 I'm live with my broken mic stand that will not stay up anymore. It is so the obvious middle-aged man joke that I won't make. But by saying I'm not going to make the joke, I make the joke. You see, that's the, you know. But you can claim that. I was not even thinking of it until you brought it up. I'm also a child, Ron, so I got it. Yeah, there you go. How does that sound? Does everybody in the chat room? Clinton is in the chat. I'm sure Clinton will tell me how I sound, whether I sound loud enough or not. Perfect attendance, Clinton. Hello. Yeah, the Perfect Attendance Award is definitely, I mean, we're only 15 episodes in, but Perfect Attendance Award to Clinton, like, very impressed. Very happy. Yeah. I have a question as a noob. Is there a link that I can share to threads? Is that in the spreadsheet that I... Two threads? I mean, anywhere on the internet, like, because I mean, like, the live show. Oh, the live show. Yeah, no, yeah, actually, here, I'll give you, it's a, the YouTube is probably the best. Twitch.tv.gooddayinternet. I'll drop it, yeah. Our YouTube.com slash Daily Tech News Show. Here you go. Put it in, you see on the right side in private chat. Private chat, oh, yes. There's Twitch and there's YouTube, so. Red, okay, thank you very much. Clinton says I'm slightly low. If I could bump it up a little bit, says Willie. All right, see, the thing is I bumped it up last time and I was hot on the recording. And so in the edit, I can't, I'd rather, thank you, Mike, okay, Ron's volume is lower than others. Yeah, so I'd rather be on the low side and not hot on the recording, you know what I mean? But, and because of my mic stand situation. It was challenging, yeah, your mic. I may have to hold it like this. I had it balanced, it's all about balance. That's what it is, man. That's right. These springs are just done. There's one YouTuber I love, I'm out of the Jedi. She does like media, movie, film analysis and she's always recording with holding her mic in her hand and she sounds immaculate. So I have no idea. Maybe that's the game, man. Is this right? Yeah, that's the thing, like, do you know that TikToker that now has a podcast that Bobby Altoff woman, she did a whole bunch of TikToks about like motherhood and like how she had a baby and all this sort of stuff and then has parlayed that now into a podcast career. But what her premise is is that she interviews celebrities, like she's this like short, demure, like quiet kind of woman and she interviewed Shaq and Drake and like Mark Cuban. And I have no idea how that happened and she's just deadpan and it's just like, so are you proud of yourself? Like that's how she talks. Like, and it's very, you know, it's very amusing that but when she's doing these interviews on the road, she has the, I don't know what, I think they're sure mics or whatever, but they're like, you know the really thick ones that aren't meant to be held, but she's holding them and it like drives, I should find a picture of it. It just drives me crazy because these are not mics that are meant to be, they're meant to be held. Yeah, that's what my girl, I'm out of the Jedi does. I think it's a sure SM7B or something and she's just holding it. She might have like the, because it has like the top of like the stand or whatever on it. So she, let me find a picture. Yeah, no, I got a picture here. I just got to put it in the room. I see, honestly, I'm gonna see if Amanda does the same thing. There you go. There we go. Let's see. Where is it? Doop. Okay, see, see right there on the right. Oh my God. Yeah. Like that. It's just like a beer can. Yeah, yeah, it's like a beer can. Yeah, it's just, yeah, it's just, it's not, it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't seem like, there's better road mikes, everybody. Yeah, but I would take that run over the, over the kind of like ubiquitous, like the little lav mic on the little things like, Hey, everybody, I'm here. I'm like, when did that become a thing? Yeah, it's, it's challenging. I think it just might be like an aesthetic thing, like a branding kind of thing. It looks like. Yeah, but what? I don't really know the reason behind it. Yeah. Yeah. Can't get behind that. No, I can't. I can't. I don't subscribe. All right, Clinton, how's my, how's my mic? Now, I got the, I got the mic stand balance. So we're good there. I got the level. If everybody can let me know. You sound good to me. I sound good to me too. You sound good to me too. Yeah, excellent. I sound good to win. Excellent. And JJ has complimented your headphones, Michael. So. Oh, thank you. Oh, there's the chat. Okay. Thank you. So you see, you see in the comments on the upper, yeah, on the right side, you can see both, you can see both Twitch and YouTube in there. So it's just pretty cool. That is pretty cool. StreamYards is a cool cut form there. It is. I'm constantly impressed by StreamYard and it's great. David Arnold in the chat. Thank you for noticing my t-shirt. I just saw Bob Mould live last week. So yeah. All right, Willie says I sound good. Mike says I'm low. Mike, I appreciate you. Everyone is much louder on YouTube. I don't want to be too loud. I'm going to do it a skinch. I need to get a new little box. So that's what. Okay, vital question. Am I hat or no hat this week? It's good luck. It's a good luck. It's a very good luck. I dig it. It works. All right, I'll try this week. Mike, can you live with me at this level? My friend, you're the only hold out. All right. Oh wow, Marcello is very excited to see you, Michael. Hey, what's up, Marcello? Thank you. I'm excited to be here, actually. I was just saying that right before we went live. It's great to be with y'all in this context. I think this is my first time with this kind of branding. Yeah, well, we're glad to have it on. All right, so Marcello says my honor sounds great. All right, why don't we do a show? Let's do a show. Let's do a show. Let's get some people in here. Let's do it. All right, I'm doing the intros. So what I will do is I'm going to remove you all from the stage and I'll add you back. And then we'll, and Michael, it is just free form conversation. You just be, you be you and we'll be great. Rock music sounds good. All right, so I'm going to remove Michael. I'm going to remove Michelle, I'm going to remove Win. All right, I'm going to do this. There we go. And welcome to another edition of Android Faithful. We are your weekly source of Android news, hardware chit chat, app lovin', email answering, and general Android party havin' people. I'm Ron Richards. And as with me, as always. It's went to it out in a hat this week. Ooh, with your appropriate title of Queen, which I appreciate. So welcome, Win. And of course, it wouldn't be Android Faithful without Michelle Ramon. I'm not in a hat, but maybe I might get one next week. But so fabulous. We should do a hat night. We should do a hat party. I mean, I know it's a twit thing. Twit does a hat thing on the iOS show, but they might have canceled that show. I'm not sure. Oh, I don't want to just do any shade. All right, so here we go. I love it. We are super excited, though, here on our 15th episode to welcome alumni of our former show, All About Android, as far as a guest, one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet in tech, none other than Mr. Mobile himself, Michael Fisher. Welcome to the show, Michael. Thank you for having me. I apologize for my echo, but I simply could not get to my sound chamber across town today. So thanks for putting that up. It's OK. We do record. You're on the East Coast like me, so we are in the evening hour. That is true. Keeping you from the baseball playoffs or whatever thing, that's OK. Oh, yeah, that's right. What the hell, man? That's good to be here. The chat room is reminding me that DTNS has Hat Friday, so I guess hats and tech is OK. So when we can make, we can have a Hat Tuesday. All right, it's a Hat Tuesday. Yeah. We only have a record on Tuesday. Which is a great time to remind folks listening or watching after we're live that we do record this show every Tuesday, Tuesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern or Tuesday afternoon 5 p.m. Pacific from the West Coast. And you can watch it live on youtube.com slash Daily Tech News Show or twitch.tv slash Good Day Internet thanks to our fine friends at Daily Tech News Show who have given us a new life. And Michael, we're so excited to have you on the new show, man. It's so great. I'm very happy to be here. I'm very happy that y'all are painted new colors and all very, we've all got fancy lower thirds. We've got nice hats. I would have brought my hat if I had known it was Hat Tuesday. It's not getting on everybody. We got branding, Michael. We got, I feel like you know branding well. And so hopefully, hopefully we're doing all right. Should be having one of my old stained Mr. Mobile coffee mugs on the thing just slurping noisily and then through the tech tober stress. I'm going to talk about the big deal. What's the difference? Exactly. All right. Well, it's an exciting, exciting week because embargoes are being lifted left and right. We're almost in the clear of this hardware palooza that's been happening all month. So we're excited to get into it. But before, and Michael, you brought a lot of hardware. I've got hardware, so we're going to talk a lot of hardware. But we want to talk about some news first. But before we do, I just do want to remind everybody listening that you can go support us over at patreon.com slash android faithful. We actually had a influx of new loyal listeners and enthusiasts joining the show via Patreon in the past week. And we love you all. Win and Michelle, I was thinking, I think we might start figuring out how to, whoa, what is going on with this? Did you see her? Hey. Did you see that? So, yeah, audio stream listeners, I made a heart shape with my two hands and StreamYard is now populating my little go-to-the-vot. Is it your camera? So hearts come out of your face, but. Well, hold on, I just dropped a picture of my face. It's not working for any of us. That's crazy. Is it? No, I'm using a DSLR. So unless Sony just gave a the bomb is as firmware update without me doing it. Is are you on the new iOS? And I'm iOS. Or are you on the latest? Sonoma? Yeah. Because Sonoma does that. That is a Mac OS thing. That is a Mac OS thing. Oh, wow. Yeah. Which I saw an article again for our audio viewers, if you make also like if you do, do two thumbs up. When do you go like this? Yeah, there it goes. What is happening? What's happening? So fireworks happened behind your head. I read an article that is making online therapy very challenging. Oh, my God. I thought you shouldn't laugh at that, but goodness gracious. It's pretty funny. But all right. Anyway, sorry for the distraction, especially audio listeners. Go watch the YouTube video. You can see what we're talking about. Video effects happening on the wind's camera. But yes, but thank you to everybody that's gone to patreon.com slash Android faithful and signed