 Hello and welcome to a special Thanksgiving edition of Android Faithful. It is Tuesday, November 21st, just a couple of days before Thanksgiving. I'm Ron Richards and I'm joined with this week by Michelle Raman. Welcome Michelle. Unfortunately, when is she's on vacation? She's off in party. No. Yeah. We're very excited for her. But those of you watching live in the chat, she's watching live from Japan, which is pretty exciting. So you can chat with her. But we're also going to hear from her later in the show via a previously recorded little bit. But I know Wynn was so bummed to be missing this week's episode because we have a very special guest, Mr. J.R. Rayfield. Welcome to the show. Hello. Wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me. I got that name right, J.R. I did my homework. You did it first time. First time in like all the, what, 20 years? Maybe 40 years? I don't know how long we've been doing this. The lesson finally sunk in this past summer, but J.R., so you were, J.R., you joined us a lot in the early days of all that Android and then schedules didn't line up. And then for a little bit, you were sending in your video tips for more than a little bit. It was like a year, wasn't it? It was a good run. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. So when we had the new show, I was like, J.R., you got to come on the new show. And we wanted to wait a little bit until some ducks came in the row, but we're super excited to have you because we've got a little bit of announcement to make, don't we? We do. We do. It's overdue and I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to figure out how many years. I don't know. 17, 72. It's been a really long time since we've been live in the same virtual location together. Well, so before we get started on the show and make the announcement, why don't we tell folks what you're doing these days over at the intelligence? Yeah. So the intelligence is the newly launched kind of big brand on top of Android intelligence. There's also now Windows intelligence. I've been joined by the wonderful Chris Hoffman, most recently editor-in-chief over at How2Geek. He's writing a Windows newsletter. I'm doing the Android thing and the intelligence is kind of the big shlabang around it all. So we just launched that like a week ago. Exciting stuff that's been in the works for a long time. So yeah, it's a weekly Android newsletter. There's a premium membership resource community, the Windows side. It all kind of comes together and we do all sorts of fun stuff. Very exciting. And so folks can subscribe to it. What do they get for subscribing? So they get, can you tell us what the offering is? Yeah. So I mean, if you want to sign up for free, there's a weekly, every Friday is Android intelligence. It's three things to know and three things to try in your inbox every Friday morning. If you're interested in Windows, there's a Windows intelligence kind of equivalent for the Windows world. And then there are a couple other things during the week. On Wednesdays, we do a thing called Cool Tools, which is just one interesting off the beaten path like tip or tool that works on any device. Chris and I kind of go back and forth on who's writing those. And then we do some like reader tips and other stuff on Monday. But I mean, obviously everyone here is interested in Android. Android intelligence is still there, still going strong. And if that other stuff is, you know, up your alley, then cool. It's there for you too. Yeah, exactly. So Android intelligence, we're very excited. And so why we're so excited is that we're teaming up to a certain degree. That's right. So JR, you've been kind enough to provide a special offer to our patrons. So for those of you who are signed up for Android faithful on Patreon at the Loyal Listener Plan or higher, which is starting at $10 a month, JR, you're going to, you're going to send over our way a special coupon that will give you half off of one year of membership to the intelligence, which is awesome and very generous of you and folks over at the intelligence. So we're really appreciative of that. And what I love about that is it brings together, you know, your newsletter is fantastic. Hopefully we're doing a good show. We're also making an offer to intelligence subscribers to come over and join Android faithful. So a little bit of a crossover, as we say in the comic book world, right? So. Yeah, it's cool. We're not, we're not audio centric. We're kind of more word centric. You guys are audio centric and we're sort of the, well, I won't say the loan, but among the few standing independent Android outlets out there run by, you know, a few enthusiasts who've been around doing it forever. Yeah. And yeah, just to make it clear, like the newsletter is a free thing. That's on Friday. So this is the intelligence insider. It's our premium membership resource community. So when you sign up for that, or if you sign up hopefully first here and then get access to that and get like the whole bundle together, you get access to our app. There are all these on demand resources, in-depth super guides, a searchable database of every tip, every newsletter that we've ever published, going back, gosh, years now. And then we also have our own community and insider help desk, all sorts of people who are there to, you know, I say help answer questions. There is sort of that like beginner stuff, but the fun part for me is like the creative thinking. Someone comes in with the idea of like, I've got this wacky automation thing and what's beautiful about it to me is not just me. It's like, yeah, I'm there. But there are all these other people who are even smarter, who know so much stuff about the ins and outs on Android and we get into these cool conversations of thinking up like cool custom creative solutions. Then you also get like an extra, extra cool version of the Friday newsletters. They're ad-free. It all just kind of comes together nicely. And if you're listening to Android Faithful, you get that. It's a good Thanksgiving meal, you know? It's a great Thanksgiving meal, in fact. So Android Faithful patrons, if you're signed up at the loyal, listen to the level or level or higher, keep an eye out for your Patreon inbox because very soon you'll be getting some information about how you can sign up for this offer and to get half off on the Intelligence Insider. And important to note, this only happens once a quarter, right? So if you want to get on this, if you want to get on it, you should jump in as soon as you get that information, we'll be doing it again next year at the next window to open up folks. But you got to act now if you want to jump on it and get as much Android intelligence as possible as you can get from JR and team. So we're really excited to be working with you, JR, really excited for us to be collaborating again. And this means we'll have you on the show again more often in the future, I hope. So. Absolutely. It gives us a good reason to do it. Yeah. And the quarterly thing, you know, you hate to get like overly gimmicky, but what we're trying to do with that because of the community nature, it's like we don't want, it works because it's kind of small and tight knit. So we're kind of limiting it to these quarterly windows. And we'll see how it goes. That's kind of how we're trying it for now. But yeah, you've got, you know, basically through Thanksgiving weekend, like a week or two to do it. And likewise, anyone who's listening who's already on the intelligence insider side, there's a similar deal there. So we've got everybody taking care of it. Exactly. Yeah. If you go to patreon.patreon.com slash android faithful, you can see that the sign up for that loyal listener level get $10 a month. Our Android intelligence friends right now can get that up until December 4th. Folks who listen to subscribe to Android intelligence get that up. We're coming in at the $5 level. We're excited to have them on board. A couple of people have already signed up. So welcome to the party, folks. We're really excited to have you. Yeah. And those of you who don't know, who don't follow his newsletter already, even from my perspective, we're constantly scouring the internet for what's new in Android and all the new cool things that are coming out. But all the time, you don't know how hard it is to look back and say, hey, you can do this. You can use this old app. You can use your phone in this way. I'm constantly impressed by how many things you guys at these kind of newsletters and all websites, like how to geek and all your intelligence, all the things you're able to scrounge up and all these tips that are so useful. I completely forget about half the stuff that came out like a year ago because just constantly evolving the world of Android and tech in general. So if you're not constantly reading every single piece of news and you just want to learn about stuff that's actually useful, then I highly recommend subscribing. Thank you. That means a lot coming from the one and only Michelle Rahman, especially. And for a weird, like, small world full circle moment when Michelle was at his last job working at Esper, he was writing some stuff that ended up in our newsletter. So everybody's interconnected here. It's one big happy family. It is. We love our happy, we love our extended Android family. So JR, thank you so much. We look forward to the collaboration in the future. But for now, usually, we've got a lot of news to talk about. I think the week of Thanksgiving is a quiet time, but those of you who are tuned into the Android news and the tech news in general probably saw some news drop last week that you could probably guess is the first thing we're going to be talking about this week here in the news. And it is, sure enough, hell froze over last week. A hat tip to the folks at 9 to 5 Mac for the scoop that Apple announced that they will be bringing RCS support to the iPhone next year. And after that, I say, we definitely didn't think this would ever happen. And here we are. Apple is nice. So basically what had happened is, and honestly, it came as a huge shock that the news hit on November 16th that Apple, in response to 9 to 5 Mac, Apple let it know that they will be providing a software update later next year that would bring RCS to iMessages. And I basically want to read the Apple's explicit quote where they said, later next year, we'll be adding support for RCS Universal Profile. The standard is currently published by the GSM Association. We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users. They got to get that little bit of Apple hubris in there. So as soon as this news hit, lots of questions, lots of things like that. But JR, do you remember where you were when you first heard this was happening? I think I was sitting in this very spot. If I'm not mistaken, I will never forget that moment. And what was your reaction? Well, you know, so a couple of things. First and foremost, obviously this is very good news. But I mean that being said, I hate to give Apple too much credit here. We have to be realistic. Apple almost certainly isn't doing this because of its suddenly benevolent, magical and revolutionary heart. I mean, it's been, it's had a good thing going here and it knows it and it's going to try to keep that going. There have been analysis after analysis over the last few years in particular. And again, this is mostly a US issue. But here