the Snapdragon W5 Gen 1. And yeah, it looked pretty straight. And rumors are, we're OS4, but yeah, that's what we got. They're very, you know, very high fidelity renders. And of course, even if it is based on, you know, an actual device testing prototype, things might change between now and release, but you kind of have a decent look. I mean, it's kind of hard to tell like maybe whether the bands will change or right now we've got some very straightforward silicon straps in black and white. I gotta say, as I've been trying to shop to find a new band for my Pixel Watch 2 that doesn't look awful, these look really nice. I'm intrigued by this for sure. I'm all for like straightforward silicon bands if I did wear wearables. Yeah, right now I got a new band. It's like a nylon Velcro. And I don't care that it doesn't look that good, but it's the most comfortable kind of band for me. I always kind of like, I can wear it all day to sleep and like not feel like I gotta readjust the size or anything. Yeah. So, cool. Well, it's good to see that OnePlus just continues to be topical, right? The OnePlus 12 was coming out soon. We're still, I'm seeing every article about the OnePlus Open saying it's the best foldable on the market and all that sort of stuff. Everybody seems to be loving it. You're having a good year. OnePlus is on a roll. And just to think that like a year ago, we're like, what's up with OnePlus? Where are they going? They settled and all kinds of stuff like that, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And especially coming from their first-gen watch, the OnePlus Watch was kind of derided at launch because it ran at proprietary RTOS and it did not do a lot of like functionality. It didn't have a lot of apps. It was basically just a glorified sleep tracker and like no notification mirror. Like to put it generously. It was not very good. Yeah. But this one looks like it's gonna be a lot better. Hopefully. Hopefully. So excited to see it. All right. So Michelle, what's going on with Samsung? So Samsung, you know, is getting on the generative AI train. And this week they detailed their Galaxy AI branding, which is set to debut in next year's Galaxy S24 series. They didn't say specifically Galaxy S24 series, but they said debuting next year and, you know, we know what's coming next year. So this Galaxy AI comprises their comprehensive mobile AI experience and it's gonna be using their on-to-base AI that's both running on-device on their, on Samsung devices and as well as cloud-based. And one feature they showed off in their announcement is a AI live translate call, which we built into their proprietary dialer app. Samsung says that with this feature that audio and text translations will appear in real-time as you speak and that the translations have all happened on-device. We've seen features like this before, but they've generally not been very good. They've been kind of slow. So I'm kind of interested in seeing if Samsung has nailed the performance, like if this will really be real-time or close to real-time. Because that's kind of the issue. Like Google has live caption for calls. Google also have live translate. They haven't married the two together yet to do live translate in calls. And in my experience, Google's live translate on a pixel is kind of laggy. Like it takes a few seconds for it to actually catch up with what's being said. So if Samsung can nail this, then it'll be a really neat feature. But apart from the AI live translate, Google, Samsung also showed off its own generative AI model called Gauss. And this generative AI model runs locally on-device and it's likely to be integrated onto the Galaxy S24 series. You don't know how many parameters it's gonna be running. It's gonna be like a thin version of this large language model. But they do say that it's gonna be able to do things like generate, edit images, compose email, summarize documents, and even operate as a coding assistant. So a lot of the things that we already see, Bard and ChatGPT do, Google, Samsung says that they're bringing this on-device in their next flagship device. And they also tease that it can enable smarter device controls when integrating the product. So maybe this will let you control things on-device, like with your Mixed-V smart devices or even functionality on your Samsung device, like various settings, things like that. It's the kind of thing where this AI stuff is like you gotta be in the game, right? Whether we like it or not. Table stakes, yeah. Yeah, yeah, which is, you know, so, I mean, at this point, Samsung is almost lagging behind Google in this regard. So like they're, you know, obviously, like they've got to catch up, you know, with this. So we'll see. But not a surprise. All right, well, lastly, a bit of sad news, because Michelle, I know you were really excited about this. In fact, you were, back when we were predicting Google announcements stuff, you wanted this to be included in those announcements, if I remember correctly. But doesn't look like satellite phone connections are gonna be a thing anytime soon, at least when it comes to Iridium and Qualcomm. So Qualcomm ended its partnership with the satellite communications company, Iridium. Iridium said that, quote, the company successfully developed and