 Hello, welcome to another episode of Android faithful you we can source the latest news hardware and apps for the world The wide wide world of Android. Hello, everybody. I am Jason Howell and I'm Ron Richards I'm going to it now And I'm a shawarma. Oh, yeah worked flawlessly good to see y'all last week Just started and I'm already exhausted Confirm it's been that kind of week. This has been this is possibly I think the biggest week We've had in months in the Android faithful and do you think yeah, there's a lot of stuff I mean Mobile World Congress just does that right like there There are does I feel like previous years were like, oh Mobile World Congress was a dud Oh, well, I mean the last handful of years have been a little weird, right? And this was like this was the big boom of Mobile World Congress that I feel like we haven't felt in a while And it's making the show gonna this is gonna be an extra long edition of Android faithful So buckle up buckle in everybody. So well y'all were bantering about 90 shows I was conserving my energy because I have a big script ready for the one-plus watch to that We'll talk about later today lots of stuff. All right Well before we get into it because we got a lot of great stuff this week, right? Like we so stuff I just want to remind everybody if you are not following us out on the social media You need to do that get on with it So we are on twix Twitter X as twix as we like to call it here We are slash Android faithful on on Twitter. We're on Facebook at Android faithful We are on Instagram at Android faithful podcast. We are on threads at Android faithful podcast. Look at that We're also on mastodon. We're at Android faithful at Android dev dot social and Our our least amount of followers, which I really want to grow We're on blue sky also at Android faithful that be sky dot social. So So many places to follow us I just want to remind everybody to do that if you're on blue sky go follow us if you're on mastodon Go follow us etc etc. We're gonna try to post to all of them all the time and do more so We definitely want to grow those channels. So if you haven't started following, please do Instagram has got some cool droid guys there. So yeah, I had such a hard time with Instagram try as I might They're all tough. They're all tough is really hard for me to know what to put on Instagram Even though it's probably easier for For everyone else it seems like so Jason. What do we got to what's what's going on with this episode this week? Well, oh this episode. We're not talking about social media Okay, maybe maybe somewhere in here there is but I don't think so. No this week I mean, you know, it's all it's really seems to be entirely about Mobile World Congress Maybe there's a few stories in here that are tangentially related if if at all related But really this is the year of or this is the week of Bartholona, this is the week of Hamon. Come on. Yeah, that we aren't eating because we aren't there at Barcelona, I think we should make a plan next year to all go and we'll have a Android faithful annual Work meeting in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress around a plate of Hamon. It'll be it'll be the expense It'll be a write-off. Let's do it. Let's commit to it Or we just put it out in the ether and we say hey someone wants sponsor Android faithful go into Bartholona We'll do the show anyone listening Anyone listening who is either related tangentially to a brand that is an affinity to our audience or If you're an eccentric billionaire, we can be bought. We'll hang out with you Come on do it email us at contact that Andrew faithful calm Maybe we need a special Hamon Hamon patron level. Yeah. Oh my goodness. That's amazing idea. I love it The Hamon yes, I think if you'd like that idea go to patreon patreon.com slash Android faithful and first sign up And then let us know in the comments somewhere on that site Okay Interesting plugs out of the way Mobile World Congress week begins now. Why don't we start with the news Ron? All right, let's do it. Well the well right out of the gate at Mobile World Congress Google showed up with a whole bunch of Android related announcements That we're very excited to find out about so Google announced eight they announced nine new Android features to help you stay productive So a bunch of productivity based updates So I'm gonna run through these you've probably seen already, but you know, we can discuss as needed AI summarized text and group chats will be will be arrived will be arriving while driving via Android Auto The lookout app meant for blind and low-vision users will auto describe photos and images, which is very cool They're rolling out screen reader support for lens and maps. So talk back. We'll let you know information about maps about places that map sees Handwritten annotations are coming to docks, which is pretty cool An output switcher support for Spotify Which is already supported by YouTube music what that actually means is that the little Media panel in your notifications pane can be linked to Spotify, which was very cool. I use YouTube music I take advantage of this all the time Updated Fitbit app with health connect for integrated data across more wearables and apps Also on the wear OS side of things Google Wallet passes are now available on wear OS devices. So if you've got passes in your Google Wallet You can pull them up in your wear OS device on your watch Transit directions within Google Maps available on wear OS And then finally, of course, it wouldn't be an announcement from Google if we didn't talk about Gemini Right now you can chat with Gemini directly in the Google Messages app As they're integrating Gemini across the board I'm about you guys have you gotten a message an upsell message in all of your Gmail accounts to Pay start paying for Gemini like I have like I opened up my email today And it was like try Gemini try Gemini try Gemini. I'm like, I know Google. I know about Gemini. I know Jiminy I I did get access to Gemini 1.5 actually just the other day Oh, yeah, I haven't really had time to play around with it yet, but that's gonna be something I'm gonna definitely be trying out. Yeah So Google Google appeared pretty strong at the start of World Mobile World Congress with all the stuff at Android And it was neat to see some wear OS stuff There because wear OS has become a hot button topic for the Mobile World Congress, hasn't it? Yeah, and So this is interesting. So Google's got wear OS news that really goes in tandem At least the way the announcement was formulated with one plus and we're gonna talk about one plus and the hardware that they've announced at Mobile World Congress in A little bit and I think it's gonna come up a little bit now But Michelle and I had the opportunity to speak with Bjorn Kilburn from the wear OS team Yesterday it kind of timed with some of the news that they were releasing About some changes to wear OS for about some really interesting ways in which wearable devices are Going to at least at least this is the case with the one plus watch too And I'm guessing we'll see it more in some other hardware going forward in the future But ways in which they're kind of operating in a sort of hybrid mode Which will hopefully ultimately mean better battery life And so Michelle and I spoke with Bjorn and we got that video So we're just gonna go ahead and play it in its entirety and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about it And of course we'll talk about the one plus watch two after that. So stand by everybody. Here we go All right Once again, we are blessed with an opportunity to speak with someone behind the scenes working on the hardware and the software That we all love in the world of Android joining a Michelle and I is Bjorn Kilburn Who is the VP of wear OS at Google Bjorn? It's it's great to meet you and great to talk to you today. It's really great to meet both of you as well I'm really excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. And I I can speak for myself Michelle, I know you've got the hardware as well I was literally just before we kind of walked into the studio here doing setup on the one plus watch two That's on my wrist. So I haven't dove into You know the nuts and bolts of everything that we're gonna talk about today But this is gonna be really good kind of laying the groundwork around what my experience is probably gonna be but why don't we start with kind of wear OS for the state of Where we are at with wearables on Android just break down If you don't mind is kind of a good starting point some of the highlights of the new wear OS for that your team's been working on Yeah, sure So, you know, we're we're focused on streamlining the core smart watch experience and in wear OS for we added some key Frankly missing features like watch transfer meaning Taking your watch and and getting a new phone and being able to transfer that watch to the new phone adding some apps Flashscreens and and also bringing Google Calendar, which is is one of the Google apps that that we really felt was needed and needed to be added into the wear OS ecosystem And then also, you know, one of the biggest things we've still got to solve And I think the the one plus watch two announcement is a great step in that direction is better battery life It's it's one of the key user needs that we still need to make progress on in order for the watch to be a Trusted device that it really needs to be and and so a number of the things that we were we've done in in wear OS for to You know set the conditions for that are for example Bring the declarative or watch face format, which is a declarative format and that sets us up to be able to Enable watch faces to be much more power efficient We've also introduced system managed data bindings for tiles for certain data types like heart rate or steps And that allows tiles to be updated without necessarily having to wake up the app in order to update those data types And we generally made improvements to power management within wear OS itself In order to make continuous step towards better battery life for users Yeah, I mean no question battery life is I think at the top at least in my experience with with smart watches And I haven't had a huge amount of experience with watches that are you know more devoted to a single thing versus the like wide You know the wild wild west of smart watches that could do everything which is amazing as a user It's like I want my devices to do everything But as you say like as that feature set expands then you know the battery life as one key example Really it begins to take a hit and I think it's hard to measure up I have to imagine you can tell me kind of your perspective on this But it's hard to measure up Against what the expectation of the user is which is I want a smart watch that can do all these things and last forever Versus what's actually possible and I know that the architecture here is a really big part of that story this hybrid interface Architecture and I'm just kind of curious like what what exactly is different about the hybrid interface approach When you compare it to come previous where OS generations and where OS efforts Oh sure, I mean, that's a that's an excellent question We've we've actually been working on the hybrid interface in past versions of where OS but we haven't really talked much about it because it's something that we provide to the OEMs to to To implement based on their particular power management strategy, but for example in where three we added the health hybrid interface which Enables where health services to Be periodically updated by the MCU on the system also in where three we have a display Hybrid interface which some OEMs have been using and then in where four specifically working with with With one plus we added the notification a hybrid interface which enabled them to be able to Handle a lot of the notification use cases on the watch in the MCU whilst leaving the the AP asleep so having We've been building that interface to enable OEMs and and