 Hello, and welcome to another edition of Android Faithful, your weekly source of news, hardware, apps, and all the wonderful things that make Android so special. We're here for you. I'm Ron Richards. I'm Pwintwit Dahl. And I'm Michelle Raman. Hello, Michelle and Wynn. Good to see you. Welcome back. Hey, everybody. Good to be back for another week. Yes. That's a good week. We figured we'd come off of the Labor Day weekend here in the United States and not have a guest. We've been running and gunning for the last eight weeks straight doing the new show. We've had lots of guests. It's been awesome. But sometimes it's fun to just keep it to the fam, right? Just chill with the fam. Yeah, there it is. And we couldn't have picked a better week because I feel like after weeks of trying to make up stuff to talk about, we finally got a bunch of stuff dumped on us. In fact, stuff got announced after the show last week, which is always our least favorite thing when that happens. But we have to sync up with the old Google PR. But yeah, it should be a good show this week. But we do want to take a moment, and I want to remind everybody, if you go to androidfaithful.com, that is your source for everything Android Faithful. There you can subscribe to us on Pocketcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, even Apple, YouTube, et cetera. All the subscribe buttons are there. And you can also find a nifty link to our Patreon. And we want to thank everybody who supported us on Patreon. You guys are really, really the best. We are so thankful for all of our supporters on Patreon. And by doing that, there's a couple of different levels that you can join up at. You can join up at the lowest level, $5 a month, where you get to participate in the voting of a story for us to talk about on the show. Very, you know, it's the high point of the week. We're always curious what story you're all going to pick. The $10 tier, you get that. 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We'd love to hear from you. So all right. So with that, do you want to get into the news? Shall we? Let's get into it. All right. Well, the big news coming out of last week after last week's show was released was that Google set the date for the Pixel 8 launch event. It's October 4th, which is less than a month from that was a month as of yesterday from now, where they are going to unveil the Pixel 8 and let us all know what we can expect from it. And I got to admit, they did do it in a unique way, which I felt was very un-Google in that they released a video on social that highlighted the Pixel's spa days or rather the mobile phone spa day as you see Google Pixel. And what is the other phone? It's an iPhone. It's an iPhone, right? That's what I thought with cucumbers over there, over their camera lenses and talking about how hard it is on these launch days and how they need to relax first. I don't know. I mean, kudos to Google. What do you guys think of this? So I guess unsurprisingly, you know, it's cute, but it's also Google, you know, taking whatever shots again. I mean, it's all cute and like get together, but it is sort of Google taking some pot shots a little bit at iPhone. They make fun of like the USB-C thing there. It's fine. It's funny. Actually, my husband, I was watching this for the show just so I could kind of like have an opinion on it. My husband like, what phone is that? And I'm like, oh, baby, that's an iPhone. He's like, well, I couldn't tell because there was a cucumber over it. But so it's kind of a very particular. I don't know. It's kind of a very particular audience. So I think it's funny. I do think it it smells of try hard because it's funny, but it also is like, hey, like Pixel so much better in these many ways. But hey, we're all friends here. It's it's it's cute. Well, just leave it as it's cute. Michelle, what do you think of it? Yeah, they're supposed to be like funny, pretty much like like you mentioned, cute and just like to compare like some kind of features that you might think are obvious in hindsight. Like, hey, the iPhone is finally getting USB C charging. You kind of saw it in the ad right there. The previous one talked about, hey, your iPhone is dying. Let me use my Pixel to reverse wireless charge it. And you're like, hey, thanks for saving me. Right. It's like these little cute little comparisons that show off some of like the most unique features of the Pixel and also kind of just poking fun at the iPhone. Yeah, I mean, it is funny because it's I was surprised to see it. And I do like it when it goes lighthearted and unexpected, which is that's what this was. And also the tongue in cheek, making fun of the launch events and stuff like that. Because how many years have we been through all this? Right. And so I don't know. Yeah, I agree with you in that it's a little tryhardy, but like they've got to try hard to get noticed, right? And I do love stop motion animation. So that is fun. And yes, because I'm a job, I agree. Try hard as Google's humor. Start I'm sympathetic because as someone who has been who who just by mentioning that I have a pixel fold has someone just out of the blue apropos of nothing said, iPhone is better. I get where Google is coming from. They're desperate for people like just lay people to know, hey, the phone is good. The phone is good. There are advantages. There are things that we have. So I really, really understand that as someone who that's happened to be like at least two or three times in my life. Just iPhone's better. I didn't say anything that just came at me. So I I get it. But it's also like maybe maybe we'll just own up. Tryhard is is our style and we just own it. I like that. We'll just go with that. All right. There it is. We'll go with that for sure. So October 4th, if you're looking at your calendar as we already have, it's the day after it's on a Wednesday. It's actually the day after the show. So tune into October 3rd when we will be pre-gaming the event and doing our predictions and all stuff like that. And then come back a week later. What is that October 10th? And we will give our breakdown of what the of what of what the show is. And I'm sure I haven't and I don't want to speak ill, but I haven't spoken to Tom or Roger or anybody over at DTNS. But I'm sure one of us is going to pop on DTNS probably after the event to talk about it. So because we're part of that family and here we are. So it's exciting. This is the big moment. So we will see. But of course, once they announce that event, well, we've already been covering that for the past month. But it is time to talk about the rumors and the leaks. And we had a pretty big leak. So when why don't you and actually, Michelle, Michelle gets credit for this one. I mean, Michelle gets credit for half of these. And it's so funny because I feel like at this point, October 4th is going to be like when you do the crossword puzzle and you just want to check your answers. It's starting to feel like that with as much leaks as we're getting. And so we have a bunch of leaks to talk about about the Pixel 8 series that are coming out. The first of which is that Google leaked itself. You leaked yourself. So basically, and Michelle, this was one of yours given to you by at Android setting on Twitter slash X. Basically, the Google store released a promo image, a little promo page a little bit early, which basically shows the Pixel 8 Pro, which kind of confirms some design updates to the camera bar in the back. So of course, the Pixel 8 Pro like many of like basically like every other camera bar version of the Pixel Pro has three cameras. And so the design has been, you know, like two of the cameras bundled into like a circular unit with a with a third, I think the telephoto