 Hello, and welcome to an exciting episode of Android faithful your weekly source of news hardware apps and more For all the people who love the wonderful world of Android. I am Ron Richards and with me as always We're into it now and of course it wouldn't be a show without Michelle Raman And we are very very excited to welcome a guest who some of you are probably familiar with You know him you love him. Mr. Jason howl I Was that was that confetti you just threw yeah, because it was so I'm I promise I'm not fishing for happy birthdays But it was my birthday a week ago and so my dad's Littered with confetti and a party hatch these little like clapper things And I wondered why and now I know why so that I throw them at the camera. Hi. It's so good to see you Welcome to the show Jason for those who you DT and s Listeners or watchers that you guys know Jason too But if you don't know we used to do all about Android with Jason and here we are in the new frontier of Android faithful We've been dying to get him on the show And finally the schedules aligned and he was able to come on board so thank you and like without fail We had a staff meeting here at twit that ran long So, you know, we're starting the show it like the normal all about Android time Which was almost always at least a half an hour late. Exactly. I'm just waiting for Burke to text me to yell at me about something So for and again for those of our listeners might not know Jason Jason What should everyone know where you where do you work? What do you do my friend? How are you? I work at a podcast network that you may have heard of called this week in tech or twit And you know, I produce some shows. I host some shows right now. I'm hosting Tech news weekly with Micah Sargent twit.tv slash TNW and then I'm also working on an AI show That's called AI inside and that's been a lot of fun as well. We have a AI story later in today's show They picked just for you Jason. Oh, nice. Yeah Drinking card Composed Yes, we haven't talked about RCS as much. Yeah, it's been a little quieter. Yeah, so All right Well, we'll quick before we dive into the show just want to remind and thank everybody that goes to patreon.com Slash Android faithful for you are the folks that are helping make the show happen We really appreciate everybody who signs up on our patreon and as part of signing up for the patreon every week You get to pick a story that we talked about on the show and it's always fun to see you guys vote some more on that a little later on But with that out of the way, let's get into the show. What do you guys say we Jason? We don't have fancy twit bumpers here. No, so I just say So out of here. I just I just like to say we're gonna just we're just gonna talk about the news and so first up Michelle is gonna tell us what's the look so Android 14 has been a hot topic around here. I don't do you still follow Android Jason or yeah I mean, I will say that I kind of took my foot a little bit off the gas But hey, I still have an Android phone. I don't have the beta installed right now For whatever that's worth, but I did check for an update today, and I got one I just don't think it's the one that we're are you familiar with the fact that it hasn't launched yet Android 14 at least or Thank you, Ron Speaking of the update you you got today. I'm guessing it was probably this the September 2023 security update that rolled out for pixel phones this week Many people were expecting the Android 14 update to have rolled out already But instead we got a new Android 13 based update for pixel phones And this is actually a little bit late because the September patches were announced back on September 5th But now it's September 18th or actually this was yesterday when it rolled out But that's when we got the update and so now many are wondering when is Android 14 coming out? Well, we don't know the exact date, but some people are expecting maybe next month or maybe later this month We don't know for sure But another thing we do know is coming this week is the Android 14 QPR beta the quarterly platform release beta, which Google has said they did say it's coming out the week of September 18th so sometime this week maybe tomorrow it should be on the way and For those of you who are keeping track As to what devices will be getting the Android 14 QPR update the pixel 3 I sorry the pixel 5 and Pixel 5a 5g and later should be getting the update assuming that device is no longer Is not being dropped from the roster Speaking of devices being dropped from the roster though the pixel 4a Is no longer being supported with the monthly security update because Google announced that Way back when it was launched that that device would stop receiving updates with August on August 2023 and later So the September update was not released for the pixel 4a and so so sorry Michelle I had a I had a question for you though so I saw I saw a bunch of chatter about the QPR beta and Everybody basically throwing. I saw a bunch of articles saying Now's your chance to back out of the beta to avoid getting the QPR. Oh Yeah, so it's kind of a mess there so assuming that the Android 14 update was supposed to be released on September 5th That's the assumption that I'm going with The idea was that Android 14 would have been released on that date on September 5th And then the QPR update would be released this week so that anyone who was still on the beta program would have been able to opt out and Receive a stable update and not be forced onto this new beta But because this QPR beta is launching this week and because stable update hasn't released yet People who are still on the Android 14 beta program Will be forced on to the Android 14 QPR beta program Unless you do a complicated process, which is opting out right now Refusing the downgrade Update that's sent to their devices until the stable release comes out because if you take that downgrade package That's sent to your device. It will wipe your device. It will wipe your data and you start all over So you got to opt out and don't do that and wait for the stable release to be pushed out So it's safe to say this point at this at this point Are we are we marking Android 14 as a total disaster before it's even out or what what? I Know like a Like a like the average triple a show, you know a little delayed. Yeah Once it comes out, it's gonna race it like it would erase your device if you do the wrong thing It's gonna erase all the bad badness about it Yeah, well as someone who was on a team who pushed out four fixes in a single day when all of us were stuck at IO I will not say anything bad about this other than Heart sympathy and yeah looking forward to the release this stuff. It probably isn't very easy It's not easy for us to throw tomatoes from the sidelines, but sure I'm sure that I'm sure that behind the scenes There's some sort of panic going on All right, well Michelle anything else on on the September release before we move on or That's pretty much it the fact that the update happened in this kind of weird timeline shenanigans going on and nobody knows Where exactly Android 14 stable is and that's what we're all really here for yep So we're waiting for where in the world is Android 14 stable. That's the question I mean at a certain point. Why don't they just kind of hold on to it and then tag it on to the pixel event Like that's what I think is happening that that's my once they missed the September window My gut was like hey We have a hardware event coming in the early octin in in a couple weeks October 4th in New York City and Jason sure enough I can't even go they booked in on a time when I'm unavailable so but I'm just gonna blame them for that as if they care But my guess is that there'll be there has to be an update there or it happens that day. That's my guess Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right cool. All right. Well Jason. It wouldn't be a show without some numbers right when yeah We have some numbers for you so basically Canalis global technology market marketing market analyst firm has put out a article stating that the North