 Hello and welcome to another episode in the saga of Android Faithful, your weekly source for latest news, hardware, and apps for the world of Android. I'm Jason Howell. And I'm Ron Richards. And I'm going to it now. Yeah. And I'm Michelle Ramon. And welcoming to the show. What's up? What's up? It's Flow Glow. The Flow Glow. The Flow Glow. The whoopee whoopee whoopee whoopee. Good to have you, Florence Ion. Welcome to our after hours going on till 3 AM house needs. Love it. Oh, I wish. Maybe when the kids are older. So those of you, you got to watch the show live. And you got to tune in early on Twitch and on YouTube because we were talking about Jason's previous life as a DJ and adventures in house music in San Francisco. And Michelle, we didn't get to it. What kind of music do you like? Yeah, what is your music thing? Let's put you on the spot. Oh, not to put you on the spot, but hold on one second. Okay, go. Oh my gosh. That's not nice. I pretty much just listen to any relaxing music whenever I'm working. I don't listen to much. I mostly listen to podcasts when I'm driving. So not much time for music. So relaxing, like Yanni or what? No, I mean like lo-fi. Okay, lo-fi, yeah, that's it. It's like study music. So you're not a big, you're not super into like. No, I don't have like a Spotify. Who's jazz? Like Dave Cause? Lo-fi's a legitimate genre. That's legit, yeah, totally. You're not, I mean, you're not going to hear it on the radio, you know, lo-fi instrumental, but it's a whole movement. Lo-fi girl and all that. Absolutely. All right, well. Solid. This is what it is, because we're a family. We like to get everyone to know and speaking of that. Actually, Jason, we had a family moment recently, right? We did, yeah. I went to LA for a music conference and then found out that Ron was going for a music performance that didn't happen. Morrissey! Yeah, are you serious? Yeah, I got a last minute invite for an extra ticket to see Morrissey at the forum this past Saturday. And like literally like on Tuesday, you know, used points, bought a ticket to LA and got, you know, got cheap hotel. And then I was just like, oh, wait a minute, Jason's going to be in Anaheim. I'm going to be in LA. Tom and Eileen live in LA. We should all hang out. And we did. Sure enough, we did. So if you go to instagram.com slash Android Faithful podcast or check out Jason's or mine or Tom or Eileen's podcast themselves, you can see that's us hanging out in Koreatown this past Saturday. It was pretty awesome. Super awesome. I mean, I saw a lot of cool things when I was at the conference, but this is my favorite moment of the entire trip. It's pretty cool. And lots of very cool Android Faithful DTNS plotting occurred at this luncheon. So it was fun. Yes. And I had been carrying around, lugging around. Oops, I went to the wrong shot there. Lugging around this ginormous award that when Tom worked at TWIT, we got for tech news today back in like 2013. OK, so at this point, more than 10 years ago. And I mean, the thing is just ginormous and huge and heavy and everything. And I've been lugging it around for years. And I was like, wait a minute, I can get it back to Tom. And so I put it in my luggage and got it back to him. I was really happy about that. Anyways, that's maybe more information than you needed. Yeah. And also the concert I was going to got canceled. And so I just ended up being in LA and hanging out with my friends all weekend. But I saw a lot of cool people and it was worth it. Ron, Morrissey doesn't respect you. No, no, I mean, the thing is, because I was at a party this past Saturday night, there's a lot of people making lots of jokes about it. And for those who watch the show or listen to the show and don't know that I'm a big Smiths fan, a big Britpop fan, and of course I've been a big Morrissey fan, politics aside, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole. Valid complaints, I'm not arguing. Art artists, cool. But I was like, doesn't he cancel all the time? Like, was it like a 50-50 shot? I was like, no. Actually, there is a website that tracks every concert cancellation of his since 1988. And I quickly did some napkin math. And it's roughly about 23% of the annual. So you've got a 25% chance he's going to cancel. This was not my first cancellation. But 3 out of 4 ain't bad. Yeah, 3 out of 4 ain't bad. I mean, he did five nights at the Apollo in New York 20 years ago in 2004, did all five nights, didn't cancel any of those. I was at all five of them. OK, so you racked up the percentage points there. OK, anyway, all right, this isn't all about Morrissey. No, but I think maybe we have a good show idea to work on. No, we don't. No, I don't. Don't touch that with a 10-foot pole. It gets really dark at night. That would get really complicated. Real quick. And then we'll move on. Back in 2005, when at the beginning, nascent podcasting, when I'm listening to Buzz Out Loud, that's when I started listening to Tom and Jason and over at CNET. And then I started I-Fanboy with Josh and Connor. I was like, I want to do podcasts, right? And so I'm like, because I-Fanboy was going really well. And I was like, what else can I do a podcast about? So I started a podcast about Morrissey. And it was called Mozcast. And we did like, and it was going to be like a weekly, what's going on in the world of Morrissey. This is before he started putting it, well, no, I mean, it was before he started really putting his foot in his mouth. He had already said some stuff and everything. And we did like three episodes and then stopped doing it. And like, when I look back, I'm like, I'm so glad I stopped doing that. Because I didn't want to have to be the one like, well, you know, when he says this, he really means that. Like, I don't want to be defending any of it. I'm going to stop talking now. Let's do this. Yeah, that show would have gone a million different directions that you probably didn't want to go. Possibly some of you didn't want to go there with this show. Well, you know what? We're going to go ahead and take our detour into the content of the day. When Flo was here, it just goes off the rails. I know, and I'm sorry. We haven't talked about 90210 yet. OK, so time for the news. Time for the news. But I snuck in a reference. Oh, dang. OK, I missed it. All right, let's get to the news. Dang it. Oh, before we do patreon.com slash Android faithful. There, I got it in the beginning. Support us. If you like what you're hearing, if you like what you're hearing, go support it, patreon.com slash Android faithful. That's right. That's right. Don't blame Flo, where your life is all the time. Just don't opportunistically like, you know, put it in. So here's the thing, when the camera and the mics turn off, this is what it's like all the time. So that's true. This is just life. All right, we have a lot of news to talk about. So when and Flo, kind of a combined effort here, when, what do you got? Well, I got some bad news. I mean, we already talked about this bad news back a few weeks ago with Adam Dowd, where basically of the about 17 or so assistant features that are going bye-bye, the change that changes the little microphone that lives in the Google Launcher Search bar is now the change to kind of make it not assistant launching has gone out. If you hit that little microphone in that's next to a Google lens in the Google Launcher bar, what you will get instead of assistant is voice search. So that's not confusing in the slightest. You can still for now get Google Assistant and it will let you know if, I think the first few times you launch it, it'll let you know, hey, by the way, this is voice search now. If you're looking for Google Assistant, you can either long press the power button or just say your hot phrase of choice. Well, the one involving G, not the one involving S. But that confusion doesn't end there because it looks like, well, I mean, we have an idea now very accidentally from Google of what assistant with BARD might look like and how you might launch it. Little leaky-peaky of what that might look like. And Michelle, you commented on this on Twix as well, but basically there's a little demo video out about how you'll launch BARD. There is a BARD app and when you hit that button, you'll get a little floating window that shows you, you can't see it on the live stream just yet because they're having video loading problems, but it'll basically see a little floating window and it has your generative AI options with like chat, sorry, like a microphone and a camera. And that allows you to launch into a BARD experience. Like for example, the demo video shows, you like giving it a picture of a plant and then getting generative AI results for that plant. So the thing that is confusing is that this demo video shows not just you launching this new BARD experience from the BARD app, but also from holding down the power button and also from saying HG. So yes, probably some details to work out there, but don't count on your assistant microphone button in your launch or launch or search bar to do anything you expect it to anymore. If anything, guess that it might be BARD, which may not be called BARD on launch. It might be called Xemini. So yeah, I mean, Michelle, just to go back to the whole thing with the Google Assistant with BARD demo video, you covered this, right? You've got some more little detail about maybe some particulars about how this might be launched, maybe in a March pixel drop or a feature drop. Yeah, so basically that video that you just showed on screen, Jason, was from the PixelTips app, which is like an app that's preloaded on pixel devices that tells you about certain features