 Hey, welcome to Android faithful through the snow, rain, sleet, strep, and COVID. We are your weekly source for the latest news, hardware, and apps for the wide, wonderful world of Android. I'm WindwetDow. And I am Ron Richards. And all the sympathy goes out to win, because I know you're struggling. And I'm just tired. I don't have much of an excuse. You did do a show with strep, so it's my turn to do the show, injured something. I have COVID this week, but we are here. And we are extremely lucky to have a special guest without this week, director of engineering on Android at Google, Roman Guy. Roman, welcome. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Welcome to the show. We're so delighted to have you on. Despite all of us feeling. I'm amazed by how happy you sound the way in the concert room. That's just sick. Listen, for an hour once a week, we are very happy to talk about Android. And it overcomes all physical ailments, as it might be. I mean, we'll probably pass that out to the show. But hey, for the next hour, we are here. And we are trekking along. Yeah, so we're super excited to. So we're going to do a show a little differently than usual. We don't want to take up a ton of your time. And we're very thankful for you giving us the time. So we're going to chat for a little bit. And then we'll say goodbye. And we'll let you kind of log off. And I'll go best out because I'm not sick, but I got my booster yesterday. And it's it's hitting me hard. So OK. So we'll give you time to go rest from that boost. And then when you and I will hammer through a ton of news that's going on this week. But before we get started, we do have a little minor announcement. We are on Mastodon. Hooray, we did it. Or I finally did it. So now we're at Android Faithful, at androiddev.social on Mastodon. We went live on there earlier this week. And we will be posting there as much as we post to X or Instagram or Facebook or wherever. So I know many of you are on Mastodon. A lot of you wanted us to be on there, so we did it. So it wasn't it wasn't that hard. So. Wow. So Android Faithful is on androiddev.social. I am the only Android affiliated person not on androiddev.social. I'm not on androiddev.social. I'm on just the Mastodon.social. But I'm not at androiddev. Like I know I'm just somebody who thinks he knows what he's talking about. I will say I got a very after I complained about it last week, Clinton and Chad all gave me a very nice like migration guide. Of course I did get COVID this week. So I was unable to execute it. You have an excuse, you have a fair excuse. Yeah, but thank you Android fam for having my back and basically telling me get the heck on androiddev.social. So yeah, let's go ahead and get started. So yes, we have a very special guest today, Raman Ghee. So Raman, you have a pretty big title. It's director of engineering on Android. So what does that, what do you do? What does that mean? That's a complex question. When you're as fancy as the title suggests. So, you know, it's a fancy term for the fact that I managed what we call the Android toolkit team. And toolkit also contains Jetpack. So all the Jetpack libraries that we ship and develop. Some are being developed by other teams, but we provide the infrastructure so that those teams can ship Jetpack libraries. So we have a minor drinking game on the show that whenever a topic is mentioned, obviously you drink and Wins claim to fame as anytime Jetpack or Jetpack Compose is mentioned, we all have the drink. So you just shot off like Wins did like three shots. It's gonna be hard not to mention those things. Just one, just one as the topic mentioned, otherwise people will be injured for other reasons, more alcohol poisoning than COVID. So like apart from that though, I think something that would be really interesting for especially folks of the Android fabled to know is that Raman, you're not just like currently the director of engineering on Android, but you were one of the OG Android engineers. And we've talked to Chet Haas multiple times about his fabulous book, Android's the team that built the Android operating system. And I mean, that's, I mean, in a small, like you're part of that, right? I mean, that's not just about you, but there's many other people. And so I think that's really unique because you've been working on Android for six, seven years. Yeah, it's been since 2007. So what, 16 years now? 16 years now. So before even we Android faithful or even a thing, you've been on working on it. I never thought that would be, I guess a lifer at the company, but the job is interesting and we get to work on a lot of different things. So here I am 16 years later with more gray hair and less hair, but. Well, I mean, I guess could you, would you mind giving us maybe like the short version of how you got started on the Android team and I guess from your perspective, how everything got started? Yeah, it's interesting. I joined as an intern and Android was still a secret project within the company. So Google reached out to me and offered me an internship. So I showed up and I ended up working on Android, working on the UIs, which is something that I was doing a lot in the world of Java, you know, we swing in Java 2D before that. And that's how I met chat actually. We met at Sun Microsystems who are working on visual effects and rendering, writing blog posts, giving talks. So nothing has changed since then. So yeah, you know, some of my first tasks were to work on some of the widgets like radio buttons, radio groups, table layouts. Then I got to work on Launcher. So the home screen was also one of my tasks for a few years. The little gray tabby thing, the little thing that pulled, yep. The whole application. The team was small back then. So, you know, I got to work on the UI toolkit and the home screen application. Cool. Plus helping around like, you know, wherever help was needed. So yeah, starting on the UI toolkit team then over the years, I, you know, I evolved a little bit or just changed a little bit. So I did more like performance work, graphics work. I was doing a lot of rendering and I went up to the graphics team for a while and then I came back to the UI toolkit team. So, you know, I don't really write code anymore. I do miss it sometimes, but that happens from time to time. So yeah, it's always been around UI and rendering in graphics. And I think that's something interesting you said is that you didn't think you'd be a lifer. And, you know, I think that's something that, I mean, I think maybe I talked a chat about this is that, especially like this day and age, it's very common for engineers to just hop from job to job. And it's not really a bad thing anymore. It's like, you go to different companies, you learn different industries, you learn different skills and then you kind of applied it somewhere else. But what I think is extremely cool about the Android team is that you have quite a few people who are still around today. So like, for example, Diane Hackmore and all hail our Lord and Savior Diane. And I kind of wanted to ask you, like, as you said, is it just the interest of like the project or is it the team? Like, what is it that keeps you and others around like a lot of the LGs? It's funny because I think about that quite often because, you know, I ask myself the same question. I think it's a mix of, I feel like when you work on a project, you know, whether it's Android or something else, you kind of have some sense of what you want to achieve. And when it's something like at the scale and the scope of an operating system, it's hard to be done because there's always more to do, right? Like there's always more ideas, things that you haven't, that you had an idea 10 years ago, you were never able to do it. And on top of that, you know, even if you don't really change job, like even myself again, you know, I got to work on some of the apps. I worked on the way to work on the graphics pipeline I worked on some of the SDK tools. Like you can find, when you're a bit bored of something, you can find something else to do. And nowadays, you know, even more so, like with the Jetpack team, you know, Jetpack, we do things like we have room. So we have data storage. We have folks doing compiler work. We have folks doing graphics and rendering and UI tour kits and input management and accessibility. It keeps the job interesting. You know, I often say that I would love to have one boring week. That would be fantastic. But yeah, I think that that's what it is, right? Like it's just, we just don't have time to get bored. Well, and you want to stay challenged, right? I mean, that's how you stay fresh and that sort of thing. And so like, and it's interesting that we're talking to you around this time of year because here we are, you know, on the eve of a new version being launched and stuff like that. After all these years is like now the, like is this the excite, like do you see the exciting time? Like is the rollout the exciting time or is it the conversation you're gonna have in two months about Android 15 that, you know, that starts the next wave? Like what part of it is the most exciting for you now after all these years? I mean, it's still exciting because, you know, and it's the same for folks who build applications. There's nothing more gratifying than putting what you've built like in the hands of users. But interestingly, I think for our team in particular because we've been doing more and more on the Jetpack side, now we get to shoot often and regularly. So things have been a little different for us. And instead of like specific moments in time that do happen, you know, when we launch a new big library, like Jetpack Compose obviously a few years ago, it's more like this continuous relationship that we have with the community and with developers and, you know, looking at the feedback and trying to improve things. And there are a lot of things that we can improve on. So keep the feedback coming. So yeah, it's a bit