lens separate. Now those three units are merged in and that's the camera design, which you can see in the leaked pictures of a gentleman using the Pixel 8 Pro and showing kind of like the now merged triple camera unit. And also it confirms that porcelain is is going to be a pixel pro eight colorway. It's white. It's going to be white, but it's called porcelain. Um, another thing that is leaking is that the Pixel 8 Pro will indeed keep its physical SIM card. There were some rumors that maybe the Pixel 8 would eight series would see the first eSIM only phone. Not yet. We're we're still going to have that little SIM card tray, but something that we will be getting on the Pixel Pixel 8 series is night sight for video. So I'm really over at nine to five Google noted this is just kind of, oh, oh, yet another thing in the series of, hey, a pixel photo first feature coming to video. So like in the last few years, you know, portrait mode was was coming, you know, came to video. And this year with the Pixel 8 series, it looks like sorry, night sight will be added to video. So you get your night sight videos. Exciting. Interesting. Like, you know, bring in our bring in our computational photography to videography. Excited. Yay. I mean, yeah, it's it's it's what we can expect from this event is there's going to be some sort of pixel exclusive kind of thing that makes your reason to do it. The physical SIM card, I thought was interesting because we were just talking about the eSIM cards and all this sort of stuff. And it seems like that that train is probably moving faster than Google is intended, right? I don't know. Yeah. Michelle, what's Michelle, what's your take on these ones? I mean, it's good that they're keeping the physical SIM card around for this generation. Like, I've no doubt that eventually it'll go away. Like, there's no way that that's not the trend that everyone's going to take eventually after iPhone already did it in the US with the iPhone 14 series. But, you know, it's good that for at least this year, because I know if you're a reviewer and you swap phones a lot, eSIM is a pain in the rear, like having to constantly because like you can't just pop your SIM card out of one phone, put it into another and boom, bam, you're done with an eSIM. You got to like sometimes call your carrier. You got to hope there's a way to transfer eSIM between devices, which on the vast majority of devices, there is no way to do that unless you have like two Samsung phones or I think two iPhones can do that. So, yeah, good thing they're keeping that around for another generation. And as for the night side for video, I'm a little worried. I wonder how well that'll do in like hotter climates. Like, I'm in Texas and it's just always hot. How long can I do night side for video without phone just like overheating completely? I mean, that's really fair. That's really fair. I mean, we'll see. We may become like a night light almost like it's just going to burn so hot. It just becomes a flashlight. But it will be interesting to see what people can do with it, though, right? Because we see because we saw those great like Starfield photos and like all those great kind of night side photos. I mean, I guess I'm curious to see what the demo will show. You can do it with with night side video. And then, Michelle, you'll get the slap or the burned hand when you try to do it in real life. But yeah, yeah, I think those are good. Yeah, I think the bigger deal if like there hasn't been any rumors on it. But if Google updates their camera app to support ultra HDR, which is the thing they announced with Android 14, because like right now, all the photos we take are in like SDR. But once you introduce ultra HDR, you'll be able to take photos that both have SDR like the base images SDR. So whenever display you're using can display it properly and also has that HDR metadata that's embedded in it. So devices that have HDR displays can actually like show the additional colors and everything. You know, you get better photos for everyone across the world. Actually, actually take advantage of it. OK, so just to wrap up, so this is this is a Michelle. Michelle, you found that from FCC filings that Wi-Fi 7, which is also known as IEEE 802.11, extremely high throughput is the next generation Wi-Fi standard might be available on the eight series. And finally, just if you want some pixel blood pros that match the new colorways that do include porcelain and sky blue, it seems that Google will be announcing not necessarily new buds, but new colorways to match the sexy new color colors that the pixel eight series will come and be coming out with. So possibly Wi-Fi 7 and probably more than likely matching pixel blood pros. So we should probably clarify, by the way, the porcelain is the descriptor of the white version of the phone. The phone is not actually porcelain, although now I really want to see a porcelain phone. But yeah, just to clarify that. So, Michelle, why don't we dig into the FCC filing one? Like, give us the behind the scenes on this story. It was just something that this Reddit user who's like prolific at looking into pixel modems, like this is like he's just really enthusiastic about seeing what's happening with the pixel modems. He saw that this little detail was kind of missed by initial scouring of the FCC filings. So you can see, like, I kind of highlighted in red if you zoom into the one of the photos, like way at the bottom, it says that it supports WWLan 802.11 and all the way at the end, it says slash BE. So 802.11 slash BE is the IEEE term for Wi-Fi 7. So based on that, we're speculating that the Wi-Fi, the pixel eight series will support Wi-Fi 7. Is there any chance this might help to mitigate kind of like the widespread issues that people have with like Wi-Fi and reliability on pixels in general? Like, I feel like we get an email about that once a month. Is there any like, I don't know much about Wi-Fi 7, but could this be like something to be hopeful about? Well, I mean, if we're getting a new Wi-Fi chip, which this will definitely require and hopefully that Wi-Fi chip is better, that would solve like reliability issues. But Wi-Fi 7 isn't something anyone's going to be using for a good while because first of all, you need a Wi-Fi 7 capable router. I doubt anyone has a Wi-Fi 7 router right now. Someone does somewhere, but the mainstream-wise, right? Yeah. Right. Well, investment in the future is normal. Well, no, I mean, it's good that they're thinking about forward thinking because at some point it will be and you want the phone to work. And investment, long game. Exactly. All right. So event in a month from now, we're going to see, you know, we know, obviously pixel eight, pixel eight pro, right? We know these that we're this pixel bud stuff will be curious if we get any sort of update in the tablet world, given that the tablet will be out for almost half a year at that point. There's always the question of Fitbit and Nest and all the other stuff. Like, are they going to take the approach of the, you know, like Samsung, the connected ecosystem environment of Google? Like, you know, time will tell to see what the what the pitch is in this event in terms of how they how they approach it and how they tie everything together. And we'll see if anything, what else leaks in the next month. Lord knows, we sure some other stuff might, you know, you know, commercials have leaked like we all through the years we've had so much stuff leaked before these events. So we'll just have to keep our eye on it. But I'm excited. I mean, I feel like it will be the first big event for our show. No, Samsung Galaxy Unpacked was while we were doing the show, wasn't it? Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it'll be our second major event. So there we go. But yeah. And then also before we move on to the next story, it's probably worth noting that I know there was a lot of speculation around Android 14 and, you know, kind of some folks pointing towards it possibly coming out this week, maybe even today. And as we could tell, it has not. In all intents and purposes, it looks like it is still forthcoming. So maybe they'll line it up with this event or not in a month. We'll see. But still no Android 14 on the horizon as of yet. But that doesn't mean we don't get some good fun Android stuff, right, Michelle? Absolutely. Today, we didn't get a pixel feature drop, but we did get a new Android feature drop. And for those of you don't know, the difference between an Android feature drop and a pixel feature drop is that the pixel feature drop is just for pixel exclusive features and updates, whereas this Android feature drop is for updates to Google apps that are available on all Android devices. So in today's announcement, Google announced five new features across various different apps. The biggest one is the new AI powered Google at a glance widget. And this is not the same widget that's on Pixel phones. So Pixel phones have an adult glance widget. This is different. This is the Google apps adult glance widget. I know it's a little confusing, but this widget is available to all devices, not just pixel phones. And this one will let you see your weather alerts, travel updates, event reminders. And it's supposedly AI powered. I don't know exactly how, but Google says it is. And as you can see, it has this spiffy new design, like this pill shaped box with material you theming. And right now it does those three things that I mentioned. Hopefully it could do more in the future if Google continues to update it. And it looks like that's something they're going to be doing because this widget has been around for a very long time and hasn't really done much. But now they're finally giving it another look, a new design, new features and hopefully it continued to receive more in the future. So the second feature they announced is image Q&A. This is actually you scroll up a little bit past it. Yeah. So the lookout app for those you don't know is an accessibility app that helps people who have visual impairments, you know, kind of see the world around them. So like for this feature, a particular image Q&A for images that don't have alt text or they don't have any good captions, image Q&A will automatically generate an image description from an image. And then the user can ask questions about this description. Like in this example, there's like a dog running on a beach. The user can ask questions about the image and get like a AI powered, you know, question back and forth about what's going on. So a lot of times a lot of images, you know, I myself am guilty of this sometimes just because, you know, when you're posting an image, right, a lot of people don't have time to add alt text to every single image they upload or it's, you know, it's a second thought to them. But this feature will kind of make up for, you know, that lack of introduction to good captions. So the next update I think is really cool because it's something they announced a long time ago, I think all the way in Google IO 2022, it's the ability to import generic passes into the Google Wallet app. So if you have, say, an image of your gym or library card that has a barcode or QR code in it, you can scan and upload that now to Google Wallet data, which is very cool. And definitely like the thing that makes this Google Wallet even more valuable, right? Boarding passes is great. You're allowed but the all the random cards we have in the world that we that aren't in their database that you can have at least so good. Yeah, absolutely. The next thing they announced are new apps for Zoom and WebEx by Cisco. So these apps are not coming to Android Auto. So if you're on the go in your car and you get a call from your boss, you can now answer it on your car display. I will say I'm scoffing and I'm cringing at this, but I literally was driving back from the doctors today. And I, depending on how traffic was, I might have had to take a call in my car and the number of times I've not used Android Auto. But just using the Subaru OS, you know, for my whole thing, where I can Bluetooth my phone to the audio and connected via Zoom and just put the phone in the in the in the cup holder and on the phone as if it was in Zoom and it works fine. A more native integration would be great. Just no video, no video, please. Don't don't don't get distracted while you're driving. Please, I've done the same to run. Unfortunately, at my current job, we use teams, which is probably not going to get an audio and Android Auto integration in time soon, but I won't have to worry about that very soon. Oh, God, I hope. And the final sorry, I hate teams. Teams are the worst. I'm sorry. Yeah, the final feature in the Android features off is the ability to read out your activity in sleep beta through a Google Assistant routine. So if you set up a Google Assistant routine such as the no, no word good morning, I'm not going to say, you know, hey, you know what I'm talking about. Yes. If you go to the Google app, you can add a new action called Get Wellness Info. And so that whenever you have your Assistant routine trigger, you can have it read out your sleep and activity data, which is, you know, collected through Fitbit or Google Fit. All right. All right. And that's not the only announcement Google made today, by the way, the other announcement. Hang on, before you do that, though, before we go into that, that's a meaty like Android. Like that's a lot of good stuff that isn't just pixel based, right? Like it is, I don't know, I'm impressed by that, right? So am I alone? No. Yeah, I mean, it's nice. It's nice to get features like this, you know, all grouped together from time to time. And it's interesting that they're finally starting to actually publicly brand it as an Android feature drop. They used to kind of shy away from that term for a long time. Like they just called it here are new features for everyone, right? They didn't call it an Android feature drop, but now they're finally calling it that again. Well, it could be related to the next topic. Yeah, so today, Google also announced a visual overhaul of Air Logo and the iconic robot mascot, you know, the bug droid. I just can't get over how, if you see the bottom left of the video, the little new bug droid, look how stubby those arms and legs are. I don't know, if you're listening to this on audio, go on Google's blog and look at the new modern look for the Android brand blog post. And you can see a video that shows the new bug droid robot and it's like stubby arms and legs. I've been telling everybody that the new bug droid looks like Winnie the Pooh. Yeah, it's so great. Well, it's so funny because if you remember two months ago, when Android Faithful started, we had gotten the news that they were changing, they were capitalizing the A in Android again, or not again, but just capitalizing the A in Android. So we knew there was some level of brand stuff changing. I did not have the little bug droid guy coming back. Thank God he did because if you look at our logo, we're leveraging it. Yeah, don't get rid of him. But and Lord knows, I love the little guy because that was OG Android. But these are very curious. And even friend of the show, Dave Burke from Google got in on the action celebrating the 3D-ness of the Google bot posting on Twitter that the bot-bot is back and now in 3D with a little gif of the little Android dude waddling. And he looks a lot like Winnie the Pooh