 Hello! It is Tuesday, December 12th, and we are the Android faithful, your weekly source for the latest news, hardware, apps, discussion, emails, feedback from you, the audience, and general love fester on Android. I'm Ron Richards, and with me as always is... We're in Dweck now. And of course... Michelle Ramon. Hey guys, how you doing? Hey! Glad to be back another week. Another week. This is our second and last show of the year of 2023, and we couldn't think of any better person to have on the show than... What is this title of these past couple of months? Totally Normal Audience Member. Totally Normal Audience Member. Totally Normal Audience Member, Mr. Jason Howell. Hi! Welcome back to the show, Jason. How are you, my friend? I'm doing pretty good. Totally normal things around here for a totally normal audience member, Jason Howell. So Jason, you've had a busy week, haven't you? Yeah, it's been quite a week, let me tell you. And I was actually just saying earlier today that I think I'm busier in unemployment than I was working at TWIT. But yeah, for those who have not heard yet after 13 years, I was laid off from my position at TWIT, and you know, you can kind of think the economy, think the weird kind of turn and position that podcasting and advertising and all that kind of finds itself in right now. But it was a, yeah, it was a sad day, but it was like I also completely understood the reason why. And you know, there's no bad blood. There's nothing like that. It's all good for my eyes. Yeah, I mean, it echoes six months ago when they ended all about Android, and it was like, yeah, we understand and we still love Leo, we still love Lisa, we still love Burke, we still love everybody there at TWIT. Absolutely. They'll probably agree with me when I say it's their loss, you know, like you and Ant and Victor are just awesome talent, and it's the reality of business. And I don't think I'm speaking, you know, out of turn to say that they really, truly did not want to lay any of us off. And I could tell that when, you know, when we had our conversation, this was not something that was done, you know, for any other reason than it was just a necessity based on the climate of things right now. And I get it. I completely get it, you know, and I also, I've been there 13 years, like I've done a lot of time working for TWIT longer than I've worked for any company before. And so, you know, it was kind of, it's kind of been an opportunity to kind of turn toward the unknown and be and, you know, get really curious and go, OK, well, what can I do now? Like it really opens up the door for so many cool things. Well, so before we get into the show and before again, some other stuff to that point, Jason, how can people follow along with you and find you basically? Well, so I've been primarily pointing people to free jasonnewsletter.com, which is just a short URL that directs you to a sub stack that I set up, which if you want to know that address is jasonhowell.substack.com. But basically that's kind of like, as that URL says, that's like a free place that you can subscribe so that you don't, because I wanted to, like, there's so many different places that people can follow, you know, people online, and I wanted to just have one definitive place to say, you know what, if you follow there, you're going to know everything that I'm up to because I'm not going to be a Twitter anymore. So that's where you go. And then I also have a Patreon that I set up pretty quickly, patreon.com. Jason Howell. That is a, it's a paid Patreon. Obviously you could do free if you like, but you're not going to get many of the posts, but really because it's so vague. If you go there and you read through like what you get at this point, it's really vague because I'm truly building my business in real time. You know, the whole, the old adage of building the plane while you're flying it. That's really what I'm doing right now. And so that Patreon is really set up as a way for people who care deeply and want to kind of be involved because my plan is to really kind of hit up patrons and, you know, have some, have some office hours that are specific to them. And, you know, at some point I need to set up a discord, but just have an open line of communication so that I can communicate with you folks and you can communicate with me and we can kind of see what Jason does next, you know, together. Yeah. Well, I signed up. I'm excited to see what happens. I know. Thank you, Ron. So did you win? You totally didn't have to, by the way, but thank you. No, we want, we want to support you. Well, to that though, I think when Michelle, do we need to change Jason's title now? I think we do. Yeah. Yeah. Totally normal audience member no longer, but totally normal host. Woo. That's right. Yes. It should probably come as very little surprise to anyone that if I'm coming on to the show, you know, after getting laid off at Twitter, there's the possibility that I might join Android faithful. And I mean, at the end of the day, you guys, like we had such a really, such a wonderful thing going with all about Android, um, not just from a news perspective, but from like when I, when I think about what my life was like for, for the 13 years that all about Android existed and then when it went away, the last handful of months, like I'm not only not talking about Android, this, this topic that I'm passionate about. I know you all are too, but I'm also not hanging out with my friends and being nerd nerdy geeks with them and talking about, you know, stuff that's related and then unrelated. And, you know, it's, it's a weekly hangout session. And that's what I always loved about all about Android. And so of course I'm so happy to be invited into the fold and to join you on Android faithful every week. I'm happy to be here. Well, we, we are delighted as people in the live stream chat are saying the band is back together. Jason full-time member of Android faithful moving forward. Um, so we're super, super excited about that. Can I add two more things, two more quick things. Yeah. One, I promise you this lighting setup is not my permanent setup. It looks awful. I look like I'm a hostage in a hostage video or something that is not true. This is just what I could throw together in short term. And two, should we reveal the whole song thing? Uh, we might, if we want to, if we want to go behind the scenes here, let me do this. Oh yeah, that sounds familiar. Yeah. I don't know if this is something we were waiting for another time. No, let's do it now. Why not? Y'all like that song? Y'all like that song? Yeah. That was, that was me. That was me. I was really proud of it. And I'm so happy that you guys liked it and integrated it every second. Jason came to our rescue when we were starting the show up and like me and when Michelle were pulling all the pieces together and I'm like texting Jason. I'm like, how are we going to do it? I'm like, oh, I need to find, I need to find some royalty free crap song. And Jason's like, well, hold on. And then like a day later sent us that. I think it was like the first, like it was like the first take or second, like it was, it was like really early. It was like nailed it. And we're like, yes. So Jason, even though you didn't know it, Jason's been with us since the beginning. There we go. There we go. Yeah. A little behind the scenes stuff. I know, I, you know, I, I don't want to, I don't, I talk too much. I don't want to speak for Michelle and, and when, but I will say I am delighted not only, you know, for the behind the scenes, you know, spreading out the work that we've talked about already, but also just the fact that your perspective on Android, I think is so wonderful and so grounded. And it's like part of what made the magic of all that Android for 12 years. Absolutely. And so, you know, the future is bright for Android faithful, I think. Yay. I'm so excited you guys. So great to be here with you all. Awesome. So you guys want to do a show then? Shall we do it? Yeah. Before we get started though, I will remind everybody, and I didn't do it last week because we had Eric from Beeper on, which by the way, that's crazy. This is your last chance to nominate any best of moments. I think we just had one actually, but to nominate any best of moments, we haven't gotten a lot. So if we're going to pull together a best of episode, we need your help. So go to tinyurl.com slash a f best of 23. It's linked in the show notes. It's linked in the post on Android faithful.com. You can find the link there. I'll post it to social. I'll post it to Twix and to mast it on and to Facebook and everything. Please help us tell us your favorite moments of the show going back to July so we can put together something for you because if not, we might not have one so because we're running out of time. So yeah, please we need your help. Thank you very much to everyone. And with that, we're going to get into the news and Jason, you picked a hell of a week to come back to the show. That's for sure. This is a stacked week. I was like, okay, I got to hit the ground running here. I'll be honest, like since all about Android, my like regular like updating myself on Android news to the degree that we do it for a show like this has really fallen off a little bit. So it's going to take me a couple of weeks to get back into the flow. Get on the horse, my friend, because last week we were so excited to have Eric from Beeper on to talk about Beeper Mini. And then we got on the Beeper Mini roller coaster. So I'm sure everyone listening and watching is aware of it, but I'm going to I'm going to plow through kind of what has happened since we hung up with Eric last Tuesday. So Beeper Mini was introduced to the world. And then ceremoniously on December 8th, Apple killed it. Apple was able to figure out how they were doing it. And we started getting reports that Beeper Mini was going off line that it wasn't working. And then ultimately it got confirmed that it was was indeed Apple that did it Apple. And honestly, I'm not surprised. I do think it's important to read their actual statement because they give a better sense of it, but they said, you know, blah, blah, blah, they build products, blah, blah, blah. We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage. These techniques pose significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam and phishing