American smartphone shipments Are forecasted to fall 12% in 2023? and Yeah, I mean there's gonna be some uptick in sales kind of based around of course like launching a new models like the pixels and q3 and Yeah, but it basically it's been been I think it's been one of the lowest the lowest Shipped divide like the lowest amount of shit devices in like 10 years or something. Oh, yeah So yeah, I mean if anything you can see the premium segment Which is basically any smartphone costing a thousand dollars or more is still remaining strong And it's kind of like a linchpin for a lot of manufacturers to kind of ride out the instability But kind of not surprising with what we've talked about since you know this whole pandemic thing and just the current economic, you know environment inflation that Things are tough and people are just you know that manufacturer basically having to realign their strategies to both kind of Try to continue to drive, you know premium upgrades and premium purchases But also trying to figure out what the head to do with mess in the mass market and folks that aren't looking to buy You know premium phones The canal says say that smartphone shipments They do expect them to recover slightly in 2020 24 by about 3% But I mean don't really look to you know the numbers getting anywhere near You know like pre 2021 numbers anytime soon. So and this is industry-wide. This isn't just Android This is because Apple's taking a hit too. I mean, you know, so we just came off of an Apple event Jason What is your what's what's your take on the state of smartphones right now? Well, what well, I mean smartphones. I feel like I feel the kind of slowed down I feel like you know in the past couple of years we've had these these foldables to be the kind of the distraction of or the example of like what is innovation and I think the The market is mixed on whether people really truly believe that foldables are the innovation that people are looking for I think at the end of the day really smartphones are a thing that we all have had for long enough to for them to Kind of for for the excitement about them to kind of slow down a little bit Having said that when I look at this report There is a kind of a glimmer of hope for Google that Google's market share grew from 2% To 4% so doubled their market share in a year. That's that's not bad I mean 4% isn't a giant, you know market share Yeah, it's going from 2 you're going 2% growth, but still and that we haven't had their hardware event like Google and you'll be a 8% There's a really cool dichotomy here and I liked what so one of the analysts from Canalis Lindsay Upton called it the Premiumization game, you know and a lot of the premium market is being driven by of course iPhone and Samsung and first You know any iPhone and Samsung foldables and that yeah There she's you know kind of noting that the kind of catch up in other OEMs trying to kind of get into the premium market and be like Contenders in that premium space, but on the flip side, you know, we talked a lot about like flip side Oh, I didn't mean to do darn it Why don't they on the on the other side on the other end of the spectrum? You know because of like market volatility and kind of change in user spending habits, you know consumption and this kind of like Lindsay Upton mentions along get a refresh dials stock cycles and decline declining carrier subsidies There's like and the like business to have to focus on quote a more sustainable like business model model for kind of like the non premium market And yeah, just like it kind of also driven by you know, as we've noted like a lot of like regulations And just like customer intent. So like right to repair You know replaceable batteries all the kind of stuff So there's like a really kind of interesting tug and pull between like hey Like the rest like people that not aren't in the premium market want to keep their phones longer How do businesses deal with that while still driving, you know, all of their crazy premium devices? So interesting time Also, this is great. So I'm also kind of curious how the reentry of Potentially the reentry of Huawei into the smartphone ecosystem will actually upend things because as we talked about last week Like they kind of shocked the world with their new devices that are powered by a Seemingly unlabeled 5g capable chipset, and you know, what would happen if Huawei was just unleashed on the world again Like they were a force to be reckoned with And that is not sketchy at all But yeah, do you think do you think they can retain do you think they can get back what they once were if they lifted that I I suppose so right they can climb up. They have the capability. They made some seriously impressive hardware I mean, they still do make some seriously impressive hardware It's just they were severely hampered by you know, losing access to those chip technologies and Google apps. Yeah We'll see. All right Well, next story is a middle-aged nostalgia pick because Jason over the decade-plus that we podcasted together talk about Android I feel like every three years we talked about Nokia in some way shape or form. Yeah, right? It's like it's like a bad thing and then at a certain point it was still recurring. It's like It's like a bad penny that coming back, right? Well, here we are. It's back sort of kind of this is like a reverse Nokia The people who make the current Nokia phones HMD, they're gonna launch their own smartphone phone brand They've decided to move on from the not not necessarily move on but Part you know kind of do something different than the Nokia branded HMD global Which is based out of Finland and they produced the Nokia branded smartphones and they've said, you know They said it's been a great journey as HMD the home on the key of phones an exclusive position We've held for the past six years an exclusive position everyone mind you like was the last time in six years You saw a Nokia phone that mattered But they're taking they're taking their next step of their journey and they're gonna enter the market independently and no information as to whether What those products will be what HMD will look like if they're gonna call it HMD or HMD global or some other brand or something like that But sure enough they're gonna try to they're gonna try to be on their own outside of the Nokia shadow. So What are the Nokia phones right now? Are they are they the mid-rangers like our Nokia devices right now kind of decidedly mid-range or budget to mid budget to mid-tier According to this article in the verge, you know the Nokia C32 in that budget to mid-tier I don't know how much exactly they they they cost but they definitely are affordable and I got to imagine They are more, you know, it's being a Finland based like this is another one where it's like It's more of a global brand than what we see domestically, right? Yeah Yeah, we certainly don't see a whole lot of Nokia energy these days I mean we get like you said we keep seeing that HMD is like really leaning into the fact that it's got the Nokia namesake and it's producing phones that have it on there is purely nostalgia For a certain group of people, but then there's a lot of people that like don't even understand the nostalgia around Nokia because it was so long ago So I don't know it's a really interesting brand in this day and age to to know whether that actually works well for them Or not and I will give cousin of jaw in the chat props for HMD hold my droid That's a good one. So all right. Well, there you go. There's a little Nokia for you, Jason. So thank you. I was waiting. Yes was thirsting Well, it is now time for the patron pick so every Monday we post three new stories And our lovely lovely patrons who we adore and thank you very much for their support Get to vote and pick on which one we discuss And I mean would you call that a landslide? I mean like that's a very hefty win So what did we have sorry? Well, so we had so google file users get get easier google one access got 24% of the vote Oh rip surface duo support window 22% of the vote but with you know a decent simple