up. You can sign up at the $5 level, get access to our Discord and all of our exclusive stuff. A $10 level gets you access to the ad free podcast. And $20 a month gets you a t-shirt. And we're starting to see people get t-shirts in the wild. So send us your pictures. Someone shared it on Discord. I didn't get her permission to show it on the show yet. So I'm hoping Jen, if you check on Discord, check your private messages. And hopefully next week we can show off the t-shirt. But thank you, Jen, for supporting us. And thank you to everybody. And Jen was was Android AF, not just faithful, but Jen was showing off all her new gear. Her Pixel 8, her Pixel Watch 2, all in beautiful blue. Exciting. That's the color. That is the color. So we're gonna get into all that. But first we got some news to get through. So Michelle, you got the first story, I believe. Tell us about what's the latest in Android 14? Well, unfortunately for some users who updated to Android 14, they discovered that their phone is not quite working properly. So a couple of Pixel 6 users have taken to Reddit and the Pixel support forums. And they've been complaining about their phone being unable to access their storage. Anything that's stored on their phone, like their media files, their photos, their videos. And then frequent crashing is happening as well. And a couple of news outlets picked up on this, like The Verge and or Authority, which is shown on screen right now if you're watching the video feed. We don't really know the cause. Like Google hasn't commented, they haven't offered any solution or any acknowledgement of the issue. But given all the media attention and the severity of this bug, I'm sure they'll pick up on it soon. And bugs will happen, right? I mean, it's a thing. Michael, I gotta assume you played with Android 14 at this point or any? I have, I just completed the upload or the upgrade on my Pixel Fold, after which I was surprised to learn that I had turned 57. That took like two hours. That was a crazily long update process. But yes, I've leveled it to a very limited extent, but there are just too many other things going on. It definitely feels to me, so I've been playing with Android 14 on my Pixel 8 and my Pixel 8 Pro, which we'll show in a moment. I haven't done the upgrade on my Pixel 7 yet, because I currently have too many phones at the moment. But I'm noticing like it does feel different. And Wynn and Michelle, I don't know if you're feeling it, but it definitely like, I felt like 13 and 12, it felt somewhat iterative and like didn't really feel like noticeably different, but 14 does feel different to me at least on those phones. I don't know if I'm alone there. Michelle, I mean, Michelle, you've been drowning in this stuff for months now, right? So here's the thing. Everyone always asked me like, how is Android 14? How is the new OS version in terms of stability and performance? And I'm like, I don't actually run any of these beta bills on my daily driver. My daily driver is some other device. It's not a Pixel running the beta. You guys can be the guinea pigs. I'm just reporting on what's new in the OS. So do you feel a noticeable change with 14 or? I mean, you're asking the wrong guy. All right, fair enough. Well, Wynn, what do you think then? Yeah, I do think so. A lot of the visual changes happened in like 13 and 12, right, with the kind of the much wider buttons and everything, but I do think that we're benefiting from some of the quality of life improvements, like the share sheet to some extent, like predicted back. I mean, things feel a little bit tighter, I think. And then it's weird because I think now before, I would have noticed a big difference, but because we talk about this every week and every week, and Michelle is so good about documenting every single little thing that changes in every single QPR. It's like I kind of anticipate things, but it was really funny because I was hanging out with my old Trello fam and everyone was asking same question. What do you think of Android 14? I was like, there's a lot of good stuff. I kind of had to play like the role of Michelle and kind of go through things. And yeah, I think there's a lot of very subtle quality of life things. It's hard to put a finger on, but I think things are coming together and it's not just visual. It's just like a, you know, just again, quality of life. Sure. I'm actually pleased you brought this up because I have a question. The Easter egg in Android 14, I have had so much fun with it, but I don't know what it's referencing. Is it an old game? Or is it a new scratch built game? What is this? I haven't actually, oh, that's an old, wait, I haven't unlocked that yet. How do you actually do that? You do the multi tabs on the 14 and then you press and hold the Android 14 logo until you get into this game, which appears to be a spacecraft that you're steering around looking for. Yeah, that's an old late 70s PC game. It's really fun. I don't know. I haven't know that I've figured out the point yet, but I'm just having a great time cruising around. Yeah, it's, there used to be here. Here we go. I found it here on the thing. Too many windows to open. But yeah, it is a, where is it? I saw how many tabs you had open. I wouldn't be able to find a thing. I know. It's crazy. Mission control here is just, it wouldn't be, but yeah, so here, yeah, here's the Android 14 Easter egg. And it's basically, yeah, so you go into settings and about phone Android version and do the, and then you tap the Android version repeatedly at a quick pace and then you unveil the Easter egg, which is this little very simple game where it's floating in space. But does it vibrate for you when you do it? Like the, it does, yeah, you press and hold the logo and it kind of like, yeah, it gives you either a low frequency sound or a little haptic thing. And then it launches you into this, in this game. Yeah. And you want to, you want to get to the coordinates of zero, zero. It reminds me a lot of the very old late seventies, you know, kind of, you know, dot based space games. You know, so. Oh, you're navigating for zero, zero. I see. Okay. Yeah. So you can actually find multiple bot, like planetary bodies by floating around. I don't know exactly how it works, but I know the people who made this are heavy space sim nerds. Yeah. That sounds like so much fun. I'm going to be playing with that a lot. I'm just, thank you for educating me a little because I just realized I had just discovered it. Didn't know anything about it. So, Michelle, there are some good things about Android 14 that are going on though, right? Yeah. So a couple of performance related improvements that I haven't talked about before are listed here if you're watching the video feed. Google actually mentioned these as part of their blog post announcing Android 14, but a lot of people didn't really catch it because it was like buried at the top and it wasn't in the draft blog post that sent out the blog. So I just kind of wanted to highlight a couple of things they talked about. One of the major performance related improvements is the ability to freeze cached apps after a short period of time. So back at Android 11, Google introduced a feature called the cached apps freezer and this feature stops cached processes from being executed in the background. And by doing so reduces their resource usage because misbehaving apps might attempt to execute code while they're being cached. And if you freeze cached apps while they're in the background, you reduce the CPU consumption of these apps and that will increase performance and battery life ideally. Before Android 14 though, the OS would freeze cached apps after 10 minutes. Now on Android 14, the OS does that after just 10 seconds. And as a result, Google says that during the Android 14 beta process, cached processes consumed up to 50% less CPU cycles compared to Android 13. So it's a significant improvement in the CPU use of cached apps. Another improvement they did is related to broadcast. So in development, a broadcast receiver is an Android component that lets apps register to be notified of certain system or app events. So for example, an app can register to be notified when the battery level has changed and they can start a component, they can do some kind of work whenever that happens. But Android has kind of been cracking down on when apps can receive these broadcasts so that there's not 20 different apps receiving the same broadcast every minute and then clogging up your resources in the background. So one of the new restrictions they're doing in Android 14 is that if an app is cached, they won't receive context registered broadcasts until they leave the cached state. And this will just slightly improve battery life and memory use. And then Google says that because of the first and second improvement, I just mentioned that they're able to increase the longstanding limit on the maximum number of cached apps to Android 14, which results in a reduction in cold app starts that scales by the amount of RAM present on the device. So before Android 14, I believe there was a limit of, I think, I forgot how much the number was, but now they increase the maximum number of cached apps to 1,024, which is effectively unlimited. I think it was a really small number, like 32 before in Android 13. And because of this, you can have way more apps that are cached and ready to be relaunched from memory. And so Google says that if you have a device with eight gigabyte of RAM, they saw 20% fewer cold app starts versus on devices with 12 gigabyte or higher RAM, it was over 30% fewer. And this is good because starting an app from memory is much less resource-intensive than starting it from scratch, like loading it into the disk and then loading everything that it needs to run. Which is why you should spam close all your apps all the time. Yeah, that's why Google tells you. They do that all the time. Stop, stop. Because it's like the old Windows mentality of like, if I close the program, then I'm gonna free up memory, right? It's actually, if there's anything you learn from this episode, everyone, don't do that, right? And Android does not need your help managing its memory. Leave it alone, let it do its thing. All right. Sorry, Michelle. Yeah. There was one more related improvement that Google will probably expand on later, but they say that the latest version of the Android runtime, which they modularized in Android 12 and made it updateable, they're saying that this new version includes optimizations that reduce code size by an average of 9.3% without impacting performance. And so by reducing the amount of code that the Android runtime has to interpret, this results in better memory and storage use. And Dave Burke did an AMA on Reddit. They included some additional details on how this works. They said that an average phone can have 500 megabytes to one gigabyte of optimized code through these changes. So this translates to 50 to 100 megabyte savings in, I guess, memory use. This is kind