attacks. We'll continue to make updates in the future to protect our users. I totally understand that because just because Eric and the Beeper team are kind-hearted and not and using this for the right reasons doesn't mean that someone else couldn't figure it out and then spam, you know, like, so I understand why they needed to take this step. I think it's great that Eric and the Beeper team did it in the first place, though, because it really proved the point. And so in the meantime, the Beeper team scrambled and then over the weekend got it back, which is great. So Beeper Mini is now back working in no longer authenticates the iMessage via your phone number. You now need to provide your Apple ID. And I'll be honest, a lot. I was really disappointed in some of the tech press because, like, here we are looking at the Verge where they said, it's back, but now it's a downgrade. And people were somewhat complaining because going the Apple ID route meant that you were messaging with somebody via iMessage via your email address and not your phone number, right? And so it was another hurdle to explain to somebody, no, no, add me under my Apple ID, not my phone number, and yada, yada. So there are some people who are critical of it, but I've got to applaud them for, you know, in less than a week getting a fix out there and getting it working. But while all that drama was happening in the span of a couple of days, mainstream media picked it up. I saw it in the Washington Post. I saw it. Michelle, you said you saw it in a couple of places, right? Where did you see it? Yeah, in the Morning Brew newsletter. Yeah. Yeah. So I saw it in Fortune. I saw it in Forbes. I saw it in, like, mainstream news. And then, like, my eyes popped out of my head when I saw Senator Elizabeth Warren react to the Verge article and tweet or post on Twix. The green bubble texts are less secure. So why would Apple block a new app allowing Android users to chat with iPhone users on iMessage? Big tech executives are protecting profits by squashing competitors. Chatting between different platforms should be easy or easy and secure. So bravo to Senator Warren. And then Senator Amy Klobuchar also chimed in sharing the fact that Beeper testified at a hearing about the impact of monopoly power and innovation. And now we're seeing that impact in real time. Apple is blocking their app that increases choice and convenience. We must pass legislation to stop this anti-competitive abuse, which is just wild. The fact that it is got to the level that it did within the government. I will applaud Eric Mijakowski. I know we said it correctly last week. Great job, Wynn, saying that. Not only in their scramble to fix Beeper Mini, but to keep on message and have the talking points and explaining exactly what happened. And you can go to the blog.Beeper.com and read everything. They explain everything that happened and respond a great response to Apple's statement and basically throwing the gauntlet down with Apple and offering to share their entire code base with a mutually agreed third party security research firm to prove to Apple that they're not doing anything malicious. And then furthermore conceding to Apple that if you're concerned about this, we'll insert a pager emoji to all metadata sent via Beeper Mini so users know it's coming from us. Like Eric Mijakowski and Brad Murray and the Beeper co-founders are, they are saying the right things. They're doing the right things. The statement that Eric made to the press, which was similar to what he said on our show a week ago, he doesn't understand why Apple wants to have their users be messaging insecurely to Android users because there's no encryption on SMS, which is a 100% clear kind of thing that's happening and should be fixed. So what a roller coaster. Jason, were you following along on this or what did you think of all this? Yeah, no, definitely following along. In fact, we, well, I, Mike a sergeant and I spoke with Eric on a tech news weekly. I have my last show to it last Thursday as well. And what I found interesting during that conversation, this was prior to kind of the resurgence here. Actually it was prior to it being knocked out because at the time it was still working. This was just last Thursday, I believe. Yeah. And we were really pressing Eric on, on the, you know, the seriousness of Apple and its business and how it protects its, you know, what it sees as its kind of, its premium reasons to keep people, well, more or less locked into the Apple ecosystem and not on Android. And he had a really hard time answering it very, very directly and clearly it really kind of seemed like he didn't want to answer it. And what I think now is I look back on this all happening there almost immediately after, and I wonder if he kind of had some insight into the challenges that they were about to face and didn't want to kind of name it at that point. It's total guess. But yeah, I mean, no matter what, when you're going around something like this, especially with a company like Apple, you better believe Apple is going to do what it can to control this in any way, shape or form. If Apple really wanted to, you know, to roll out this feature set to people, it would. And it continually chooses not to, except for, you know, this RCS concession that they're doing right now, which is better than nothing. But I think Eric is really smart at really doubling down on the fact that, yeah, you know what, this would actually be the most secure for everyone. And that's not just Android users, you know, finally winning something because they get their, their iMessage that they've been whining, complaining about for so very long. It's that Apple and Android users can have very secure conversations with each other. And at the end of the day, Apple, don't you want everybody to be protected? Like that's a really great perspective to do with that. I will give credit to Marcello in the chat who said, he admits he's being cynical, but he's guessing this is playing out exactly how the folks at Beep are expected to play out. Oh, 100%. You better believe they didn't know that that Apple was going to have some sort of reaction and that they were going to face some challenges like this. Yeah. I do think it was a bit, I mean, the way they played it out, it felt like Eric was a little actually surprised that they would do this. Like I didn't, a lot of us thought, there's no way they wouldn't respond. There's no way Apple wouldn't take notice and immediately try to kill it as soon as possible. And, you know, they do have every right to do so because I think like Senator Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, they were kind of saying that like, you know, Apple shouldn't be squashing a competitor, although in this case, BeeperMini isn't actually competing with iMessage. It's piggybacking off of iMessage servers. So technically, you know, Apple does have every right to kill it as they did. Yeah, they're footing the bills at that server time. Yeah. But then when you actually read into Apple's statement, they're doing this kind of thing that you see all the time with Big Tech companies. They have their public intentions and their private intentions. Publicly saying they're protecting users, they're protecting privacy, they're mitigating spam and it is true to some degree because there's such a high barrier to entry to use iMessage, you have to buy an iPhone, you have to buy a Mac, you have to buy these hundreds of dollars worth of hardware to even access their messaging service. That does mitigate how much spam is being allowed on iMessage. But at the same time, because they have such a high barrier to entry requiring you to buy a piece of Apple hardware that also has the benefit of locking users into that ecosystem and also just getting Apple more money to access their specific service. So their public message is, they're also protecting users' privacy and security by limiting iMessage and not allowing anyone to make an account, which is true, but privately buying the scenes if you were to somehow get access to all their internal chats, I bet they were probably very worried that this is going to affect our share price, this is going to affect our ability to lock users into iOs, this is going to drive some users to adopt Android and then use Beeper Mini instead of buying an iPhone and using iMessage on our hardware. Yeah, it's all about the exclusivity and that's a very valid and very strong business strategy. And we already talked about this in relation to the Apple Watch because that's a huge driver and that's why they dropped their project to have Apple Watches be compatible with Android. This is more or less kind of a similar strategy. I did see a thread that Eric linked by Corey Doctro and he did mention, and it was a good point, now this is a different situation, but he did mention the role that reverse engineering can play in the broader tech ecosystem and he made a kind of a, and it's again, it's not the same thing. I do think there's something to be said about the fact that they're going through Apple servers. So even though it's probably just the tiniest little mini-dent in like multi-billion dollar companies' server time, it is something worth to be said that back in the day, a company called Apple reverse engineered the proprietary formats of Microsoft Office and created pages and numbers and Mac ecosystem apps that could work with the proprietary systems. And the thread is long and interesting. It goes into something called adversarial competition or Comcom and it kind of like the value in having reverse engineering and this kind of anti-competitive fight kind of keep big companies in check. It's a view point. I don't necessarily think that that's the be all and all of it and certainly, as he said, there's probably good points that Apple is making, but I do think there's a lot of size to the story. And I will say, given some of the other things we're going to talk about this evening, I do appreciate the Congress women jumping in, the Congress folks jumping in, but it is a very interesting time for them to hop into anti-competitive. It feels almost like piggybacking. I was like, hey, we're fighting all these anti-competitive bannals. But the thing is, both Amy Klobuchar is sponsoring the legislation she was referring to around that and Elizabeth Warren is calling for