majority We got 54 picking pixel tablets hair down Emptier than you think Uh, so when I first suggested this I did not know that this I didn't notice or kind of miss that This actually started as a ron a mario write up. So of course, there's a lot of wonderful ron takes about What's going on inside the pixel tablet? And basically so So this kind of started as a good thing right because google and iFix it have been partnering to kind of create, you know, like This kind of going back again to like the right to repair a more repairable, you know ecosystem by providing, you know guides and and just official support Well a side effect of that is Now you can see inside of a pixel tablet and hold on I had to I have to read you some ron a mario quotes ron notes that quote It's a little odd because the inside of this tablet looks like it was made in someone's garage with a 3d printer. Um, so So for uh audio stream listener only folks kind of like the thing some of the main things that are being pointed out that might be a little bit strange or Maybe less what is it? What how we say less premium or just surprising about the inside of the pixel tablet is that there's a lot of Empty space if you once you take this the display or once you take the cover And the display off you can see a lot of the kind of white backing plastic that is in fact Just the back of the pixel tablet. Um, there are a lot of foam blocks that seem to be adding stability And actually, you know plays holders in side of the tablet and kind of I guess very easy to see is There are a lot of wires like connecting wires where normally they would kind of be you know grouped together Maybe laid over components kind of in a neat way. Um, it kind of looks like your typical Custom pc bill where you're seeing red white and blue wires just kind of braided together It does look a little radio shack home like make your own tablet kit a little bit a little bit Um, and there's a lot of space. Um, and so You know, I don't know. I've never made personally made a pixel tablet So I I'm not going to judge but it is there is some wondering about what case of why is there so much space like Um, are these components that were for a smaller or less like rugged device put into a larger case like larger, you know, um housing Yeah, why or is it or or is it a testament to the state of hardware manufacturing that the components have gotten so smaller That when making a 10 or 11 inch tablet that you're going to end up with with empty space Yeah, that that's kind of what I was thinking like When I think of I mean, I've never made a tablet before but when I'm thinking of you know, the design of a tablet I'm not thinking I'm going to make this tablet so that the stuff inside fits it perfectly I'm thinking I want the tablet to be this size And then I need it to do these things which means these components. How do we fit these components in there? Maybe they were just really efficient with the components that they put in there I don't know like or is that a strange take? I mean, I don't own a pixel tablet But I do remember being at IO and and having one in my hands. It did not feel as hollow as like an on on on on a tablet Feels very empty and hollow right like it felt significant enough And I think at the end of the day the the vast majority of people aren't going to crack these things open So it probably doesn't matter if that's okay Well, so I and I think it's worth sharing because when when you did your research here And we got the iFixit guide to replacing a battery on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Which which is too, which is that's the earliest latest version I could get but sure. Yeah, definitely less space It's just interesting to see the comparison and like we've got folks in the chat popping in like someone named Burke Maybe I don't know This random gentleman named Burke saying that electrons are usually not a bunch of separate boards So that's maybe worth noting and and kind of some of the criticisms that people have laid at the feet of the pixel tablet are kind of The the counter that are seen here like again the wires being laid kind of laid over components and As killbot 404 and other folks have noted But if there's so much space could that not mean bigger battery bigger storage more? Give me a headphone. Give me a headphone jack. Come on. Oh courage for it. So that's pushing it Ron I mean right there. I can I so I can I tell you Jason. Have you gotten to play with the pixel tablet at all? Have you gotten your hands on release? No just at iO. So I I did get one and I have it in fact I traveled I went to Chicago this past weekend and actually traveled with it and I gotta tell you like I like it but intuitively Stuff feels wrong And basically what I mean is that like in looking at this photo of the pixel tablet, right pretend the screen is here And when you're holding it landscape position not portrait, right? The charging port the usb-c port is on the left side Okay, and instinctively I want it to be on the right side because when I rotate it 90 degrees to hold a portrait I want to plug in at the bottom and I find myself plugging in at the top now sure I could rotate it the opposite direction 90 degrees and then that's fine But for but the way my case is here. I have it right here Like the way the way the the I have a spec case And the way it's set up is the camera is on the upper right side And so if I tilt it It just all feels backwards. It feels like somebody left-handed made this no offense anyone left-handed But you know what I mean like it or like or like the Somebody designed it in a mirror, you know what I mean like it just feels like everything feels like it's in the wrong spot Like the volume rocker and the power buttons on the upper right hand corner when I want it to be on the upper left Like it just it's it's very kind of strange. So Yeah, um, yeah, audience listeners just just take a look at some of the maybe go to iFix and check it out But yeah, I mean it is noticeable just kind of the difference in what the samsung Seven looks like and even if you look at an ipad breakdown how things are a little more kind of cohesive again Not hardware designers here, but you look like a lot of disparate parts I just wanted to actually note that kind of ron did some speculation that he wonders whether The pixel tablet really did start off as a proper smart display And you know, we've talked about this on this show and other shows about kind of like the the weird Migration from smart display slash, you know, google assistant, you know emphasis to Other things and then so ron speculations that maybe the google The pixel tablet start off as a proper smart display and because of like business changes or even like other product changes last minute or Not so well planned out that that's why the inside looks different than other tablets. So I don't know Yeah, could be you know that that person named burq Whoever he was, you know, that was a pretty smart comment I mean when I was After he said that comment and I was kind of looking at the picture I was like, okay, it really does kind of look like these things were just like tacked into place like I don't know right There yeah, sure It lines up right here. Look at fix it with some glue I mean, it it does look like like I said it looks like in radio shack You can get a build your own radio kit, right and it tells you where to put everything. That's what it does look like It's very odd It does have like foam blocks in it like which again Don't want to like just rag on someone for making a good, you know solution to a hard problem But does it feel like a five hundred dollar tablet? I think that's kind of my point is like at the end of the day if it's sealed up And it works and it does the trick like how much does it matter? I mean, maybe there's a reason for this to matter and and i'm missing it Pay no attention to the wires behind the curtain or the lack thereof All right, and just real quickly just for parody's sake We found a tear down of an ipad and so you can see the inside of an ipad is much more I mean