in the US that have shown people are sticking with iOS products and moving to iOS products because that iMessage effect, especially when you get to the youths, young people, there's a lot of stigma around the green bubble, but really even above these. So it seems pretty clear that what hasn't been explicitly said yet that there's a reason this is happening. We know there were a lot of investigations, regular regulatory things going on in the EU. It would make sense that Apple is trying to get ahead of that, pull the trigger on its own before it's forced to do something even more drastic. So, but that being said, yeah, it's good is going to make this whole cross-platform silliness a little less silly. But really, realistically, it's probably not going to change much with the stigma, with all the green bubble and nonsense and all that. But it'll make for a little less of a dumb down artificially, you know, weakened experience with the messaging in terms of we've all had this, where you send or receive like a absurdly low resolution image or video you can even watch. It'll help with that. And that's what matters is the function. Exactly, exactly. It was funny because when I heard the news, if you follow me on Instagram, I posted an Instagram story of the screenshot of the 10 to 5 Mac story. And I put in the music, We Are the Champions by Queen, because I was very, had a lot of hubris myself and felt as if we, you know, Google deserved to take a victory lap here because we talked about last week that Google had set a note to the EU claiming that iMessage should be considered part of the digital foot as a fair markets act or digital markets act. Should be a gatekeeper under the DMA. So who knows if that's what pushed Apple to be like, oh, we don't want to have the EU come and make us. Let's get ahead of it. Like you mentioned, JR, but that led to the inevitable next question is like, does this mean we are free of green bubbles? And of course not, because the follow up clarification Apple provided is that RCS messages will still use green bubble bubbles as Apple confirmed, which is not a surprise. And of course, they're going to still stigmatize anybody not using iMessage. But to your point, JR, it doesn't matter if I, you know, hopefully people can can look past the colors of the bubbles and recognize that getting a decently resolution image or video when sent and not have lag between messages and all that, you know, the interoperability still there. That's what that ultimately is what's most important. But, you know, it's also interesting that they are not going with Google's spec of RCS rather the, what was it? The G, I forget the name of it. The GSM Associations. The RCS Universal Profile, which, you know, continues to kind of like, you know, they're not fully, fully on board with Google, but they're making a step towards the middle. Michelle, where were you when you heard the news? I was in on my desktop PC in another room when I heard the news. It was definitely a shock. Of course, the first question that came to everyone's mind is will Apple continue to use green bubble? And then, yeah, the answer was yes, they will. So of course, the thing that we most know, you know, reduction of that stigmatization of green bubble users is probably not going to, it's going to take a long time for that stigma to go away. Because even though next year, sometime next year, we don't know exactly when, you know, green bubble users will finally have a lot of features that they've been missing for a long time, like higher quality media and group messages, you know, reading indicators, typing indicators, and things like that. Those are like the two biggest things that happen in green bubble users out of group messages with iMessage users. So even though we're going to get those features finally, like just because we know about this, like we're talking about it now on the Android Faithful show, how many regular Apple users out there even know that this is coming to their devices next year? I'd wager like 95% of users have not even heard of this announcement. And like only 5% of those users know about the announcement because they're all like, I'll counter that Michelle actually. I think because this got such pickup over the week, so like two things about the reaction of this is that one, I was shocked at the pickup it got. Of course, 9 to 5 Mac, I'm just instinctively saying 9 to 5 Google, but 9 to 5 Mac, you know, broke the news and by the weekend, what day was the 16th? Was it Thursday or Friday? I forget. It was Thursday. By the weekend, I saw articles on local NBC news websites that it went fully went mainstream so much so that my family chat with my in-laws that I made them all move to WhatsApp to avoid this problem. Someone in that, and like I'm the only tech-minded person in there, someone in that chat shared a news article reporting on this saying, does this mean we can move off of WhatsApp next year? So like, I do think that it reached the average user and reached the Apple user a little bit more. I saw some chatter on my social media networks and stuff like that of the usual Apple vs. Android bickering going, yeah, yeah, I messaged just still better and blah, blah, blah. People trying to explain encryption, which was very funny to see people not understanding that encryption and how that works and all that fun stuff. But I do think that it actually got out there, but honestly Apple really needs to send a thank you note to Open AI for stealing the news cycle on Friday and over the weekend with all the drama going on in Open AI and Sam Altman because like this went from being a major story by Friday to be completely like, by the news cycle went so quickly and Open AI sucked up so many news cycles that this was I was like kind of sweating. I'm like, well we have the wait till Tuesday to talk about, of course this can be relevant to us, but like everyone's kind of moved on by this point now. Yeah, you can have a whole HBO mini series on the Open AI drama. Yeah, exactly. They're probably will be. On the iPhone front, I wonder even if some iPhone users average non-techie iPhone users are starting to be aware of it happening what will it take for if they ever have become, for them to become aware of the stigma of it. Not the green bubble thing, but just the idea, because I think there is a very real perception out there that because of this people think Android phones are just junky because Apple is really credited as far as business goes done a hell of a job reinforcing that narrative that Apple is the premium place where you get the highest quality and look, if you're talking to people on Android, they can't even send high-res images. So I don't know, I'm curious if there will ever be a revelation of, oh Apple fixed this and they stopped doing what they were doing or if it's just kind of like, oh yeah I guess the Android phones suck a little less now, but they still suck. Yeah, it doesn't really matter, but it doesn't agree when you look at the macro picture, the market share and trends and all that kind of stuff. So I don't know, I'm sure Apple will do everything and to avoid that realization. They're probably not going to highlight it at all, whenever it does roll out. Kind of like how they're adding side loading support eventually, but they are not going to mention that at all. No, I think when they do mention it Michelle, they'll do like they did in their statement where they're going to say, yes we're doing that and we're making a step towards the middle, but iMessage is still more secure, iMessage is still better. They're going to use it to even pump up their own products a little more. I was curious what Google's response was in terms of this and Google very much embracing the meaning them in the middle. Google said that it's happy to see Apple take the first step today by coming on board to embrace RCS and basically Google said they look forward to working with Apple to implement this on iOS in a way that works well for everybody. So if Google and Apple can work together, I feel like this, I hate politics, but I feel like this is like reaching across the aisle. This is a real red versus blue, green versus blue kind of thing. Hopefully we can all come together and be in a more common ground when it comes to messaging which is all we all want. Don't you mean just switch to WhatsApp like everyone else? Exactly, or Telegram or whatever your app of messaging thing of choice. Either way, hell froze over, the unthinkable happened. Just insane. Before we move to our next story, I forgot to mention before we started getting into the news, stay tuned to the end of the show because we've got a little special Thanksgiving kind of thing planned. So if you don't, if you stop listening during the news, keep listening to the end, trust me, we got some surprises at the end of the show for you, so I just want to make sure everyone knew that was coming. So, but onto messages, Michelle, I have to give you some credit because last week when we were talking about nothing coming out with nothing chats and enabling iMessage support, you were very vocal and saying this was not something you would do. And I feel like you were the bell weather on this next story. Ooh, that proved out nicely for you. You know, I thought that it might not have been a good idea. There might be some issues with it. I did not expect it to be this bad. So what happened? So basically they released nothing chat and then very quickly as it became public on Friday, there was like a public beta people were using it. A lot of researchers who were very skeptical and I guess I rate at nothing and sun bird over their marketing and the messaging claiming it's very secure. They started to dig a little deeper and like sniff their packets and like see what exactly what data is being transmitted between their device and the internet. And they quickly found out that they're not following security best practices. Let's just say like I didn't like I don't have the exact full details like if you want to look at the exact issues there's an article on text.com as well as nine to five Google that dives deep into the exact problematic security practices that nothing's chat app, which is based on sun bird is following and yeah like they're not encrypting messaging messages and images as they're being sent between the device and the server, like all this is being hosted on like a publicly accessible Firebase backend and there's all sorts of other issues with the application so much so that nothing immediately pulled the application from the app store and the Google Play and all these devices and like right after there's only like a couple I think a day after they launched it publicly they pulled the app and they said you know we're going to be working through this we're going to try to fix it and then right after I think earlier today or yesterday sun bird shut down its own iMessage app so like this really really hyped up launch which was kind of funnily overtaken by Apple announcing RCS support on its own devices you know carplay like he's a marketing genius it really seemed like he got something right with the marketing like this he partnered up with Marquez Brownlee they had a big collaboration and then like a they even had like a Washington Post review this article like this app they really hit us they made a splash with their you know iMessage app for Android but then because