it. Rallying against big tech in favor of the little guy and that sort of thing. These are very political talking points that are convenient, but I mean, it depends on where you fall on the side of the spectrum. Some people don't think they're wrong and clearly they don't think they're wrong. So it is a little convenient in that regard. I will point out, and thank you for pointing out in the chat, by the way, an important to note is that as soon as Beeper Mini came back with his new fix, Eric and team removed the subscription price. So now Beeper Mini is free to use, right? Which again is like, I gotta applaud Beeper and Eric and like class act all the way. I think the whole approach they've done to this has been really, really impressive and I've just got a ton of respect for them. I think it makes me feel like they really believe in the mission rather than the business. I mean, as much as the business, the mission is what matters. I feel like I'm quoting a show, but yes. And Michelle, I'm stealing your point. I mean, can you make the point you just made in chat, Michelle? Yeah, I mean, this is just a huge PR win for Google and they didn't have to spend a single penny to do it. They're just sitting on the sidelines watching this all unfold. As users criticize iMessage and Apple's green bubble for spoo bubble lock-in effect and they don't have to spend a single dollar like they did on all the advertising they did to make their point because Beeper is doing it for them. Very cool. Well, that's a good transition. That's a good segue to because Google could use a win. Oh yeah. They could definitely use the win because the other day the Epic v. Google decision was finally reached and the jury unanimously answered yes to every question put before them. It was a very scathing defeat for Google at the courthouse. So the jury decided that the relevant markets in question that Google was alleged to well actually it's not alleged anymore because they lost the case to be anti-competitive, monopolistic in, were the Android app distribution market and Android app in-app billing services for digital goods and services transactions. And the jury decided that several of Google's arrangements or agreements with developers in OEMs including the Google Play developer distribution agreement Project Hub which allegedly saw Google pay out millions to game developers to keep their games on Google Play and other things like the mobile application distribution agreement or MATA and revenue sharing agreements or RSA with several OEMs were unreasonable restraints of trade. And it's worth noting that the judge hasn't decided what the appropriate remedies will be so we don't know exactly how Google will be forced to change its app store and Google app licensing practices but this case could have monumental consequences on Google's business. And if we get there because Google's already come out and say that they're going to appeal. They're going to appeal of course. But if this does stand and Google is forced to make changes they're forced to do things like allowing US developers to implement third party payment providers in their apps on Google Play because right now if you're distributing an app on Google Play in the US you have to use Google Play in app billing. Google could also be forced to stop giving sweetheart deals to game developers in order to keep them on Google Play. Google could be forced to change its revenue sharing agreement terms with OEM so that OEMs are no longer prohibited from preloading third party app stores. Like right now a lot of OEMs aren't allowed to distribute Epic Game Store because of RSA agreements with Google. And like a lot of these terms things could be changed because of the outcome of this trial. We don't know exactly what will happen because that hasn't been decided but what's really surprising about this case and what really shocked many is that Epic lost majorly in its case against Apple two years ago. They saved for a single count. They lost almost everything all their points. That case is still being appealed. Apple is appealing that to the Supreme Court because they did lose one count that went on in the anti-steering provision. But then this raises the question like why did Epic lose against Apple but not Google? You know, Android is way more open. They have side loading. We have alternate app stores. We have AOSP. We have forks of Android everywhere. What was the difference in the two cases? Well there's some key differences in the two cases. Well no, but the biggest case was that the Apple case was up against a judge and the Google case was up against a jury. I mean that's one of them. But as a matter of law like the reason the key difference is that ironically it's the fact that Android is more of an open ecosystem that led to the situation being even possible. If Android had been a closed source operating system distributed only on Google hardware then Epic probably would have lost this case just like they lost against Apple. But the problem is because Google made Android open and available to OEMs in order to ensure that the Google Play Store and all the Google apps take the top spot is distributed widely in all their apps. You know, they had to come up with all a lot of these agreements like the GMS licensing agreements, the MADA and all these other requirements and restrictions and licensing deals and revenue sharing agreements and all this other stuff. When you look at all of that stuff it really looks like Google is kind of forcing OEMs to play by the ball and it's those agreements that really really made them look bad in this case and that's kind of what led them to be labeled monopolistic in this case. I think there is also a thing about the documentation like basically they couldn't get, I'm sorry if I was trying to find the but yeah there's also in terms of just the evidence and the kind of like information that was able to be presented to the jury which by the way I think my husband said and someone can back me up if I'm wrong about this that the Apple chart was decided by a judge where this was a jury. That's the plan I made earlier. Oh yeah my bad yeah but also that the evidence is a bit different. I think Epic's CEO Tom Sweeney sorry Tim Sweeney my bad Tim Sweeney said quote the big difference between Apple and Google is Apple didn't write anything down and because they're a big vertically integrated monopoly they don't do deals, sorry as you said already to deal with developer and they just simply block at the technical level but I yeah again I just think that's so interesting that not only was it just kind of like the characteristic of Apple versus Google or Android rather as an open versus closed ecosystem but also they didn't write anything down because they didn't And this also this goes back to my point about the private versus public intentions and their statements like you know see publicly Google has been arguing very heavily that their terms their GMS terms or MADA all these agreements that they do benefit consumers and they do because without them you know who knows whether or not if you bought an Android device from X OEM and you bought an Android device from Y OEM whether or not they'd even be compatible with another in terms of applications like how much more work would developers have to do to support Android devices if there wasn't a set of common APIs and behavior across them it'd be a lot more complicated and also for consumers if they didn't have a single app store to download apps from and like a single payment provider to you know buy apps and then do refunds and all that stuff you know it'd be a lot more complicated a lot of consumers wouldn't like that so yeah there are benefits like tangible benefits to developers and consumers but you know if you look behind the scenes peel back the layers and look at the internal communications a lot of this was done to protect Google's dominance in the Play Store and Google Play in a billing and their revenue and that's a lot of what we that's a lot of those internal communications were exposed as a result of this trial and it made Google look really bad here whereas as you've brought up when a lot of that communication wasn't exposed when Epic went the trial against Apple because they didn't really document a lot of the whole thing they didn't make nobody write down something to be said for not writing stuff down yeah take better notes or take better no notes or don't if you don't have to don't it's like you were saying earlier Michelle like the barrier to like the price to entry of using iMessage like everything else is just a several hundred dollar phone that's a different argument and you know all of you know unfortunately that becomes a simpler if you know wallet and a little bit capitalistic argument then you know this other argument that we're having on the Google side so it just it's just very interesting as someone who has always lauded the openness of the Android platform it's like oh it's kind of running a running a front of the enterprise part of Google and I think one thing that I've also kind of been thinking about this is just the fact that being a monopoly is not inherently illegal it is not illegal to be an apple be a monopoly or have a hundred percent yep it is illegal to do illegal things to become a monopoly and so when you take a look at Apple and it's really tight closed ecosystem which is what everybody loves about Apple there are no competitors so Apple is just like playing the game with itself it's just the way it is if it's a monopoly it's because that's just that's its garden and it's tending to it and it never acted on the thought that it was being competitive to you know opening up its play field for others to kind of compete against it Google took a very different approach here and then found itself in a position to really need to do all of these things to make sure that it stays powerful in all of these different ways and I think at the end of the day that's what really you know drew the ire in a case like this 100% yeah so we'll see how it plays out and we'll see what the ramifications are and the impact is 2024 is gonna be a little harder for Google I gotta say though as we like normally when we finish the show on Tuesday night on Wednesday we start planning the next show and like on Thursday I was like oh we're gonna be talking about AI a