 And how do I stop my camera? There we go, okay. All right, and let's do a show. In three, two. And welcome to another edition of Android Faithful. We are your weekly source for the latest news, hardware and apps in the wonderfully wacky, wonderfully adventurous, wonderfully reminiscent world of Android. I am Ron Richards. And as always, joining me, Quinta Dao. Good to see you. Good to see you and very much. What's the best Ron? You started riffing on the intro, and now I feel like you raised the bar there, so I'm going to get in on it. That was like a 15 foot raise. I'm going to have to start warming up before the show to meet you. That's awesome, love it. Exactly. So we're really excited. Michelle's off this week, but we have two guests, not just one, but two guests. And so first up, I would like to introduce my good friend, Mr. Brendan Bigley. How are you doing, Brendan? I am doing so well. How are you both? Good, doing good. Thank you so much for having me here. Welcome to the show. Brendan, where are you from? What podcasts do you do? Where are people? Where am I from? Great question. I'm from the great state of New Jersey, and I have a couple of podcasts. The one that I will plug is Into the Aether. It's a low-key video game podcast. Awesome. All right, cool. And we will reveal while you're joining us this week in a moment because our second guest, our mystery guest that we were hyping up on social, longtime fans of our former show, All About Android, get ready, get very excited, because it is none other than your favorite and mine, Ms. Eileen Rivera. Hello. Oh, excuse me, one second. Let me turn this off. Oh. How are you? Hello, Eileen. Welcome to the show. Oh my goodness, thank you so much for having me. I'm a bit nervous because I am relearning Android all over again and relearning everything. So I'm not as versed as I was over a decade ago, guys. So it's been a while. Well, so for our newer viewers, for our newer listeners, viewers, whatever you want to call them, or folks who watched All About Android later in the years, Eileen actually founded with Jason Howell over at Twitter, the original show, All About Android. Eileen, you invited me on as a guest, I think, in one of the beta episodes. And I never, I just never stopped showing up. And we wouldn't be here on the show if it wasn't for you, Eileen Rivera. Aw, thank you, I appreciate that. Well, those were good times. And you know what? They're going to get better, right? Exactly, exactly. Technology has advanced. Yes. These things are better than ever. We'll talk about it. So we're going to get right into it, because the reason why we wanted both of you on the show, because it's so interesting in terms of how lives run in parallel, but then intersect, and things like that, both when we started Android Faithful, Eileen reached out to me and said, oh my god, Ron, I think I'm going to come back to Android. And I said, really? And then at the same time, Brendan and I, we worked together at our day jobs, just so everyone knows. And Brendan, when the Pixel Fold came out, Brendan, what did you say to me the day came out? It's time, baby. I'm switching. So now to, I guess, to kind of start things off, right? You both were on iPhones previously, right? So Eileen, give us your phone journey since you left all the way. Wow, I think I had my Android for a bit, and then basically my entire family's on iOS. So communicating with them with Messenger. I still have an iPad, I can still, and I still have my iPhone. I didn't trade that in, but here we are. Here we are. So yeah, so I've had iOS for quite a while now. And I just, I've been watching, and those of you who used to watch me on that other show know that I am a big Samsung fan girl. I always have been. And I've been watching and waiting patiently and thinking about when would I make that switch? When do I go back? And it was this year, and Ron, you actually challenged me. We were talking about, because I said, I think I'm gonna go back to Android. And you're like, you know what? I would challenge you for the flip phones, one of those instead, because I was thinking the S series. And honestly, I'm a power user. The camera's very important to me. So this is only my first week using this. I do feel like my heart might be with the Ultra. Not gonna lie. Oh, did I say you're wrong? But, but this is winning me over. This front cover situation here is winning me over for many reasons. It's the camera. It's the fact that I go to a lot of concerts and the phone that they keep talking about if you wanna record video at concerts is the Ultra. It's a bit big, but yeah, it's that I'm, you know, I feel like the hardware is here. And so, you know, if they just put the same camera as the Ultra or the S series into this, then you know, it'd be perfect. But I do love this so far and we can get into it later. But yeah, I just felt like it was time. Like the hardware is working, you know, for Samsung. And it doesn't hurt that a band that I love has been endorsing this since I started loving them three years ago. So blame BTS and blame Suga from BTS because that is part of the reason why it pushed me over the edge. There's a lot of in the community, the army community, there's a lot of iPhone versus Samsung and there's a lot of Samsung users in army. And when I said I was dabbling with it, all of army was like, just go, just do it. Just do it. Let me tell you why. Oh, let me tell you, then there were all of the opinions, S series, Ultra or the like so many opinions there. So I had been thinking about it for, you know, like three to four months now and there was a Korean band that pushed me over the edge. I was going to say, did Steve from BTS reach out to you and tell her whatever is the, what are the BTS band members name? Steve, Jerry, Mackie. Close, close, close. I can't believe you guessed every single one. Yeah, that was amazing. That was an amazing round. I wish I had a conversation with Suga from BTS, but I did thank him on my TikTok, which he'll never see. And I told him, you made a sale, dude, you made another sale. So if you've been following BTS at all and Suga in particular, you know that at the end of every show, he goes out to the crowd and looks for a phone and will do the like selfie thing. And he literally said, no iPhone, like in show two and then proceeded to just only find Samsung phones and he's looking, looking. Well, that's because Samsung is probably paying him. Of course, of course. He's like such a good marketing. He's part of the marketing team now apparently. So anyway, that's, I'm here. I'm here and- Do you remember your last Android phone? Do you remember the last one you had? It was a Samsung. I don't remember which version it was though. It was like 10 years ago, right? Yeah. It was a long time. Like when you jumped, you bailed. Like you bailed hardcore. You quit the show and then went on to- You know, when you like go back in the day, I'm married now, but like when you had a breakup, you cut your hair, you know what I mean? It's like kind of analogous to that where you're like, I'm just gonna just in here, you know, your world's collide. There it is. All right, so let's move the spotlight over to Brendan. Brendan, what has your journey been like? Yeah, I used to switch back and forth between iOS and Android pretty regularly and sometimes had both going on for a while. I worked at a startup for a little bit called Anker. And while I was there, it was just helpful to have both devices simultaneously. So my phone of choice was always the Pixel line. I mean, it started with the Nexus line and I was a big, big, big Nexus fan, but eventually switched over to iOS full time after leaving Anker. And it just felt like the right time. I think also for me, I take a lot of photos. I mean, I like hobbyist photographer on the side. So the camera is super important to me and the iPhone pro lineup cameras just produce images that I was happier with than Pixel images for a long while. And just stuck with that for a long time and then got so bought into the ecosystem that it was so hard to escape until I started doing some research about what was possible in the world of Android because I'd been so detached from it for a while. And the more research I started doing, the easier it seemed like it would be to switch back. And the less the walled gardens seemed like a wall at all and just seemed like a hedge I could maybe hop over if I wanted to. And I did that. I switched over to the Pixel fold. We'll talk a lot about folding phones and why and why that's the thing that brought me back. But I am super thrilled with it so far. I've had it for about, I guess like two weeks. And it's been great. It's been like really great. Very happy to be back. I can speak from experience that over the past, I don't know how many years, Brendan, every time Google does an event and he's like, oh, that Pixel seven looks really good. I think I'm gonna get it. I'm like, yeah, you're never gonna leave iOS. So I was shocked when you got the Pixel fold. Yeah, it was really like a zero to 60 experience because the Pixel fold came out. I was like, I don't know. It looks exciting and I'm glad that Google is making a folding phone. I think that's really fun. But I was always in favor of this guy instead of this guy, but decided to pull the trigger anyway. Give it a shot. Happy I did. All right. So now you're both on Android. So now what? Now what? I think making the switch is the bigger thing for me. I don't know how you felt about it, Eileen, but especially talking about iMessage and how most of your family is on iMessage. Have you found any solutions yet? No. No, it's just separate. Oh, you do. You have one for me. I have one for you. Please share. Do you want me to get into it now? Yeah, I will. I basically made a list for myself because this is the kind of person I am. Made a list for myself of all the things I knew I was gonna miss about iOS when I switched