and how they work. And like under the hood, there's like a file that shows, okay, this device should have this tip showing because not every pixel device has access to the same features. And the particular file that controlled what devices this BARD tip should be shown on said that this will be launching in March of 2024, which most likely coincides with the pixel feature drop for next month. And then it also said that don't show this tip on certain devices. And those devices were every single pixel device except for the TensorFlow Pixel phone. So the Pixel 6 series would have this tip, the Pixel 7 series, the Pixel 8 series would have this tip, but not the Pixel Fold, the Pixel Tablet, or any of the older Pixel phones. And that kind of suggests that if they're going to exclude this BARD tip from showing on those older pixel devices, that means maybe this BARD feature won't be available on those devices because why would you show a tip for a feature that's not available for a particular device? So potentially this feature could be limited to just tensor powered Pixel phones. But we don't know, we're still a month away from this launching, presuming it does launch next month. But Flo, you had some, you were excited to talk to us about some things you heard regarding all of the BARD slash Gemini, Gemini, Gemini, Gemini, Gemini news. I mean, everything that I am excited to talk to you guys about always, 80% of the time is conjecture because I am a huge gossip, especially in the Android realm. But I mean, it all kind of makes sense just from like a trajectory standpoint because everything is getting consolidated. I actually just turned over my voice icon to voice search. I actually want to go into voice search when I hit that little icon. I have no idea what they're gonna be doing now that we have the new circle to search gesture. That's available. Which you love. I absolutely do love, and I use it like 12 times a day. If I'm using the Ultra, I'm still waiting for it to come to the Pixel 8 and the 8 Pro for, but for right now on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, it is definitely the new way to use Android. Well, that's a big statement. Yeah, it is a huge statement. But so flow, but this month, at least to me, this month has been a rocky, feels like a bumpy road by Google to the end users in terms of what's happening and what changes are doing, what changes are occurring. And even by in the confusion of the two weeks that we've had of we're losing the microphone at the bottom, why are they here in the microphone? No, the microphone's gonna stay there. It's just gonna do something different. And it's gonna do this and things like that. And it's all kind of tied up to the identity of Assistant and whatever Bard is becoming and all this stuff kind of Michelle found. And it's definitely going in a direction, right? And Flo, you've talked to Google, I mean, you've covered this stuff and I think you've had a bit more access than we had, at least about it. But like, do you think it's going in the right direction? I think we're gonna have to wait just a little bit longer. Okay. Okay. I think we're just seeing the beginnings of some of what's going on. I think the most important thing to pay attention to is the fact that Circle to Search, which is a Google search feature, rolled out on the back of the Galaxy S24 launch. I think it's a really big telling thing to pay attention to. Okay. Yes. Not at all mysterious or intriguing. No. Because the rest of it is just confusing. I was confused just trying to figure out the difference between the two things that we were talking about on the show and the fact that they seem to be trying to... But I mean, Google is... Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt when I just wanted to say that Google is really disorganized as a company as it is because a lot of the divisions don't work together. They clearly do not talk. It's very apparent just from being a user of these things for like more than 10 years and seeing how stuff is fluctuated. Google is just gonna try and figure out what works the best. I think the strategy right now, and this is just from what we've been watching unfold in front of us, is to offload some of that Android-ness onto Samsung and kind of tapping in the marketing that they have going on because at the end of the day, like their phones are the best ones. They're the ones that are offering the best of what the industry has, the highest tier specifications and all that. Like what you're still getting with a pixel is... It still feels like playtime at Google. I don't know. I'll push back on that. I'm not sure that pixel feels like playtime, but I would agree with you, Flo, that Samsung continues... Even with the temperature check on the Pixel 8 Pro? No, don't get me wrong. Google makes bad decisions. I mean, maybe that was a good decision when they made it. It's just time it hasn't told them. We'll get to that. We'll get to that today, don't worry. Yeah, for sure, that's coming a little bit later, but I don't think the pixel is total playtime. I think Google sometimes makes wrong decisions and then they end up removing it. That's what they did with Soli. So playtime, yes, is probably a little harsh. Yeah, but I'm not saying that to disagree with you entirely because I do agree with you that when it comes to a lot of these kind of like advancements, Google is trying to keep the pace and doing good at keeping the pace and setting the pace in certain ways. Samsung appears to always kind of be right there. And that's why I think you find Samsung and Apple in the same conversation. I was just about to say that, who else is always right there is Apple. And I think sometimes as a consumer, I got a little frustrated with Google because I see what Samsung and Apple do and like how well they do it. And I'm like, why can't this be me? I chose the pixel because I wanted this experience too and I wanted the direct access to Google, but at least now maybe I won't have to choose so much if I'm choosing between Samsung and Google. Choose what you love. That's the moral of the story. But what if I don't know what I'd love? Choose what you think you might love. And if you don't love it, choose something else. I don't know. Choose the pixel because the pixel every couple of months has a feature drop that is meant to convince you that you love what they're doing and maybe you do. But apparently they have a new pixel drop that I have not received on my phone yet unfortunately. Neither. But the aforementioned temperature sensor, getting an update, skin temperatures now possible with the Pixel 8 Pro. So I might have 0.3% more reason to use it than I already do, which was like 0.1%. I mean, seriously, that thing is not coming back in the next iteration of the phone. Like there's just no way, why would it? But I could be wrong. Circle to search, which as we also talked about before, you absolutely love and I can't wait to use that. I'm really curious to get my circle and fingers on it. You don't have to circle. I'm sorry to interrupt. Well, no, you can scratch. Because you don't have to circle. You can just highlight what you're trying to look at and it will Google search for you. Yeah, you can just like scribble if you need to. Magic Compose and Google Messages now on device for the Pixel 8 Pro. That's care of Gemini. There's that word, Gemini. Gemini Nano actually in this case. Photo emoji, let me show this one. So if you're in Google Messages, you can take a photo from your phone, like this cat that we're seeing and very smally and it will separate that from the background and make it an emoji. So you can then react with it. That's interesting. Well, they'll check that out. I don't know how much I'd use it. It's an, that's an iOS copycat feature. Is it already got that on iOS? Yeah, they have like a similar feature where you can touch and hold and then it'll kind of crop out the object or the thing, the noun that you're highlighting and then you can use it as a sticker in iMessage. So this had to come. It must come. Now you can turn your cat into a reaction shot. The arrival of QuickShare as we've talked about many, many times, nearby share, turning into QuickShare and then audio switch, which comes to the Pixel Watch. So this is, I think I understand this. You're watching something on one device and you can send the audio from, you know, your Bluetooth headphones over to your Pixel Watch with like a little notification that appears something along those lines. I don't have a lot of faith that this is going to be a smooth thing. But I don't have Pixel Buds. So I guess I shouldn't, but hand off at Bluetooth is never easy. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. And then finally, minty green flavor of the, or sorry, color of the colors were true. Yeah, the rumors were true. If you lick your mint green Pixel phone and it tastes refreshing, write it in and let us know. I have to say, I'm a little disappointed they didn't offer it at the beginning because I would have not bought a pink phone. I actually felt kind of pandered to that pink was the one that they ended up making available. But that said, I'm not going to buy a new phone because I'm already super established with the phone that I have now. Why, like was there not enough mint whatever available at the time? Or why the, like they've never done this before, introduced the new color post launch. It's a very Apple move. Remember when Apple did the mid banana iPhone two years ago? But Google's not Apple. Right. But maybe Google wants to be Apple sometimes. If it works for them, it can work for us. I want to be rich and famous, you know? But I can't. You will be. You can manifest that, girl. You got it. Manifest. I think that's what the kids are saying. Yeah. I don't know. It's January 30th. It's January 30th, so we've got another day or two. We've got another day or else this isn't the January Pixel drop, right? Yeah, speaking of it being a January Pixel drop, this is actually the first time they've ever done a feature drop like this. Every single other feature drop has been coinciding with a quarterly Android OS update versus this feature drop is just a couple of app updates and that's it. So I wonder if they're going to continue doing that or if it's just a one-off thing because they're releasing a mini Pixel phone. Well, it's marketing. It's part of the marketing. Exactly, right? Like, they're going to take the advantages where they can, whether it's an Android update or just app updates, you know, where, you know, I'd rather see them do this on a monthly basis, have some consistency and either have it be a big one or a small one or other would just do something. But rather than there not being Pixel drops for months on end, like we've seen, so. Can I also add that I think piggybacking all of this on the back of the big Samsung launch is the smarter thing to do because the truth of the matter is the Pixel brand is not the brand that drives Android as a platform forward. It's Samsung and what they're selling to the masses, especially here in the US and Canada, right? So to have those Pixel drops even matter, they need to start having it come to the phones that people actually wield in hand. So I have a feeling that this is the year they're going to try and see what they can get based off of their third party partnerships. That's really what Samsung Galaxy Impact felt like too, is to like, hey, we're not making much headway on our, you know, what 4% market share. Hey, Samsung, you've got like, hold almost 20%, like. You make a lot of money for South Korea. You make a lot of money, like, hey, friend, buddy, partner. What do you think? What do you think? Oh, well, yeah, marketing and they did it. They took over the Shark Stadium and just, you know, excuse me, Shark's Arena. You're excused. I made it all sparkly and pretty. Michelle, I have to ask, because I didn't get to, I didn't get to ask you this. Did you also have to climb over seats to get down to the bottom of the demonstration area? No, but I did have to wait a while because they were controlling how many people they allowed into the area for, I think. I probably just gave myself away as climbing over the seats. You probably weren't the only, you definitely weren't the only one. I'm sorry to the security guard, I pushed. You pushed a security guard? That's not appropriate. I pushed a security guard and I got flagged by a San Jose PD on the way to the venue right for speeding. Geez, that was an eventful day. All right, well, I can't follow that on the same way. I didn't put anything on that one. But Michelle, no, it's over. But listen, Flo, I do know you love your wearables as does everybody else here listening and watching. And good news that Wear OS 5 is indeed coming and we might actually see it later this year. This is all based on, it's gonna all be based on Android 14 and actually Google and Samsung working together because Samsung is working to support a build of Android 14 for the next Galaxy Watch 7 chip. And that build was referenced, was referred to as Wear OS 5. So likely, Summer's Galaxy Watch 7 and Falls Pixel Watch 3. And then over on an APK Insight, shed some light on Material U-theming coming to Wear OS 5 which is not a surprise given Google and Material U and all that sort of stuff as well as a redesigned app launcher which I think is a great addition and change. And actually, Michelle, you kind of dug into what could be coming beyond Wear OS 5 to Wear OS 6 when you're doing your analysis. What do you see coming in the future of Wear OS? Well, I was basically just corroborating 9 and 5 Google's report. Like a couple of months ago, I discovered like a hint that Wear OS 6 would be based on Android 15 and by extension Wear OS 5 would be based on Android 14. And the reason that's significant is because for the past couple of releases, Wear OS has been skipping an Android version, like whatever it's based on. For example, Wear OS 2 was based on Android 9, Wear OS 3 was based on Android 11 and Wear OS 4 was based on Android 13. So if you continue that trend, you would expect that Wear OS 5 would be based on Android 15. But according to 9 and 5 Google's report and my corroboration, it looks like it's gonna be based on Android 14 instead. So it might be moving to a yearly release cycle instead of a by yearly release cycle. And we don't exactly know what features will be coming in the next version of Wear OS. The 9 and 5 Google report doesn't, like it's not confirmed if those features are going to be coming to Wear OS 5. It's more likely it's just gonna be a system update to existing Wear OS 4 devices that I'll bring the material use support because that's already in the OS for Wear OS 4 based on Android 13. And that grid app launcher would probably just be an update to the launcher app on Wear OS devices. So that's probably coming before the next major version of Wear OS, but we'll have to wait and find out. Cool. I have to say regarding Wear OS that I did end up buying a Galaxy Watch 6, but I have not worn it since I got my Pixel Watch 2 review unit. I've only been wearing the Pixel Watch 2 review unit. Part of it is because of the interface. There's a different interface on the Samsung Galaxy Watch, right? It's a little more of the Samsung flavoring, but the seamlessness between the Pixel and the Pixel, it's unparalleled. It's unparalleled. It was funny because it was nice. And honestly, it's starting to get a little hard to mix devices in the Android world. Oh, wow. Isn't that funny how that's working? Are you getting locked into a lane? Yeah, I mean, I'm missing out on some things from buying the Samsung Watch with the Pixel phone, right? And I was missing out on some things, but then I see some of the seamlessness. I mean, yes, it is by designer and it's working on me. That's what I'm saying. It's working. Wouldn't it be so nice if you could seamlessly transfer all your data between your devices? Oh, that would be nice, Michelle. Why do you bring that up? Like your eSIM profiles. So it looks like... That was good. So while I was setting up, while we were messing around with the Galaxy S24, one of my readers discovered that when they were going to transfer their eSIM, they're opening up the page on their Galaxy S24 to transfer an eSIM. A pop-up appeared on their nearby LG V60 that asked them to transfer their eSIM from their V60 to their Galaxy S24. And I was able to replicate this with my Pixel 8. And this is the... I think the first time we've seen a cross-device eSIM transfer between Android devices from different brands. So Samsung has had an eSIM transfer feature before on earlier versions of One UI, but it only worked between Galaxy devices. This one seems to work between Android devices of different brands, although it seems to be limited to certain carriers like T-Mobile right now. So that's kind of a big limitation, obviously, because not everyone is using T-Mobile or has an eSIM from T-Mobile. But hopefully if this gets expanded to more carriers in the feature, it'll make transferring data between your devices much more seamless and setting up a new device much more simple. And that's a big if, though, right? It's always the if it rolls out to more carriers. It's gonna be... Yeah, carriers are definitely the big bottleneck here. Yeah. They continue. They continue to ruin everything. eSIM really seemed like it promised easier, and I don't know that it necessarily has been. I'm afraid. So I'm afraid to... So I currently have the iPhone review unit is the one that has my eSIM on it. So it's the only eSIM phone number that I have rolling around, but I'm afraid to take it off of that and then not have service on the review unit when I need it. So I just kind of have this dormant number that lives perpetually on iOS because I'm scared. I'm really scared to move it. I prefer a physical little card that I can take out and physically see it go inside and activate the selling card. Although, can I tell you the downside to the whole physical card thing that happened to me the other day? They're so small. I mean, they are. They are. They're just so big. So I've got the 8 Pro, right? And I was having issues with some messages, again, SMS messages that weren't coming through. They were just swirling and swirling no matter what I did. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna pop my eSIM card into my Pixel 7 Pro. And the tray, the tray snapped. So it like snapped into two pieces. I like put the eSIM on it and just went... So now I can't like, I can't use it. I can't use it in the phone because the tray is broken. Anyways, that's just... When I was going through that tool that takes screenshots of it, one of the pages, since I actually do use T-Mobile, like I have a physical T-Mobile SIM, it asked me, do you wanna convert and transfer this T-Mobile SIM from your previous phone to your new phone? I'm like, no way. Not for the sake of an article, I'm not gonna get rid of my... That sounds complicated to undo. Yeah, like you just don't know. I question your loyalty there, Michelle. But at least... I would have done the same thing, Michelle. I feel like... But T-Mobile is generally always been really open to people swapping the SIMs between devices. Yeah, okay. Because they just care about you being on the network. With a network like Verizon, for instance, they have to kind of like register your phone on the back end before it's fully usable, which is very annoying. I will also say the other reason why I don't switch around the eSIM is because then I have to wait for three days to get out of iMessage purgatory. Yeah. That's annoying. It's annoying. No good. That's no good. But you know what's good are patrons. Yes, they are. Yes, they are. And because our patrons are so good and so wonderful and support us in this endeavor, we like to give them a pick of three news stories that we post every Monday at 12 o'clock Eastern. Whatever that is, Pacific, 9 a.m. What is it? 9 a.m. Pacific. 