lot next week and here we are almost halfway through the show we've been touched on what I thought was going to be the biggest news story which is also going for Google meanwhile we're not even halfway through the news block it's gonna be a long show you guys but Jason you've been while you weren't with us you've been you've been diving into the world of AI right well yeah that's true and when all about Android kind of went away I started working on an AI show at twit and so I got you know more and more I spent time getting deep into the weeds on AI and then this was a really big week for Google with AI they got a lot of attention for their Gemini AI model which was announced last week pretty powerful AI model three sizes the nano which we'll talk about here in a little bit but that's primarily for mobile devices specifically the Pixel 8 Pro there's the pro version for Google's data centers via Bard and then there's this ultra that we have not seen yet that they say exceeds the current state of the art results in 30 of the 32 widely used academic benchmarks used in LLM research and development so Google is like all about their Gemini but the primary thing about this is that it's natively multimodal which is a really big step up from a lot of the other competitors GPT-4 specifically that are using plugins to do this sort of thing and multimodal means varied modes like voice chat, cameras that sort of stuff all together to produce the best possible answer so Gemini is and specifically the nano version is a big deal because it's going to be on device right it's an AI model built for on device tasks that's why it's launching on the 8 Pro it's a focused version of the larger Gemini model down into a mobile version and Dave Burke was pretty excited about this he said android is the first mobile OS to ship state of the art hardware accelerated LLM as a system service so which yeah Google is in a really great position I feel like with the chips that they're creating for these mobile devices all the stuff that they're doing in AI being able to take those models and shrink them down we're going to start in the next couple of years to get into it beyond the circus trick stage that we've been in for the last year let's say of like oh just think what you can get AI to do I can turn this picture into something that we have never seen before and we're going to start to get into what we thought assistant would be able to do but on steroids you know what I mean and that's all coming into the mobile phone and I think Google's just in a really great position to do that and that's not even touching on you know the version of this that you get barred or eventually you know that ultra version that's going to really potentially wow people at least so things Google so I feel like this kind of ties back into the pixel made the pixel event back in what month was that and then it seems like I think that was one of the low key things that they sort of announced but didn't get a lot of attention was oh these you know we've created a subset focus model everything is on device and it's kind of like they almost mentioned it that news like that gets a little bit deluded when you're in a hardware event because the shiny like tangible things are easier but I kind of just liked hearing this announcement and like oh is this what they were talking about then or this is what they were intimating and of course a lot in the AI world has happened between now and then but yeah it was really cool to see that kind of like all the connections being made like Google's been working on this it's not just like they pulled this out of thin air to respond to whatever is happening well and Google also I should say did not do itself any favors with how it announced this like it got a lot of attention but they released this video that when you watch the video like I remember the first time I saw the video without the context I was like holy crap like that's really impressive I like this is going to be like it really it it showed me what I could envision a smartphone being able to do in a year's time with that kind of capability and then after the fact you know it kind of was came to light that it was the way it was shot was not very truthful like yes the AI could do all of these things in the video but the video really makes it seem like this guy is like having a conversation with the AI and with no thought whatsoever the AI is just giving him exactly the right answer at the right time and it's really you know this total wow presentation and then you realize oh it was based on screenshots and actually it was a text conversation and they overdubbed the guy later and it's like you didn't need to do any of that like the model was impressive as it was like now you've just kind of like pulled some of the oxygen out of the room a little bit around it but well but to be fair they were a bit transparent in how that video was filmed they like published a detail blog post that goes like step-by-step and what they were showing off yeah yeah and that's where production if you're paying attention then you see that yeah I think a lot of people see the video and they go oh my good which you know fair enough I think it's a good point that you bring up it really is on the you know on the part of the person kind of watching that video to not trust what you believe even Google can hallucinate right yeah I mean that's the cross section between like marketing production and actual you know like and that and that's the tough challenge because like coming out of this and you know like I you know saw so many headlines was like Google fake their video and blah blah blah and like that's you know that's all people are gonna walk away from or remember which you know which you know nobody's really talking about like the video in the post where it's like you know Gemini is explaining math and physics to people right yeah you know like some of these were a little more technical demos but they weren't as marketing as that was so yeah totally so you can so it's this is in Bard now right so you can use Gemini Gemini it's so funny because Gemini was that after the astronauts and I just I just think of the movies about the astronauts where they say Gemini instead of Gemini there's another accent thing for you but yeah so it's integrated into Bard so you can you can play with it on there and then as Dave Burke who's the VP of engineering at Google for Android outlined there's a hole in the Android developers blog a whole thing about the new foundation of AI on Android and it goes in and explains more about Gemini nano and how it's being used on the pixelate pro etc and what it can do I think the key the key point from this blog was actually the fact that they're introducing a new system service called AI core which is what actually downloads and updates the model on device and the benefit of this is that this is not only going to be limited to the pixelate pro Google explicitly said that this is coming to other devices from Qualcomm from media tech from Samsung silicon semiconductor so eventually we'll see other devices with the AI core on board and also with access to Gemini nano running on device very nice well we don't have to wait too long because even though there was a lot of you know kerfuffle about the validity in reality that was in the demo video there actually are some gemini5 Gemini5 features Gemini5 features in the December 2023 pixel drop so there are actually are some very concrete ways for you if you have a pixel to give Gemini5 a try so there's actually a lot in the December 2023 pixel drop so I'm not going to go through everything but I think related to this conversation recorder is actually getting the Gemini2 boost a feature called summarization basically and the fact is that Gemini5 because Gemini5 is on device and it doesn't need network you can despite all of that you can get summaries of your recorder recordings and it reports to be able to kind of summarize conversations, interviews, presentations all kind of context context, context, what's plural in that anyway but yeah again and again the amazing thing is this is on device so there's going to not be the kind of latency that you might expect with certain kind of server round trips that you would have to make with some AI services and it's offline so that lends to the feeling that yeah if your device is not if your data is not leaving your device that's a little more towards the security and privacy of the user. One big caveat with summarized for recorder is that it's currently only available in English and you're also going to get some Gemini in your Gboard and Gboard is actually going to start leveraging Gemini for smart replies it currently works with WhatsApp and it is going to be expanded to other messaging apps hey look a messaging app that everyone in the world actually uses WhatsApp but what you're going to do is again be able to access this again on device model without the server round trip without your device or without your data rather leaving your device and what Gemini will kind of assist with is creating high quality responses with conversational awareness so the smart replies will you know again as many LLM type features do be able to understand the context of your conversation add a little bit more kind of appropriate responses suggestions things like that and there's a ton of AI stuff in the pixel drop but those are the Gemini specials Gemini December specials there is actually one more major caveat to the recorder thing besides only being a US only well because the Gemini Nano model is so small people have found out that you're very limited on how long of a transcript you can actually use it to summarizing so like some people will try to use like a 20 minute transcript and it just reviews to do it and like it says it only does like short to medium length transcripts people find out it's like only a couple minutes long transcripts that it works on so it's kind of been a little disappointing on that front that is super to summarize the last two minutes like you're definitely not using it for this podcast it would have summarized like half of the first story at this point that kind of like kind of put the dent in being able to summarize conversations interviews and presentations many of those things are generally longer than two minutes that's got to be a short