 Well, hello and welcome to another edition of Android faithful your we're your weekly source for Android related news Hardware apps discussion fun times roller coasters, whatever you want professional wrestling. We got it. I'm Ron Richards And I'm oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm the macho man Jason howl. Oh, yeah It doesn't take much to get Jason to do the macho man. And of course we're here with Solomon Welcome Michelle. How you doing sir? pretty good So when is unfortunately not not with us. She's a broad. She's traveling to Japan again, I believe Lucky her. Yeah, lucky her indeed. I don't see her in the chat yet So hopefully she's off doing fun stuff in Japan and not watching her show Last time right now. Is it like early morning or almost? Is it is it tomorrow? I don't know Well, I've got this tool called Google 9 17 a.m. Okay. All right, so so breakfast in Japan So but in her place we welcome back The one the only mr. Juan bagnell the most the most guested You still are you're at the top of the list Love it Welcome back sir. How you been? I'm doing great This is a breaking another streak of me being on a show where Jason is actually on This is weird. Yeah, we had a long how it's supposed to go We had a long streak on all about Android Continuing into Android faithful that one and Jason never appeared on the show together And what people don't realize is that Jason and Juan do not get along so this is gonna be an interesting episode We had to keep them separated for many years. I I just feel like you coming in with the macho man Randy Savage It's suck it stole a lot of the wind out of my sails I was gonna come in with the spider-man quote like you ain't going nowhere You know like yeah, but now I now it just feels like I'm just kind of copying you and We don't much which let's be honest you are Juan, right? Yeah. Oh, and we're back in it now And listen Jason Juan knows what he did. He said he was sorry Jason. You said you would accept the apology and move on You know what I just want to clear the air. I absolutely adore So it's like that one is here. Yes, there's nobody I am so stoked to join you get you guys again So well since since you were last year. I don't let since you were last with us. I don't know if you've heard the news But we got t-shirts now We last week we launched Android faithful merch over on threadless So now you can head over to Android faithful dot threadless calm and you can purchase your t-shirt mouse pad stickers Skateboards, whatever you want threadless has got it and it's been super exciting to see not only people ordering it But people have been receiving them and posting online. I know we just Shared one somebody posted to Instagram. We shared that one earlier today Couple of listeners are sending pictures of them in their merch Our first design is the Android faithful frequency design that wind designed And yeah, so if you want to if you want to show your pride Of being the Android faithful listener head over to Android faithful dot threadless calm I would remind like the day before we announced it. I'm still waiting on it to Finally here on Friday. Yeah, I think mine's arriving the same day, Michelle So next Tuesday will be will be sporting the threads. Yep, and I'm definitely picking up some stickers for you guys That's that's that's legit. That's awesome for sure. Um, yeah, we're very excited for that We're gonna have more designs coming soon, so stay tuned for that and then also just one quick big bit of business We're hoping to go to Google IO and we're considering maybe doing a live show on the night of May 14th So if you are interested in attending that if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area If you're just a regular Android faithful fan, you don't need to be going to Google IO It will be totally free anybody you get in let us know if you'd be interested in coming go to bit.ly Slash AF Google IO all one word in lowercase And just let us know if you'd be interested in attending and give us your email and that way we can keep you posted on it Some people responded last week getting some interest We're we're seeing if we can make this thing come together might not happen so no promises But yeah, but the more that we hear from you if you're actually going to be in the area and you actually have authentic interest Yeah, let us know because we get enough response on this Then it becomes worth it for us to kind of look into this and I mean we would absolutely love to do something like this But not if it's going to be an empty room Exactly, so we just want to know that if we do it, it's good. It's gonna work. So let us know Yeah, so that's at bit.ly bit.ly.ly slash AF Google IO all one word in lowercase And we'll put in the show notes on the show tonight So you can if you want to find that link you can go find it Over on android faithful.com or in your podcast little notes thing so All right, that's all of our that's all of our opening business It was slow news week, but we got some some interesting news to chew on which I'm sure we will Get into it and and the biggest news of all Michelle we look to you to break down The second developer preview of android 15 hit last week right last thursday, I believe Yeah, that's right Ron and I disagree with it being a slow news week because a new android developer preview Is not the definition of slow in the grand scheme of how much there is to talk about in this release. It is a lot Poor michelle is that guys have been working my butt off for you to say Okay, I gotta do right now do my stream to show you guys basically everything that I've been discovering and everything google announced so Yeah, the second developer preview of android 15 is here android 15 tp2 adds some user interface elements to ensure a more consistent user experience For devices that support satellite connectivity as you can see here. It's like a system notification says your auto connected to satellite This update also adds some new apis that apps can use to detect when a device is connected to satellite and also let's sms rcs apps use satellite connectivity to send and receive texts android 15 is also adding better support for clamshell folding folds Um, aka footballs. There's a new property that developers can use to show their app on the cover screen of footballs This is opt-in though and only works on select footballs that add support for this feature Another feature is that apps can add support for detecting when a screen is being recorded So apps that are performing sensitive operations can use this to tell when they're being recorded and then they can inform the user about it I'm scrolling through right here. Unfortunately, google didn't share a screenshot of what cover screen support looks like or what the screen recording detection looks like So you just have to use your imagination right now They did share a screenshot though of the new pdf changes that have been announced in android 15 tp2 So android is making some big changes to the pdf rendering api the previous version of the api that apps could use Basically just supported print previewing Whereas this new iteration of the print the pdf rendering api allows for more advanced things like rendering pastor protected files or annotations And this is being backported to android 11 and later through an update to a project mainline module Um, there's also a bunch of other things like an observe mode in the nfc stack that let supported devices listen But not respond to nfc readers A new api that let um apps instead of the os decide how much to dim sdr elements on screen so that they don't look too dim right next to hdr elements as you can see here If you're watching the video feed there's like an image on the left and the video image on the right And if you dim sdr photos too much next to hdr photos, then it can make the sdr photos look really bad in comparison And then there's also a new support for the cta-2075 standard that helps apps Reduce audio loudness inconsistencies But this requires that the audio content itself provides some loudness metadata and that the app that's playing the audio also supports this new api And there's a whole bunch of other changes in this blog post Like there's way too much to talk about and a lot of it's kind of nitty gritty developer focus So if you're a developer I highly recommend you actually go through and read this full blog post on the android developers blog But um, if you're actually interested in finding out what's new in android 15 dp2 and install on your device um, there's a couple of Minor changes that have carried over from android 14 qpr 3 But also some bigger ones including this new audio sharing page that you'll find when you open up settings and go to connected devices This page has a toggle that lets you share audio And this enables others to listen to your media along with you so long as you have compatible headphones And this audio sharing feature specifically is referring to aura cast Which is the marketing term for bluetooth le audio broadcasts Basically, you have a source device in this case would be your android phone Starts broadcasting a signal over bluetooth low energy that other aura cast supporting devices nearby can pick up on They can join your aura cast session to listen to whatever you're listening to Um, they don't directly join or pair with your device like traditional bluetooth works Think of aura cast more like a radio broadcast over the air that your car picks up Android supported aura cast since android 13, but google is kind of making it more prominent and Easier to create and join sessions through a new settings page in android 15 And of course this requires your device to actually have the hardware to support le audio and aura cast which not every device does The next major change Is a fix to the android webcam feature that i've been complaining about a lot on previous episodes They're finally adding a mode that allows you to take full advantage of the camera sensor on your pixel phone So if you boot up Android 15 tp2 on your pixel and you open up the webcam feature you'll notice there's now this new hq button in the top left And selecting this enable the high quality mode which basically disables some thermal optimizations So that you can take full advantage of the full quality of your camera And if you're wondering like how different how much different is the quality? I actually did like a youtube video right here just showing the Quick comparison like the standard mode you can see right here if you're watching the video feed just me and my Acting a little derpy and then i switch over to the high quality mode um Like there's more detail on my face all around If you just take a look obviously if you're listening to the audio feed you can't see the difference at all And if you're wondering does this actually like impact the battery life and does it make your phone overheat? Well coincidentally, um, I actually enable this feature while I was recording episodes I believe 35 of the podcast and I ran up for about two and a half hours and I think um My phone battery level only dropped about 8 and that was because I was using a slow charging cable and also my pixel 8 pro's battery temperature only reached a peak of about 37.6 degrees celsius, which is not at all very hot so I wouldn't be really concerned about this high quality modes effect on your Uh pixel devices like battery longevity or its lifespan So I would enable it once it falls out for your device and of course not every device supports this android web can feature Right now. I'm mostly only pixels do But a feature that will be coming to more devices, especially large screen devices like Tablets and foldables is a toggle to switch back to the old taskmar style So in android 12 l Google introduced this taskbar style that you can see here if you're watching the video feed It spans the entire width of the display and it's always persistent on screen unless