demonstrated the technology, but smartphone makers, quote, have not included the technology in their devices, leading Qualcomm to end the agreement. So it's a real bummer if you were hoping for satellite technology to be in your phones. Michelle, do you think this means it will never happen, or is this just a bump in the road? Hold up, there is a silver lining. Actually, if you read Qualcomm's statement, the CNBC, they mentioned specifically that the reason why smartphone makers weren't interested in Qualcomm's solution was that it was proprietary, and that smartphone vendors are more interested in a standards-based solution. So it's kind of good news, actually, that smartphone makers didn't jump on board with the proprietary implementation. It kind of signals that they're all waiting for something to be standardized and released so that maybe all smartphone makers can interoperably communicate with satellites so that there's not just one to many, like Apple solution is proprietary right now, and if they move to a standards-based solution, then all devices could communicate, send emergency SOS messages to satellites, and I don't know exactly what that'll look like, or what kind of hardware needs to be integrated into devices, or what exactly needs to be updated in Android to support that, but I always applaud when a standard is implemented rather than something proprietary because it means that more device makers can make use of it. Yeah, and that's actually a really great point, and hopefully we'll see it sooner rather than later, because that's kind of like the next frontier, right? Like what is beyond, like let's go beyond the networks and the 5G and stuff like that, go to satellite, and then, you know, let's see how we can leverage that, so. Cool, all right, well, let's go to wrap up hardware, and we're gonna see, we got some app news to talk through before we get to your emails on this extra long version of Android faithful, right? First off, is exciting news for foldable owners, right, Michelle? Yeah, so before Android 14, apps weren't able to make use of both sides of a display on a foldable phone. You know, most foldables have two displays, but typically apps can only show their content on the inner or the outer display and not both. Well, in Android 14, there's actually an update to an API that makes it possible for apps to do just that. We kind of saw this already when Google rolled out the dual screen interpreter mode for the Pixel Fold with this Android 14 update, but what Google didn't say was that this actually makes use of an API that's available to all applications. But to take advantage of this, OEMs have to implement something called the Jetpack window manager extension module and that this gives apps available access to additional displays on foldable devices. And then apps that use the Jetpack window manager library can take advantage of what's shown content on both displays. Right now, I tested the Pixel Fold and the Galaxy Z Fold 5 on Android 14 and both of them support this new rear and dual display mode. Hopefully, as other foldable devices get updates to Android 14, they also add support for this feature. Well, if anything, and here we're looking at the photo on the Android police article of being able to use the back camera as a selfie camera with using the front display as a viewfinder, like that's, I remember being at the OnePlus open event, Michelle, I'm hearing like there was a very animated group of people who have been guests on the show discussing the fact that you can't open up the fold, use that amazing Hasselblad camera as a selfie camera and see what you're actually taking a picture of with the front one. So that's the killer app right there for this. And of course, it's Jetpack, right? So. Yeah. I think when you're muted, but you're, you want to take something much effect. No, well, actually I'm friends with the gentleman who was actually cleaning up this API for public use. So he actually did mention he worked on the dual screen interpreter. Oh no, he worked on the selfie camera demo for IO and I've been trying to get him on the show to talk about working on it. He's being a little shy. He's recovering from a medical procedure. So I told him I'd bug him in the new year, but he did say he's, they had it for a while, but they were cleaning it up for, you know the rest of us, you know, unwashed developer masses to get their hands on it. So yeah, I'll try really hard to get him on the show to talk about it because I'm excited. I have a lot of ideas. I won't be able to publish them to the Play Store, but I'll work on them still. Maybe do it with those data. With our new service, we'll get you the testers indeed. Don't worry about it. Yeah, so. I love this. First customer. All right. And so Michelle, there's some more generative AI news, isn't there? You're like on the AI beat today. Drink, drink, drink today. So the Google Home app is getting a lot of generative AI features to help you create automations for managing your smart home. So some of these include, of course this is not AI related, but the Google Home app itself is getting expanded controls for devices like fans so you can control their rotation and speed. You'll also be able to see more data from sensors in your home. This capability