the application itself just wasn't well designed unfortunately it's kind of backfired spectacularly on them this was like another roller coaster like I feel like this week between like Apple and RCS and OpenAI and the nothing chats kind of thing was just like an absolute roller coaster so JR when you saw this nothing chats thing kind of starting what was your take on it did you have were you skeptical of it or you know I'm always a little skeptical of anything the more parties you bring in third parties and intermediaries it just the more room there is for error but I sure would have thought it would have been this bad I mean this was this was a shock it was like a jaw drop moment to see what what I wonder I mean there's obviously a lot of egg on face here and sunbird is with what sunbird is but how did nothing not vet this better I mean they're a technology company they're putting it out to their their customers and they talk a fair bit about privacy and about engineering and and all the things that should come together to say didn't you look at it like you know an average user isn't going to be able to find this but you think the company signing a major partnership to bring it as like a native service on their devices would have been so that's where oh I'm just kind of waiting with bated breath and fascinated to see at whatever point nothing addresses it what they say I mean I think they basically danced around it obviously the tweeter post whatever it is up there yeah so by the way JR win as she's come up with a clever name for the twitter x thing as twix every now and then we refer to it but yeah the only public statement nothing is made about this is through a post on on twix which is where they said we've removed nothing chats beta from the play store and we'll be delaying the launch until further notice to work with sunbird to fix several bugs understatement of the year my insertion there they said we apologize for the delay and we'll do right by our users so yeah so that that that was my my thought exactly also JR which is like nothing probably got excited by this and moved very quickly you know what is it what is the axiom move fast and break things and they they broke things and hey they sucked it up yeah exactly they broke a little too much so which is a bummer because I appreciate the disruption that they tried to do you know but didn't work out it was a really cool idea I mean the apple thing kind of took a little wind out of the sails but then this happened it was just like oh that's rough I feel like they're gonna sunbird you know whatever no one has a strong opinion one way or the other sunbird but I feel like nothing is gonna have to do a lot to regain trust and I said in that that twix they did apologize but they apologize for the delay I feel like they kind of owe users a little more of an explanation and apology there's probably not much they can say but I feel like they have to say something if they're gonna regain any kind of any kind of trust any perception of integrity and quality it's that's rough I will say it definitely it definitely had echoes of early stage one plus back when Carl was running one plus when they were marketing mishaps and stumbles nearly every week but and here in the chat for our live stream viewers because of the job said reset the one plus nothing counter yeah they definitely have some egg on their face and they're gonna have to do some damage control I think on this or they just ignore it and move on like which honestly sometimes in like corporate communications that's the best thing you can do because like opening yourself up to criticism are really self up to talk to talking about it what do you know like there was a problem they pulled it we're moving forward you know how many people have done like dumping it over this past weekend everyone nobody would have seen it yeah exactly exactly and what did it roll out for a day I mean two days it was hardly anything only on the other hand I guess the nothing users are the types of people who are aware of these things but in terms of like broader public perception most people probably didn't even know anything happened I did find it funny with Sunbird how they were like some birds like none of your messages are on our servers well yeah but they're on Firebase servers that you own that you're that you're using in the cloud like it is like it was there was some dancing around language from on Sunbird side as well exactly so what a messaging roller coaster this past week has been it's been insane all we need is Google to launch like some new messaging service and we'll have the trifecta of just like everything you could want in messaging hell if Google wants to kill Google messages and have the next version of whatever the messaging bring back hangouts it's it's time it's been a little while right revived Google alo yeah yeah yeah well moving on Google does bring is bringing out some new stuff not necessarily about messages but Michelle why don't you tell us what's coming in QPR to beta one yes a Google kind of surprise released the first beta for Android 14 QPR to know mind you this is before they've released a stable build of Android 14 QPR one which will be coming to pixel devices as part of the upcoming December feature drop so in this beta release there's quite a few new things those of you who are like kind of nerdy and looking at the build number will notice it's it starts with the letter a instead of the letter you is in like view for upside down cake which is the code name for Android 14 there's a bit of a technical explanation for why I stress for that I don't think that's really important to get into right now but some of the other actually exciting things that are worth talking about if you scroll down one of the more exciting new features scrolling on the video feed is this feature right here so when you start a screen recording you now have the option to record a single app or the entire screen so normally I think Android 10 Google or it was an Android 9 Google introduced the built-in screen recorder function and now when you open that dialogue you have the option to record either a single app or the entire screen and when you record a single app basically any notifications your status bar your navigation bar none of that will be in your final recording so you just have whatever you're doing inside the app of your choice and you can also do this with a screencast so you can choose a single app to screencast instead of your entire screen you know you don't accidentally embarrass yourself with a message you don't want anyone else to see it's always something my biggest fear whenever I'm sharing my screen by the way is getting some notification or something like that something in your nothing chat I mean we could really go all the sorts of places with that another exciting change for tablet users is that the task bar now has a search bar so when you open the app drawer through the task bar before you have to scroll through your entire app list if you want to launch another app or like drag and drop it to split screen now there's a search bar so you can quickly find the app that you want to open some of the other things that are added in the beta these are not like this upcoming feature is not currently present but there are hints at it there's a new quarantined apps page hidden to win the developer options I don't exactly know what it means by quarantine like you can take a guess based on the you know the real life term quarantine but after what it means in android world as I said last week I'll dig deeper later he did not dig deeper I've been just a little too busy this past week I promise I'll look into it sometime but moving on there's a new privacy indicator dialogue so when you pull down a status bar and an app is accessing the camera or microphone you tap that little indicator in the top right and now you'll see this little pop-up dialogue before it would open you like a full screen page that shows you all these sorts of tools but now you have this more dedicated focused dialogue that lets you see what apps are accessing your camera or microphone and then stop them from accessing your sensors if you want one of the more exciting changes that's also not currently available in the current beta but is hinted at is a toggle to hide the pixels at a glance widget from the home screen so this one got a lot of applause I know a lot of people have for a long time wanted to hide that widget at the very top of the pixel launcher and finally Google is working on a way to do that you have to enable the toggle which is not present by default I had to enable it manually and then that space at the top of the widget of a launcher is reclaimed and you can put whatever apps or widgets you want in its place and there are a couple of other more exciting changes if you keep scrolling on that one's not too interesting this one is quite interesting there's a hint in the code base that Google is working on adding a pop-up dialogue to the bluetooth quick setting panel so right now if you tap the internet you have this pop-up where you can choose your wifi network or your mobile data network and you can switch between the two right now it's just change your bluetooth device you have to long press on the tile and then go to bluetooth settings well there's a hint that Google will add a dialogue that just pops up wherever you are on the screen so you don't have to dive deeper into the full bluetooth settings to pair a new device or change paired devices and then I think this one is really exciting video viewers you can see this screenshot of a page called private space so what I think Google is working on here is a new basically a place for you to hide certain apps from other users who are on your device so if you're familiar with like the locked folders in Google photos or like the lock folder in the files by Google app this seems like it'll be the equivalent of that for apps on your device so say you want to hide X or Y app from other users and put it in this private space so only you can access it with potentially a custom lock screen pin and then there's one more potentially exciting thing keep scrolling around is a notification cooldown feature so right now if one app spams like 20 notifications at once it'll just keep pinging your device whatever sound you have and it won't stop it'll play at the same volume well this notification cooldown feature potentially could detect when an app is spamming notification and then gradually lower the volume at least that's what I think will happen like the feature isn't fully working in the current beta release I just happen to find it while looking through the build and that's pretty much it for what I've discovered so far in Android 14 QPR2 beta 1 well that's quite a mouthful there is one more exciting thing but I'll leave that to Ron because it's going to be our our patron pick but before we get to that though two questions for you one what phone are you using as your daily driver these days or phone that you're digging and two what are your thoughts on Android 14 has it changed your life for the better good questions and before I forget because my brain has very little working memory capacity these days an interjection there with that notification cooldown there's a really cool app I don't know if you guys have used it called Buzzkill that has a very similar feature you can configure