you Hell down on an empty area and then you could hide it manually That kind of took up too much space on foldable. So in android 13 qpr 2 They revamped the taskbar. So you have this kind of pill shaped bottom bar at the bottom And that only appears temporarily when you swipe up from the bottom So this is the new style on the right and this is the old style on the left The old style is better for multitasking because it's always on screen So you can easily switch between apps and easily launch apps and split screen The new style is better for saving screen real estate Um If you want to switch back to the old style, you know how to do some more work and switch between apps This new always show taskbar toggle Um, which you can access by long pressing on any empty spot on the taskbar Will let you switch between the old style and the new style for the taskbar and this is available on large screen devices and it depends on Whether or not the oem actually implements it like this is available right now on pixel tablet and pixel fold But other oems like one plus samsung could offer this feature if they wanted to right now like the one plus open For example, they had as a taskbar, but it only uses the old persistent style of taskbar When it when it auto hides Is there a way to like temp like to swipe up from the bottom and have it show for a second and then Disappear again, or there's no way to do that on a temporary. Yeah, that's how the transient That's how the news taskbar works by default. Okay. Okay like by default It's always hidden and then you have to swipe up to show it. I like that yeah Next up is a feature for foldables So basically google has added a new way to transition apps from the inner screen of a foldable to the outer screen of a foldable And i'm going to play a little video right here As you can see on the inner screen this user had telegram open Then they closed their pixel fold and they opened it up after the swiping on the lock screen And they were able to continue using telegram on the outer display So previously on the pixel fold you couldn't choose when you wanted to transition an app from the inner screen to the outer screen you only had the option of Transitioning apps that are full screen. So like a full screen game or a full screen youtube video with transition But now you have this new swipe up to continue toggle in the display settings on the pixel fold that allows you to choose Specifically which app you want to transition And this is actually borrowed directly from the one plus open it in fact the same setting Has the same name on the one plus open And I personally think this is the superior way to handle transitioning from the Unfolded to the folded state Because you know you can pick and choose which apps you want on the z-fold 5 in comparison You have to go into settings and specifically pick the apps from an app list that you want to be able to transition like that Um, so this is coming to any foldable that wants to implement it Right now it's only available on the pixel fold on enter 15 dp2, but other foldables could also add it Next up. I love that feature on the open for sure. Yeah, that was really intuitive very intuitive It was like one one of the actions that when you did it you were like, okay This is the way it needs to be on other foldables too. Yeah Yeah, definitely a very useful feature Next up not going to talk about this one too much because I talked about on last week's episode And it's the built-in app archiving feature. It's live and fully functional in dp2 And it works exactly like how I described in this article I wrote for android authority, which I talked about last week um, honestly, the biggest change in android 15 is that For the app archiving feature it was previously in exclusive to the google play store, but now on android 15 There are apis that google has added that can be used by third party launcher and third party app store developers to Add support for app archiving. So this video i'm playing right here quickly just demonstrates the app archiving feature I archive the uber app and that replaces this It significantly reduces the storage size it goes from like 400 megabytes to like 18 megabytes a dramatic difference And then I just tap on the icon after it's archived it redownloads it from the play store And then i'm booted back into it without losing any data That's the tldr of app archiving if you're familiar with ios at all They have a feature called offload apps and it works pretty much the same like in practice But under the hood, of course, it's different. It's the different operating system and lastly You'll notice that after you update your phone to db2 You are now required to authenticate yourself before you're allowed to change the usb mode. So as you can see in this photo right here I have to I have this biometric prompt dialogue It's asking me to verify my fingerprint before I can change the usb mode between any of the two This is a honestly a pretty minor security change But you might find it useful if you share your device and you don't want someone I don't know like plugging your phone into their pc and dumping your files on their pc You know without your permission There are some other changes that I haven't talked about in android 15 dp2 Like I said, there's a whole bunch of things mentioned on this block bus I didn't talk about Also some other stuff that I didn't talk about that's actually in the build that I talked about on my usual deep dive twitter thread So if you're interested in learning more, I highly recommend you go through those two resources So so looking at last year with android 14 As we're looking at the calendar, right? Are we on schedule with developer preview 2 or they ahead or behind schedule do it? Do we remember does anyone remember when this happened? Um, let me see. I should I should have looked it up. I think we're on schedule. You think we're on schedule. Yeah Let's see preview 2 14 let's see if we got a date on that Um Android developer preview 2 came out march 8 2023 Okay, so we're a little behind google late A little behind a little couple of weeks behind schedule google a week or so, right? It should just work guys I think I think it's safe to say it came out march. We're on schedule. That's fair. Yeah. Yeah sometime within the month of march. It's yeah It's fine. All right. Well, that was a lot. Uh, won are you keeping track of the android? What's coming in 15? Yeah, I've been following up audio stuff. I thought I thought of you there Absolutely, so so things like that I I I always kind of bristle a little bit because we get sort of this It seems like we're gonna go longer and longer and longer between more visually Exciting changes to the android operating system, which is really what I prefer I like seeing these kind of like Intermediary and iterative updates where we get these quality of life features Having those audio controls I I think android is long overdue having sort of a A consistent system for helping you protect your hearing It's something i've soapboxed on all of your podcasts every visit that I make Um, but then also just I I want to see google making these steps towards our phones becoming More competitive computing devices And so when we see a better, uh, operation for foldables when we see A more consistent from google a more consistent, uh, support for video output That's the kind of stuff that gets me really excited It doesn't need to look flashier prettier change like animations all on me all the time just so that it's novel I want to see if I spend a bit more on a phone Can I do more with it to displace other gadgets around me? Cool And michelle are you using the uh the video mode that you were showing off there right now on your camera? Right now. No, I'm using the logic briot just my usual webcam Okay, okay, as I mentioned I was using it on episode 35 like I did have the high quality mode enabled And I was actually using it that whole time two and a half hours Well, it's funny because like as someone who's recently embraced the, uh, uh, android as webcam functionality I was shocked at which we'll get into a little later in the show. I was shocked at the lack Of function it had other than purely just being a pass through camera And I think you could choose the zoom level and that's about it currently right now on android 14 So it's nice to see you're getting a little more out of it with android 15 And it's kind of interesting seeing the arms race too because microsoft just improved support for their phone link to improve webcam functionality and certain phones that like Again, it's like we're trying to approach a lot of these problems from both sides of Well, what is the phone telling the computer and what is the computer asking for from the phone? So I there's definitely something happening. We want to see improved functionality We want to see some of these features start getting start getting better And we're kind of coming up with multiple solutions to arrive at similar outputs Yeah, definitely. It's a it's a brave new world. That's for sure. Yeah Speaking of like the multiple different competing webcam things like android 14's and slash android 15's webcam feature that google built is Completely generic on purpose because it's meant to be as widely accessible as possible You're like literally creating a standard generic usb webcam slash like I think the Mode is called uvc or universal video class and that's like that allows your android phone to turn into webcam That can be recognized by any platform including linux mac os windows even other android devices and anything that supports a usb webcam Will support your android phone versus microsoft's Um phone link webcam feature, you know requires you to install phone link on your phone requires you to install your the phone link software on your pc and requires like the Maker to actually add support for it. So like There's a lot more limitations there But obviously it offers far more advanced controls and I kind of wouldn't be surprised if google is working on something similar to Integrate it better with chromebooks like a and more advanced wireless webcam feature for pixel. Yeah, yeah That makes a lot of sense Cool eco systems. There it is the e-word. Speaking of ecosystem. Speaking of ecosystem. Yeah Well, so android 15 developer preview 2 go read the blog post over on the android website But speaking of ecosystem the other big news that dropped in the last week Uh was the fact that the u.s department of justice justice Officially accused apple of anti competitive behavior in the smartphone market and we got a lot of people asking I know this is an android But are you guys going to talk about this and it was like there's no way we can't talk about this right? Because yeah, because this has this like this graphic on the verge Article that we're talking about this will reverberate through the entire industry the results of this Basically what they said was uh, you know apple exercises monopoly power to extract more money from consumers developers Content creators artists publishers small businesses and merchants among others listed in the uh in the charges They cited app slash service stickiness limiting cross-platform compatibility with smartwatches limiting third-party digital wallets and yes The big the big one damaging messaging between iphone and android Um and a large part of the case has to do with the platform lock-in Um, and we heard uh, you know through the various coverage stuff that I heard that there were several emails that stuck out The the department of justice got their hands on including Uh, steve jobs complaining about how easy it was for people to switch from iphone to android Which is pretty damning damning and then apparently tim cook's famous, uh response to what should I tell my mother about getting You know fuzzy pictures and his response saying tell her to buy an iphone is also now kind of blowing him up in his face Um, some