is coming to users soon in the public preview program for the app. What's more interesting is the script editor feature is adding a new help me script feature that uses generative AI to help you create automations. So say you wanna create automation when it's sunset, you wanna turn on your lights and close the blinds. If you enter that prompt into the help me script feature tool will automatically generate a script that you can then customize and apply to your specific home. So this feature is available now for users who are in the app's public preview. I personally haven't really used a script editor yet. Like one of the things I want to do more is I have so many smart home devices at home and Google Home and like I wanna make more use of it and I feel like this will be really helpful step forward because like figuring out the interface, having set up routines and automations kind of annoying to just saying, I wanna do this, make a script for me and just apply it. That'd be really nice to do. There are a couple other things that are being added. The script editor now let's use camera events like package delivered alerts as starters. You can also create custom notifications. Another thing that's being added in the Google Home app is you can have new starters and actions for household routines so that you can build routines that start whenever someone is in a specific room. For example, every night at 10 p.m. you can have your blinds closed, the light gradually dim, humidifier set, the humidity level, doors lock and et cetera, all as part of one automation. And then lastly, the home panel feature that first debuted on Pixel phones with the June 2023 Pixel feature drop is now available for other devices running Android 14. So I checked and it's already available on my OnePlus 11 and nothing phone two. And if you're watching the video feed, you can see on the left what this home panel actually is. On the left, I have a OnePlus Open running Android 13 and that's using the old device controls interface. So it's kind of just like a bunch of tiles that are not really like organized in any coherent way. There's just a bunch of tiles like they all show the same on off state or just a slider. But on the right, you have the new home panel activity which shows you your favorites. It shows you a live feed of your doorbell and like it copies the same interface that you have in the Google Home app. So this new home panel interface is just much more, I guess it's a lot better for managing your smart home devices and it's access. It's a lot more intuitive. It's a lot more. It's a lot more intuitive. Yeah, yeah. It's a much needed update for sure. Yeah, yeah. The new home panel feature is accessed by opening the device controls interface. So you tap the lock screen shortcut or the quick settings tile and that's how you access this new home panel feature the home panel interface. All right. So if you are a Google Home owner some cool stuff there for sure. All right. Well, that's all the stuff. We actually had to do some live cutting of stuff for time. So we might revisit some stuff next week but we do want to make sure we hear from you the audience. If you email us a contact at androidfaithful.com we'd love to hear from you. We've been getting so many emails back from folks which is awesome. So please keep them coming. And that's gonna tee up our first email which I think Michelle, we just wanna we're making you work tonight, Michelle. So there you go. Yeah. So our first email comes from a gentleman, a person named Isaiah. We don't know where they're from but they sent an email saying, hey, Android Faithful Crew, been loving the show and decided to finally write in how do y'all keep track of so many tabs open at once? I treat my browser as a cue for interesting links to look more into but I can't imagine having more than three or four tabs open including my search engine's homepage. As soon as I'm done with something the tab either gets closed or if necessary I save the link to my notes before closing it. Would love to know more how you guys keep track of all those tabs. P.S. Shout out to Michelle. I always have a small laugh when it's Michelle's turn to share where to find them and the answer is everywhere. That's true. I am everywhere. Thanks, Michelle. So we've got more emails on this topic about browser tabs and the fact that our next batch of emails go into it but last week's episode kind of started the fire as we revisited the topic of how many tabs you have open on your device but, Michelle, again, you shared you shared with the tabs that I imagined, right? So what was it? I mean, I've been using Chrome's tab groups feature so whenever I like I'm opening I'm researching something like and I have a whole tab, a bunch of tabs open related to that research topic. I label it as a tab group like say, you know, Android 14 lock screen API, whatever, right? I named that tab group as that. And I have it open. If I can get to it immediately and I write something on it like I'm putting notes on it then I'll keep that tab group open. Otherwise I'll use an extension called one tab and then I'll close that tab group. And the one cool thing that one tab does is it actually preserves that tab group. So that tab group that I named and saved it gets saved