strange. Like we have both, right? It's this moments and at the same time, like it's continuous. It's everyday. Yeah, I kind of thought something interesting too is to kind of go back a little bit. And, you know, like, you know, as like ended your work on projects, you join a startup, you join a company. And especially if you join a startup, a lot of times you join a project that doesn't work out for whatever reason. You know, you never get public or you never get sold. You just kind of move on. And that's fine. You kind of accept that, you know, you never work on something that say your parents or your friends might know about. And that actually, you know, that happens a lot. And actually I can't help but always mention Diane Hackborn because I just want to because Diane's awesome. But, you know, like, and obviously members of the team that you were on. But yeah, for example, like folks like Diane Hackborn were on like BOS, right? Which is a beloved OS, which didn't quite have the same success. But y'all were, I mean, you know, you were now, you know, you worked on Android and now Android is the most popular mobile operating system in the world. Can you just talk about just how your personal experience like over the last 16 years of going from, okay, you know, that kind of crazy time where you're trying to just pull this whole thing together, like maybe with duct tape, maybe with not to, okay, today, where we're having these very sophisticated nuanced discussions about OEMs and socioeconomic environments with like, and then a Huawei and all, what's that been like for you as someone who built the thing? Yeah, it's definitely different. Like, you know, the early days, there was a mix of not everybody obviously believed in it because Google was not building operating systems. So we had a lot to prove. And we were starting from nothing, right? So there was so much to build and it was about building it as fast as possible and prioritizing what you need to build. But over the past few years specifically, like you reached the point where the US is there, it does all the basic functionalities and things change a lot. So you get like just a different perspective. And it happens at the same time, you know, it's interesting because when you have like, I don't know what the official number is these days, but you know, hundreds of millions, billions of users, like it doesn't make any sense anymore, right? Like those are just abstract numbers. You just know in the back of your mind that you want to do right by all those people, but it's hard to like fathom what it means. So yeah, I would say it's more deliberate, right? Because again, in the early days, like there's so much to do that you can do pretty much anything and it's going to be useful. But nowadays, like it has to be more thoughtful. And it's got to imagine that chorus of millions and billions of voices. Like, is it, I gotta imagine over the years, have you had to wrestle with what the feedback you've gotten from the community or the users and like to your point, like it becomes an abstract, like it's just so hard to do versus the direction or the vision that you guys have as a team of what you believe is the next step forward. Like I gotta imagine like material design, like these kind of these moments in time for Android where it really shook us as a community, but we had to put in trust into folks like you to know that you were taking us in the right direction. What, how do you balance that out? Yeah, it's interesting. I think sometimes, especially when it comes to APIs, you can have to take slips of faith, right? Of course you want to listen to feedback and listen to your users and developers, but sometimes what it takes is a little more than that. And that's why I spend a ton of time on Slack, I'm ready to conferences when I can to just talk to the community and try to like absorb that feedback continuously. A good example, I think is Jetpack Compose because we did ask developers directly as we were building it, without mentioning what it was exactly, we asked like, hey, would you like a new UI toolkit? The answer was basically no, like we understand views and we understand the flaws and we know how to work around these issues and it just works. But our observation was talking to developers like we could see like that they were struggling and that there was a better path that we could offer. So this is an example of where, for us listening to feedback was not like fixing a couple more bugs in an existing system but going a very different direction. And I think it happens all over the place and sometimes you're not gonna be completely right, you can't please everybody, like I wish we could, do our best, but it's interesting, right? Like from a personal standpoint and I assume it's the same when you work on apps, like you just need to learn how to dissociate yourself a little bit from the work, which can be difficult when you're passionate about what you do. You have to be able to like distinguish like, yeah, what I've done, you know, I've stopped someone but that's okay, like I should still sleep tonight. Sometimes it's hard. So related to that, I'm curious, like over the years, are there any of those moments in time that stick out in your memory as like a high point or like, you know, like kind of, you know, your favorite kind of moments in Android or? Yeah, there are a bunch. And I think, you know, they wouldn't be surprising. For instance, the first Motorola Android, our first phone, the G1, the Motorola Android, because that's when like Android like really exploded in the US, our first tablet with Holo, like when we really like kicked into second gear in terms of UI design, it was very hard from lots of sleepless nights on that project. So it was both like, I do not want to do this again, but I'm glad we went through that. We had somebody in the chat asking about phone memories of Holo. Yeah, I mean, some memories, I don't, it gave me a lot of like, you know, horror stories to tell people. I don't know if, I don't know if all those memories are full, but it was good, you know, one of the situations where again, back to your previous question, like why, why you stayed in the job for a long time? Like it was at this challenge, right? Like one of the things that you have to do when you work on a platform, the metaphor I use sometimes, like we cannot have to swap the engine like in mid-flight and you have to do it without the passengers, like noticing that you're on the wing doing that. And you know, sometimes they do notice, sometimes they don't. But again, that keeps the work like interesting and challenging. And it does teach you like, I think that's something of a very good skill to learn. It teaches you how to make compromises like what shortcuts you can take, which ones you cannot take. And you know, it's interesting when you're in this, you know, between engineers, we like to have a very purest approach. And I wish that the world was so black and white. Yeah, all of our best late intentions. Actually, that kind of falls up to my next question. Is there a feature that you, either you personally or you just loved an Android either now or past that you love that you maybe wish people still used or didn't think it enough love or you just have an affection for, I don't know in particular. I don't know if there is a feature. I think what's interesting is that the way we use the operating system is slightly different from the way it was originally intended. And I think potentially it was, it was one of those cases where we had a vision of how apps should work. And I think we were not wrong, but it wasn't really tested. And so we're not really using that. And I'm talking about like all the concepts of like the intense and multiple activities. And one of the ideas that apps could like share pieces of themselves with each other where the usual example is like the camera instead of building a camera screen in your app you just send an intent and the camera pops up. Obviously, when you want to control this user's experience, the brand, you're not gonna do that. You're gonna do it inside your app. And I think I'm glad we tried it. I wish this happened more today, like in the apps. You still see some of that, like the widgets, the share sheets. Like there's still a number of things in the system that have their roots in that idea. But it would be interesting to see apps benefit from that more greatly. Yeah, just to translate real quick for the non-devs in the house. Like usually so what we do. Yeah, sorry, no, no. So basically the way that a lot of times that the way that an Android Dev might request something like the camera, it will, the way we might do something like the camera is either we do it ourselves using like the camera APIs, which is great, but not really recommended for everybody, especially if you say you're like an exercise app and you just wanna pick an avatar. Or you can send out an intent, which is kind of like what it says. It's an intent to do something and the system is able to kind of direct us to an app that can provide that functionality for us. So that's how you do things like, I don't know, link out to Gmail, open up a camera app, open up any kind of like link in the app that you think it should be opened in. And so that's kind of what Roman is like kind of like talking about. It's just like this really interesting system of like, oh, how can other, how like kind of, I guess you almost had to be kind of psychic in a sense of like, or in kind of like COVID brain, kind of like try to guess on how apps could communicate with each other. Anticipate, anticipate what the user- Thank you, my gosh. This is why I'm here. I'm the healthiest of the three of us. Yeah, you're the healthiest. No, but yeah, no, I mean, honestly, that is like an elegant approach. And even as a non-developer to hear both of you talk about it and like, and understand like, oh yeah, that's what it's do. I have a preference in terms of this app. Why should