term thing as well as the feature if you don't it's just the starting this is the right out of the gate and we'll get there important note also on the pixel support forums they posted the availability of some of those functions per device which I thought was really really handy and like so if you're someone who owns a pixel 6a and you want to be like well can I get smart reply in G board well no according to this you can't currently so knowing what you can get for each of your device and pretty much if you're scoring pixel 8 pro wins the only two that it didn't get are the things for the tablet but I thought that was a nice handy reference point thank you to whoever posted that in the sheet for this week because just going through the pixel drop post and I was trying to go through all the features and footnotes that were because a lot of these things are only on pixel 4 and above or only on pixel 5 no above only on pixel 8 pro but I mean there's a lot of stuff in this drop a lot of the stuff that was mentioned again in that pixel event like video boost night sight time lapse photo on blur those are all kind of starting to roll out so if you were interested in any of those things that were mentioned take a look at the post take a look at the chart to see if you are if you are you know able to get those updates but yeah a lot of stuff with you know videography and computational photography photo on blur works with your dogs and your cats now something I really liked because I have a pixel fold is that you can now get dual screen preview for your camera app so while you're like behind the camera trying to like fuss with things this actually literally happened to me this weekend with my family the you know the people that you're taking the photo of can actually see the same preview on the front screen so they can kind of like adjust so you don't have to be like a little closer little closer um there's a lot the pixel watch unlock is rolling out in the December pixel drop we've talked about that several times in the past so if for some reason you can't use the fingerprint unlock or your face is covered by a mask or for any other reason if you have a pixel watch and it's nearby that can be used to unlock your phone um I think you're forgetting the most important one of all which one was the most important one uh the combined clock and weather widget yes yes sorry I forgot I know our fam loves weather loves the weather and yes Jason's eyes lit up when he saw that both in the same widget you're gonna get your weather in your clock in one widget your weather in your clock one the one the one widget to woo woo woo one widget to woo woo woo one widget to woo wall way woo woo wall way there's also a new repair mode feature that you haven't mentioned I did a deep dive on that on my youtube channel by the way yeah go ahead how it works under the hood is kind of complicated so uh I don't want to spend too much time talking about it but this is basically the pixel version of Samsung's maintenance mode feature if you're familiar with that and it's out finally I know we've been talking about this and zipping back in for it like the whole year and now rolling out um and yeah again check go to go to the pixel support page look at that chart if you're curious about any of these things but have no idea if you had it because some of these things are tablet only features some of these things are eight only features so yes thank you whoever who wrote that page by the way because it saved me a lot of like by the way this is only available on such and such and such but I gotta say real quick that that's a pretty substantial feature drop like this there's a lot of really I think it's the biggest feature drop yeah ever and it's kind of like finally delivering on a lot of stuff that we've heard of which you know and in a good chunk too I think it's a brilliant drop I was brilliant drop wow brilliant drop I love it I think the the kind of the further Google gets into this whole exploration and you know of AI and you know in this year 2023 slash 2024 the more consequential the feature drops are going to be like it because of all the all the things that you know we may look at AI and go oh wow I didn't know you could do that with a computer do that easily usually it would take this many people or this much time or whatever all those like wow moments that we see with AI that's gonna start kind of coming I think more rapidly into the mobile phone and this is kind of an example of that right like at least half of that feature drop list was all related to Google's work with AI and I think that's just gonna continue but Google's not stopping there are they Michelle nope so for those of you don't know every single quarterly release every single quarter they do a pixel feature drop but on top of that that new pixel feature drop also brings an update to the underlying Android platform the December feature drop brought Android 14 QPR one but the next pixel feature drop will bring Android 14 QPR two and that's currently in beta and Google just released a second beta for Android 14 QPR to the other day and of course I've been digging through it to find out what's new and upcoming and what Google's working on under the hood so one of the biggest new features that Google's working on is built-in phishing protection so this is kind of interesting it seems like Google is analyzing apps and seeing if they ask for things like if they have like a view like a text view and they ask for things like your login information your password and they'll be comparing it against like a list of known apps that might be potential phishing targets and then potentially raising that up with Google Pay Protect for scanning it's gonna be an interesting to see if this is actually effective in any way but you know hopefully it does protect some users against phishing attacks because you know you can lose a lot and if you're a victim of one of those another very useful feature that people will be happy to have is the private space feature so this feature allows you to hide apps from other users who have your phone so those of you who have a Samsung phone and be familiar with the secure folder this is basically pixels version of that feature you can create a separate profile you can install apps whatever you want onto that profile you can hide it behind your lock current lock screen or set a completely separate lock password for that private space and then you can just you can also even hide it entirely from the launcher I have a full demo of how it works on the Android police article that I wrote if you want to take a look at that another feature that they're working on is the they're finally adding a drop-down menu for the Bluetooth quick setting tile so those of you familiar with the internet panel if you pull down your status bar you tap the internet you get this little drop-down without going into the settings menu to change your current internet connection they're finally doing the same thing for Bluetooth so if you have multiple Bluetooth devices paired you can quickly switch between them without going to the full Bluetooth settings panel finally I'm sorry I just I was traveling on a plane this weekend and switching between headphones was just why is it this hard sorry just very excited yeah yeah a couple of other things they're doing just a quick rundown they're adding a notification cool-down feature that will lower the volume whenever you get a spam of notifications from a single app they're preparing to add a circle draw circle to search your screen feature this will probably tie in with the assistant with barred feature whenever that launches they're preparing to redesign the notification panel so that it looks better when you use your phone in landscape mode they're integrating they're adding built-in support for app archiving because right now only Google Play supports app archiving and other app stores have to implement it themselves Google might be adding native support for it so that you can archive an app from within settings and actually on archive apps that were downloaded from other app stores that aren't Google Play they're also they also this is the one thing that I mentioned so far that is actually in the build as you install it because everything else I mentioned is hidden but they added a share Wi-Fi button when you open the internet panel so that you can quickly share your current Wi-Fi credentials and yeah that there's a whole lot of stuff that is in development and is not available by default so if you want to see what those features are you can enter a police article that I wrote which is going over every single hidden feature Ron showed it a couple of times if you're watching the video feed and yeah if you're not on the beta you'll have to wait until March for this update to roll out to your device and even then there's no guarantee that any of the features I just talked about will be available in that release Wow it's a lot cool stuff though I mean it's neat to see the progress of stuff go from the QPR and then into the pixel drop and the only challenges and especially if I was listening at home hearing this I might I might want that now and the fact that I need to wait is frustrating but you know you'll get there eventually if it gets through the gauntlet of testing and all that fun stuff I like the notification cool down idea that's a pretty good deal cool so real quickly I know we're jam packed on news and it's been a crazy week but one thing I did want to notice some folks I saw this pop up on Android police you know about a potential you know a lot of us use password managers you know I personally am on Bitwarden after the great last pass meltdown of early 2023 was that 2023 or 2022 I forget when that was but um 2022 but so some researchers found a vulnerability among some Android password managers that they're calling autospill which basically could allow malicious apps to steal credentials while using autofill these researchers tested the vulnerability across several devices although it seems to be mainly on older models but several the password managers already addressing the vulnerability with some advanced warnings to folks so just a reminder that if you use a password manager you know whether it's on one pass or or if you're still using last pass or what not they they tested it on one