to Android and I tried to find if there were any solves for those things. Number one on that list is iMessage. Number one, I was like, I really, I gotta find some way, see if there's something to do. I like you also have an iPad. So I was like, I could still keep using it if I really want to. Like there is a link there. I found an app which I don't know if you've talked about on the show yet or not, but yeah, there it is. It's called Beeper. Okay. It is kind of everything I was hoping it would be. So the idea of Beeper is not new, I think, in a lot of ways. Beeper essentially is an app that just takes all of your messaging services and just links them together and puts them in one app. And that kind of idea has come and go, I think, over the years as different services change their API access and change different ways in which you're allowed to access their servers, I think a lot of those companies end up just kind of like falling by the wayside. But I haven't, I don't think ever seen an app try and include iMessage in there. And that's why I was so interested in Beeper. And I signed up for it, got into I think what is an early access build of it right now. And it is everything that I wanted it to be. I mean, it is iMessage working flawlessly on my Pixel, which is unreal. And atop that, it also is pulling in WhatsApp so I can talk to my friends in Japan and I can pull in Instagram DMs and I can pull in Twitter DMs. And they have all of these wonderful settings that allow you to prioritize or deprioritize certain people or entire services. So sorry if you're DMing me on Twitter, but I'm definitely not seeing that because that's in the low priority folder. But that having been said, I have now switched to it also full time on Mac, the other Mac app, and on my iPad as well. And I'm just using that for all messaging. And it's been great for like over a week at this point. And I've heard, just to put a little caveat, a little asterisk on here, I've heard some horror stories about it. I have not experienced any of them. It's just been great for me so far. So Eileen, that could be a solution. That could be a solution because really iMessenger was kind of the biggest thing besides the camera, but that's on me on the hardware that I choose. So that's a separate issue. No, I feel responsible about that choice because I was nudging you towards the foldables. Well, Tom said, you know what? If you do want to go S series or Ultra, you might as well wait another six months because we're already halfway through the cycle. You might as well wait. So there might be another trade in next year. The camera is so important to me. And by the way, the camera is pretty good here. And I actually love how long this is. This is nine by 22. I love looking at vertical video, especially TikTok on this phone. It's fun. It is a little weird to record on here because it doesn't format well when you watch it on the iPhone, but that's another issue. And then again, I just love this cover screen and using, because now that I have an app called, I think it's called GoodLock, you can put any app on this cover screen because Samsung only allows you like certain apps. We talked about that last week, right, Wayne, right? I don't have lots of opinions about that. I found the email you sent me for this show, Ron, just by, oh, let me look at my Gmail, what email, oh, okay, here's the rundown. Now I couldn't really click into Google Docs and all that stuff, but I was notified and all that. There's things that it's not perfect, but there's something about this, just form and putting it in my pocket. I feel like I'm coming back to the show as a real consumer, right? As a switcher and a consumer, not as a expert. And so as someone who's, like an everyday consumer using this, I'm just kind of dazzled by like, oh, I love the notifications here, I love how easy it is to get to basic apps just on this cover screen. I will say that there are a couple things that have bothered me and I don't know if it's a me issue or a phone issue, but the face recognition does not wanna recognize me and it doesn't recognize me with glasses, which my iPhone did recognize me when I wore my glasses or didn't wear my glasses. So that's kind of annoying. And also the fingerprint scanning, sometimes if you don't get it perfect, if you don't, I kind of like redid it several times with different fingers because I have to kind of figure out, well, how am I holding this phone or whatever? Because if it's the slight angle off, it just won't. And then I'll try again in 30 seconds. That might be an Android. That might be an Android. Is that an Android app? We're gonna talk about that later in the show, yeah. Okay, okay, because I was like, what is going on with biometrics? That is so annoying. It's funny because I know, because we went through, Android went through many ups and downs with facial recognition and they rolled it out and they pulled it back and then they brought it back and other manufacturers are doing it. I just never turn it on just because I just don't even wanna mess with it. So when you start talking about facial recognition, I almost forgot that it's on Android. So, Wyn, why don't you share your foldable, because I feel like you've got a whole library of foldables behind you, right? Hold on, hold on. So I got the Pixel Fold, which is actually my main driver. I've got the Motorola Razer Plus and I just today got, oh, I complained about my ship date being very delayed. Last week it showed up Monday. So there you go. I had the Z Fold 5. Yeah, I have a lot. So, I mean, whether it's clamshell or flippable or foldable. Yeah, and I think even for those of you that just didn't watch last week. Yes, I did say in fact, if it doesn't have a hinge, I don't want it. And I'm kind of increasingly feeling that way with phones and especially these. So yeah, Pixel Fold is kind of like what I live in, but man, the Z Flip 5 is really, really nice. And I did play with the Flex Window quite a bit. And Adam talked about this a bit last week about the different approaches of the Razer Plus versus the Flex Window and about how Motorola just lets you kind of bar none more or less. Put any app you want like out of the box on the front screen, whereas Samsung doesn't more curate it. And I don't know, Eileen, like do you, if you didn't have Good Lock, would that, like how many points down would the Z Flip 5 go for you? Or is it more just like, oh, it's nice, but the whole experience, the experience in and of itself out the box is enough? Yeah, it might go down just a tiny bit because there are some apps that I use frequently like Gmail and well, I said Gmail, that's on here. I'm trying to remember. Like TikTok and Instagram. Yeah, because right now I only have on the Samsung cover, Kakao Talk, that's for Korea Maps, messages, Samsung messages, Naver, Netflix and YouTube. And then on my other Good Lock, I have Gmail, TikTok, Duolingo, Instagram, Amazon, Chrome. I didn't have Chrome available. So it might go down a little bit because it's nice to just kind of use this small little screen. I didn't think I would like the smaller screen. And I do again, I love, I do love this 9 by 22, but it's just kind of handy not to just kind of, I didn't realize how like smaller tasks that I use that are kind of nice to just do it from this front cover and easy. It's gotta be great to flick through Instagram on that, right? Cause it's just like one image, kind of one image. Well, let me show you, yeah. I don't know about story, story probably sucks. The image is actually like 16 by nine. It's kind of weird. Oh, interesting, weird. Yeah, I see it, yeah. Oh, which is not really Instagram-y Instagram-y at all. Where is the long one there? Oh, because it was Samsung mobile. Okay, hold on. Ironic. Ads only. So it's all ads only. No, actually, maybe it was just that one account. Yeah, I think it might have been that one, but yeah, still. But yeah, it's not bad, right? So, so Brendan, how, so you and I were talking offline about the front screen on your fold, right? So what is your, how does this, how does that experience compare to you with the fold itself? This is interesting because I think the reason I was curious about folding phones in general was the introduction of the Surface Duo for Microsoft. And the Surface Duo was I think the most exciting phone that was released that year, that first version of it, specifically because Samsung was already, you know, in the game with foldables, making the folding screens that bent in the middle, things like that. Microsoft coming out and saying, hey, we're gonna make a folding phone. It's gonna have two screens with a hinge in the middle. The screen's not gonna bend. And on the outside, no screen, no notification light, nothing. Which creates this environment where you need to physically interact with the device to be able to use it, to interact with it, right? You need to, you need to physically open it if you want to check your notifications or know what's going on. And I thought that was really exciting in a world where both Apple and Google are experimenting with things like digital wellbeing, right? This idea of screen time and focusing on making sure that people are using their devices less. I thought that Microsoft accidentally making the perfect phone for that by not having a screen on the front, despite all of the messaging, the messaging for that phone being, look at how productive you can be. You can have Excel in one window and then you can also have Chrome in another window. It's very funny to me. But I think that that phone really kind of set off a bunch of synapses in my head that kind of made me want to experiment with using a folding phone. And the closer I got to the announcement and release of the iPhone 15 series and knowing what those rumors look like, USB-C action button instead of a do not disturb switch that you could like map to a camera and stuff. I was like, these