of a big deal. There's like a whole subset of tools in Android development that are like, it's called ProGuard. It's basically allowing you to strip out any code in the different like toolkits and stuff that you don't need. And that's complicated. And one person usually gets the shaft and has to do it and they don't have a happy life. And so to the point you guys made earlier is that a lot of times the best thing that we can do is to just let Android do its thing and not break the rules, which is hard because the rules change on us. But yes, this is a big deal and it's a big help. And it'll put less pressure on that one person who has to edit the ProGuard file. Yeah, good. All right, cool. Well, thank you, Michelle. And then we got a couple of little, little minor OS tidbits when right? Yeah. So speaking of OS's, nothing, we have something about nothing to talk about. Is that right? Is that? The brand name that keeps on winning. So nothing OS 2.5, which is based on Android 14 is actually being kind of released as a beta. If you go to nothing.community, you can sign up for the current open beta. And yeah, nothing OS 2.5 is based on Android 14. And it actually adds a few extra little, something something's on top of the Android 14 goodness that we're all kind of like thinking about and having subconscious good feelings about better nothing widgets, a new photo widget for just playing circuit photos on your home screen or lock screen, a new more advanced screenshot editor and menu, a nothing-ified back gesture. I couldn't see any screenshots of it, but it fits the design of nothing much more. There's a three swipe gesture for screenshots. Ooh, there's so many times I've had really awkward times trying to catch something on a screenshot. The gesture would be nice. Customization of the power button, double press. You can have hidden app icons. So I wanted to compare it to like the Steam library hidden section. So if you wanna just put like some apps away for another day, but still have them fairly easily accessible or accessible, nothing has that for you in 2.5. Redesign joint home screen and lock screen customization and a glass filter to add a little juge to your favorite wallpapers. And yeah, I do think this is interesting in that when we first started talking about like the nothing phone one and updates, I think Carl Pay got a little bit of flack on Twix because at the time I think everyone was wondering when Android 13 came out like so August last year, there was a bit of lag time between Android 13 coming out and knowing even if nothing would get some Android 13 version. And I know like the first tweet he gave out was a little, I don't wanna say dismissive, but like kind of like, well, why did the numbers matter, man? And then at some point later, I think February this year, nothing one got a Android 13 flavored version. And there was a really in-depth interview with I think Android authority, is that right? Basically about why this all happened and what happened. And he admitted, hey, Android 13 is late. So I mean props and nothing for really just raising the bar this year and getting out at least a beta of an Android 14 flavored nothing OS. What, like two weeks later? Yeah, his classic responsive back in 2022, a product is more than just its specs, features and version numbers. So like nothing was elevating over the version number of Android, which is rarefied air. I don't know, Michael, what is your take on nothing in general on the phone too? Did you get to play with it? I did, yeah, I covered it actually. And I was really pleasantly surprised because I didn't even do a full video on the first one. But the second one came around, I did a full review and I was very pleased that in addition to some really distinctive hardware, which I always advocate that people can use fun as a criteria for buying a phone that doesn't all have to be pragmatic, that the software had been tuned to match it finally in a way that the first one that they just didn't do it all almost. So the more I used the software on nothing phone too, the more I found it, just such design catnip. I had so much fun, I think it looks so nice and it has all these little fun corners in it and I'm really happy that they appear to be keeping up pretty well with improvements to that as the underlying platform gets upgraded. So credit to them, build a foldable. But credit to them. Seems like that's table stakes now is having a foldable. Yes, man. We did that in a little bit actually. Well, if you want fun and you're thinking about Xiaomi we might have to wait to see what their newly announced HyperOS might look like. We have no idea, but basically on October 16th Xiaomi founder and CEO announced on both Weibo and Twix that there will be a new Xiaomi operating system called HyperOS and this OS will eventually replace MIUI. It will debut on the Xiaomi 14 series which has recently been leaked and is rumored to be using the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. We have no idea what this looks like yet but presumably it will look less like iOS because that has been a, at least as I understand it a complaint from many an Android user about MIUI over the years, it's a little bit iOS-y and it should run more, well, this is J, sorry, sorry, this is the CEO slash founder's words in that HyperOS will have hyper performance, fluidity and connectivity across smartphones and AIOT and it has a completely new rewritten architecture and HyperOS won't be exclusive to China, it will be released two phones outside of that market and the global HyperOS ROM will roll out in 2024. So yeah, I mean, it's basically seems like just trying to make things better stronger faster and I mean, I've read a lot of criticism I have not been much of a Xiaomi user at all I only just got my first Xiaomi phone because Michelle sent me one so I don't have a lot of experience with MIUI but I don't know, how do you all, that have Xiaomi experience feel about the criticisms about it being trusive and heavy? Does this excite you? Well, are you as excited about this as Lei Jun is in this photo here on Post-it on X? Very excited. How excited are you? Yeah, is this worth a note? Michelle, what do you think? I think it really depends on how different HyperOS actually is and how much of this is just marketing speak because it really feels like this is all late in right now with lip marketing speak and how do we know it's not just the rebranding of MIUI? That's what it probably feels like right now. Right, yeah, I think the proof is gonna be in the pudding on this one, we gotta check it out. I wasn't offended by MIUI when I did the Mix Fold 2 review last year but it's just not optimized for this market and I think that will continue to be the case as long as Xiaomi can't really sell here, so. Yeah, I will say HyperOS from a marketing standpoint from my background in marketing and product, HyperOS is a much better name than MIUI. I can never figure out how to say it. I had to look up an ocean YouTuber. Yeah, MIUI, I like MIUI. But HyperOS is like, that's got excitement, it's got energy, I'll give them a check mark for at least getting better marketing going. Hyped for the hyper. Does MIUI have the right Chevrons? This is not MIUI but I think, was it Ron, you posted something from, the OxygenOS this week? Yeah, somebody posted on threads, here I'll share it, they comparing OxygenOS to iOS side by side and they're not the first person to do this but it's kind of uncanny when you look at it in terms of the setting screen. Oh yeah. So for our video viewers, it's a side by side of an iPhone and a OnePlus running Oxygen and on the left is the setting screen of iOS which is stacked vertical, it's a settings, got a search bar, information about the user and then Wi-Fi, airplane mode and another section and then OxygenOS is, I mean, it's a carbon copy. Literally. The only difference is that iOS is using square icons on the left for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and OxygenOS is using circular icons but other than that, at quick glance, these are both iOS. Yeah, I make fun of the right Chevron because for as long as I've been an Android Dev which is like since 2011, 2012 now, we very often get designs with that very characteristic like right arrow, right carrot on list items which is not a thing in Android. It is, we have to do extra work to make that happen and it's, what did I say? I said like, I kind of, yeah. Just to back it up though, so by right Chevron, you mean it's the little. The little carrot. The little. Greater than symbol. Yes, thank you. It moves you to the right. Yes. Yeah, to kind of slide over. Not an Android pattern and, but I've been doing it since 2011. It's still happening, so yeah. So Ron, I don't know if you saw this news but the resemblance to iOS 14 up to iOS doesn't end there. The latest version of OxygenOS also added a dynamic island close. Oh no. Of course. Oh my gosh. Yep. No. Naturally. Yes. You don't want to be left out of that phone. Come on. That said, I mean like, none of this surprises me, right? Because if you're like, if you're OnePlus, are you, are you going after Pixel and Samsung users or are you going after iPhone users? Right? Like, would it make sense to make your phone look iOS-y to bring them over? Well, that was always. You want to ease a transition. Yeah. Yeah, that was always, not excuse, explanation. We would just year after year be like, thanks for showing us this new EMUI or whatever. It looks a lot like the iPhone. That's annoying. Why are you doing that? And they're like, yeah, well, we're trying to get iPhone users. So we want to make it easy for them to understand. I'm like, all right, fair enough. I wish you wouldn't, but fair enough. Crazy. All right. Well, last bit of news. I just wanted to mention, because I think it's relevant because we're talking a lot about hardware and we're talking a lot about operating systems. We don't often talk about carriers. And I thought it was really interesting that the folks at Ucla, who do the speed test website, recently put out a report after comparing T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T and basically doing a side-by-side speed report in terms of access and data transfer and things like that. And T-Mobile, and this is per gsmarena.com, T-Mobile annihilates Verizon and AT&T in those new speed reports. They ran, they basically checked for median download speeds. And in a comparison, the median download speed on T-Mobile was over 163 Mbpses. What is that? Is that megabits per second? I never get that right, but good number. Whereas Verizon was at 75 and AT&T was at 72. And then they looked at 5G median download speeds and T-Mobile was at 221, Verizon 153 and AT&T 101, which really makes me kind of weep for anybody who's an AT&T customer. I feel really bad for you. But they also identified which devices had the best speeds. And unfortunately, the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max topped the charts of having the best download and upload