it's a little different how it works but for instance if you know somebody who like just sends every two words as a new message and so when they're messaging you like ding ding ding ding ding ding and it just gets for me that drives me crazy Buzzkill I mean it does a lot of cool stuff but one of the things it does is a feature called notification cooldown where you can say any notification in Google messages that has the name Jim Smith or whatever in it do not show me more than one every 60 seconds or something so if you're hungry for that now and you don't want to wait it doesn't sound exactly the same but it's a really cool app does a lot of really nice it's almost like Gmail filters for your notifications but it has a lot of powerful stuff that maybe think of it yeah so on the phone front I've got to say I did not expect to like it I really enjoyed spending time with I didn't purchase it but I had to review a review unit my time with the pixel fold thus far up till that phone I hadn't been won over by folding phones you know the choices here in the US have been Samsung and Motorola and for me I mean the software is always an issue I'm just I'm not into the Samsung thing and updates are a problem for me there but more than anything was the form that you carry around this little like candy bar remote control thing and you spend most of your time at least I find when I use a foldable phone I use the outside more than anything it's nice to be able to open it so the pixel fold really won me over with that form and I was kind of leaning toward maybe getting that and then this guy came out the pixel eight so this is also a review unit this is not my own personal one but I'm finding so I've been living with this review unit you know since roughly when the phone came out a little bit before and I'm kind of finding I'm being won over by this for one main reason and that is the face unlock everywhere which I haven't had since the pixel for going way back to that old but with the project solely and all that stuff and it just makes all other camera stuff all the cool features all the AI stuff all that something that I appreciate numerous times a day because it's not just having it unlock when I pick it up which is nice but every time I sign into a banking app or you know whatever kind of secure thing you have to sign into it's just so handy and so I don't know I don't know if I'll end up getting this if I'll wait till next year at this point the phone I officially still own is the pixel seven pro I've been living with the pixel eight and I'm very tempted to make that leap well I will say that the black Friday deals from Google and the pixel eight pro are very very tempting in fact one of my friends who's a who I would consider a tech adjacent normal text to me is like how's the pixel eight pro is like I see that that deals pretty good should I pull the trigger I'm like I've been pretty happy with it it's been pretty great so yeah it has it has android 14 you know I think it's great it hasn't been like a night and day life changing update on the surface but we're reaching the point where there's so much stuff coming out all year long that if you're on an iPhone that would be part of like your iOS update but we get an update to Gmail every month or multiple times a month to Google keep to Chrome to whatever so yeah I've been digging it for sure it's been nice little bits of polish and convenience and all that but at the same time I get why people see the update and they say wait is anything different what's the deal because we're not really at the stage where it's everything is like this transformation it's not visual transformation I'm sure we'll hit that again at some point but it's subtle but yeah it's been a nice upgrade I've been more excited this year by hardware than I expected to be I guess is what I say whereas software has kind of been the key thing for a number of years now it's like the hardware's cool but you know every year it's kind of the same and this year with the fold and then the Pixel 8 Pro and just some of the nice quality of life things I've been pleasantly surprised by how much I've enjoyed that hardware I need to decide when I'm going to make that bump you're stealing my thunder a little bit more on the Thanksgiving side no no it's all good I share the feeling for sure can I just interject you mentioned Black Friday deals but I just have to bring this one up because Samsung is also offering some amazing Black Friday deals because my dad has always been eyeing a foldable phone the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and just their deals this week were just too hard to pass up he got his Z Fold 5 which for the 512 gigabyte one I think it's like MSRP of $1936 he got it for $700 because it's a 25% off the base price and then they traded in he's traded in his Galaxy Note 20 Ultra for $800 that phone came out like over three years ago like I don't Samsung their deals are crazy that's all I say so bundle and save up to over $1,330 with the Galaxy Z Fold 5 that's crazy those trade ins have gotten so good I feel like it was just a few years ago where you would have to be crazy to not just go sell it on Swappa or eBay or whatever you do because the trade ins were you get something but it was a lazy way out and you'd get next to nothing for it now even Google's gotten hit and miss but at the right time they've even come up a lot that's awesome to see I will take a moment to advocate for the Samsung the Frame TV that's my TV in our living room it's fantastic and it's an older model the most recent models even better too so yeah Samsung's got some good deals good deals this year it's almost as if all the manufacturers and retailers recognize the fact that everybody's poor this year and they need the deals what do you do like what's on your the frame TV when it's when it's not on like what do you what do you have it do so Samsung has this great it's running ties in so it's not running Android but they basically have like a app store for art there's a whole art store where you can go through and there's curations there there's art from sources like museums like tape modern and things like that and their collections and so like so right now I have like a Thanksgiving painting up and like there's a there's an artist that the kids like Uli-Guli that does like these little figures and stuff like that and so typically it's something kid forward around whatever holiday is of the time period but like I've had classic classical you know like you know 1600s I've had you know modern stuff you can add your own art my wife had purchased some pieces of art digital pieces art that you like that we put up there that were more on the modern side so it's really flexible in that regard you could put photos and things like that if you want you can plug a USB stick in and upload your own stuff if you want to or you can pull from those art sources so that's really cool and you just stays on in that mode like 24-7 it's got an ambient mode it detects when there's nobody's in the room and will turn off and will detect when you walk in the room it's got the cool kind of wood grain plastic frame that snaps around the frame of the TV so like and it's hanging on the wall so like when it's it's so effective that when we moved in here we had friends come over who who knew us from our old apartment and said oh when'd you get that piece that wasn't in your apartment and and her husband leaned over like it's the TV she's like she literally thought it was a frame piece of art so wow that's really tempting that sounds pretty cool it's very cool so all right cool well as Michelle mentioned every week over on Patreon our loyal patrons can help us pick a story to talk about on the show and this week this Thanksgiving week we have three stories up for you guys to vote on Google cubes coming to the play store can help Android users discover new apps to install came in third place with 13% of the vote Gmail for Android may soon make it easier to avoid spam came second with 39% of the vote and I feel like every couple years Gmail is trying to help you avoid spam and it just they never quite crack it but they're trying again but the number one story that got the most votes of 48% of the vote was Google Pixel phones finally install system updates much faster and Michelle as you mentioned that was part of QPR QPR 2 part of the bundle bit of the function in this is that users are seeing much faster installation times with updates and making the whole process go faster and they don't appear to be limited to a specific model of phone and it it's you know applies to app update security patches you know like the update of the phone taking up to 30 minutes to an hour like I did the most recent update I was like why is this still going it is ridiculous how fast how long it's taking and so it's great to see that now it is able to go faster Michelle can you under the hood explain a little bit how this is happening or so I don't have the full details myself but Android police founder and APK mirror founder Artem Rusikovsky reached out to his contacts at Google and he actually came up with three potential reasons why this these are what he learned from Google as to why the update process has been significantly improved so according to what he was told number one Android now parallelizes compression operations so he says that OTA installs previously require individually compressing thousands or they require compressing thousands of small blocks and now this is all being done in parallel so this is all instead of being done like one at a time sequentially it's now being done simultaneously and this has led to a 26% reduction in install time during Google's testing number two Artem also says that Android now batches operations of these small blocks so for example instead of it's all kind of technical details but this change has resulted in a 24% reduction in install time during Google's tests and then the last thing that Google also did is that they switched the compression method from GZ from GZip to now LZ4 which is a different compression algorithm so this results in a 50% decrease in install time and then combined these three changes has resulted in taking a 25 minute installation time down to around 6 minutes so there's like a lot of things that are going on when you are installing an over there update like I think one of the things that people have noticed takes the longest is the optimizing apps and you know that's like Google has tried to various ways to speed that up like when do you do that optimization step because that optimization step has to be done like the Android runtime like it's like literally compiling apps like do you do that in the background when the user is not using the device do you do it when the user is using the device how many CPU threads do you dedicate to doing that if you take too much will that prevent the user from using their phone for other stuff like there's a lot of considerations that need to be done and Google is constantly optimizing you know this whole installation process because it's not really a thing that a lot of people you know we complain about techies because we're constantly updating the beta all the time we like we want the reboot now we want the new update now but the average user is like I don't even want to update right I'll just wait for the last minute to update and the long time it