 Hello and welcome to another edition of Android faithful. I am Ron Richards, and it is Tuesday, November 28 2023 And it is Tuesday and that means it's time to talk Android But I'm all about myself this week win is still on on location on vacation in Japan And Michelle is also not here So I turned to some of my favorite people on the internet joining us this week. Mr. Juan back now. Welcome back Three-timer your third time on the show Am I the first three-time you are the first three-timer, but you do I will pull the curtain back on the show for everybody when we started up Android faithful one was one of the folks So I called it. I was like would you come on the show often and and you were amenable. So yeah, so heck Yeah, yeah, so we appreciate that but then you also suggested we welcome our second guest tonight Mr. Strong welcome. He put out the Thundercat call The call So so good you both are two of my favorite people to shock. Oh, we had you on all about Android back in the day So you're no stranger to the to the format to the show and so I figured the three of us We're gonna just we're gonna be a couple of dudes talking Android on a very very slow news week Yeah, it was pretty dry going through the links like I felt bad. I hit you up this morning. It's like I got nothing man I'm sorry. It was I will be honest. It was it was rough. I mean it was so rough. I'm trying to pull it up It was so rough that I I'm trying to get to mast it on. I actually posted on mast it on. I'm not even But I posted to mast it on that I was like whoo slow news week unless you're really into Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals Because basically last week was Thanksgiving In the States and then obviously Black Friday and Cyber Monday follow that and I feel like every website That follows Android that we usually use to cultivate the news from it was just a parade of get this deal Get this deal get this deal until like today. It was still going. It was crazy. Yeah So so did did you guys get any deals? Isn't today supposed to also be like a small business? Small business Saturday Okay, and then Today was giving today's giving Tuesday where you're supposed to give Okay, so I knew today was supposed to be something. I am in such shell shock. I have holiday brain going bad Yeah, there was some news that we're gonna get to which I'm excited to So but but real quickly I want to throw my props to Shaka. You're joining us You write for Android Central and I'm more right for those I am a contributor Excellent And we're gonna talk about one of your articles in a little bit, so we're super happy for you joining us Also quick reminder to those of you watching live you can tune into this live stream We'll watch us record the show live every Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern 5 p.m. Pacific You can do that at youtube.com slash daily tech news show or on twitch at twitch.tv slash a good day internet And you get to also help us pick a title for a show And you can do that at af.showbot.tv and after when we do the live stream recording We ban we talk a little bit in the beginning if those of you watching live So let's talk about some anime and wikipedia some good stuff there And we'll chat a little at the end of the show and we'll also pick a show title So those of you who are who are listening after the fact if you want to tune in live This is what we do. We have a fun time. So is thundercats go already a front-runner for It's like the Academy Awards. I don't think it deserves a win, but it should be nominate. It should be in there And before we get started actually I do want to share with everybody I'm an insane person and because so we had a Back at all about Android when we were part of the twit family much loved to twit. We loved twit They did a great job of pulling together like a best of episode at the end of the year of all the best clips from the from the year And I kind of got sad thinking that we would not have that this year So i'm going to try to do it, but I need all of yours help So if you're listening if you're watching here's all the information I put up a form that you guys can go to at tiny url.com slash af best of 23 And that will take you to a google form where Just let me know what the episode number is whether you're you're pulling that from the audio or the youtube video because those have different durations And the time the time stamp and why you think that moment is the best And I will do my best to at least put together an audio best of I might try to do video It all depends on how much time I get over the holidays or over this month But I didn't want us to not have a best of moment type thing. So that's tiny url.com slash af best of 23 I'm also going to put it in the show notes on the podcast so you can find the direct link there You know because I'm a crazy person why not so No, but it's it's like the right time of year We like to look back and it's it's fun stuff to kind of go through and and just forget how much stuff we really did this year Yes, because you go brain fog on some of this and you feel like you're missing it And um, it also important to note our holiday schedule We're we're not going to be putting out shows on December 26th the day after Christmas And January 2nd the day after New Year's we're taking a little break And so this way we'll have some content to run during the break. So there you go. Nice Cool. Good call. All right. Um So with that said, uh, let's get into the news and it seems like the real only news like actual meaty news That has happened since last week's episode was the fact that um Google drive seems to be borking on a lot of people And while this isn't exactly android specific, it was enough google enough that I thought was worth bringing up but um, but basically, uh, there was a lot of reports coming through, uh, for users of google drive for desktop, uh, that they were losing lots and lots of data, um And google actually did respond