speeds on mobile networks followed by the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4. And then in fifth place was the Pixel 7 Pro. Obviously this is done before the eight came out. So I just always think that's interesting. I'm a T-Mobile customer. I love the data speeds there. I will say that T-Mobile has continuously, though, suffered when you go inside a building, more so than Verizon or AT&T. And I found this out last night. I was at a comedy show that was underneath the theater, underneath MTV and Times Square. I don't know if anybody's familiar in New York City, the 1515 Broadway or whatever it is. There's a, it's called the Palladium at Times Square, but like you go down an escalator, then you go down another escalator and then you're in this theater. I had no coverage. Like I was completely cut off from the world because T-Mobile just cannot penetrate. And this runs in like I go to the Bowery Ballroom in New York City. I can't get, if I'm up by the stage, like deep in the club, I can't, I have no service. Like it's always been T-Mobile thing penetrating walls, especially at nightclub seems to be a problem. I love your very specific and concrete data points in this, Ron. Yeah, well, it's a good experience. This is what every carrier discussion turns into, right? Like whether you're on a podcast, whether you're talking to your grandmother or service, like, well, now there's down in the grocery store in the, in the, in the A-Thile, I can get reception with AT&T by my friend. And so I could give you a whole essay on why I think Verizon's pivot to millimeter wave was one of the worst things they ever did. To still two day, I will have a Verizon phone that doesn't work right because it's trying to go between millimeter wave and low band. And it's not working me while my T-Mobile phone is doing fine, but I'm just so glad people are out there reporting it. So I don't have to because that just seems like very unforgiving work to get those network results. That's for sure. But if you're on T-Mobile, go download because you got, you got good speeds. So. All right. Before we wrap up the news, when? Yeah, we got the patron pick. So every week on Monday, we paste, we post three stories for our lovely patrons who we adore for their support, get to look at and pick which particular story we get to, we get to talk about this week. And it was kind of a landslide. I'll talk about the other two first. We did have 18% of patrons pick formerly blacklisted by the USO film supplies Huawei. I thought that might be interesting cause we've been talking about the, the, you know, interestingness of Huawei lately. And no one, I mean, a few people did really care but not enough about threads adding an edit button. I sympathize wondering how many people really did care about the edit button, but not too many because the vast majority, 78% wanted us to talk about Google camera removing photo sphere mode. So yes, we don't get to play taps just yet, but, you know, there's about to click it. It's almost, it's almost. And I think, I think it's one of our patrons comments that they can still see it. So this is only on pixel camera version 9.1 which is only on the pixel eight and pixel eight pro but it has been removed. And I didn't really, I didn't remember until reading this article but photosphere was out in 2012 in the Nexus four. So it's a very long lived feature. If you happen to not remember, it's that feature where you can basically create a 360 panorama by taking a series of photos kind of lining up to a grid. And you get basically your own personal spherical Google street view type, you know, image. And yeah, it looks like it's gonna go away. Google camera 9.1 is still just on, you know, the new pixel eight. So once that gets unleashed upon the rest of us, I guess we'll see the end of photosphere. So we'll play taps, I guess when, I don't know, it happens, but almost, or on life support by Google, the impending downfall about to shuffle off the coil. You've got to assume there's some level of user data that they have that says nobody's using this. I don't know. I mean, anybody on, I mean, Michael, when was the last time you made a photosphere? I remember doing it six months ago and I specifically posted about it because I had forgotten the feature existed. I'm like, guys, remember, we can do this. This is pretty cool. But you know, you could see the stitch lines. It was very obviously a 2012 technology still kind of limping along. It felt like. Yeah, I wonder with all the new advanced competition photography with like swapping and magic editor, it just doesn't. It's just a relic. It's like the sad, this. Yeah. It's stinking rude. It's like this. Never mind. I was something mean, but yeah, it just doesn't fit the new polished, very AI driven experience. So got to go. Sorry. So, well, so our almost RIP photosphere. We'll keep it. If you use photosphere, email us. Let us know what you think. You can email us a contact at androidfaithful.com. Send us your photospheres. We'll show them on the show. Yeah. Yeah. So cool. All right. Well, that's going to get us into hardware because now is the moment that everyone's been waiting for. I know, like, it's funny because because we do the show weekly, when they do these embargo dates lifting, they don't really affect us. So like, everybody got to show off their Pixel phones last week when they bar go lifted. And I'm like, oh, I've got to wait until Tuesday. But here we are. You know, now we're a couple of weeks out from the made by Google event. And Google was very, very kind enough to share with me and Michael, it seems. The Pixel, my light is, but I've got the Pixel 8 Pro and the Pixel 8 itself, as well as the Pixel Watch 2, which is pretty good. So yeah, so I've been operating with the Pixel 8 Pro as my daily driver since I got it. And here you can see my son, my background photo. But some of my immediate kind of feeling about it was that this is great. It's been delightful to use. I was on a Pixel 7 previously. I didn't have the Pixel 7 Pro. I wanted the Pixel 7 because I liked the smaller phone. And I did the balance between the Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8 Pro, and the Pixel 8 is smaller than the Pixel 7. Like, it comes in and it felt smaller. And while the Pixel 8 Pro, obviously, is the bigger of the two phones, it felt more akin to the size of the Pixel 7 in my hand than the new Pixel 8. So that's why I went with this as the daily driver. In terms of hardware and kind of phone feel, as we like to say, they did send me a case. They sent me a very nice blue case to put in the back of it if I wanted to. But everybody knows me. I don't do cases. So I've been going and saying, how do you feel about that, Michael? You agree? What is your agree? Big, big agree. Yeah, write them. Take them naked. It's great. Right. These are meant to be shown. I want people to see the blue colorway. Even out obscure the hardware. Yeah. Cool stuff. Beautiful. But it feels great. I know there's been a lot of talk about that the Pixel 8 line is more roundy corners than previously. But it's got a good pocket feel. It's got a good in and out of the pocket. And then when I'm holding the phone, I've put it through its paces. I've taken it to see bands play. I took it to that comedy show last night. I took it around New York Comic Con last weekend. I can start some photos in a second. But overall, just in terms of how the phone feels, it feels good. But it's obviously, like we see, it's not a huge departure from the Pixel 7 line. I mean, Michael, how's your physical feel been with the Pixel? Yeah, from a hardware standpoint, I'm always a little bit disappointed if a design gets recycled more than two generations. But we're kind of plateauing. We're maturing. And it's a great design. I mean, I love the increased symmetry in the camera bar and all that kind of stuff. But I agree with you. One thing that I kept coming back to as you hold it and tell me if you feel this way, it's got such a unique material feel, that glass. I always have to check to reconfirm that it is glass because it almost feels like a chalkboard that someone mostly erased. It's almost slippery in an otherworldly kind of way, but in a negative way. What I found nice is that it does feel slippery in that otherworldly way. That sums it up nicely. But the spot where the Google logo is, right? Yeah. Has just got a little, just a little enough of a definition where you can trace the G. And I find myself kind of fidgety doing that throughout the day in my pocket or something like that, because that little tactile touch is enough, right? See, I want a little bit more of it. I wish it was a textured G. But I think that's I just have never gotten over the loss of the Motorola Dimple from the Moto X days. I understand, yeah. Good hardware. Yeah, great hardware. In terms of use, I was running Android 14. Like I said earlier in the show, I'm feeling the difference with Android 14. Everything, I got to say, this was probably the best phone transfer experience I've had yet. Yes, unlike your Android 14 install, Michael, it did not take a dog's age to have that. It sure didn't. It was shockingly how fast my phone got set up. And not having to plug in a USB cable, just put the phone next to the old phone, and it did it and had my wallpaper, had all my stuff. Honestly, it was one of the fastest kind of onboarding experience I've had. And then using it as my daily driver has just been really nice. But it's not like I'm not going to make any groundbreaking review here, because it's running Android, it's on the Pixel. Like it felt comfortable. It just felt like the next generation. Not too much change, but just enough to make me want to play with the AI wallpapers and do the other kind of bells and whistles. But overall, it feels great. That said, I did compare the Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8 Pro camera-wise, and Ken confirmed that the Pixel 8 Pro camera and the whole camera setup and stuff like that are phenomenal. And I'll show some photos here in a second, whereas the Pixel 8 normal just felt like flat camera-wise. Like, as we all know, they didn't really dramatically make any changes to the Pixel 8. But the Pixel 8 Pro was noticeable. So like I mentioned, I went to New York Comic-Con. And here's our good friend, the friendly neighbor in Spider-Man and his buddy Miles Morales. That was shot with portrait mode. And you see, I got somebody's head in the lower portion for our video viewers. It's a picture of Spider-Man. But I was able to use Magic Racer, and I got rid of that head. And it came out great. Like, yeah, really, really cool. I also ran outside and wanted to take a couple of pictures of the lovely Empire State Building. And so that was just a standard photo at regular camera mode, 1x, no zoom. And then I started zooming in. I went to 2x and then to 5x. And then I said, let me zoom as far as, zoom in as much as I can. And you know, it's, you got some artifacting going on. It's a little blurry. I'm