9 a.m. Pacific. And then on today, on Tuesday, by 2 p.m. Pacific and 5 p.m. Eastern, we pick the most voted of these options to talk about today. And so the losers this week were Samsung reminds people that Bixby exists with 9% of the phone. Obviously, y'all don't really give them. No, that's just a given. That's just a given. But I mean, it's kind of funny that Samsung like, hey, Bixby's still here. Another, the next runner up was Google chat to gain voice messages support with 13% of the vote. A messaging option that didn't win. That's kind of significant right there. His voice. Nice. But what did win, and because time is a flat circle, is that Pixel phones were broken again with a very similar sounding storage bug. So yes, users, Pixel user reporting that the January 2024 Google play system update has locked them out of their phones internal storage. So there's some kind of permission issue that is preventing users from accessing their own system storage, which is not good and is resulting in a lot of dysfunction, app prashing and very real kind of data loss risk. And again, this is not dissimilar to the one that happened in October 2023. And of course, Google has acknowledged the issue and they say they're quote, looking into it. Michelle, you actually did follow up a bit on this. Is there any more flavor? And did you get any more information on this or just have one more flavor to put on the story other than here we go again? Google hasn't commented publicly with any details, but they did like send out a message privately to OEMs telling them, hey, we're gonna stop rolling out the January 2024 Google play system update because we found an issue that is leading to users not being able to access their files or open their camera and all the issues you described just now. And they're still investigating the root cause, but it has to do, they think it has to do with one of the project mainline modules that's updated through Google play system updates seems to just get reverted back to its factory installed version. And because this is a module that's relied upon by other system apps and other modules, it's causing this mismatch between the code that's in the factory installed version and the code that's in the updated version of these other apps and causing things to crash. So that's what they think is the root cause and they're still investigating it, but I haven't heard any updates since. Yeah, and is it, I saw some speculation this was something about mainline and like the special Apex file system that goes with that. Is that confirmed or is that not confirmed? Yeah, well, I mean, it's not publicly confirmed but that's a speculation. Okay, well, yeah, so if you do have a Pixel phone maybe avoid that January 2024 Google play system update if you can and yeah, flat circle. Let's happen all over again. So condolences to folks that are having these issues because it's a bad one, but that being said that was our patron pick we do again and post the patron pick every Monday. And if you wanna participate in this patron pickness, pickiness, pickness, pick voting, please join our Patreon at patreon.com slash Android faithful and you can get in on the fun. Like the patrons we are shouting out this week, like Ramira Martinez Jr., Richard Zirkel and Patrick Fuentes and Patrick Fuentes, I have to give him a little extra like Patrick Fuentes actually is a really good friend. He was and he, well, I mean, you never, he never stopped being Android Dev. He was an Android Dev back in the day in the Twin Cities. He is now a DevRel engineering manager at Google. Patrick, I appreciate you, man. Like that's so awesome. I saw your name and I had to like reverse up your genomes. It is fun when you see people who you actually know supporting what you're doing, which is, I mean, like it's so great that so many of you that I don't know, even though you know us, but we don't know you personally, but like when people, we personally know Chip and that is fantastic. Yeah, thanks Patrick. Now Patrick is a wonderful guy. He's definitely like Android fam and anyway, thanks Patrick. I hope you hear this and love you, dude. Thank you. Real quickly because I didn't get a chance to, I didn't wanna interrupt you win while you're going over it, going over the story that won though, but quick question. So we went over the January Pixel Drop update and then there's this story. What should we do? Should we not install the January update? Until we know this is fixed? Those are two different, the January Pixel Feature Drop is just a bunch of app updates. The January Google Play System update is a separate thing, but that's already been halted. That's not being rolled out. Okay, okay, so we're safe then. Okay, good, good, good. Okay, yeah. So. A few. Great distinction that. No, thank you Ron for asking that. I wanted to ask, okay, we can move on. All right, and we will. Moving on to hardware. It is time for you to hear the news about Fossil because I think, didn't we talk about this in a previous episode at some point that there were rumors that Fossil might exit or was that somebody else? That's gonna make me cry. Well deserved, though. Okay, I gotta compose myself. By the way, Android faithful uses the really slow drawn out. Yeah, this is a. Yeah, so. This is a long one. This is really one. Okay, good. Yeah, okay, good. I couldn't concentrate. The two years were flowing so hard. So Fossil is yet another fashion brand that's exiting the Wear OS ecosystem, announced its exit from the smart watch business, not just Wear OS is like, you know what, smart watches, peace out. We're out of here. We're gonna go back to traditional watches. I don't even know what we were thinking. They didn't say that. It was buying them. I don't know. Well, I don't know. Fossil had a pretty solid arsenal. Wait, didn't Google buy Fossil? Like, isn't Fossil owned by Google? No, what I mean, it was buying the Fossil watches out in the wild. No, I know that. But what I mean is that like, then why did Google buy Fossil if they're not gonna sell smart watches? I don't think they bought. I don't think they did, didn't they? They like, bought some of their technical technology. They did not buy, the brand is still very much. Okay, I thought they bought the brand. It's an airport, duty-free shopping places everywhere. They just looked it up, they bought some of their IP. They bought their IP. Okay, so they bought some of the IP, that's it. All right. Can maybe find it at Nordstrom, a Fossil watch. I rocked a Fossil watch for years from like high school to college. That was like the mid-tier watch, you know? You were like, I need to get something fancy for prom and homecoming. Yeah, but I wouldn't prom and homecoming. It's kind of sad because Fossil and Mobboy were like the two ones that were carrying where it was for a couple of years. Well, Fossil was one of the early ones too. I mean, they got in on it early, right? Yeah. Those hybrid watches were beautiful, I have to say. I have two of them. I have like kind of one of the first gen ones. It was really beautiful. It was smaller than what Android was offering at the time. And you know, for those of us with smaller wrists, that was really welcome. And then I got another one from them last year that I just, I kept meaning to review. And then it just, I think because it didn't take precedence over maybe some other things that it came out in 2023, I think Fossil sort of read the writing on the wall of like, this is not something that's really moving the needle and maybe we need to just cut our losses. So it tried the smartwatch thing. Smartwatch thing, obviously. I can't blame them. You got to go. You got data telling you what people buy. Yeah, yeah. So the gen six was was the last of their smartwatches. It was launched in 2021. Fossil does say they're going to they plan to support their existing Wear OS watches for the next couple of years. Don't really know any details beyond that. Probably just to make sure there's no, yeah, like security, security, yeah, major security thing. But eventually that's going to get folded into something else. It's a bummer. It is that like, I think when Wear OS first came out and like, you know, we were talking about a different job that I've been at, whether we should support Wear OS or not. Because, you know, we know how things are. We know like how Google is. And so every new thing, new preposition is kind of like, oh, is this a good ROI? And just the fact that they had a couple of, you know, huge watch brands behind them, you know, and supporting Wear for so long made it less risky. And they, and I think Fossil for a lot of people, at least in the dev space did kind of be like, okay, well, that's worth something, right? But obviously not enough to fossil anymore. Not saying that with any hate at all. Just sad, just sad. Well, no, and it's, but it also speaks to the fashion industry as a whole, which is everything that, you know, Apple is a fashion accessory in the fashion world. I have