are all things that I could just have on Android and I could have an even more exciting phone because the era of phones that I am always thinking about is the era where you would walk into a Verizon store and have absolutely no idea what was on the market and just saw the wildest thing you could imagine. It was like Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory in there. You know, it was like, here's a phone that has the biggest speaker ever just right in the middle of it. And when you open it up, the speaker's still right in the middle. Here's a phone that has a Hasselblad camera attached to it. You know, like just the wildest stuff possible. This idea of like phones don't need to just be a little slab. A candy bar. Exactly, they don't just need to be a candy bar. And in fact, it might be better for people if they weren't that, I think is something that we should be moving towards. And I kind of wanted to support that a little bit and experiment with how that felt personally. Ron, you better start sending Brendan links to the unihertz with all the really crazy phones. Yeah, the unihertz phones are just are wild. Like Brendan, there's a whole corner of Android we can introduce you to that just to stick with it. But it's like, Eileen, do you remember back in the day? I don't know if you would love the show but that put it up, but just like, this is why I liked the modular phones, right? And like the Motorola Moz, remember those all snapping like, you know, and like, and the idea like, and looking back on almost 15 years of talking about Android, the paradigm that we Android phones and phones in general, and I think iPhone falls in this as well, gets stuck in, like they get stuck in about like three to four year cycles where someone decides that the metal bezel and the rounded corners, and this is what it's going to be for four years. And it takes somebody like a one plus or somebody like Samsung or somebody like that to shake it up. And Brendan, on the same way, like I want to support that. Like that's why I love the next bit, Robin, when it came out, just because it was- Yeah, because it looked bonkers, right? It was like the weird color and like all that sort of stuff. And so like, so when the foldables were coming, that's why I was like, years ago, I'm like, foldables are going to change everything. Foldables are going to be like the next big thing. I was saying that in 2018 or whatever it was, I was a little early, but here we are now. And it's like, I still complain about the price point. I still think like, you know, like I can't afford the Pixel Fold, you know, like right now, you know, like it's, you know, at $1,800, that is just prohibitively expensive to buy unlocked. Understanding that you could get subsidized, you can go to your carrier, you can get better deals. I just, I'm stuck in this world of buying unlocked phones because I don't want to be tied to a carrier or anything like that. But yeah, I just love the fact that you're, and the irony is I don't have a foldable, but the, I love that you're all loving it and embracing it. I traded my iPhone 6S to get a discount. I added in storage. And when I went to Samsung to trade it in the sales rep said, wow, this is the last iPhone I actually had. Yeah. I knew it was coming and I never went back. I was like, okay, true salesman, true salesman. But I actually did have an online, I should have had this phone for a lot longer. I've had it for less than a week because my online order, when I ordered it online, it said, you could pick it up tomorrow. And then I get the email that says, because I was just going to the actual physical store. Then I get an email that says, I estimated the next day, which would have been Saturday. And then it just, I never got an update. So I kept calling Samsung and they would, I would just leave it on hold and then they'd eventually hang up after an hour of me just waiting just to hear, to talk to somebody. And finally like that Wednesday of last week, I called again and said, you know what? I mean, if I don't get the phone, okay, well, whatever. Somebody picked up and then we just, you know, cancel the other order. They had a bunch of phones in stock. I just wish that Samsung could have a better retail experience because they should have known or there should have been something there and they're like inventory to have known that I could have picked one up at that store. But something happened there. Well, when you were saying last week, those are all the fulfillment issues they were having. Yeah, it seemed like they just did not know when anything was going to go out. And then I don't know if they tried to compensate for that by just pushing everything out. I mean, like, oh, surprise here. It's here early and kind of, you know, setting the expectation a little bit lower so that everyone could be presently surprised. Pleasantly surprised when their flips came in. And they flipped. So we're gonna have to get to some news in a little bit, but I don't want to, I like to discuss it. So Brendan and Eileen, I am curious though. So now that like Eileen, you're only back for less than a week, but Brendan, you've had a couple of weeks. Is there anything from iOS that you miss or that you're like, oh, why isn't it like this or not? Brendan, I see you nodding. What is that? I got two things. One of them is like super niche. It's just an app I used to use to edit photos that isn't available on Android. It's a bummer. I can find another one. It'll be okay. The other one for me is focus modes. The introduction of focus modes into iOS is something that I thought was a little bit cumbersome and not too exciting when it was first announced. And then I was stuck on the tarmac on a plane once and was like, let me mess around with this and see if it's fun or exciting. And really got into the weeds of creating different focus modes for when I'm at work, when I'm traveling, for example, when I'm at Walters Disney World, for example, when I'm asleep, things like that. Having different home screens and different apps and different kinds of notification settings for each of those modes, having all of that happen kind of intelligently based on where and when I am. I thought it was really nice. I have heard that Tasker might be the solution for that. Tasker also seems pretty intense. Well, I was gonna say, Tasker's the Swiss Army knife for anything that you need, right? So, but there's gotta be something that replicates that out there. And so we should stay in touch because I wanna follow that journey because if there is, we should talk about it on the show. Bedtime mode, by the way, I am obsessed with because it makes the screen black and white. And I just think that is so smart. It is so cool. Every time it happens, I'm like, oh, it is time to go to bed. Thank you, Google. Honestly, like I'll be in bed and it goes black and white and I'll close Snap and then I go to bed. So, all right, so Eileen, how about you? And you can't say the camera because that's a hardware thing, so. I was gonna say too, the real test is gonna be on Saturday when I go see Blackpink and whether or not this takes good concert video. We'll see, we'll see. I'm really curious about the audio as well, picking that up. And you know, all my gripes are kind of, even though I love the hardware are a little more hardware related, I'm not used to where the volume is compared to. The muscle memory. The muscle memory and that kind of thing. I'm like, you know, and just even opening and closing or doing. I mean, honestly, but it sounds like, I'm not like, I don't think I'm as much of a power user as you, Brendan, but really, it all just boils down to iMessage because when I transferred everything, everything was here. Everything that I really needed was here. Oh, I was curious what the transfer was like. Cause I've never, I've transferred from Android to Android, but I have no idea what the iOS to Android transfer is like. It wasn't great for me. So I stopped after a while. I stopped after like three hours cause it kept adding more time. And then I thought, you know what? I'll just log in individually, all my data, whatever. I'll just, it'll eventually I'll be there. It's fine. So, you know, and again, cause I still have an iPad, like I have all my stuff there. So I don't feel like I'm losing, you know, valuable things, but yeah, all my, you know, contacts ported over fine. I mean, just basic stuff was fine. It just didn't finish. I didn't finish the transfer because it was going to take forever. And you same thing? Okay. Yeah, same exact thing. Yeah. I ended up just bailing on it and then just installing apps one by one, which was fine. I like setting up a new phone. I haven't done that in years. I can't, that's got to be interminably like take forever. It did ask me if I wanted to back up for my Nexus 5, which I thought was very funny. Oh my gosh. Absolutely not. Good question though. Oh, I miss the Nexus 5. Yeah, so do I. That was such a good phone. Don't we all? Just do that again. Well, yeah, well, yeah, well, Brendan, I don't know if I've ever told you, we do have the Android Hall of Fame that we established back on the old show and the first inductee was the Nexus 5. Cause it was the greatest Android phone ever. So. For the next bit. Robin was right after that. Yeah, I love the next bit Robin. All right, cool. Any other, when any questions or any other closing comments before we move on? No, just welcome back to the flip side or fold side, whichever. I sold that from Samsung, of course, but. Join the flip side, yeah. Join the flip side, but I mean, it's so good. We will just, we'll give us some extra marketing. It's great. I will say, I'll add one more thing. Just a couple things, switching from AirPods to the Pixel Buds. Great, glad I did that. Realizing that MagSafe is actually an open protocol and I can still use MagSafe accessories with my Pixel Fold is unreal and like the most on