the app you're doing not utilize my preference or what is already established in the OS? It's just one of the other wonderful things to make Android so elegant. That's so wonderful. So, leading into this, we let our loyal patrons know that you were coming on and joining us. And so we asked them if they had some questions for you because we want to involve our faithful Android faithful listeners. So, when you got our first question from a patron. Yeah, so, I think it's fair to say that most Android users in the world are not exactly on stock Android, but on some flavor. And so around here, a popular flavor is of course, Samsung's One UI. I've joked a lot in the past that as a dev, I was kind of morally obligated to hate Samsung, but actually as someone who uses Z Fold for a year, I've come to like it. So I think one of the most popular things about Samsung One UI is of course, is it's like cornucopia power user features. And I guess the question from JJ and Laura was basically like, how does the Android OS team and other kind of teams like Samsung's One UI team, do they ever interact? Is there much collaboration? Like do you take inspiration from what other teams? I'm not gonna go into a lot of details because that's stuff that happens at work. But I know there is collaboration obviously between Google and our teams and the manufacturers. And it's important, and truly from a personal standpoint, I know this has been somewhat difficult sometimes for developers, but I just love that the ecosystem, the Android ecosystem provides that choice. It's just fantastic that if you don't like a pixel phone, well, you can get something else that will still be Android than the other way around. And we've certainly seen like a lot of really interesting innovation coming from like random places all over the place. Now we're used to seeing Android like everywhere, like from cars to the entertainment systems and planes, but like when manufacturers started doing that, it was surprising even to us, I remember saying you know, having written some of that code is like, hey, please don't use my code to do this. But you know, and so it comes with like good things and sometimes let's do good things, but I'm just glad that we have that. Like it's just fantastic to have this kind of like diversity. And that's really that like you create something, you put it into the world and you hope or you have an idea of how you think people use it, but you lose control once you release it, right? And you see how people, what they do with it. And the fact that they've surprised you and the rest of the team, I think is a compliment to the operating system because it's like stuff you guys didn't even think of. Yeah, and it's openness. I mean, like I'm not gonna rag on any other mobile operating systems out there, but it seems like the openness is both like an intention and a feature. And so yeah, now we have Android in our pelletons and are like in our like, you know, fitness spikes and fitness walls and even in like poor little tablets that live in like, I don't know, I think I was in one, like a museum in Italy and my husband just, whenever I ever, whenever we see a kiosk, we just like to kind of go like this from the bottom to see. And usually it's hollow by the way, it's still hollow by the way. But when we saw the operating system numbers, Jesus, it was a couple of years ago, but like the number of people there was like active devices way early in the OS versions. And we're like, oh, those were all kiosks. Like all the kiosks in the world, right? Like who's the running like honeycomb? We're like, oh, like some kiosks. I love that we enable this kind of stuff like recently. So this weekend I'm taking my car to the rest track and I have this like device that you can put on your dashboard that measures your lap time. And I was kind of delighted when I turned on that thing that it's Android, you know, I just love that we enable the hardware company to, like they didn't have to worry about the operating system and finding developers and development tools. And there's nothing to do with, you know, what we say that to build with Android, but I just like that we're enabling this kind of stuff. Very cool. We forgot to ask at the top of this conversation, what's your daily driver? What phone are you using? I'm still on the Pixel 6. 6? Hey. Yes, I know. Good color. No. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I love it when you can have like, you know, both colors. Yeah, it's funny because, you know, the way I choose a daily driver is to make sort of being a user and also being a developer, where, I mean, it's obviously a very good device, but being, well, soon a couple of generations older, when you do performance work, it's nice to be able to test on the previous ones. And I still have a Pixel 2 right over there that's also used for that. Nice. I love that because I think for those of the rest of us who have budget to buy phones, we tend to like just buy the latest flagship and then run performance, you know, work on that, which doesn't exactly make sense. So, hey y'all, devs looking. Roman, hold on, wait, hold up this way, this way. Roman is rocking a Pixel 6 and Pixel 2 for his performance work. So live and learn, that's how we should do this. I gotta say, I really want to buy a Pixel Fold. Yeah, I love the plug-ins, but I know, I know it's awesome. I love foldables. Well, so do we. That was my next question, is what do you thought of foldables and if you're, so your pro foldables? Yeah, absolutely, yeah, because you know, one of my favorite devices ever and I think it will not shock anybody, it was the Nexus 7. You know, small pocketable tablets. Yeah, fit in my back pocket, so. Yeah, it fits in your back pocket. Yeah, because I love, I read a ton. And so any device that can make this, that can make this a more pleasant experience, you know, I have a Kino, but bring a Kino everywhere where it's kind of a pain, bring like a full-fledged, like 10 inch tablet is also a bit painful. So yeah, foldables are kind of like a sweet spot. Ron, can I mention to Roman the thing we've been talking about for three weeks in terms of, okay. Sure, I'd like to pull it up now, hang on. Yes, please, Roman, in terms of things that you would never expect out of Android, have you heard of the Honor V purse at all? Is that an Android running on the purse? Because I've never heard of it and at the same time I would be so not surprised. So it's not a purse. It's not a purse, it's a wrap around foldable where the screen actually wraps around. But it's meant to be a concept photo, but it does have a chain, I'm sorry, we've been talking about this for like three weeks and I really want one. But and it's kind of ridiculous because no, it's not really a purse, you can't put anything into it. Although Ron does often mention correctly that with Google Wallet and other things at this day and age. Yeah, technically a purse. Technically, it's a purse. But it's got a screen on the outside that is reactive. So like in this picture that we're showing, it's got the chain to hold it like a purse and that chain of charms is actually on the display. And if you swung the phone left and right, the charms would swing with the display. Yeah, like so they made it into a fashion accessory. And it's production now. I can't almost one now. So yeah, so it was a concept phone, but then they announced two weeks later that it is going to production. I think they announced it. I think it's actually out now. It's been a week. So I'm hoping to get it in my hands on one. But I just think it's kind of interesting and we were kind of making fun of it, but also thinking, hey, like in terms of like, you know, where this could go with fashion and fast fashion and sustainable things like you never know. And it's kind of just cool that, I don't know. I mean, foldable like smartphones were ridiculous by themselves to begin with. And then foldable phones seem ridiculous to begin with now. We're talking about yet another ridiculous thing, but, you know. Yeah, but obviously like smartphones are such a big part of our lives now. I just love that, you know, there's all those, again, different form factors for different folks, right? Like, even if it's niche, like it's fantastic that someone can get like what they want. It's great to see here you mentioned the Nexus 7 and earlier you mentioned the G1 and the tablet and the droid. We've established a little mini Android Hall of Fame on our podcast as we talk about it. And like all those devices are in, well, the first entry in the Hall of Fame was the Nexus 5, which was the greatest phone of all, you know. 100%. I don't know. For me, it's the Nexus 4 over the Nexus 5. I really like that. Wow, cold. I don't know, there was something about the back, like, you know. The glass. It had that, yeah. I love that device. I mean, the Nexus 5 was also fantastic for other reasons. Yeah. And look, you can't ask me like which one was my favorite Nexus or my favorite Pixel. It's like asking me which one is my favorite child. I'm an Instagram. I'm just not going to tell you. Well, I know you have one. When asking what your favorite feature of Android is, it says it's another bunch of children to choose from, right? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Easy, the one that I did not work on because I'm not responsible for the bugs. Oh, see, that's like me and my niece, right? Like, I love my niece, because then I can just play with her, have fun with her, and when something goes wrong, I'm like, oh, hey, by the way, troubleshoot her. Exactly. Something's wrong with this one. So. All right, well, this has been great. And I know you're struggling after your boost, so we can give you some time back and let you go rest up. But thank you for joining us and giving us some perspective on how you can really appreciate it. Inside Android, that's so, I mean, you got, I mean, we're here every week talking about your guys' work, so please extend it to the team, tell them that we love all the work that's being done. And we might be critical every once in a while, but it's because we love it. So. That's OK, that's how we can improve things, right? Like I said, we need the feedback, so keep it coming. Excellent. We did get a lovely Patreon question. Like, how do you keep making Android so good? So, just, yeah. Well, that's a really good question. Yeah, no, but just to let you know that, yeah, people love what you do, so, and I wouldn't have a career without it, so thank you. Excellent. Well, thanks for joining. Hopefully, we'll have you on again sometime again in the future. Talk a little more. That'd be great. When you feel better, at least. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. All right, thanks so much. All right, have a good night. All right. Well, he's awesome. Getting that perspective is so, to remember the fact that there's legions of people behind the screen making this stuff, it's always a good reminder and to get that kind of sense of what it's like to work on Android, especially for so long like he has been, so. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Like, again, it's very rare for someone to be a lifer like that on a project, so I don't know. I think the fact that we all are still here for Android and he's still there for Android says something about our little big friend here. For sure. And I think it's appropriate because we do have a ton of news to talk about this week and it's all very Google heavy this week. It's a Google heavy week. So we didn't want to put him in a position to have to comment on the company or things like that. But I do think it's appropriate. I thought it was appropriate. As we were planning the show, sure, we could talk about Android 14 QPR-1. Sure, we could talk about Pixel 8 leaks. Sure, we could talk about Google Podcasts. And we will. But I thought it was more important to start with the patron pick because, A, we love the patrons. We love the fact that if you go to patreon.com slash android faithful and sign up and become a loyal patron, you can help choose a story for us to talk about on the show. But I further love my new game now with all of you is I try to guess what story you're going to vote on. And when we did this, I was like, there is no way this story is not the one that wins. And I was so glad I was right because this week, the number one story as picked by our patrons to discuss is the redesigned Google Weather app has begun rolling out, which had a whopping 67% of the vote. And it totally beat out the Galaxy Buds FE from Samsung being shown with the S23 FE and the Tab S9 FE, as well as Gmail for Android adding a select all button, which I would argue is probably way more important than the weather app. But sure enough, we do love our weather app. And so because you demanded it, I got to pull up my little thing because I didn't, I missed loading this one, but where is it? There we go. All right, thank you. So because you demanded it, here we are. The weather app has started to roll out. The little froggy is still there, but in a new material you revamp, the weather app gets a full redesign. And those of us who've commented on the fact that the weather app has been somewhat outdated, they're finally updating it. It's gonna have material you and it's not exclusive to Pixel devices as phones from other brands have reported seeing it, which is fantastic. And, you know, co-host of the show, Michelle Ramon posted on Twitter and the, or posted to X and the press picked it up, the stunning screenshots of what the new weather app looks like. And you got a much more smaller subdued froggy, but he's still there. And then it gives you a sense of these kind of, like these little boxes, telling you what the weather is gonna be like, what the early forecast is, and then the 10 day forecast all in one screen, which is pretty great. So we do love our weather app and when I feel like back in the day of all about Android, like years and years and years before you joined the show, we talked about weather apps like almost every other week. Jason can attest to that. I believe he's watching live this week. But so yeah, new Google weather apps rolling out. I haven't gotten it yet, but I'll be honest. I'm excited. Yeah, what is it about weather apps? It just feels like this kind of evergreen source of, you know, it just, everyone needs to know the weather, I guess. It used to be one of our go-to topics. Like as we covered apps back in the day, like weather apps were like a category that we always had to cover. And sure enough, they've all fallen by the wayside because Google weather just does it so well. So there we are. So, all right. Well, so that was the patron pick. Go to patreon.com slash android faithful. And now we can get into the real news. Yeah. And I'm glad Ramana's gone because then I can make the joke that, hey, Generalissimo Francisco Francois still did and Android 14 is still not out. But guess what is out? The beta for Android 14 quarterly platform release number one, which is, you know, the release after the Android 14, which I mean, it's gonna go in beta. So it's not like it's kind of, I guess, overriding the release or something. But anyway, our very own Michelle Ramon had a very extensive write up. And in his own words, it's a doozy. And you can read this over at androidcentral.com. Yeah, you can read over to androidcentral.com and please do. And he links that to kind of all the different technical details that he has in his other amazing articles about each of these features. There's a lot in here. So I was, I picked some of my favorites. And I think number one, and I think is also one of Michelle's favorites because he actually did a separate write up on this for Android authority, maybe. I'm sorry. Yep. Yep. Is, hey, you can finally override an apps aspect ratio and we're all looking at you Instagram. So yes, now in Android 14 QPR one, you have actually a very fleshed out experience for overriding the aspect ratio of an app. And if y'all were, if any of you were on the Z Folds or the other, or like on a labs, they had a menu very, very much like this and a feature very much like this where you could basically say, hey, make this specific app be 16 nine full screen, four by three, whatever. Well, this is now in Android 14 QPR and it will eventually be in Android 15. And it's actually a lot easier to use in the old Samsung labs version. There are three ways for you to access this feature. You can go into the settings panel, open up the apps list and then go into aspect ratio or you can go into an individual apps info page, go into the under the advanced header and then select aspect ratio or actually Ron, if you can play the video or when you load up an app, like, and so this is my phone on QPR one, there's actually a little button now for the video stream users where you can have to tap it and it takes you to the aspect ratio. And basically, yeah, you'll get a list of different ratios. Michele lists a whole bunch in his article. I don't know why there's discrepancy in what I'm seeing, but for example, when I go into Instagram, I can see that I can do full screen, half screen or four by three. You click one of them and Android will just make it do the thing. It will make it full screen or half screen or whatever have you and as an update kind of, or as a kind of coalescing of many different stories, we talked about the Instagram app finally having a large screen layout, but only on big screens in portrait mode. If I do this, if I use like the QPR one aspect ratio thing and force it into full screen, I actually get that vertical rail that we talked about in like on the website. Like on the website, yeah. So in Michele's Android authority.com article about the aspect ratio, he outlines that you can choose from app default, full screen, half screen, device aspect ratio, 16, nine, four, three or three, two as the different options. And I wonder if it depends on what device you're on when. Yeah, what device too, yeah. Yeah, if you're on the pixel fold, maybe they're being a little more, you know, a little more specific about how that can roll. Yeah, it really doesn't make sense to like maybe do 16, nine on the inside of this. So maybe it tries to pick like, you know, ideal or preferred or optimized ones, but yeah, it's out there and it's really great. So if you were missing that from, you know, your Samsung and your Z Folds, QPR one has it and it's really handy and it works really well. I think it's like a better user experience. So go out there and get it. And yeah, Instagram fine, looks right. Some other big ones is of course, we've talked about this a little bit, but you can finally use your phone as a webcam. Of course, you know, most smartphone cameras are pretty stonking good these days. So why not be able to use it over your, you know, potato webcam or computer web cam? So now you can, when you now, with QPR one, if you plug in your device via USB, you should get now a webcam option on top of the other ones. And this should work on most platforms, Windows, Mac OS, Chrome OS, Linux and even Android itself with no problem. Could you imagine that you use another Android device as the webcam to another Android device? It's like Android and Android. Cool. It's Android all the way down. You can now, depending on your device, of course, view your phone's battery health, which is really just account of the discharge charge cycles and also the manufacturer date, which will be really important, especially as, you know, we go forward and battery replacement is a thing as well as right to repair. Let's see what else we got. There's now a new style for your lock screen. I've been really enjoying customizing my lock screen on the Android 14 beta, but now you get yet another style to choose from. This is actually pretty cool. You can actually, so usually what happens if you have like a foldable device and you're using an app and you close and you fold it closed. The