And really new new in the one plus watch two is the addition of viewing and dismissing bridge notifications on the MCU And then seamlessly transitioning to the AP if a more you know more the spoke reply for example if the keyboard user wants to type out a response then we Seamlessly transition to the AP and then the user is able to respond to that notification But it really you know part of the reason we haven't really talked much about the hybrid interfaces because it really shouldn't be visible to the user What's going on? It's really a set of tools that we provide OEMs to enable them to get to better battery life Yeah, something I've really noticed when I was using the one plus watch two Over the past couple of days like I would get a notification and it really does as you mentioned This is supposedly running on the microcontroller unit or the MCU But I don't actually notice that it's running on the completely custom RTOS That's on this smartwatch versus where OS that's powered by the more powerful application processor or AP And I'm really impressed by how that's been done And I'm kind of curious to hear if These apis that are provided currently by the hybrid OS interface the display health services and notifications If there will be others coming in the future or if that's what we're working with For the portable feature right now Oh, it's definitely an area that we're continuing to you know iterate and and learn on their their capabilities that Our OEMs are asking us to add to the hybrid interface I think in particular as you get into these transitions between display control where the MCU is sometimes controlling the display and the apis is sometimes controlling the display That's you know, that's where it gets really tricky because You've got to make sure that that transition is is so seamless you don't want the user to have to notice it and And that that there's there's definitely some some improvements in that area that we think we can still make to enable even more seamless transitions to also enable more capabilities on the MCU so that More of the use cases that our OEMs want to be able to power from the MCU can actually be Driven there and driven with similar fidelity and I think one of the things that's really important to us is these watches are You know, they're 50 percent I the way I like to think about them is like 50 functional like they need to do helpful things for people but they're also a piece of jewelry so you know, they need to be beautiful and and so really being able to make Continue to make the watches really have this premium beautiful jewelry like feeling Whilst also optimizing battery life is actually a pretty fun challenge it's pretty complicated to do and definitely will be you know, investing more in the hybrid interface to enable More of that beauty to come through in a way that also optimizes for battery life I wanted to follow up a bit about the Exact capabilities of this hybrid interface. So in the blog post it's mentioned that this enables more Power-efficient experiences such as sense of data processing on the MCU while the application processor is kept asleep I wanted to ask like is there a specific kind of pull limit on the sensor data collection Or can it be effectively continuous because I was wondering if I'd be possible to build more complex features Running entirely on the MCU such as sense of data collection for car crash detection and you know that requires continuous monitoring of like Microphone of accelerometer data and gyroscope and being able to have all that running on a super power efficient MCU would be much more beneficial than having that run on something more power hungry like the the main AP Yeah, it's a great question. Michelle. I'm like I'm in the lot to unpack there I for sure like on the one hand these these microcontrollers are great for always on sort of low compute complexity tasks um But there is actually a threshold beyond which, you know, if the compute complexity gets too high Then the AP is actually both more performant and more power efficient And so making sure that we're running the right compute jobs in the right place is really the the key thing here and And certainly, you know in I think pretty much every watch architecture that i'm familiar with the MCU is generally running all the time Usually it's some maybe it's some lower clock speed, but it's doing things like collecting your heart rate on a continuous basis or steps on a continuous basis And you know, obviously with the user's permission and at the user's request But most users like to have that feature enabled and once they do the MCU is they're doing that job all the time and and to your point You know, even just the normal sort of tilt-to-wake gesture that you make with the watch Needs to have The gyro the IMU the the gyro and the accelerometer running all the time. Those are usually connected to the MCU so usually the MCU Is on for even those basic type of gesture detection And so then having other tasks run on the MCU when the MCU is on makes sense And and certainly Since it's running the more tasks you can take care of there without turning the MCU effectively into an AP Is is a is a way to approach that problem. So certainly These mcs are actually pretty capable and it is definitely possible to run some pretty advanced machine learning algorithms on low power mcs like Such as models built with tensorflow light micro They can be run on an MCU and so that can enable some of these Types of scenarios whether it's an improved heart rate algo or it's an improved distance tracking algo Which, you know, generally involves not only, you know fusing gnss, but also uh initial motion algos so that you can Dead reckon when you go out of gps coverage and things like that those types of algos can be improved with Running AI and that AI if it's a small enough model can run Um on the MCU when it comes to something like car crash detection It all depends on Whether or not the model can be made accurate enough and small enough and the compute complexity can be light enough That it makes sense to run it on an MCU. We'll have to see How, you know, how folks do with with being able to get a model onto a watch like that But in theory those types of things are possible and in practice You know, those types of algos are already used on an MCU on an always on basis for These types of tasks like detecting whether or not you've tilted your wrist and doing that very accurately or You know improving the quality of your heart rate or or or distance or step calculation Or like fall detection on the pixel watch Yes, yeah fall detection is another one that would send would fuse sensors together and and that type of algorithm Can run on an MCU Yeah, yeah, I think you know at the end of the day what i'm realizing as i'm listening to you kind of talk about all this is You know again touching back on what we started with at the end of the day The general user of these devices just wants better performance wants longer lasting performance And what's going on under the hood seems to tackle that what I also realize is that You know our our fans the people who watch and listen to android faithful There it's a mixture of the developer people, you know, the people who really understand the under the hood kind of Mechanics of all this working and then there's the user the person that just really enjoys android and wants a better device So if you had to break this down and kind of spell spell this out for the just the basic the the user of the watch to to know Like what activities that they're doing are powered by the MCU compared to The application processor and like how that improves their kind of their their perspective on their experience If that makes sense. Well, I mean, I think the first thing The first thing I'd say is like I think the fundamental thing here is that we can put all kinds of fancy You know capabilities into a watch, but if we you know run out of power before the user gets through the day They're not going to rely on the watch It's effectively not going to be a useful device because you're not sure You know you're just creating way too much anxiety for people and so It's really really important that we get to trusted battery life and trusted battery life for me is like Is your watch there for you on your worst day, right? Like if you think of a friend who's trusted they're going to be there on your worst day And so that's where we need to get to in my mind with With smart watches is your smart watch has got to be there for you on your worst day Your worst battery day in fact that the day that's going to drain um You know the most battery life and if it can't do that then Every other any bit of functionality it does it's kind of cool or neat is actually Kind of a parlor trick. It's not super helpful at the end of the day So, um, that's that's ultimately where we need to get to The you know that you know as to your question like about what runs where it really varies by by oem and what they Implement where but I will say that you know pretty much everybody makes use of Of for example the health hybrid interface and so it's just makes a lot of sense to have Things like your your step count and your heart rate Running off a microcontroller and not running on the on the application processor Some oems use the microcontroller to to run certain parts of the display typically for long running use cases right because if you can it's it is um It's it's expensive to run the ap and it's Expensive to start it up not because it's inefficient but because it's designed for Really complex computations Um, and so it's sort of like a big engine in a car like if you can run it on the little electric engine for a little while Um, and we don't really have to do a job. That's really that hard Then it makes more sense to use the electric engine until we've really got to you know get up to speed and pass a car You know, then we then we turn on the big v8 and and and go really fast And it's using the right engine for the right job or the right the right cpu for the right, uh You know the right job at the end of the day if you can imagine for example like You know at the end of the day Um, like a stopwatch doesn't isn't really very computationally complex, right? It really probably shouldn't be running on the ap now in most cases I think pretty much every case on a wear OS watch the stopwatch runs that i'm that i can think of Runs on the ap today. That's something we should get to at some point that you know a use case like that Where you just set a t timer You know, maybe doesn't need to be something that's being kept track of on a on an application process It's a little bit over specced for that job if you will whereas like opening the play store updating apps You know, maybe navigating in maps like some of those really complex tasks They're just actually you're going to get better battery life actually running them on an application processor because they're inherently complicated Um, and and the ap is is more power efficient For those complex tasks talking about the whole race to idle Approach where you get the complex tasks done as quickly as possible and go back to sleep with the processor, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly and and there are tasks that you know that are in um That we wake up the ap for today that are not super complex complicated And those are on you know on our list of of things to get to to Move them out of the ap, but they're they're they're naughty. It's it's uh, it's complicated Most of the the challenge to get to battery battery life is not a big silver bullet It's it actually takes a tremendous amount of work Up and down from silicon to glass from you know the work we do with our silicon providers to How our oems assemble the watches to what we do in whereos and together we'll get there But it's it's uh, it it definitely takes a high level of collaboration, you know across across the ecosystem I wanted to ask you a bit about one of the capabilities mentioned