interesting other little notes that came out of this Uh regarding green bubbles the department of justice points out that apple's choices Mislead consumers to believe that android phones are worse even though it's apples choices that make the experience worse on android phones Thank you department of justice. I want to go down to dc and hug you for like Not I mean and not that i'm happy this has happened to apple and stuff like that but for Summing up the issue that we've been dealing with for a decade now like oh my god Um, also interesting apple responded to the doj charges with with that the apple watch doesn't work with android by admitting They tried for three years to bring it to android and scrapped it because of technical limitations Which I feel like technical limitations All companies couldn't figure it out Oh, what happened? Yeah, you're gonna tell me that apple just Apple just drives up the freeway to mountain view and is like, hey, we want to make this work on android Google wouldn't bend over backwards to make that happen and help them. Yeah, so yeah Um, so it's early on the case just dropped It's likely gonna take a while and we know that the doj doj is also looking at google and as they've looked at Microsoft in the past So this is seems like a big kind of government reckoning that's happening across the tech uh tech space Um, one do you think that the doj has any merit here or are they fishing? So first off i'm i'm going to you're a lawyer, right? You're you have a legally right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely I was literally just gonna say i'm not a lawyer This is a regulatory space that I have been paying attention to a lot if anyone catches my monday morning podcast If there's ever any FCC or FTC news, that's what I lead with I love the intersection of technology and politics because everything we do is politics And I have been advocating for a lot more big tech scrutiny from regulators and right now When when it rains it pours because on on on top of this We just got news that there's uh, there's going to be a series of class action lawsuits That are following the doj's lawsuit against apple saying Well, if what the doj says is is accurate then that means apple has artificially been inflating the prices of phones And so there's there's a consumer aspect a consumer angle to this and we just caught another Wave of investigations that are going to be happening through the eu because of the dma So companies like amazon and apple They're complying with the dma But not really So now the eu is going to be investigating their behavior and their responses to new regulations as well I would kindly ask people to maybe Stay some of their Decision-making on all of the editorials that are coming out Because if you're an apple publication Surprisingly a lot of the editorials and apple publications are Well, the doj. This is a laughable lawsuit nothing. They're just upset that apple's successful And if you're a more like windows or android kind of publication Oh, we've been preaching about this for years apple needs a regulatory correction blah blah blah blah blah This is really easy language to just go to the department of justice Get the pdf. It is 88 pages long, but if you're a techie at all It's a really easy read for 88 pages and and read their their arguments read their case read their There because none of this is evidence either, you know, this is what's going to come out during the court cases Right now. They're just saying this is what we believe has been the market impact from apple's anti competitive business practices and then We need to actually put that evidence out in a court of law. We need to see the disclosures We need to see the arguments. We need to see how the judge responds to evidence We need to see all of that play out But instead of trying to say like, oh, well, you know, this guy over at apple macfamboy.net said that he Talked to a lawyer and that this was not a good case. The case hasn't been made yet So instead if you read the actual brief, it's fascinating. It's fascinating to see how the doj came to this place This is a court case 10 years in the making Because we actually had another sort of legal action that was planned against apple and the doj pulled it And again, they didn't think their case was as strong as it could have been They didn't think they had the data to do it. Now they do And so it just seems to be the air right now if it's a massive tech corporation conglomerate amoeba swallowing up all of these other services I think we're all a little tired of how we're being treated as as end users as consumers as citizens with this kind of big data strategy and I hope this paves the way for other things like Getting the ftc to go after ISPs that monitor everything you do on your internet connection and sell off your data I think this is the right step in the Step in the right direction for going after automobile manufacturers that sell your data off to insurance companies Like we're do we're do some kind of correction because the laws that we've had in place have been inadequate to adapt To a changing technology landscape And this is the first step in trying to mitigate the problems that we have as end users Yeah, and and that's the thing it's so easy to fall into the the blue bubble green bubble trap or the apple And like when I say this i'm doing i'm doing the show on a mac desktop, right? So like i'm not right apple I know we play it up and the wrestling angle of it all the time just because it's because that's fun I do I do think that they have You know that they've misled and we talked a lot about the messaging stuff on the show of the years and stuff like that I do think that is a big case, but the thing is is that like DOJ is looking at google too. They're looking like like, right? Oh, yeah, you know like like no one should be safe from this sort of scrutiny and amazon facebook microsoft They all need a regulatory scrutiny market correction because of how we're running headlong into new services And this is what we should want I mean as fans of google, we need to know what the what the rules are We need to know what the boundaries are and we can't let a corporation decide for us Free of regulatory oversight. This is how far we'll go Yep, okay You know what? We've kind of been doing that for a while and I think it's okay if we kind of nudge the pendulum back a bit And we say there are concerns and we need to address those concerns the DOJ is a broadsword I was really hoping that this kind of a course correction would come from smaller agencies This is going to be a big Slumbering court case coming from the DOJ, but yeah, look a lot for for years Yeah, and it's going to take a long and apple's going to drag this out and the DOJ is going to drag this out But you march the army you have not the army you want, right? So this is what we're in line for and and if nothing else It just needs that public disclosure The the change of perception where we we have all these truthy things that we've been saying since like The 90s you know max don't get viruses, you know like we we keep letting that marketing kind of take over And we just need better information out to consumers so that they can make better informed purchases and also know how better to protect themselves And this is I think going to be a valuable resource for us to be able to point our family and friends to and say hey, you know You like what you like. I'm not trying to tell you not to like your phone or something, but This is what's really true not The commercial that you saw that you felt good about Yeah Yeah, just seeing the this case and the reaction to it I kind of had like two broad takeaways that I think are kind of important The first is specifically to do with the case and it's something that I've also noted when you know Epic suit google and other lawsuits against apple and google in the past is that the public marketing of certain features and The reasoning behind why certain things the way things there are in ios and android differs heavily from What apple and google and many other companies are actually reasoning internally for why they do certain things So like just to give you an example like like Why does apple Block third party payment vendors from accessing the nfc chip on the iphone The reason they say publicly is for security reasons But we all know i'm from like these losses from these lawsuits reveal the emails internally what they really think and it's because Surprise money because they can get a cut of all the transactions if people are forced to use apple pay Like a lot of these things you see the way people defend apples practices, you know online on on social media But when you pull the curtains back and actually read the reason behind a lot of these things It's not actually fully like i would say maybe like 20 of the real reason is actually security and privacy But oh it just so happens to also entrench their business and lock users into their ecosystem even further, right? so like why are so many people upset about apple being forced to Ship usbc port on their latest iphone because some of a lot of them have spent maybe hundreds of dollars on lightning accessories and lightning chargers and cables and Etc right but who put them in the into that position in the first place by locking them into the lightning accessory ecosystem it was apple right, but they're blaming the eu for forcing them to you know actually uh open up and You know actually like use accessories that everyone else is using and you say helpful for the consumer Because they have more choice now they have more choice in hardware But consumers don't see it that way because you know they've been Horsed into this position by apple and now they're kind of just have to live with it Which is like brought me up to another point like I don't know if you guys follow a little bit of apple news the ios 18 there was like this big exclusive about ios 18 is finally getting Support for being able to arbitrarily move apps on the home screen and people are going wild over this feature Whoa, and over a decade right and my reaction to that is like It's kind of it's kind of silly how excited people are by this feature like they're willing to put up with almost any Downside or you know minor inconvenience on ios because they honestly have no choice right Like on android if I didn't like a decision that one plus made on the one plus open the software right I could just buy another android phone and my one plus watch 2 would still work with it My galaxy buds 2 pro would still work with it all my other devices would still work with it Or if I hated something in ios I would have to spend way more money to leave the ecosystem. Yeah Yeah, or you can even if if you don't like if you don't like something one plus did You could switch your launcher Yeah, exactly. You know, I mean like you've got so much more flexibility As opposed to the iphone where there's no flexibility right so hard work one of the reasons i use software freedom too Yeah, yeah big time One of the reasons why I think the doj is now feeling a bit more confident making this play are the recent sales numbers here in North America So we have a very antiquated view on monopolistic business practices calling something a monopoly And apple is now encroaching on his 70 percent market share if we start talking about performance phones or premium devices It's not the 50 50 or the international markets because this is the us doj They're not going to care about apple only being 20 percent of the market internationally We're talking here in the united states But this is also the first step in trying to broach a conversation where It's it's inadequate for apple to say There is competition Just leave everything you've invested in leave everything that you've purchased throw away all of your your Your behavior all of your sweat equity learning how to use these products and just leave