password last pass keeper and end pass as well as google and you might just want to make sure that your stuff is you know being addressed being updated for autospill Bitwarden actually responded the one that I do use and said Bitwarden was not listed in the research has not been notified by the researchers that affects Bitwarden but they're investigating and will address if needed just be careful out there if you use a password manager that's all you want to make sure that your stuff is as secure as possible I still advocate the use of a password manager and it's great that these folks or the security people are looking into vulnerabilities so that they can get buttoned up before malicious people get to it so keep that in mind all right well we've got a lot of news this week but we have one more news item for you and it's important because it's the patron pick of the week so every week we pick three new stories for our patrons to vote on and the winning story we get to talk about and this weekend it was kind of contentious we had some stuff I thought was half decent in the running in last place is a story about fit the Fitbit app readying pixel 8 pro thermometer sync integration because no one knows what to do with a pixel 8 thermometer was hoping Fitbit might have an answer for it but we're not talking about that and we're not going to talk about how some Samsung phones are missing months of Google Play system updates so though yeah if you have a Samsung might want to check on that sound important no the winner and pick is the fact that Google is working on a messaging editing feature in Google messages so this comes from good old person that inspects code assemble debug and assemble debug found a few feature flags which seem to indicate that Google is working on adding meta message editing to messages now there's no actual code or implementation yet these are just feature flags but it has a strong indication that you're going to be able to edit a message load edit history and of course there's flags for presumably both sending out message editing and also processing other folks is that you're speaking with your messages edits now RCS protocol does not support message editing by default but that didn't stop Google as many have noted from you know implementing and encryption because that's not you know standard to RCS by default also so look out for that because we all know oh sorry go ahead I was going to say that this would this would be a great bit of functionality what SAP recently rolled this out to be able to edit your message after posting it and that's a lifesaver because nothing drives me more crazy than a typo right you know right and so and I do know that iMessage does support editing messages so when I say I'm parody why not yeah yes when I think about it though like wait a minute that's in because I'm used to thinking of Android messages as an SMS app and as it becomes more of a SMS combined with messaging than I guess those messaging features make more sense Jason I hate to treat you like Han Solo in the beginning return to Jedi but a lot has happened in the last six months with Google messages we might need to brief you on the RCS no I know you know all that but um but yeah I do think the important thing is that any messaging app that allows edit capability let me know it was edited though that's the only thing for transparency and clearness and that sort of thing but like the way Slack does it was edited that's a nice way of doing it so um excellent well you can do that you can vote every week for a new story for us to talk about by signing up over on patreon.com slash android faithful we thank everybody who signed up and listen if you've been on the fence for signing up we got you Jason so come on if anything you get you to sign up for the Patreon hopefully supporting Jason joining us is enough to get you to jump and join up at one of the levels and when we want to thank a couple of our patrons right yes we do we want to thank Morgan Greenholt sorry Morgan right in and let me know if I'm pronouncing your name incorrectly and John Larson so not only do you get Jason but you also get why me everybody gets Jason that's like the free tier um but you also get your name read out hopefully correctly but if incorrectly let us know thanks so much to our patrons for supporting us on this our 23rd episode seven hundred people we appreciate your support thank you so much well finally an hour into the show let's talk about some hardware my goodness this show could have been just news but no Asus had to come around and start teasing the pants off of the ROG phone 8 we have decided it is ROG ROG every single time it comes up I question myself I always want to say ROG I will say ROG until the end of time believe me I wanted to say ROG and then I had to like Google it and be like okay ROG ROG phone 8 apparently there will be a lot more details because we don't really have any details at this point coming at 2024 consumer electronic show which is at this point mere weeks away if you can believe it but this is specifically January 8th 3pm Pacific so a little less than a full month away Asus is touting a brand new camera system going beyond just the gaming capabilities of the phone and then they've set up a blind camera test site a site where you can go and it puts up three different photos and you got to go through and like you know vote for which photo you think is the best and everything and then at the end of that whole process you're rewarded with a look at two of the phones just the backs of two of the phones let's do the voting now live for our audio listeners so the URL is just brilliant so it's ROG-BLIND-CAMERA-TEST that asus.com it just rolls off the tongue so ROG-BLIND-CAMERA-TEST that asus.com with hyphens that's a nightmare URL so the first picture is a portrait of a woman one's dark one's a little mid-range one's a little brighter which one do we like the best? squashed through compression of online streaming um I don't know the right one I guess I have a lot of glare from my lights I would pick the right one just because I can barely see the first two alright we'll go with the right one just a warning Ron there are lots of these I don't think we're going to get through all of that so do it on your own time I just wanted to see the thing but you do that like a number of times middle I don't like the fact that when you click on the photo you prefer it gives like a cross hairs on it yeah that is a little what do you expect it's a game it's a gaming thing um this is Ron's blasting through this maybe we will get through it Ron's like I'm committing to the bit I'm committing to the bit I've got a good eye I might have bad ears but I've got a good eye well you've got the source also like we're all looking at it through the horrible internet compression so do they have any pictures of dudes I'm just saying like anytime they show a person it's a woman's thank you alright here we go for taking part so they give you an image of the phone here and it's sleek looking that's for sure yeah I mean it definitely looks a little different a little LED logo-y thing you know to bring home that no this is still a gaming phone you got to have your flashy LED on the back but yeah I think the design is a little a little bit more sub dude a little bit less gamey more streamlined it's amazing because ROG has never been subtle as a kind of sub brand of Asus it's like in your face we game looks like a nice phone probably the best the most appealing design that I've personally seen from an ROG phone I thought because sometimes they feel really like overtly I'm a gamer that's the point Jason well I know that's the point that that's my point is that this looks a little less like that and I'm more inclined to be like okay I like it now and what else was there about their oh just yeah basically that we're going to see it soon because bluetooth 6 certification website was updated for the ROG phone 8 the 8 pro the 8 pro ultimate also the Zen phone which if you wondered if the Zen phone lineup had met its demise with the 10 well you would be wrong because the bluetooth 6 shows the 11 ultra appearing there as well is that just going to be a yearly rumor that they're killing the Zen phone line and we're going to have to just like spell the and use the same what was Michelle did you like to use the but the Zen phone the rumors of something brightly exaggerated sorry never mind never mind it was some phrase but yeah I think what's interesting is the fact that they're calling it the ultra Zen phone 11 ultra I wonder if that means it'll be a compact phone like Zen phone 9 Zen phone 10 or if it'll be a bigger phone this year ultra yeah it really seems like it's got to be bigger super super indeed all right well Jason blast from the AAA pass do you remember managing what the it's been X number of days since one plus had a marketing mishap yeah the billboard that we had out on highway 101 that exactly and we had to go out there manually flip the number it was a pain in the butt but you know but we did it we did we were committed to the bit but we're very bullish on one plus these days I think one plus is doing a great job but I do think we might have to institute X number of days since one plus had any sort of mishap because sure enough caught off the heels of last week's announcement release in China of the one plus 12 someone bought a one plus 12 that had a bug in it and we're not talking like a code bug or a you know something not working it was a literal actual bug in the bezel of the phone that it's hard to see for our video viewers that are watching I'll try to zoom in on the photo it's a tiny little bug there's a tiny little spider there right in the corner of the phone that looks to somehow have gotten through QA and yeah there's a bug in there so think like dinosaur DNA kind of like thing going on there like it's in like the clear bezel like it looks like poured into there that incident of the bug was part of like a broader controversy in China about people complaining about bill quality issues on the one plus 12 kind of like there's like gaps and like it kind of feels and exactly read all the complaints I just heard about it because there's a lot of reporting on it hopefully when this phone launches in the US or North America and Europe it doesn't have these issues but this is concerning