in the hybrid os interface is the ability to Support certain watch faces and I believe the block was specifically said only Some watch faces are supported by the hybrid os interface. Could you elaborate a bit on whether or not? um This is about whether the watch face is built only in the watch face format Or all watch faces could be capable of being upgraded to support the hybrid os interface That's a great question. Michelle I like the the legacy watch faces the ones that are based on android x are basically like many applications and so They need all the apis that are available in the you know effectively in the android system and If we were to take those apis and have them run on the mcu Then the mcu would be a mini ap and it would kind of defeat the purpose so The advantage of the watch face format is that it's declarative which means that it's the watch face itself doesn't need to run um developer specific code And that allows you to run the watch face effectively or for the watch face to be what we call system managed Meaning that the the system takes care of running that watch face That opens the door for that watch face to be rendered either on the ap or potentially on the mcu now the next limiting factor that you run into is that Some of those watch faces are then Can be quite large in their assets. They're you know depending on How big the the assets or the images that are in that underlying watch face there has to be space for those and um You know in most cases the mcu's inside these watches have fairly limited storage now That's a problem. We're working on with with with our oem partners to come up with more flexible memory structures to enable future watches to be able to take advantage of more of the watch faces that are out there But in the in the near term the storage that's directly available to the mcu is often quite limited and so What the point we were trying to make with the the blog post was that this watch face format does open up the possibility of being able to run More of these watches watch faces on more watches on the mcu But it very much will depend on how much Memory is available to the mcu as to which watch faces will be able to run when now Of course the user will get the benefit of better battery life when when we are able to run one of those watch faces on the mcu Otherwise the developer and the user shouldn't know We're have to do anything different in order to get that capability. It's something that will work together with oems to um, you know, make sure that the watch face can at least run on the ap and if we're able to move it to the mcu because there's enough storage Uh available on the mcu then that's something we would obviously want to do um, and and you know clearly You know like we talked about like these watches are jewelry So we don't want to just make the watch faces really simple and you know cut the assets out We want them to be beautiful and so there is a real balance to get right there to make sure that we continue to enable users to have the most beautiful possible watch and watch face whilst also You know meeting this fundamental need of having trusted battery life at the end of the day Yeah, indeed now um to kind of wrap things up I guess a big question that a lot of people are going to have If they're watching the announcements and kind of you know reading and listening Today to the to this news So much of it at least from one plus's perspective is tied to the one plus watch too What about other wear less users? Um, is any of this really hardware dependent in ways that might actually prevent? Some of these improvements from hitting some other watches that are already out there that uh could you know potentially be upgraded To enjoy some of these improvements. Um, what's the what's the view there? Well, we you know so much of what's in wearos 4 is Generally available for you know for watch users that will either upgrade to to wear 3 or you know buy a new watch Which is based on on wear 4 And so there are for example power improvements that we haven't talked about in this launch that are in Where in wearos 4 That do lead to better battery life As well as the other capabilities that we talked about in terms of transferring to a phone and and those types of those types of capabilities We spent a lot of time talking about the the hybrid interface Here because the note specifically that the notification hybrid interface is something we work very closely on with With one plus on their watch announcement And when it comes to the hybrid interface, it is something that depends very much on each individual oems underlying watch architecture um, and their power strategy so uh, Unfortunately, I guess in some senses it depends based on You know what those underlying watch architectures are as to how much of the hybrid interface might be adopted in wearos 4 By oem on the other hand we like we've talked about we really don't want this to be something that Users need to unduly worry about and in some cases, you know oems will have other ways of Achieving better battery life that may not make full use of one Sub portion of the hybrid interface um, I would not be surprised though if we don't see more oems adopting for example the notification um hybrid interface, um, you know because generally We're We're working closely with oems and anyone who comes up with a great idea of how to improve battery life That's really top of our list to want to collaborate with them on and we're really thrilled to work with apo on it They were very excited about it. Um, and you know, we welcome that kind of innovation So I when it comes to battery life. We're we're excited to Take on the best ideas from across the ecosystem and I think that's one of the beautiful things about being part of an ecosystem right we have um, you know, we have a number of Really competent Partners out there who have great ideas and we can collaborate together to bring those ideas to fruition All in the service of more trustable battery life for users. I think that's a that's a great thing at the end of the day Yeah, at the end of the day, that's a huge win for everyone. Okay, that's what we all want at the end of the day Bjorn Kilburn is vp of whereos at google and Bjorn. It was a pleasure meeting you today Thank you for carving out some time on a monday to talk to us about whereos and everything you guys are doing We'd love to have you back sometime Absolutely my pleasure jason and michelle. Thank you very much. It's great to see you both Absolutely, we will talk to you soon and keep up the great work Bjorn All right, give me one second to bring everybody back here Welcome back to the room everybody. What a great conversation you guys. I'm bummed. I missed it. Unfortunately I'm bummed. I missed it too. I was doing dts at the exact same time as you were talking to Bjorn Yeah, thanks the big special thanks to google pr for putting this together so quickly like it was just like a Friday afternoon I reached out. Hey, can we get someone and they're like, yeah, we can get Bjorn. I'm like really seriously over the weekend We got all scheduled out and especially I mean the timing is really good because the technology that Bjorn was talking about Is so relevant to this moment in wearables for android as we will talk about coming up next All right, michelle You know everything that Bjorn kilburn was talking about really, you know At least directly now ties into this new hardware announcement from a world congress from one plus the one plus watch two I'm wearing one of my wrist because they sent me one for review, but I haven't reviewed it yet I know you've got one on your wrist too. Oh, man. I feel left out Yeah, you and I are getting the shorthand of the stick here Part of this party. Well, you are because you're here with the android faithful, but michelle, what are your thoughts? Uh, I well, I think I kind of want to tell people about the hardware itself first right before I dive into my hands on So just for a bit of a recap one plus did unveil the one plus watch two at mobile world congress This is their second ever smart watch hence the name But it's actually their first to run wearos It runs wearos four out of the box and includes all the hybrid os interface improvements that we just heard extensively about from Bjorn And thanks to these improvements coupled with the huge 500 milliamp hour battery relative to other wearos smart watches One plus says that this device can last up to 100 hours 100 hours in the default smart mode There's also a dedicated power saving mode that can boost that up to 12 days of battery life And this is possible again because of that dual chipset architecture with the hybrid os improvements that we just talked about And um, this device has two chipsets The first one is the qualcomm snapdragon w5 gen one that's powering wearos And the second tent second one is the best technique bes 2700 chip, which you've probably never heard of That's because this is a chip that's typically found in hearable products like tdbs earbuds and this one is powering opos custom Rtos real-time operating system. We don't know what it's called doesn't really have a name But this is the ultra low power operating system that is On the microcontroller unit that is like constantly seem see switching between Wearos and this operating system to save power And that rtos that was that was the underpinning of the original one plus watch right like because it wasn't running wearos rts is kind of like a generic term like for any like super low complex real-time operating system running on like these kind of devices So they didn't really give a name for this specific rtos, but that's just what it is Apart from the software there's also, you know the hardware, which I'll show you in a second as a 1.43 inch amela display Dual frequency gps for precise location tracking heart rate sensor oximeter 2 gigs of ram 32 gigs of storage Vooc fast charging support It doesn't support lde or some advanced health features like ecg or blood pressure monitoring But it does have opos revamped o health app that supports over 100 sports tracking modes sleep analysis and more And if you're interested in picking up the 1 plus watch 2 you can get it On pre-order right now Through march 4th for 299 us dollars or 399 canadian dollars And 1 plus is again offering a crazy Trade-in any device or specifically any watch in any condition until 31st, and you'll get 50 dollars off And now for making it like their whole trade-in thing I'd love just because it's bananas and just like totally crazy But like the fact that the watch at 299 I feel like is priced in the right zone for what it's bringing with it from a spec standpoint But you can get 50 bucks off that like the 1 plus like I love the aggressiveness of go It shows the confidence they have in the product, right? So And now for what you all are waiting for the actual hands-on of the 1 plus watch 2 Does it actually live up to the hype? So I've had the device in its black steel finish for about six days now So while I can't offer a full review, I can share some detail first impressions first things first How does it actually feel to use? Well, it is considerably larger than my pixel watch 2 which I have right here It might not be that easy to see in this, but it is it's chunker. Yeah, it is much wider But surprisingly, um, it doesn't actually bother me mostly because I I do have big wrists So even though that is a 47 millimeter case size and is heavier to wear I've been able to wear 24 seven without much issue even while sleeping I do plan on changing this Default 22 millimeter rubber strap with a third party one I like those soft nylon velcro straps like the one I have here for the pixel watch 2 I just prefer the comfort of those things I'm going to switch that out and just support third party Watch band so you can do that In terms of the actual hardware it has this circular display. It does have like some thick bezels. It's not like curved It's a completely flat display It has two buttons on the side