to it. Um, at the time we're looking at an article from The Verge at the time of Of the article being written there was 192 users who said they had the same issue on the uh, google support chat um, and somebody uh from The google team a google employee posted and they said we're investigating reports of an issue impacting a limited subset of drive for desktop users And we'll follow up with more updates and in the meantime gave some instructions So if you are a google drive for desktop user and you're running into this Do not click quote-unquote disconnect account within drive for desktop And and do not delete or move the app data folder Um, and that location on windows is at user profile slash app data slash local slash google slash drive fs And on mac it's at library slash application support slash google slash drive fs Um, and he says optional if you have room on your hard drive, we recommend making a copy of the app data folder Just for just for posterity Put it on there with your wiki with your wiki backup. Yeah room my wikipedia. That's right See, I told you it's sort of tangentially related to one of the topics we were going to be talking about That that is the scary thing to me where we've sold people on the convenience of cloud storage We've got them comfortable using it But then when something like this happens look at those steps Look where you have to go digging and it's not a mac or a pc thing It has nothing to do with the computer that you're on That is a chore to get a family member And and to head them off at the pass like hey, don't do this thing or don't disconnect this or don't panic Try to you know, just keep a level head and here are all the tech support steps You're going to go through to try and find this stuff. Yeah first. Uh, did you turn it off and turn it back on again? Yeah, classic critically important all the time So so my question for you guys were either of you affected by this Are you google drive for desktop users or I genuinely don't know I Have really not I've really backed off Using google drive and one drive for anything more than just sort of casually sharing media with my family and friends And and like some of the folks here in the chat, I've become a big advocate for rolling your own network attached storage And the pricing on putting a big drive in a little mini pc or getting a nos like a proper nos enclosure Has begun has been getting more and more affordable And to me that's just a safer way to kind of spread out. So my parents have a nos I'm talking to my brother and sister about backing up their stuff on hard drives attached to their own network And there I think we should all be talking about a multi redundant Strategy for backing up our data. I'm the lazy guy. It's in google drive. It's on iCloud drive Yeah, I'm I'm I'm screwed. Well, so It's fun. It's when you go down you go down Well, because what what at least from my experience? So like I'm one I'm more like you like I'm a casual google drive user Right where where I use it to transfer files or to share things or things like that but um But also like my start my my pinball company startup scorebit We use google apps as our main sort So like that's actually like all of our data is on there And that is a workspace that we're using any company that is using google apps is using google drive for their cloud storage My only thing is that this is so early in this happening And knowing what we know at google i'm hoping that it's not the data is gone It is just not accessible by g drive for desktop Because if you go on the web or you go to the app, can you still find the data? Is it still there is just a problem in whatever the the the software that's that's driving the desktop experience So that's exactly the concern I had and I wanted to ask both of you guys Do we think that this could be some of the early teething pains because aren't we in line for google killing a whole bunch of old Gmail and drive accounts if you haven't logged into a gmail account for a while They're going to start cutting all of that info. Correct. That is happening on december 1st Oh, even sooner than I thought Yeah, and in fact, in fact, it's I've seen it. It's crazy. I've been tracking this because like this is cbs, right? This is like like I'm like we're pulling they're mad at me for using the ad blocker So Like mainstream news is starting to cover this which is the fact that That coming december 1st google will delete inactive accounts and all their contents photos calendar emails context and drive documents And basically this is that you know what they're saying is it's This is a security measure to protect users from security threats such as spam fishing and account hijacking So if you have accounts that you haven't been Doing anything with go check them by december 1st and log in and make sure everything I had one account I got an email to I got an email to one of my other accounts as a backup saying Hey, we're going to purge this account if you don't log in and do what you need to Which I don't fault google for doing this. I'm shocked 2023 and they haven't been doing this Same yeah, like the unlimited notion of where When we finally got into gmail and I had like 10 Gmail accounts for very minorly specific different things and I got it whittled down now to three But but again, we know that google likes to get ahead of some of this stuff and I can totally see them flipping some switches on servers and storage and then Oops, we accidentally also bought a couple people who were still active users of these products. Yeah Well, we'll see what happens on december 1st when the apocalypse happened the the purge purge purge Today's before my birthday. It'll be a great gift You're just gonna Marie Kondo all your old All right, so additionally in the in the android news world Um The android 14 screenshot detection system is coming Um, basically with android 14 now Apps there's a new api that will notify apps when a screenshot is