standing on 8th Avenue and 34th Street. So I'm a couple blocks away from the Empire State Building. But looking at the difference between looking at this on a computer screen versus looking on your phone, the phone wise, it looks great. It looks crisp and it looks like, wow, I zoomed all the way into the Empire State Building. And that's something previously that I haven't played that much with. I mean, Michael, what has been your kind of camera experience with the Pixel? Tainted is the answer to that. No, not because it's bad. I'm not disappointed. It's just that I happen to be shooting side-by-side with a phone I'm not allowed to talk about. And I was stunned to find that this other device outperformed at night in telephoto. And I am excited to be able to talk about that someday. So yeah, it's not a good sample. But you know, I do expect. And also I only have the Pro. I don't have the Mini. So, you know, I've kind of got biased results anyway, but. And it's funny that you say that it's called the Mini because that's essentially what it is, right? Right. But you don't want to brand at the Mini because no one wants to buy a Mini. I guess that's a lesson HTC and Samsung learned forever ago. But, you know, I wouldn't say that I miss the days when at Pixel events, when we're talking about the camera, you know, it was less about the AI and it was, well, it was less about AI as we know it today. And you had, when Mark LaVoy was still with the company, you know, you had a company talking about its inspiration artistically for the kind of color science it was applying to photographs. And with, you know, other companies kind of take the shortcut to it now or they get a partnership with, you know, I don't know, Leica or Hasselblad. And there are all kinds of things to talk about with that we don't have time for. But at least there's still a conversation about what kind of personality does this camera have, if that makes sense. And I feel like the Pixel for all its AI trickery, which is fun, it just feels a little bit more not sedentary, not sanitary, antiseptic that I did before. A little, yeah, safe is right. Yeah, yeah. Interesting, so. Ron, I wanted to ask you something. The Verge, they published an editorial that said the Pixel 8 camera is almost the perfect camera for parents. How do you feel about that? The 8 or the 8 Pro? I don't remember exactly which one that's having to say both or my 8 Pro. I will say the 8 Pro and I closed the window with the pictures, but I did take some pictures of my kids, I can pull it up. Yeah, I saw that article too and I thought that was interesting and it did make me chuckle being a parent. And I know a lot of it is the, and we talked about on the show last week is the whole best take thing where, you know, because part of the biggest challenge is getting your kids to actually smile and that sort of thing. But, you know, I have found that I am getting more good photos with portrait mode with the kids than previously with the 8 Pro. And I'm just chalking that up too. It's the better camera than the Pixel 7 when I was using previously. And here I'm pulling up, I'm vamping as I pull up some pictures of them so you can see it. But yeah, here we go. Pumpkin picking and I can show you that in a moment. I lost the window. I did talk to my sister about this and I explained to her how face swap and everything works and I have a two-year-old niece who's awesome but she also runs around and my sister kind of, everyone's different but she kind of was on where we are. Like, it's nice, but also there's an authenticity that's being lost when you swap and over edit or not over edit. I have not done any face swap photos as you see I should do this with my daughter because she's clung to the pumpkin. But yeah, but these were kind of quick snaps at the pumpkin patch with the kids with the movement and it's capturing it. It's capturing the moment, like feeling pretty good about my daughter, Rota Pony. And then when she stopped, I did the portrait mode where you get the bouquet effect and all that sort of stuff to see it. It's been positive. I definitely have felt a difference over the 7 standard. I can't speak as to if the 8 versus the 8 Pro is better for parents or not just because I found the 8 to be less, which is what it is. It's less all around and not in a bad way, which, you know, and I know we're running out of time I wanna quickly kind of wrap up my review here. Overall, I think that this is a good iteration of the Pixel line. I think for the first time, I think in a while, you know, historically I've been like, ah, if you wanna save money, you don't need the Pro just get the regular one or whatever. But I actually, I think this time around would recommend the Pro even with the higher price tag with the $1,000 flagship price tag. But if you gotta deal with your trade-in or deal with your carrier, I feel like there's enough bells and whistles and there's enough stuff in the 8 Pro in order for it to make it worth the purchase. By the way, on that note, I delayed on getting my Pixel because I wanted to wait for holidays, but then I got re-attracted because of trade-in. If you were hoping for that Pixel Watch 2 freebie with your Pixel 8 Pro, that ended, which is now yesterday, October 16th. So can't get it on Amazon or Google Store no more. So if you're like me and regretting that, I guess just wait for the holidays now to really kind of get some money back on your Pixel 8 Pro purchase. But that being said, I might still get one anyway because it's going to Japan. Well, so the other note to it is I got the Pixel Watch 2. And as everybody knows my experience with Michael, I don't know if we've talked about this, but I got the Pixel Watch 1 and returned it within two weeks of getting it because I just thought where OS wasn't there, the software wasn't there. All I wanna do is go running without taking my phone and be able to set a podcast while I run. And it was a God awful experience. How, did you do it for this one? I did. So I installed pocket casts. I geared up and went for a run the first week and I got a chance to do it. I'm happy to report that I had a much better experience in the Pixel 1. I still give it a B plus because I had lots of, I feel like the interface for I use Adidas running as my app. And then I also was using Fitbit because it's on there. And the number of times I stopped to stretch or something and it just ended my run. So I'm like, no, I'm pause the run. Like, and it has a pause function and it was the kind of thing like, and it's all software. This is what it comes down to. Like the Adidas app, if I move the phone, if I move the watch away from the context of the Adidas app and I go to another app, it thinks the run is over. And when I go back, it's like, start a new run. So like as opposed to having one five mile run in my log, I had like three 1.4 mile, you know, that just got frustrating. But give it a B plus. I will say, I installed a podcast, downloaded podcasts, linked, you know, connected my Bluetooth and my nothing ear sticks to it, went running. I was out for maybe an hour and the battery went from 100% to 22% in the time of that span of that run, which is crazy. But then that Monday I wore it to work and I went two days without having to charge it. So, you know, balance, right? It depends on how you're using it. If I know I'm gonna go run, I know I'm using very network intensive stuff. It's gonna drain the battery. I throw it back on the charger. It charges up like that because the battery is tiny. So it's not too bad. The fact that it made it two days without a charge and like commuting and like going through my day to day kind of stuff felt great. My co-workers said the band looks awful. They're like, the watch looks cool, but that band looks awful. And I'm like, yep. What's the official color way on that flash? Yeah, I know. Well, this one's gray. The lighting on my thing, what is the gray side? I got the same band, but in orange. Yeah, the band that the watch came with doesn't fit my wrist. So I'm happy that Google sent a second band that this one was bigger and was able to fit my wrist. So like if I bought the watch off the shelf, I wouldn't be able to wear it. I had to buy the extra band. And now I'm probably gonna buy another band that's kind of more aesthetically pleasing to my mind. But I give the Pixel Watch 2 a B plus. I'm gonna keep it. I'm gonna stick with it. I'm gonna use it for my runs and I'm gonna wear it daily and try to get back in the watch game. So there you are. Cool. And then Michael, you got the buds, right? I didn't get the buds. I did. As I understand it, the buds hardware is identical, right? I feel like they didn't- It's all softer, right, Michelle? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I gotta say that. So what is funny is I got, I saw these buds way before they were released because we got at IO, I think. We got a little design tour and these were kind of sitting out. And I was like, is that, do you guys make blue Pixel Buds? And they're like, well, you know, stay tuned. Oh, okay, cool, that's right. But I do love that they have a Bay colorway. And I was one of the folks who reviewed the Pixel Buds, the first generation. And they worked wonderfully for like three days and then I had nothing but problems with them and that was a big disappointment. So when these revised ones came out, I immediately fell in love with them. I have almost nothing bad to say about them. I can't say I've used any of the new features, but man, these are fantastic. So the only way I can figure out to cover all these products that were just announced is to do them together as none of them independently is different enough to warrant its own thing. So I'm so happy that I get to kind of put these in my ears for 10 days because they are truly some of my favorite buds on the market. I think they may be my favorite product from the year so far. No, I mean, Pixel Fold aside, sorry. Yeah, Pixel Fold, beautiful. Yeah, come on. Cool, all right. Well, so yeah, so Google unveiled a bunch of Pixel stuff. I'll do some more deep dive stuff as we're going through but I might be changing my daily driver soon. We'll talk about that a little later. They're probably next week or so. But for now it's the Pixel 8 Pro, so I'm excited. But Michelle, with the Pixel, there was actually some software implications, right? Yeah, I'm gonna switch around the order of the story first because both of you mentioned that the setup process was very seamless for you. And I'm curious if you encountered the eSim transfer tool that a couple of users saw when they were setting up their device. So if you are on T-Mobile and you transfer your backup from a previous Pixel phone, you may have seen a transfer T-Mobile SIM card option. And this lets you transfer the eSim from your previous Pixel phone to your new Pixel 8. And, you know, eSim for reviewers is one of the most annoying things to deal with because, you know, if you're transferring phones, your next phone may not even