a Sorry a home button here and a multifunction button down here The home button is in the form of a rotating crown And you can rotate it, but when you rotate it, it doesn't actually do anything Like it doesn't actually scroll your notifications or do anything which is kind of weird But uh, you know, it doesn't really bother me that much. I don't really use the crown but um, if you Uh go into settings you can remap what the buttons do because right now by default they do the typical wear OS actions You can long press the home to open assistant double tap the multifunction button to open wallet and um Speaking of things you can change the app list by default Is a watch OS style App grid, which I know Like will make some of you roll your eyes like of course they had to copy apple on that But fortunately you can go into settings and change it to a greater list view And as you can saw if you're watching the video feed performance has been really snappy for me Like I haven't noticed any noticeable transitions when switching between wear OS and r to s It's pretty seamless as google and one plus or advertising Like when you get a notification It's technically running on the r2s, but like you don't even notice it when you're actually interacting with the notification or sending a reply or anything like that You can manually access the r2s by entering power saving mode I'm not going to do that right here because that actually requires a reboot So I don't want to make you wait for that But if I were to show you it basically looks exactly like wear a west except you can't access wear a west apps and some features like smart reply oxygen saturation tracking voice guidance and Some watch faces and complications just aren't available Now the battery life, which is the key gimmick the key feature of the one plus watch 2 It's been nothing short of amazing for me on the first cycle alone It lasted 75 hours in smart mode and that included all the setup time that I had for this watch downloading the software Downloading a whole bunch of apps from google play downloaded an entire youtube music library for offline playback did about like two hours of outdoor gps tracking with music playback and And the end like when the watch dropped down to a 10 battery It automatically triggered power saving mode for me and then when I left it on overnight in power saving mode It didn't drop a single percent when I went to bed and then woke up like 10 hours later It's worth noting that a lot of features like aod oxygen saturation monitoring during sleep they're not enabled by default when In the default mode with smart saber mode, but Uh I would wager that this is basically a three or four day watch with all its defense with all its default settings But if you enable everything like aod and all those sensors I could imagine this lasted two full days with everything enabled But I need to actually do more testing to verify that regardless Um because of how fast the charge is it I don't think it really matters like whether it lasts Two three or four days like because you can plug it in for an hour Into this this charger right here I was about to ask about the charger that that looks that that looks like a really good charger Yeah, it connects pretty seamlessly it even supports usb data transfer if you're a developer you'll be happy to hear that and Only about an hour is needed to fully charge it like I I think I left it on the charger for like 50 minutes and it reached 80 percent from just Zero percent and that was with a non ideal charger I plugged it into my computer's usb port Because I just didn't I just couldn't bother because this cable is not very long So I don't want to plug it into a wall, but hang on. I mean the time the charge is great But show the charger again though I'm I'm I'm harping on the charger because the miserable experience of the google pixel watch 2 Um, does that disconnect from the cable? Is the little puck? Yes, it does. It's not it's not so all you need to do is bring that puck with you and Yeah, oh, yeah, that's so cool. That's the usb-c insert that goes into the puck So you just bring whatever whatever usb-c cable on the road that you use to charge your phone And you bring that puck and you could swap it out very easily that that's so much better than this Sorry, I'm yeah. Yeah But I will also say, you know the the annoying aspect of the the pixel watch Charger or puck or whatever that is kind of floppy and whatever you gotta line it up, right? I mean you have the same thing here Oh, but it looks like it looks a little more formidable and it looks a little more easier to line up And it looks a little more. I don't know it that looks like an I would rather have that over the pixel watch 2 one so And just some final thoughts if I had to mention any complaints It's that software support is limited to two years which Compared to the galaxy watch and pixel watch is less than what they offer Some nice these like do not disturb mode doesn't sync with a non one plus phone that I have paired to it The vibration strength is pretty weak The speaker isn't that loud so I couldn't really take a call in a busy place like a cosco And auto workout detection just didn't work the time I tried it Although I like like I said, I've only had it for a couple of days. So I need to try to test it out more Everything else I tested like I did verify was pretty accurate like gps tracking sleep detection step counter the heart rate and oxygen saturation sensors Um, but like I said, I need to spend more time with this device to really offer a definitive review on it But just in the brief period that I've had it so far It's already become my favorite where it was smart watch and I'll definitely keep using this over my pixel watch 2 for the foreseeable future Wow cool I'm pressed Yeah, I only got mine This weekend and kind of had it set up got it set up yesterday. So Um, so I haven't really had much time with it on my wrist at all But I will say that the it's a stark contrast From a feeling perspective on the wrist and from just a sheer size From the pixel watch 2 that I've become really used to wearing on a daily basis Uh, and then going to this I'm like, man, this thing's heavier. Oh, it's bigger. You know, it's just everything about it feels more Yeah, and I'm I'm kind of on the fence on on what on how I feel about that So I'm really curious to see, you know, I want to give it a couple of weeks and and do you know like you Michelle, I wanted to kind of like a thoughtful um, kind of an experiential review with it cool, well, but um It it's a chonker like we said even in jason on your wrist. It looks it looks normal But you have you are a very large man Large watches generally look okay on my wrist. Um has has been my notice and so then what it comes down to for me is like How does it feel for me to be wearing a watch of this size? And I think I'm just I've just become so used to kind of like the smaller kind of compact Rounded quality of the pixel watch 2 because this doesn't have a whole lot of rounding to it I mean, it's a round watch, but like Michelle said the glass is very flat um, and I don't know that there's it lacks a certain kind of like elegant contour to it Some of the edges feel a little too sharp for my preference That might not be the case for everyone though Well, it was funny because I was scrolling through my google news feed this morning And I saw the headline of an article about the one plus two watch that was uh Uh first look the one plus watch two is too big for my tiny wrists And before I even saw that it was gizmodo. I'm like that's flow and sure enough It was by none of the florence ions first look on Gizmodo where she zeroes in on the wrist size So when I imagine you align probably closer with flow than jason michelle here I'm really interested by the way also Killbot 404 and discard right before you mentioned her article was like, oh, I wonder how it flow would think about the watch Um, yeah, I have to admit like so I Especially was like the new wearer was features that you know, we kind of mentioned earlier I I am I want to try it for japan for the transit And yeah, I'm just like flow. I've had big huge chunky watch what chunky watches Chunky chunky watches Chunky watches chunky watches a chunk a twunk. I've had I've had twunks. That that doesn't twawks Anyway, you can't portmanteau that crap man. Um, I've had a chunky watch before And I mean I love the software like I had like a withings for a long time I really try to make it work. Um, it was one of the google watches back in the day that withings it It was just it's just too heavy. I try to use it for workouts and and detection and because it's so heavy It is not flush to my wrist So it it tends to interfere with like the fitness things and again It's like maybe five years ago But the fact that it's a big watch versus a tiny wrist like and I I have tiny wrist too is I don't I don't know If the current technology can you know make up for that? So I'm with flow. I need a smaller Smaller small like I need watches for smaller wisdom and and yeah granted. It's got a lot of tech in it it's going to be only so small but It's tiny wrists are very common y'all. I mean it's it's Nearly 50% of the population or over 50% of the population. I I am curious why no I mean, it's got to be you know Market share and all stuff like that, but just like make a commitment and do a Smart watch for women. Just do it. Someone do it smaller and let's see what let's see what happens. Take a risk I don't know What does a smart watch for women mean though? And I know you know what I mean like does it mean that it's a smaller watch or does it mean that it's a pretty watch or I think that it's a it's a physically smaller smaller display, but it feels more comfortable on the smaller wrist I think that's the that's the thing you're trying to pack in all the stuff and all this functionality And you know when for would you rather have A watch that feels normal like the one you're wearing right now That gave you that gave you some or whatever, you know, that that's whatever it is. Yeah Yeah, that gives some that gives smartphone smart watch Access or not or a big watch that you'll never buy like that's what I don't know The answer is this like that's why I it's comfortable It doesn't slip and you know, I do care about the fitness features and this It while it's not perfect, you know, actually is always in contact with my skin. So does the data so What watch is that again? It's not a watch. It's a whoop. It's just a fitness tracker. So it's like it has no screen But I miss it and the reason I tried so hard with that withings chonker Was because I liked having all the wearer was features. I liked having navigation with me on my wrist I liked having all that but it just wasn't viable like and it just wasn't comfortable And there's no way there's no way in heck. I was wearing it through the night to measure my Oh, totally. I know a million years imagine this thing to sleep So and to answer your question Jason, I don't think it's a pink wristband or a rose gold bezel It's just a smaller display Physically, yeah. Yeah, it's a watch too. I mean the pixel watch and the pixel watch too are both the same size right there That's smaller display. It's interesting to me that some companies google has opted to Produce the smart watch in the smaller size that maybe appeals to more people But it's going to turn off, you know, some hardcore, you know Some dudes that just want to be a chonker on their wrist, you know what? I mean, it does everything and lasts forever and yeah, it's just interesting how they take how they take the size The one plus obviously is taking the larger do everything Kind of approach and maybe someday they offer multiple sizes on I'd be willing to listen to numbers Like if someone out there is able to share numbers about like maybe and it's not all about gender But there is some correlation between gender and wrist size. I think it's fair to say Maybe is there numbers out there that just