 This episode of Android Faithful is brought to you by Awesome. The Awesome Privacy Cable gives you much needed control over when and how your data is shared. Get more info at awesomeprivacy.com slash privacy-cable. Hello. Welcome to Android Faithful. Yes. Welcome to Android Faithful, your weekly search for latest news, hardware, and apps for the awesome world of Android. We're back with episode two. We're on a bumpy road, aren't we? Have some music playing in the background as we do the intro. It will fade out nicely there. Well, thanks everybody for joining. As mentioned, I'm Ron Richards, and we're back for our second episode of Android Faithful. We want to thank everybody for listening to the first episode, watching the first episode, enjoying the first episode, and being patient with us as we work out the kinks. I know we had some audio issues on the audio version of the podcast last week. We made some adjustments. Hopefully, that will be a little better. Every week, we're going to get a little better, a little tighter. I hope. I don't know. What was the feedback to the show for you guys? Did anybody give you any positive or negative feedback? I think people were just happy that the show was back in a spiritual cluster. Isn't that a great feeling to make people happy? I mean, that is something that I have gotten, I will freely admit I've gotten addicted to in my tenure of podcasting, is when people tell you how happy your show makes them, that's like, oh, that's why we do this. Yeah, it feels like, I mean, I love doing the show, but it also feels like, I don't know, it just it just really feels special to have people say that they enjoy so much what you're doing. And, you know, like I had someone. Anyway, it's just great. I just do I just do this because I love it. So the fact that other people love what I'm doing just makes it all of it. Thank you, guys. All right. So a quick reminder. 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We're on Twitter and Instagram and threads and Facebook and all the fun places. And lastly, you can email us at contact that android faithful.com. We got emails this week, guys. I hope you're ready to answer emails because people wrote in, which is like the best the best thing ever. So that's awesome. We're also for our live stream viewers. We're going to be using the show bot for to choose the title of the episode. It's another reason to watch live. And I was sick this weekend. I had strep throat and I did not do my work on the show that I wanted to. So we didn't work out the kinks of the show bot. So we're going to thank Zoe and the rest of the team at DTNS for letting us ride their coattails for another week. But yeah, that's at DTNS.showbot.tv where you can help choose the title of the episode. So we'll be keeping an eye on that and talk about it in the post show here on the live stream. So all right. So that said, do you want to get into the first little bit of news, first news story show? Yeah, you're already for some news. I don't we still have a news bumper, by the way. Sorry. So so all right. So when I think you've got the first one, so take it away. Yeah. So this is kind of what this is pretty dry, but it's pretty important to all of us as both Android users and Android developers. And that is basically that in this kind of environment of security and privacy, the Google Play Store is doing a huge update to boost trust and transparency. So there's going to be a few, a few, quite a few changes and things that devs and publishers will need to do to keep up with the new policy. So the number one thing that we're going to talk about today is basically if you are a Google Play, you know, developer account, well, actually, if you're registering a new developer, play account. Not for an individual developer, as an organization, you need a DUNS number. I unfortunately know exactly what that is, because I used to have an LLC myself when I was self contracting. For those of you who are fortunate, fortunate enough to not know what that is. It's basically a registration number by this company called Dunn and Brad Street. They're a company that provides like business intelligence and analytics and provide proprietary software and information, yada, yada. The process is long and full of tears. I mean, possibly submitting official documentation, which I think I had to do back in the day. So I mean, if you're a big company, it's no big deal for those of you who are smaller independent devs, just be on the lookout for that. I mean, independent devs with, you know, an organization and LLC and just be aware that it can take up to 30 days to do that. So all my independent small dev shop fans out there, you know, be aware of that. But it is, you know, basically registering your business. So that's kind of part of the, you know, accountability trust, kind of being able to verify that a developer is who they say they are, more or less. And you have to provide things like, you know, the basic information like phone number, email, that kind of thing. You do have to keep your information up to date. And basically, that just means, hey, if Google Play is asking you to verify who you are, please send the information promptly so that your app is not removed from the store. And they're kind of in the vein of, remember that data safety section that we got last year. Well, the Google Play Store is also now wanting developers to provide more information. So the contact details are now becoming app support. So you'll be able to provide more information like your website and other things about you as a developer. Again, additional information and contact. So I guess in this world of everybody, a lot of people think and that Android is at the Android Play Store is just malware. This is just kind of stepped to alleviate some of the concerns, accountability, transparency, all that. And another interesting thing, which I guess it's interesting, a part of this has been for Google Play to make some policy changes and to kind of have very specific policies around blockchain based experiences. So this is the Google official line, but for, you know, blockchain related apps, Google Play is, quote, excited to allow these apps to, sorry, is excited. They're excited to allow these apps to create, quote, engaging and immersive digital experiences with tokenized digital assets, such as NFTs. But at the same time, of course, not commenting much on this, but obviously there is a need to balance innovation and being able to use these new technologies with the responsibility to protect users. So they're going to add in a few policies, basically trying to put user trust as paramount and just basically increasing transparency. So any apps that, you know, use tokenized digital assets, they must very clearly declare if they sell or enable users to earn, you know, these kind of tokenized digital assets. And even though, quote, tokenized assets are meant to build, you know, more enriched immersive experiences, developers may not promote or glamorize any potential earning from playing or trading activities. That's real clear and very specific, but you can kind of see, you know, they're trying to, I mean, I don't want to get too opinionated in how I'm, you know, communicating this information, but obviously they're trying to balance, you know, letting people leverage this technology, leverage the experiences and, you know, the whole market that's there, but, you know, trying to put some guardrails in place to circumvent like the downsides that can come with, you know, blockchain, you know, and enriched experiences. And yeah, but at the end of that particular announcement, they kind of cited, you know, like companies like Reddit, companies like, I