a feeling if they wanted to put on a runway show, people would show up and treat it like a legitimate affair. I'm not sure that any Android brand would have, maybe Samsung could pull it off, maybe. They could pull it off in, no, I mean, here or in the world. I think Samsung could definitely pull it off in Korea or whatever, in fact, they probably are, right? And maybe they could pull it off here. I agree with you there, Flo, but yeah, but I don't know, the whole wearable category as a whole, I think is just, you know, there's Apple and everybody, and then there's everybody else, unfortunately. Unfortunately, I agree. But I'm still wearing my Pixel watch too. It's coming really handy. Mine is right here. It's not on my wrist, but I have it, and it's, I haven't charged it because I'm, I just get so annoyed at putting it on that stupid thing. Although I did see a cool base. Somebody shared, I saw, I saw there was a Pixel design base. There was a spot for the watch and for the phone. And I was like, oh, that's what I need, but yeah, we'll see. Yeah. Yeah, I have been on a Pixel, I think I've been taking breaks now from the smart watch that I'm not trying to monitor every movement. Yeah, and the constant nagging of like, oh, this just happened, oh, this just happened. I will tell you, after being in Los Angeles and visiting with friends, a lot of which have Apple watches, there were several, several moments over four days where conversations were interrupted by their getting something on their watch and looking at it. And like one person actually apologized. He's like, I'm sorry, this might be my daughter. He's like, oh no, it's not, okay, let's go on. And then proceeded to later, just then can keep on checking throughout the whole conversation as if the one apology covered it all. So yeah. No, okay, see, I was gonna say at least he apologized, but it actually does super bother me when somebody checks their watch and they're all talking to me. Agreed, I'm the same. It's rude. Well, it's well, and actually it's really funny because Jason, when we were with Tom and Eileen, we were noting all the scratches on my Pixel 8 front because I don't have a case and I have all these scratches. And Jason did note because I were at the, I don't know, we were at the restaurant or whatever, and my phone was face down on the table. And Jason's like, oh, you're probably getting all those scratches because you put your phone face down. I go, yeah, I put my phone face down on with people because I don't want it up to interrupt me during the conversation, right? And so I want to show you, I'm putting my phone down so I can engage with you in person because we are people. So yeah. People are people. Offer a high horse. That's right. People are people and people make accidents unfortunately. Some of them could be potentially deadly, like when you're driving a car, a two-ton vehicle. We're getting real here. That's why I drive a Subaru, okay? Sorry, we all drive Subarus. No, no. If you have a, you know, if you have a Pixel phone or a modern iPhone, we're not here to judge even though it is Android faithful. You have a feature that comes in handy called car crash detection. And hopefully you never have to use it, but if you do end up in a situation where you do have to use it, this feature can dial emergency services and locate, like tell them your location, you know, like call your loved ones automatically and, you know, basically get you the help that you need immediately when you might not be able to access your phone. And for many years, only Pixel phones and finally iPhones have had this feature, but it looks like Samsung might be bringing it. I'm saying might because it's very, like not a lot of hard evidence, but they might be bringing this to the Galaxy S24 and the Galaxy Z Fold 5. So when I was just digging through the phone looking through what's new, I found a sensor that's mysteriously called car crash detect wake up. And I don't really know any other way to interpret it other than the fact that there's a sensor that is designed to detect when you're in a car crash. And this is obviously not like a physical sensor. It's not like an actual sensor that they bought and put in the phone that just is dedicated to car crash. This is likely just a composite sensor. That's like a virtual sensor that takes data from the gyroscope accelerometer and then just treats it as one thing so that an apps just have to read from the car crash detect. Unfortunately, like I didn't find any other evidence within the OS that suggests there's like a, like they're gonna be like an alert screen that shows you what happens when you're in a car crash or like there's no system for alerting emergency services. There's just this sensor. And then there's also an app that handles starting and stopping the sensor. And that's all I know so far. But it sounds like they might be working on car crash detection for their premium Samsung Galaxy devices. And I did reach out to Samsung for comment but I hadn't heard anything back before I published this article. They were like, dang it, Michelle's on our case again. What doesn't that guy know? I love that you just like stumbled upon this, you know, in like a random moment with Tasker. Like even when you're just using an app you stumble upon a thing that's so- Oh no, it was actually totally random. Like I was just working on something completely unrelated. I'm like, what the heck is this doing here? But that's the thing. Even when you're doing random stuff you're still finding that stuff because you're like a magnet for it. I know, totally. It's also good to know that they can virtually, I don't wanna say spoof, but that they can virtually enable the feature without having to go in and do some sort of like hardware rigmarole. But it sounds like there has to be some sort of set and some sort of sensor that you have to have access to. Cause why would they just give it to the premium? Or I should say the most expensive devices. Well, the way it works on Pixel phones and iPhones it uses just very basic hardware sensors and pretty much every device. That's what I thought. Gyroscope, accelerometer, microphone, all intangible in combination. Every phone has that. Which is why it was going off on the iPhones on the roller coaster because the coaster will stop very fast like a car that is breaking. The real challenge as you brought up is sensitivity and processing that data. So that's the hardest part. Well, I hope Samsung figures it out because it's kind of such an essential feature. Yeah. Yeah, I'm kind of surprised they don't already have it to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. So. All right. Moving along. Well, moving on. By the way, just for the record, I do have a Subaru. I was just not wanting to call that Michelle too much for, because then she doesn't. Three of us have Subarus here? Three of us have Subarus. Right, yeah. Flow, you, me, yeah. Subaru. I used to have a Subaru. Nathan traded a Subaru for something else. Yeah. Okay. I was going to start a podcast about Subaru, but I guess not. Subaru Faithful. All right. I have no idea how to segue from that to this, but there is no way. One of the first phones and one of the first foldables we talked about on Android Faithful was the Honor Magic V2, which kind of came out last summer and promised to come to other markets like the UK and Europe. Well, guess what? It's here. Magic V2 is notable for being the thinnest still book style foldable with it being 9.9 millimeters when folded. That's still 2.4 millimeters thinner than any other book style foldable. And hey, only a millimeter thicker than the S24 Ultra. So you are getting an incredibly thin foldable. So it is from, you know, the original model was released in China and it was from last year. So, you know, the specs aren't quite as sexy as things that we talk about that are just coming out. It is rocking the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, but a good 16 gigabytes of RAM. And then 50 main and 50 ultra wide, 20 megapixel photo and then 60 megapixel internet selfie cameras. It is interesting to note that the price in the UK and Europe, which is 1,999 euros, or we'll just go to flat 2,000 because all those nines confuse me, how that compares to the Z Fold 5's price in those markets. And it's about 100 euros more expensive with the Z Fold 5 being 1,899 in euros. In the UK, the Z Fold, sorry, not the Z Fold, the Honor V Magic 2 will be 1,699 sterling. And yeah, you'll get purple and black in both regions, which actually are both my colors. So maybe I just get both phones in small paths. I don't know. Anyway, the Honor V Magic 2, so if you're in UK and Europe and have been waiting, here's your chance. And you might also wanna look for, if you're a Porsche fan, the Porsche Design Honor Magic V2 RSR, which is just a- Race sports race. Zoomy, a very zoomy version, very aerodynamic with anti-scratch nano crystal shield. That version is already available in China, but if you're in Europe and you just want a little extra something, something on your Honor V Magic 2, there you go. And yeah, any of our fans or listeners in Europe or the UK, let us know if you get one and how it's truly thin. It is. How thin is it? How thin is it? Can you remind me, does Honor have access to the Play Store? Yes, they do. Okay, so at least if you get that in Europe, you will have access to that. Right. Speaking of foldable just real quick, I got the open from Ron when I saw him. So- Oh, nice. I handed it off. I regrettably handed it off because I love that dang thing. You're never getting it back. Well, if you really love something, you let it go, Ron. I