as its own category in one tab. So whenever I want to revisit it I just restore all the tabs and it opens a new Chrome window with all those tabs and that tab group restored. So that's how I organize my tabs. There's another application that I tinkered with a while back called Workona, W-O-R-K-O-N-A which is a similar kind of tab management tool basically tab manager in spaces and it does work on Android as well. So you might want to look into Workona as well and in addition to one tab. So, cool one. But in terms of the tabs, now this is the amusing part of the show. So buckle up because we got a bunch of emails on this topic. And again, refer to last week's episode where, how did it all start up? It started out with, actually two weeks ago because two weeks ago we just laid the background we had Peter Wright in who had written into our old show referencing the fact that he had a large number of tabs open on his phone, on Chrome. And then that led to Brandon writing in last week sharing the fact that he had 75 to 100 tabs open and he was reacting to Peter, he said, the guy who had 33 tabs open. Well, this week the responses flew in. First up, Linda wrote in and said, I checked my Chrome tabs on my Pixel 7 Pro and was surprised by this, but 327 tabs. And Linda says, love the show, I haven't missed an episode. And she also sent in proof screenshot of her Chrome after she closed all 327 tabs. And I zoomed in for our video viewers so you can see proof of this. I think 327 tabs at the moment is the reigning champion. So congratulations, Linda. But Brandon couldn't help himself and Brandon also wrote in and he said, just over here, raffling, rolling on the floor laughing. He said, my tab count is always the smiley face because I have too many. If I recall correctly, once you hit over 100 it becomes a smiley face. Although Linda showed 327s. I don't know if they kept the smiley face or not. He said, despite the tab count, I have them organized. Okay, in my own chaotic way. Looking into one tab now because I generally have them grouped together in a way that sounds like it'll work in a similar way. Okay, I manually counted. I'm at 315. I may have a problem. So Brandon, 315 is good but that does not beat Linda's 327. So Brandon comes in second. But of course not to be not heard, the original email or Peter did write in to correct Brandon that he had 37 tabs open, not 33 but now he's down to seven. He said it was six until yesterday morning when he Googled synonyms for communication which I found very funny. So, and that came in from Peter. So thank you everybody for writing with your tab counts. If you can beat 327 tabs without cheating without doing it just to beat it, email us in and let us know, send a screenshot. Open up your Chrome, see how many tabs you are without looking, without editing it. I feel like we need a bumper for that, a special bumper for a tab count. Dun, dun, dun. Tab count. All right, and we got one more email. Yes, and I know I did a long grant earlier and our good listener, Kevin from Pittsburgh is vibing on me this week and has a little rant slash event of his own. So Kevin writes saying, it seems like it's been a few weeks since you last got an email about Google support or lack thereof. So here's one for you. My Pixel 7 Pro recently started to develop some black spots on the screen. It was working fine but was slightly annoying so I decided to pay the $29 to have my screen repaired through Google preferred care. They had me go to my local UBreak iFix location to get a new screen put on. Unfortunately, the repair shop not only couldn't get my new screen put on but they completely broke the phone. Something about breaking off the connector for the ribbon cable that the screen attaches to. So not only do I have a phone, do I not have a phone for a few days now but now I also have to pay an additional $99 for replacement device. I tried to explain to both Assurance and Google including multiple supervisors that I didn't want to pay an additional $99 to fix the problem that they caused but I had absolutely no luck. Doesn't seem like the best way to treat a customer especially one that has had almost every Nexus and Pickle device over the years. Sorry for the wall of text but I needed someone to vent to. I can't help but imagine how differently this experience would have been if I had an iPhone instead. Thanks, Kevin from Pittsburgh. That's just bad luck. That's, sorry, that's frustrating. That's super frustrating. Really sorry, dude. Yeah, sorry that happened. I don't know, there's no real like recourse there. It's, you got a lot of cooks in that kitchen, right? Between the people who Google, the people who did the fixing and the breaking and then Assurance and all that stuff. It sounds more like that place you changed in from you break, I fix, to you break, I break too or something. I don't know. You break, we break worse and charge you money. Yeah. It's terrible, so sorry. No one fix. Yeah, no, no fix. We break, no one fix. So, I will say in terms of the topic of broken phones, my wife's iPhone screen cracked a little bit, so I'm going to attempt to take it to a genius store and have Apple fix it and see how that goes. I've never done that before, so I'll be curious what it's like on the Apple side of