think, Mythic Entertainment, I may be getting on, but this basically, we're working hand in hand with developers and companies of all sorts to create a more transparent and more, you know, trustworthy play store for you. Michelle, I know that you actually had one of your, you know, trademark wonderful threads about some of these other changes and you went in a bit more technical detail. Is there anything that, you know, you want to kind of, you think it's worth noting in these policy updates? Actually, there are two things. Well, I mean, first, my immediate reaction to the blockchain announcement was an eye roll. I felt like it felt like the kind of thing that should have been announced earlier, like back when people didn't have such a negative opinion on NFTs, now it seems kind of ill-timed to do this. A little late to the party, so. A little late to the party. Not really late to the party, but the party's over, right? And it's like the next day where the party was. And I definitely, I was reading it because there was a lot of positivity and like good vibes, but also like, you know, like holding the, anyway, holding hands like, hey, it's still cooling off. Anyway, yeah. So two of the other things that I wanted to bring up was I guess it's showing on screen right now. There's a new interesting policy about apps that run in on-device secure containers. So there are these apps on Google Play that allow you to basically run an entire Android OS in a container. So like you can install whatever apps you want and it's like an entire another Android OS running within an app. And now it looks like Google wants developers to have a way to opt out of their apps running in those environments. So if you use any of those apps to say like, you know, virtualize and run a game or something and so you like to mod your game in those containers, maybe certain game developers will start opting out of having the game show up in those apps. So I'm gonna start seeing that in the future. The other thing I wanted to bring up is when kind of alluded to it earlier, like more information that developers provide will be showing up in the Play Store data safety section. So for example, you can see like the example screenshot they're showing like the phone number, the email address. And a lot of indie developers are kind of concerned like, hey, is the phone number I'm providing to Google is that gonna show up for users to call on the Google Play Store? And I can kind of understand the concern there. Like if you're just a random, you know if you're an individual developer having your phone number show up so anyone can call you, sounds like it's something you don't wanna deal with. But that's the thing though. And like that, and like going back like when you're talking about the Duns number like I too have like been at a job where we needed to get a Duns number and gone through all that process and stuff like that. And like this is maturity of business. Like if you are a developer who is making an app and putting in the Play Store and asking people to subscribe or pay for it you are running a business. So therefore there are common business practices. It's the same, I mean it would be take the same kind of example of, you know if there was a storefront somewhere but they didn't wanna advertise that they didn't wanna put out their phone number or their address because they didn't want anyone to find them. Like, so like either you're in the game or you're not in the game. And I actually applaud these kind of changes and I'm surprised they took this long because if memory serves me, the job I was at we were trying to get a Duns number in order to get an app in the Apple App Store and Apple required a Duns number. And this is like 10 years ago, right? And so a lot of this stuff seems kind of like table stakes for just doing business in an App Store. And you're right, Michelle. Like if a developer is not comfortable putting his phone number out there or doing the work to get a business phone number which by the way is so easy to get a phone number to go to a voice box or something, you know a voicemail box or something like that. But if they're not willing to do the work and expose themselves in that way then they shouldn't be publishing the app. Well, one thing to be, I should note is that it's not really confirmed yet if individual app developers phone numbers will be posted on Google Play. Like I did ask- It's whatever number they put. It's whatever they submit. I think there's some conflicting documentation saying that it might only show up if you're a company and not an individual. So I did ask Google to confirm so that part's not confirmed yet. But I do, like there is like a growing sentiment. I've seen among like indie app developers that developing for Google Play and Android is not really for us anymore. It's not for the indie. You gotta be a company now. It's like the more and more restrictions and the more and more policies you gotta follow it kind of feels like a full-time job instead of just a hobby thing you put out to for anyone to enjoy. I don't know, like what do you think about that? When like do you see like a future for hobbyists? Like just pushing an app out there and forgetting about it. Is that really something that people can get away with now? Yeah, I do, I do. And I, you know what? I totally agree with you, Teeran. And by the way, I got that DUNS number because I was, that was when I was doing iOS development. And so it was, and I have an LLC single, I'm a single person LLC. Now that's a really good question, Michelle. I think it, I feel two ways about it. So I do, I feel like Android as a platform for like the longest time, you know, is the platform is enthusiast and hobbyist. And so I think there's part of me that is sad because we are growing up and you know, I think a lot of innovation, a lot of interesting things. And I know a lot of, I know a lot of friends who did, as you said, they experiment, they do cool things, they push them out there. Sometimes they work out, sometimes they don't. Sometimes it's just you experimenting and doing cool things. And yeah, part of the ability to do that or the kind of thing that encourages you to do that because it was really easy on Android. You know, you didn't have to go through all this. And we used to make fun a long time at Trello when I went to Trello of like, oh, ha, ha, ha, the iOS devs have so many much more, I mean, my hoops and like full review to go through before they get their app. And we could just push ours out. And that's changing, you know, we don't get to make fun of them for review times. But at the same time, it's weird because at the same time, there's the other side of it where the Android, the Google Play Store is also known as a place where, you know, I have tons of people asking, oh, isn't the Play Store is an Android full of malware? Like isn't every other thing like spying on you? And because of that permissiveness, because of the freedom, we've had some people take advantage of it in a really bad way. And so I regret it, but I also think there's other things that play into it other than, you know, just Google cracking down. And I think maybe, unfortunately, it is time to grow up a little bit. And I agree with you, Ron, like if you're gonna go out there and ask people to give you money, sometimes you need to do some grown-up stuff. You need your license, then you need to take the test, or the other way around. You take the test, then you get your license, but it is feel like something is lost. Just like growing up, it's just like growing up. You lose some freedom. You lose some, I don't know, something, but it makes sense. But I get that feeling like, we don't wanna go