the apple ecosystem You always have a choice And that's not a choice in the way that people relate to and utilize their devices today There is a 100 monopoly on apple devices by apple and now we need to see what kind of market pressure and what kind of uh business practices have enabled apple to Put a squeeze on their own customers often when we talk about this stuff. It's with the kind of Side realization that we're frustrated on our family members' behalf Right that whenever apple does something eventually it hits us. But who does it hurt first? It hurts apple owners first because there is a 100 percent monopoly on that ecosystem So we don't have court um precedent for Cars right because the idea is you can always drive on roads. You don't have to Be beholden to one automobile manufacturer to drive from California to Arizona But that's different in the world of technology and it's different moving from laptops to cell phones Like we've we've kind of put these uh dividers into phones treating phones like appliances in ways that we've never treated Laptops or desktops. So this is going to be a really interesting court case to see it play out because our very Definition of the word monopoly is going to be challenged by both sides Both the defendants and the plaintiffs so that we can start sussing out What is a 21st century economy look like and what is the relationship between an end user a manufacturer? Software developer all of these pieces are going to be affected All right. Well Big big pop corn. We're going to keep we're going to keep tracking it for sure But there's other stuff going on in the world of android, right? Especially over in the samsung corner of the world, right jason Yeah, another another popcorn moment in in the world is uh the samsung galaxy a 55 from one massive behemoth in the uh in the iphone to the a 55 no the a 55 is great, but I'm just trying to crack a joke here. Um samsung for a very long time has not had seamless updates And what are seamless updates? I think this rolled out like eight years ago at this point But basically what it allows for is for your os update or firmware or security update Whatever it is to download verify and install in the background. It's kind of like a multi Multi volume system. That's not the right word But anyways, it's happening on it's it's like an ab system happening behind the scene So while you're still running the phone on another part of the phone all this stuff is happening instead of having to like power down And wait all that time for the update to go through my dog's going nuts right now. Um You you can do it while you're running the phone and then the next time that you boot It might take a little bit longer than your standard boot But it would be pretty quick because all this work has been done seamless updates. Well now, you know samsung's been pretty much not Not part of the seamless updates party, but now they are the a55 5g Is uh is getting seamless updates right now I guess there's a a security patch that hit the a55 it's first firmware update And it came as a seamless update the update actually shows a split progress bar Downloading and installing is one verification As the other and then you know once you reboot it's a little bit longer than your standard boot But not nearly as long as it would be otherwise It actually launched with seamless update support It's just that people didn't figure it out that it supported it until the first update came Right well that makes sense that makes sense. So seamless updates though That's not something that has to be um that has any sort of uh extra special hardware Requirement right like old samsung phones. Could they be updated with a new Firmware update that enables it going forward The only problem you you can retrofit existing devices with AB partitions like which is the underlying mechanism that it works But it's risky doing it at scale because you know any error or bug could lead to significant data loss for users And even though this is a feature seamless updates that's existed since android nougat It's actually evolved over years And like there there's somewhat of a good reason why samsung hasn't adopted it So like just switching over to this web page right here. You can kind of see there's like a different Variations in the way that you can implement seamless updates. So the original iteration actually took up quite a significant amount of space Like actually almost double the space of the original installation size to do seamless updates But starting with like android 13 and like android 14 they've kind of Made it on par with the original. So non ab Is on this left column this left One right here That's what samsung has been using for a very very long time Modern android devices like pixel phones use this on the very right called virtual ab compressed And you can see like down here at the at the bottom row. It says total storage required to apply ota Uh non ab which was samsung was using in spot 5.9 gigabytes Like versus uh virtual ab compressed about 6.6 gigabytes like almost the same size versus the original of um ab updates about 9 gigabytes So you needed like a significant more storage space to do updates So there's kind of like a that's kind of the reason why samsung has not supported Um ab updates for so long It just took up so much more space and there might have been other reasons like knocks or I don't know exactly like samsung phones They're very unique in how they're structured and their firmware, but um Yeah, it's it's surprised and it's long overdue for them to finally introduce this feature on a phone Hopefully their future phones continue to add seamless update support. Yeah, indeed There you go. So if you've been waiting All right, and what else is going on in samsung, which I'll Yeah, so right before the show aired samsung actually publicly announced the rollout date for one ui 6.1, which is their um next major os update for existing zalcan devices This is rolling out for the galaxy s 23 series the z flip 5 the z fold 5 Um starting march 28th and it'll roll out sometime this week for the tab s9 series So what does one ui 6.1 bring most notably it brings most of the galaxy ai features that samsung announced with the galaxy s 24 such as um Not only circle to search which is actually a google's feature But um a lot of the image editing features in the samsung gallery app The you know the features in those samsung voice recorder app It also includes like the live translate feature in the samsung phone app interpreter Not assist chat assist all these different features that samsung announced Um with the s 24 launch a lot of those features are coming to existing samsung devices So you have that to look forward to if you have a s 23 series z flip 5 z fold 5 or tab s9 device Cool All right, so that's a samsung goodness coming down the pike Samsung goodness. Oh, yeah Yeah, um, usually i'm usually loathe to say anything nice about samsung, but I have to say their cloud ai strategy has been remarkably solid um for some of the frustrations that my pixel fold pals have had with things like Maybe not always being synergistically updated on pixels Um, it has been really refreshing to see samsung go back and say like well, yeah, you're going up to a server There's really no reason why this phone can't have this feature too. Enjoy All right, yeah And uh another bit of goodness is our patrons patreon.com Android faithful trying to find the thingy thing here patreon.com slash android faithful if you are a patron You have the opportunity to participate on a weekly basis of the picking of a news story that we read on the show and Let's take a look at the poll here for this week Who created the image first of all i'm pulling it up right now This is one of my favorite images that we've gotten by the way It is when you think of android news you think of an old-timey 1940s reporter going you see here I got the latest android news for you. Um, and this comes uh, thanks to josh rose who sent this in I just I love the lighting. I love everything about it. You know, you see this image, you know exactly This is 1947 and he's covering all the android news coming out of hollywood I don't know what this thing is hanging off the table But I think it's a light. I think it's a light hanging off the table and for audio listeners It is it is a fantastic ai generated image of a little android bug droid with a fedora in a suit Typing at a typewriter and uh, it's fantastic. So yes. Yes indeed. All right, so thank you for submitting that We got uh, we have three story options for this week And the clear third place is the s pen on the galaxy s 24 ultra stinks comma literally I don't know. I was like a sure I thought it was gonna win but i'm surprised it got so low So glad it lost it says so much of your audience. I'm so making smelly s pens Smelly s pens is a loser also a loser google keep readying new bottom bar. That's more like an island that got 40 percent of the vote Uh, the s pen got 11 by the way And coming out with almost half of the votes Google contacts making it easier to set custom ring tones for individual contacts Seems to be rolling out. Um, some users are starting to see this so you can um, yeah, you can uh You can go ahead and add your own custom Ring tones to particular contacts. So when I call you ron it can be like the A wrestling theme of uh, randy macho man savage. So this is this is I had this on my g1 When android first came out I I had I went through a process of having my friends pick the song They wanted when they called me and all this sort of stuff and then we slowly lost it to the ether through the years And now 10 years later, it's back Yeah, what was once old is now new. Yeah, exactly. So and now I don't have the time nor the inclination Nor do I ever have my phone not on silent. So I'm not gonna use this whatsoever. Totally When was the last time you heard your phone actually ring anybody? I don't know possibly years Yeah, exactly in a while I mean so much so that I don't know what ring tone like someone could call me right now And I have no idea what would happen if I turn the volume up ron your your phone is ringing. That's not my phone That's my phone. I don't know what that is. That's a wind chime. No, um, yeah, this is neat I mean, it's it's it's a it's a cool feature. We definitely have wanted for the past 10 years, right? Maybe you'd maybe you'd unmute your ring tone If you knew that you could assign all of the amazing songs that you have in your playlist two different contacts. That would be maybe then Yeah, maybe that's what they're trying to do Anyways, thank you for voting for that. Thank you, michael because that was your tweet. Um that we were just referencing and um, yeah, big thanks to richard peck From the uk ruth white from maryland and abdulla from patreon all from patreon all three patrons at patreon dot com slash android faithful You two could get your name called out. You too could vote On next week's story if you support us patreon.com slash android faithful We are so entirely grateful for those of you who support us behind the scenes. Thank you Indeed. All right. Well up next is hardware and we've got some cool hands-on hardware at the moment Um, I know myself you all know that I love a good tablet, right? Yeah, I think I think I've learned that over the years. Yeah, yeah, and uh, and uh, I'm always interested in seeing the new tablets that are coming out So when the fine folks from hmd got in touch with me and offered up, uh, the nokia t21 tablet I of course said yes, I would like to check out this tablet so um, so the uh, the nokia t21 series tablet This has been hmd has been making this and making it available internationally for a while The t20 before this uh, the t21 looks to be one of the first ones that's available domestically So you can actually get this at walmart for the low low price of 239 dollars And uh, guess what everybody I got I got this hands on so much. So