Audio stream listeners, but it's funny because there there is a big sign that says this is weird It's more just commenting on very specific parts of like the ipad 10 versus the ipad air design But it's pretty full. I mean, it's pretty dense and I don't know in there. I don't know Not a hardware designer If you are a hardware designer write in and let us know is this weird Are we being mean or is this is make a lot of sense? It's just yeah, if you've opened up other devices You're like, yeah, that's normal. Let us know and also, what's it like being a hardware designer? Yeah, do you want to come on the show and talk about it? We'd love to hear That's right. We're just we're just a bunch of jerks over here opining and giving hot takes also. How does it pay? No All right So that was the patron pick and reminder you go to patreon.com slash android faithful sign up there at any level And you get to participate every week. We love everybody who votes on that. It's so much fun Um So with that, uh, there would be a bumper here where we would talk about hardware But instead I'm just going to throw it to mr. Michelle All right, so first up on the hardware is the news that dropped from, um, camilla I'm always mispronounced her last word jacalska, but uh, camilla won't just houseka We'll go with that For android authority that talks about the roadmap for the tensor chipsets that are coming in the future You know, I know you all know that by now. Hopefully that the pixel 8 is launching on october 4th next month But this article is not talking about the chip that's going in the pixel 8 This article is talking about the chip that's going in the pixel 9, which is coming out next year And it basically the gist of it is that um, if you are looking forward for You know, it's significant performance improvement in the pixel 9's chip Um, unfortunately, it looks like that won't be happening If you're looking for google's custom chip to actually result in something super fast and super performant having all custom cpu and everything It looks like that might be coming in the year after In order in other words the pixel 10 or 2025 tensor g5 series So, uh, this article is a is a great read. It's very technical. It goes over like how google partnered with samsung to co-design the tensor chipset the various components went through the pixels tensor chip And you know the ip blocks, you know the gpu the the npu the dsp the all these other things You know if you're really interested in the silgon the necruity hardware aspects It's a great read But uh, yeah the gist of it is next year No super custom The next year after is super custom stuff My main takeaway from this was that I like the fact that google like we got away from dessert code names for android version But we've got beach code names for tensor chips We've got redondo and laguna and zuma like we've got some good beach names here So they gotta have like some theme to wrap all their products around apparently Exactly This is a thing like engineers love to just find like really intricate esoteric or just very specialized naming scheme for things And we stick with it forever. It's just our thing. Don't take it away from us. Make us happy Yeah, but the the thing about and to get to get less serious from the from the naming I'm not surprised. I mean michelle. I don't know if you're surprised, but I'm not surprised by this because like I believe jason or when I think we I don't know We we this is a more recent all about androidism But we said hardware is hard right like making system making a system on a check has got to be It's a generational thing and especially like and this great article goes in depth with it But the relationship with samsung and what they learn from samsung and what can they do on their own? Like it is it's not something that iterates very quickly It is like within years right because they got a they got to design it They got to make it they got to use all the chips they make before they make another one, right? I mean, I don't know like am I am I wrong to be not surprised by this and or patient in this process or I mean supply chain problems and murphy's law only goes but go ahead. Sorry michelle probably No, I mean, yeah, absolutely This these things take years to develop like they're working on this stuff The chips that they're working on now won't come out until like 2025 2026 like These are years in advance. They're making especially custom cpu design There's a reason that's so very rare and the reason like samsung gave up Was just because it was very very hard like they had their custom Mongoose cpu they had a whole center and r&d center in austin that was developing all this stuff But then they gave up and now they're using largely qualcomm chips throughout their devices I think they still do make some x-nose chips in their samsung flagship sold in a couple of markets like korea But even those are using arms, you know off the shelf cpu designs. They're no longer using samsung's custom designs I have a question then about along that that line is if they're If google's trying to create its own first like first top to bottom head to toe chip and release it Years down the line And this this might be a question that none of us even have any clue the answer to I know I don't I'm baffled on this How do they know that that chip years down the line is going to be competitive with anybody else's chip years down the line How do you even know that it's a good question? That's a good question It's actually like really relevant. They don't know like right now They're just comparing the chip that they have and they're comparing it against the current generator the current market Like the qualcomm there was a report from this semi conductor Research firm semi analysis that talked about the qualcomm's custom chip that's coming in their laptops like their orion cpus And they said they were comparing it with the m1 slash m2 chip But apple is already on the m3 which is significantly more powerful So like by the time qualcomm's chipset comes out, which is we don't know. I think maybe next year. We'll see it in products It's already going to be competitive with the m2 But like apple will already be well underway close to releasing their maybe m4 by that time Yeah, that's wild This is not quite the same thing But it kind of reminds me also about you know, especially like in the last few years You've heard about like whiskey or like bourbon kind of like long like things with a Products with like a long tail where you have no idea what the demand is going to be when you start making something And then the actual the liquid the liquid sorry No, these are google products You know whiskey I I did say engineers like to theme their names But it's such an interesting thing where you make a product and you will have no idea what the demand or the success or You know what the turnaround is going to be be for that product years years from now It's just interesting. Um, I never thought about it from a tech perspective before just usually like, oh Yeah, yeah, making bourbon's heart. That's always chips Now I want now I want bourbon. Oh, yeah Good right now All right. Um, well, cool. Well, thank you. Michelle. That's a great flag is great article. Everyone should go check it out Um, really really great job. If you want to get deep into it. It's over on android authority.com. Check that out Um, but we were talking uh, nokia. We were talking about how they're in uh, those phones were in the mid range to budgetier Over the years I've been a big fan of what motorola has been doing for the mid range and here they are their back Um, you know, we're in that time of year where it's the you know It's the fall and everyone's announcing their new phones and whatnot And motorola offered up some new mid-range phones in the form of the motorola edge 40 neo The moto g 84 5g and the moto g 54 5g And these all all these phones come in and I can go through and read all the specs You can check my effort for the mid-range for me. It's the price they come in somewhere between, you know High 200 to high 300 like the motor all edge 40 neo is $375 which is just for you know, as we're talking about, you know $1,000 plus flagship phones or $1,800 foldable phones. It's nice to know that there are You know motorola and other manufacturers are making phones that are affordable to the folks that can't afford the big You know kind of flagship one and the specs and all this stuff like that are pretty they're not they're not bad They're they're decent phones as far as I'm concerned So good job on motorola for continuing the g-line I think it's an important spot in the android marketplace for sure So it's nice to see that they they are still out there Sexy colorways too I gotta say motorola tends to be pretty pretty good with like the aesthetics of it And there are some just really nice colorways out and I just they just look nice. Yeah, they look good They they definitely I feel like the the the motor the moto g line has has matured nicely All right, it's got look it looks like got a nice little mock-a-dial Yeah, the tail probably would love this. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so Vegan leather finishing and lifelike entertainment features in the moto g 54 5g And then you've got this wonderful. Oh my gosh deep red with the moto g 84 Irresistible design ultra pixel camera and 256 giga storage And yeah, once again, you won't find I mean, are there any phones out there that are closer to a osp You know stock android than motorola motorola keeps a lot of the bloat off of there. So that's pretty good Cool All right, so that's a little bit on the moto mid-range, right Yeah, and we'll finish up hardware with a watch roundup So we talked a little bit about google kind of given a sneak peek of the pixel watch 2 Last week and we've got a few more rumors about other things that might be packing Maybe packed inside the pixel watch 2. Um, we already talked about the electro dermal activity eda sensor for Managing your stress and tracking at how stressed you might be And not only that, but there also be a skin temperature sensor according to Sources that will allow for kind of beyond what the fit bet does now Which is kind of skin temperature overnight tracking as part of like general health friends You should be able to now check your skin temperature on the man and still have that history Now that might seem a little bit much But what I absolutely love is that the speculation is that this kind of more rigorous temperature tracking could be used for menstrual tracking Which is, you know, um, I think is an awesome kind of increasingly Increasingly kind of covered like area of health with all these like, you know, new like health devices. Um, samsung talked about it a little bit Um, so, uh, health aside. Oh, sorry and one more thing the exercise ui will have a more Engaging uh heart rate displayed while you're doing your exercise ui So if you're doing your runs you're rowing your your cardio and you got to stay in that zone too to get your vo2 max up Something about the ui will just make you work harder or stronger faster better. I don't know something about it will be more engaging Um, but not just exercise, but also personal safety the current pistol chip already a pixel watch rather Already has a couple of personal safety features like hard fall detection An emergency sos feature where you hit the crown five times real quick succession and it um, uh, does emergency dialing So the pixel watch two will kind of add on top of that And not just that but we will try to make these features as standalone as possible So a lot of these features if you have lte and if you have an active data plan They should work without the phone. So these will include things like um car crash detection, which we already have on the pixel phone Um, and I'll also have um, I didn't write down with the name of the feature called But basically when it detects a crash your core medical information will just be displayed on your watch In the case that emergency medical That's pretty cool. Uh, uh, Technicians need to kind of see it at a glance which is amazing. Um, this also will include emergency sharing where your location can be shared With trusted emergency contacts And then safety check which is another feature that pairs with you know, pixel phone where you can basically set a countdown And once that count then expires You the the feature will actually ask you hey, are you all right? And if you have not responded your emergency contacts will be notified and again Well, this is a pixel phone feature it will be added to The pixel watch 2 as a standalone um Feature if you have an lte plan and an active data plan or if you have the lte device and an active data plan So, um, that's all great. Um translation is coming back to the pixel watch 2 Um, it's been away for a while once, you know, where os stopped having the google translate app But it looks like with other things that are being re-emphasized or re-enter through google assistant Translation will be part of the google assistant um, and yeah, it does look like it will be independent of having the phone with you So again, just the continuing thread of and theme of hey stuff you can do without your phone on your watch Uh, and yeah watch unlock is is hopefully coming soon. We talked about this when we covered ces 2023 on all about android um, the code is there and it was built on a 13 android 13 api, but Uh, it might be held hostage by the release of android 14, but it's common and nine to five google Uh, gun ended by google's apk insight team unlocked it. Uh, yeah unlocked watch unlock Uh, to show you what it's like. Uh, you can go to the article to see kind of a Some snap of some snap screenshots of the actual setup process But kind of what we've already talked about where you know, it's meant to kind of fill gaps in authentication Like if you have wet hands or if of course you're masked, uh, why would you I'm not going to make that joke? It's been a long pandemic But you know kind of like kind of trying to make it for odd situations where you know, the usual and authentication methods don't work Um, your wearable must be unlocked on your wrist and within four inches And of course it might be slightly less secure google warns and traditional face fingerprint and strong pattern recognition um, and it might affect the battery slightly but um Within four inches four inches So how is it doing that? Is that you wb? I think just bluetooth received signal strength. So just uh, uh, oh the signal strength. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Um And yeah, oh and finally, um So that's oh, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, see before we move on to the next watch thing Jason, are you tracking the pixel event coming up in october? Are you are you? Yeah, are you excited for the new watch? What are you what are you? Well, i'm excited for anything that they have going on at the new event and i'll be getting whatever the new phone is Apparently google really loves their temperature sensors because they've got it in the watch and they're going to have it in the date pro What are they all about? They've got a they've got a watch that the watch makes sense. They've got a box of them in the Off in the office at mountain view. They're like listen. We got all these temperature sensors put it in something 2023 is all about temperature What I was shocked and what I was shocked is that one of those spots in the tablet was supposed to be a temperature sensor And they didn't put it in and so tablet He was joking I was cool because I would have believed it I mean, I do like the theme though of and I Ron didn't you mentioned this like especially for like pocket Like for podcasts and stuff like being able to do a lot more with with just the watch And it seems like they're really coming for that kind of uh category of user with the pixel watch too For sure. Yeah jason the pocket cast wearos app is finally out. So maybe I'll give Maybe I'll give that a shot. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah, so It'll recommend different podcasts depending on how warm you are You're stressed out here is a here's a meditation podcast Don't listen to this political podcast right now, but you know, leave me if there's any way through the api to do that Someone's gonna do oh troll. I like that trolling trolling your stress. It's not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea So, um, all right. Well, that's not the only watch news that's out there, right? No, we've got a real quick peek at a show me entry into the arena with a show me watch 2 pro Not much information just yet, but they made an x tweet next x post September 18th, but yeah, um the show me launch event in September 22 We will have information on the show me watch 2 pro So if you are able to get a show me watch 2 pro keep your eyes out for that and and the big news on this is that it's I mean, it's running wearos, right? It is. Yes. Yeah, so There you go. Very interesting to see jammy yet in the in the wearable game Yeah, wonders amounts of watch news the wearables. All right x. All right. Cool. Well, that's gonna wrap it up for hardware Um, and so we we like to talk about apps on the show jason. I don't know I know the old show didn't really talk about apps as much, but uh, we made a concerted effort to talk about apps here So five your show you can do whatever you want with it But um, I saw this pop up last week after we finished last week's show and I was like, oh We got to talk about that especially jason since you're coming on and you're working on the AI show um The fine folks at swifki on the swifki beta Now let you generate AI images from swifki directly And I thought this was really interesting because last week we talked about Google's AI implementations in gboard where they're enabling AI driven, you know, kind of rewrite, you know, kind of Grammar checks and kind of, you know, that sort of thing like AI getting more integrated to the keyboard But here microsoft who now own swifki And is very big on AI is Enabling the big AI image creator, which is powered by dolly to generate images right from swifki Which is kind of crazy now jason, you know a lot about this AI stuff. Oh, I know everything I'm an AI expert at this point. I have to do a podcast sort of for like two months. I know Is dolly a good option is being being doing a good job on the AI or is this like would this be something you would use Or what do you I mean, I think I think this makes sense You know microsoft owns swifki microsoft owns bing AI is a really big deal right now And I think I think all of the major companies that have any sort of foot in the AI space Which is basically all of them because it's the hot thing right now Is looking for any way to integrate and and make it so that you don't have to go to a destination to do that AI thing The AI thing is already baked into the thing you're using already So I think I think it makes perfect sense for you know swifki to do this google Like you said doing it with their messages Thing and not to mention like when it comes to messaging so often we're presented with with these things that we want to say or or a feeling we want to present and Thus far our solution has been emoji or it's been an animated gif It's already been created or it's you know been a screenshot that somebody's already made or you come up with it You know and you have to like go into a separate app and create it I mean this actually makes a ton of sense to me It's like well the feeling I have is a magician jump jumping into a swimming pool and poof you get it You know or whatever create your own illustration somewhat. Yeah. Yeah created on the fly. I think it makes perfect sense Yeah, what I want to know is Is a how many gallons of water? Uh, it does microsoft data center use every time I send my friend a meme. Yeah, that's true That's a really good point. I mean Yeah, as as these things get baked into everything like the amount of water That it takes to you know to drive it in the back. Yeah the back end Sorry, I miss that joke completely Yeah, it was kind of just the harsh reality of like every time one of these ai models are running in like their data center And it requires a lot of water to cool. Yeah all these servers. So like oh, okay How much water am I wasting literally by making a meme with this keyboard? It's it's generally yeah, generally the the the the the drain much like nfts But the drain that ai has on on servers and data centers is a real, you know economic not economic Ecological impact right over time, right? Yeah. Oh, it's an interesting framing I always thought of it as like the actual just general just energy consumption, but yeah Oh, well, so there was even a study about chat gpt and the amount of water that it generates and just training it alone A chat gpt3 Consumed 185,000 gallons of water Equivalent to the amount of water needed to cool a nuclear reactor. What? That's news to me Yeah, the environmental impact of all this ai stuff These are the things you learn on android faithful. So Well, I feel like we got a rant coming up So I was not happy to see this so um Y'all might have uh, remember that I we did have a pixel tablet Actually, uh, if you were all about android fans and watched the last episode You know that I have a pixel tablet in my house, which um, kind of probably flew off the dock My legacy at twit. Um, and that I generally speaking my husband and I are We're our huge fans of smart displays and we love our google nest hub max Um, and kind of basically expected the pixel tablet to be that which it is not Um, so to my further chagrin I found I read this article from the verges week saying that uh, Basically people have been getting messages that google is going to act support for google meet and zoom on its nest hub max smart displays. So Um, there's a little bit of nuance here basically for google meet. You can't join meetings From the nests max display anymore. You can make do one to one to one calls But you cannot join meetings with a call a join meeting google like kind of join google meets With a code anymore starting september 28th And if you happen to be using zoom on your google nest hub max that support will end very soon september 30th 2023 Um, and I mean, I know there's not a big deal I don't know how many people are taking zoom calls from the nest hub max But it's just yet another like nail in the coffin for me because you know, they already stopped affring games You know, they've definitely been you know distancing themselves from kind of like these like smart hub displays and really emphasizing You know the more kind of on phone on tablet stuff. Um, And of course my disappointment is the tablet. I mean my my first question here is why And I always got to go back to these decisions don't get made lightly No, or maybe they do I know it's google. What do we know? I should know better, but but um, but you know like I wonder if people just aren't using it Yeah, michelle. I mean we are sorry I mean the nest hub max and all the other nest hub devices are running a completely different operating system Like they're not running android So right it requires some level of support and active development on zoom and you know google's end to continue supporting these apps I mean, they're not going to do it indefinitely, but on a platform like android You know, you can't imagine zoom is dropping support for android anytime soon So that's why I kind of see like the pixel tablet as a successor platform Is something that will have much longer longevity even though google says when they launch a pixel tablet We're not replacing the nest hub. Well, you look at this news and you're like Well, is does this thing have much more future if they're just dropping apps and features left and right? Yeah, that's kind of what I'm I'm pissed about basically like I totally get what you're saying and I get And especially as like someone working at a software company I get it at some point if some people are not using your product It makes no sense to invest money on it and you have to migrate people to other things I totally get it I'm just disappointed because I think that these that the experience that we're