here. Yeah, that sounds like a title. That sounds like the title of this show episode to me right there. The bot-bot is back. The bot-bot is back. So yeah, so in the post, there's this one line of like, ahoran. They explain it like, we've a, ahoran. So this is from the release post. We've also updated the robot's full body appearance to ensure it can easily transition between digital and real life environments, making it a versatile and reliable companion across channels, platforms, and contacts. And I messaged my Trello Amdroid fan and said this kind of feels like an AR clip you thing going on to me a little bit, just with like the hyper. I'm saying that with some affection, but yeah, it's interesting they're going full on 3D. Well, there is, you know, there have been rumors and they did announce that they're working with Samsung on an XROS for, you know, that's Android base. So potentially maybe like they're updating this logo to be more 3D like, because you'll be able to see this in augmented reality through. Okay, that all makes sense, it all turns together. I mean, now I'm putting, this is speculation. I've no inside information or anything like that. And I'm putting my day job marketer, you know, career marketing hat on. They're going to start pushing Android as a brand again. I think that this is going to be, this is laying the groundwork for the next phase of promoting Android to the masses as a viable platform and whether or not Android means Pixel or Samsung or whatever phone manufacturer of your choice, but the underlying root OS is an Android phone. It looks like they're trying to take ownership of that again and also make it relatable with the little bug droid dude. That's my take on it. No, 100% because they actually show, if you go to the release posts, they actually show the reasoning a bit for why the A is now capitalized, which I'm still not a fan of, but basically they wanted Android, the word Android, the logo mark Android, when put next to the word Google to actually stand out rather than kind of looking de-emphasized. So a hundopee run, I think that totally backs you up in that Google is trying to, not that they ever didn't own it, but kind of like revitalize that connection. Yeah, I mean, like reading directly from the post, it says, in addition to moving away from our law and standing lowercase stylization of Android, we're elevating the Android logo by capitalizing the A, adding more weight to its appearance when placed next to Google's logo, which is a very specific use as an example, right? And we've added more curves and personality, the new Android Scylation more closely mirrors Google's logo and creates balance between the two. Like this is definitely they're trying to say, Android is Google, Google is Android, right? Which I totally understand they own it, they have all the rights to do this and I totally get that as a perspective. It does ruffle my Android is open also feathers and it feels like it's always weird because Android is like a two minds, right? It's open, it's like this like scrappy platform that always feels like we're trying to catch up to other people, but it's still something owned by a huge corporation, right? And it's their brand as well. It's just interesting, because it kind of also run counter to Samsung and other huge partners that are trying to also, that are also Android as well. It just, the whole thing is interesting. I don't really have an opinion either way, but it's super interesting how these all things interact. It's definitely interesting to watch on the sidelines at least to see the evolution. And it's also like, what is old is new again. Like history repeating itself, right? I definitely do appreciate that for sure. Over, under, when they're gonna deke, they're gonna lowercase the egg. I mean, what six, seven years when they decide that Android isn't as important as Pixel and so we're gonna de-emphasize that. Yeah, so anyway. All right, well that was good stuff. So we got a little taste, a little the world of Android, you know, despite no Android 14, we did get some stuff to work with. That's pretty cool. All right, so moving right along, as I mentioned earlier, our patrons get to help us pick a new story every week to talk about over our Patreon.com slash Android faithful. And this week we had a nice mix of stories. We had three stories you could choose from. The Galaxy Note is dead in favor of foldable sales in Europe and that got 22% of the vote. OnePlus is working on using all of the RAM in your device, which there's a lot of random like, OnePlus is doing this, OnePlus is doing that stories this week and we're gonna get to one a little bit later on. That only got 20% of the vote. But the clear winner was the techno phantom ultimate rollable concept. And I gotta say, if I was voting, this is probably the one I would have voted for. So if you haven't seen this yet, I encourage you to go Google techno, T-E-C-N-O. And they've got a video of the techno phantom ultimate unveiling of their rollable concept phone. And Lord knows, I love a good foldable, but I love a rollable that much more. So this rollable phone, I'm just, for those watching our video, I'm trying to get to the goods here. You press a button on the top of the device and the screen expands outward, rolling the screen along as it does it. And it expands from a 6.55 inch display to a 7.11 inch display. And it's just ridiculous. It's just like, I love rollables. And it was great. And in the video, if you watch it, which we just saw, if you just swipe the screen to the right, that triggers the rolling back into it, which I just feel like we need to watch the rolling again and that much more. But yeah, it just expands out ever so gracefully. And the icons kind of roll with it because the display is actually malleable and flexes and rolls with it. What is not clear in this video is to whether or not the actual viewport of the display is 6.5 inches or 7.1 inches. Like is it 6.5 inches? But you're cutting off like a third of the screen when it's in the small mode. That's what it looks like in the video. But I don't know. I think this is hysterical and I love it. It kind of looks like the part that's folded over becomes a cover screen, but a real tiny cover screen, like super tiny y'all like itty-bitty, like a thumbnail, like I can't even... So we'll see. Kind of cool though. I do wanna call out and we're looking for, if you're watching the video, you can see the stills before our audio listeners, there's a still of the back of the phone, which is, I feel like is a little bearing the lead. The back of the phone's got three camera lenses, similar to what you would expect from a Samsung phone or whatnot. But then on the right side of the back, there appears to be a little mini display that runs the length of the phone, which is like another size screen, second screen kind of display, like we've seen with the foldables, but like really thin and long, like the full height of the phone. Yeah. I think that's the overflow. I think that's the overflow. Fascinating. The overflow screen, just not... Yeah, there it is. It's the rollable portion of the display, winds to the back of the device would not use the services, it's always on display. And this part of the screen can be used as a small viewfinder for rear camera selfies. I don't know, this is pretty cool. I mean, it's a prototype. It's a concept, yeah. Yeah, it's a concept, but I love when they do weird stuff. No, this is of the concepts that we're gonna talk about today. This is the coolest one by far. Are you sure it's not the next one we're gonna talk about? No, it's definitely this one. This one will win. I'll put money on it, but we'll just barely lead on that one just a little bit longer. Yeah, so