Apple thing ever. And after that, I'll just say, I'm happy to be here. Thanks so much. Your AirPods reminded me when, by the way, just I got my OnePlus ear stick back fully repaired. And I noted where the dirt on my white container was because I wanted to see if they just replaced them. And this is actually mine. Like this is like, I took a picture and lined it up. But like the left ear one now plays the same volume as the right one and the right one is all fixed. It's not crackly anymore. So good on nothing for customer service, you know, sending in a defective device within warranty and fixing it. They actually fixed it. I have a confession. I have lost my ear sticks at my sister's house. I helped her move house back in June. I lost them. So I actually got the ear twos, which got the same vibe, same like cool design. Like the packaging is really great and the pairing was not bad at all. So little more in ear though, which I know is not your thing. I'm not an in ear guy. I do have a question for everybody and also maybe chat. The one thing I completely forgot about, I used to wear the Apple watch every single day. What should I do about this? Pixel Watch 2 on the horizon? Pixel Watch 2 is on horizon. More than likely we're presuming and we've seen leaks and things like that. The Pixel 8 will be announced with the Pixel Watch 2. There is the watch, the Galaxy 6 series coming out. And so I think actually what's really interesting is I'm gonna take a minute. During Samsung and Galaxy Unpacked, they really tried to make the 6 series seem very Apple watchy, where it was kind of like your entire like life and health companion. And you know, they kind of went there very like, again, like kind of like what you were talking about before about like trying to be more like, you know, being technology but being better for your life. So I actually might even check that out to be honest, like and see if that, if they're sort of trying to do their like own ecosystem, so maybe it doesn't fit, if it doesn't fit with the, and with the other Samsung things, but I don't know, like maybe the 6 series might be something for you too. And it has a rotating bezel as well. Well, one of the models says. I love that. Eileen, are you doing a watch or? Yeah, I mean, I still have this. Mostly because I have a, you know, LTE with it, but I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know what I'm going to do because I actually, this is very old. This is like four. And I haven't upgraded it. I haven't needed to, but should I need to upgrade? I don't know. I don't know. You talk about the lock in on the environment and stuff like that. It's that watch. You can't use an Apple watch with Android in any way, shape or form, right? You can still maintain it with your laptop or your iPad or whatever it is, but yeah, but yeah, so. Yeah. Well, Brendan, I might give the Pixel Watch 2 another go around because I tried the Pixel Watch 1 and returned it purely because there was no decent podcast app. And now that Pocketcast has a Wear OS version. That could be the game changer, but I'm going to wait for the Pixel Watch 2. So maybe I'll test drive it and let you know how it goes, perhaps. Yeah. I'm also just fascinated by that hybrid smart watch world where it's analog watch face, but technically connects to Android. Battery life is like. There's a lot of them out there. There's a lot of them out there on the Android side. Interesting, man. Yeah, cool. All right, cool. Well, what a fantastic conversation. And we're really excited for both of your journeys. And we hope that you'll come on the show again and fill us in, let us know. Eileen, I'll be curious to see how long you stick with the flip when the next series comes out, right? I just, I really do love the form factor right now. And like I said, I'm less than a week in. But I think this is going to be great to travel with. So I'm going to take it to the mother ship very soon and see how it bodes well for me as I travel. But yeah, I don't know. I really like this, but the camera is everything for me. But the camera. We'll see what the Blackpink show. We'll definitely keep an eye out on your socials to see how that goes. All right, cool. Well, the world of Android keeps turning and the news keeps going. So we're going to dive in. So and Brendan and Eileen, feel free to chime in, make any comments or anything on this world. You're both are plugged into the tech world. So we're sure that you'll have some commentary here. But all right, so when you got us to the first one, take it away. Yeah, Lauren, I want to ask you, as a manager, have you ever done a Friday release or how do you feel about Friday releases? I always suggest moving it to Monday. Just wait the weekend because what's the risk, right? Like I feel like you do that only when you have to. Well, guess who put a Friday release up last week? So we covered the Android 14 beta 5 last week saying, oh, hey, this is the last beta before the big release of Android, the official full release of Android 14. We all were wrong. And as Ron intimated in, which has been my experience, you really don't often in the software world release on a Friday because what if something happens and everybody's on leave and you got to wait till Monday for all the piles of Android users. But hey, apparently sometimes it is worth it. And apparently the Android team thought it was worth it to push out Android 14 beta 5.1 on Friday afternoon. There's not a lot of fixes, but it could be that the fixes that are there, which involved the system not deciding SIM cards if you're using fixed number dialing, connectivity interruptions when carriers are using 5D standalone mode, blank home screen after unlocking the device, and some performance issues with these. Yeah. This seems critical. This seems like they had to roll this out. Like we can see that release notes online and they're titled a minor update, which fair, but also these are some not minor bugs in my opinion. So it could be that with maybe with whatever their roadmap is there scheduling, they're like, oh, shoot, we got to get out this fix. So yes, don't usually release your software on a Friday unless you've got blank home screen and connectivity interruptions. But yeah, if you are in the beta program, look for that one, especially if you're having any of these issues. But hey, now I don't feel comfortable saying this is the last one. That's the irony is that this was beta 5 and we're presuming that this is the last beta before Android 14 rolls out in about a month in mid-September. But blank home screen on unlocking device seems like. But that also seems like it could just be like someone didn't close a bracket, right? Like it might be something like that. That's kind of the thing with whenever you release something, there's always a small chance that when you fix something, you break something else. That kind of plays into whether something like this last minute goes out. It's like, okay, we're only touching these few things. So hopefully it works. But yeah, it does feel like someone didn't cross an eye or dot a T. Wait, in the other way around, but you know what I mean. Yeah, so I don't know. So it's funny because Eileen and Brendan, you have no, like you're just coming in on Android 13. So like there's no context. I'm on the beta. Are you on the beta already? Immediately after the beta. Right in there, man, right at the deep end. I love it. I'm running the dev beta on iOS, the second I announced that thing. I was like, is there a beta available for Android? Okay, I'll install that. Didn't even think about it. It was like, maybe the second thing I did. And Eileen, how is it to be back to, what is the dumb Samsung thing called? What is that? What is, one UI, right? One UI. Like I'm sorry, I'm anti-Samsung. I'm the Samsung jerk, by the way. There are a few things that are a little wonky. Why am I unable to block a call, which I followed the instructions on how to block a call, but this school keeps calling me. I don't know why. You should pick up your child, that's why. I know, right? Well, I mean, it's fine. I don't have an issue with it, to be honest with you, but give me some time. Get back to you. All right, yeah, we'll see when Android 14 comes out if you guys notice any differences or things like that. Well, moving on, Brennan, you're asking about the Pixel Watch. That is tied probably to the fall hardware announcement from Google. And so we've been slowly getting little leaks of what the Pixel 8 is gonna look like to us. And I thought this was interesting in that we got our first look of what the new Google camera app on the Pixel 8 will look like. And Eileen, you being a camera person, this might be important for you, but here's a kind of a side-by-side in terms of what the, and for our audio listeners, we're taking a look at a side-by-side shot of the old camera app versus the new camera app where you see basically a lot of the elements, more visible camera shot itself and some of the elements more collapsed in the pills like that we've seen and the navigation kind of being adjusted, subtle changes, but still an evolution of the camera app. I think it's, I've struggled with the camera app on Google with specifically with the settings access. And so I'm hoping that this gets a little more intuitive or able to access it very easily and do it quickly on the fly. Because Eileen, like you, when I'm at a show and I'm seeing a band, I quickly wanna adjust the exposure time or something like that. If you're spending all that time tapping away at it trying to get the setting exactly right, you miss the moment, right? So, but we all know that the camera is a big selling point for the Pixel line and Google always leans a lot on the camera stuff for it. So we have to imagine that, you know, they're gonna lean a lot into these app changes. So, Brennan, what is your experience with the camera on the Pixel Fold been so far? Are you happy