taken Um, which will basically allow people to Be aware if it's being screen-shotted The system will display a message at the bottom of the screen to inform users when they have to text the screenshots being captured Um, and it does have some limitations It's only detecting hardware button screenshots and doesn't detect screenshots taken via adb But as you can imagine, uh, this is probably something that A lot of apps would like to know what is being screen-shotted And some apps don't want you to screenshot everything right like and I know that some apps like the streaming services currently already have protections to Disable the ability to screenshot. You just get a black screen when you do the screenshot. Yeah Which is the bane to a lot of bloggers and and uh stuff like that What do you guys think of this at the at the api level? No, I I like the play because we do need that nuanced difference between just outright drm On media that can't be copied through whatever type of on-screen presentation And then something that at least is kind of keeping track of what someone's relationship is Um, I do think it's going to be kind of tricky for some of these apps to kind of say like Hey, we're looking at you using our service I know there are probably going to be some concerns for for security and for privacy and stuff like that But I think this is probably the right way to start If the app has an interest in maintaining or protecting the content if they're worried about screenshots, then It just needs to start somewhere. How do you protect the data in that service? Right and doing it the api level shows like an acknowledgement of this from google and on the android level Um, you don't want to have to be making all those solutions on your own Like I bank with one credit union where their app is just a wrapper for their website and it's not great and and so You know having better tools to incorporate into those services into those products like I'd kind of want to know like if someone's trying to screenshot information from something then I think that makes sense For sure. Well, and from a parental standpoint So I kind of found my way into the tech biz proper in 2009 when my wife and I started a digital literacy non-profit And we were going around the country educating parents initially And then we kind of got begged at an event Because you know, I'm like tatted up and I had the earrings and all this stuff and the parents are like, oh my god Could you teach our kids? They think you're cool. Please and I was like, no, I'm not ready I haven't created a program for kids and they're like We're gonna book you next year for when the next school season starts and if you want to You know decide not to by then that's my son feeding the dog If you want to decide not to by then then, you know, you can cancel so we started teaching uh internet safety and and in 2009 and What I'll never forget one of the first times we taught at a junior high um, we talked about screen recording and we we talked in front of a classroom full of children of children teens tweens And talked about how if you do anything inappropriate in front of on a webcam You know with your phone, whatever somebody can record it and For everybody watching who has friends who think their kids are digital natives and know everything You're wrong at the end of that seminar these kids walked up to me mostly girls, unfortunately And they were you could tell the they had this look of concern on their faces And they were like it's california. Don't they have to tell you before they record you Like but this is the naivety of children. Are you a cop? You've got to tell me if you're a cop What that shows is that middle schoolers know just enough to be dangerous or get into trouble Yeah, right like yeah, and so that that they're And not even just middle schoolers like I I see this a lot with the grade school kids at my daughter My daughter is a lot younger and they are really good at navigating a polished UI These are kids that have fundamentally no experience with where that data lives where that data is transmitted from I was talking to my daughter last night like she does not know how to use a web browser She knows how to do a whole bunch of things on the internet But she doesn't know what the relationship is between where content lives and and where content is stored And so again something like that Snap has had to build their own solution for trying to circum circumvent some of that security that you're describing shaka We're kind of overdue just building it into a common tool that every developer can access Yeah Oh, man as as the as a parent of two very small kids I fear for the as they get older and the technology will just evolve and Biggest piece of advice is the best parental control software is the software between their ears And if you will talk to your children and have Conversations that make you uncomfortable You'll be having the right conversation right? Yeah Well, no, I mean like I'll say that like just tonight before we did the show I took my daughter to gymnastics and my daughter's five right so we're And there were two bad actors in the class who were just like disrupting everything and And I'm watching and I'm like and I'm far away from like, you know, you know, like we're separated from it But I'm watching my daughter and like she's listening She's acknowledging like I'm watching and then like when the kids acted up I saw her like look at them then look at me and like make a face and I was like, yes I'm doing it right. I'm doing it right. We're doing this or she she she knows that they're being bad It's like, yeah, so I'm hopeful for the future. So from a tech perspective I keep threatening Marie like maybe we should just raise our daughter You have to use all the same things that we grew up with so here's a dust box And here's five and a quarter floppy drives Well, what's funny is that I remember I remember that same conversation No, this is