have eSim or it may not support the carriers or, you know, whatever, there's no way to properly transfer the profile. But this tool, if you're going from a previous Pixel phone to a new Pixel phone, will let you easily transfer that T-Mobile eSim from your old phone to your new phone, which will take a lot of hassle out because... I did get this, Michelle. And I freaked out and said skip and I just moved on because I don't have... I was trying to set up the phone quickly because we were going to go somewhere and I was like, ah, I don't want to figure this out. Okay, skip. And so I did skip. Yeah, I'm really hoping more carriers support this thing. And this works between device brands because right now it's a mess. Like I refuse to switch my primary SIM to an eSim until, you know, it's figured out. 100%. That's why I freaked out and said skip because I didn't want to like screw it up. And then, you know, yeah, exactly. So, but it seems like it's going in the right direction. Yes, slowly, but it is. Because nowhere to go but up. Speaking of going in the right direction, one of the features that was heavily rumored before the Pixel 8's launch is the capability to send video out over the USB-C port. And when Google launched the Pixel 8, they flat out denied that this was a feature. They told multiple outlets this is not a thing. But after some digging, I figured out, I confirmed that yes, it is a thing and it is supported on the Pixel 8. This is the first Pixel phone to support display output over the USB-C port. Right now, it's disabled by default. You have to root your phone and send this command that I document in this post to enable it. But it is there. And that suggests that Google could enable it in a future over-the-air update. And the implications for this are pretty massive because this means that we could finally be, Google might finally be working on a major revamp to desktop mode, which we've seen the hints in in the Android 13 and 14 QPR betas. We don't know when they might launch this. If they ever do, it could be maybe next year, Android 15. And they might just be waiting for that to launch or maybe the launch of their, maybe their AR partnership with Samsung before they enable display output. Because besides connecting to an external monitor and using it as a desktop device, you can also connect phones to AR glasses and output apps and things like that. If you're familiar with the N-reel or X-reel glasses, the roll kid, those kind of devices are getting more and more popularity. So those are the displays that Juan Begnell came on. Yeah, you talked a lot about those. Exactly, yeah. And we were like, it's a shame that Pixel doesn't support display out because that means you can't use them with those glasses. But now that the Pixel 8 does support it, eventually you will be able to use it with those glasses if Google decides to enable it. I love that you found it and you have to root it in order to do it. But it's there. Like that's so cool. And if anything for us, for tech podcasters or streamers, like this makes it a lot easier to hook your phone up and show it on a display for a live stream or something like that in our environment. So I would love that. Oh yeah. And what else, Michelle? There's one more. And this is pretty much a one sentence article. Google Camera is now called Pixel Camera on the Play Store. So they literally just renamed the Google Camera app to Pixel Camera to reflect what we already knew. The camera app on Pixel phones is exclusive to Pixel phones. That's it. Yeah, and it plays into our conversation last week with Flow where they seem like they're really emphasizing Pixel over Android or over like the general space. All right, cool. But that's not all the hard we have because Michael, you've got some cool stuff to talk about. Yes. I do. Yes, you do. Michael, would you say that you're, I mean, like on the show we definitely are foldable faithful as well as Android faithful. Would you consider yourself foldable faithful as well? I am foldable exclusive. I have been since January 2020. Yeah, I've not carried a phone that doesn't have a hinge willingly since that time. So yeah, I'm a bit obsessive about it. It's weird when I sit at my desk at my office and I'm literally surrounded by foldables. Well, Michael, I'll give you all the credit. Your Pixel Fold review gave me the context to explain foldables to other people and just the one line when I watch your video and you're just like, I get it. It's a digital Moleskine. I have used that. I've lifted that lines to so many people when I'm explaining, when they're like, why? And I was like, you got to watch this review. This guy says it, but basically it's a, as soon as I say that, you see the light bulb go off and people kind of go, ah, right. I guarantee you that was, you know, I'm sure I wasn't the first to say it, but if I was the loudest to say it, it's a good thing. So I thank you. Yeah, I think it's one of the challenges to foldables is that trying to describe it to people in a succinct way and I'm not good at not being verbose. So yeah, good, short head. Something that does kind of require a bit of explanation is hinge technology. And Michael, you were also, I think it's fair to call you a hinge scholar by now. Like, I mean, still trying. Still trying. Well, you've read a couple of videos about the hinge and I think you actually had a very special video come out recently for a very special, very recently released phone. I did indeed. Yeah, I have to be careful to only talk about what I'm allowed to talk about. Because so everything that was in that video, back in August, I was invited to Shenzhen to see where OnePlus essentially constructs and tests the OnePlus Open, the new foldable that is launching soon. And the hinge portion of this video was lovely. They literally brought out a container full of components, specifically 69 components because they have reduced that from a hundred, they're very proud of that. And I got to see every moving part of the OnePlus Open and ask anything I wanted about any one of those components, including little things like, all right, so when I open the thing and pose it, like at different angles, where does that friction come from? Where does that like, what is a cam? Where are the springs? Do you put oil on these things? You know, all these little things. And it was such a wonderfully mechanical tactile experience to be able to touch a hinge that's now effectively in its third generation. Because if you look at the thing, it is patently obvious that they have just collaborated with OPPO, you know, across the hallway and evolved this OPPO find and hinge technology to something else. But my absolute favorite was going to the durability testing that the kind of the torture tests. Have you all ever, I mean, you all been in the business for a long time. Have you guys visited one of these places? There's not always a lot to post about them. I've never visited one. Yeah, I talked about it in my Samsung, after Samsung Unpacked, they took us on a tour. So they took you to the one that, so yeah, I wasn't allowed to talk about that. Yeah. But so it was so refreshing to be able to visit a place and not only talk about it, but film it. And to see these phones, it's amazing what happens when you're right next to it and there's this tumbling barrel test we're seeing right now on the screen where phones are loaded in and they drop a full meter onto a steel plate. And four of them at once doing this and they're just slamming into this metal over and over. And I'm standing there with two of my PR friends and we're all just kind of cringing as hard as we can because it's the most unpleasant thing. But it's cool. It's cool to see what kind of testing goes into making a phone durable enough to withstand everyday life. I mean, what I also like is the technology it takes to design a machine to pick up a foldable phone and drop it. Yeah. Right? Like the technology itself of making the phone and being able to do it, but then also to test it in this rigorous kind of way. That's a whole nother. And like we're looking here at your video which is up on your YouTube channel and like there are little robot devices that just press the buttons over and over again. And like every physical aspect of the phone is getting put through the ringer. Thousands of times. And here's the butt test. This is my second test. Oh my gosh. So I think it's technically called the soft pressure test. But yeah, they stick the phone in a pocket on a denim like STiSAW and just run a pencil eraser into it over and over again to simulate sitting on it. I'm 12. I just like calling it the butt test. I'm sorry. The butt test, yeah. But the next one is the really awful one that is like a torque test where it's actually like the one right after the butt test. Yeah. This is what it's called, sorry. Absolutely, I agree. Yeah, I think they call it the twist test actually. And yeah, they apply a certain amount of force to a phone that's clamped in between two vices that are then rotated in opposite directions. It's horrifying. It's like taffy. But you know, they do that, well, I don't know how many times I say it in the video there are so many figures, facts and figures in the video. Like 500 or something crazy like that. Sounds right. Yeah. Just so cool to see. Not again, not just a phone, but a foldable phone which we've all been, you know, maybe rightly, maybe not conditioned to expect it's gonna fail if you look at it wrong. And to see them tested so rigorously was certainly very heartening, which is I'm sure the reason OnePlus was happy to let me film it. I said, I wanna get the message out there. This is a well-tested phone. It certainly seems to be. I will give you credit. Sorry, Michelle, I'll go for you. I got a quick question for you, Michael. So you're very, very familiar with using foldables for years now. But as like the average consumer who might see a foldable and think, this thing is fragile as heck, you know, even if they're not aware of the amount of testing that goes on with it, how long do you think it'll take people to come to terms with that they don't have to baby the device because it's, it should be able to withstand what they're showing off on these tests, right? Absolutely. Yeah. I think that will kind of, that'll start to change when the spontaneous failures that I see on Reddit a lot go away. Something happens, you know, it's like I've carried foldables for so long, I throw them around, I'm terrible to them, but intentionally, because I like to see what the edge of the envelope is, right? Have I broken a foldable display by throwing it accidentally? I have, but most of the time, it's not a result of abuse like that. It's somebody wakes up one morning, they open their phone and it's black or it's broken because the display spontaneously failed due to some cause that is not well understood by anyone that I'm aware of, you know, outside the industry and no one inside the industry will talk about it. So I think once those spontaneous failures go away and you people see more of them out in public, especially as we start seeing lower cost foldables out in public, you know, it'll just seep into the public consciousness that, hey, you know, these are, these are not any more fragile really than a slab fund. Oh, speaking of lower cost foldables, we like not just book foldable. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Well, before you go there, just before you move on. So the OnePlus Open is real, it is happening. I know we've been like talking about leaks and like all this stuff, but like I was gonna say, I wanna give OnePlus credit. I feel like they've been handling this rollout very interestingly in that it's been like drawn out over the last month and we're getting drips and drabs, but we're finally gonna see everything. They have an event this Thursday, October 19th at 10 a.m. Eastern time where they are going to unveil the OnePlus Open, right? We'll see it all in its full glory. And Michael, I know you're limited to what you can say, but it is more than just a hinge, right? God, yeah. I wasn't exactly sure if I could say that at the end of my video. I was like, listen, literally the stuff they brought me to China to show me is I'm interested in other stuff even more so that I'm not allowed to talk about. So I can't wait. I can't wait to exchange notes with you. Yeah, and you're not, as you say, you're not alone in not being able to talk about it because at least two people on this show are very excited to talk about it and we will go deep on the OnePlus Open next week, on next week's show after the embargo lifts. Cannot wait to listen to that. So now, when that your wonderful transition, there you go. It's okay. It's okay. We forgot to mention the event, which is ironic that it's the Open and they're not being quite open about details yet, but yeah, so we do like us also some more affordable foldables and usually those are flippables and actually, Michael, looking at your channel today, I was actually really charmed. We're not gonna talk about this tonight, but you do have a video on the Techno Phantom V Flip which we talked about a little bit. We had Techno pop up for a bit and we were celebrating the super affordable foldables, a foldable foldable foldables. A foldable foldables, a foldable foldables. But there's another flipable that we would love to talk to you about and it's kind of funny because I feel like we just talked about the Apo Find N2, like not too long ago, but now. Oh yeah. Michael Fisher, what is that you have in your hand? What could that possibly be? Wait, wait, did you want to talk about the Foldable? Yeah, I was like, wait, I've got them all. I told you, I'm surrounded. Which part are we talking about? I think tonight we're talking about the Find N3 Flip first. Correct, excellent. Yeah, that's right. And I was on a podcast earlier and somebody reminded me that this just, I just reviewed this five days ago. It feels like it was two weeks ago. But yes, this is a wonderful little weirdo. Does anybody else have it right now? I don't. I think nobody else cares besides me. That's not true. We care. The delightful thing about the Find N3 Flip is that Apo released the Find N2 Flip less than a year ago. This is an eight months later sequel. So why do you do that? Well, you do it if you're gonna stick another camera on there. Somebody tells me I'm wrong about this, that Huawei was the first to stick a third camera on a flip phone, but I don't care because it doesn't run Google services, so it doesn't matter to me. So this is, for all intents and purposes, the first flip phone with a proper telephoto camera. It's only 2X. They say they built it for portraits more than actual long range shots. And it is just delightful to use for all the reasons we were talking about earlier about cameras with personalities and things like that. Like I was so bummed out when they said it was only 2X and then I'm shooting with it with these Hasselblad color filters and I'm like, actually, these are really beautiful photos to get out of a smartphone. Oh my God. And the rest of it is just this bizarrely iterative device and they didn't change the one thing they needed to change which was to let you run any app you want on the cover screen. You can't do that. That's that. That continues to be the channel. The cover screen, give us freedom for the cover screen. That's what we keep asking for. Absolutely. And you know, OPPO is like the best positioned to offer it because they have a screen with the right aspect ratio. It's a little unit Hertz jelly too on the cover. But they say they've kind of nudged winked me when I bothered them about it and they said, you know, we're working on it, so, okay. All right. So we just need to take the Motorola Razr front screen software and stick it on the OPPO N3 maybe and then add in the Z Flip 4 hand camera like it's like window camera thing or something. Absolutely. Yeah, actually, Michelle remind me to bother you the next time we're able to talk. I would love to know how difficult it could possibly be to just say telephone, hey, you can run the entire phone out on the cover when the phone is closed. Like, I know things are harder than they seem. It just doesn't, if Motorola and Samsung could do it, I know OPPO can do it. I'd be shocked if there wasn't some way to just, you know, hack your way to doing that. Like cover screen OS, which I always forget about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, I think it's interesting because it's like knowing the relationship between OnePlus and OPPO. And if OnePlus is coming out with the OnePlus Open, which is like a book fold style, is the OPPO find N3, is this ATs for what we could see from a OnePlus Flip? Yeah, because it's got a switch. It's got an alert slider on it. Like this wants to be a OnePlus phone for the US. Bring it here. Yes. Well, we will see. We'll see. That's very cool. So, but then you had another, you had another flipable. Yeah. This is the one I thought we were going to. Sorry. Yes. It's a very different use case. We're calling it the Razer Minus, quite unkindly, I think. Sorry. I mean, they're calling it, they're calling it the Razer Gen3 or the 2023. Well, that's not confusing in the slightest. Yeah. Well, so in the States, it's confusing because in the States, it's the Motorola Razer. Just period. And then overseas, it's the Razer 40. As opposed to the Razer 40 Ultra. But the thing is, this is a very compelling phone for one reason. And that is that it is a $600 foldable. I mean, that's crazy to say. Yep. Right? Remember when the Flip 3 came out from Samsung, not that long ago, and it was $9.99, we all lost our mind because that was finally below $1,000? Yep. And we're already at $5.99 with the launch. And I gotta tell you, in the aforementioned earlier when we showed my kids at the pumpkin patch, I saw not one, but two people with flip phones, just normal people out on the island using the flip phones. And in the wild, and I got all excited, my wife just looks, she's like, can you just focus on parenting? I'm like, no, people with flip phones in the world. And I've been seeing more folds on the subway in New York City. I've been seeing a lot more, but the flip and even like I was at New York Comic Con and one of my coworkers who's from, not from New York City, I don't see her often, she like took her phone out and she had the flip. And I was like, oh, you have the flip. She's like, oh, I love it. Like the foldable revolution is coming. I really think it is. And so, yeah. Yeah, I see the fold in airports and on airplanes and I see the flip on the streets like New York City especially. It's fascinating. So yeah. Well, Michael, it's always great to have the hardware parade that you bring. So thank you so much for that. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Good stuff. Yeah. We've still got a couple more things. I know we're running along. We're gonna try to wrap it up. We did have one apps thing that when I know you wanted to talk about. Yeah, so YouTube, it kind of starting a while ago has been doing this whole big redesign. Well, they just released a set of three dozen new features and there's some stuff in there that I just really wanted to talk about as a complete YouTube addict. I cannot basically go a day without watching YouTube at least two hours a day. That probably says a lot more about me than anything else. But yeah, part of these three dozen features is stable volume, which will reduce drawing differences in volume. So if you've ever been like me or my husband and play a video and wondering why this part is really loud and why this part's really quiet, hopefully this new stable volume, which by the way in the new release will be on by default will help you there. And if you for some reason just wanna go back to the natural sounding mix or the original mix, however that creator wanted that to be done or unintendedly did, you can go to the settings gear and go to additional settings and toggle that on. They're adding a whole bunch of gestures for different things like you could easily basically hold and press to two acts through a video. And then as soon as you release, you can, the video returns to one X speed. So that allows you to much more conveniently scrub through a video and find the part that you want. And, oh, kind of apropos to earlier when I surprised myself by giving, by activating Mac OS X Sonoma's hard thing. When a creator asks you to like and subscribe and smash that button and ring the bell and yada yada, the like and share button will act as the like and subscribe button will actually sparkle now in app just to kind of highlight, the actions that the creator wants you to take. So look for that. And they're also, once you smash that button, you're gonna get more animations. So basically bringing more delight to the party. So Michael, as what could be considered a YouTuber? Are you excited for a little more delight when people smash that like button? Oh man. I'm actually much more excited about the volume equalization thing because the truest guilt I've ever felt in my life is when a bunch of commenters say like RIP headphone users at like 755 and I'm like, oh, I did screw up the sound. I'm so sorry. We never hate, we just wanna, you know, but the hearing just, you know, totally understand, equalizing is hard. And, oh, and another thing is that you are going to be able to search YouTube via singing, humming or playing a clip, a similar search functionality is coming to the main Google search app. But hey, if you're just on YouTube and you wanna find your current jam but you just don't know the name of it, you can do all of the above for various different, you know, more audio related ways of searching YouTube. So that is coming soon. And yeah, more redesigned, so smart TVs to make it easier to access all the nice things you get on the app. And a new you section, which is basically just more of like you specific stuff like your history and previously viewed videos all in one