shows it? I don't know people of smaller wrists are not buying watches. Yeah I don't know what it is. I would just like to know. Thank you All right, well, mashaal great first look at that watch. It's pretty cool. I'm intrigued Yeah, one plus doing doing well. I think And speaking of one plus I went into in depth a promo if you listen to yesterday's episode a daily tech news show February 26th episode I was on the show with me and tom merit and we went in depth on what's going on one plus this kind of resurgence between the one Plus open one plus 12 now the one plus watch, you you know, you've got this ecosystem now the one plus is kind of entering Uh, and what's so attractive about them? And we haven't even mentioned that they've got the one plus 12 our Genshin impact edition Coming up. I think we'll talk about that next week. But um, yeah, it just it's one plus is on fire right now So bravo to them. Chunky watch aside flow All right, we got so much hardware. We got so much more to go. Yeah, we believe it's the surface That was one thing. That was one story When you've got the next one. Yeah, and this is very recently I'm going to keep my eye on and so we're getting even more looks at what the pixel fold to might look like I'm super interested So this is actually not a an official look at the pixel fold to but on leaks in collaboration with Oh, my notes missed it. Uh, smart pricks. Sorry. If smart pricks and on leaks have collaborated on 5k 360 degree video, uh, that is a render of the pixel fold and they have some specs to go with it so You kind of you know, and I feel like on leaks has been pretty on point on leaks is on point, uh with You know their leaks for sure over the you know, many years, uh, and so I don't know I'm willing to take this with more than just a grain of salt or less salt I don't know if you are someone with hypertension, but yeah, there's a there's quite a bit that is different about the pixel fold And yeah, I think what stands out most is of course the form factor Um, and also the camera bump. So it is going to be a larger phone than the Pixel than the og pixel it picks pixel folder. This is to believe The og pixel fold was 5.8 inches. The front screen is 5.8 inches diagonal When closed open screen the inner screen rather is 7.6 inches the pixel two renders Have it have it being constructed at a 6.4 inch Screen on the outside and then the inner screen being 7.9. So a little bit bigger all the way um, something that they do show too is that uh Allegedly the pixel fold two will be thinner though not quite as thin as you know Your honor v magic twos or anything but compared to the og pixel at 12.1 millimeters They're dropping like a whole like mil like millimeter and a half down at 10.5 so not again not quite as thin as the honor but Get getting thinner. So like wider And like thinner. I don't know how that works, but it it just does like bigger screens But like thinner when folded so you said 10.5 10.5 millimeters thin when unfolded Or sorry when one fold it so like whatever the when fold it right I'm sorry When unfolded it's like 5.24 5.4 or something like that. It's just thinner than the one plus open which I was Super just looking at exactly my bad. Um, no, no, no, that's that's interesting to me Because that's one of the things that I've loved about the one plus open It's so like if they can get thinner Man phones if generally phones can get thinner and keep the battery life. We're going in the right direction everybody Yeah, I mean with bigger screens too. So it is just really just going leaning into that foldable advantage of just mow screen just mow more everything seems familiar michelle That's right. Um Because it looks almost identical to the photo that I obtained the pixel fold 2 and posted on android authority a couple weeks ago And it does have that uh, it has it is moving away from the horizontal camera bar in the back to make a little You know to kill rectangular islands I mean I'm not too worried about this as a current fold user because cases just cover everything up But it is it is a it is a shift in the design language from, you know, that very iconic pixel bar that we've seen for the last How many years now and I don't know like are they just chasing one plus or they just trying a new design language like and that's the question Like I saw a lot of criticism of this online I saw a couple articles a couple of think pieces some of that where they said that like Google's throwing in the towel. They're foldable or they're just chasing whatever they're doing whatever but like I after using the one plus open and like sampling the samsung's And sampling the pixel fold I feel like one plus was in the right direction in terms of what the right foldable form factor was for the book style You know multi digital moleskine style one I think this is the right direction for google to go in personally if it is bigger I mean like I I still like the landscape when open aspect ratio But I do think this looks wider and I don't have a one plus open I need to fix that. I mean you're going to steal my husband's by my own And I do think that this does look like a good compromise. That's about as much as I'll say to it I'm going to get my hands on one at some point, but yeah, it looks a little wider than the z fold So it kind of is a good. I mean and and that's a thing though like if they aren't I mean I loved the tablet tablet landscape aspect ratio of the inner screen But if I'm the only one then what's the google going to do they're going to they're going to do what works And the one plus open has been just unabashedly positive positively reviewed, right? So I don't hate them for this at all And yeah, like that's pretty much what we got so far. There's this color colorway It's gonna be called charcoal, you know in the in the history of cute slash interesting artistic colorway names And oh, here's one thing that I don't like is that the render show the inner camera being under display I was gonna ask you about that. I hate okay I really hate it because the z fold under display camera is just inner camera is a freaking potato and I really Really it's just not good. It's just it. I mean, it's better than a camera from 2010 2009, but it's just kind of Well, especially for how much you pay for it. Well, yeah, I don't I don't know Is it worth not having that little dot there like the dot? I don't even see it Yeah, I don't I don't maybe like as long as they don't do the pin I don't know like it looks actually like it is a cutaway rather than a pinhole camera Which is like is that the the term for the z fold one where it had like that little weird like overlay where it tries to like If it's not that then it's fine, but I I just I I'm over I think the idea is that you If you want to take an actual selfie you flip the phone around and you take it using the rear cameras because you can do that With the tizipa foldable. It's a better it's a better camera system. Yeah Significantly better, but the inner screen under display camera is purely just for like video calls That's like it's all you're supposed to eventually and eventually eye tracking and like Stuff that they need for that and that's sort of you know, yeah I will say I am a hundred percent like a big fan of the rear camera selfie But I as an actual like hundred percent pixel fold user that is not always practical y'all to like Flip it around but that that's I mean that's fair They're they're gonna put all their eggs the camera eggs in the back basket and leave the front for Whatever, but we'll see I'll I'm almost assuredly gonna get one. So this is I'm complaining for nothing. I don't know Well, these are still weeks. These are still it's still early I mean like when did they announce the pixel fold last year? It was a may announce or is it google io announcement? Right. Yeah, so so we'll see if they keep on that schedule And if we this becomes real in a couple months, right? Getting realer I just realized by the way earlier today I was like, I was like, what are the dates for google io because like may is looking to be really busy for me Yeah, and I'm not out yet, and I'm getting really stressed out now because I'm like Oh boy, yeah, yeah, it's coming up blink. It's gonna be here. Yeah, hopefully we can all make it again Hopefully we're all invited again Well, I think I think I feel like we're actually Surprised that I feel like we're in better position that we were a year ago and we got invited last year So I'm not gonna google we love you. We'd love to hang out with you again. So Love it. Love it. Um, okay more mobile world congress news and I don't think mwc would be Mwc without something from xiaomi Uh unveiled the xiaomi 14 There's a number of releases here basically and so I probably won't show a screenshot of everything because i'm driving right now, but Not driving a car. I'm driving Android autos come a long way don't drive in podcast y'all don't really don't do that. Um, but uh, let's see here Xiaomi 14 scheduled for global release. This is actually released in china last year Uh, but it's gonna get a global release snapdragon 8 gen 3 16 gigs of ram up to anyways up to 1 terabyte of storage 6.36 inch amelad with 120 hertz, you know all the other stuff you expect 3000 nits in sunlight Rectangular camera bump and i'm showing for video listeners. Um, kind of like the well, I guess it's more like a square Camera bump, but anyways, you're seeing it. Uh aluminum frame and then they uh last week Had unveiled in china the 14 Ultra so this week they announced the global launch of that that is the one that you see here in the center It is the large circular camera bump with lyca optics All four cameras are 50 megapixels Uh, the main camera lens is a one inch sensor with stepless variable aperture So it goes anywhere from f 1.6 to f 4.0. So that's going to be real good and you know Probably give you some really great shots and low light and be able to be very flexible It does have if you can see if you're watching the video version this Um, this textured back that really reminds me a lot of the one plus open This, uh, nano. What do they call it nano tech vegan leather? Uh, so that's on the back. So it's got that grippy quality I actually really like that on the on the one plus open by the way. Um, I first got it I was like is that tacky, but I actually really like it. So it's probably nice here to 5300 milliamp hour battery wireless 80 watt charging That is fast for wireless. Yep. And that's what the uh, the 14 ultra has on board The 14 pro as well, but that's not going to get a global version. It's really just a larger 14 So I'm not going to go into that one. Um, that's the phones Before I get into the wearables any thoughts, uh, I I really want to get my hands on some dang Show me hardware. I have not been able to review show me in a long time and how do we do that? How do we how do we do a great question? How do we do that? I don't know I've tried in the past and not not reach the right people Yeah, me if you're listening get in touch contact at android faithful.com review your stuff let us um Also announced for some wearables which I can skip to here. Um, what am I showing right now? I think this is the Is this the s3? No the s3 is interesting because Where is it? God, it's what it's one of these I can't remember But basically the thing about the the xiaomi watch s3 is that it has interchangeable bezels So you can swap the bezels and I don't think that I'm showing it. Is it this one? I honestly can't remember. No, this is the xiaomi watch. That's the watch, too I think the s3 is up from what was that one? No, but the s3 is a No, well it says yeah, watch s3. Yeah that one just dialed the xiaomi watch s3 So is that the next one down? Yeah, that's what I think so because I know that the s3 is a circular so um So maybe it's this one and that might actually be the bezel that you can change and essentially what happens is when you swap it in It also has a certain Like a wallpaper that's matched with it So when you change the bezel it has