know, but Jason, I want to hear your thoughts of it after I've gotten to play with it. Yeah, I finally had time to unbox it today. So I'm gonna get myself all set up on it and give it a couple of weeks. I love that thing. I think you'll love it too. Yeah, well, I expect that I will. It seems like everybody loves it. We'll talk about things that people love real quick, kind of little mini hardware review for you. I decided to get a keyboard for my Pixel tablet because I wanted to explore how could I use the Pixel tablet as a productivity device, right? And so I took advantage of the trip to Los Angeles and I did not bring a laptop. It was like the first time I flown without a laptop or anything like that. I know, tell me about it. That's hard. And so I did some research. I was looking around and I ended up, I netted out on the Logitech K480 keyboard that everybody pretty much raved about online. I think it's been out for a while. Flow, I'm glad you're here for this because it is mechanical keys. I had that keyboard for a long time, actually. Oh, okay, yeah. Unfortunately, I left this keyboard at an old job. Oh. Well, it's only $34.99, so you can easily replace it. But which I gotta admit, the price on it is great. I mean, it's got some heft to it. It's got some weight. It's got a nice sturdy kind of plastic shell. And as you can see here for our video viewers and audio listeners to take a listen to it or go Google and pull up the Logitech K480, it's got this little neon yellow strip, which is basically a hollow spot where you can drop your tablet in. And then it becomes, oh, look at that. It's like a little computer, right? And what's great is that little strip is actually kind of like grippy plastic rubbery. So you can even drop your phone in. Here's my kid. You can even drop your phone in and turn your phone into a little productivity device. It is Bluetooth-based. One of the neat things about it is on the side of it, it's got a little dial, and it lets you pair the keyboard with three different devices at any given time. Which is pretty standard with Logitech devices, like my mouse has three different slots, stuff like that. And as I mentioned, it is all physical keys. So it is very nice when it types and you feel, you press a key and it actually happens and it's all fantastic. I gotta admit, I love this rave review, four stars. My only, only complaint is the location of the power switch is on the bottom of the keyboard right there. So when you turn it on, a little green light goes on and then you put it down and it's very easy to forget that you turned it on. When you leave, you gotta take the tablet off, pick it back up and then turn it off. Like that's my only complaint about this other than it's like really pretty fantastic. I picked up pretty cheaply, there's a cool case that I found that, sorry, I don't have enough room on my desk here. This little kind of hard plastic case, I think it is by Hermit Shell and it's kind of designed for the Logitech, so it drops right in nicely in there and then there's a little spot to put your tablet above it and it all zips up and it fit into my backpack pretty easily and nicely, pretty nice. So I will say as a keyboard and as a device, the Logitech K480 gets double thumbs up for me. If you have a Pixel tablet or any tablet and you wanna go the productivity route with it and you want an external keyboard, I did look at some other folio cases that had keyboards integrated into it but they were like capacitive keys and I wanted that kind of clicky kind of feeling. But the 34.99 price point was just fantastic. That said, if I was going to not have a laptop and just use my tablet, I can't do it. It was a nightmare to do. I had to do two tasks via web browser this weekend for work. One was for iFanboy, I had to do some stuff and I got that done. But then posting the patron pic yesterday for this show, patron in the browser for whatever reason, it would stop scrolling, I'd have to refresh. I almost threw the whole thing out the window and went to the library to use a public computer to get it done. Nothing against the keyboard. Once I was typing, it was fine. For some reason, the stuff we do every day on a computer, it just is completely different in the tablet environment and I don't know why. And I see Michelle, you're nodding and Jason, you're nodding. I feel like everybody knows this already but I had to find out for myself. But I really wanted- You have to be reminded to be humble. I wanted it to work. I was like, oh, I'll just use this tablet. All I need is a browser, right? Why is it so different? What do I need? Can I blow your mind, Ron? Sure, yeah. Okay. All right, so this is the keyboard that you were just talking about. 3499 Logitech. Yep. And check this out. Oh my gosh. This is the on and on. Oh my God. This has to be private label. Logitech makes it for them. I mean, look at the difference. It has to be. You get a bonus. Oh, you get a number pad. You get a numerical pad. It's expanded keyboard and a mouse. You get a bonus mouse. It's one penny less. And you get the power button on top. Wow, if on and on can figure it out. Logitech, what's going on, man? Yeah, I don't know. I can't speak to the clickiness of the keys, but there you go. So penny less. Well, at this price point, it doesn't have a Windows button too. That's very funny. Does it have a Windows button? Yeah, it does. The option button on the left side, on the left side. Oh. At that price point, I would take a flyer and try the on and on and see what it looks like. By the way, the photo on the Walmart site of a workspace of a tablet in there is so fake render. That is not a real photo. That is very funny. So, oh, on and on. You know, I'm just designing my car on my tablet with the keyboard that I got from Walmart. And somebody in our audience says that they have the on and on keyboard. Oh. The 801 watching live has it. Hopefully, give us a thumbs up or thumbs down, Renegade One. Yeah. But yeah, that would be neat to know. But anyway, yeah, external keyboards, 35 bucks, give it a shot. Logitech was awesome. So I'll check out the on and on and on. On and on and on. Okay, while we wait for that review, we got some apps to blast through at this point. Holy cow, we're going long. All right, Michelle, you're first. All right. And this one came as kind of a surprise because out of nowhere, a user sent me a message about a new feature they found out on their Chromecast with Google TV. They discovered a new call setting page on their Chromecast that allowed them to basically enable receiving call alerts on their TV from their phone. So basically when they enabled it for Google Meet, they were able to, whenever they got a Google Meet call, they were able to get this notification on their TV that they were getting an incoming call from their phone. So this is kind of a neat feature, like if you're listening to audio privately, maybe you have a pair of Bluetooth headsets connected to your TV or your Chromecast or whatever, and you can't hear your ringtone on your phone, but if more apps support this feature, and I remember this is quietly rolled out, I have no idea how this works. Google hasn't made any announcement. I don't know if this is using an API or whatever and only Google Meet seems to support this right now, but if more apps support this feature, then you could have all these alerts from your phone that you would otherwise be missing show up on your TV and then you could say, hey, let me just pause what I'm missing to you and then pick up my phone and take that call. That's handy if it's your TV. It's got to be your TV. It's synced to your Google account or whatever. And you're watching it and no one else is, because, oh, if you were watching on that TV and there were notifications coming up every two minutes for somebody else, that might be a little... See, in the house, in my house, it would just be me, because my account is on everything. And so constantly, if I need to do a security validation or something like that, everybody will have their entertainment interrupted by my security prompt. Yeah. I get a lot of complaints from Mona, because she's like, mommy. Mommy, your two-factor authentication code is up on the screen right now. Yes, because she sees my little profile photo and she's sick. Well, I'm impressed that she knows all about 2FA. That's amazing. It's a Montessori store, right? She calls it a prompt. She knows it's called a prompt. A prompt. A prompt. I got her to say prompt. That's great. That's great. Oh, man. All right, we're moving right along. So we've been talking a lot about Assistant, Google Assistant earlier in the show, but a big one, and Android Auto. There's one of our drinking game topics. But Assistant on Android Auto is getting some updates. We want to touch upon it quickly. Assistant now shows a bar at the bottom. It says, hi, how can I help? And it also includes real-time transcription of voice commands that shows replies visually on the display. And this is rolling out to Google Play beta program users, and then eventually coming soon to everyone else. So I don't know if this is like, the stuff is happening with Assistant, and then Android Auto kind of trails behind. Like they're just catching up by making Assistant updates there, and then they'll get the barred or whatever it's going to be later in life, but there it is. I think that these divisions, again, these divisions are very separate. So whatever the Assistant is going to become. They don't know, right? The left hand, no. They don't know. Never seems to know what the left hand is. It's going to be just a plug-in. And here's the thing. I feel like a year or two, the