to see and hopefully they do fix it yeah it doesn't have any bugs one would hope at least I don't know personally I want the one plus phone with a bug that's suspended in cryogenic form you're trying to start a Jurassic or Jurassic Park exactly oh is that your new business idea now that you're going to breathe that's what I'm thinking I'm just workshopping it here so let me know alright well that's going to wrap up our hardware thankfully it was a quiet week in hardware it is getting to the end of the year and we are pre-CES so yeah we'll see but with that let's get into apps and Michelle you've got the next update and speaking of bugs hopefully this new operating system from Samsung won't have many bugs to talk about when it launches so one UI 6.1 has been leaked and this is expected to be the OS version that will launch with the Galaxy S24 series next month and it should rely on other Samsung devices afterward and it'll be based on Android 14 existing one UI 6.0 but what will one UI 6.1 bring apparently a lot of AI focused features one of the things that is interesting is the AI wallpaper generation feature which looks like it's a straight rip from pixel 8 onto the Galaxy S24 now obviously I don't think like they're making a direct clone of it I think Google is actually working with Samsung and pre-loading their app that sort of looks like to me there's also a whole bunch of other AI related features like weather and portrait effects for the lock screen you can like add rainy effects and other stuff on top of your lock screen wallpaper and your live wallpaper there's a ability to relocate objects and scenes and then expand photos beyond its borders with AI we saw this similar feature from Qualcomm showing off at the Tech Summit they were doing a demo on their Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 but it looks like Samsung is actually bringing this to life on their devices you can use AI to organize messy notes in the Samsung Notes app and make them more organized and cleaner overall you can have a live translate during calls feature so that you can automatically in real time translate when you're speaking to someone on the phone that's a big one we saw that leaked a couple weeks ago I think that was leaked maybe also Samsung showed it off somehow didn't they they were like show we did talk about it before there's some other things like being able to isolate your voice and audio in environments moving subjects from one image to another enhance battery protection features and new animations because for some reason people really love teasing with the animations wherever they have a new one UI version but this looks like to be a pretty substantial release from Samsung and hopefully they'll talk about all this stuff when they launch the Galaxy S24 series cool what else we got what else we got some updates to the personal safety app a new opt-in feature with the new update that's aimed at for those unfortunate and hopefully they never happen but those unfortunate times when you have to call 911 and this is essentially a way for you to enter in your details ahead of time that you want to be shared with first responders so things like your name of course emergency contacts pre-existing medical conditions things like that so when you call 911 maybe you're in a situation I'll stop referring to it as if it's you because I don't think this is going to happen to you and I don't want it to happen to you but someone calls 911 and at that point of dispatch they will receive all of this information given that you've opted into this feature on the device to share with them at that point because a person calling 911 might not be in a position to talk to say anything and it's still really important to share as much information as possible in that situation available for Pixel 4 through the 8 Pro series as well as the nothing phone one that have the personal safety app installed personal safety app pretty cool feature I think that Google's brought out in the last handful of years I think it's got some really good stuff definitely let's hope you never have to use it Jason or Michelle or me or anyone it's good to know it's in there we haven't talked a lot about it only because it's I don't know on one hand I was like it's super depressing and lame but on the other hand I'm like maybe we don't really need it but Google podcasts is going to be shutting down in April Google has shared the end the end of life point and I guess I suppose we could Jason since you're here oh you have it see I didn't know you had it on the board oh yeah no we've been working on it so good new podcasts will be stop working in April and I don't have an elegant fade out there unfortunately but as early as April 2024 and so if you like podcasts and you want to stay inside the Google ecosystem YouTube music unfortunately will be your option of choice I don't say unfortunately I'm sorry there are a lot of hard people working on it I'm sure they're working good stuff in there but they're going to be enabling the ability for you to export your subscriptions to YouTube music so when you go to Google podcast you see a big banner on there and then you can transfer your subscriptions to YouTube music and basically for podcasts that aren't available on YouTube I'm telling folks that they'll be able to add the shows directly via the podcast RSS feed so they're really making an attempt to give you the ability to still subscribe to your podcast that you listen to just in the YouTube music app it's very easy to play tabs and to shit on this but I don't know but on the other hand when we launched there was a lot of people asking for the show on Google podcasts I look at my podcast data and I go for my other shows people are using it, do use it so we'll be curious to see what this migration does look like just because I don't use it doesn't mean that everyone use it, you should use podcast but sorry, shameless plug for our friends at podcast but yeah, so it's going away so be prepared transfer your stuff to YouTube music give it a shot in YouTube music don't let me crapping all over it get in the way of what you choose to do but hey everything into one app, for audio and giving you tools giving you tools, exactly the next messaging app will have a podcast component built into it oh gosh, no alright win? and we're going to leave off with everyone's favorite kind of app a weather app this is a little bit of a misnomer we don't actually have a dedicated app yet for that very sexily redesigned Google weather experience which is a pixel only if you do have a pixel you won't get a dedicated app but you will get the next best thing which is a dedicated shortcut to the weather screen from the app grid so this is going to be different than the shortcut that you get from the usual widgets menu which has the Google apps badge because it's part of Google apps usually when you do a shortcut it has a little badge showing you where that app came from video stream users can see it there now you just get a nice plain old weather icon and I would argue I know there's no dedicated app but if the shortcut looks like an app and launches like an app it's fine, I'm fine with that because it's better than trying to find the four pixels in the little status bar up top where I actually get the weather versus my calendar it is not accessible just publish a shortcut just publish this shortcut on Google Play so people can search for it and then launch it I don't understand by the way, when you said this was a pixel exclusive the weather experience but it's been rolling out I guess a bit slowly, really slowly really slowly, to other devices it's not pixel exclusive but don't count your weather don't count your clouds until they appear on the right path don't count your clouds I don't count your clouds until they rain, I don't know that's good, don't count your clouds until they rain don't count your clouds until it rains I think it's a bit of a trick of weather I will give Google Kudos in that the new weather experience even though I missed my froggy friend although he's still there on the main screen I'm looking at the 10 day forecast screen the added the wind direction humidity, UV, pressure, sunrise, sunset I found myself referring to all this stuff when I, in the previous experience I wasn't because they weren't they weren't bubbling it back up and in fact we had a horrible, horrible rainstorm the other night that unfortunately caused a lot of flooding in my basement, I've been dealing with that and I actually was sitting there on the Google app refreshing to see the precipitation levels through the night because I had to keep the basement from flooding and so I needed to see when it was going to be heavy rain versus not and it was really handy it really did the job so, good job it is good job Google on weather yeah, we don't need a dedicated app we just need this technical note, I don't know why they didn't do before because you can have a single code base and single app have multiple launchers like this, so it looks like multiple apps so that's all we need, that's all we need so yeah, it's coming hopefully to more people I don't know, but it's here you all love weather, go check it out I have it now, it's awesome so there you go all right, let's wrap it up for apps I know we're running long, but since Jason's at your back do you want to do a couple emails? all right and as always everyone you can email us at contact.androidfaithful.com we love hearing from you, we've already had some great topics we're going to revisit one topic in a little bit but yeah, email us at contact.androidfaithful.com Michelle, you got the first email and a first email from Charles from San Antonio who wrote in to say, really enjoying the new show from day one I was so happy that I'm assuming you meant to say y'all continued doing the show after AAA went away my question is when will the Pixel Fold get the update that the beta program is getting I love my Pixel Fold and want the settings beta has, thanks for the great show and continuing being Android Faithful thank you for writing in Charles from San Antonio we talked about that later with QPR too but like, that's a great distinction when is your phone getting an update? unfortunately, like, my advice in this scenario if you really want to just side load the update you don't have to unlock your phone or wipe