a new watch. Oh, it's a watch face not a wallpaper A new watch face that swaps in once installed So it's like you're changing the whole style of your watch just by changing the bezel That is cool. Yeah If you're not on the video stream if you're audio only the s3 that jason has shown it has a like a navy blue band But then the bezel also is navy blue So if you're super super into making everything coordinate presumably you could get you know A separate band that you can also get the matching bezel for or mix and match or however you like And not be stuck with the same color in your bezel, which actually has got an intrigue to me That's good. Cool. I like that I like it too Cool Very neat. Um, it is not wearos though. So keep that in mind. It's it's running xiaomi's hyper os Which is based on android, but it's not wearos And they are saying 15 days battery with the watch s3. So apparently this is the new norm um Yes, the xiaomi watch 2 Which is uh, is that this one? Yeah, which is kind of like a Kind of a mid-range wearable ish sort of a solution kind of comparable to You know at least in look and maybe size to the pixel watch 2 Snapdragon w5 plus gen one chip running wear os So this is running wear os and finally and I don't have the picture of this one But the xiaomi pad s6 pro which is a 12.4 inch tablet that they announced the largest ever from xiaomi Look at them with multi devices busy phones watches tablets xiaomi's got everything they even announced an ev right? Didn't they announce a a electric car? I missed the ev Yeah, they announced an electric car as well like xiaomi's like everybody's ecosysteming real hard. Yeah Everybody's aiing really hard because there were also a whole bunch of ai features They announced in that blog post for the 14 series. Yep A lot of stuff about xiaomi's busy. Good for them. I mean they're filling in that gap where huawei was That's what it feels like, you know, like um where huawei was where huawei was Every time every time Where once there was a huawei Once there was a way to get back home Oh my goodness The perfect opportunity to segue away from singing away Away from huawei to michelle What you got michelle and away from me to qualcomm because qualcomm took the wraps off their Latest modem and their connectivity chipset. So first is the new fast connect 7900 chipset This is a all-in-one connectivity chipset that bundles bluetooth wifi and for the first time ultra wideband on a single chip So if you aren't familiar Ultra wideband is a short range wireless communication tech that enables high precision locating So it's commonly used for pinpointing loss items or to You know connect to your car key and find your car in like a parking lot, for example With ultra wideband integrated into the fast connect 7900 It's possible that this will accelerate the adoption of ultra wideband Which right now is only available on a select few premium android devices. For example in the galaxy s24 series Only the plus and the ultra models have ultra wideband because they have a dedicated chip for that Maybe next year if the galaxy s25 series bundles the fast connect 7900 all three devices In the s25 series assuming it'll have three devices, of course Would have ultra wideband Of course, that's not the only thing about this chip that's notable It also supports all the other highest end connectivity features like wi-fi 7 bluetooth 5.4 with rcast and channel sounding It also apparently uses ai to understand the context of using your wi-fi connection And I don't know it feels like a little bit of buzz wordy here to say that this wi-fi chip is using ai But anyways another notable thing is that it's fabricated on a six nanometer node, which is a significant increase or significant Bump forward efficiency compared to 14 nanometer node from its predecessor the fast connect 7800 So hopefully there should be some efficiency improvements when you See devices shipping with this in the second half of 2024 We'll likely see this bundled with the next gen snapdragon 8 gen 4 processor whenever that launches Towards the end of this year. I don't know november december. Maybe january. Who knows and alongside That new connectivity chipset. We also have the snapdragon x80 5g modem rf system This will also likely ship in the snapdragon 8 gen 4 Later this year qualcomm says this is the first 5g modem with full support for narrowband non terrestrial network satellite communications. So this is um The basically the communication the satellite communications system that is used by a lot of low earth orbit satellites And with this integrated into the snapdragon x80 chip Hopefully we'll see smartphones shipping with Satellites connectivity support next year or later this year And they don't have to have dedicated hardware for that because that's something that has been kind of holding back satellite connectivity support for so long And uh other than that it also supports Six carat six x carrier aggregation, which if you're a cellular modem nerd, you'll know that it means improve cellular network performance You michelle you really want satellite phones to to be a thing don't you I feel I feel like this has come up a couple times You're like you're subscribed to the satellite phone development thing because it's cool. I don't get your wrong But like it's a cool. It's a cool thing I mean, it's genuinely can make a difference. You don't know if you need it It's too late to have to go search for it, right? Like you're gonna need it. You're gonna need it then there. Yeah That's true. It's true. It's a good point Someday someday michelle. That's my christmas wish for you. That's my holiday wish for you is that we get satellite phones this year so All right, cool. Well That was a lot, but that's not it because mobile war congress has been happening this whole past week in barcelona the homone I'm very very jealous of friends of the show merriam and michael fischer and josh vegar. I'm seeing them all on social parading around flaunting their Not but but like also they're there hands on with these phones and i'm super i'm i'm super jealous So I hope they all had a good time But uh, i'm gonna i'm gonna blow through a bunch of stuff that also came out at mobile world congress that I think we You know, we just want to touch upon So last week we talked about zte. Remember when we were talking about that japanese flip phone That was really interesting So zte showed up to mobile war congress in a big big way Then zte's newbie a flip 5g which is similar to the one that we saw the japan model last week With the circular front front display. It's a budget friendly foldable with dual screens high resolution cameras price priced at $599 for global markets The newbie a 760 ultra which is starting from 599 puts in the snapdragon 8 gen 3 And unique features like an under display selfie camera. There you go win um And then my favorite thing was that zte got wacky and if you're watching the uh the video you can see what we're talking about here They got wacky with some very specific type phones like the newbie a music phone Which has a really cool roi lichtenstein style design with a Speaker that looks like a record on the back For the vinyl heads out there, man Yeah, if you're listening to the audio version of this podcast go look up the zte newbie a music phone just to see what this phone looks like That got my attention. I was like, whoa, what is this? Yeah, it's really attractive And then they've also got the newbie a neo 2 5g gaming phone Taking a page out of asus and the rog phones A gaming specific phone So zte showing up pretty pretty strong important to note that the uh that the The gaming phone and the music phone all start at 150 dollars Um, so i'm actually i'm actually really interested in that music phone I think i want to try to get my hands on the newbie a flip because I it does seem to be like a u.s Launch so i will get my hands on that and then just not worry about looking for one in japan. Cool. There you go um A lot of folks are talking about what honor showed up with with the honor magic 6 pro We talked about this a little bit last week with the portia design But i gotta admit i like the i like the look of this phone like the the the back of the phone with the camera The camera bump kind of looking, you know looks very unique that looks like unlike any other kind of phone I was very impressed by this. Um, but of course a big part of their announcement was the ai features Uh, they they shared information about the eventual release of an ai powered eye tracking feature that knows when you're looking at the magic capsule Also known as the dynamic island We talked about and will automatically open the app of the notification. So the idea be No, don't do that when I look at something So my question my question is how long do you have to look at it for it to trigger right like great question run That would be really annoying if everything you looked at just launched the app. Yeah Exactly. I have to imagine there's some sort of beat, you know, like oh looking at it for a second. Okay They've they've also got something called quote unquote magic portal Which automatically recognizes addresses or events and messages and links the appropriate app or map Which is actually pretty cool and something I would think google would do Um, which google does throughout there kind of suite of apps, but having it be on the phone level is really interesting. Um It's running the qualcomm snapdragon h n 3 with a 5600 milliamp battery. That's the other Under sold, you know, like the the the secret agenda of this phone. It is a huge battery It's got that 80 80 watt charging over a cable or 66 watt wirelessly And it's six 6.8 inches with 120 hertz oled display with up to 5 000 nits So the honor magic 6 pro Showed up very with a strong showing of a war congress. Um, I don't know michelle. What do you think of this phone? Very solid hardware and it's basically Like honors, basically, I mean, of course, they were a spin off of wall way originally, you know, we all know that right? So but wall ways always made amazing hardware But unfortunately today you can't get their devices with google apps on their software But basically if you buy an honor phone, you get that amazing wall way hardware that we all love and miss But with access to google apps So I think that's a win-win like if you miss wall way hardware Go take a look at honor And you get a 5600 milliamp battery, which is just yeah, we'll never we'll never end. Um, that's not all You might remember a couple of weeks ago We were talking about hmd as they announced that they were going to be not renewing their nokia license So the people who make the android phones with the nokia branding on them currently They're gonna they're gonna go out on their own and do their own phones So mobile world congress they gave us a glimpse of what that looks like Um, and It looks like it's barbie They are teaming up with matel to make a barbie flip phone Um, that's gonna be coming out this summer. Why this didn't come out last year with the movie Whatever who knows but um this phone right here the idea is to make the pink barbie flip phone Um, which is you know a little bit of a you know, whatever. That's a gimmick But what got my attention, uh, was the fact that buried in the barbie conversation was also That uh, in addition to the barbie phones, they're going to be developing a modular Based phone platform. Um That will uh, innate will basically have pogo pins and Enable the ability to have Specialized hardware attached to these modular phones. So, you know, you've got a display You've got a camera system. You got a battery Then you've got the pogo pins and like for medical devices or like other industries where they have specialized needs with phones They'll build this platform out We don't know what it will look like because they didn't have it at mobile or congress And in fact, michelle and i were talking about earlier today all they had in their booth was uh shots of blurry phones Oh god You could promise