front screen will actually start up in sleep mode, but now Android 14 keep your one, now lets you have some options to either let apps that tend to not, that keep your display awake like games, media players, to kind of seamlessly reopen that app, not in sleep mode in the front screen. So that's now an option. Let's see, only new locations in lock screen, setting different live wallpapers on the lock and home screen. I mean like these are the little tiny things that you think would just already be a thing, but you know. This one is huge. You can change the Bluetooth audio as device type, which is like having, often time I feel like Bluetooth is like this mystery and it connects to the device and I just can't do anything about it. And so now you get a little more control over it, which is good, especially when you're using spatial audio or, or you know, exactly switching between different headphones and things like that. So like having the ability to switch between the speaker, the headphones, the car or hearing aid is helpful. So. Yeah, usually, I mean, usually Bluetooth type does come in, but if it's wrong, now you can actually override it. So you can actually, you know, so that you don't, you're not kind of slave to your device and Android. Actually, let's go down a little bit to, oh yeah. So Michelle has mentioned this a few times, but yeah, he's definitely found in QPR one that the locating your Pixel phone, even when it's off is in there. So that, you know, usually find my device requires a phone to be online. Well, not in QPR one, it's coming that you're find my device, we'll be able to find your powered off phones. China changes to the, to the kind of universal search bar, just different design changes. Oh yeah, maintenance mode or rather something like repair mode, repair mode. Sorry, maintenance mode is the Samsung version. And now Android as an OS is getting it as well under the hood and Android 14 QPR. It's not like fully out there yet, but Michelle found that, you know, repair more, sorry, repair mode is there existing inside of QPR one. Hey, Google now on tap, this was a marshmallow thing where if you had some content on your screen and you held down the home button, you would get like contextual information about kind of surrounding the content on that screen. So more or less like Google ends, but like back in the day and more like contextual information, like if it's all an address or a landmark or maybe like someone in your context, it would try to show you that information. Well, that's coming back, but now it's, what is it? Yeah, it's going to be called the long press screen search gesture. It's all kind of just a big circle of features. Google now on tap, Google ends and now long press search. Everything, what's old is new. It all comes back. What's old is new? There's so much more. You can switch your phone to landscape while on the lock screen, which is... Am I the olden who's super excited about this? I don't know why. It's such an odd thing to think about. Like, all right, you couldn't do that, but yeah. Yeah, it's just... Yeah, anyway, there's possibly going to be, you're going to have more flexibility when editing your home screen, being able to add or move multiple items at once rather than just dragging everything one by one. Let me see, let's see, that's what... Oh, putting bubbles into a bubble bar. So apparently for large screens, if you are the person who likes chat, bubbling your chats up, rather than having them kind of like floating around, like, air bubbles in your bubble bath, you're going to have a little bar for them. Yeah, I don't really like that, but I might try the bubble bar when it comes out. Instant hotspots and things. So yeah, just a whole bunch of stuff. It's packed. I mean, it was so funny because Michelle couldn't join us this week and he was just like, oh, there's so much in QPR One. And there really is. And it just, if anything, it's just driving a lot of the hype for 14, you know, when and if it comes out in October, cross our fingers, right? Whatever it comes out. But hey, you can see what the next release after that looks like. So definitely go check out androidcentral.com and Android Authority, where Michelle's been writing and he's got a really in-depth kind of breakdowns of the stuff that you can expect. And it's exciting. So if you've got QPR One installed right in, tell us what you think about it. You can email us a contact at androidfaithful.com. And we'd love to hear what your experience with QPR One is as we get the hype train going for Android 14. So very cool. Well, and it wouldn't be remiss, you know, given this time of year, if we didn't have, if you remember this time last year, was it this time last year's when Google did their first shot across the bow to Apple with RCS, with the Get the Message program? Well, they are back and Google rolled out a video ad for a new device called the iPager, which is mocking Apple in the design approach of the ad, of course, and mocking Apple for the fact that, you know, their use of SMS is just basically no more than a glorified pager, you know, a circa late 90s text communicator. I gotta admit, I mean, this made me laugh, you know, like they're highlighting the outdated messaging tech like Apple still uses to text with Android. But, you know, I respect the fact that they are behind RCS and behind, you know, trying to explain to the users why you get pixelated videos and why the green bubbles exist and why you get broken images or distilled images or stuff like that. And it's all because of the technology that Apple has chosen. Like I, you know, I know that this can be seen as petty and as, you know, kind of like people don't think it's a great, you know, a great look on Google's side, but, you know, and it ends with the phrase in the ad time for SMS to end the chat, to leave the chat, which is true, but, you know, putting pressure on Google is, putting pressure on Apple is not only good for Google because it gets Android out there in the world in the public zeitgeist as a, as an alternative option. And it explains why. I think this is actually more effective than the ad last year. So. You know, I definitely am very sympathetic to the goal here. And I know I've said many times that I find some of their efforts to be a little try hard. Like, I think we talked about the Drake, was the Drake thing already a year ago? Yeah. Maybe less, but I actually, okay, I have to admit, I really enjoyed this one just because it's sort of kind of coming to Apple where they're at with the stylishness and the design and trying to like, and I think we've already mentioned this that a lot of this is just a education, almost like an educational campaign, right? Like, like it really, they just really need to get the message out there that, hey, there's a reason why the experience is so, you know, disconnected between, you know, messaging between iPhone users and Android users. And I, so I'll share this. Like, so I was hanging out with my family last week and I sent this to our little staff chat. I was like, guys, I'm in the line and literally I'm hearing the people in front of me say, oh, she has an Android phone for some reason. I think it's a money thing. I told her to get an iPhone. Like, this whole attitude, it needs to be addressed in these kind of ways. I get it. Like, Google has no other choice, but to try to put stuff like, out like this, like, just sell that stuff. To see that in the wild, to overhear someone, to assume someone has an Android phone because they can't afford an iPhone. When we all know Android phones are as expensive if not some of them are more expensive than iPhones, right? It's just, there's so much, there's so much consumer confusion about the differences. And this is a more educational, albeit in a humorous mocking kind of way. Like in the video, I have the video paused here because I didn't, I just noticed that like, when they're showing the problems with it, they're saying how there's, how SMS lacks any encryption and the iPager floats by with someone's social security number on it. Which is encrypted. Yeah, exactly. So I don't know. I mean, Petty, maybe snarky, absolutely funny, definitely. And, you know, I'm fighting the good fight with RCS too. I'm right behind you, Google. So like, I don't think that this is a bad thing. It made me laugh when I came up with this. I really like this ad. I'm sorry. I've been definitely a little bit, like feeling cringy sometimes, but I like this ad and I respect the continued fight. Like, you gotta respect that. They keep going. Yep. All right. That was the news of this week. I mean, the big news was Android 14 QPR won the RCS ad and Lord knows the Google Weather app. That's a big one. But there's even bigger news that's happening later in the show. But first we're gonna get at some hardware because we are now, are we one week away from the event? It's next week. Oh my God already, yeah. It is next week. And so that of course means that everything has been leaked. Yeah, there's gonna be no surprises, y'all. And of course we've mentioned many, many times leaks by, okay, I try to practice this week. Camila Vojciowska, of course, has leaked us many, many wonderful things in the past. And I mean, she got us basically the whole specs of a Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, as well as like their cameras. And I mean, you want, I mean, like they're both rocking the Gen, of the Genser, sorry, the Google Tensor G3 with Titan M2. You've got a 6.2 OLED screen on the 8 versus the 6.7 on the 8 Pro. Let's see what else we got. We got the eight rocking eight gigabytes of RAM with 128 or 256 gigabytes of storage, whereas the Pro is rocking up to 12 gigabytes of RAM with up to one terabyte storage in the US. Terabyte is gonna be common. It's gonna be like, you know, in the next year or so a terabyte on a phone is not gonna be a thing we joke about anymore. No, I mean, especially with, if we keep making cameras as good as they