anyway, so thanks everybody for voting. Go to patreon.com slash android faithful. You can vote every week, but win. Let's kick off hardware with the next great concept that we've seen. That's real. That's real. So for number one, we've been hearing a lot about the Honor Magic V2, which again, so Honor is a spin off of Huawei because you have sanctions and stuff. And their big thing was the Honor Magic V2 with that it would be compared to this latest generation of the Pixel Fold and the Z Fold 5 in terms of passport slash book style foldables would be the thinnest and lightest. And of course the question with any kind of Chinese manufacturer is how global is global? Well, we have the answer and that the Honor Magic V2, which did launch already in China, will in fact go on sale in markets in Europe and elsewhere, just not for us here in the United States, want, want, I think no later than Q1 2024, 2024, that is correct. Yeah, and I mean, just anecdotally speaking, I've seen a lot of like very half decent reviews so far of people that have been able to get their hands on the Honor Magic V2. So if you do live in Europe and other markets that aren't the US and you're looking for a cheaper alternative because I believe the price is approximately 1,300 USD again, compared to 1,800 for every other passport slash book style foldable. And a thinner, lighter foldable, the Honor Magic V2 might be your ticket. And again, like it is like, I think 9.9 to 10.1 millimeters thick when folded compared to the Z Fold, which is 13.4. About as light, slightly, and in fact, even while it's lighter and thinner, it's a tiny bit better in several ways. Like the inner display is just a tiny bit bigger, 7.92 inches versus 7.6 on the inner screen of the Honor Magic V2 versus the Z Fold 5. The outer display is just a tiny bit bigger at 6.43 versus the Z Fold 6.2. They're both though rocking a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 but the Honor Magic V2 also packs in 16 gigabytes of RAM compared to the Z Fold 12. Same storage options with increments of 256, 512 gigabytes and one terabyte. The camera units on the Honor Magic V2 are at least in terms of megapixels, just sheer megapixels are way bigger at a 50 wide, a 20 telephoto and a 50 megapixel ultra wide versus a 50, 10 and 12 on the Z Fold. So just overall more megapixels. It still only has 4K at 30 and 60 frames per second versus the Z Fold where you can get 8K. Although good Lord, good luck to you if you're trying to record 8K on a phone. I don't care if you have one terabyte of storage or not. You're gonna be using that up real fast. And yeah, better inner covers. So one thing that is a huge difference is battery though. So we've covered this before but again the Honor Magic V2 has a 5000 milliamp battery, 66 watt wire charging compared to the 4,400 milliamp battery and the Z Fold 5 and only 25 watt wire charging but the Honor Magic V2 does not have wireless charging if that really is a deal breaker for you compared to the Z Fold 5 which does have 15 watt wireless charging. They both have style support. So you can see like the Honor Magic V2 is very much competing with the Z Fold and many different avenues and trying to distinguish itself in many ways. Obviously it's cheaper and is missing them things but kind of ups the spec game and a couple other things. So again, if you're not in the U.S. and you are kind of looking to get in the foldable game this approximately 1300 USD model might be for you and it's super compelling. And again, I've seen some pretty good stuff. I don't know. Would you all want one if you could get one? I mean, Michelle, you might be able to get one, right? You got waiting rooms? No? No? Well, the only thing I'm interested in is like, they announced this right now but it's not shipping until Q1 2024. It's quite a bit of weight. And we don't know what the software is like. Like I've seen some hands-on videos of this and they were not really allowed to talk about the software very much. They were just showing off. What magic OS is in that magic, what do you think? Yeah. Like I actually wrote an editorial over the weekend about the Z Fold 5 software features and just the sheer number of things that Samsung added to one UI that like enhance the foldable experience that just aren't available in stock Android or the Pixel Fold. So like even though Samsung, yeah, I guess the hardware is still not the best. I mean, it's not the best anymore. You know, there are definitely obviously competitors that are better in some ways, like the Honor Magic V2 in terms of thinness, battery, capacity, but will they provide a better software experience than Samsung that remains to be seen? And I doubt right now that any other foldable device has the same software experience as the Z Fold 5. That's the remains, I think it's big as advantage. No, I think that's really fair. But it's 9.9 millimeters folded. I know, I really want to try it just to hold it. I mean, come on, dude. This thing is so thick. Okay. This thing is ridiculous. I know. It's a chunker. What are you holding up there, Michelle? It's got a bot-bot. I'm sorry, sorry. I was holding up the Z Fold 5 in its estimate, which makes it even chunkier. The Z Fold 5 compared, it's not in the millimeter world, right? You know, 9.9 thick, this one folded. 4.7 when unfolded. 4.7 millimeters, that's like, oh. It's very spelt. It does not have a bot-bot like the new droid. Yeah, so by the way, just kind of sidetrack. I got the D-brand case for the Pixel Fold, and that has made this phone a real chunker. Oh, look at that chunky baby. It does have a kickstand, which my husband loves. He says, if I hate this case, he's gonna use it, but I have other problems with this case. If you ever want a fold case review or survey, let me know. Okay, so that's the Honor Magic V2, which is definitely an incredibly compelling device from Honor. They did talk about a concept, which is the... Dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun. They also announced the Honor V purse, which if you were a fan of Huawei, which again, Honor was spun off from, this might look a little familiar, but basically Honor V purse is a concept phone, which is basically the Huawei Mate X, where it is a foldable phone with the outer display wraps, where, is it foldable? I think it's just... Yeah, it's a foldable. It's a foldable. Where the outer display wraps around the body, but it comes with a very handy attachable chain so that you can wear the phone like a purse. And that's it. You can't put anything in this. This is not a purse, other than the fact that it has a chain on it. And if you're looking at it... It's not even an actual purse. It's not even a purse, y'all. Don't get all excited that you're gonna be able to put your wallet or your whatever in here. You can make the screen look like the surface of a purse, but you can't put your ID in it. Just to, well, wait a minute though, actually with Google wallet, what is your ID in it though? I mean, digitally, yes, but don't be thinking you're gonna be putting your chapstick or your keys or anything. I mean, please do not put your keys anywhere near this. So yeah, it is basically a phone that you can attach a purse chain to, which I mean, don't do that for me because I knock my purse into all kinds of things. So, but that is the concept. I mean, so to get away from just totally railing on this thing. Oh no, let's not get away from it. Let's go right into it, right? So is this just a for the law concept or is there something here in maybe tackling the fashion, the kind of like look, life style. Wait a minute, I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. I don't mean to interrupt you, but I found a couple of more images of it. And