michelle. I'm using my pixel as a webcam for my brand new, uh overhead cam Oh, yes, look at this So here is the uh, so our video viewers can see the the lovely box to the nokia t21 Um, and I have it right here underneath the box And it is a nice looking tablet. It is a Uh, it I would call this like a budget slash premium tablet because it feels like a premium tablet on the outside And it's got budget stuff on the inside So, uh, but that's not bad because if you're looking for a tablet Maybe you don't want to spend a ton of money on a pixel tablet or a samsung tablet or whatnot And I don't want everyone to see my code. So i'm going to go off side. There you go. Oh, no with your top down camera Yes, there it is. Um, so Yeah, so the tablet is um, I forgot the exact dimensions I don't know jason if you can look just to see what the uh specs are on the on the screen because I don't have it handy but um It feels nice. I can hold it in one hand as you can see here It's a little smaller than my pixel tablet as a comparison uh a comparison to it. Um, and like I said it it it It feels like a premium uh tablet It's it's got that nice kind of metal feel that metal backing on it. Um, it's got, you know Tablets with cameras. I just think are very funny. Um, but it's got an eight megapixel on the back And an eight megapixel on the front you don't really need your tablet for camera purposes But it's good for webcam use or for other kind of um instances where you might you want to take a quick picture or something like that um and anyway, um 10.36 inches ron 10.336 inches. That's pretty good. It's a slightly different aspect ratio Um, I forgot what the exact aspect five five by three five by three. There it is Right, so you don't get you get some bars when you go full screen and that sort of thing the best, uh Thing about this tablet, uh, is that it is As close to stock android as i've seen on a device in a long time Um, there is very minimal bloatware on this device at all. Um, it comes it ships with android 11 And then what can only be described as a several hours long update process. I got it up to android 12 I felt like I was updating all day while I was doing it But eventually it did get to android 12 So you don't get any of the neat bells and whistles that you would get with a pixel tablet with the latest version of android 13 for tablets But it's slowly getting there It comes with all the standard google kind of out of the box apps and the only additional apps are netflix spotify Express vpn and hmd's own personal little my device app Um, which you know is there I guess they're trying to build their ecosystem within hmd And those are the only I don't know why it's taking so long to load but yeah Those are the only apps that are on it aside from the standard google apps. So it's pretty much a clean blank slate Um, it's pretty trim now. Yeah, that's that said I was curious to see how it performed Because it does have Kind of less than specs because it is a bit of a budget tablet. Um, so I ran geek bench kind of performance tests on it and So it got a score of 424 on the single core on the cpu and 1474 on the multicore And the gpu score came in a 456 and that give that comparison If you don't know what those numbers mean if you've never used geek bench before they run They run all these tests and ultimately come up with the number and I ran those same tests on my pixel tablet And so the cpu performance on the pixel tablet Was on the single core was 1,383. So that's compared to the 424 that this tablet gets And the multicore was 3,657 on the tablet compared to 1474 on the nokia And then the gpu got 309 3971 compared to a score of 456. So this is considerably Less performance based than the pixel tablet And where that comes across is it comes across in switching apps opening and closing apps doing any sort of that kind of processing I did not run into any problems with with youtube with video playback or anything like that. Um, and I don't know what's that doing that now, but um, You know, basically what you would use is a tablet Whether it's media for my uses of a tablet be media consumption reading etc If I didn't want to spend 500 on a tablet, I would totally consider this tablet It's not a complete hunk of junk Right like again, like I said, it feels nice and again, you can hold it in that one single hand And it is such a blank slate that you can pretty much do whatever you want with it at this point. So, um, yeah, so that's the nokia The nokia t21 tablet from hmd. Um, it's on sale at walmart for $239 Um, so you can totally pick it up for that price if you're looking for a quality build Budget-ish tablet, uh You know, I would I would give it a recommendation That said If I said, you know, if you can afford it, I would say go the pixel tablet over this or one of the one of the higher end samsung ones Uh, because they give you a slightly better kind of full full fledged experience But for for under $250, this is pretty solid. So Yeah, I mean 64 gigs of storage four gigs of ram that four gigs of ram is you know today Today's age is a killer. That's that's gonna really limit you but But where it is in the price range You know, you got to make some concessions Well, and at that price we're kind of talking an appliance tablet like you're not getting this with the expectation It's gonna get a ton of software updates and you're gonna be it's not even up to date Now But as that video viewer you want to read some comic books on it Do some stuff like that like I think that's pretty solid low intensive games Not high intensive not not heavy gpu games But if you want to do a little 10 to 1 says if you fire up around in nittons, it's still gonna chug. Yeah So anyway, yeah, so there's the nokia t21. I give it like a thumbs medium There you go. Not a thumbs. Yeah, but not a not a whole hearted thumbs up, but that's a horizontal thumb. Yeah, exactly Cool, and that was my first overhead cam. Uh, thanks a lot of it That's great. I think I had to do that to my upstairs studio too get get one of the The assortment of old phones that I have all on my back display down here. Michelle you inspired me The use of the the use I was like, wait a minute I can use the and I do want to thank a friend of the show berk Uh for providing some technical assistance on the on the set up in the rig As he and I were chatting about it. So excellent. Yes I believe it's that berk clap clap Burke approves. Good to see you berk Um, well, I have spent not quite a month, but you know, like three three and a half weeks with the one plus Uh watch two got it on my wrist right now, which with my mic microphone setup It's just easier for me to take it off my wrist to be honest um And uh, so yeah about three three and a half weeks with the one plus watch two Doing like different battery tests different scenarios Using it just as my every day because normally I would say my every day Smart watch is the uh pixel Watch two and you can see side by side. There is a big size difference between these two. I mean the one plus watch two That's the thing right like it's known for the battery. I'll talk about that in a second. Um, but you know It has a large battery because it's a large phone So, you know smaller wrists are this is not going to work on smaller wrists if flow was on the show This would be the thing that she's complaining about with the one plus watch two as she has done many times in the past on other wearables like this but if you do have larger wrist and um, and you're Like top tier priority is battery I you know and and along with that you want a fully functioning You know wearos device this has wearos for so it's very you know, it's exactly up to date I mean, I don't think you can do better than this for a battery performance device that does Pretty much all the things that you expect out of a fully functional smartwatch running wearos I ended up getting and I put it in my review. I actually did just um I did earlier publish a review to my channel, but I did some battery tests and I mean I was able to get like Something like 130 hours Out of this with uh aod off the always on display off When I turned when when I set it full default with always on display on I got 103 hours out of it Which is just not so when we need to think about I mean that's that's four ish Days right there that you're getting without the need to put it onto a charger And I know for some people that's a really big deal like being able to go day after day after day not putting it on a charger um, I think that's the question that I have is like Still at the end of the day Incredibly impressive that you can do that with the one plus watch too but Like my habit is to put it on a charger and so All I really care about you know at my core with the smartwatch is does it get through the most extreme day that I have Then I take it off incredibly early in the morning and put it on the charger incredibly late at night Having used it a lot throughout the day and still have let's say 20 remaining So I feel comfortable, you know that it that I wasn't pushing it right to the edge And you know, I can generally do that with the pixel watch too I think I also kind of have a little bit of a preference for a bit smaller of a watch face Than what I have with the one plus watch two. I could totally do it with the one plus watch two Just fine But I think I do prefer something a little bit smaller, but um, but yeah, this is a really impressive device And I think what they're doing with the hybrid architecture is something that I hope other Um other smartwatch makers in the android space emulate because it obviously works Really well to have that hybrid architecture to be able to offload some of the functionality some of the core functionality to a lower power processor And then you know have your wear OS layer that is optional by the way You can deactivate the wear OS layer and still use the smartwatch with you know Something like 75 of its functionality Just shedding away the wear OS And you end up getting days upon days Out of it even further than what you're used to if you do that I didn't really do any tests in that mode though because I don't really envision myself doing that the original one plus watch ran entirely on that low that other os rt os And uh, which is fine. You could you could get like seven days out of it I think I got seven or eight days out of that when I tested that a few years ago But it's not wear OS. It doesn't have the play store. You can't do third party watch faces You can't do you know, kind of like the the fitness some of the advanced fitness tracking Possible, you know capabilities that you get roping into google's ecosystem there's just certain things that it's not going to be able to do because it's not google and um So I don't know I was I was pretty darn impressed with this $300 you want to see the full review I do have it up On my web on my youtube channel yellow girl studios.com and uh, I put them side by side and just publish the review earlier today after a lot of work And of course it looks great again a great job Jason So this is it on my wife's wrist by the way. Oh, jeez check out that that hocker I've actually you know I've had the watch for a little bit longer than you did I did do the hands-on initially for andridge faithful and like One thing I have to say is it actually has changed the way I use my smartwatch like you mentioned You still charge your watch every night, right? That's the habit of yours But I actually have stopped counting the number of days since I've charged my watch Like I actually do not know when the last time I charge my watch is because it not only charges super fast But like it lasts so long that I have to stop caring about actually charging it every day or even every other day Like I just wait for it to say actually just right now. I got the 20 battery remaining alert So maybe now I'll throw it on the charger for like five minutes or like 10 minutes and you'll have