are, we're gonna need a space. Although that is that one terabyte is only gonna be available in the US. The rest of everyone's gonna have up to 512 gigabytes, which is still sizable. Yeah, half a terabyte. Half a terabyte, not bad. You know, let's see, we got a 44, let's call it 4,600 milliamp battery on the 8 versus 50, 50 milliamp battery on the Pro with 27 watt fast charging on the standard Pixel 8 versus 31 watt charging on the Pixel Pro. And then both have QI certified wireless charging, 18 watts on the standard, 23 on the Pro. And here's the big one. I think that's key. Isn't a key certified one? Was it key? Yeah, the QI is for, I never compared to either. Oh yeah, like key, key, like, okay, I get like energy. Okay, I never forget that. But here's a big thing. The Pixel 8 will both come with seven, seven years of OS and security updates up from the previous five. And I think that's just a huge deal. And it obviously is kind of going along with the trends that we've seen and kind of like this new support, support war that we're seeing from all of the major manufacturers trying to, ultimately, let's call a spade a spade. It's ultimately trying to catch up with Apple and they're kind of amazing, long-term support of their devices. But I mean, here's, we keep complaining about Apple, or not Apple, sorry, Google putting their money where your phone is and here we go. Seven years of OS and security updates. Write in and let us know what you think about that. And yeah, just, of course, the cameras are always huge. We should jump over to the specifics of the camera now, right? Yeah, so of course, things have been leaked. Sometimes people like Camilla leak things and sometimes Google leaks itself. This is a little bit of both, the promo video, kind of highlighting the video and photo features of the Pixel 8 have leaked. And so we got things like, and I'm actually really excited for all of this. So we're gonna see that that Tensor G3 and that Titan M2 powering these, the following computational photography and videography features, some of which we've kind of like, kind of mentioned or heard about before. But watch the video and you'll see things like, DSL or like pro controls come into the 8 Pro only dam, which means that I kind of want one, even though I love the fold, I kind of like the idea of DSL or like controls. Real tone, which is of course, that fine tuning of the algorithms and camera models that more accurately highlight diverse skin tones using that kind of like that real tone technology that we've been talking about like for the last couple of years, night sight for video, super res zoom, astrophotography, the audio eraser that is allowing you to in videos, kind of reduce ambient noise for videos. Magic editor is getting some extra things like swapping faces, which honestly I find a little bit horrifying, but. So disturbing. The face swapping thing is so disturbing. Because it looks like what you can do is take faces from other adjacent photos and swap a man, which. Yeah, so just so, just so we're clear. And in the video, it shows a lovely family on a merry-go-round and they take, they quickly take several photos. Right. And then you can choose the best face of the people from that burst of photos. And one's not right. This, sorry. But so it's a cool feature, but I. It's going to blow my wife's mind. It's a promo video. So I feel like it should be. Here's the thing about these promo videos. I've been watching these Google rollouts now for over a decade. These promo videos always make me laugh because, and I understand that they are, it's a marketing video and the whole test. But it is depicting a quality of life that I have never seen or know anyone who is related to. You know, they're like, this particular promo video took a lot of it from in the New York metro area, which is where I live. And so I know exactly where that merry-go-round Brooklyn is where those people are. There's a whole bunch of people, a whole bunch of photos of people running through the TWA terminal at JFK that was restored, right? Which is a great location, a great mid-century modern location. And like everyone's wearing colorful clothes and they're laughing and they're having fun. And I'm just like, this is not my life. This is that, this is, all of a sudden I'm talking head song. This is not my beautiful life. But yeah, like everybody in these videos are always living their best possible life and it's being captured on the phone. And I know that's what's supposed to be happening here, but it just makes me laugh because like, I would like to make one of these videos that like depict me like taking a picture of the broken molding on my window to go to Home Depot to go get a replacement or like, or like, or the burst of blurry photos my daughter took when she stole my phone or like. Dude, I want to see that because that would be so, so good. You know what I mean? Like that would be like how the real half-life, that would be so compelling. I want someone to make that video though because no, I want to see that. But so yeah, so in terms of specs and when I know you're struggling with the Rona. So in terms of specs, the Pixel 8, both Pixel 8 and Pixel Pro, both will have a 50 megapixel octa-PD wide cameras, the main camera lens on it. The Pixel 8 is going to support that as well as a 12 megapixel ultra-wide camera. So you got two lenses on the Pixel 8 on the rear and the Pixel 8 Pro has got the 50 megapixel, a 48 megapixel quad ultra-wide camera and a second 48 megapixel PD telephoto camera. And then they're both rocking a 10.5 megapixel dual PD selfie on the front. So they're, you know, like once again, you know, cameras are going to be a big part of the presentation next week. I think like this, which by the way, I forgot in all of our planning for our guests is the fact that we were supposed to do our predictions for next week. Oh no, we'll do that next week. Cause we're the event, yeah. So we'll say them for next week and we'll do our predictions, but like it is very clear that they're going to drive once again, why the Pixel has a superior camera and what the AI and the processor can do and the tensor can do and all that fun stuff. So, yeah. And also, yes, the colorways as well. I mean, sure. You do like the colorway. I do like the colorways. I do. We do have Obsidian Hazel and Rose for the standard and Obsidian Porcelain and Bay. I wanted to ask, is Bay the blue one? I think, I think so. Bay, maybe. Bay the blue one? Yeah, I don't know. Can you get Bay for your Bay? Okay. Well, I'll get the blue. If I could choose, I would get the blue one or the blue one or that slate one would be really nice. Yeah, I think that's Obsidian. So anyway, yeah. And we'll, I guess we already kind of know what's common and now just all we need to do is just wait for it to show up next week. So, yeah. So tune in, tune in for sure. And you will be with our friend Jason, right? Is that the message? I will. I will be joining Jason for a little Reacto livestream over on Twitch. So, yeah. I mean, if you are an old fan, you know where to go. And if you're a new fan, yeah, definitely go check out the Twitch livestream during the event and you can see me and totally average, not special at all. Of course, you're super special Jason, audience member. And I talk about the October 4th pixel announcement. And then either you or Michelle will be on DT and S for Tom and Roger and the crew that afternoon to talk about the event. So Android Faith will be everywhere on that day. Yeah, if you can get enough of us. I will be working. So I can't participate in any of that kind of stuff. But I know of all I said it before, I had one day in October where I'm in a meeting room from nine till five and it's October 4th. So what can I do? If it happens again next year, I'm gonna think it's personal, but we'll just talk it up to bad luck this year. So real quickly, I know we've been tracking over these past couple of weeks our love of foldables. And now the Techno Phantom is becoming like, this is three weeks in a row now of us talking about the Techno Phantom. But here it is. The Techno Phantom V Flip was announced as well. They launched that as their first flip phone. We alluded to it last week, but here it is. It's got a 6.9 inch, 120 Hertz AMOLED display. It's got a really cool circular front display, which is, and that also houses the front facing cameras, which is really kind of cool. And it definitely looks very similar to the Samsung Flip in terms of like their design approach and their marketing of it and how it's, you know, kind of like a fashionable kind of thing in there. But what's fantastic is it's about half the price. It is, it's on sale in India for converted to US dollars, about $600, which is about roughly the half the price of the Galaxy Z Flip 5. So if you can get your hands on a Techno Phantom V Fold, you can get it at a pretty cheap price. And I don't think it doesn't look at least it's a cheap phone in terms of build quality. It looks pretty impressive. So like Techno continues to impress us with what they're doing here. So it's neat. I dig it. I love it. And again, Techno is that company that is focusing on kind of like more emerging markets and kind of like the markets that we tend not to talk about, which is like not China and not EU and not US. So kind of good for them, dude. So awesome. Yeah. I also, I love the, I mean like a foldable, like admittedly it's a flip, right? So it's not less thing, but like a foldable for $600, like that, that's the dream. Like if we can get foldables down to the five to $800 range, then it becomes more of a reality for the average consumer. So. Yeah, hopefully this will inspire like more, again, Western manufacturer, Western market targeting manufacturers to do the same thing. So we can all have foldables. Look at it. Yeah. We're getting there. The foldable future is coming. It is, hopefully. All right, cool. So we're going to wrap us up for hardware. And now let's get into apps because