through all this to just to put an app out there for fun. But I don't know. I think these are mature, business-driven decisions that they're making. And I think they're the right decisions in the long run for the safety of the Google Play Store. So, Michelle, you agree disagree? Yeah, no, I totally agree with both of you. No, no, it's always a really tough thing for Google to balance, because they have to satisfy so many different stakeholders, like not just any app developers, but regular users, companies, OEMs, anyone who like sells apps, like regulators around the world. Police, for example, there's like scams and stuff. There's so many different people they have to satisfy. And obviously, if one change is going to hurt one group, it might benefit everyone else. They obviously have to weigh the benefits and the downsides. Right. Well, when you talk about weighing benefits and downsides, our good friends at the EU are back in action, by the way, a part of the unofficial Android faithful drinking game when we talk about the EU restrictions. But here it is, according to the EU, by 2027, all smartphones are gonna require to adopt replaceable batteries that are easily replaced with no tools or expertise, which I like to hear that. So, similar to EU going after lightning cable and proprietary cables and things like that, the European Council agreed on this new regulation, which is saying that all phones sold in their area are going to require replaceable batteries. Replacable batteries were a thing of the past. If you remember, we talked about this on our old show as we were looking back on the world of phones when it used to be table stakes to get a phone that had a replaceable battery and then they went the way of the dodo. So, the question though here is whether or not the manufacturers, I mean, 2027 is a long way off, right? It's four years away. And then the other question is whether or not this change makes them make replaceable batteries worldwide or just in the EU, right? I think that's what really remains to be seen. I don't know, like at this point, what they do is speculation, right? But it's a pretty big deal. Imagine an iPhone you can take the battery out of. I mean, I definitely think it's one of those things that if they have to abide by it for the EU, there's no way they can void it anywhere else. It's like, you know how the next iPhone is very heavily rumored to have a USB-C port. And it's not like they're gonna make two different iPhones, one of the Lightning port for everywhere else and one for Europe. That's just like too much, you know, it's two separate product lines for two huge markets. It's just no way they're gonna do that, yep. Yeah, I agree with all that. I mean, I presume I'm not, I used to be a hardware person way back in the day, but not anymore. But I presume like even just like the logistics of having, you know, removable battery and then things like waterproofness, like the fact that everybody's like trying to get like phones as thin as possible. That's a lot of extra hardware design time that I imagine cannot, I don't know what the ROI on that would be. So actually that's what's gonna happen to all of our skinny phones and our waterproof phones. Like I'm just saying- I was gonna say waterproofing alone, when you think about all the advancements that have been made in that have come from the fact that they are these sealed boxes that are hard to open, right? And that's what gives you the waterproofing. And so now you're gonna have a whole section of it that like a whole back panel that kind of open up again. It's gonna be a choice you gotta make, I guess. And if you're in the EU, you got no choice. So that'll be interesting. I mean, we always thought we've been talking on this shows and other shows, well, I guess mostly on other shows until now about like longevity and like how companies are trying to lengthen their kind of software updates. And part of the thing that kind of runs a kind of counter to that is like battery life and like the actual longevity of their hardware. And this would, you know, compliment the longer a software updates that some companies are putting out. But at the same time, yeah, it feels like everything evolved in a certain way and that's okay. But also, yeah, I would like, I miss replaceable batteries. I don't know, I've always felt two minds about this thing. There's like the good side of it, the bad side of it. And then the, I don't know, the other side. The other side, the third side is triangle. I haven't fully read the EU, the actual report, the regulation, but might it be possible that, you know, they're not gonna require necessarily that the back has to be easily removable or that, you know, you have to retain waterproofing throughout the entire process. Maybe, or maybe an OEM could abide by the regulation by only just by just providing replacement batteries to use. Oh, you mean like going to like a certified. They have to be easily replaceable without requiring tools or expertise. That's the trick. Oh, okay. So. Oh, then never. If so, that means then I don't know how that would fit with, you know, waterproofing. We'll see. The next four years definitely will be interesting as we say. Hey, innovation, man. Maybe this will spur an innovation and we'll get something real cool in the next four years. Then we'll actually say yay EU. Maybe we'll see. And we'll see if we'll see if we're still doing the show in 20 minutes. I mean, the people in EU, yay. The regulations, different feelings. All right. Well, we couldn't move on from news without touching on Android 14. So we throw it to Michelle now here. All right. So if you use a work profile on Android, in Android 14, when you hit the pause work apps button, the Android OS will actually pause the work profile now. So previously, even though the button says you're pausing work apps, you know, when you hit that button, what's actually happening is you're turning off the work profile entirely. And I know it's a little confusing because like everywhere it implies that you're actually, you've always been pausing the work profile, but that's not the case. So in earlier versions of Android, turning off the work profile means that all your apps stop running, that you're not getting any notifications, apps can't check your location, your, you know, your IT admin, they can't update your policy, like they can't update your apps, check if you're in compliance or anything like that. Basically the entire profile shuts down, everything stops working, which is, you know, for a user point of view is a good thing. You don't have apps running in the background, draining your battery. You don't have your, you know, your work apps checking your location from time to time. It's basically, you know, you turn off, you go on full vacation mode or just, you know, end of the day, you could put your phone aside and use it as normal. But in Android 14, since you're now pausing the work profile and it's continuing to run in the background, all of your apps will keep running as well. You won't be getting any notifications because those will be hidden from you, you know, while the work profile is paused, but because apps are running, when you unpause, they'll be immediately available and any notifications that were being, you know, piled up will immediately be available to you as well. But this also means that, you know, apps could be accessing your location in the background or because they're running, you know, you might have an impact on your battery life. So, you know, you might see a reduction in battery life by using a work profile on Android 14. We haven't had any like testing done, so I don't really know how much of an impact it'll have on battery