with it being a photographer person? Yeah, I mean, I'm aware that it is not the top of the line Pixel camera module, right? Like it's the A series camera, I think that they have in the fold. For me, I still think it's great and really interesting just the subjective idea of what reality is supposed to look like on all of the different carriers and manufacturers. I think pixels is the, or at Googles is the most, the most all about focusing on like producing the sharpest possible image. Whereas I think the iPhone gets a little bit more almost like analog looking, Samsung wants to bump up the saturation a lot, which I also think makes for like fun, vivid images. I think they're all viable, I think they're all great. But going from shooting a lot on the iPhone to now shooting with the Pixel, I'm enjoying it a lot. I also will say that it feels a lot like a point and shoot, specifically the idea that I could double tap the power button to immediately get into the camera. Reminds me so much of like the cool pics camera I used to use in like the Sony Cyber Shot and like the Ricoh GR3, which I use for street photography all the time. So it's kind of nice. I think it's a fun experience. I'm liking it a lot. And I like the look of that new camera app, honestly. I think that's exciting. Yeah. Oh, sorry, Eileen, have you played with the flex camera for some of the features and stuff? Oh, are you? Eileen, you're on mute, you're on mute, you're on mute. Sorry, I was coughing. I was gonna say you could do it like a camcorder, you know, you can see. Because you could flex it and have all your stuff on the bottom and the camera view on the upper half. I've also played with the trackpad. Also, the trackpad, let me show you the trackpad when you use YouTube. I cannot. There you go. So I'm on, I'm about to load YouTube eventually. So the second screen has a trackpad down there. Well, that's amazing. With a mouse cursor too. That's really cool. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah, so you can just kind of leave it up. I don't know how you would, when I was thinking, when would I use this at a cafe maybe if I was just hanging out, reading, and I don't know, playing some low-fi beats or something on here? Yeah. My wife has not working here today. But yeah, there's a cool little trackpad feature and then yeah, you could kind of slide. But also it helps for like the selfies, like the put it up on the table and take a picture of yourself, right? I was playing with it this morning and it might be hard to do, but actually with the flex window, a couple things, like it actually detects and they show this in Samsung Impact, like if you do a hand gesture, it'll actually start to count down on time and then it'll take, it's so cool. It's so cool. I actually just posted that on TikTok. I was like, oh, and I love this hand feature, like literally like that. And also, I just, you know, I forget that this is the back camera that's down here, so this is much better quality than, you know, any phone that, you know, the front-facing camera. So, you know, if you're into shooting, if you're blogs or whatever, that feature is pretty darn cool, but I love that hand. I'm literally like, hey. Yeah, I took an 18 picture of myself. But, okay. Sorry, we went a little off topic, but I had to ask. I was just, this morning, 18 selfies because of this phone. I know, I know. Yeah, I did too. I was like, oh, wait, what's happening? Oh, and I can change one to one, nine to 16. Oh, I didn't know I could do all this. I didn't know I could do that either. Okay, I don't know. I know what I'm doing after the show. All right. We'll get back on task because it is now time for the Patreon news pick every week on Monday. We post three news stories and our lovely patrons who support us on Patreon get to vote and select what we talk about. And this week, it actually was kind of a landslide. I did not see this coming. I didn't see this coming either. So our three stories were, Samsung confirmed a foldable tablet was kind of low key. Like they did say they were gonna do one, but apparently no one noticed until recently. Google Play testing a much darker dark theme, which I have to admit, I said, I know I wanted to have it as a goof, but that's what happens when you... You never know. People love the dark theme and I thought a darker dark theme would resonate with people, but yeah, here we are. I thought so too, but it was anyway. It was hilarious, but I guess understandably, the winner at 76, that 76 or 78% is, how eSIM transfer will work on Android. So in February, Google announced a new like eSIM transfer capability, which is so funny because I feel like we talked about this with Adam last week, maybe after the show, where he mentioned as a reviewer, eSIMs are great, but not so much for someone like him or presumably also Michelle who swap phones all the time. It's just having to transfer the profile is not viable and having to set it up is a pain, but another of the amazing Android code suites their assemble debug has actually found kind of like what that eSIM transfer capability will look like and just gave us a peek. And then basically how it will work is that you, when you want to initiate an eSIM transfer, you start the transfer on the new phone, but really the new phone will show a QR code and then you go to the old phone and then from the old phone scan this QR code presented by the new phone. And then once that transfers actually initiated with all the yes, D, are you sure? All the confirmations, then the process completes on the new handset. So that's it, it actually seems fairly straightforward. I mean, we'll have to wait and see when it's actually released, how well it works and whether it actually makes the process of switching between phones faster. But yeah, we'll see, right now Google did confirm that German network, Deutsche Telekom, telecom, sorry, someone who speaks German yell at me, would be the first network to have this capability. But I mean, we'll see when we get it on this side of the pond or some other side of other ponds, like who gets it in where. I do feel like the eSIM is like possibly a moment in time because I don't mentally understand it all. And I feel like it's like one of those epoch kind of changes where in a year or two it'll be like, how did we live before this, right? But it's like, wait a minute, you can change the SIM with the phone because I'm so used to the physical SIM card, right? Like I'd go to T-Mobile and get a new SIM and put it in like that sort of thing. So like the eSIM just seems mind blowing to me and like hard to wrap my head around. So. It is hard, I think on the old show, I tried to read, I think I was trying to explain one article where Michelle explained it and it took me like three hours of like, okay, I need to read this a couple of more times. But it's great software, but yeah, it's kind of funny how something so complex makes a really seamless experience. And hopefully now in the future more seamless question mark. I was on the phone with T-Mobile for so long. A couple of weeks ago. It took forever to transfer the eSIM over. So. Which is so funny, because I'm on T-Mobile. I've been on T-Mobile since day one on Android. Eileen, I went to the T-Mobile on Market and Third and bought the G1, right? By Cask, you remember Cask, like that neighborhood, right? I was having drinks at Rob DeMillo and he got the G1 and he got the G1 and showed it to me and I literally left the bar and went to the T-Mobile store and bought it. And I don't think I've talked to anyone at T-Mobile in years. Because I still have the same little crappy T-Mobile SIM card that I keep every time I get a new phone. I pop it out, pop it in and going from OnePlus to back to Pixels to all the different devices. But I have this, I got in like 2008, I got this unlimited data, unlimited text deal. And I'm probably paying more than I should. I'm paying around 100 bucks a month or so for it. But I don't have a contract. So I don't want to talk to them because I don't want them to be like, oh, you need a contract. I don't want to have that happen. So I just don't talk to T-Mobile ever and everything works and it's all fine, so. I like that. Don't look at me, don't look at my plan. Exactly, everything's fine, everything's fine. I mean, unlimited data and I use a hotspot because now that, actually, Brendan, now that I got to start commuting into work more, I have an hour-long train ride, I turn the hotspot on my phone, I pop up on my laptop and I do work on the train, right? And that's unlimited data, definitely is handy. I'm also grandfathered into a pretty old T-Mobile plan that I refuse to leave for exactly that reason. No, I got hit even on Google Fi and I think now that I've been traveling a lot for a home and man, getting that message from Google Fi, I was like, hey, hey bud. You're doing a little too much. You're doing a little too much. We're gonna slow you down for the rest of the month, okay? All right, that are, you gotta watch yourself. That was actually very embarrassing. Well, the only other one I thought about jumping from T-Mobile tour was Mint Mobile because it seems like those deals are just insane but I just don't even wanna rock the boat. It's the same reason why I'm pretty sure I'm paying YouTube for like three subscriptions and I refuse to untangle it between YouTube TV, YouTube premium and like, anyway. All right, cool. Well, that was the patron pick. You can go to patreon.com slash android faithful, become a patron. We love our patrons. You guys are awesome. 