getting through things like the pixel tablet Just don't compare to The kind of like many years of really cool features like and really like smart Like I think the smart display experience on the nest hub max is is awesome Like things like even just saying Stop to stop your damn dang alarm and even like the way that certain things work on the nest hub max are We're really geared towards it living on your device. Yeah home device And I totally get it. I just wish they had put more efforts or I at least or maybe I hope that they put more effort into transferring some of that more seamless home Experience into the tablet than they currently have And also just to put a final point. This is a little bit different But now if you are the kind of person who like to kind of create speaker groups with your google home devices We do you are now actually only limited to one group. So before Any nest device any any nest device in your home could be added to multiple speaker groups So you could have one for every single speaker in your house or have one for just kitchen bathroom, whatever Now you are limited to one although this is a little bit different This has a lot to do with the uh legal issues with sonos Sonos steel Which which kind of took away like using the physical rocker to change, you know, the volume of groups So it's a little different, but you can kind of see like well again kind of maybe justifying it for google There's a lot of negatives to keeping nest around. So I am it just seems like an albatross I mean jason i'm watching you shake your head at this one. Oh, it's just disappointing I mean, you know, it's one of those features that At that at this point is just feels like table stakes and yet You can't do it and I get I get it like, you know, it's the it's the lawsuit and Everything but I mean, what is sonos doing at this point like seriously like sonos has got to you know Kind of command this this type of feature like are they are they relevant anymore? I don't know sour grapes I don't actually have You know nest. Well, no, I have google home speakers Yeah, never mind. I'm pissed No, we do and I I think I I mean sonos has all rights to their art to their ip as they do But I will give it to you that I am very much less invested in we have a sono We have a we have a sono setup a little bit for some parts of the house I am very much less invested in it than I ever was in my nest hub max I mean, I love that thing and I was hoping to just like play with it until Came to come but oh well Bye. Bye. Bye smart display. All right experience. Um, cool. Well, uh Michelle you got the next story as I as I try to tee it up for you There we go Yeah, so for those of you who don't know, um in the gboard app You've been able to use the emoji kitchen feature to basically create a mashup of whatever emojis you want Like whatever comes to imagination Um now google is bringing that to the web So if you just type in like emoji kitchen into search you can mash up emojis to your heart's content the available options aren't as Numerous as they are in the gboard app or android But if you're an iphone user or you just you know on a pc now you can do the same now you can create an emoji kitchen Um creation or abomination or whatever you want to call it and copy paste it send it to your friends over Whatever messaging app you want to use and there's one thing I saw on twitter like I have to show if you're on video Here we go. This is amazing. Like I love the things you can create with emoji kitchen He had like this mean looking face the adorable turtle emoji and then you create this The really the meanest looking adorable turtle. I've ever seen so I so just to give me again our audio listeners Everyone knows the purple devil emoji, right? Like the little purple devil That's the the purple face merged with a turtle to make a devil turtle Um, uh and shout out to quad spawning on to on x or twitter on that But yeah, you can see throughout this whole thread people making you know a pine tree and a whale to make a pine tree whale Um, yeah, it's crazy or uh, if you combine the fire emoji with a pig you apparently get bacon It's great. There's some really smart ones. Um, if if y'all know what monkey bread is It's like this kind of like uh, kind of loaf you make where you can like pull it pull it apart If you do monkey plus bread, it actually shows you monkey like the actual monkey bread the actual kind of yeah So anyway, it's awesome. It's a kitchen. Yeah, all right, and a little more for monkey bread I'm hungry. I haven't Michelle we got a little more productive last app note for everyone, right? Yeah, so a couple of months ago google, um, announced the rollout of the playstores app archiving feature Which would basically let you um Uninstall the app but keep its data in case you want to reinstall it later and when you have more space But that feature was only opt-in at the time of whenever you were running out of storage And you tried to install an app google would offer to archive some apps so that you could free of space to install that app Now what they're rolling out is a new toggle in playstores settings that lets you opt-in to the app archiving feature Um without having to go through that without having to Have low storage and then going to install an app. So that's basically all they did Unfortunately right now you can't manually archive an app So you can't just like go to your app list and then say I want to archive this archive this app and use it for later, um But yeah, if you want to opt in now, you can do that in settings and uh jason this is just to Catch you up to the android faithful world. This is a new part of the drinking game is when an article references michael's tweets I mean Michelle you're prolific I I swear half the articles that I do read I see you mentioned somewhere in there. I'm continually impressed Yeah, I'm a little I'm a little leery, but not just in the drinking game because I think we're all going to get poisoning soon If we had bourbon whiskey then it'd be it'd be fine. So yeah, we just sip then yes All right When you run across michelle's name in an article and he mentioned it on the show Do you refer to michelle's if he's not on the show with you? like oh michelle ramon of android faithful reports Anyways, there was there was one week when he wasn't on the show and where we had like four stories that all References tweets so it was almost like that. Yeah, it's just like much else here Yeah All right, cool Well, let's go wrap it up for apps and now we're gonna get in some of your emails As always we like to hear from everybody you can write into us at contact at android faithful.com We love to hear from you And before I get into the first email which is a reaction to last week's episode Jason have you did you use beeper? Have you been on the beeper bandwagon or did you play with it? Yeah, I'm on the beeper bandwagon. I actually installed it. Um Probably like a week and a half ago, but I still can't get it to like sync up with my iMessage or my my messages on my mac Yeah, so I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I want it I want it to work. You got some beeper problems. I tried. Yeah Yeah, well, so last week we had a uh, someone write in So a couple of weeks ago. We had someone on the show brendan bigly talking about beeper Um Sharing his experience with it. We had someone write in last week Who wanted to get on beeper so we can kind of close the book on this story because he wrote back in Brandon wrote in and said thank you guys for your help on getting to use beeper I found their twitter as you recommended and upon searching found this link, uh, which is a link to There to reddit where people are sharing invite and referral codes Um, and he says it's not so close now. He hopes everyone gets to use it I just set it up today. We'll be putting it through his paces. Thanks for the awesome recommendation Brandon And I love when this happens when like someone writes in we give some feedback And then they they get what they want they got the app they want But that this story doesn't end