your data to side load it if you want to get your phone to get the update you could wait, you could get it immediately you could get it in days, you could get it in weeks maybe Google pulls or delays the update and they don't publicly announce that and then you got to wait even longer if you're on a carrier you got to wait longer or you don't know, like if you want the update now and you really want it you're like tech savvy enough to care and follow these updates and these news I would just side load it I will say Charles that I don't know and during the show I don't want to update my phone but maybe, I don't know, refresh tonight because I just, I did not notice it but I have one pixel fold it's like the surprise it's like the surprise Christmas or birthday or Hanukkah you know, it's like, there's an update great, like you're getting excited and you see what you might have it so there it is alright, Jason I don't have the fold but I'm checking for update anyways just to see I just, I checked my watch to see if I missed an update and I'm up to date but it says the latest update I have is October which I guess is the latest for the watch where's the update I'm checking you just got to press the button Michelle all you have to do is press the button is it under system? live, yeah, system system update, my system is up to date as of November 5th is there a newer one? no, it's not yet it's so up to date Ron I am on the beta program though so I'm with you man I'm literally getting it as we as we speak it is preparing the system update I better plug in so I can join the update a live system update there it is, alright that's how we do it on this show Jason, you're going to be swimming I'm the only one that can update me and Charles swirling, twirling I'm just going to hold this up while I do you want to do the next email? yeah, I got the next email long time listener to android faithful and the old show and sometimes caller Rob Scherzer here from often moist Vancouver, British Columbia moist is just not a word you need to use Rob and host of the talking about glaucoma podcast there you got your plug it looks like google play and I think he meant google play movies and tv is heading to killed by google heaven based on this email I received they refer to it as simplifying how customers access purchased movies and tv shows I'm not clear on how this is simple I'm guessing that by next week's show you already have this as a story but here I go anyway for TVs and streaming devices powered by android tv there will be a shop tab in the your library row for cable boxes and set top boxes powered by android tv and also on web browsers all purchased movies and tv shows will be in the youtube app had I not opened this email today I would never know that this was all happening on January 17th 2024 great to hear you back on the air thank you for writing in Rob he sent in some screenshots of his email explaining it which is very complicated and confusing but I understand this is the mess they're in now right and to your point Jason we're finally saying the news that we're finally saying about google play movies and tv which means I probably should do this as well goodbye goodbye bye I hardly used you see you later this uh this this tab says is a little nasalier it is yeah we might need to find it I did my best while you were gone Jason alright I did my best although this is to get better horn players in this piece this has been a two tabs episode which is impressive double tap if you purchase stuff from google play tv movies you might want to look in your email pay attention to this stuff because those are coming on January 17th 2024 alright and our last email revisits the ongoing saga of chrome tabs with Jason if your phone is updating maybe you can still access chrome but uh Eric DiStefano from roseville michigan writes it and said so I guess I'm the only one that sets all my apps to always load links in chrome rather than each apps internal browser this reason every time I open a link anywhere for the most part is launched in a new tab by default so much my tab count is always so high that my tab cap pretty much always displays the happy face meaning more than it can display in the tiny box every so often I go through and close all the tabs but I don't really worry about it too much I figured I would just share since you asked thanks for the awesome show and keep up the great work and he said in a screenshot of his little and you can see there the little happy face in the upper right hand corner because he had too many tabs to open but not to be whatever not to be outdone um Ebo wrote in and said hi to the faithfuls a few months ago I noticed my tabs in chrome are gone I shrugged it off and considered it a tab bankruptcy a few weeks ago I discovered that all my tabs are still there just in another chrome window I currently have 88 tabs open and on the old chrome window 768 tabs it's only growing with time even though I sometimes close tabs sincerely your faithful listener Ebo 768 tabs is I think the highest number we've seen yet Jason how many tabs do you have open on your chrome on your phone right now I just looked 64 okay not too bad that's manageable respectable number I think yeah it is so winner winner chicken dinner 768 that yeah that's our that's our biggest number as of now I forgot what the previous record is I really should keep track of these things if I want to keep revisiting it so I'll work on that we can put we add a field on the on the show sheet exactly days since last one one plus event and then yeah biggest tabs I will say it is extremely therapeutic to go through and close tabs like I do enjoy doing that I think I'm down well the thing is you can't do that if you have more than 20 because it does it is currently right now I'm at four so that tells you and one of them one of them happens to be a Google search results of rainbow birthday cakes because my kids birthday is coming up my son said he wants a rainbow cake so now I got to figure that out does he watch this show did you just spoil the surprise he's not in bed right now that I've got bigger problems all right well that's gonna wrap it up Jason your first official show back as a co-host of Andrew faithful how did it feel to be back in the back of the seat it was like riding a bike just got back on that bike and start pedaling I think in a couple of weeks I'll be more like along the ride of the current kind of wave of Android news because there's the major topics and then there's the minor ones that I'm like yeah I haven't been following that one for a while so I think it's only going to take me a couple of weeks but it's great to be back this is so much fun it's awesome hanging out with you guys love it so where can people find you well raygun.fun is a little short URL I created that rhymes that just kind of takes you to a place that has a bunch of different links what's next for me you know my substack all my socials some music it's all there will you be adding the show to this page yeah absolutely I will now that now that the announcement has been made very good awesome well we're so glad to have you back Jason yeah great to be back thank you although I think I'm not sure Michelle might be here I think he's secretly dreading your turn I can feel daggers right now all right so win why don't you tell us where people can find you yeah so I am an developer is my day job although I'm a little more independent right at this minute like many people here and you can find my talks associated code and video on my website randomly typing dot com on the socials which is pretty much Instagram these days if you really want to like you know I don't know say hi or just check out what I'm doing I'm at queen code monkey on Instagram sometimes threads occasionally other places but yeah you know I'll just say Instagram if you really want to find me and Michelle I was just kidding about Jason before by the way I'm gonna say our mommy and daddy fighting we all love Jason Jason don't believe anything Michelle also that's real I want to build some tension between these boxes here manufactured drama yes all right so Michelle working folks find you sir don't you know I'm everywhere you are twix threads mastodon telegram reddit discord at Michelle Ramon and if you want to support my work you can find me at patreon.com slash Michelle Ramon because it takes a lot of effort to dig into every Android release and find out what's new as you can see there's a whole laundry list of stuff Google is constantly keeping me on my toes so it's a never-ending battle between myself and whatever Google is working on and it's a fun one and yeah check it out if you want to find out what's coming up on Android right on right on and for me I often don't talk about actually on Android faithful that much but if you are into pinball please check out SCORBIT which is a great project I've been working on for several years now at SCORBIT.io and we've got a mobile app in the google play store working on a maintenance update coming out this month on it but it's a great way to track your pinball scores if you like pinball so we work very hard on it we hope people enjoy it it is niche but it's fun so check it out we also have an iOS app too in case you're on an iPhone some of our listeners are on iPhones by the way we have people written in who said that they are iOS users yet they enjoy the banter of the show and we love y'all just as much yeah exactly so excellent check all that out at SCORBIT.io and of course our home on the internet is at androidfaithful.com for this very show you can go there to find links to our patreon where you can support us please help us keep the lights on at the show especially now that we gotta start paying Jason you think he's cheap come on folks so and you find all the links to subscribe every episode has an individual page where you can see the episodes video as well as all the show links and stuff like that it's all at androidfaithful.com and we thank everybody for going there we thank everybody for supporting us on patreon you guys are the best androidfaithful streams live every Tuesday at 8 p.m. 8 p.m. eastern 5 p.m. pacific on the dts youtube and twitch channels and we release the podcast on your podcast catcher every Tuesday night we will see you next time for our last episode of 2023 until then we're the androidfaithful