it's something you could yeah, exactly. Um, so hmd building an air of mystery around what's to come from them Right, maybe we should have held on to nokia just a little bit longer. So we had something to show These phones are so hot. We had to censor them But modular phone you had me a modular. I'm listening hmd I want to know more contact at android faithful.com get in touch. Let us know Is barbie a last year thing or an also this year last year I think it's it's yeah, so this is like if it's a little bit laggy or this is a little reactionary Yeah, a little bit a little bit. It's okay. And then the last last bit here at mobile world congress motor Lenovo motorola were there um with people at mobile world congress hands on with The rollable concept phone. We saw this last year the fabric like back that could roll and we saw people Slapping on their wrists like a wrist bracelet. Well, it was there at the show people I saw michael fischer holding it on on instagram Here we're looking at a a gif on tech crunch of someone putting it on their wrist Um, it exists. It is real. I love it. Um, there's no guarantee it will become a product Um, and actually, you know, now that we get to see people holding it It looks more bendable than rollable. It's more of a bendy phone Um, and it's got a caterpillar kind of yeah, and it's got a squishy quality looking to it But I like the fact that it looks to be like fabric and Yeah, I I love I want this phone. I want this phone just because it's just ridiculous Yeah, it hits it hits like you already said this before line It hits that power glove like pip boy from fallout kind of feel and I I don't know want to try it If you end up someplace and you don't have a pillow and you got to fall asleep Lip it over and lay your head right there and it looks pretty cozy. I mean It looks pretty comfortable. It's a cold that would that could not be ip anything right with that fabric back Oh, jeez. That's a good question. And also, um, they show they show it using itself as a stand Like it basically is bent so that the bottom third of it is resting on the table Sorry, I I don't want to poke holes in this but that's kind of scratch y'all But I I do think that conceptually is really great. It's just um, well, that that's the question is What that rollable Display on the on the front side with the display how prone is it to scratching or not what you know All and so many questions about this, but I mean, but I do love it It looks like a it looks like a sweat band. Yeah, I was gonna say it kind of looks dirty, too Well, I think it's all the people throwing that on your wrist all the time time again It's just collecting all that the dirt in there. Oh, how do you wash that like? Oh, yeah, when it gets all Delicates bag when he if you wear it and you sweat into it and like all that sort of yeah Don't worry to the gym that idea. Oh, I love this so much Anyway, so that's all the hardware that was at Mobile World Congress. It was a packed year I think this is probably the busiest mobile world congress we've seen in a in a in recent years Just so much stuff coming out of it. So can I can I throw an audible in there one last thing that didn't make it? But I just saw the headline on the verge and I have to add it. Yeah, uh, a 28,000 milliamp hour battery Whoa, we got the new telecoms energizer hard case p2 8k That's not a phone. That's a battery with with a phone. That's like not a phone with a battery with a battery pack Battery with a phone in it is Oh my gosh Yeah, I don't know if that's it or yeah, anyways, so talk about a chonker. This episode's full of chonkers This is a chonker Anyways, oh Well, um on on that note, um Probably the latest that we've ever had in the show. It is now time for the patron pick So every week on monday at around 12 o'clock eastern We post three stories for our lovely patrons to vote upon and then we discuss the one that you Decided amongst you patrons and we have a new thing coming on Where we we have a new thing where we have, you know, our lovingly ai generated images to you know, kind of like a decorate As an accoutrement. I love that word too much We have our lovely ai generated patron image for the week and this week's was from devour Dope, um, so sorry devour devour Just say devour d. That's fine devour d has actually a very very good. Uh ai generated Google like they kind of like the old-school Google android bot reading a google newspaper. Gosh darn it looks good, dude. That's that's pretty We got so many of these in in the past couple weeks By the way, keep them coming email contact to answer it faithful. We're going to use them every week on the patron picks So we're going to see you have you all get involved. We get some awesome ones Um, but this one feels extra special given this week's Yeah, it's devour you ai prompted the heck out of this thing. It's it looks amazing But so let's talk about what what we voted on and what what didn't win and did win so, uh Number one loser third place is about the vivo x-fold 3 controlling mac os mac os only 22 percent of our patrons wanted that Only 36 percent of our patrons wanted us to talk about android tv introducing a new quick access row on your home screen And the winner this week I'm and i'm not sad about it is androidify strikes back google now lets you create a custom android bot so way way way way way way way back there was a site that allows you to build your own, you know, uh android, you know out of like various different like colors and like You know clothing and everything and you could like output it I definitely had one and I think they took that page down in 2020 And so we've been been lacking a little avatar an android avatar maker Well, now that they have a new, you know, 3d slightly chunky, but still quite cute The bot to replace the old android They now have a return to androidify with a new site on android.com where you can create your own bot Where you create your own version of the bot They have like 20 something different materials, which is like basically the color although some of them are like fishbowl fishbowl looking Or kind of transparent they have like clothing they have accessories you can put on And yeah, create your own bot and you can either download it directly to your computer as an image or It'll also generate a qr code for you to download it that way. So yeah And I don't see it's not quite androidifying because it's a little bit limited So you can't like, you know, make your own personal representation of yourself in android But it's a tall and skinny. You can't yet now No, but you can you can certainly make a cute little bot for yourself. Uh, I did Long time listeners might remember that jason and I and Eileen Rivera Used the androidify We made our own little android guys and that was the artwork for all about android for years, right jason's like five Five six years or a little android bots, right? So that's right This is probably a good time to thank michelle for giving me the heads up that google was selling Little android bots in the google store and I got mine the other day So They're they're leaning into bug droid, right? Like it's a it's a thing So I made sure to notify you guys first privately because I knew it sell out like the moment I tweeted about it He told us how many were left and so I also bought one mine's not here yet But I got I got mine in like two days. It was crazy. I didn't I heard a bunch of other stuff So that probably that probably they're all sold out now on the google merch store But if you're listening and you want to buy one of your own These are actually made by andrew bella dead zebra and he's going to be selling it on his website I think shop dot dead zebra dot com in the middle of march. So just keep an eye out for that Yeah, my kids have not discovered this yet. So it's just a matter of time Yes, they're way better than used to be the the antenna are actually movable Like the old android figurines that usually just snap off constantly. I did notice that yeah, you can You can change that. Yeah, these are great. The build volume is awesome. Amazing. So But yeah, that is our patron pick for the week And if you would like to be part of like the fun of picking and oh and you know, oh, sorry So, yeah, I did do a bot my own little android if I meet I tried to try to somehow make queen code bot This is great. And jason michael me we need to all make our own and we're going to make some artwork with this Like let's make our own little box There was a crown. So I deleted leaned in of course. There's a hoodie. I own like 50 000 black hoodies. That's just my my developer wear So, yeah, actually if you if you all use androidify, you know, send them in like share share share with us your favorite androidified bots Of the android faithful emails that contact on android android faithful dot com. And yeah, send us your draw Send us your boss. I can't call them droids anymore. I want to say droid their boss. Send us your boss Um, but yes in particular we want to shout out our just a few of our lovely patrons this week To, uh, sorry, uh, tamvu. Uh, tim davies michael Griffith from virginia Thank you so much for being patrons and for supporting us and making the show possible We could not we literally could not do this without you. So thank you very much. Thank you Indeed And yeah, so programming note, uh, no emails this week because we ran so long But there was some news that had nothing to do with With mobile world congress Yeah, so and rachael is a pretty big one, right? First bit of good news is uh, if you're a samsung You know device owner which is probably a good number of you because of the number one android oem You'll be happy to hear that samsung has announced When they'll roll out the one ui 6.1 update to their existing devices including the Galaxy s23 series including the s23 fe the z4 5 the z flip 5 and the tab s9 series They'll be rolling this out at the end of march It'll include several of the galaxy ai features that samsung unveiled with the s24 at galaxy unpacked And these features include chat assist live translate interpreter Circle search with google note assist browsing assist transcript assist generative edit edit suggestions instant slow mo and ai wallpapers They're all including a whole bunch of features. They, um, unveiled first with the galaxy s24 series So it's quite awesome to see them bring these features To their existing devices and if you're not familiar These features rely on a mix of google's gemini nano or pro large language models depending on whether or not They run offline or in the cloud and they do things like provide translations at voice calls conversations and meetings Summarize notes and webpages transcribe meetings and the gallery based features that i showed off on episode 28 of the android Facebook podcast Let's you do things like expand photos or create brand new ones entirely on device There is one caveat all these features are coming to the devices that i mentioned Except for instance slow mo that won't be coming to the s23 fe But it will be coming to all the other galaxy devices that are mentioned in the blog post So keep an eye out for the update on your s23 device your z flip 5 z flip 5 or tab s9 device Sometime at the end of march. This will be rolling out over the air Google so google on its pixel devices has the kind of dedicated, you know AI chip Or you know or so they they picked it as kind of like an AI chip on the pixel devices that helps it do all these things Does samsung have that on some of their phones because it's interesting They're kind of pushing this to all the devices. Maybe they've had these these like specialized chips for years Or maybe they're just not that necessary for these particular things Yeah, I mean at least the snapdragon devices they have their own snapdragon npu You know like qualcomm has their own AI processing hub They have all their their ai sdk's and everything like they have all their own stuff And i'm assuming samsung's exanose chips that are sold that are used in their