left hand knew what the right hand was doing. Because the left hand not knowing the right hand was doing was like a pre-pandemic five, eight years ago problem that we talked a lot about. And then the left hand on the right hand held hands a lot more. And then 30,000 left hands got laid off. Exactly. And the right hand is having a hard time right now to figure out. The right hand's waving in the air, panicking. Yeah, yeah. Man, pretty much. And then finally, we have 3D maps. We have 3D maps, yeah. And we have pass keys. Yay. Pass keys are just kind of confusing, if I'm truly honest. But if you like pass keys, more services are offering support for pass keys via Google's password manager. We got Adobe, Best Buy, DocuSign, eBay, Kayak, Money Forward, Nintendo, PayPal, Uber, Yahoo, oh, Yahoo Japan, sorry. And soon, TikTok, all managed through the Google Password Manager, is my understanding. Are you all using pass keys where you can? And what's your experience? Because I just find it like, I don't know, but it necessarily makes things easier than having a password manager. I feel like I used it once. I feel like Google was like, check your phone, use the pass key. And then I never got it again. And I don't remember how it happened or how to replicate it, but I used it once. It's one of those things, kind of like eSims. Yes. Yeah, go ahead for it. Yeah. Sorry, I just wanted to share my experience, because I do use pass keys on several. I use pass keys for several apps. And so when I try to log into those apps, they'll have me go to the Google Authenticator app on my Pixel. And then I have to go get the code, blah, blah, blah. I also use the password manager in Chrome. However, I also mess things up for myself. And I was moving really fast through our Windows update. And then I enabled Microsoft's pass keys across not just my Android ecosystem, but also my Apple ecosystem of things. So now I'm going through often two or three different gates before I can get to my account. And that includes my Amazon account, which requires two pass codes now to get in. Oh, boy. Oh, my god. Well, that's super safe, guys. I'm so safe. Aside from the Microsoft angle there, I mean, I'm using a password manager for my passwords. I'm not using the Google password manager. I'm using an external one. We stopped using last pass. I moved to another one. I'm going to whatever. So I feel like that covers it within there. And by the way, Jason should not be allowed to be involved in anything with 2FA or anything like that, because we all know what happens when Jason does 2FA Live on shows. Only when I'm doing a show. Exactly. But I turn pass keys on, because I want it to be the future. But I don't know what is using pass key. What isn't. And I'm using Google Authenticator. I'm not using Authy. It's all a mess. It's become a mess. I'm using a third-party password manager too. I use one with password. And I have to say, if the experience is still rough on using Google password managers is so integrated, it's really half-baked when you're using one password. It's gotten a little better. And I think in some cases, it's great. And I do try to use it where I can, because I want to be there. But Android really just is not friendly to one password managing my pass keys. There was one week where it basically was showing me, hey, you can use pass keys through one password, and then just kept showing me the same dialogue over and over again. Oh, man. Like over and over again. You want this pass key? You want this pass key? You want this pass key? And I'm like, yeah, give it to me, fool. And it just wouldn't. That's what you have for going third-party. Why didn't you just stick with Google, huh? I know. That's my problem. That's a me problem. But yeah, I mean, I'm there. And I think if a site implements it well, it's great. If not, I'm back on passwords, man. We're not quite there yet, in my opinion. Anyway. And they keep getting breached anyway. And so every time I log in, it's like, hi, you need to actually change your password, because I got breached last night while you were asleep. And that's the thing is that I don't care what my password is now, as well I do. But I mean, but with having two-factor setup and with Google Authenticator, I get all these emails like, here's your password reset. Click here. If you didn't do anything, don't do anything. People are doing that to my stuff all the time. And I know they get stopped because they don't have authenticator in my phone. I feel that level of protection. As long as I have that, I'm good. And a pass key can replace that and not be hacked or whatever, then it'll be fine. But yeah, it just. It cannot be hacked, please. Yeah. Please, just don't hack it. It's easy. Just don't hack it. All right, cool. Well, before we get an email, I know we're running late. I have a write-in because while we were organizing the show, I totally forgot that we needed to. And I teased it at the top of the show. But you might remember last week, Michelle and I and Jason, when we were chatting about the temperature sensor on the Pixel and how useless the dang thing was. And then all week, Michelle and I have been writing. Michelle, we've been texting each other and laughing about, sure enough, Google has announced the rollout of the ability to test your body temperature via your Pixel 8 Pro. And they finally got the FDA to green light the use of it as a device to do it. And they posted an article on the keyword blog about how they built and tested it. So pretty soon, you will be able to use your Pixel 8 Pro. I have my Pixel 8 Pro. I'm going to test it all the time because I never can tell if my kids have fevers or not. And I panic all the time. And I've gone through about six thermometers from Walgreens. And none of them, like, one tells me it's 105. Another tells me it's 96.2. It's like, I don't know what's going on. And so I'm hoping the Pixel can bring some clarity to it. But I am taking credit for this one because last week I said that the temperature sensor was useless unless they do this. And then sure enough, they heard the show and gave it to us. Right, Michelle? That's how it works, right? Obviously. They had only just magically gotten approval the day you asked for it. Well, the FDA listens, too. That's the thing. People at the FDA are huge fans of the show. Real quick, before we get to email, thank you to the Ozon Nightmare. Dang. Given the $10 to us during the show. Yeah, Ozon Nightmare said rarely get to catch the show live, but it's great seeing the show filling the space left from AAA, wonderful seeing the band back together talking to Android. Thank you, sir. Yeah. Right on. Thank you so much for that. OK, we've got some emails coming up next. Contact at androidfaithful.com if you want to send us an email and let us know what you think about the things we talk about and if there's things that you want us to talk about that we haven't talked about yet. Michelle, you've got the first one. Hello. Maybe? Oh, Michelle's frozen. Oh. Oh, no, Michelle's. I know, I know. I thought he was moving. I thought he was messing with us. It's all right, I'll do it, Jason. I'll take it. All right, so our first email comes from Chad at San Antonio who says, as a follow-up to last week's email, and if you listened to last week's episode, Android Faithful, number 28, Chad and San Antonio wrote in about wanting solely in AR computing and we agreed on the Apple Vision Pro and all that whole conversation. But Chad did listen to the episode and followed up and said, instead of a virtual keyboard for AR computing, I think experts should devise a set of gestures from the ground up for maximum efficiency and ergonomics. With something like Project Solia, I should be able to flick my fingers while walking in order to write an email, debug code, switch applications and more. That's the future in which keyboards will be obsolete. And Chad, you're probably right. I mean, they're going to have to come up with some new paradigm for data input. What it is, I don't know, somebody like when is going to figure it out and I'm not, because I'm not as smart. But yeah, but I also think it'd be weird like if we've got Ray-Ban glasses with our AR stuff or walk around, we're all just going like this or like whatever it might be. I still, Flo, you listen and watch the show regularly, right? So you saw this last week, right? You know what we're talking about? I did not see this last week. Oh, no, you don't? Oh, that's a bit. I have been in a Samsung. I'm teasing you, I'm teasing you. What I did was, my suggestion was we bring back the Nintendo Power Glove and we have a glove with a little keyboard on it that you could type. But I don't know, I mean, what is the world of input without a keyboard look like in the future? You know, like is it just gesture-based? Is it solely, I don't, like, I can't even. Can't you just read my mind? Yeah, I mean, maybe that's the next big jump. Seriously. I just don't know that I'm so convinced that we're all going to be walking around in the world doing air keyboard, you know? Like. Could it be like winks? Could it be like a visual thing? That's weird too. We don't have the evolutionary, like we did not evolve to do this in the air. Like this will tire you out. It's the same way how we have to prop ourselves up at the keyboard. Like we're not actually supposed to be. Purple tunnel. Maybe what we have is what we have. Like maybe the future is just a lot more of this. Yeah. Put a blanket on it. More excellent. I mean, the future is they wanted to be the ambient stuff, the stuff that goes in your ear and that you talk to. But I don't want to be walking down the street and be