takes to update makes you not want to update because there's up to a half an hour to an hour that you can't use your phone right and Google's got a smart that's well the update has kind of gotten rid of that like you can still use your phone during these whenever pixels install on an update it's just that if you if you're like an inpatient like techie like us you want to reboot right now you want that update right now you don't want to wait for this optimizing app state they'll take like 30 minutes so yeah it's nice that Google has sped this up by a lot because you know it is kind of you're wondering like why does it take so long to optimize apps like why does it have to sit there for an hour like what's it doing and uh yeah I'm just really glad it's being done I mean go ahead oh I'm sorry I was on a side note I was going to say I adore the fact that Artem is the one who dug this up and sourced it it's like you can take Artem out of android police but you can't take the android police out of Artem I love that he's still just like posting stuff on his own on on on Twix and also that he is stuck to that one profile picture since I was like going back I don't know why first before I even met him became aware of him 2008 I don't know whatever that was he's he's committed to that and I appreciate that I love that guy and and he's still doing awesome work just kind of out doing this thing I mean I guess I don't know what his official relationship is with AP but he's he's clearly doing his own thing there and that's awesome very cool so yeah so I mean that's a that's a welcome welcome change so it's in the QPR too so it'll be a while before it's out to the standard release right Michelle like normally what's the what's the lag between the stuff that you showed in QPR two versus when average users will see it QPR two is going to hit stable stable in March so quite a while yeah so few months not that far off I mean here we are it's it's almost the end of the year so March isn't that far off so and then that update presumably will take a long time because that update will have to apply before the faster updates can apply moving forward right yeah I think you have to apply the update to do the faster updates right right right it's like it's like you're on a train going 80 miles an hour and you want to make it go 100 without stopping so you still gotta you still gotta apply the the update that's pretty fun I think so a little bit of MCS or kind of mentality going there or borrows kind of yeah all right well everyone go to patreon.com slash android faithful and you can vote every week voting happens on Mondays and every anybody signed up for the Patreon can vote and we love the fact that you guys help us pick something to talk about so very cool all right so moving on to hardware a couple of quick kind of things to look forward to Michelle and JR if you're going to get your calendars out I'm sure you already have it out here but so Samsung Galaxy S24 launch date is imminent it looks as if Samsung confirm the 2024 Galaxy unpacked event to the Korean press and confirm that the launch date will be January 17th which is about 15 days ahead of how of previous models and you know we can expect seeing you know seeing the Galaxy S24 which I feel like has been shared through leaks and then pre-orders will start after the event and we as we talked about last week Michelle right that that Samsung is going to get into the AI game with this release so excited to see that I don't know JR how do you feel about Samsung these days are you pro con Samsung you know I think what I'm most interested to see the AI stuff all right cool I mean some of it's practical some of it's just sort of like buzzword for the sake of buzzword at this point we'll see what they do I'm really curious to see and this phone may be too soon but I'm really curious to see if and how they're going to respond to the pixel upgrade increase of going to the seven year guarantee I mean Samsung of course prior to that had raised the stakes itself by bumping its Galaxy phones up and there's ideally the whole competitive marketplace thing leads to everybody getting better and you know it's easier and cheaper for the manufacturer to not do that but once somebody does expectations go up so I'm really hopeful that Samsung will if not match at least bump up and follow suit I don't know this this may just be too soon but I'm curious to see if they do and if not then hopefully by next year well next next years the following years we'll see some action there but yeah I mean you know it's going to sell well you know it's going to be almost certainly going to be a hit so it'll be cool to see what in the service level features the AI stuff what they can do and how it compares hopefully it won't just be the usual like big speed kind of why is this here Google's already doing this better thing hopefully they'll come up with something cool new and different and having a purpose to exist and I feel like enough times happen since the Google announced of them if they want to extend that coverage period that they can get their ducks in a row in order to do it but yeah we'll see yeah but Samsung's not the only ones coming up in fact even sooner our good friends over one plus have set a launch date for December 4th for the one plus 12 to capitalize on their 10 year anniversary it's hard to believe I didn't even realize this that it's been 10 years of one plus they were founded in December of 2013 when they were founded by Carl Pay who's now with nothing and Pete Lau and so they're going to be doing the one plus 12 announcement on December 4th and you know a very dramatic shot of Pete Lau standing on a watch which is you know to announce the date so and we've seen a bunch of new we've seen a bunch of leaks on the one plus 12 it's going to be running Snapdragon HN3 got a new camera it's going to have wireless charging which is a hot button topic for one plus users and that sort of thing so I'm excited to see how the one plus 12 rolls out because I do love my one plus open JR have you gotten to play with one plus open at all or? No I haven't spent much time with that so you have that one there? Yeah it's over there Michelle you probably have it handy right? But Michelle and I love it this device It looks cool I definitely need to spend some time with it. Yeah if you like the pixel fold I think you'll love the one plus open because the pixel fold like we talked about this a little bit when we reviewed the phone it's almost like a Goldilocks on the three bears thing like the Samsung Galaxy Fold is a little too small and the pixel fold is a little too fat one plus open feels like just the right form factor just the right size for the book foldable style so curious to see what the one plus 12 can do to add to the larger one plus offering and the fact that they're adding back wireless charging if that's hopefully that is an indicator of what's to come because the one plus open does not have wireless charging which is a lot of people are complaining about. One thing to note Ron about that December launch for the one plus 12 that will probably just be the China launch if you want to see the global like the availability in the US will be at the wait till at least January we don't know exactly when but we will have to wait a little bit and hopefully we'll also at least see in December the one plus watch 2 which I think we talked about last week or the week before well probably with that that marketing shot of Pete standing on a watch setting on a watch in the case of the watch. Very subtle little bit very very subtle. One plus is still still kicking that we've got them we've got nothing you know it things have condensed so much over the years where it's like yeah Google's to there you got Samsung Motorola but we used to have all these little random players I mean what was there was like the next bit there are all those other ones essential I mean a lot of it's gotten harder and harder for these smaller non mammoth companies to compete so the fact that one plus is still kind of being the alternative in the little guy it's cool that's what makes Android fun and different and what it is I was pointed when speaking of essential awesome that OSOM didn't end up well it kind of did a crypto thing but it didn't end up coming up with what we were all I think a lot of us here we're looking forward to as the essential phone sequel of the next the next generation right yeah but it's cool that some of these companies are still carrying the torch and doing something a little different and you know it may be an enthusiast play it may never be like mainstream top tier shelf and Verizon but doesn't have to be it's cool that stuff still exists and is an option out there for everybody exactly I like it definitely is I feel like we're trending towards again going back to what we're gonna be thankful or we're trending towards a I feel like another period of kind of hardware variety you know lack of sameness which is good so yeah you're gonna get a rollable phone Ron oh man I'm right I mean years ago I was promoting the foldables I was saying this is the next week thing I think the rollable rollable is right behind that so it's something yeah we'll see all right so Michelle how about this next story so um those of you who have been having a bit of MagSafe Envy from your iPhone wielding friends we'll be glad to know that soon hopefully soon smartphones with the new Qi2 wireless charging standard will be coming on the market so for those of you who don't know Qi2 includes the new magnetic power profile which is basically the generic standardized version of Apple's MagSafe their magnetic wireless charging implementation so whenever Android smartphones with Qi2 support come out that's when you'll actually properly have MagSafe compatible Android smartphones because that's what the new standard entails and the wireless power consortium which is the governing body that dictates the wireless charging standards sent out in press release talking about the first Qi2 production smartphones that are coming soon and one of the partners was Google and like the Google spokesperson I think the product manager on the team mentioned that they are working on bringing this technology to feature pixel phones so not pixel phones they just said pixel devices so it's looking like potentially a future pixel smartphone or maybe pixel tablet or pixel smartwatch will support Qi2 wireless charging we don't know exactly when or which product but it is exciting to finally have basically MagSafe on Android because it's a very convenient charging implementation it's just something that has been proprietary to Apple for a long time JR do you take advantage of the wireless charging where do you fall in that world yeah I do I've kind of dabbled on I mean Google's kind of given it to us taking it away like going back wasn't the pixel 4 I think the first at least the first pixel phone had it oh yeah pixel 4 I'm thinking of the orb that's the one I think that's why I always think of that yeah then it wasn't there for a while but yeah no I've definitely gotten the habit and so I've also I'm wearing pixel buds right now so those plop on the same thing and yeah it's nice I've got a charger here on my desk I've got one you know kind of close to where my bedroom is and obviously it's very like third world problemy it's not a big deal to plug your phone in but it's