to top it back up And then yeah, not care about when I have to charge an x. It's just that lasts that long It's completely changed how I exact same relationship I also have with one plus's fast charging is I'm not trying to put my phone down on pads or plug and get in when I'm Oh, I guess I need to charge my phone. I'll take 10 minutes All right, cool. Yeah, and um, I just did a trip down to San Diego for three days and you're like, I'm not taking my charger I don't need to But for three days, I you know, I went with 100 came back with 40 and you know what that that was great That's exactly what I want the watch to do. I'm not Thinking about managing it and like, okay now in the hotel room. I've got this charger and I've got this block I'm gonna bring my U-green so I've got all these extra ports so that I can plug in this cable And I don't have to worry about losing the little puck in my backpack Because I can just leave it at home. So it's stuff like that Sorry, yeah, go ahead. The puck is detachable. That's such a huge difference compared to the pixel watch, too I love that. What's great is I mean like you one you don't have to worry about taking it with you You can leave it at home or you because it's so small you can just bring it and just plug it into your usbc cable And like that's great It's because it's so small I'm worried about traveling with it because I've got a stupid backpack full of gear and stuff And I don't want to lose cables and adapters and pieces in part So if if I know I'm gonna only be out for like a week I'm not going to take the charger with me because I can get away with rtos for 12 days on a charge if I absolutely need to Um, it like I was already in kind of that habit with the tick watch because the tick watch was a good three to four Day battery life watch, too, and this is just taking it to another level Like yeah, it's so refreshing to kind of have a device that I don't babysit as much Yeah to kind of get me through my day Yeah, I kind of pegged this watch is like the watch for people who don't want to experience battery anxiety anymore because that's what it does It it kind of alleviates that like like you were saying michelle And another thing that I think really helps this is If because I will admit like when I as I've been using this I don't put it on a charger every day because I don't have to I guess what I was saying is like I don't mind putting it on at the end of the night because it's just kind of part of my ritual But what I like about not having to put this on the charger is It's not running at full power overnight if you have that auto hibernation setting going And so you set the times to say between 11 p.m. And 6 30 a.m Switch that sucker to i auto hibernation when it's off my wrist It goes to the low power mode and it wakes up, you know when I wake up in the morning It may be lost a couple of percents. Maybe um, yeah, and you know And so you end up the the battery is used when you're using it and not the other times, you know It's so it's it's really really smart how they implemented the hybrid architecture How they worked with the power management throughout the fact that you can't really even tell as a user That it's using one chip and not the other and that there's any sort of like handoff happening I mean the only time you really notice that is when you go into the settings and you effectively say Turn off smart foot mode go into power save mode And then you kind of see the process But when it's when they're working in tandem you wouldn't even know the difference and it's just uh, yeah, it's it's really It's a really fantastic watch I have to say I'm really impressed that one plus could figure this out and companies like samsung and google Have it, you know, like well, I mean one plus I mean google figured out because they worked with with one plus to implement Yeah, we thought we talked about kill burn about about that and the wear us as angle of it They just have chosen not to yet and I think that you know by all I wonder if they will Yeah, it's so funny. I think this will be opening up up to other manufacturers I would be very surprised if next gen pixel watch and galaxy watch don't have similar Maybe not exactly the same full rt os but similar sort of different power modes because this was also kind of a A feature on the tick watch The tick watch had a low power sports mode that still did heart rate And step tracking and it was a basic time piece It sounds very similar then And you could run it for like two weeks, you know, um on a charge you just shut off all the wear os stuff because Uh mob boy always used a separate custom core. They didn't use they didn't always use the qualcomm plus chip So they had a low power state that was essentially its own unique Watch environment and then you would fire up wear os for all of the fancy computing stuff Again, it's like there are so many good ideas out here And I think one plus has definitely kind of taken that next step for this hybrid arrangement I'll be shocked if samsung doesn't have an answer for this next year Yeah, well, but I think it's just most interesting about this whole story is that the one plus watch The original watch was so derided and such a Swing of this and this now is the Complete 180 opposite, you know, I've yet to hear anybody aside from complaining about the size of the chunk Um, I haven't heard anybody criticize this watch in any capacity. So um, yeah, just funny to see how they turned it around So That's good to see. I totally agree indeed. It's a it's a good comeback story All right. Well speaking of comeback michelle qualcomm can't count them out yet. Can you? Yeah, that's right. Coming back with more chips coming back with new chips. Don't call it The beginning of last week they announced the snapdragon 8s gen 3 and at the end of last week they announced the snapdragon 7 plus Gen 3 So what's the difference between the 7 plus gen 3 and the regular snapdragon 7 gen 3 Well, the 7 plus gen 3 has boosted cpu and gb performance Supports wi-fi 7 But most importantly supports on device generative ai so it can run several art language models on device such as gemini nano and llama 2 Um, that's basically it. That's all you really need to know about the like chipset besides specific numbers but expect to see this chipset land in upper mid-range devices from oems like one plus Um real me and shark and in fact one plus actually already did announce a smartphone powered by this new chipset Only available in china right now the one plus ace 3v But it's rumored to be launching internationally as a one plus toward four. So hopefully we hear more about that device soon nice Cool, buddy's getting their ai chip capabilities It's a race right now. Yep ai all the things all the things ai all the things You went tom brokaw. That was great Let's move on from hardware into apps because a couple a little quick app news, right jason Some app speed round because we are a little long right now Um epic games, you know, we're talking about apple earlier and an ante trust and I think you know the V o g's in uh taking apple to task at this point where epic games In a long arduous battle with apple Over bringing its epic games store to ios apple has been losing that battle, of course Uh, so now the epic games store coming to ios and since it's coming to ios You better believe it's also coming to android epic games store tweeted out the news No date to expect the arrival quite yet But this is going to allow epic To avoid paying google 15 percent Well, so the deal is you pay google 15 percent up to one million dollars in revenue and then beyond that 30 percent Uh, I my my understanding is that epic would not have to pay that anymore instead epic would earn 12 percent on sales With the remaining 88 percent going to developers in the store So that's it, you know, it's going to be a big big loss for google a big gain for epic obviously That's why they're so interested in making this happen I'm so excited about this This is this is huge I I don't think people always remember we've had like the amazon app store A humble bundle used to have its own Android app store and like I had I had a bunch of games through there I've been waiting for like steam to become the steam of android gaming too This is going to bring developers to a space where I I I can't I can't imagine an outcome from this which won't be better quality games on mobile And better access to those games on mobile. So I'm I'm really stoked. This this this could be pretty epic Oh, wow, that's fringy But you did it it's okay, but it's a huge opportunity for indie game developers I think it's smaller game developers and you know, just to have it Just to have it be in a gaming centric and knowing epic They're gonna push the boundaries wherever they can because that's the kind of company they are. So Unfortunately for epic I think this is going to fail massively Because on pc, for example, there's no really good centralized app store on the par with like google play store on android Or the apple app store on ios So there's already a culture and like a history people know They have to go to websites to specific services to download most of their apps, right? But on android and ios there's already too much market penetration of google play store and apple app store People just go to those app stores to download all their apps The only hope for something like epic game store to succeed is to get a whole bunch of big publishers to Distribute their apps only on those stores and market the heck out of it But the problem is big publishers Don't always see eye to eye They might want to launch their own game store so they can have their own commission So I just don't see this working out because it would require epic uniting basically the entire gaming industry to decide We're not going to post on google play anymore. We're going to only post on epic game store And that's such too much of a big Risk and too much of a big gamble for them to take and especially on the ios side This is only going to be launching in europe and even then Epic still has to pay apple a fee because apple is charging this core technology fee to even distribute the epic game store So I just don't think it's going anywhere. It's it's a nice endeavor, right to see if they can break out Of the duopoly But I just don't see it actually landing All right, I think you're right in the short term But I think this is also the long term play at what we see in every changing trend for pc gaming Like look at the excitement that so many companies have been able to foster with things like handheld gaming devices and Yeah, we can point to something like the nintendo switch and then also say like well Yeah, but like a three-year-old android phone is demonstrably more powerful than a nintendo switch What we need are the developers and the interest and the market to start building around portable gaming devices and then also The differences that we're seeing like I was just testing out the new x elite chip from snap From qualcomm that new snap dragon ship that's gonna be really disruptive for pc So we're gonna be seeing a whole bunch of different gaming avenues arriving all at the same time So epic being able to start this now means that they'll have an entrenched hold If we start to see a market develop It's better to be at the forefront of that than to Wait for the market to prove itself and then try to build your store on top of that So that's why i'm excited is you know immediately nothing's gonna change You're gonna fire up the epic game store for android and it's basically just gonna be fortnight and you're like, okay cool Yeah, that's what we've always had but for them to have the infrastructure in place I believe is gonna be the change where we start seeing like well Maybe an android gaming handset starts to make a lot more sense when we've got silicon that can back this up and Tremendously out power some of these other devices that