76% of you voted for that story that shows how important eSims are, so good to know. All right, so we're kind of condensing hardware and apps into one block here because there wasn't a lot of hardware news but when you got it for us, right? Yeah, and what we got is a little leaky-peaky. So this is super, super leaky because we're not really anticipating the one plus 12 until next year but more than a few very credible sources have kind of converged on some kind, honestly, insane specs for phones. I will give credit. I picked this story because I knew that the leak for one plus happened but I went with phone arena story for us to talk about here because Adrian Dinescu who wrote it used the term two credible sources joined forces to quote-unquote leak bonkers, one plus two spec sheet. The fact that it's bonkers, I really loved it. It is bonkers. Okay, I mean, what could be less bonkers than having an upgraded version of the one plus 12 have 24 gigabytes of RAM? I mean, that's just insane. Yeah, so the kind of like the big thing that's kind of blowing everyone's mind about these leaky-peakies is that, yes, the base, the entry model of the one plus 12 is rumored to have 16 gigabytes of RAM which is pretty much the high end on most phones these days. And the upgraded version will have a casual 24 gigabytes of RAM. Yes, if you edit videos or maybe if you edit 4K video on your phone or you like to do all the things, all at once constantly. But yeah, 24 gigabytes of RAM, would any of you want 24 gigabytes of RAM in your phone? Yeah, for when I edit the next Bex picture winner at the Academy Awards 2024 on my Hasselblad camera-wielding one plus. I mean, that's a good story. That's a good story. I think we should call them up and let them know that they could definitely run this as a story for the next Oscars. So just to round it off, there's a lot of really good specs on this. The rumor is that the one plus 12 will have the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. We've already had a lot of praise for the 8 Gen 2 and apparently the 8 Gen 3 is gonna be an even bigger power boost on top of that. A big old 5400 milliamp battery with 100 watt wired and 50 watt wireless charging for your stonking big huge phone with 24 gigabytes of RAM, triple camera system with the 50 megapixel primary, 50 megapixel ultra wide and a 64 megapixel periscope telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom. Which God bless OnePlus for sticking to the periscope camera, by the way. Like I love it. Yeah. You know what? You gotta stick to your guns and just never settle. 6.7 AMOLED with 2K resolution and 128 Hertz refresh. And I mean, presumably IP64 at least because that's what the one plus 11 is. But I mean, that's a banger of a phone. That's a lot of power. Going back to what Brenda was saying about supporting phones that break the paradigm. I like one plus, like the one plus 12 looks a lot like the standard one plus, right? Like if we look at it again, like it's got the big old camera circle on the back and it looks very tall, but like pack the inside with just insane specs. That's awesome. Like do that, right? Like do you need 120 refresh rate and a 2K resolution display on the phone? I'm interested in who the target audience for that is. I was just thinking, is this for Christopher Nolan? Like, who is this for? What's the one plus fan? The one plus fan thinks differently, right? So that's true. That's true. Hey, make more backpacks too while you're at it. One plus. Yeah, I did make the keyboard and they did a magnetic phone cooler that they read. The keyboard, the keyboard was really cool. Did you guys see Eileen or Brenda? Have you seen the one plus keyboard? They came out with a mechanical keyboard. Very recently, like this year, like a month ago or two, and it's got like a red button to go like the one plus, like that one little red in their logo. Like it is very cool. Like I will give one plus credit. So it's really nice. Yeah, and they have a phone cooler. We didn't get to cover it, but it's like, it's like, I think it has like a magnetic attachment and there's like a little cooler. I don't know, I didn't look too much into it, but it has like the red cord that goes to the little like cooling unit. Anyway, one plus accessorizing. Yeah, they're just going all in on their accessories. So yeah, cool. There it is. So, all right. Well, earlier in the show, Brendan, you were extolling the virtues of Beeper and that actually kind of stole our thunder a little bit because in our app section here, we're talking about the fact that Beeper added RCS support for Google Messages. So in addition to that iMessage support, you get all the goodies of RCS that we've been excited about for a while now as we've been talking about messaging and RCS. Yeah, it was looking on Beeper's product log on August 17th. They added Google Messages and RCS support, which just continues to take this great app and make it even more parody of what each phone and each messaging platform they can have on it. Brendan, you probably don't know of a life before Beeper or RCS. So you can't really be like, did you miss RCS or are you glad to have it back? But I don't even, RCS is something you don't even notice, right? But it should be there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I've kept a peripheral eye on RCS and just in general, I think Google's many, many, many messaging apps over the years. Somebody in chat also asked, can somebody speak to how safe Beeper is? They seem really, really, really focused on privacy and end-to-end encryption, like across the board, which is very interesting. And as far as I know, they're also hosting their servers, I think in Sweden, specifically, to keep them even more on lock because their rules about end-to-end encryption are much more intense than they are here. Didn't you do a whole onboarding experience with them? Like someone walked you through it and everything? Yeah, I just tweeted, if anyone could get me on Beeper, I'd be very happy and someone on their product team hit me up and was like, just walk me through how you feel about onboarding onto this. So I got to skip the line and stuff, which was very nice. But having been the person who did those kinds of product onboarding Zoom calls in the past, I was like, okay, cool. I know exactly what this is. And it was fine, it was an okay process. I think the thing about taking all of those disparate messaging apps and throwing them into one is like, the amount of weird logging in experiences you're gonna have in a very condensed period of time are gonna make you feel like you're absolutely losing your mind. Like, okay, especially when you're like, logging into iMessage and it's like, hey, a server in Sweden is trying to sign into your iOS account, is that okay? And you have to type in the code and then like WhatsApp, you have to scan a QR code and the Discord, you also have to scan a QR code and then Twitter, who knows what's up with Twitter these days. It just gets weirder and weirder and weirder and weirder the further down you get. But I like it. Beeper is basically Trillium for the 21st century. I was just, Trillium, yes, wow. Trillium, not Trillium, Trillium, right, yeah. Oh man, that was great. I could, you could talk to your Hotmail chat and your AOL chat and your g-talk. Yeah, so good, all right. So Eileen, when you were in iOS land, did you still use Google Keep at all? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I just used the Notes app. Yeah. All right, well, when do you wanna share what's going on with Google Keep? Oh, well, finally, finally, finally, finally. Google Keep is getting version history for your notes. Bad news is that it's only on the web version for now and actually when I went to look, it's just a placeholder. But if you, like me, were kind of infuriated every time you accidentally edited a note and could not go back to the previous version or couldn't even tell the last time you edited something, Google finally, finally has a fix for you. You can tell, I'm pretty annoyed that it's too long to get it. But you will get it eventually and maybe on the web. I don't know if they're like maybe just like testing or the rollout slow, but I did not actually see it. I just saw version history coming soon, but you will have that. And to go along with your version history, our very own Michelle Ramon reported this week that Google Keep is also rolling out text formatting. So if you wanted to, you know, give your notes a little bit of extra jeuge, bold italics and all the rest of the lovely, you know, fond accoutrement, you can finally start doing that in Keep starting with, I think was it version 5.23.32.05, which is rolling out? Just, it just rolls off the tongue. It just rolls off the tongue. Version 5.23.32.05, right? Clearly. Yeah, I'm trying to remember that and check it. But yeah, there's a couple of Google Keep updates for you. If you are still a diehard Google Keep user like myself, you are annoyed. I live and die by Google Keep and I was wondering earlier this year, why on earth I can't, there's no text formatting, like what, like it's bonkers that it's 2023 and that we're finally getting in this, but some product manager Google was like, oh, wait, we should do that. And so they did it. So that's good. Yeah. Also with the version history, as it is, if you can find it, apparently the way it works now is that you can see the version, but you can't say auto revert like you can with like say your favorite whatever version history where you just kind of auto replace it or you can download the note or you can copy and paste the text. So at least there's something, but don't expect too fancy of experience just yet. Yep. Cool. That's awesome. All right, we got one more new story, but Eileen, Brendan, are you guys on threads? Yes. I sure am. Where do you net out on threads? Did you sign up and go, oh, this is cool and then never open it again? Or are you active on the platform? Eileen, you go first. I think I was pretty active. I tried to just, I decided I was going to post a picture every day for a little bit and then I kind of died down. Yeah. Just like on Instagram, right? Just like on Instagram. I know. I was like, I'm going to use it, but in a different way and share different pictures. So I think I just naturally