life, but I do think it might have an impact and some people who use a work profile are also a little concerned about the implications of this change. It's so funny because I have one of my work accounts, I accidentally set it up on my phone and chose like work profile, because I'm like, oh, I've never used that before and it is so annoying. It is so annoying to have to jump between, you know, like to, you know, to have that moment, that momentary jump from your personal profile to the work profile to access mail, to do whatever it is and to be bouncing between the two. I found it to be more of a detriment when I got a new phone, I didn't set up work profile. So I can be crazy, but. I kind of personally think that work profile is not accessible enough. Right now you can only use it if you have like a managed Google workspace account and like, you know, the IT admin for your workspace account specifically allows it. Like right now you can't just like, say you're an independent contractor or freelancer, you can't create a work profile without using a third party solution. And so, you know, I think that's something that's definitely missing from the experience. Yeah, that would be nice, especially as someone who works at a big company and there are advantages to it, you're right, but it's definitely like a very disconnected experience. Although as someone who hate installs a work profile or doesn't want to install a work profile, but does anyway, I don't know, maybe I'm a bad person to ask. Hate install, that's not right. All right, well, we're gonna stay on Android 14 though, but it is time for the patron news pick, drum roll, music or whatever it might be. So as we mentioned at the top of the show, our loyal patrons over at patreon.com. Slash Android faithful, every week they get to vote on a story for us to talk about this week. And this week it was very, very exciting as we had three stories, Samsung integrating chat GPT in their browser, nearby share you might be using QR codes or the winning story, Android 14 to warn when trying to sideload updates, which was written by our very own Michelle Ramon. So Michelle, tell us about the patron news story. It's not as menacing as it sounds at first. It's basically, so there's this new improvement Android 14 related to app stores that lets an app store claim update ownership over an app they install. So say you install an app from a third party app store like the Samsung Galaxy store. And then you also have that same app available for update through the Google Play Store. Right now in Android, either app store could update that app and you might not enjoy that process. Like you might not want one app store to update an app over another app store because maybe you trust one app store to only serve you vetted app updates. Like this is especially prominent if you're using, if you're like a privacy focused, you know, person and you use like F droid for example, which only sources open source apps. So basically what Google is doing here is they're applying this new process to claim update ownership over select Google apps including the Google Play Services app. So right now in Android 14, when you try to sideload and update to the Google Play Services app, you'll get this warning that says, this app, I don't know if you can scroll down a bit Ron to show you the warning. Yeah, you'll get this warning right here. It'll ask you if you want to update this app from this other installer. In this case is APK mirror installer, which I was trying to sideload through the Android Police APK mirror installer app. And the Android OS is warning me that this app normally receives updates from the Google Play Store. And that by updating from a different source, you may receive feature updates from any source on your phone and that app functionality may change. So basically, this is just a simple warning saying, hey, if you stop receiving updates from Google Play Store, you might mess things up by, you know, sideloading the wrong version of an app. You're still safe because Android's regular security measures like the signature verification and you know, the package verification will still be taking place. So like it won't allow you to install a malicious version of the app on top of, you know, the existing app. But it will warn you that, you know, you might experience a loss in functionality if you install from another source because you might not know what you're installing. So how different is this? This doesn't seem a lot different than the existing protection of installing an APK from a third-party source that isn't verified, right? This seems like an extension of that. Well, the existing protection from sideloading the app is just a general warning that, you know, you might not, you might be able to install an app that is not safe because it's not available on Google Play. But this warning in particular is saying, the app you're about to install should be safe because its signature will match. So like an app that's available on Samsung Galaxy Store and the Google Play Store simultaneously from the same developer, you know, they're both the same, they're both signed by the same developer. But if you install from one source, then you might get a different version of the app that might not be optimized for your device or it might be missing certain features, for example. And I provide an example in the article that talks about the live caption feature that debuted on the Pixel 4. When the Pixel 4 debuted and that shipped with the live caption feature, some people found out that after they were sideloading updates to a particular app, they lost that feature because they were inadvertently sideloading a version of that app that was meant for other devices that didn't have the live caption feature. So that's an example of how, you know, sideloading an app when you're not sure what you're doing can result in you like losing something. Right. All right, well, interesting. So this is gonna be an Android 14? This is gonna roll out with you, I think, or? Right, it's something that's available to apps to use. It's an API, the update ownership API. And I don't know if Google Play Store will start doing this for every app it installs. I kind of doubt they're gonna do that because then you'll see this warning anytime you try to sideload any app. Right now it looks like they're just doing this for this particular core Google app. Right. All right, cool. Well, there it is, your patron news story, straight from the source. We can't always promise we'll have the source, but this week we did with Michelle, so thank you. All right, excellent. So we are gonna take a break now and we are going to thank our sponsor, Awesome for making the awesome privacy cable. Awesome privacy cable is really an amazing thing. It gives you much needed control over when and how your data is shared. It's got a built-in switch that cuts off the USB to it pins that deliver USB data. So there's no software wall that could get broken into. It's just a straight and simple, straightforward air gap. And I've actually got the cable here and I wanna show everybody watching on our video show. And if you're listening on the audio podcast, head over to awesomeprivacy.com slash privacy cable. But you'll see that the awesome privacy cable is made of that fantastic durable kind of fabric wrapper that we love when you get a really good cable on there. It really feels high quality. It's abrasion resistant braided nylon sleeve with adenized aluminum end caps. And at the end of the USB cable, there is a little physical switch, right? And it's got a little lightning bolt icon under it and the switch is back and forth. And in that switch, there is a LED light that tells