we've been using I think it's a long. I think it's a long con. I think it's a long play But it's better. I I think in the long run. I think epics in the right direction. It's just it's gonna be laughable to start Yeah Well, we'll see we're definitely gonna watch it closely Um, all right. Well quickly for you google wallet users. Um, All through all around the country all around the the us and the world internationally You may have noticed that you need to unlock a little more than often when using it Google's implemented some changes now That have adjusted the threshold of payment amount That requires an unlock You know, so for example, there's a 25 euro threshold in belgium is 30 euro threshold in france Here in the us unlock is now required for all transactions except for transit Which is really interesting So basically, I mean they just want to make sure you're verifying your u before you're making any payment So I understand where this is coming from It's funny because I always unlock like women and wall greens and I go and pay I just assume you needed to unlock to pay Um, and I just and uh jason, you've been proud of me. I've been wearing my pixel watch too When I go into the city, I've been using the google wallet watch payment on The new york subway, um, which is awesome All you got to do is just I kind of double crap tap the crap the button on the watch And just tap it onto the subway and go through the turnstile. It's very very effective So i'm glad that they're not requiring unlock for transit because you don't want to you don't want to be held up in that moment And that's a little god. Yeah, that'd be super stressful. Yeah, exactly. Um, But yeah, so a little more security on google wallet requires you to unlock a little more type in your pin But you know, it's money. So let's be safe. So Let's all be safe. Yeah around here. All right. Michelle. You got the last one Yeah, and very briefly if you have a one plus or xiaomi device You can now go into your stock gallery app and enable google photos integration So previously you could only like back up your photos from the one plus gallery Or the xiaomi gallery to google photos But now you can actually pull in your entire google photos library Into those stock gallery apps by enabling this Synchronization option once you go to the gallery app and enable it In google photos. So this allows you to seamlessly view And make edits to your entire google photos collection right from your stock gallery app So there's a particular editing features that you like in the oem default app You can now use those instead of google photos suite. The only downside is that albums aren't synced both ways. So If you like to organize your photos into albums a lot, that's one thing that's missing. So, um, That's why this feature is opt in thankfully so you can go in and opt in or opt out if you don't like it Cool Sounds like that could possibly get a little confusing But but I also Think that's a pretty handy feature pretty nice to have that right and this is available not just one plus But also opo and real me devices all of the bbk devices that run oxygen os slash color os with a recent version of the Um stock photos app as they call it as well as on xiaomi devices with their own The latest version of their gallery app Cool very nice All right, well that will wrap up apps And now we want to hear from you the audience who listens and watches us You can email us at contact at android faithful.com always great to hear from you. Thank everyone who writes in We got a bunch of email in the past week. We can't get through it all But um, what's great is that we've gotten a lot of responses to stuff from the episode like last week We got all our responses to last week's episodes. It's so nice to see Also, if you are a patron you can send us a message via patreon We receive messages there via the direct message function. So you can always email us there But michelle, you've got the first email which did come in from patreon. Actually, so That's right. This first email comes in from Alpan 23 on patreon who wrote in to say that i'm one of the few android users in my office We're quite ios heavy in the uk too and one argument Friends that use ios always give me for sticking with apple is quote security Historically android has had quite a bad reputation But now that we have pixel phones which google patch up monthly Is it fair to say that an android device can be as secure as an iphone from malware slash spyware perspective? If you were to not jailbreak your pixel Are you as safe online and on the google play store as you would be on the apple app store? In light of the doj suing apple this question becomes even more interesting as apple has used the Privacy and security excuse as one of the reasons behind their monopolistic practices And we're all nodding vigorously. I think you agree that the answer is yes to this question, right? Yeah It's it's different threats, but I wouldn't say any one platform and michelle you were literally just saying like as we were talking about the doj case like Yeah, a part of this is a legitimate argument about privacy and security and then a lot of this is also just marketing So I so I kind of feel when it comes to you as an individual user Right the argument that apple and google like to make to disallow Or disincentivize side loading or third party app stores is that as an aggregate when you're talking about billions of users You're including your 80 year old grandma who might use your phone, right? She or he or your grandparents, you know, they might not know What's safe and what's not to safe like what looks like an obvious scam to you might not look like an obvious scam to them Right, so they might download an app. That's you know malicious But the thing is you as an individual user you're listening to this podcast. You're probably more tech savvy than most Uh, there's nothing you need to worry about. I don't know exactly I can't talk about andro ios security because I'm not an expert at all on ios But when it comes to android really all you need to do is pay attention to like does the app seem legitimate, right? Number two, what permissions does it ask for this is the biggest one because even if An app seems malicious It can't really do anything unless you give it permission to do things, right? Right, so if like a ski ball app asks for your sms permission, right? That's obviously sketchy. He's hey Don't give it that right feel like ask yourself. Does this seem Legitimate, right? Because when you're installing an app, you're not you're not giving it a black box to do anything at once, right? It can only do whatever permissions you give it access to Like of course, there are some things Potentially you could want to worry about like like low level bluetooth firmware bugs that can lead to an app gaining root access on your device, but you can't you can't like actually Factor that into your security consideration because you can't prevent that, right? That's not something you really got to consider But if you're just thinking about how to keep yourself secure just use some common sense Look at the apps you're installing look the publisher behind the app on google play Look at what permission is asking for look at what you're granting it Think about why it might need that permission And you'll stay safe like for the vast majority of cases I don't think you do you have anything to worry about if you're on android There's so many built-in security features that sandbox apps that sandbox processes from apps that prevent apps from Miscommunicating with another app that prevent apps from leaking data from another app There's so many things that are built in that take care of a lot of the really basic Um security concerns that you might have So my my question about this which which triggered the trigger the thought I had was There was some point in time Where and the android, you know the google play store and android stuff that wasn't as secure Right, but that was a long time ago, right like Did this did the the sins of the past become the baked in fact of the present? Yes, yeah Yeah, I I believe so I think I think by and large a lot of the people who Don't pay close attention to this stuff But know what android is and you know and many of them have an iphone and everything Still operate under the playbook that was that existed 10 years ago under the The the the news that was very pervasive that android was inherently insecure because it was open And they might not even realize the because it was open They just heard android is insecure enough to continue to believe that that's still the case I think that's probably pretty true I think the reason also is because you still see headlines coming out like every week basically saying there's this new malware campaign that is One most of the time distributed through apps outside of the google play store But also sometimes ding ding ding right store because google is not perfect neither is apple at policing their app store number two Involved permissions that the user was tricked into or deceived into or just You know willingly gave to the malicious apps themselves to steal certain data, right and you see these headlines and People misconstrue this idea as oh there are malicious apps Being spread to android users Therefore the android os itself is insecure, which is not true There's just these headlines and once most of the time that you dig into it like 95 of the time It's because the user granted it permission they shouldn't have And that's basically all I gotta say just be careful what you're granting For however many years in the last handful of years, you know before all that android went away These security stories would come up every week and what i'm picking the stories I would always look at them and be like god Do I really have to put this in there again like there there is always one of these stories and it's exactly what you say Okay, well, yeah, it impacted 5000 people like in in the you know in the entire world or the app was Outloaded from third party, you know app stores illegitimate. It's like and and the problem is people see those headlines And they automatically assume that that means that android as a whole is indeed still unsafe It's like no, but you got to understand the detail there is it's you know It's very different than what people believe I think and it's hard to get good data because I feel another major problem is the sort of security through obscurity tactic that Apple tends to we just don't make as much noise when there are Similar issues that are outside of a user's control like When a malicious app does make it through the app store we get this kind of flurry of headlines and then it's like Oh, but no, but apple apple does it better that's I think they caught the the malware So that's how you know apple does it better and you're like well, yeah But when we talk about catching malware on google play That's evidence of google not doing it better, you know, like there was recently It was a password manager and a malicious company made a clone of it And it was convincing enough that ios users were downloading this copycat and putting in all of their password manager credentials in there you can get malware through apples App store guidelines But when there's another situation like I want to say it was a little more than a year ago Safari was leaking everything across browser tabs So there's nothing a user can do if you use a browser Any web service could see what was in every other browser tab And you're like well, where was the flurry of headlines about max and iPhones? Because that is a genuine consumer concern that that is a a a terrible situation to be in and then ios users mac users just completely unaware That that was the security threat that it was and again apple not publishing any information on that until they had already long passed it I patched it but For how long was this a concern? How