just so nice and convenient to just drop it down you don't have to deal with the USB port inevitably getting like clogged up with lint and having to clean it out over time I guess you're still using it for data transfer you might but yeah it's nice it's nice and and and having the mag save kind of thing seems they're gonna be the people who say it's an Apple thing but it's a good idea even Apple comes up with a good idea sometimes so if we can use it hey more power to all of us universally not as long as it's not proprietary right that's the one exactly exactly so yeah that'll be that'll be great I mean it will kind of suck that there'll be that transitional period where we have to buy all new accessories because standard is going to change but hopefully it'll stick and then once you get those once they'll just work from there on out for sure yeah it's funny because I don't use wireless charging so like I'm like whatever you know so it's like it's those who subscribe to wireless charging are passionate about it and those of us who aren't are just like whatever just like to your point it seems like a luxury like a nice to have you have a problem with it or is it just kind of like yeah whatever I just have never taken the time to get all the stuff right like I've got my usbc cable by my nightstand I plug it at the end of the day and that works for me so yeah well then also like when you travel but you're gonna bring a charger it's one more thing to shove in your bag I never bring out if I'm going anywhere so it is a slightly silly luxury solution but yeah it is nice it is funny because I did stay at a hotel that had a wireless charging base on the nightstand I was like oh cool I'll use it I put the phone on I saw I did the charge I went to sleep and it must have moved or slipped and it just didn't charge overnight I'm like see this is and it's having my wife as the iPhone and she and I got her the wireless charging base and happened the other day where she like thought it was on charging and it wasn't then she had like 6% battery and yeah so it's it's definitely it can be fraught so and hopefully Q2 will solve that by when you're aligning your device yeah by making sure yeah it works yeah there you go alright cool so a couple quick under the hood stuff in terms of processors Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 lots of exciting there after Qualcomm announced the mid-range 7 series chipset and the results are in and it's giving up to 15% improved performance on the CPU and 50% improved performance on the GPU and overall 20% better on power saving so those those kind of benchmarks are are giving thumbs up across the board for the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 Michelle is there anything else I'm missing in terms of that's note with the Snapdragon Gen 3 or I think I guess one thing to note is that we don't we don't really know what devices will actually I mean like at the at the very end of this article you can see that we are expected to have devices from Honor and Vivo launch with this chipset typically you don't actually see a lot of smartphones launch with these like the 7 Gen 1 series 7 Gen 2 I don't think there are very many devices that even launch with them so I'm kind of curious to see you know if that trend will continue or we'll actually have more devices move to the lower end especially as the market is hurting and people aren't buying as many devices they used to like prices got to come down exactly and then additionally over on the MediaTek side of things I was very jealous as many many of our friends are at the MediaTek summit recently I saw I was very I got a little bit of FOMO looking on the Instagram seeing lots of friends of the show hanging out but as part of that summit MediaTek officially launched the MediaTek Dimensity 8300 and as they say it's got a tricluster ARM V9 CPU and it's you know therefore gonna have a blazing fast GPU Wi-Fi 6e and support for on device generative AI so it definitely is packing in a lot under the hood on the Dimensity 8300 and yeah so if you're into processor stuff you're probably going deep into all this sort of stuff that it does but yeah it will be interesting MediaTek also did mention it's compatibility with dual displays which leads to some speculation that is it a processor that's really leverage foldables or what does dual displays mean if not foldables from there so exciting stuff on processors I have a hard time with that personally it's a very very nitty gritty right yeah I'm with you I mean it's cool I'm more interested to see when we see what it can really do but of course you've got to start with the specs yeah I think this upcoming generation of especially the flagship end will be really interesting to see exactly how much AI can be done on device because one of the things that Google caught a little bit of flack over on the Pixel 8 launch was like there's a lot of AI features on the Pixel 8 but a lot of it's not being run on device it's being sent off to the cloud for processing like a lot of the photos magic editor features for example and how much of that will be able to be done on devices with the next gen Snapdragon MediaTek chipsets and how I guess available with the technology because you know will one manufacturer offer the feature will another manufacturer not offer that feature it's really interesting to see what we can do with this new these new powerful chipsets alright so Michelle you've been on a Don Coyote asks journey with your webcam haven't you that's the only way I can describe it yes Ron so recently I've been doing a little experimenting with my webcam and because I've just been I've had to like I guess over like I've been going to my visiting family's house I'm like I don't want to move my I don't want to take my little brio with me I don't want to unplug it from my desk so let me just try out the Android 14 webcam feature just to see how it goes because I've been covering it for a long time I've been anticipating it for so long and then once I tried it out and then I compared it to third party webcam software I discovered that for some reason the Android 14 feature just the quality is just so much worse I don't know exactly why like are they doing aggressive like compression before sending the video feed over to you know the device via USB like I don't know exactly what is going on but if you compare Android 14 webcam feature versus a third party app like camo or any other solution you'll notice that the built-in solution is just significantly worse in quality so let me do it for those of you who are watching live on the video feed right now right now I'm not using Android 14 webcam feature but I am using my Pixel 6 Pro as a webcam and I'm using one of the third party solutions that I alluded that I mentioned in the article I'm not going to explain how I set it up it's a little complicated but basically I'm using I'm not using Android 14 webcam feature right now but in just a second I will switch over to the Android 14 webcam feature so you can compare before and after so this is what I'm using I think it's much higher quality I'll let you be the judge of that once I switch over just take a look for yourself and compare a little bit of magic right here live demonstration right here a little live demo stuff but in the meantime while he's switching his webcam I encourage everybody to go to androidcentral.com where Michelle wrote up basically a breakdown that the article was called the Android 14 webcam feature makes my $1,000 Pixel 8 Pro look like a cheap camera and it goes into some details of the journey he's been on in terms of this and the testing that goes through it and it's really it's got to be a software issue right Michelle I mean like if it's so have you switched over now at this point I'm back yes okay so we're going to go back to zoom in to me right now so yeah those of you who are watching the video food video feed I have changed I am you I was using previously the third party tool that I talked about in the article and now I'm using Android 14's built-in webcam feature like this is the in the December update when that rolls out I think in two weeks from now once that rolls out you'll be able to you know swipe down your status bar and change the USB mode to webcam and this is the quality that I am getting right now for my Pixel 6 Pro using the built-in webcam feature and I think you can quite obviously tell there's a dramatic difference in quality I think it's way worse than what I was using before and I don't know why it's way worse I'm hoping it's just a software issue and that Google can change the quality settings and that they can bump up the you know the lower the compression so that it looks way better or just offer some quality option because maybe one reason they did it is because of thermals right maybe potentially running at a higher resolution just could make the device overheat well I did test that out like last week was a live demonstration I recorded for two hours at 4k 30 and my Pixel 6 Pro did not overheat the battery temperature I think reached a peak of 36 degrees Celsius sorry what did you record for two hours I was like the Truman show you're just like making lunch we may not want to know this might just be something better not explored I was at 4k 30 yeah I was at 4k 30 and my phone did not overheat I was quite surprised this is a Pixel 6 Pro with a first gen tensor and it ran fine for two hours even when in Tokyo she said significant drop in quality in the chat along with TechnoMench in the chat yes I'm watching through Twitch Google TV app on 4k TV and yes there's definitely a difference so confirm so let me just switch back very quickly so those of you who can do one more quick comparison this should take just a few seconds deactivate there we go as we get a little switch that looks a lot worse I can't see the black screen is really that's an interesting feature it actually is none more black as it were yeah I should be back now much better you can tell the difference you can actually see the details on my face now sometimes the camera stuff starts to feel really academic you have to zoom in and look at this this is very obvious just to the naked eye looking at a modernized there's no question I wouldn't have as much of an issue with it but Google's marketing we've got a video that says you can now use your epic Android camera as a webcam and like on their landing page it says you can use your beautiful you can use your Android phone as a beautiful webcam I'm like what beautiful webcam that didn't look beautiful to me before so now that's why I kind of wanted to highlight this so hopefully Google can add like an option for us to bump the quality up if we want yep alright well interesting thank you Michelle for doing the doing the Lord's work and figure out the webcams maybe we'll see if we can hear from someone at Google to explain what's going on there and see maybe it's a work in progress on their side who knows alright well let's wrap it up on hardware we run a little long hopefully JR you can still hang with us for a little bit so we got a couple of app stories to get through and then we're going to give thanks so first up Michelle I want you to tell us about Microsoft so Microsoft has long had this app on Google Play called link the windows and on your PC called phone link basically lets you communicate between your windows the windows PC and your