Android had some exciting, Google had some exciting news for developers, right, Wen? Yeah. So I mentioned, we talked a little bit about Studio Bot around Google IO, which is of course the kind of chat bot assistant that was announced at Google IO, which is for folks like me to use in Android Studio, which is our integrated development environment for making Android apps for y'all, Android faithful. And yeah, it's been out for a while, but the thing is that when it first came out, it was only available in the US. It's still kind of like, in testing and no work in progress, but kind of a big deal is that not a lot of the Android devs out there. And again, we're everywhere because Android is like the dominant mobile OS in the world, but unfortunately only as devs in the US had access to it well. On, let me say what day of that, September 21st, they actually announced that Studio Bot, again, this chat bot that you could ask questions, have it look at your code and suggest fixes, even produce example code for you. So kind of all these kind of like generative AI, get your dream cards out, things, that we hear about for regular things like SwiftKey and images and all that kind of stuff, coming to the developer world, it is now available in 170 countries across the world, except not in the EU and UK. And that's very likely because of privacy concerns. A similar thing happened with Bard, it took Bard a while to get to the EU because Google was trying to address the data privacy laws that are part of the EU. So yeah, fam in the EU and UK, my bad, you still don't have Studio Bot, but pretty much everybody else does. So... And I gotta admit, this is, I mean, as talking to my friends who are developers and say what you will about AI, but like this integration it blew my mind when we saw the demo in the keynote at Google I.O. But to actually talk to my friends who are developers who are actually using it, like for my own, for my app, at Scorbit, we're at a spot now where we lost some developers, we're trying to keep code up to date, we're trying to get stuff going and we found it immensely helpful to be able to say like debug this block of code and have it come back and point out where the problems are or like some of the examples. And so in the Android developers blog broke the news when the Isabella Feiderman, the product marketing, product marketing manager and Sandia Moyhan, the product manager posted the blog post about it and they had some examples, which are like, what's the best location? What's the best way to get location on Android? Or how do I add camera support to my app? And there's a cool kind of GIF on the blog post that shows you what the Studio Boss response is and it's immensely helpful. And this goes back to the conversations that we've had with Dave Burke over at Android where like the whole idea of this AI, it's similar to, it's game-changing in the fact that it's similar to the Industrial Revolution where it took a week to do the laundry and then you invented a washing machine and now it takes three hours and imagine what you can do when you get that time back. So imagine if you're a developer and you don't need to spend the time chasing down bugs or trying to find libraries, you can get more creative and do more exciting things. I think this is a fantastic addition and glad to see it rolling out to so many countries and regions, hopefully they can work out the EU issues. Yeah, that is a bummer. Hey, you could even get large screen support and not just portrait mode anymore. You know, like that, I mean, I'm joking, but that seriously, that's the kind of thing that this kind of time constraint keeps us from doing is like, and then it starts to feel half-assed when these solutions come out. And Ron, you're 100% right. We'll be able to do like that kind of more, you know, fine work and the kind of dotting the eyes and crossing the T's and the actual like, you know, polish that a lot of times we don't get to do. So that's why it's exciting. And yeah, hopefully everybody gets at some point. Yeah, hopefully. Cool. So I feel like it's been a couple of weeks since we talked about threads, but here we are. When threads came out, actually, I believe I went on record, I was very vocal about them needing a web client, which they did roll out now they have. But one of the things that was really frustrating, especially someone who has multiple accounts is that the account switcher was just like an aim. Like you needed to log out of your account and then you could switch to another account and log back in. Well, Threads recently just added an account switcher on both Android and iOS at the same time. So bravo to them for going dual platform. And they are working on an edit button that would allow you to edit your posts, which we all know that is the dream that Twitter just will never get around to addressing or X or whatever the hell it is. But yeah, so they are working on the ability to edit posts, which is fantastic. So good on you Threads, keep it up. You know, everybody likes to talk about how everyone stopped using it, but they're not. It's still very active. It's just like it went from the crazy land grab to like the dust settling. And now they're fighting a good fight. So good job. And they are trying to hustle and get all these features. I think even so, I didn't include it because we already had enough to talk about, but maybe even having the deletion thing where you cannot separate, once you start enable Threads, you can't separate your Threads and Instagram account. I think they're even working on that. So a good on them for really responding to what people want and need. Yeah. All right, so we're coming down the end of the line. We got a couple more. I know when you're, I imagine you want to take a break, but we're close to the end. No, we got some good stuff. So I mean, just really quickly, if you're on the WhatsApp beta and you have already started the great transfer to pass keys, well, guess what? You might be able to use pass keys to sign into WhatsApp if you're switching devices or like loading up a brand new possibly foldable device with WhatsApp. And you do need already a password manager and that is handling your pass keys, but if you're on the beta, and I don't think it's everyone in the beta, it might still be an A-B testing. It sounds like some people are getting it, some are not, but if you're on the WhatsApp beta, check inside of your settings and go to settings and go to account within settings and see if you are now able to set up pass keys to use with the WhatsApp. And yeah, you can use it with whatever your password manager of choice is, whether that's Google, Apple, Microsoft, whatever have you, but yeah, WhatsApp working on that pass key support. The pass keys of the future is pass keys. There it is. And they're coming. They're coming, they're coming. All right, and so now for our last new story of the evening around apps. If you heard, I know for a fact that this morning, many, many, many people out in the world of Android and Google screamed when the inevitable happens, when the thing that we knew was coming, but this morning, a blog post went up on the YouTube official blog, announcing, creating a centralized podcast destination on YouTube music, further affirming Google's commitment to podcasts on YouTube music, and thus saying that in 2024, they will be ending Google podcasts and focusing purely on YouTube music. So when I thought it was a better time than ever to finally, for the first time, 12 episodes in, do our first little bit of funeral music for our good friend Google podcasts. And as was commented by my friend when we were talking about this earlier, 2024 is like around the corner. Like this is soon. Yes, it's almost October. Right. So, and I thought it was pretty damning. All right, so there's the music, ha-ha. I did find it, I did find it. We were talking about getting tapped. So I thought it was pretty damning that Google mentions, according to Edison Research, about 23% of weekly podcast users in the USA that YouTube is their most frequently used service versus just 4% for Google podcasts, which talk about like Google, like putting the nail in their own coffin. Yeah. But what I find fascinating is that they're going with third-party data for like what people say their preferred podcast, they have the data. They know how many users are using Google podcasts or using YouTube music for podcasts. Like why do you have to go to Edison to give like a perception number, whatever. I can't say I'm surprised by this. I've ranted on the show in the past about YouTube's approach to podcasts and how it's flawed and the problems with it. The fact that it took them this long to commit to shutting Google podcasts down, Google podcast has been like not maintained for a while. Like we've seen the writing on the wall, this is not a surprise, but it just continues to be frustrating. And it's like, and even in this blog post, they continue to commit to it. They continue, it's like for users, for users it means a simple migration tool and ability to add podcast RSS feeds to their YouTube music library, including shows not hosted by YouTube. They're offering an option to download an OPML file, their show subscriptions and then they can import to another app, which is fine. But like for podcasters, this means providing robust creation and analytics tools as well as RSS uploads. Not RSS, like they're not doing it. They're just doing what they want to and it just drives me crazy. Yeah, how cool are we? We're giving you all the stuff that podcasters obviously need anyway. So yeah, and I will give a shout out to the cousin of John, the chat who says that Google has made more migration tools and products, but there's almost a one-to-one at that point because you need the migration tool when you kill something, but yeah, so. Oh gosh, that's a good career choice actually. Yeah, I'd make my migration tools over at Google. That's an excellent career choice. That's a lifer, that's