reverted to something that is somewhat related to Instagram, but I think the last time I posted was maybe Thursday or Friday. I started doing actual like Twitter messages instead too, but yeah. Not so much, Brendan, how about you? Yeah, I hopped on pretty much as soon as it was available. I've been bouncing around to everything post Twitter, even like going back and trying Tumblr again and seeing if Tumblr maybe is like fine now that automatic owns it and not Verizon.net. But yeah, I don't know, I'm interested in threads. I think it launched as an MVP the way a lot of meta stuff does these days and was missing a lot of features. And I was really, really just like reticent to believe that they were going to add those features in a timely manner. And in a way that wouldn't make them lose all the steam of hitting the, what was it, the 100 million signups faster than any app in history. But to my surprise, they've been really on top of it. As far as this week, I don't, is this the story you wrote to Brendan? That's the story. Well, I was gonna say, so like my problem with threads, and we've talked about it on the show a lot, is that I'm, I mean, ironically, like because the nature of my life by day, I'm sitting in front of my desktop all the time, I'm not on my phone as much because I'm not commuting fully yet. I'm not out and about as I once was as a youngen when we're out on the town. And the lack of a web client basically killed threads for me. So that's why I was delighted to wake up to the news that threads is finally launching on the web and it's gonna be available in a few days. The fact that the website, all you could do is read people's accounts and not actually interact in any way, shape, or form. And when he went to the threads website, it was just a QR code with a neat little animation behind it. The lack of a web client pretty much almost killed it for me. So I'm glad that they finally are getting to it. And I'm shocked it took this long. I mean, I don't know, Brendan, is that where you were getting at? Yeah, yeah, I'm, the web access is the biggest thing preventing me from using threads a lot more than I would like to be. At the moment, the one I've been using the most is Blue Sky because of their web client. And I think where I'm at is I would much rather be using threads than pretty much all of them. Interesting. Specifically, I think a lot of it also comes from like my interest in photography and following a lot of photographers. And for some reason, the image gallery just looks way better on threads than it does on Instagram and specifically looks amazing on the fold when the screen is open. I would say the image gallery is very cool on threads, like what they did with that. We do a lot of stuff like that at work with the scrolling images and it looks really cool. So it's not out yet. I don't have it yet. I don't know if anybody else has it, but last I checked it, it's still, I'm gonna check now, but it's supposed to be rolling out any day now. And it's very funny because when I type, when I start typing threads, my browser autocompletes to threadless.com because I've spent years of using threadless. And so I feel bad for threadless because yeah, is it telling that I didn't download threads originally? Yes. On the new phone? Yes, it's very telling. I just did it while you guys were talking like, wait, where is that? Oh, let me download it now. I feel so bad. Like I'm excited to like get back to go into the city more because like I've got my lonely little, I've got my little social message, social media window here and I've got Facebook and TikTok and Twitter and Blue Sky and Mastodon threads and like I just don't, I just use it to check stuff and like I don't really actively post. So I do want to get more active. So we'll see if we do that in September, but so. All right, cool. Well, we are running a little long but we're almost at the end of the show. Reminder, everybody can email us at contact.androidfaithful.com. We love to hear from you. We love to get your emails but any topic we talk about, if you want to weigh in, please do. And we got a long email this week but I feel like it's worth diving into. And so I want to thank in advance and I lost his name and where is it? I want to thank in advance Larry for writing in this long email and explaining his kind of experience. So here we go. And I got to pull it up. Great, excellent. So that didn't work. Where does the email go? I lost his email. All right, well, I'm just going to read it to you. There we go. Okay, so Larry writes in and says, to start with, I'm so excited you've created this podcast. I was both saddened and angered when I learned of your previous partnership being terminated. I was then equally delighted that you pulled together to create this new show. Thank you so much. You're welcome Larry. Thanks for watching, listening. He goes, with that said, here's my message. I love Larry. For people who don't feel like contacting Google phone support, I want to share my most recent experience. I've been using a Pixel 5a for most of the year now following my previous Pixel 2. I've been really enjoying the Pixel 5a because of its great battery life. I typically got most of the two days on a charge with the 5a. It was very frustrating when earlier this summer my screen stopped working. I was able to get it working for several attempts at resuscitating it but finally had to admit the screen wasn't working at all. I knew the phone itself was still working because it would vibrate in response to me accessing the fingerprint sensor on the back of it. I contacted Google support about the issue. After going through their diagnostic steps they indicated that my phone was out of warranty and that for this particular problem they'd be willing to offer a repair or replacement. I wound up sending in the phone on a Monday. In a day or two they had a response that it would be more cost effective to replace my phone than try to repair it. They emailed me the paperwork to authorize the replacement. The unique part of it all was that the unit they would be sending me was not the 5a but rather a 6a. I double checked and they confirmed that I would be getting a 6a for no additional charge. In one sense I was excited to be getting an upgrade but it was also very leery about it because I knew the 6a had an on-screen fingerprint sensor and I'd heard very mixed reviews of it. I received my replacement 6a on Friday of the same week I sent in my 5a. I felt that was pretty good for a phone to be sent on a Monday and receive the new unit that Friday. My biggest challenge with the unit was indeed the on-screen fingerprint sensor. I wound up mentioning this new issue to Google phone support and they had me perform diagnostic procedures. After all said and done they wound up sending me a replacement 6a. This time by sending me the replacement prior to me sending in the old unit thereby avoiding the time without a phone. This also allowed me to transfer all my data from one 6a to the other via USB cable much faster than doing the cloud-based restore. I've since had much better results with this replacement unit's fingerprint sensor. It works probably 75 to 80% of the time on the first or second try. Not nearly as good as the 5a sensor but I have to admit there are times that not having to pick up the phone to apply a fingerprint is more convenient. I hope my experience will encourage those who may be having a problem to contact Google support. And that's from Larry Hussling. Who we swing? I mispronounced your last name. Who we sing? Anyway, who sing? Thank you Larry for writing in and I gotta echo this the same. I've had nothing but delightful experience with Google support when I've had a problem. They've been, they've replaced phones like they did here. On our old show we had some people writing in that they had some problems with Google support where they weren't very responsive or weren't getting the solutions done. But much like my experience with nothing in my ear stick, you have warranties. The things you buy are under warranty and they want you to be a satisfied customer. So I would say not to be afraid to contact Google support or any support of these manufacturers because they wanna keep you as a customer. That's my thought, I don't know. I don't know if you've had good or bad experiences with any support but. I haven't needed it yet but, you know, there's a lot of horror stories but the pics will fold out there. So if that happens, I think I'll be glad I bought it from a Google store in Manhattan, New York. You went to the actual Google store, right? In Chelsea? I think the most important thing too when you're talking to any support person if possible is just to kind of like be upbeat and not so angry because they'll probably help you more, you know? That's just been my experience. I've been on the phone with a lot of customer support for various things. And, you know, the minute you start showing kind of any kind of irate feelings, they start to kind of cower back but the moment that you are, you know, just trying to understand and be helpful and be like, oh my gosh, thank you so much. They're gonna even like, oh, let me get you an emergency rush on that. Like, oh, thank you. I didn't even know that was possible, right? And confirm. Yeah. And that's why I got my phone earlier than I had intended because I wanted to talk to a person and so I finally talked to a person at the Samsung store and not only did I get the phone earlier than who knows when I was gonna get the actual phone but I actually got the color I wanted too because I ordered the silver just to get it the next day, which never happened. And when I called, I said, oh yeah, so do you have other colors? And they're like, actually we do. And I said, do you have lavender? Oh, we have a lot of lavender. Great, I'm coming in right now. I drove right there and I got my phone. There was just a little bit of like a tech