one of them is animated to show the fact that the exterior of the device has an always-on display that also taps into the, what is it? The accelerometer to pick up movement. So what you see is you see a purse swinging left to right with the always-on display showing an image of a charm bracelet with charms hanging off it. And as the phone swings, the charms are moving with the swinging because none of it is real. It's not real. No, it is not real, but I'll bring it back around. So trying to bring this back around. So I do think this is a vaguely interesting concept because of discussions of like say fast fashion and sustainability and yada, yada, yada. Now imagine, I know this is real dumb and this phone is not gonna survive just hanging off your shoulder and it's probably gonna get stolen because, I mean, if you're just holding your expensive ass phone on the sling over your shoulder, you know someone's gonna wanna come over and grab it. But all that impracticality aside, I think this is interesting in that, yes, we are like, if we're talking about this from a fashion style thing, imagine like sustainability, all fast fashion, all that stuff. Imagine if you could find ways to express yourself in fashion with your phone and make it slightly more sustainable by having not necessarily physical things that, I mean, they're talking about like, if you go to Beyonce concert or a Taylor Swift concert, you're having to dress a certain way. And there's actually like people requesting Beyonce and Taylor Swift to stop or question things because there's an element of waste and fast fashion, you know, contributing to climate change and all that kind of stuff. Now imagine you could express yourself through a phone, it's digital, you can swap out to anything to match the outfit of your evening or match like, you know, seasonal styles. And there is my attempt to pitch why this isn't like a wholly dumb ass idea and why it could be interesting. It's a concept. It's a concept. I mean, I agree with you, it's a concept and there is a category of people who are super into this. Yes. Right? And it might not be us, you know, it specifically isn't me but I've seen weirder. Let's just say that. So one potential reason behind this is you have to remember this was shown off at IFA and Honor is still a very, I guess new independent smartphone brand. You know, they've been around as like a spin-off of Huawei for a while but like they became truly independent somewhat recently and they're still trying to sell their phones internationally to users who have never heard of the brand before. So this definitely got them a lot of attention. Like I don't know if they have any plans to ever sell this thing but this definitely got them a lot of attention. Well, probably what they're aiming for. And to give them their own words, so we're looking at the website designboom.com which appears to have had a exclusive interview with the designer at Honor behind this and got us a lot of interesting quotes but they say today's discerning and who was it? It was the Honor design team. This is who it's credited to. Today's discerning users, just today's discerning customers are looking for new ways to express themselves or reflect their individuality whether it's a fresh haircut, a new outfit or a statement piece of jewelry. There are many ways to stand out from the crowd but until now devices that we have on display for much of the day have taken a backseat compared to other more stylish accessories. We believe this is a bold new concept that will pave the way for the future of fashion and technology. And I'll be honest, I might not choose always on display with a bunch of charms hanging off of it or a purse that thing, but I would want to customize my phone. I mean, I customize the wallpaper of my phone as soon as I get it. I don't use the stock wallpaper. I choose art of my choice, right? So it's the same concept. It's just the ridiculous attachments of the purse strings and saying using it as a purse but that's not a fashion look that I relate to, right? But I mean, and this is why I was, you know we're hoping to have Flo come join us on some shows soon. Soon this, I feel like this is right up her alley to either roast or praise similar in the way you did win. And to be honest, I'm not sure where she would land and then I need to ask her. We got a text there. I could see both ways, but I mean like people some people we did think and some people still think foldables are a dumb idea and are ridiculous and won't take off but we're seeing different. So it all starts off with a dumb idea and then it becomes the next big thing. So. And we'll see when Apple copies it. So. Yeah. So I don't know. It's easy to make fun of it and it's easy to what should we call it to roast it in the way we have but I get where they're coming from and I do applaud them for trying something different. Yeah. I mean, and also in this country I always talk about how iPhone is kind of increasingly getting the market for younger smartphone users. So again, always kind of appealing to like the younger, more fashion or style conscious people. It makes sense. It just makes a lot of damn sense. So no hate there. All right. Well, that was all of our hardware because we had a lot of pixel talking earlier in the show but we want to make sure we get into some apps and I can't let the Android 14 thing go. You know, no Android 14 today but Michelle, there's still Android 14 news to talk about, right? That's right. So last week one plus they announced that they're gonna be rolling out or they plan to roll out their stable release of Android 14. Their OS is called Oxygen OS and they're gonna be rolling that out starting September 25th. That's what they plan to do. We don't know if those plans will change in light of the rumor that, you know Android 14 will launch not this month but next month. We'll see how that happens but in any case, one plus plans out their update on September 25th and their potential devices that will be included in that rollout would possibly include the one plus 11, the one plus 11 R and the one plus Nord N3. And one of the things they announced alongside their update is something they're calling the Trinity Engine and I kind of cringe at this term because I've heard this kind of thing a lot of times they like companies they announce like they give this fancy sounding name for like their OS performance optimizations. So that's what basically one plus is doing here. They announced their Trinity Engine which includes improvements to CPU, RAM, storage, hyperboost, hyper touch, hyper rendering. It's a buzzword salad but basically your phone will feel faster. I'm gonna call it like it is like. Buzzword salad, there we go. Basically they're just, your performance will be better when you upgrade to Android 14. That's the TLDR. You don't know exactly what they're doing to fix. They're trying to market what they're doing, right? They're trying to spruce it up, yeah, so. But without any numbers, like any graphs, any benchmarks, any explanations for what they're doing it's just buzzwords to me. If you give us numbers then I have something to talk about but that's all we have. Just this technology called Trinity Engine. So beyond the release date and this new Trinity Engine that's all we know so far about what they're doing with their Android 14 update plans. Surprising considering they announced these plans to coincide pretty closely with the potential release date of Android 14 so it goes to show that they're really close to releasing it. Well, that's what I was gonna say was that, I mean, first off despite the buzzword salad Trinity Engine is a pretty cool product name. I'll give them that credit. It's coming off of Oppenheimer