european devices and a lot of the asian market devices Also has their npu and their various ai blocks and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, interesting Cool before we move on quick question from the live folks watching live in our chat By the way, we live stream every tuesday apm Eastern 5 p.m pacific on youtube at youtube.com slash daily tech news show and twitch.tv slash good day internet and marcello Had a question saying is the samsung s24 worth getting it's a want not a need I'm wondering what the android faithful family has to say say about that I have not touched the samsung s24 yet, but i know michelle you have had spent some time with it Jason's got it there. I got the ultra. Yeah, what do you think is it is it is it worth getting or? I would say of the three devices in the lineup My personal pick would be s24 plus if I were to buy advice Because um the s24 ultra i think provides two bit too big of a premium to justify getting it Like the only real benefits that have over the plus model I think is the fact that it has the s-pen a 5x telephoto camera and the griligas armor Yeah, five. I think those that's those are love. They're nice But I don't think I think the s24 plus has everything else that you need for the average person That's like the the peak I will admit I I feel like every time a samsung phone comes out every time an iphone comes out You get all the articles comparing or something like that, but I feel like I've seen more articles raving about the camera system in the s24 than I have in For the s23 or previous releases like it sounds like the camera on this phone is the real deal Like it's it's really top notch There are still Yeah, it's still it's really good as usual like there are still some things. I think I wish samsung would fix like the um the the shutter speed like It's like a long long standing problem where you take a photo and like there might be some parts that are blurry But other than that like I haven't had any problems with it like it's taking great photos for me I have the s24 ultra by the way not the plus I was just saying like I would if I were to buy a phone from that series It would probably be the plus just for the the features and value you get What is the price difference between the plus and the ultra just I think it's Like $300 or it was a $400 difference. It's a pretty substantial gap Yeah, um 11 19 11 1120 According to well, that's the t-mobile site Yeah, okay 1000 looks like one starting 1000 and then you got the ultra I think that's like, you know another 250 or 300 more than that. So So, yeah, you're paying a lot for a couple of features But I love A good telephoto lens. It's really hard for me to not have one if you have the option Yeah, but meanwhile at the same time like I'm not I'm not a huge user of the s-pen So that's a feature that I would be paying for that I would not use very often So, yeah Unless unless it unless you become a user of the s-pen. Well, yeah, unless I like force myself to use it enough That I started to really rely upon and everything but I you know Was it Steve jobs that said the best, you know, the best writing or pointing thing is your finger? I mean, it's not like that's it. That's a you know, that isn't a totally obvious point But it's always the thing that I have right with me that I don't need to pull out another thing in order to do it So I just don't Anyways, I am working on a review of the s-24 ultra I will be having one in the coming weeks because I do like the phone a heck of a lot But I always like their ultras their ultras are just Man, they're so powerful. They do they do so much Are they justified by is the price justified though? And that's really a personal preference Um, but real quick, uh one last story before we round things out Uh Google pay the google pay app It turns out Well, we knew that it you know that we knew the things were not long in this world for the google pay, but june 4th 2024 that is the day that it dies for good Google wallet will be your go-to There we go I mean Not a surprise Sad and I can't even say that google pay hasn't been killed before because like at this point I've lost track of all the different permutations of of google's payments You know Portfolio it's the it's the it's the carousel that keeps turning the merry-go-round of wallet pay All variations Those four things interchangeably You know thrown in together soon. We'll start stacking them google's android pay Or androids wallet pay, you know, it'll happen. It's so frustrating. So frustrating google Anyway, it's getting simpler, right Google pay is going away. So that's a good thing, right? I mean, yeah, it is getting simple But it's almost a point now where it's like the joke isn't even worth the effort anymore. Yeah I just like it's like, oh come on. It's just a little too obvious at this point But you know, but hey google wallet i'm i'm i'm pro google wallet I love my google wallet if it doesn't my whole thing about google wallet Is the frustration i have too many phones on my desk the frustration i have with actually Getting to My cards right like and and part of that was because i was using g pay And then you've got to click on you've got to tap on your little icon and then and then choose your cards I didn't discover that there was a shortcut link to google wallet that goes right to all my all my cards So i was like, oh that made my life a lot easier like my main frustration about g pay was g pay's existence period And the obstacle it was to get to google wallet. So get rid of it go to google wallet. That's fine. So yeah There you go. Well, you don't have to wait much longer this summer, which as you know You're gonna blink and it's gonna be here. So yeah until google wallet gets killed for for android wallet or android pay Was the android pay already a thing? There's still time for them to rename more things. So who the heck Well, hey, you know gmail's dying, right? Did you see did you see our friend of the show it killed by google was uh In the middle of that whole gmail, uh ruckus that happened That's right, which was which was uh, yeah, not true by the way just so everyone knows gmail's not going anywhere. It's not going anywhere Too funny what a show everybody. What a show What a bubble real congress it feels like we were there Doesn't it does i'm full I ate so much ham on this entire hour and a half that we were doing this show and you had no idea We reached the end of this episode of android faithful Love doing this show with you all and we are so blessed to have the folks at google Um, given us amazing people to talk to like bjorn killburn. Thank you bjorn for uh coming onto the show today and telling us All about the state of android wear As it is right now. So thank you bjorn. Thank you google ron. What you got? Yes, so Go follow me on social i'm at ron xo, but I actually don't want to plug anything i'm working on I wanted to have a follow-up note from last week's feedback um, uh, we had an email last week, uh From tom from ireland who shared the near drop application, which uh gives nearby share functionality on osx On mac os After the show last week. I installed it And dude this thing works like a charm like it was like it was the cut like if you had those moments Where like with technology where you do something and then you got to put the device down because you're freaked out Like it works so well that now i am not going to be My previous solution of uploading a file the slack and then going on the slack app and downloading it on my phone to get it I am now going to use near drop. So if you are a mac os user and you have an android phone Go to github.com slash g r i s k a s k a uh, or just google near drop, uh, you can find it on github. Um, but it worked awesome. So you know big big big, uh, personal, uh, uh, What's the word recommendation? Uh for near drop. I was impressed. Yeah, so that's github.com slash g r i s h k a slash grishka near drop But near and and d are capitalized. Yeah, it's probably just better to search And if you and if you go to reddit and google and go to go to the android subreddit and search for near drop You'll find you'll find grishka posting about it there, but but testimonial. I did it. It works It's running on my machine right now. I'm doing it all the time. It's awesome. So nice right on Excellent near drop Thank you, barn Michelle, what do you want plug? I'll plug all my socials twix mastodon threads reddit discord Etc etc at michelle romon And you should follow me there because I actually talked about near drop all the way back in august the last year and again Yeah, ron. Yeah, you hear about this stuff months Many months ago if you follow me on socials, um, but if you want to support the work that I do you can go to patreon.com slash personal romon And uh, I'll be posting a lot about android 15 in the coming weeks I already have a lot queued up I did post something Big today that I didn't get to talk about just because the show would have ran even longer than it already has so If you want to hear about what's new in android and what's coming in the future release You could follow me in all those socials and support me on patreon Do it Michelle's work is awesome. We are thrilled to be here with you michelle each and every week. We're we're blessed Um, when what about you? Uh, yeah, i'm an android dev. That's my day job and you can find Technical talks that do about android development at my website randomly typing calm and associated videos and code And on the socials. I'm really just on instagram. Where by the way, I post a lot of you know A needless workout videos, but usually that requires me upload into dropbox and downloading So actually after the show, I want to download in your drop and see how that works. I'm actually excited I'm really excited. So yeah, follow me at queen comb monkey. I am on instagram I'll try to be better about like threads and mask it on because I do want to give the Fed over some love But I mean if you really can't find me it is instagram. I'm sorry y'all I'm not cool enough for tiktok Um, but that that's it. Um, I'm glad to be here with you guys. No wind with out not cool enough for tiktok No, it's true. It's really Neither am I Try as I might it just doesn't work for me Uh, boy, um, well, thank you win. Um as for me go Plug in yellowgoldstudios.com into your web browser It'll take you to the youtube channel that I am currently trying to build up Did a review last week of the one plus open this week I'm working on a comparison of the one plus watch two to the one plus watch one To see if they've made some of the right decisions around improving the watch hardware from the last time And it's all gonna be here. I'm like super close to a thousand subscribers I'm super excited about that like I'm like 11 away So, you know what go there make it happen Jason's review was amazing y'all. You need to see it like seriously jaw job. It's so good. So good. Oh, thank you It's fun. It's it's also a lot of work production value. Yeah, and right y'all. Thank you. I appreciate that very impressed Um, and that is it for this week's episode of android faithful We do the show every tuesday you can subscribe by going to android faithful.com Send us emails contact at android faithful.com and we might actually have a Feedback section next week. We probably will we just had a lot of stuff to talk about this week So don't worry about it. You're you're going to come back into the episode next time Do subscribe to us in any of the podcatchers that you That you love and adore pocket cast spotify apple wherever you happen to listen to your podcast And yes, like we've said many times before you can support us directly by going to patreon.com Slash android faithful that does give you special perks like bonus content And uh the ability to vote for stories and have your name read on the show lots of fun stuff We could not do this show without you Here with us each and every week. We love you and we'll see you next time on android faithful. Bye everybody