you when the privacy protection is on and active. So a great example of this is if you're in an Uber and you wanna plug in your phone and get a little charge while you're there, is there's a strange USB cable. You don't know what you're plugging into. You don't know what the other end of that connection goes to. If it's truly just power or is it somebody who's gonna wanna steal your data off your device? If you have the awesome privacy cable, you flip that switch on, it cuts off all the USB data and just gives you the power that you need to charge up your phone. So it's really, really handy. I mean, think about what this protects against. It mitigates against the vector of the hypothetical juice jacking attacks that the FBI and FCC have warned about the possibility of. But listen, these attacks have never been observed in the wild yet. It's just something that the FBI and FCC have warned could happen down the road. But if you're worried about protecting your data and you carry sensitive or highly valuable data, why not start and just carry this cable with you and have an added layer of protection? That way you're all set for the future. Really can't get away, can't get better than that. So the cable's got up to 60 watt charging speeds, 20 volts to three amp, and it's also got USB 2.0 data speeds. And now you can get all this data privacy protection for just $30 available on Amazon, all right? It's pretty, it's a pretty, pretty good deal. It's a solid fast charging cable that protects your data while doing it. So we wanna thank Awesome for sponsoring this episode of Android Faithful and head over to awesomeprivacy.com slash privacy cable and check it all out and order it on Amazon. Thanks, Awesome. Cool. So with that, we're gonna move on to hardware. And last week, I had promised a proper review of my Pixel tablet. So here we are. So buckle up everybody. Everybody knows that I love tablets, right? I mean, that is well-known that I'm a tablet fan. I wanted it to be the year of the tablet when the Pixel tablet came out. I really, really, really, really do like this device a lot. I think it's a really solid tablet. It feels great. It's got a good weight. The display is bright. Audio sounds really solid on it. When we think about what we use tablets for, I mainly use them for media devices. So watching and watching TV and movies, listening to music, reading books, reading comic books, that sort of thing. I said it last week on the show that I really like the integration of this tablet into the whole material you kind of world. The fact that it feels, it almost feels seamless when I go for my Pixel 7 to the Pixel tablet. Like, oh, I'm just going from one device to another and it knows me. And it picks up all my settings and knows who I am and what I'm doing and what I like. So I definitely do like that. A huge pro for this, and it's been talked about endlessly in other websites and other reviews when you talked about it, when you chatted about it on our last show. The base that it comes with, the little charging base that also has a speaker, when you snap that tablet into it, it basically turns into a home hub and it really gives you two devices in one. It's the portable tablet that you can carry around and use as a device, but it's also, when it's not being used, it's this ambient device that you can allow to control your home and whether play media, the speakers I think sound great in the base and all in all just really, really positive. It's an additive device, which at this point in 2023 is very rare, at least in my kind of devices that I use. Now that said, I do got some critiques. I've got some criticisms and Winsons, you also own the Pixel Tab. I'd love to hear what you think of it. When I snapped it into the hub and put it into hub mode, I think I literally said, that's it. Yes. All it did was just give me a slideshow of my Google Photos, which is cool, and give me a button to access the panel in my Google Home app and that's it. Yes. I definitely in my mind had more hopes for hub mode in that it would give me more of a control center, give me kind of at a glance access, a little more functionality, but the hub mode is just for all intents and purposes a photo frame with a button to turn lights on. Rod, I'm so happy you're saying that right now because that was our experience and we hated it. In fact, we actually went through the promotion material. So I think it's fair to say that maybe we approached the device in the wrong way. We wanted a hub first and not a tablet. And I mentioned that on our previous show. And it was really funny because after I talked about it and I felt like a little weird, like I felt like, oh, maybe I missed something. And my husband and I actually went to the promotion material for the Android tablet to see if maybe we, to see like, okay, were we looking at a tablet and hoping for a hub? And yeah, like if you look at the promotional material, it really shows the tablet as a tablet being docked. And I totally agree with you. Like I wanted a hub and it isn't quite, it's not the same. And I really miss, I miss the hub interface as a hub, like the Nest hub that, is it Fuchsia? Was it built in Fuchsia? Yeah, I think it was Fuchsia. I miss it. I miss it a lot. And yes, my husband and I had the exact same experience as Ron when we had the camera. I feel redeemed there. And that said, if I got to give it, like, I don't know, we haven't established our like rating scale. We need to come up with a rating scale on our reviews, by the way. I think that's how we should differentiate. But on a scale of one to 10, I probably will still give it an eight, just because it is a, it is a solid, it's a solid device. And it does everything I want as a tablet. It hasn't been a life changer. I haven't moved over to productivity yet. And that said, I haven't really traveled as much, right? And so that's where I want to see where it kind of will come through and shine. I do want to get like a Bluetooth keyboard so I can see if I can actually work on this thing or not. But overall, really solid, great build. Would recommend the price point is right, as far as I'm concerned. The video quality and audio quality sound good. Like it checks all those boxes. It's just the areas that I thought it would differentiate itself to push it up closer to a 10. Fell a little short for me. So. I definitely think it was released a little too early. Like it's clear there are aspects of it that are still a work in progress, especially related to all the large screen improvements and Android 14. The stylus support, like you check the spec sheet, it supports stylus and there are rumors that they're working on a stylus for it. And they might be even working on a keyboard for it. Who knows? I feel like if this launched with Android 14 and all the desktop mode improvements, maybe we could have like a, you know how on Samsung tablets you can have decks running on the tablet itself and you get like a desktop environment. If this device shipped with Android 14 with all the smart hub stuff, with the dock, maybe with a stylus and keyboard accessory, so you can use it as both, you know, a tablet that sits on your desk and tablet you take with you to work, then I think this would easily bump its score up maybe to like a nine. And it's funny though, because like after listening to when you talk about the Pixel Fold last week and seeing all of our other friends reviewing the Pixel Fold, talking about it as a productivity device, a nice, you know, a tablet you take with you that you can work on and stuff like that. It's like so much of the rhetoric that's being talked about the Pixel Fold in that category is what I wish the Pixel tablet was being talked about. But