responding to an email and be like, they're people just talking to themselves, which is crazy. You know, like, like, yeah. I mean, people do that anyway. If you go to the office job, there's at least four people on FaceTime with somebody being like, what kind of bagel do you want? How much smear? Well, if I tell you, I don't even, I don't even understand. So like I take the Long Island Railroad into New York City all the time and there are people and we're talking morning commute, PM commute. And I see that they're on video chat because it's not always Apple's, they're iPhones but I see people at WhatsApp and I look to see who they're talking to and they're just sitting there, not really talking. Like is it a connection thing? Like I'm so baffled. I want to talk to be like, what are you doing? I think it's a connection thing. I think it's a connection thing, which is exactly why it should just be in the ear. Yeah. In the ear and in the glasses. Yeah. I'm fine within the glasses. I think that's that'll be cool. I've never done the on the phone thing, but when my husband and I were first dating, we were long distance 1000 miles for like two or three years. And we did would just open. I made him, well, okay. Now I sound really creepy, but we would often leave Skype open just so that we were together, even if we weren't actually talking. Yeah. I worked with someone who did that. I worked with someone who did that. Yeah. So I'm sympathetic even though, man, on a train, on a train though with other people. It's weird. It's a little invading spacey, but I don't know, connection, sympathetic to that, I'm sure. Anyway, all right. Well, thank you Chad for writing in and responding to that one. So. You want me to take the last one? Oh yeah, you take the last one, Jason. Yeah, we've had a little switchy switch room. Okay. Ah, hi, Android faithful says Mike in Dubai. Do I have the right email? Yes, I do. I dunked my phone in water and alcohol saved it. Let me explain. I was on a boat trip and we got out in a shallow lagoon to take pictures. I brought my S23 with me to take a few shots. I never totally submerged it, but between the IP rating, flow mentioning taking it in the shower. Didn't know about that. And having gotten my phone pretty wet a few times, I didn't think it would be a big problem when it took a little dip while in my pocket. That's like a nightmare that I have, by the way, when I climbed up the ladder to get back in the boat. The moisture warning went off, but I figured that it would be fine in a few hours. Otherwise the phone worked normally. 12 hours later, my phone was set at 8% battery and I still couldn't charge it. I had to buy a wireless charger on vacation just to make it through the trip. A week later, I still couldn't connect my phone via USB, which stopped me from using Android Auto. I tried cleaning out the port, nothing worked. Ouch, man, this is a journey. Following a Reddit thread on moisture warnings, I found a tip that recommended turning off the phone, dipping a toothbrush and isopropyl alcohol and scrubbing the port. I gave that a try, turned on the phone 30 minutes later and it was good as new. It was a long time AAA listener. I never came across this tip and wanted to share it in case anyone else comes across a situation where their IP rating mostly saves their phone. Thanks as always, Mike in Dubai. Long time AAA listener and I should say now long time AF listener. It's good to have you on board, Mike. That was a journey right there. But I'd never heard that tip either. I mean that. Yeah. But, well, isopropyl alcohol, you want that because it, I mean, I use that anyway to clean devices. So I would imagine whatever the moisture, that's the moisture layer that's left behind. Isopropyl alcohol will mix with the water because isopropyl alcohol is a lot more volatile. It actually kind of takes the moisture with it. And generally those cases, it's better to use 99% versus 21 or 23 just because 99% is super volatile. Like I've seen that tip too. But yeah, it's just basically helping the water evaporate faster. Oh, that's great. Fascinating. Yeah. And you know what? I might be explaining some things incorrectly, but it takes the water with it. I wanted to add that isopropyl alcohol is also, if you're on a trip, if you need to, you know, pop some blisters on your feet. Oh, I was like, where are you going with that? Because you're going the Betty Ford direction. Are you going the, what are you doing? No. Well, listen, your girl has a habit of buying. I was going to tell you about the ads of the purple one. Ha ha. No, but that's really good. There wasn't a very good episode of intervention about that. Because you don't want to get infected. Oh, really? Yes, exactly. Just a tidbit for anybody out there. It's the little sewing needle. It's the liquid that does everything that I had going on. It does. That you should always have it. And it's great for keyboards and just like taking care of all your tech devices. So if you should walk with anything today, it should be. Isopropyl alcohol should be in your medicine cabinet for your skin and your tech. Yes, there we go. And scene. With that, we have reached the end of this episode, this longer, but not like crazy longer episode of Android Faithful. It is plug time. We'll start with you, Flo. What do you want to tell people about? Well, you already know I'm covering all the Samsung stuff over at gizmodo.com because that's where I am. But I'm also on the Relay FM podcast network. I do a podcast every week with Andy and Notco. We talk all about Google from Google search to the Google devices. So please join us at relay.fm slash material if you're interested. That is right. Material, I'm trying to get the screen. Oh, there we go. There we go. Now I can show it. Relay.fm slash material. 448 episodes. That's something to be proud of. That's solid. Thank you for coming, Flo. Always good to have you. Thank you for having me. Any time. Michelle, while your internet still works, what do you want to plug? If you want to find out what's happening next in Android, you can follow me on Twix and all the other social media platforms at Michelle Ramon. And you can also join my Patreon at patreon.com slash Michelle Ramon if you want to support the work that I do. And yeah, I expect a lot posts about Android 15 in the coming weeks because it is that time of year again. So I look forward to that. Is it time? Is it Android 15 Eve? Are we there yet? Stanta Michelle delivers. Stanta Michelle delivers. Thank you, Michelle. Win, what about you? Hey, yeah, I am an Android dev that is my day job. And I've been getting back to my day job lately, working on Compose and all kinds of stuff. It's been really fun. Eventually, I'll probably talk about some of the new stuff that I'm doing. And you can find any talks and associated code and video that I do on my website, randomlytyping.com. And if you want to find me on the interwebs, I'm at QueenCodeMonkey. I'm in places, but let's be real Instagram. And that's been fun. Radon, good to see you win. What about you, Ron? I took the red eye last night, so I'm on fumes. So just follow me at RonExo, cross social, and move along. Move along. There's nothing to see here. Here, I will plug. If you made it this far, if you enjoy the show, go to patreon.com slash Android faithful. So many of you are supporting us. That's awesome. But so many of you aren't. So go, go, go, ship in. Yeah, what do we got to do to convert you from an aren't to an are? Yeah, exactly. I would love to know what you would want from the Patreon. I will come more often if you need me to or not. If someone wants to. Hey, or not, or I'll just keep coming once in a while. I. But yeah, no, we definitely we love everyone who supports us. But those of you who aren't, I would love to know why or give us a shot. Yeah, send us an email. Contact at androidfaithful.com if there's a reason. Yeah, or message us through the Patreon. That actually makes a lot of sense, too. Of course, Edward faithful. OK, and then as for me, well, I have another show that I launched just last week called A.I. Inside with Jeff Jarvis. We had us two coming tomorrow, which is fantastic. It was a great, great first episode, by the way, Jason Bravo. Thank you. Very strong out of the gate. Excellent. We're we've got a lot to learn about artificial intelligence. It's really what we're using the show as. It's kind of like we like what we know about A.I. And we want to know more. So let's invite people who are ridiculously smart to teach us each and every week. And you get to be taught to along with us. So A.I. Inside dot show is where you can go to check it out along with me and Jeff Jarvis every single Wednesday. And with that, we have reached the end of this episode of Android faithful. Don't forget, you can go to Android faithful.com. That's our website where you can subscribe. You can find all the ways to subscribe. Everything is there. If we haven't said it a million one times, we'll say it again. The patron Patreon at patreon.com slash Android faithful. That's your direct support. You get to be involved in the patron news pick every week. You get an ad free fee to the podcast, exclusive content, merchandise, merchandising and so much more. So check that out and, you know, just find us. Oh, no, wrong file. There we go. Find us on the socials. Twitter dot com slash android faithful Instagram. You know, you just search for Android faithful and all the different socials. And you will find us and then send us an email if you like contact at android faithful.com. If you want to yell at me for playing the wrong music file, you can email me there. See you, everybody.