here because we also got an email from adam j who wrote and said I'm a long time beeper user and they gave us invite codes to share with others I'd be happy happy to give brandon one of them and these emails came in back to back And so like brandon wrote in and then I immediately got adam's email right after it So I was able to tell adam no brandon's all set. He's good, but um, uh, it was just great to see so if you're looking for beeper Go to reddit, uh, and there's a sub reddit for beeper It's reddit.com slash r slash beeper and there's people sharing invite referral codes And that's a real easy good fun way to get uh to get directly into beeper, which is awesome So yeah, I love when that that happens. It's like the the best way the stories can go so Um, all right, cool. And then we got one more email Yes, and this email is from Derek in illinois. Hello af crew if I can call you that The past few weeks you guys have covered the phone that is designed to be carried as a purse It looks like case mate already has an offering for the iphone with a similar style of carrying It takes a very brave soul to hang their iphone by its charge port and a plastic case Love the new show and the android faithful name Derek Jason have you seen the honor? I'm sorry to talk about this for like the third week in a row, but I love it. I love it I know too. Jason. Have you seen the honor v purse? No, the honor v purse Well, I'll pull it up right now. Hang on. So first off. This is the honor v purse jason. Oh my god It is a wraparound foldable That has two hooks for chains And it has a it has a display That um shows the pattern of a purse and also it can move with the phone moves or like as if you're touching it Yeah, you can have little charms hanging off of it and presumably they have physics as well Uh, and it originally was announced as a concept phone and then two weeks later It's in production. It'll be like a launch september Wait real soon. Actually, it's a real soon real soon. Wow, I think might might have been released today Fast-tracking that thing. It's such a great idea. They're fast-tracking it. Yeah so here So for our video viewers and our audio viewers the the e-mailer wrote in uh with this case from casemate which uh attaches to an iphone and uh, it gives you a stylish Chain for you to hang your phone by uh, not so much a purse more as a necklace or whatever Invited you to reimagine how you carry your phone Yeah, and you have to plug it into the charge port in the case Which is great because you know when someone starts really yanking on that, you know a chain that's exactly the kind of Place on the phone that you want to apply a lot of force to anyway Yeah, well i'm like I don't know why it matters to me to figure this out But i'm like seriously like it only plugs into the charge port. It does look like it has A little bit of a further attachment kind of designed to it. So Thankfully, I don't think you're just like plugging it in hoping There's a little bit of a fastening to it. Um, it's more than meets the eye Yeah, it's like a transformer. Yeah kind of yeah like a really pretty over-the-shoulder transformer I I really hope we can get our hands on one because I I just want to carry it around for a week and to see how messed up that phone gets in my hands Do like a 20 minute review on just that case. We got to find someone's in a contact and honor to make that happen It's a wrap around foldable from uh someone in twitch chat. Oh killbot 404 Who says so now you'll be really mad when someone is yanking your chain My chain no seriously All right, so thank you everyone emailed into us you can email us at contact at android faithful. We love to hear from you So much fun and you can get that link of course on our website at android faithful.com with all of our subscribe links and fun Stuff like that. I love your website. I love your graphics. I love your music You guys have done some really amazing stuff. We pulled out the stops. We really pulled out the stops. I'm glad you liked it Well, jason thank you so much for coming on the show You you I don't know it not to not to get too sappy or emotional or whatever But like your dna is in everything we do here on android faithful We wouldn't be here without you so We're so honored to have you join us. I love you. Oh, I miss you And I miss you guys too. This is a lot of fun. Thank you Well, that said, you know at the end of the show our guests get the plug. Oh, oh wow. I'm on the other side Yeah, uh twit.tv go there. I do tech news weekly if um if you happen to be a subscriber of uh club twit Then you can check out my ai show called ai inside I'm doing that with jeff jarvis and we're having a lot of fun Just kind of playing around with ai tools interviewing people about different topics in the world of artificial intelligence And all that stuff and then as far as socials at jason howl on x until they start charging Then I will probably leave for good. Um, and just just search my name and a social media platform You'll find me probably All right, excellent. Well, jason seriously, man, this is this is a dream come true for us Me too. We can't appreciate you guys. We appreciate so much. So All right, uh, michelle, where can the people find you? Yeah, so i'm on all social media platforms at at michelle ramon If you want to find out what's coming soon in android 14 qpr Definitely give me a follow because i'll be posting a whole lot about that os update once it launches And if you want to support me i'm also on patreon at patreon.com slash michelle ramon Excellent Go support michelle. You say He's doing the lord's work with your break it with your with your tweets and your you're digging into it. So Um, well, thank you all. All right, cool. All right, when? Yeah, I am an developer. That's my day job Yes, it is my day job And uh, you can find any talks like the one I did just last week in droid con new york on my website railing typing.com Including video Code and whatever when the video is out. Uh, and yeah, if you are on a social Network of some sort and you type in quick code monkey and you find it. It's probably me Then if it's not let me know because I'll go after that person. I'm just kidding. It's a good name. It's a good name Thank you. It's a little long, but it's me And finally you can follow me on social. I'm on all the various socials at ron xo So go find me there. Um, and also I don't talk about much on the show as much as that often, but uh, I'm I got a little startup called score bit where we have a An android app that allows you to track your pinball scores I know we just had a massive update to the app actually roll out recently not massive But we did a lot of bug fixing and catching up and stuff like that. Um, and actually it's really funny because we've been using the ai Kind of ai coding bots to help us kind of squash bugs, which is pretty cool From an ai perspective standpoint like the android studio integration and all that fun stuff So, uh, yeah, so go to score bit in the google play store. Um, it's totally free if you like pinball check it out. Um, good times Um, and as always want to I've mentioned earlier, but we want to remind you to go to that website that jason says that he loves Over at android faithful.com and that's got all of our It's amazing. It's amazing what you can do in about three days. Um, uh Yeah, and there you can find links to subscribe to pocket cast spotify google podcast apple podcast youtube etc By the way, I am very very honored Uh To the fact that uh, we are consistently in the top 100 podcasts, uh for the category tech news on apple podcasts Nice. So if you're listening to us on apple podcasts talking about android, we love you. You're our people. Thank you so much It's fun when that happens, isn't it? So, um, all right. Well that is going to wrap it up for this week This podcast releases every tuesday night and you can subscribe at android faithful.com Or you can go watch on youtube at youtube.com slash daily tech news show or twitch.tv slash good day internet That's it for this week. We'll see you next time on android faithful