place. Anyway, go update your YouTube to app and enjoy all those things. And hey, if you have not yet subscribed or liked Michael Fisher, Mr. Mobile, maybe you could try out the new functionality by, you know, watching his videos, make the button subscribe button, see how that works. Thanks, man. Press that like button. All right, we're in the home stretch. Wanna get, we had so much email. I wanna release one email on the show and then we'll wrap up because Michael, I know you gotta get back to your life and we appreciate you giving us some time. But last week, we were talking about Android Auto and we're asking for people for their experience. And so many people wrote in at contact.androidfaithful.com to let us know. I wanted to share at least one of them this week, but we got more. We might do more email next week actually because hopefully next week is a quiet week. But this first email comes in and it says hi when Michelle and Ron and Flo, even if she uses an iPhone in her Subaru, five time Subaru owner here. Here's the setup in my 2019 cross track, but I use the exact same setup on my wife's 2014 Forester. Android phone sits on a magnetic charging mount high up on the dash. Phone is connected to the car via Bluetooth. Phone screen handles navigation, ways of course, and notifications with phone calls, navigation audio and media are handled through the Subaru infotainment system. HG works to control navigation notifications and messaging, steering wheel controls handle volume, fast forward and rewind, play pauses on the infotainment screen or I use HG and phone is always charged, no wires. Android Auto didn't last five minutes compared to this setup and he did share a photo and this came from Scott, thank you Scott. He did share a photo and he asked if we can find the two to three Easter eggs in the photo, which I do like that there are not two Easter eggs or three Easter eggs, there's two to three. So it leaves it open out there, but he did share a nightmarish photo of his dashboard, which as another Subaru owner, I mean, if this works for you, this is great. And but yeah, you see the Subaru infotainment system driving his media, where he's using his phone, mounted on the dashboard for any sort of, for navigational ways and all the stuff that he outlined there. And at least one Easter egg there is the fact that he's listening to the show, which is fantastic. Thank you for listening to Andrew. Is the address a thing? Like on, but I'm just- It's like at Hatch Road. I don't know what that might be. Like let me go- It's a lost reference, that's what it is. Is it a lot? No, I don't know. I was trying to look at like what the numbers were and like what his mileage was. Like I got really into the Easter egg hunt. Yeah, but so anybody watching the video show, go to youtube.com slash daily tech news show, watch the video show, check this out, see if you can find the Easter eggs. There's more than one just the fact that he's listening to us. Maybe Scott will write it and let us know. Yeah, and Scott, I'm rocking a 2019 cross track, so I'ma try this. Thanks, dude. And a quick shout out to Scott for abbreviating HG, you know, just in the email. So just in case one of us accidentally triggers, you know, the naughty, naughty word we're not supposed to say word. Bravo, bravo. All right, so email us at contact.at, at contact.at, I did it, contact at androidfaithful.com. Muscle memory is a real thing, everyone, it really is. Email us at contact.atandroidfaithful.com. We wanna hear from you about everything. Michael Fisher, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you giving us some of your time. Thank you. One, if people are interested in your wares, where can people find you? Yeah, YouTube is at The Mr. Mobile, T-H-E-M-R-M-O-B-I-L-E. And if you want to talk on social media, it's a little bit easier these days to do that on threads, where I post at Captain Two Phones. It's Captain the Number Two Phones. You can find The Mr. Mobile on threads as well, but it's just a, I just tweet headlines from that. So Captain Two Phones on threads. So is threads your preferred platform of choice these days, or? You know, it became that, really. I'm still on X. I hate even having to say it. I'm kind of in the process of transferring my flag to threads. Interesting, all right, fascinating. I don't know if you noticed, but Wynn has coined referring to it as twix. Twix, yeah, I see, that's nice. See, that's, even that's, it takes some of the edge off. I would like to do a social network. All right, excellent. Well, thank you, Michael. We love your content. Love having you. Thank you. I hope you come back. We'll talk about hardware stuff and it'll be good. I look forward to that. Thank you so much, guys. So, Michelle, where can people find you? You can follow me on twix at Michelle-Raman. I'm also on Asadon at Michelle-Raman, same username. I'm also on Patreon at Michelle-Raman. And if you want to follow me and support me, it's do more of the work that I do. You can also join my Discord server if you support me on Patreon. And so, yeah, there's all different platforms that I'm on way too many to list. It's honestly, I don't know how I keep up with it, but it's a thing that happens. Say threads. You're on threads too, Michelle. I know it. Oh, yes, I didn't say threads. Yes, I'm on threads. I'm on WeChat. I'm on WhatsApp. I'm gonna give Michelle credit because he's very good at spreading his stuff out there. Because as we're organizing the show, he's sending me like his posts on X, his posts on threads, this post on over here. Like, it's like on Reddit. It's you're playing a zone defense or offense. And I respect it, Michelle. Your game is good. That's all my bets. That's right. All right. So, Wyn, where can folks find you? Yeah, you can find me at randomlytyping.com. I am an Android developer that is my day job, although I'm a little independent right now. And I've been doing this since 2011. And something else I have been doing is giving talks. So if you are interested in developer Android stuff, you can find my talks related code and video there. My talk from DroidCon New York, which I did just a month ago, is finally up. And you can see what it's like when I have literally no sleep, a lot of coffee, and a lot of jetpack and pose to talk about. It's a combination. I can't say if it's good or not. But if you're curious, it's up there. And yeah, video streamlisters can actually see the link. But yeah, go to my website and I have everything that I've ever done listed on there. Yeah, talk, it's up on droidcon.com. You can find it there. And I'm also on, no, it's, I was non-literally no sleep, like no sleep whatsoever. My brain had not done that switch thing. So who knows what I actually said. And yeah, I'm also on things at Queen Code Monkey. Queen Code Monkey is usually me. And if you're on a mastodon fediverse type person, Queen CodeMeat, Queen Code Monkey at mastodon.social. Right on. That's it. And you can follow me at Ron XO on Twix, Mastodon, Threads, Michael, I'm on there. Although I just got to post more. I'm just, I'm very busy. It's very tiring. You get out what you put into it, Ron. Instagram has been my go-to. Ron XO on Instagram. That's where you can see my pictures of food and bands and fun stuff like that. But also, I slipped earlier and said the email address for my other, for my former podcast. But I want to give a plug for them. Go to ifanboy.com and check them out. If you like comic books because they slash we just celebrated our 900th episode and did it with a epic four hour live stream where they took questions from the audience. And I may have dropped in for the last two hours of the show. So if you want to see me with my old, my OG podcast pals, you can go check that out ifanboy.com. The video was a lot of fun. And it was, I was in a hotel room in New York city, very tired like when. So yeah, so check that out. 900 episodes is no small feat. And now when is throwing thumbs up set us, which is bubbles, which is crazy. So excellent. All right, well, that's gonna wrap us up for this week. Thanks to Michael Fisher for joining us. This podcast publishes every Tuesday evening. And you can listen to it wherever you listen to your podcasts. And of course we stream live on YouTube and Twitch every week. Thanks to Daily Tech News Show. And yeah, we're back here every Tuesday talking to Android. So we'll see you next time at Android Faithful. Michael, thank you so, so much. Thank you, Michael. Thank y'all. Also, I meant to say this, I think this is the first time we've been on the air together. Yeah, totally. Awesome. It's really awesome to meet you. I was bragging to all my friends, I got Mr. Mobile coming on my podcast tonight. All right, I'm just hoping it's embarrassing now. You're Mr. Mobile. There's so many things I wanted to say before we got on the air and then I was distracted. So thank you all. It definitely is, it's like, we often, we, oh, I guess not the music there. We often forget to plug things like, both when and Michelle were going to be on podcasts ahead of the Google event. And we're like, all right, we got to plug those at the top of the show and we completely forgot. And the guest reminded us. It was like, aren't you guys going to do stuff? And we're like, oh, yeah, right. All right. Super cool. I'm very happy that I have another podcast on the feed, by the way, I meant to say this also. I listen to podcasts completely all the time because I'm always filming and they're perfect for that. And so I'm glad to add you all to the feed. Thank you. We need every download we can get. We appreciate it. I think with your full videos, that had a little send off to AA. I think you had Jason. I think it was, your pixel fold. Yeah, I think you think so. It was a rough week. So it was nice to see that. Yeah, actually, that actually bolstered us a lot because that was as things were winding down with Twitter and we saw that you, we were in one of your random screenshots and we're like, or your demo is like, oh, people like us. Absolutely, yeah. It will not be the last time I'll shut you out. Appreciate it. All right, well, before we wrap, we got to pick a title for the episode. And the current leading title is the affordable Affoldables with seven votes, but does it pass the butt test? That's going to be my vote. That's your goal, Michael. I mean, when I feel like you're on board with the butt test, right? I'm totally on board with the butt test. All right, that's a winner. Shalya, you go with that? What is that going to do our SEO? I mean, honestly, I'm leading 50-50 on both the top two. Those are both really good. Very good. All right, well, thanks. Thank you, everybody. We did run long. So I got to wrap because I still need to break down on my cardboard before they pick it up in the morning and for recycling and edit the show. But Michael, thank you so much again. You're the best. Thank you, Michael. We appreciate it. Thank you. And everybody, have a great night. We're going to wrap up the stream. So take it easy.