turned to a parenting technology parenting conversation, but um, I um my new news week My my youngest niece is a senior in high school now And I want to say like when she was in middle school, maybe five six years ago She was begging my sister for a phone and then they got her the phone so they could be in contact there And she was begging for snapchat and for instagram and all that sort of stuff And my sister was like, well, you're the you're my you're my it person. You're my tech person Is it say, you know, she wanted tiktok also is it saying that was the whole china question and stuff like that But like is it should I do it and I was like, I'm like, listen, she asked And I was like, I was like me 20 years ago when I got a modem and stuff like that I didn't ask like I just I I was going on bbs's I was down I was I was pirating software and like I was in a I was in a pirate group I was a courier like I was like And like I know I didn't I'm like so I'm like you did the right thing already and that she's not just installing it herself And not telling you so like yeah, like so I was like Give her continue to trust her, you know and and as far as I know knock on wood. It's been the right call, but uh Um, but yeah, it's wild to think about so Screenshots and apis so yeah All right. Well, we are all parents and it is the holidays And so tashaka as I as I was scrolling through looking for android news I came across your lovely piece on android central central I really liked this article. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Thank you Title five android holiday hacks to make seasons activities run smoother To to help reduce stress for the holiday season I was hoping maybe you could walk us through these and and and how can android make our lives better at the holidays Well, well android can improve your life. Let's talk about your android phone and you So, you know what? We literally have The power of the earth and all its stored data On a hundred gigabyte hard drive, but in our pockets as well on a smartphone And yet the thing people are most concerned about doing with the smartphone is taking pictures so you know People buy phones and they use a fraction of what they're capable of And you know just like I wish I could teach everybody The difference between center metering and and you know, just the different Things you can get into when you get into a pro mode that will actually improve your photos But most people just want to plug and play so the first thing You know, we did as we talked about Especially if you just bought one of the pixel 8 devices a pixel 8 or pixel 8 pro They have this really really fascinating compelling feature called best take which allows you during this holiday season when you're Gathered together around the yule log And you're all trying to take those family photos and you've got young children who are going to make funny faces or trying babies you can take a a dozen photos and Google's new best take allows you to actually see the faces of everybody in that photo Below and the thumbnail of the the main photo image that you've chosen Out of the few that you took and then select the best faces That you want for each person in the photo for families for group photos. This is phenomenal I mean, this is what ai to me At the From the consumer sense is really about I mean, I think there's much deeper Medical and all this other kind of stuff we can get an existential discussions around that But just in terms of practical everyday use this is one of this is what ai is about So, you know, we can talk one inch sensors, but right here. This is something that no camera Technology that a better sensor can actually replace so confession to make here I've been trying to use best take and I'm yet to take enough photos To have it show up in google photos like because my kids are constantly moving I'm lucky if I get like one or two. So I need to switch to burst mode. So I get that Like do we know what the minimum number of photos is to actually have this Technically it's supposed to be three. Yeah. Yeah, but The more the better So if you can I mean if you can get like 10 in burst mode, which shouldn't be difficult in burst mode If you can get like 10 photos in there, then you've got plenty of options I used it this Thanksgiving took four photos from my pixel watch to my pixel eight And I needed that there was that one shot where everyone was perfect except my cousin And we needed to replace her face and I had it So it's it comes in clutch. It's really handy. Now if you want to get real persnickety I think you can also take photos from a phone with a one inch sensor and then move them to your pixel And I think then you could also so basically you just need to own like all the phones and then you have all Exactly Only banned taiwanese or chinese phones for sure Exactly those international imports that people are so hot on right now those one inch sensors Ah, they're great So that was the first step that we went through the first how to and and of course These are all written in the theme of what's the night before christmas because I'm rhyming full So if you actually read the article, you'll be regaled with Rhymey words And then the next one we went into was um audio magic eraser now It's funny because when you watch shows like csi Any of those procedural crime dramas for years? They've always done things on those shows which are not actually possible like in this case Eliminating background noise or isolating different frequencies different sounds and I understand a audio field And and even though that was doable You needed a certain level of equipment to do it and most police agencies probably were not equipped with that Uh, and and it didn't work as fast back then as they would show on the tv show But today in your pocket with the pixel 8 or pixel 8 pro You can actually isolate You know the rhyme I have here is that your uncle gave a toast But the dog was barking in the background