long was this is an operation? When did this bug get get discovered in safari leaking all of your data across browser tabs? And it always seems to be kind of this one One-way conversation when we talk about security and and from some of the comments in in your chat right now It's it's mostly a function of marketing I feel apple has done a much better job of selling their platform And google doesn't have the same relationship directly with consumers except now Building up a little bit more credibility by reinforcing that on the pixel Yep Fascinating it's fascinating how do you tell these stories? All right. Um, well great email alpenn 23 on patreon. Thank you Our next email comes in response To the question we raised last week in last week's episode Daniel writes in and says greetings to the android faithful crew The question was raised on why you should stay or leave pixel and for me google has me locked in with their call Screening and hold for you and similar calling features. This is a deal breaker I generally could not leave for a different phone that didn't have those features Other pluses are clean android experience betas and other first to android type updates that other brands could take months Or even a year to get and all this is why I love pixel I'm currently on the pixel 7 pro holding out for the fold 2 to drop Oh and ron I updated my os last friday and got circled to search Anyhow keep up the great work everyone sincerely daniel c And thank you daniel for weighing in on why you would stick with the pixel Platform one last week we were talking about saying like if you were on pixel What would it take you to jump for you know the vice versa? And just quick update on my circle to search drama Still don't have it on my pixel 8 pro But I was using my regular pixel 8 on on the uh for the webcam for the overhead cam tonight And I was like oh, I wonder if I've got it on here. Sure enough circle to search works fine on this guy this sucker I see I seriously think something With google play services or some sort of cat And I think like if I factory reset I probably would get it, but like I don't need it that much So it's fine. So yeah, well, I'd like to reinforce I have my sim card back in the one plus 12. I love the one plus 12 It's a great phone over the course of being on this uh live stream with y'all. I've had seven spam calls Wow Seven seven it comes in these crazy waves where like all of a sudden I'm just inundated with garbage and now to the credit of android All of those have come in as spam likely But I I have not been getting those calls Alerting my attention or distracting me when my sim cards in my pixel So just to kind of help reinforce a little data on that there is Absolutely a usability perk on the pixel as one of the best communicator devices on the market today There it is That's a good. That's a good opinion. So it's a pretty awesome feature. All right. All right. We got one more email Jason. Take it away All right, finally Panzer z on twix. Oh, sorry. Sorry. I read that wrong david Twix, I read the wrong part of the lessons Says hey guys, so at least on my phone the one plus eight pro you can start navigation Then hit the lock button Then turn back on this or turn back on the screen where the map's navigation will still be showing Running. Yes, I've seen this too. You're actually still on the lock screen So it's like the it's like app pinning where you can't get out of the app unless you swipe up to get the unlock screen prompt Hope this helps from a triple a fan who is now an afn pan panzer z on twix aka David. Yeah, I've seen this too. I mean it makes a lot of sense wouldn't wouldn't suck if you were driving and uh, your phone locked your screen went off And you're driving and then you try and turn on your screen And your phone is locked and then you have to unlock it while you're driving. I mean that's just kind of a nightmare So I think you know that they're sandboxing it They're not allowing you to go anywhere else unless you authenticate, but right What is this? I'm trying to remember what this is in relation to last week We got an email from from a gentleman who pushes his wife in her wheelchair and want and takes long walks and wants to Keep maps up and avoid the phone actually getting hit to tap onto another app or got it Okay, I wanted to lock it on google map. So this is a this is a good solution here for uh, for them as well So yeah, turn off the screen when you turn that screen back on you'll still have the lock Functionality of the phone, but the navigation will still be running. Yeah Yeah, cool I would like to ask a question of your audience because I have one really old car that has like no integration with any kind of data or services And when I have navigation up and I get a phone call How do I keep the phone call from completely wiping away? The map screen because I don't have an android auto set up in this car If anyone has an answer to that I have tried numerous ways of like locking and pinning apps and stuff like that Where it also won't always even shrink the map navigation. It'll just take it all away and then I have to Multitask my way back from the phone call to my active navigation. So I don't know a thing And I would love for people to tell me how it's dumb that I don't know a thing on the internet Honestly, if you drive this car a lot it might be worth investing in just one of those mini um android auto I'm being the cranky old guy Over a hundred bucks Like I got one like a nine inch one for I think like 160 On like amazon it works really well. It's full of wireless android auto as well I just missed the sort of like the the Because it never worked well, but when we had sort of on phone screen android auto Sort of launcher I just wanted more of that so when there was at least somewhat of a solution versus One of a solution It was an attempt It was so exciting like oh, I can use ways to Wow But no, there's nothing now. Yeah, so All right. Well, if you have an answer to Juan's question email us in let us know contact and android faithful.com We want to hear from you And yeah, please help Juan in his car navigation and phone call So he's got to answer all those spam calls while driving so I'm right So bad. Yep. All right. Well, let's get a wrap it up for this week's android faithful Juan, thank you so much for joining us For those who those who aren't familiar with your work. Where can folks find you on the internet? I'm all over the place at some gadget guy across social media some gadget guy.com is my home site Where I try and tie a lot of my stories together Um, I also have a patreon where I kind of keep my exclusive camera And a photography sort of conversations. That's that's where all that stuff lives. Um, yeah It's it's it's pretty easy to stumble on some of my work and uh, I always love just Kind of catching a new geek thread conversation It's a little broader, especially this year I'm going to be covering a lot of laptop news as we get into the summer So should be uh, should be some pretty fun stuff Excellent And I got to say your appearances on this very show last summer Talking about the be the the x-reel glasses and and and some stuff Predated the vision pro release and it gets cited oftentimes on the show about the the infinite desktop conversation. We've had and so Also your insights so every every time I get to be on the show guys We get to have the friendly reminder that apple is still holding android location trackers hostage Michelle again politically You it ties right into what we've been talking about market pressure doj My camera just died. Oh, no Apple apple is intervening as they've heard you I was talking about it kill this camera kill this technology. Yes That's too funny That's hilarious Michelle you've been tracking the find my network uh drama over this time period I know you and wanner you have your your your your team meetings offline to talk about the the state of the find the network to Oh, I'm still super cranky and I've been reading michelle kind of like hey guys just a reminder on mastodon It's still apples fault So All right, cool. Well, thank you so much wan. Uh, we appreciate you. Oh, there you are your camera is back. Good to see you Um, well speaking of mastodon, uh, michelle, where can folks find you on the internet? Um, well, I'm focusing more on publishing articles and finding new things in android like I have a whole Big backlog of things to write about when it comes to android 15 So if you want to support that work, uh, please visit patreon.com slash shawaraman and chip in you can get access to my discord community Where I share a lot of the exclusive details and things that I'm working on ahead of time And to be honest like I am posting there more and more because You know, I just don't have time to write articles research and also comments on everything I find on twitter And in it if I post something on twitter, that means I don't get the chance to write an article on it so i'm trying to lean more towards article writing and Trying to leave things more exclusive to discord members who are you know You can only get access to the discord if you subscribe on patreon So if you want to hear a lot about what's coming in android 15 before google io before google announces it Several months in the future. You can join my community and follow my work Through patreon and my socials All right, everybody. Yeah, definitely. Please support me. He does. He does the lord's work um Jason where can people find that awesome one plus two one plus watch two review that you shared with us tonight Well, uh on my youtube channel, and i'm slowly trying to grow Just go to yellowgoldstudios.com and um the video Yeah, I published like an hour and a half to literally like an hour before the show tonight. So Um, so it's early stages for the one plus watch To review, but you can find it there yellowgoldstudios.com. You can also support me at patreon.com slash jason howell There's so many different ways you can get in touch with me I've even lost track of all the different ways. So just search for me and you know, just go to the channel That's the one place you go go to the channel. So that's all you gotta do And for me, I'm on the internet I'm at ron xo across all those various places and I realized I didn't mention this Last week when the episode came out and jason. I'm sorry. I added my link late in the in the in the chat but um head over to ifanboy.com uh and on their ifanboys podcast feed a couple weeks ago We released our monthly media splode podcast where we talk about stuff and we uh reacted to the 2024 oscars And then uh talked a lot about movies But then also talked about what uh, what tv we haven't started watching yet and uh And the other guys picked the next tv show for me to watch and I picked their next tv show It was a little game we played where we listed all the shows that I haven't had time to watch And they picked the one I have to so I'm I'm watching monarch legacy of monsters on apple tv plus right now Um because that was on my list and I hadn't started watching it and they said we're gonna make you watch about godzilla And I said okay, and it's been good so far Um, so and speaking of godzilla wind just popped into the chat and she said hello from kiyoto So, uh, it is good to see her Uh enjoying japan uh and catching the end of the episode Um because that's gonna wrap it up for this week's android faithful. Um as a reminder this podcast live streams every Tuesday evening at 8 p.m. Eastern 5 p.m. Pacific on youtube and on twitch So you can check that out live if you like and then it releases to the podcast feed later that evening Which you can find links to subscribe to over at android faithful.com But if you're listening to this you're probably already subscribed Tell your friends to go subscribe. We love the support. We love talking about android And we'll do it again next week because we are the android faithful. Yes, we are now and forever