or like. Pretty good, good job. But one of the things we've talked about over the years with the old show and now with this show is that great, a new version of Android comes out when will Samsung get it? When will OnePlus get it? When will all the manufacturers roll it out? And sure we're on pixels, but how can we ensure that we're, you know, the question is is that if you're not on a pixel when are you gonna get it? And good for OnePlus I'm coming out of the gate strong and early and fast, right? And even if their launch is delayed by the inevitable whatever launch of Android 14 will be you know, it's still, it seems to be faster than any other manufacturer. So, good for them, that's right. Big props. Indeed. All right, well, when won't you tell us about this one which blows my mind which I never thought I'd see the day? Yeah, I mean, don't kind of keep some brains in because it's mind blowing but unfortunately not as much as we'd like. So something that is incredibly interesting and probably my is kind of confusing is that for a long time on both iOS and Android Instagram users have been frustrated by the fact that Instagram does not have a tablet layout. And that is very surprising because of course Instagram is owned by Meta which I know often seems like, hey, a big huge company why don't they have an iPad layout? And of course by extension tablet layout. Well, I got some good news for some Android tablet users is that Instagram is finally rolling out a layout that works on large screens. Not to everybody, but if you are particularly on if you're in a Z Fold and maybe on a Google Pixel tablet you will see an updated and more screen efficient layout where the bottom navigation that wasn't Instagram and a couple of other things like notifications some other things that were kind of like basically stuffed into other menus have now become part of the navigation rail which is the highly recommended style of navigation component for large screens. So you'll get that on like the side now and then basically just now the app will on the Z Fold 5 and on the Pixel tablet in portrait mode will indeed fill the screen it generally maintains the aspect ratio of reels and then tries to just basically spread out and more efficiently use of space to give you much more clearer and easy to access navigation destinations via the navigation rail. I will say that this navigation rail on the left mirrors Instagram on the web. They rolled out changes to Instagram on the web. I feel like it was a couple of weeks, a couple of months ago where it moved that navigation from the top and the bottom over to the left. That's exactly yeah. So like interesting that it's aligning it in that regard. But yeah, but the fact that this is available on both Samsung and Pixel Fold shows that like Meta is trying to play nice with Google in terms of their embracing of foldables, right? Oh, not on the fold though. On the tablet and only when it's in portrait mode. Oh, okay. Yeah, I think it's hard to call it a tablet layout when this is portrait mode. Nobody is using their Pixel tablet in portrait mode. What did I write in my notes? I wrote F-ing portrait mode in my notes for this because the reason you see this on the Z Fold 5 is as I've mentioned, the inner screen of Z Fold 5 is a freaking portrait aspect ratio. So yeah, I am going to give... Interesting distinction, there it is. I'm going to give all my empathy to the Instagram team because being at couple big corporations now, as much as you want to do something, usually you get your hands tied by someone giving you just enough room to do something like this. But Michelle, yes, absolutely. I wrote F-ing portrait on my mode because the only way this works is in large screen in portrait, which again, Z Fold 5, Pixel tablet in portrait mode. And Ron, how many times have you used your Pixel tablet in portrait mode for something like this? Not ever. So it's a good... It's an okay start. I'm not going to blame the developers, but this is kind of silly. It's a little silly, but hey, it's a start. And again, I haven't been able to see it because the Pixel Fold inner screen is landscape. So... I will amend what I just said. I do use my tablet in portrait mode when reading comics or books because I hold it like a book. That's very fair. Right, and so if I'm in that mode and I pop over Instagram, this is great. But if I'm in landscape mode and consuming media, whatever, and pop over Instagram, that's no bueno, so... Yeah, and again, usually this comes down to very limited design resources and only so much wiggle room to give time to these things. So the easiest thing is to do a portrait mode. Generally, that's just the way people tend to think of the biggest ROI on time spent. So anyway. Yeah, I do one little one minute tangent here. I do wonder if that's the reason why the Z Fold 5 aspect ratio is the way it is because Samsung might have realized early on, hey, fast majority of apps are designed for portrait mode phone UIs. So why not design our phone to open up into a portrait mode UI so that we don't have to care if developers don't optimize for landscape tablet layouts? Whereas if you look at like the Pixel Fold, it opens up into a landscape mode. So a lot of apps are letter box whereas you don't get... And the Instagram app is indeed quite letter boxed in landscape mode just to clarify. So, and yeah. Yeah, that Michelle, that angle is really interesting and sometimes you have to wonder if you're not giving them too much credit for thinking that way or stumbling into it. I definitely do think I was part of the reason why they did that. Yeah, I think it was conscious that I give them more credit. I mean, it's really commonplace now to just lock your phone in portrait mode. And I've been on many teams and I've seen posts on Instagram on Twitter slash X where it's just a habit now where I think devs are just even annoyed at having to consider anything other than portrait mode, which I get but I am also as an old OG kind of older kind of person I'm a little annoyed by. And it's really... I mean, I don't really have a Pixel Fold, make it look good in landscape, please. But yeah, I mean, I think practicality is, I think I am not gonna say that that's not possible. I think that is a very good bet that they're just maximizing. All right, all right. And our last story of the week, Michelle, do you wanna tell us about what happened over at Google Play? Yeah, so this kind of thing happens from time to time where, you know, developers are like malicious developers submit fake versions of applications onto Google Play and they slip past App Store review. So in this case, there were malicious versions of the Signal and Telegram apps that were hosted on Google Play. And the reason this was possible is because developers took the source code for Signal and Telegram, compiled their own versions of it. They implemented some spyware into it and then they uploaded it on Google Play. Hoping that users would say, hey, maybe this alternative client for Signal and Telegram have some additional features that I want. So they downloaded, signed into their accounts, and then they inadvertently give up some of their data because they're going through a third-party client rather than the official application. So this is like a PSA. Try to use the official client whenever you can. Like, avoid third-party clients that you can't trust, especially because you don't know what this third-party client might be doing with the information they're giving them, especially if you're signing into your account through them. That advice is really interesting coming off of the Reddit apocalypse this fast summer. Right? Where Reddit shut down third-party developer apps so that they could focus