issue with like canceling my order and, you know, getting this new one, but that's fine. It totally worked out. I feel like I've known that life too but do I want the phone more or do I want my cool color? And I've made that cover my so many times. So I'm so happy that worked out for you. Yeah. That's awesome. When, what color did you get? I got, I got Lalo. Yeah, Lalo, Lalo. Lalo. Lalo, but then I was a crazy, I don't know how it is. I was a crazy person. I did get the silicone case. I was gonna ask about cases. Are you all doing cases? I think we didn't have the yellow case and I was like, well, I also like lavender and they, all right. So maybe I can have my cake and eat it too. So I got a cheapy $19 case on Amazon because I'm going to Korea. I want to see what kind of fun cases that they have and all the different, you know, stores in Korea, I bet they're gonna be like, I just can see. I've been online on YouTube, watching everybody unbox their flip fives and in different countries, they all have different cool cases and different, you know, cool tech. And I'm like, okay, I want to see what Korea has before I settle on a case. So I'm kind of waiting. I'm kind of have this as an emergency right now. It's a very nice matte $19 from Amazon case, but that's not gonna be the case that I live with. And Brendan, what did you do for the fall? Did you go naked or you got a case? Nothing at the moment, but keeping in line with almost every app I had on my iPhone also is available for Android. I was surprised to find that the case I used on my iPhone was also available for the Pixel Fold. It's a case by Pataka, which comes with a MagSafe ring built into the back. It's a continuity there. Like, you know. Yeah, it's beautiful. I love it. Yeah, I'm excited. I was hoping to have it before this recording. So I could be like, hey, check it out, but not in yet. So say, Libby. Eileen, if you do come up with any super cool, like granola cases, please like update us and share. Oh my gosh. Of course. Of course. Because we love case. We love case recommendations. And I don't, I don't use cases. Okay. You're naked. Your phone is naked. 100%. Look at that. Yeah. That's my Pixel 7 with no, with no case. Totally. I just don't like the extra thickness. Like, I just, I just, I want, I want to feel it and whatever. And sure, I've dropped some phones. Sure. You know, I've made the mistake of not having a case. Like the Pixel, and actually when, by the way, I don't need a phone. We were talking offline about needing a phone. Okay. Yeah. I found my Pixel, so my Pixel 6, I dropped by the pool onto the brick thing last summer and it chipped the back of this. So I did get a case to protect the broken glass. And I thought it was much worse than it was, but it's not that bad. But yeah, I don't like cases. I don't like, yeah. I'm enjoying the fold without one so far. I'll say that much. I think I really just kind of wanted for the MagSafe stuff, but we'll see if I keep it. Brendan, I have one question. So this might be like a internet reviewer thing, but I know like a lot of, one of the most common thing, like kind of reactions to it was that it doesn't fold flat. Do you care? No, not really. Okay. I didn't believe that to be like, do you care, Brendan? But yeah. No, there are a couple of things that I see a lot online about the Pixel Fold that I haven't had in my experience. One of them is the folding flat, doesn't really bother me as much. I'm totally fine with it, honestly, especially like late at night, because the screen is so nice if I'm like playing a game before I go to sleep. Like I don't need it to be totally open, it's fine. The other thing is the battery life I have found to be exceptional, which is like really, really far from a lot of the experiences I've seen online. I've been kind of surprised by that. The one thing that I see that is like a gripe that everybody has about the Fold that I also share is the volume is so weird. It like is inaudible until around like 80%. And then it's like all of the volume happens between the 80 to 100% range of the volume slide. Really? Yeah, it's fascinating. It's really strange. I might share, you know what? I kind of feel like I noticed that. I usually wear headphones, so I haven't noticed it, but I might be noticing that as well. Yeah, I actually usually when I'm like doing the dishes or something, I will just flip it open, have a YouTube video, you know, and just kind of prop it up on something in the kitchen and just put it at full blast. And like sometimes I can't hear the video, which is strange, because it's a thing I could do with my iPhone in the past. All right, cool. Well, this has been fantastic. This has been, I had such high hopes for this and it totally, it overpaid. It paid off and spades. So thank you so much, Brendan and Eileen for coming. Brendan, we'll put the spotlight on you. Where can folks find you? Plug away, tell everybody about what you do. Yeah, sure. I have a podcast called Into the Aether. It's a low key video game podcast. You can check that out. Yeah, there you go, at intothecast.online. We've recently just did an episode starting our new season where we played and reviewed almost every single game for the Sega Dreamcast over the past year, which was a pretty wild experience. So you can check that out if you want to listen to like a five hour episode about every Dreamcast game. Outside of that, I'm at Brendan Bigley on everything. You can find me at BrendanBigley.com. Awesome. Including threads.net. Well, thank you, Brendan. Yeah, thank you. Eileen, where can people find you if they want to follow on? Yeah, you know, I'm a free agent right now. So the best place to find me is on TikTok. If you like K-pop, then you will like my account. But I'm also documenting my journey on the Flip 5 on that account too. So if you want to follow along on that end, please follow me on TikTok. I'm also on Insta. Yeah, I'm on threads. Yeah, I'm on Twitter. Yeah, but I don't really use it anymore. So I use it to actually just read trolley news. That's kind of what I do. Or XX, whatever we're calling it. Yeah, I was gonna say the switch to X is really it's challenging to do that. It's like, especially at work, we're like, because honestly, the RT abbreviation for retweet was so in the vernacular, like, hey, we do so much of it. Can you RT this? And I was like, can you RX this? Is that a prescription? What is that? Is that, yeah, it's very challenging. But yeah, and I've been following along on TikTok on your journey. So it's very exciting. Posted my first food blog with this phone. Already learned a lot of things that I got wrong. So, you know, I'm just very transparent about what I know and what I don't know. So if you have recommendations, please let me know. Cool, all right. When, where can people find you on the internet? Yeah, you can find me on my website, randomlytyping.com, I am an Android dev. I do technical talks and things like that. And yeah, I'm usually on social media places like Queen and Cove Monkey and I just gotta say what Eileen is here. Eileen, it is an honor to meet you. I, without going too much detail, at the end of our old show, I cried because that show meant so much to me. So thank you. And it's really awesome to be here with you. Not gonna cry now, but yeah, anyway. Also, I was on DTNS today to talk about foldable. So if you didn't have enough foldable talk over here, catch the VOD on DTNS. And that's it. Awesome. I thought about trying to get you emotional again, but I decided to hold on. It's getting close. It's getting close. Awesome. Well, real quickly, you can follow me. I'm Ron Exo all over on social. Instagram's probably where I'm most active, but I'm all over there. You can find me on threads and X and Facebook and Mastodon and Blue Sky, where I don't post on any of them because I need web clients. Even though Brendan, you did share with me the Blue Sky web client, and I have not come back there, so I need to do that. Just wait for the threads one. Yeah, I will, maybe. All right, well, that's gonna wrap up our show. A quick reminder, you can show your support for the show by going to patreon.com slash all that. Nope, patreon.com slash Android faithful. Drink, everybody. Patreon.com slash Android faithful. We love our patrons. Listen, muscle memory is a thing. That's all I know. I mean, Tom has been making fun of me every time I almost slip and say, whenever I do the email, I almost say contact that ifanboy.com because it just rolls off the tongue. So anyway, so go to patreon.com slash Android faithful. We thank all our patrons. We love you for your support. You guys are awesome. Thank you so, so much. And you can go to androidfaithful.com, our wonderful website, where you can find links to, I don't know why the icons aren't loading, but you can find, there they are. You can find links to subscribe to the show on Pocketcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or even on Apple Podcasts. We are in the top 100 of tech news podcasts on Apple, which I thought was immensely fascinating. And we're also on YouTube music, if you want to subscribe there. And you can watch the live stream, the video of this show, over on youtube.com slash daily tech news show on our awesome friends, Tom Merritt and crew from Daily Tech News Show are gracious enough to let us camp out on their channel. Go to youtube.com slash daily tech news show, or you can go to twitch.tv slash good day internet to watch this show record live every Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific. And that about wraps it up. So I want to thank Eileen and Brendan for joining us, and thank you for watching or listening. This podcast publishes every Tuesday evening. You can subscribe to it, wherever you get your podcasts. Email us at contact at androidfaithful.com. And until next week, that's androidfaithful. We want to thank everyone for listening, watching. We love you. Have a great week.