Android device you can basically send photos you can send links you can access your photos and things like that but if you have a Samsung device or an auto device that has the link to windows app pre-installed you get additional functionality such as instant hot spot such as the ability to mirror apps on your phone or mirror your screen well now that kind of baked in functionality is coming to one plus Apple devices running the OxygenOS 14 slash ColorOS 14 release so those updates to those devices will get the link to windows app pre-installed and also gain that additional functionality that is only possible if you pre-install that app on your Android device and this has to be done through a partnership with OPPO and Microsoft because obviously you have to pre-install the app at the you know the manufacturing process during the build time and it's not something you can just do by downloading the app and you get access to all this additional functionality so if you use a Windows PC and an Android phone and you're planning on picking up or you already used an OPPO or one plus device I'm sure you'll appreciate this added functionality you'll get with the update right on cool quick update for WhatsApp users Google Android quietly posted in the support forum that they're going to be changing the way WhatsApp chat history is handled on backups on Android moving forward your backups will start counting towards your Google account cloud storage limit as they say similar to how WhatsApp backups are handled on other mobile platforms so this is going to start rolling out to WhatsApp beta users starting December 23rd and then gradually roll out to all WhatsApp users on Android I did not know these backups didn't reflect against my storage limit I use Google 1 I have many many many gigabytes or terabytes of storage with Google so at least I don't really think of it but if you are limited to the 15 gig of storage on your Google account and no charge and you're using WhatsApp and if you have a lot of activity a lot of stuff to backup in there you're going to want to take a look at it I do like the fact that WhatsApp allows you to indicate whether you back up just the chats and media or just the chats and no media because honestly in the gigs of backups many of that are videos and photos that honestly are disposable and I wanted to back up just the chats because I'm a weird hoarder and I have my me and my wife's entire chat history going back to when we were dating on WhatsApp and I want to keep that for some reason I don't know but uh so yeah I love how they're testing that with beta tests as first as if this is something you want to test you want to have your storage counted against your Google account my wife and I started chatting on Myspace when we were first dating how bad is that and you don't have that and you don't have the chats right you don't have one like it went through that weird Justin Timberlake era and I don't know at some point I tried to sign back in and it was so you planned this out nicely well done. So Daniel in the chat says that he uses SMS backup and restore thanks to JR and your recommendation. Oh yeah that's a great tool it's one of those like long standing just the design is awful that hasn't been updated in a decade but it works it's so good. It gets the job done you install it you use it you never look at it again maybe install it I mean it's like a five minutes once a year thing or maybe use it for more but either way it's like it just sits there and runs beautiful thing that gets the job done. Exactly. Alright Michelle what's going on Google Photos Alright so we have two new updates coming out running out right now so the first feature is called PhotoStack so Google Photos will now automatically identify and group similar photos that were taken close together into something called a PhotoStack and then it'll select the top pick that best captures that moment and basically it's just you know you take a whole bunch of photos at one location or like one particular moment Google Photos will use AI I guess to automatically group them together and create a PhotoStack so now you'll have the option to select your top pick you can modify the stack or if you don't like this feature you can turn it off entirely so this is a neat way you know if you take a whole bunch of photos and you don't have to create an album for each and everything you can just let a PhotoStack be created just for a couple of photos that are very similar location or someone who takes 20 to 30 photos of my kids in one spot trying to get one shot of them smiling this is a nice this is a handy feature so yeah and the other new feature is better screenshot and document organization so Google Photos will now better ID and categorize screenshots and documents into more helpful albums like IDs receipts and event information so previously you take a photo of a document it would just put into like a documents album now it'll actually start to categorize it more accurately and also photos will automatically identify things like dates and screenshots so you can quickly add a reminder in your calendar so if you just take a screenshot and it has like a date they'll use like a little chip that asks you to add a reminder in your calendar so just help you out a little bit more if you take a lot of photos of things and screenshots of things that reminder thing is cool Google had so many cool reminders features and then they kind of fell apart for a while and they took some away and it's cool to see that the last app reminder thing coming back again that sounds like something that could potentially be really useful if it works as well as it's made up to I love Google Photos I really do same alright and the last bit of story is about Huawei we talked about this last week when they announced their new Harmony OS next and they said there was going to be no support for APK files which as we all know are native Android apps and they're getting ready to roll this out to users which made a lot of people confused so a week after that announcement Huawei did issue a clarification that overseas units will not receive the new OS so mobile phones and tablets outside of China will keep using EMUI or is it emu emui the Harmony OS looking like version of AOSP on Huawei but doesn't have the Google services and apps but it will continue to support native apps so if you're outside of China using a Huawei device you will still be able to use APKs anything else there Michelle am I missing on that or is that pretty much it which kind of raises the question like how different is Harmony OS next truly like are they diverging it completely are they maintaining two separate entirely different operating systems one for the Chinese market and one for overseas or is it just a branding difference and how much of it is it really different like we don't really know good question so and it was very cool because when shared with us in cabs in Tokyo ads for Huawei products which was pretty cool we might show it next week on the show didn't have time for it this week but more from that but that's a good segue because now we're going to get into normally we do emails at the end of the show but given that Thanksgiving is this week we're going to take the opportunity to let's be thankful with this AI generated image of Android having turkey that I made but we polled the audience we posted to social media we posted to Patreon we posted to discord said tell us what you're thankful for about here in Android and all three of us are going to share our thoughts as well but I thought it would be great to hear from folks who couldn't be here including when even though she's in the chat she sent in a video about what she's thankful for so let's hear from when right now first to kick it off you know what I'm thankful for this year I'm in Tokyo I couldn't be with y'all this week but I wanted to let you know what I'm thankful for this year 2023 for Android mostly that this is the unofficial year of the foldable we'll call it that and that we've all decided to join the flip side whether it's with the pixel fold which I'm using to record right now or the Z Fold your Moto Racer Plus your OnePlus opens it's been a really great year and yeah I'm also just most of all thankful for y'all it was a little rough and we had to leave the old show but I am incredibly thankful that you guys just came with us to this new show and supported us especially our patrons out there so yeah happy Thanksgiving and done it see you later all right so that was I'm in Tokyo a little hard to hear because she's filming outside I'm going to bump up the audio podcast version of the podcast so live listeners if you want to hear it more closely you can go check that out but thank you Wynn for doing that from Tokyo but thankful for the year of the foldable pretty exciting so excellent so before we get into our first community folks Michelle what are you thankful for this year in general I'm just thankful to be close by with friends and family like I know a lot of folks they move far apart from the family and it's kind of tough to visit them on a regular basis but we all live in the same general area in the same cities like my brother lives in Austin just a two and a half hour drive up to there if I want to see him it's really nice to be close to family nice very good all right well then why don't you share your community thanks there you go from so from Robert Robert from Alaska has sent in a post saying I've heard so many stories from people about losing all their data when a phone breaks or is lost and Robert is thankful for android backup he says that he hasn't lost or broken their phone so bad they could lose their data but if he did I could always back up to the cloud I buy a new phone and I opt in to restore everything my photos are available on google photos even when my wallpaper gets restored back up your stuff been a faithful fan for years thank you for coming back in a new form and thank you Robert from Alaska that's a good unsung hero thankful thing I mean it wasn't so many years ago that those of us who have been around for a little while now can remember it was just awful to deal with setting up a new phone if you if you've lost something like you don't think about it because it's most for the most part not always but for the most part just works now and that's a good thing it's a magical thing in fact yeah I totally agree with that even the switching devices and like restoring your wallpaper because I remember I used to have to like export all my settings and set up a new phone and now it just all happens magically so yeah it's really it's really quite amazing how that happens oh yeah I signed into an old Dropbox account that I don't ever use anymore and found like so many like backed up APKs and random app settings files 2009 or whatever it's like oh yeah you just have to export your apps list and then go like redownload them all manually I mean it's it sounds archaic but it wasn't that long ago yeah exactly yeah that's crazy alright so next up we're going to hear from Florence Ion so here's Flows thankful bit hi folks Ron asked me to tell you all what I'm thankful for I've been thinking about it a lot okay now when it comes to being an android user I've been very very thankful for a nearby share do you know how easy it's made my life I've been able to send memes from my PC to whatever android phone I'm using