and for posterity you really want to save that toast because he said something magical And now you can actually get rid of the dog barking in the background Like the future is now this stuff. This is really Technology we need this for podcasts Exactly. Well, it's it's been fascinating because like we've had really good noise reduction tools for Decades now, but what ai is doing isn't just removing noise This I think is the the the magic of of this kind of software is it's replacing the information that gets lost so if there's a sound in my background and it's Stepping on the frequencies of my voice if you do a whole bunch of noise reduction, it's going to cut into my voice I'm going to sound like I'm underwater now ai is actually replacing that information from me And eliminating stuff from the background and that to me is still like science fiction That it not only it works, but it works in almost real time Processing a video on a pocket computer. Yeah, uh is is pretty incredible Yeah, the aliens may actually visit us I highly doubt it, but you know, we finally have some cool stuff to show them. Yeah. Yeah Can we play with your toys too? This actually I want to give a shout out to uh one of the the private What's that chat groups I'm in because they actually inspired this this entire article one day. We were chatting about We have this thing where we introduce each other once a month of the old members will say hey I'm so and so and then they give like a quick rundown in a format to say who they are Their interests different things like that so that new members when they come into the group They do the same thing So everybody's kind of familiar kind of make it like a little family really cool chat group But some people didn't want to go back or didn't know how to on their phone Go back to their old posts because you're having to repost this monthly if you're an older member of the group So I was like well you guys you can just screenshot your old post and just Copy rip the text and put it in the new post and nobody knew how to do that So, you know, like I said, most of us don't know how to use most of what our phones can do so That is actually was the inspiration for this entire article because I'm like here. Let me, you know People are going to have flyers. They're going to have party invites over the holidays And you want to plug that into your google maps real quick Without having to type everything in you can just rip it from the image And so this step was how to use google lens and and the interesting thing about android that poses Some complications is when you're when you're writing these types of articles for the average consumer the Because android are skinned This isn't consistent across every device So yeah, this process looks different on a pixel 8 than it does on a galaxy s 22 Then it does on a 1 plus 11 So, you know, so we I went google lens because i'm pretty much any of the android phones You can invoke google lens google lens will then use optical character recognition or ai To recognize all the text on the the screenshot or image and then you can Copy that text and put it right into google maps or wherever else you're going to use that text If you're sharing it with the other family for an event you can put it on facebook Whatever just makes it easy to do that Yeah And then you can even copy it to your computer with some uh some of the options when you actually go to copy that text So it's just a really great way to to make uh the holidays and the flyers and all these invites Easier to share or again to to drop into any gps I thought this was genius. I mean, it's so I mean like it's it's it's all in there and but the application I didn't go as far to think of that. So really good Thank you. Thank you And then this one actually Like it's funny because you know you go to these part you go to a family gathering or whatever part of everybody's taking pictures And then I always find people. Oh wait go back to that first photo. This is a little fun nugget easter egg Um In this image of me sitting here with this multicolored jersey. Who was that on my right? That is everybody's friend if you're old enough Tom that is tom. Wow a photo of tom for my space. Wow. Wow Photo walk. That's cool. I was on a google photo walk and tom was on this photo walk So yeah, I need a picture with you Got those classic my space days So this one this was um, you know, it's funny because you these days We're in a place where you go to an event and everybody's waiting for everybody to post their photos to instagram For facebook so that they can then see them But in this way if you're using google photos you can create shared albums And then you can give everybody right access To those shared albums so that they can then take all the photos that they've taken all the pictures They've taken out of family gathering or a party and just upload those photos right to that album Now everybody who's at the party, uh can share those photos and again, this is really good if this is like Especially family gathering now you know You are a lot more kinder than I am because um, we had my brother-in-laws couldn't make it for Thanksgiving actual So we all got together the weekend before and all the kids were together all the cousins and I was taking pictures in my pixel 8 pro And um took a bunch of pictures and we have a shared family kind of what's up And so everyone was posting pictures throughout the day and seeing that sort of thing Um, and then later that night my my sister-in-law texted me and she said your photos are amazing What phone do you have and I said, oh, it's the pixel 8 pro And I and I said, oh, would you do you want all the pictures I took and she said Yeah, so I made a an album of every picture I took throughout the day a lot with with my niece with her daughter And sent her that but I didn't make it I just I just made it read only I didn't make it writeable Well, there may have been a reason for that so