things. So, yeah, we'll see. Yeah, I'm glad that I've only had to go to a repair center once recently. And it was just for replacing the battery on a Pixel 4, and it was really quick. It took like an hour. So, went to a you break by fakes and they replaced it. Well, who knows, so. All right, well, so email us in at contact.androidfaithful.com. We want to hear from you, whether it be your support woes or your tab count or whatever you got or any other kind of fun stuff. Love, love, love all the emails and the interaction we're getting from the audience. You guys are awesome. All right, the show's running super long. Michelle, where can people find you on the internet? You can find me as our dedicated reader, as I said, everywhere. I am on Twix. I am on Mastodon. I am on Telegram. I am on Threads, Reddit, Discord, WeChat. What's app? Weibo or are you on Weibo? Not on Weibo yet. That app is infuriating to use. But if you want to support my work, you can find me on Patreon at patreon.com slash Michelle Raman, where you can be a subscriber for $3 a month. And, you know, I post a lot on Twitter and Twix everywhere, like I said, for free. A lot of detail information takes hours to research. You know, it does a lot of things that a lot of websites don't want to take because it's a lot of technical and a lot doesn't really apply to a lot of people. There's not a lot of ad revenue to get out of it. So if you want to support my work and see that work continue, please consider subscribing. And of course, subscribe to Interfaithful as well. Yeah. An important question for the chat. Michelle, are you on OnlyFans? Oh, dear. I mean, you could be. No, no judgment. Yeah, well, I mean, you don't have to do spicy content on OnlyFans. It could be Android content. I just don't know how much engagement you'll get. Could be like a burgeoning section on OnlyFans. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, see how the tech sector is on there. Android nerds gone wild. Android nerds gone wild. That's a show title. That's a show title. All right, Wayne, where can folks find you? Well, I am an Android nerd and Android developer who hopefully one day will maybe one day put out an app of her own. And you can find talks that I do about Android development on my website, randomlytyping.com. And you can find me most places at Queen Code Monkey and in the Fediverse at Queen Code Monkey at Massed on That Social. And you are not going to see me for two weeks because I'm going on vacation in Japan where maybe I'll use the dual screen interpreter, even though I just kind of speak a little bit of Japanese. I kind of want to practice it a bit. But yeah, I'll be missing you guys for the next two weeks, both you, Michelle and Ron and our lovely Android faithful. But maybe the showtime is 10 a.m. Japanese standard time. So maybe I'll just be regular audience member. When if we're not doing anything, just be on vacation. I know. I don't want to miss some of our. Am I supposed to? We appreciate you. That's awesome. We're excited for your vacation. It's going to be good. We'll miss you. But we got a couple of good shows lined up that you're going to have to watch us in regular. Regular viewer, Wintodow, I suppose to coast. So awesome. And finally, while I'm not, while I am as everywhere as Michelle is, I'm not as active as Michelle is, but I'm Ron XO out there on Twitter and Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, Blue Sky, everything. I'm most active on Instagram. But if you're looking for something else to listen to, head over to my other podcast over at ifanboy.com where we did our monthly media conversation. And I talked about, watched a movie recently, Flora and Son and Apple TV Fluss. That was very good. I've been watching The Gold on Paramount Plus. But then we went into a little bit of a, we did a end of the year mail bag with some more emails from our listeners and talked a lot about some holiday movies and specials and stuff like that as the holidays are coming up and that's our favorite time to watch TV. So you go to ifanboy.com, you can check all that out and subscribe and listen to that show if you like comic books and movies and TVs and stuff. And then lastly, head over to androidfaithful.com, our very own website where you can subscribe to the show on every imaginal podcast app that's out there. You can find links to link over to our Patreon, link over to our socials. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter slash X, Mastodon, Threads, Facebook, and you can find links to our individual episodes which all have the video. So if you're an audio listener and you wanna watch the video, you go to androidfaithful.com and you can watch the video replay. It's always fun to watch because we wanna give you every imaginable option out there to enjoy Android Faithful because we do record the show as our live listeners, our live viewers can attest. Every Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific over on youtube.com slash daily tech news show or twitch.tv slash good day internet. The podcast itself comes out every Tuesday night on the RSS feeds. And we wanna thank everybody for listening, watching, subscribing because you're the best because collectively we all are the Android Faithful. Have a great week. See you next time.