instead, they're just talking about the hub mode, which doesn't even deliver as much, I think, as the productivity of the Pixel Fold provides. So now I'm thinking eight might be too generous. I might go down to seven. There you go, seven. That's a good, I would, as a tablet, I would give it a seven as a friend, as a hub, give it like a three or four. Yeah, but the thing is, it's all in one, right? And so I gotta treat it as what it is. And up to this point, we haven't had a snappable tablet that plugs into a hub dock. So like, I'm excited about that. I think that's awesome. If this is the beginning of it, I hope the next major update to it revans the hub mode and really sells the dream of that. And at that point, then it gets closer back up to an eight or nine. So. It is a great device. And I actually did recommend it to a friend who, she was, hi Joanna, she's buying it. She's looking to buy a new tablet for her parents because she had a Pixel C. She, I think she gave her parents Pixel C is that the right number? Yeah, I remember that, yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of showing its age. And I was like, you know what? And she was like, well, I don't think they really want like a hub. I was like, then buy this, buy this for them because it's a pretty decent tablet. And like the hub features, I think are a good starter hub features, you know what I mean? That actually might be a good, it might be a good bridge product for someone who likes tablets, but isn't like sold on like having a smart display. And the interesting thing is that like, I'm also not like the way I've seen, I've read about it in ways being positioned. I don't sit on the couch with my tablet as a second screen. I don't want a second screen on the couch. I've got to, I paid a lot of money for a big screen that I'm looking at, right? So I actually, I actively put my phone away when I'm watching TV because I want to be focused on what I'm doing. And so ideally it's like when I'm traveling, when I'm in bed, when I'm like, you know, or whatever it might be. That's when the tablet comes into play where it's a handy, thin device that I can throw in my backpack and have a bunch of stuff with me and that sort of thing. And when it's not being used, it's just, it's just sitting in the drawer. And so now it's sitting on the hub and I'm seeing pictures of my kids and that's nice. And I can play music and that's nice. I just wish it did a little more. So. Actually about that, there is another little bit of untapped potential in the big little tablet. I don't know if you saw the spec sheet, but it mentions that it supports ultra wideband, I'm pretty sure. Oh. And so if you remember back at CES 2023, Google mentioned that they're working on the ability to transfer media around the house with you. And from what I can remember, you know, digging into Android 13, there's like new APIs and stuff that allows you to transfer media from one device to another. So you could maybe take your Pixel phone with an ultra wideband chip, walk up to it and it'll automatically transfer to your Pixel tablet. Of course, this hasn't been announced yet, but there's the API, there's Google's announcement at CES, there's the ultra wideband in the tablet. I mean, it all lines up. It's all the math that was working out there, Michelle, the crazy one. Oh my God, I would love that. Yeah. All right. Well, so there's my Pixel tablet review. So I'm giving it a seven overall and it is now my daily driver of my tablet. So we'll see how it stands up long-term. So with that, when you got our next story. Yeah. And I guess it's kind of hard for us to get away from talking about foldables from week to week as we're foldable fans around here, obviously with my Pixel phone, but it is in general the form factor as well. And something that people tend to talk about with, especially now the current generation technology of foldables is thickness. So, you know, we've got the, you know, the foldable phones aren't very svelte. We've got the Galaxy Z Fold 3 or Z Fold 4 or 3 or 4 rather. Sorry. Topping it off at 15.8 millimeters when closed. The Pixel Fold, which I am now rock is my daily driver and love as much as I do my Z Fold 4 is 12.1 millimeters closed. The Xiaomi Mix Fold is a little bit thinner, 11.2. And we have a new competitor coming into the ring because we have the Honor Magic V2, which has the distinction of being the thinnest foldable yet at 9.9 millimeters thick closed. So it has hit single digits, just about single digit millimeters when closed. So that's kind of like the- What is the opposite of, what is the thick, the THICC? This is the- Yeah. It went from thick to TH, I like that so much. What's really interesting is that the thickness when open is pretty dang thing. It actually has two different versions. There's a hyper-thin version that has a leather back plate. Video viewers can see it there. There's actually a glass backed version, which is like 0.2 millimeters thick, thicker. So 4.7 millimeters or 4.9 millimeters thick when open, still really thin. And if you want your little spec rundown, it's a pretty nice device. It's got a 7.92 inch inner display, 6.43 inch outer display. Both displays run 120 Hertz. And it has the very snappy Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. It's going to run 8 Android 13 via Magic OS 7.2. It's got 16 gigabytes of RAM and can go from anywhere from 256 to 512 to one terabyte of storage. You got a 50 megapixel main, 50 megapixel ultra-ride and a 16 megapixel, sorry, outer camera. And what's really cool, okay, so here's the cool thing. This is like the thinnest foldable that we have so far, right? It also has the highest capacity battery. So the Z Fold 4 has a 4,400 milliamp battery. Pixel Fold has 4,800. The Honor Magic V2 has a 5,000 milliamp battery. So it's managing to be a little bit thinner and squeezing a little more milliamps to keep that screen. How could it be thinner and fatter when it comes to the battery? That math doesn't work for me. That doesn't make sense. Well, it doesn't have a removable battery. That's for sure. That thing is probably welded in there. This won't be available in the EU in 2027, will it? Yeah, well, that's a good, I mean, we don't even know if it's going to be available internationally outside of China. But for our Android faithful in China, you can purchase it starting at 8,999, sorry, 8,999 yuan, or about 1250 USD for the base model. So again, yet another foldable that we're probably not going to get our hands on, kind of showing how the Chinese market is super, super innovating. So, yeah. The fact that the inter-display is stylus compatible, those new stylus lovers out there who want to have a foldable that you can use a stylus with, there it is. And just the, here's the thing about foldables. Like we've been so bullish on foldables for years and I've said that like I think they'll be a game changer and one of the biggest complaints about the foldables since they've come out have been their chunkiness and the thickness, especially when folded. And this doesn't look like a phone, it looks like a remote control and all this sort of stuff. And when you have a phone like this that folds to the width of a regular phone, it is very hard to argue the folding nature of it. This leaves me wondering like what, what is this leaving on the table in favor of this thinness? And I don't see it. Like all the specs are there, right? All the key specs are there, but there might be some like, there's no Qi wireless charging support for example. So the coils, there's no coils inside the phone. Like I don't know if this thing supports ultra wideband and if it doesn't, there's no ultra wideband chip. But in fairness, there are