in the vicinity to send a meme because at the end of the day if it makes sending a meme very easy I'm a very happy customer number two I'm very happy that the android faithful have stuck around with the android faithful that this is a podcast that you are going to get to enjoy in the new year and I'm very happy to be a part of it and very thankful as well and number three I'm thankful that Carl Pay made a villain of himself the other day because I know that the world is still turning when it's been zero days since the last PR infraction from Carl Pay everybody have a safe happy healthy Thanksgiving and thanks everybody tuning in and keeping the android level life well flow is very unique I did not expect the last one she definitely wins for best creative use of like a clip on laugh mic that was nice exactly so I hate to make somebody follow that but we'll go to back to the community with our next thankfulness from cousin of jaw who's currently in the chat room who sent in and said I am thankful for the ability to choose my own launcher and to be able to side load fdroid apps I'm thankful for the continued ability to view my files as files like I used to do on my computer I'm thankful for the number of options of phones each with their own strengths and weaknesses I'm thankful for android 14 finally splitting out notification and ring volume sliders I'm not thankful for my phone allowing every call to ring while on do not disturb even if I've set the interruption exceptions to no calls comes to android the lord give it and the lord take it away happy thanksgiving faithful cousin of jaw it was poetic that was just that was beautiful it was wonderful and I'm so thankful the cousin of jaw is still with us long time live stream viewer back to all that android days thank you for that that was fantastic so jr what are you thankful for this year in the world of android so I thought about it I'm gonna go a little on the sappy side but my first I have two they're quick the first one is that I it's genuine really am thankful for the community of passionate android users who are out there still as curious as ever we see and hear a lot about you know these things ebb and flow android is it was on a crazy growth spur for well over a decade now iOS is gaining ground and Roy's not the cool new thing but there's still those of us who use it appreciate it like these these testimonies we've just been hearing know what makes it special and there's still people who are every bit as excited about the same stuff as we are and beyond that willing to hang with us to support us on these smaller scale independent projects that you guys are doing here I'm doing that we're doing just kind of in our own little corners and there are people still here with us making that possible and keeping the magic alive and natural segue from that again at the risk of being a little little sappy I am thankful for you guys for doing this because I was really sad and not just on a personal level but just on a broad level when the AAA show went off the air the virtual digital air I guess and I get it I know there's a lot going on Twitter's a big organization there's a lot of business things the fact that you guys were able to take the ashes of that and bring it into this and keep what really is an unparalleled android audio show going is is just fantastic and aside from the role of small role I've had in that show over the years I've always been a fan a listener a watcher and so it's so cool to see it keep going in this this new evolved form and I'm glad that you all came up and so quickly put this together and made it happen that is just that's fantastic you can get me emotional when was here we'd already have waterworks going on but thank you I really appreciate that so I think that's a great segue to hear from our good friend and former co-host Mr. Jason Howell so let's hear what Jason is thankful for android faithful crew it's me Jason Howell yes I am recording this in my car what can I say it's Thanksgiving break things are crazy I think the thing that I'm most thankful for with Android this year is it's tenacity this whole thing with Apple and RCS and remember not too long ago Hiroshi Lockheimer going nutzo on Twitter in all these like veiled efforts to get Apple to acquiesce and everything well it worked you stuck to it you made it happen I really appreciate that about Android and Hiroshi and Google hey have a great Thanksgiving everybody I miss you bye we miss you too Jason that's good to see Jason yeah it's a great see Jason and thank you to Jason and flow and win for sending their videos and lastly a couple folks on Patreon shared their their thankfulness Bob Rissler wrote in and said thankful for the company that started supporting the RCS standard soon obviously we all are innovating it I think he means they're inventing and innovating RCS exactly inventing it and Rick Rick Anchor wrote in on Patreon and said I am thankful for the Android faithful stepping up when all about Android ended the team is on the ball and we're doing our best so thank you Rick and Bob for doing that and what I'm thankful for in addition to being thankful for everything that everyone said so far I'm thankful that and JR you kind of touched on it as well and we talked about early in the show we're coming off of a couple of years of sameness of I don't know if it was post-pandemic just you know like it took a while for those you know the dust to shake off our boots but it's a really exciting time to be into Android right now and I feel like going into 24 it's gonna be even more exciting you know the hardware got an injection of excitement with the foldables we're seeing such great stuff happening on the software side just there's so much to talk about every week as evidenced by our attempt to keep these shows tight and concise and we run long because there's just so much to discuss so I'm really thankful that we're going into what I'm hoping in especially into 24 is going to be an even more exciting time in the world of Android to just attract all this stuff and talk about it and hey this is a year that I got an awesome tablet with the pixel tablet I got an amazing foldable with the 1 plus open you know the pixel 8 line is solid you know everything going on and Samsung is solid it's just that there's Motorola like everybody seems to be putting out their best work and it just seems I'm hoping that this is the beginning of another kind of fantastic time period similar to like that 2014-2015 time period which I feel like was the last period which ironically was pre-pandemic not ironically but you know coincidentally but then of course goes not saying that I'm immensely thankful for UJR and Michelle and win and Jason and flow and all of our guests so far on the show and just the fact that all of you listening and all of you watching are keeping us afloat staying engaged I was telling Michelle after the show last week you know like we you know we're doing the show because we love it but it's nice to see the numbers are going up every week as more of you are listening more of you are discovering us we're getting back that old audience from Twitter it's just you know I'm thankful for Tom and Roger and Sarah and everybody at DTNS to be so to welcome us with open arms it's just it's been a it's been a year 23 and and I think you know Android faithful is one of the better things coming out of it so very very thankful for that so yay and now I'm going to cry you're here yeah so happy Thanksgiving everybody have a great holiday if you're in the US if you're celebrating have a great holiday if you're not in the US have a wonderful Thursday as I discovered once I went to when I was in college my best friend was doing a semester in London and I went to go visit him on Thanksgiving and I forgot that it's just Thursday in and so it's like he had work and like school and I was like oh I thought we're going to like do dinner but yeah so all right well let's wrap it up for the show J.R. thank you so much for hanging with us we really appreciate it in addition to Android intelligence and the intelligence the intelligence.com where else can people find you on the internet are you on any social media these days where are you in the social media landscape not so much not not super I am on on the masted ons actually I'm on the twit server on the masted on so I'm there not not super active I don't know I've just not been a huge social media phase I am there I mean the best place is just to get the newsletter if you go to the intelligence.com Android intelligence comes out every Friday is free yes there's the premium membership program if you want to do it cool if not it's a free newsletter every Friday you'll get fun stuff about Android so come on over we'll stay in touch and yeah similarly we should do this more often so we'll definitely make this more more than a once every forty seven year occurrence awesome can't wait excellent all right Michelle now's the time tell everybody that you're on everything I'm on everything twix discord telegram we chat what's that that's it on threads I'm gonna forget the name like at least two things every week every time I say I'm on everything I am on every platform I can think of I was on blue sky I abandoned it because there wasn't a lot of activity and I don't know why they still invite only but whatever yeah you can find me at Michelle Ramon on everything and if you want to support my work you can find me on patreon.com slash Michelle Ramon where you can get access to my discord group where we talk a lot about Android and pixel stuff and stuff I don't share on social media which I already do share a lot and if you just want to support the work that I do you know which is there's a lot of work involved in the articles and the things that I post so appreciate you could you know chip in and also support this podcast as well as you heard from Ron so Michelle if I was a member of your patreon would I get that two hour video that you shot of your of you just hanging out in your apartment or where can I get that no no that that two hour was me actually using the camera for last week's android faithful oh okay all right we ran two hours total from pre-show to the end yeah so it's not on your only it's not on your only fans if you don't sign up for his his membership though you are going to get that video this is the only way to avoid having to watch that video so go sign up by God go sign up right now alright and lastly I'm Ron XO across all the very social media most active on Instagram but that's not as important as heading over to patreon.com slash android faithful please sign up join us and our friends from Android intelligence we got a lovely community going on there we're thankful for everybody who has joined and supported us so far on this wonderful adventure and of course you can find everything you need over on android faithful.com that's got links to all of our various podcast apps where you can subscribe you can watch the video there all that fun stuff because this podcast is recorded every Tuesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern 5 p.m. Pacific you can watch us live on youtube.com slash daily tech news show or twitch.tv slash good day internet and then the podcast comes out shortly there after every night everyone have a great and safe Thanksgiving we love you you're the best because we all together are the android faithful