a lifer job. All right, well that's gonna wrap it up for the news this week. We're almost done. We've got a couple of emails we heard from you about in the audience and our first one is super long one, but I wanna remind everybody that you can email us at contact.androidfaithful.com. We'd love to hear from you. And our first email comes in and it comes in from Miguel Oliveira from Brazil who writes and it says, hello Android faithful crew and wait until you can take a break because this is a three screen email, so let's go with it. First of all, thank you very much for continuing the best Android podcast out there. I listen to you every week on my commute. Thank you, we really appreciate that. He says, I would like to share my thoughts on the Google Pixel tablet and why I believe it is the best option as a smart display. I own a Nest Hub second generation. I have three issues with it. One, it only works in English. Two, it's slow. And three, it takes too many steps to change lights and run routines. And then he breaks down each issue. He says issue one, I am Portuguese. I have a Pixel 6 Pro and my phone allows me to talk with Google Assistant in Portuguese from Portugal. However, none of the Nest products allow me to use my native language. Although the Nest speakers allow me to use Portuguese from Brazil, it's not the same thing. The Pixel tablet would fix this, I assume. All right, so the language barrier there for an international user. Issue number two, every time I touch the Nest Hub it takes a few moments to respond. I have two kids, a seven year old and a five year old. There are scenarios where things need to happen on the fly. I'll explain this in issue three. The Pixel tablet would fix this, I assume. And then he gets to issue three. He says, when it's time for bed, I have a routine that dims the hallway lights and turns on the kids' bedroom lights. During that time, I need to make sure that the kids go to the bathroom, put on their PJs, brush their teeth correctly and don't get on each other's nerves. Every time I have to do the following, I, the Nest Hub, set to show our favorite photos. I have to swipe down, touch home control, select routines, touch the routine I want. For some reason, Google has already reserved the quote-unquote bedtime catchphrase for personal routine, so I cannot use it for household routines. This means that it's not intuitive to say a different catchphrase to start the bedtime routine. Also, I cannot use Portuguese catchphrases. This seems like a me problem, which it is, but my wife's a nurse and some days I'm alone with them both, so all the help to get them sleeping fast is welcome. I'm sure you understand this, Ron. And yes, I absolutely understand it. The having the device do what you need to in the second you needed to do is crucial, especially with a five-year-old, I know what that is like. And Miguel says, the Pixel tablet would fix this, I assume. So I will say, I'll step out of his email for a minute. He's making a lot of assumptions that the Pixel tablet will be superior to the Nest Hub for all these reasons. And he might be right, but whether or not he finds out, he finishes up his email with, the only problem I see with the Pixel tablet is I think it's expensive. In Europe, it costs 679 euros. If it costs 500 euros, it would be a no-brainer for me. I wish Google did what Amazon did with their new products, which actually create a hub for smart devices. I hope Android 14 brings something new in this regard or at least let's hope for Google Home app team to create widgets because they would already be a game changer for me. Keep up the great work. I'll continue to listen to you every single week. Cheers, Miguel Oliveira. And thank you, Miguel, for writing it. Nobody got that, Miguel. Yeah, thank you so much. And you bring up some great points and like, while the Nest Hub and all that sort of stuff, we, you know, I own one, we like it, whatever, we pointed out it's on an older operating system. It was reaching kind of the end of the road. And if you take the approach of the Pixel tablet as a smart display, and like the fact that you could take and pop it off the base and walk around with you and your kids and turn on the routines, it might already be an upgrade for you there. So yeah, so good luck with that. Yeah. Cool. And our last email came in via Patreon, right? Yes, and we have Jeremy writing and saying, did you see this article about the Pixel Watch? With all the talk of Google getting into the smart watch, into the smart watch game with the Pixel brand, I thought I would have heard more about this. And that's from Jeremy via Patreon and yeah, Jeremy's talking about basically, Google Disprup uses to have a repair program for Pixel Watches. So if it breaks, there's no repair program, there's no parts, you just got to get a new watch, which sucks. It is $300, which is not nothing. And of course, not very sustainable. I do have to give, so the article that Jeremy sent to us via Patreon was from Ars Technica, written by the affable Ron Amadigo. With the sub-headline, you're the ones that keep bringing up sustainable hardware. That headline, Google says it can't fix Pixel Watches, please just buy a new one. And with no official repair program and no parts, broken Pixel Watches are just e-waste, which is a bummer really. Yeah, and especially like we just talked about, their winding support for seven years for their Pixel 8. So it just seems very disparate to have smart watches, which everyone is trying to make a thing, which Google is trying to get into the market of and compete with Apple and Samsung is ridiculous. And also, I mean, it's a glass face watch. It doesn't have as much protection as some of the other watches out there. So yeah, it's a bummer, it's a bummer. A Google spokesperson told the Verge, quote, at this moment, we don't have any repair options for the Google Pixel Watch. If your watch is damaged, you can contact Google Pixel Watch Customer Support Team to check your replacement options. So hopefully if they're replacing watches and you're sending in the broken watch and they're replacing it, they are recycling the broken watch and making it sustainable and not just throwing into a hole in Mountain View to a landfill. I doubt they're doing that. It's like a mass grave of Pixel Watches in the back. Exactly, like someone's like, don't go back there. It's full, yes. Let's go, smart watches passed. All right, well, this is a great episode. So much stuff going on. Next week is gonna be even more exciting with the Pixel event, it's gonna be good stuff. But when thank you for braving amidst your condition this week, we really appreciate it. I don't know if you realize at one point instead of saying computer, you said potato. No, aw, did I say that? You did, you corrected yourself, but you meant to say computer and you said potato. It's just... No, no, I did that. Yep. Oh, well, I guess I know what, okay. That's how we'll remember the time you had COVID is when you referred to a computer as a potato. So with that, why don't you tell people where they could find more musings about potatoes? Well, you know, if you want a potato, potatoes, I've got a potato on the potato and you can go to my website, randomlypotatoes.com. Actually, it's randomlytyping.com where I am a potato developer and I talk about potatoes all the time. And yeah, a queen code potato is... I can't believe I did that, Ron. I'm gonna go... You're going so fast too. I didn't want to point it out at the time, but I was like, I'm gonna bring that up at the end of the show. Potatoes. Queen code monkey at things, randomlytyping.com for my stuff. Normally, I'm actually quite accurate and 100% not talking about potatoes. And yeah, it was great. And thanks again to Ramon for coming on. When he was a booster, booster-fied, booster sick. Man, we had a really great show here. Yeah, it was great to have Ramon on and just to get that perspective. And it was so awesome. And so we thank him again for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks for one. Cool. In the meantime, you can find me on social media, whether it's X or Instagram or Maston or Threads or whatever, I'm usually at Ron XO. Instagram's probably where I am most active. Thanks to Win, we've been posting those awesome recaps of the episodes and they're showing up in our feeds. I actually had my photo taken at the music festival. And who knew? It's like the most liked photo on Instagram I've had in years. So people like to see me. So there it is. So good times. So yeah, go follow me on Instagram at Ron XO. Appreciate it. Excellent. And I think that's gonna wrap us up for this week. A quick reminder that you can go to androidfaithful.com where you can find links to the latest episode. You can watch the latest episode on the embedded YouTube. We embed the YouTube video on every episode there. We've got full show notes. We try to put links to our guests and things like that so you can find them. We've got links to all of our social media. I went and added all the social media icons, including Mastodon. So you can go check us out and follow us there. As well as there are links to subscribe on your, I'm gonna have to remove that Google podcast icon. But links to subscribe on the various podcast platforms. And yeah, please check it out. We thank everybody for supporting us and you guys are all awesome. Go to patreon.com slash androidfaithful and that's where you can support us. We've got much of different levels there. Whatever you can afford. We understand times are hard, but we appreciate everybody's support. You guys are our favorite people in the world. And that's gonna wrap us up for this COVID themed episode. This podcast releases every Tuesday night after we record it live. You can watch that along at youtube.com slash daily tech news show. Subscribe, listen to us. We thank everybody. We'll be back next week for our preview of the Google Pixel event. Until next time, we'll see you later. Alrighty.