a combo Bluetooth Wi-Fi ultra wideband chips I think. So like if you look closely at the specs, I'm sure you'll find some compromises that, Samsung's foldable has everything imaginable in it. But like, you know, there has to be some compromises. It's not like they're just generations ahead of Samsung and, you know, there's no explanation why, you know, there has to be something to give. Yeah, I mean, and I'm not an expert, but you can see here, like we live in kind of like outside of China, we live in the world of $1,800 foldables. This is a foldable for 1250s, but as you said, it doesn't have wireless charging. What else is, and I mean, again, I think we just kind of are outside observers to the foldable market in China. So I don't like, I can't comment right now about whether this is like, oh, that's typical, that's fine. That's kind of indicative of like what a similar foldable with the same specs and same like pluses and minuses might be in the US, I don't know. But yeah, it seems like something, but I mean- This is what's gonna come down to choice. It's gonna be like, what's important? Do you wireless charging or a thin phone? If you, like it's like a NCAA bracket of features, right? If you asked me, I would sacrifice wireless charging for thinness, right? Like I don't use wireless charging that much. I just like I'm fine with plugging it in and that sort of thing. Call me old fashioned, Michelle, I'm sorry. But I see you snickering. But yeah, but that's what's gonna come down to. It's like, do you want big battery? Do you want good camera? Like if they can introduce those options and features and get the foldable size down and as long as the price point isn't, you know, totally up in the stratosphere, then it's compelling. But we're not gonna stop there with foldables though because our good friends, OnePlus are getting into the game. And it looks as if the OnePlus Open slash OnePlus V Fold launch date is zeroing in on August 29th. So a little less than a month and a half away. And we've seen some leaks and some renders and some rumors of the OnePlus foldable with that enormous camera circle on the back. But it looks like they're gonna be holding an event in New York at the end of the month to unveil this new foldable that will be another entry into the space. Now, this news did leak. OnePlus hasn't formally announced or confirmed it, but the folks over at SmartPrix and Max Jambore who revealed it or run with it and giving us this idea of when to expect the OnePlus Open foldable to be introduced to the world. I'm very interested to see what the confirmed specs will be for OnePlus's entry point into the foldable. I know OnePlus, we kind of snickered at them over the last couple of months slash years for kind of, how would you describe OnePlus right now? Wasting its potential or not living up to its fast successes? I mean, Michelle, what do you think of OnePlus these days? I definitely think the perception has turned around. Like there was a brief period of disappointment when they first transitioned, when they first pulled off the mask and everyone already saw underneath, like, yeah, you guys were Opa all along. All along. It was Opa all along. There was a thin line that nobody really bought and of course, like there was some disappointment with the initial color of West Rollout, but I think a lot of that sentiment has turned around and a lot of people really liked the OnePlus 11. Like I've seen a lot of people online, tech influencers, content creators call it, you know, like a great deal. And I think there's a lot of genuine excitement for this device in particular based on the leaks and the fact that it's going to be a major foldable launch in the United States. Like it was a big deal when Google launched their foldable and now all of a sudden, like, barely a couple of months later, we're gonna have a third option in the US. Right. Think about how the world of foldables is always opening. The world of foldables is unfolding in front of us. But not so much foldables, but another reason to like OnePlus, which I give them credit, which I'm so bummed that Florence Ayan isn't on the show this week. We hope to have her on the show come in August. I know she's excited to join, but OnePlus came out with a mechanical keyboard, which I did not have on my bingo card. So for $220 in just about a week on July 26th, the OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro is gonna be available for all your type in needs. If you like that clickety-clack of mechanical keys, OnePlus is there for you. Again, I did not see this coming. It's got the little lights underneath it, right? The little rainbow lights. Yes, LED lights, yeah. This looks like one of the keyboards that Flo puts together on her Instagram. Oh my gosh, how have Flo and I not connected on I'm Also Mechanical Keyboard nut? Yeah, for a keyboard fan, they're releasing a 10 keyless keyboard. It's really slick. And what I really like is the color. So what kind of keycaps does it have with a PBT? Well, you're really getting into it, aren't you? But I mean, it's kind of hard to describe for audio-only users, but it definitely feels, like it has like the OnePlus Touches. It's got the red cable, the familiar red cable. It's got like a red escape key with a OnePlus logo and a red enter key. And it has like, while it is LED, it definitely has, it looks like an enthusiast keyboard because it's got that mix of like kind of high brow and low tech. I don't know if that's how to say it. What is that dial? There's actually a volume dial. The upper right hand corner. Yeah, the clear volume dial, the upper right hand corner. I mean, that's pretty sexy, I have to say. So that's pretty nice. I don't know. Yeah. I did not see this coming. So I think this is fun. This is what makes OnePlus OnePlus. Like this feels like old OnePlus, doesn't it? Like. It really does. It really does. No. Yeah. Imagine. If you like it with your words, yeah, go ahead, my bad. Next thing, nothing is going to come out with a transparent keyboard. I would buy that. I would buy that. I would not use it, but I would buy that. Nothing totally should do that. They are like one of those light based keyboards. You know, those keyboards that project that you did it in maths, what you do. That would be interesting. And then you could customize like the LED patterns and shoot, please Carl, can we have one? Please, please, Carl, please. All right, well, that's gonna wrap it up for hardware. And we're getting close to the end of the show. We wanna touch quickly on apps because those longtime listeners or watchers of our show know that Wear OS and the lack of good podcast apps has been a thorn in our side. But we were very excited to see our friends over at Pocketcast have indeed released the Pocketcast Wear OS app finally. It was in beta a couple of weeks ago and we knew it was coming. But there it is. If you've got a Pixel watch, you can now finally get your Pocketcast podcast needs covered with the Wear OS app. So someone, if you have a Pixel watch and you listen to podcasts and you use Pocketcast, please write in and tell us what this experience is like because one of the main reasons why I got the Pixel watch was to use it to go on runs and listen to podcasts and the lack of a quality podcast app made me return the watch out of anger. So yeah, so it's nice to see that it's, so the Pocketcast Wear OS app, it will work, it was questioned in the chat was if it will work on other watches other than just the Pixel. Yes, anything running Wear OS, it will run on. We're just using the Pixel watch as an example. But as long as it's up to date running the latest version of Wear OS, it should work there. So, all right. So