on their main Reddit app and everyone flipped out. And of course, obviously the Reddit apps that people love are not by malicious developers, but here's a good case in favor of what they're doing to lock it all down so that you can guarantee what the experience is. Well, generally, good applications that, good services that host APIs, they don't give you, it's not all or nothing, like access. A lot of times when you're signing up, you're saying, do you want to give them access to this, this, this, this, and you have to read it and say, do you accept? A lot of people, of course, are just gonna click accept, but you should be careful what you're actually reading when you give an application access to Google Drive or Gmail or Reddit, for example. So that actually matters what you're saying yes to. Yeah, read, read, read, even, and or just be conscious of what you're installing. And this is also a good case of showing what Google is doing to ensure safety, right? Like they caught it and took it down, right? And yes, people were affected, but their fast, hopefully swift action kept other people from getting affected. Cool. Yeah, and I believe the malicious signal app only had like a hundred downloads. So it was just sitting there, but it doesn't look like anyone actually used it. Like, thankfully, there weren't many people who were tricked into installing it. Yeah, well, there were a hundred people who used it. Yeah. Yeah, but still. All right, cool, excellent. All right, well, that's gonna wrap it up for this week's stories. We did get some feedback from someone specifically in reaction to some of my comments last week, and I just wanted to address it for everybody watching and or listening, because it's a fair question because Adam in San Diego writes in and says, hey, gang, I love the show and listen every week, but I'm wondering if there's a difference to you as whether I listen via Pocket Cast or YouTube. The reason I asked, because I know you were talking about metrics and RSS feeds and being able to track how people listen, sidebar during my YouTube music podcast rant last week, that's when that came up. So that's what he's referring to. And he says, usually I listen to all podcasts through Pocket Cast, however, I really enjoy the video aspect of shows, including yours. So I have pretty much been watching your show exclusively on YouTube, as opposed to listening through Pocket Cast because the Pocket Cast version is audio only. I was wondering if it benefits you one way or the other depending on how I listen or if it really doesn't matter. If the Pocket Cast version had video and that was better for you, I'd watch it that way. But for now I'm watching on YouTube, even though I have my Pocket Cast set to auto download your show every week. Just wondering what your perspective was. Thanks, love the show, Adam in San Diego. And Adam, we love you and we love everybody watching live right now in the chat rooms. We love everybody who downloaded it on Pocket Cast or Google Podcast or whatever you're using. We love everyone who watches on YouTube. The answer to this is consume us however you want to. There is no one way that we prefer or that's better. We put out the show in all these different versions to try to accommodate as many people as possible. So while I ranted about it last week, don't worry about that. All the metrics stuff and that's our job. We take care of that. You're not meant to worry about that. So just enjoy the show. That's all we want, right? Isn't that our position? Am I speaking for everybody? No, absolutely. Just do whatever works for y'all. And then, you know, we say what we say. We do appreciate you asking though, Adam. Thank you very much. Thank you. And also watching on YouTube and downloading on Pocket Cast, even better. Yes, double thank you. Quadruple, thank you. You can do what I used to do back when I first started getting a podcast thing very, very long time ago. I used to go to Apple stores and subscribe to my podcast with all the devices in the store. So every Apple store I went into, I would do that. I love it. That's awesome. But no, but seriously, Adam, thank you. And yeah, enjoy the show, how you want to. That's all that's important. We'll figure out everything else. So all right, cool. Well, that's gonna wrap us up. This was great. It was good to catch up with the three of us in a Pixel 8 event. Pixel laden Android full week. I'm tired. It's already, it's only Tuesday and I'm already out of it. So all right, Michelle, help me. Tell everyone where they can find you and plug away. Right. So if you want to follow me for Android news, you can follow me on Twitter slash X slash mastodon slash thread slash whatever social media platform. You follow people for Android stuff at Michelle Ramon. I'm also available. I do also have a Patreon of my own where you can support me, you know, $3 a month minimum. And if you want to see me continue doing a lot of this Android stuff, you know, Android exclusive posts, social media stuff, et cetera. Subscribe to me there. And yeah, thanks for supporting me. Right on. Well, thank you, Michelle. I gotta tell you, it's honestly, it's becoming like Whin's Jetpack Composed drinking game. Every time we're planning the show and I'm like, oh, there's a story that's referencing Michelle. There's a story that's referencing Michelle. You are very active on the Twitter and I respect it. Yeah, it would be the deadlier drinking game which is just a credit to you. I would have a hard time keeping up for sure. Okay, Whin, why don't you tell folks where they can find you? Yeah, so I'm an Android developer. I do Android things. I do technical content. In fact, next week I'm going to DroidCon New York and talking about custom layouts in Jetpack Composed. Ooh, you can have a drink there on me. But yeah, all that kind of stuff that I do, you can find my website, randlametyping.com and on the social places I am at QuedeCodeMonkey. And yeah, just find me there and thanks for listening to us this week. Right on. And I can be found over on X, Twitter, whatever, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Blue Sky, blah, blah, blah threads. I'm usually at Ron XO or some variation of at Ron XO so you can find me there. But I also aforementioned do other podcasts and I encourage you to head over to ifanboy.com where you can hear me every month and I pop on that show to talk on what we call the media splode where we talk about TV and movies and things like that. And this last episode was a ton of fun because we were in the summer movie spirit. So we put together our list of our top five summer movie, summer 80s movies. Sorry, summer 80s comedies. So if you're into 80s comedies like Three Amigos and Airplane and Police Academy too and things like that the conversation is up your alley. So strongly recommend you to go to ifanboy.com where you can check that out and subscribe to it too if you like comic books. It's a fun podcast and I appreciate your support. So, excellent. Well, that is gonna wrap us up for this week. I wanna thank everybody watching live for talking in the chat, suggesting show titles. It's a fun place to be. So tune in to the Daily Tech New Show YouTube channel or Good Day Internet on Twitch channel every Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific where you can watch the show live. And if that's not your thing, you can always listen to it as a podcast because as we said to Adam and San Diego, enjoy the show however you like to. So that's gonna wrap everything up. This podcast publishes every Tuesday evening and you can subscribe at androidfaithful.com and as always email us at contactantandroidfaithful.com. We love to hear from you and we'll see you next time on Android Faithful.