hooray, Pocketcast, good job there folks. All right, and with that, it is time to hear from you, the lovely audience. We asked you to write into us at Contact.AndroidFaithful.com and some of you did. Oh my God, it's amazing. So, Huynn, why don't you share with us the first email we got? Yes, and our first email is from Ram. I think it's Ram, not Ram, Ram. If I'm mispronouncing your name, I guess again, incorrect me, I would love that. I would welcome that. And I apologize, hopefully I'm pronouncing it incorrectly. But Ram writes us saying, hello Android Faithful gang, a long time AAA viewer and I really enjoyed the first episode of the Android Faithful podcast and look forward to many years of fun and informative episodes. I just wanted to say I really enjoyed Wynn's review of the Pixel Fold, thank you. I was skeptical of the Fold at first, but ended up ordering it at launch. Having used the device for a few weeks now, I must say I'm really enjoying it a lot. I am not a productivity or power user, but I am a media consumer and having a foldable tablet to watch YouTube and streaming content when I'm out and about is fantastic. This does mean my Pixel Fold is close for 70% of my usage and I really love the screen size. The notebook form factor feels more secure in my hand and really makes those stretched out screens on other devices feel a bit weird to use now. I agree with Wynn that this is not a device to recommend for the average user, but hopefully in five years, there will be a foldable saturated market that will bring the price of these devices down, amen. As for cases, I went with a thin case that is MagSafe Compatible, which opens up a whole new avenue of accessories. Cheers, Rom. And Rom, that's actually a great idea. If you wanted to write back and let us know which one you picked, because that sounds fabulous to me. I'm always looking for these recommendations. But yeah, that was our first email. Yes. First Android faithful email in the book. Thank you so much, Rom. That was awesome, Rom. Thanks for getting in there in the inbox. That was awesome, but we got another email. So there it is. So our second email comes from Brian from New Jersey, all right, who says, congrats on the new pod. I heard Wynn's feedback on the case-mate case for the Pixel Fold and wanted to let you guys know that the first party case by Google is excellent. If it's perfectly, it's thin and it provides a good grip. I was concerned that it uses adhesive on both parts of the case because I like to take my case off to clean out dust every so often, but so far that doesn't seem to be an issue at all. I've taken it off and on a few times that it doesn't seem to have lost any adhesive properties. The only downside is that it doesn't protect the spine of the fold at all. So if you have a direct drop onto that side, you could see damage. Good luck with the new show. Thanks, Brian from New Jersey. And thank you, Brian, for writing in and when there's a little testimonial of the official case. Oh, so I'm actually using to the official case as well. And I did worry about that adhesive, Brian. And actually the thing with the Z Fold 4 is that it also has little adhesive strips or little kind of sticky strips. And the second time I took it out of the case, they did rip off and stick to the phone. So Brian, it sounds like the Pixel Folds Adhesive are a little bit more sturdy than the Z Fold 4 cases. So there you go. This is the Z Fold case that I use with the silicon strap. So thank you for the confirmation and thank you for the email. Sweet, yeah. So thank you everybody. Please write in with your questions, your feedback, contact at androidfaithful.com. If you wanna hear from you. Any questions or topic that we have, I think we're gonna start coming up with like topics to challenge you with. So stay tuned for that. Taking a little prompt. So we'll see if those come through soon. But awesome. All right, well, that's episode two in the books. We did it, everybody. My throat made it, although I'm starting to feel it. So... Oh, rough one. I caught strep throat like four or five days ago. So I'm at the end of it, but it still hurts a little. It happens to have toddlers in the house. So yeah. All right, well, Michelle, tell the fine folks where they can find you if they enjoy your work here on Android Faithful. Well, on my Twitter at Michelle Ramon, I know that a lot of people don't use Twitter anymore, but that's very top. I have, I mean, a lot of people still do. Like you can see my link tree. I have links to a whole bunch of different platforms. You can see all my articles. You can have, I did update it. It doesn't say all about Android anymore. I was gonna call that out, Michelle. Thank you for doing the work. You did the work. You put the time in. You upped the Android Faithful logo and everything. That's awesome, so. Yeah, so I have a links to my Telegram channel, Macedon, Reddit, email, threads, everything. Like everything's on this page. So if you wanna follow me in one of these different platforms, you can find the link there. Cool, excellent. Well, thank you, Michelle. It's always a pleasure to have you. We're gonna, you're not gonna be on next week, right? But everybody stay tuned. You will be back, right? You're with us as much as you wanna be. You're always welcome here on Android Faithful, so. Absolutely. All right, cool. All right, when? Tell the folks where they can find you. Yes, I am an Android developer and you can find me and technical talks that I do on my website, my website, my website, randomlytyping.com. And you can find me at places at Queen Deco Moggy. I have not updated my website, so please don't scroll down anymore, Ron, but soon to reflect the fact that we are doing this podcast, Android Faithful. And yeah, so find me at all the places at Queen Code Monkey, Threads, Instagram, other sites that are blue, both of them, actually. So yeah, glad to be here. Excellent. And I have not done the work and put up any link tree or website or anything, but I am out there in the universe on my nom de plume at Ron XO. I am on Twitter, I am on Instagram, I am on Threads, I am on Mastodon, Blue Sky, all that sort of stuff, but I'm very busy with my life. But I try to post every now and then. I'm probably the most active on Instagram to be honest, just because of the photo-based and that sort of thing, so. But yeah, so excellent. So yeah, so follow me at Ron XO. Appreciate everybody. Thank you everybody for tuning in and watching live. We record this show every Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific. Please join us. The more the merrier, it's always a blast. And then we always publish the podcast immediately after that on Tuesday evenings. So if you subscribe, you can catch it on your podcast app of choice. We recommend podcast, but whatever you wanna use is up to you, that's totally fine. And you can download that every Tuesday night. And you can find links to subscribe to the podcast feeds as well as links to the live stream on YouTube and on Twitch, thanks to the fine folks at Daily Tech News Show. That entire awesome organization is there to support us and we thank them so much. You can find links to watch their videos, including DTNS and the other great shows on the network. All of that is over at androidfaithful.com, our own website. And you can also email us at contact at androidfaithful.com. And with that, it's gonna wrap it up for episode two. We thank everyone for listening and we'll see you next week for We Are the Android Faithful. Bye, y'all. We need to load the outro music. That's what I'm finding. I have the intro to it. I don't have the outro music. Excellent. Quite there, yeah. Yeah, a little quiet. Here we go. Got to party in the end.