No judging no judging So you were a lot more uh collaborative and inclusive than I am so but that's why I say this is great for family because You know family's not gonna, you know drop a photo in there that there's gonna go Yeah, exactly in theory So and then this one, uh Google assistant Is so powerful like there are so many things you can do with it I wonder how many people instead of and I see them all the time driving with their phones up like this How many people know that you can text via voice and traffic If you you know if you can have it reading out your messages and you can actually respond without taking your Eyes off the road and and actually send short messages. But for this holiday season I turn this into Being able to have google assistant be your personal assistant your executive Assistant And also so that you know, there's a lot going on in our heads as parents There are a lot going on in our heads as as single people without parents or even married people Who don't have kids and that's why I'm a single people without kids married people who don't have kids There's so much going on in our heads in the holidays And you're going to think of something that you need to do tomorrow or later on today And you can actually just speak that as you're thinking about it to google assistant If you have it configured properly to do so And one of the unfortunately one of the rough parts of android, which I was glad is able to write this article for Is note taking uh voice notes, you know, when you go into this it honestly I thought this article was going to be really quick to write on that part But I actually had to spend like a couple hours or so going through Uh Having showing people how to use google to take a quick dictation a quick note with a reminder Time stamp whatever because when you do that And it's not configured properly You can do it with a google assistant out of the box once you set up google assistant on your phone But it goes into the ether. There's no actual app. It's just in this weird Space and you have to then it's like data purgatory Yeah, it really is Unless you actually find the setting for notes and lists In the google assistant settings, which good luck finding the settings for google assistant on the phone because They're kind of all over the place Which is I put in the article the easiest way to do it is actually just say hey google Uh, show me google assistant settings and then it'll pull that up for you That is the easiest way to get to that to the which is somewhat appropriate, right? Use assistant To tell you how to use assistant So then when you go to notes and lists and and you you go into that menu You can set it so that google keep is your default note taking app And now when you speak those notes into google assistant They'll all be in google keep and google keep has gotten a lot better since the first time I looked at it Because I looked at it played with it was like, yeah, no i'm done. I'm not no ever notes My wife moved us off of one note. We're really to keep we're on keep now It's solid now. It really is you my main thing that I needed was uh tasks and sub tasks And now that you can have tasks and sub tasks And you can add so many more things to it. It's excellent So that was I think the last one was using google assistant as your personal assistant and really familiarizing people With how you can actually get the most out of google assistant and use it during the holidays to again Take down a quick note so you don't forget 10 minutes later for me the days leading up to Thanksgiving We're constantly telling assistants to put on my shopping list of keep going. Ah, we need olive oil Oh, we'd like in that way with this door is all there and keep and ready to go. Yeah, so Yeah, well, it's great article. Everyone should go to android central dot com and check it out five android holiday hacks um And and we we're all kind of pro users here But use this to evangelize send send someone in your family this article and help spread the spread the gospel Spread the android love. Yeah, exactly. Well, good stuff Above that. Sorry. I know we're going to move on to the next topic But if you'll pardon just the moment of sentimentality because i'm such a heavy photo guy I love it. Um, I recently lost a cousin a couple weeks ago and We're all scrambling to like try and find photos and videos of my cousin phil And it's everything I can do to like share those family albums make sure people have links to them They're going to fight you the whole time, especially your older family members They are going to hate having to figure out how to click a link in an email or in a in a message But when you're going back and you're trying to to find this stuff again, it really matters Do not let your memories be disposable social media fodder Share and support and do the it stuff do that that thankless work Of getting your family members up to speed because it matters so much When that's that those are the memories that you want to hold on to I mean that that topic alone like My frustration with google photos is that my life starts at 2015 when I started when I adopted I started using it right and like I know that I have digital like there's a there's a big gap That's a lot of people are going to run into between Roughly the late 90s into about the mid-20s teens where we took photos on digital cameras and Who knows where those files are How many you know you go on the computers and tar drives and all this sort of stuff and like Pre 2000 we had printed photos and photo albums and that sort of thing. There's going to be a digital Void that's exactly the gap we had on my cousin I mean you're describing it to a T where we were scrambling to try and find this I think about that often like I if I had more time I want to dig up my of all those photos and scan them Exactly. Yeah, so yeah crazy All right. Well, yes, so there you go There's there's a good ps8 to get everyone onto onto some sort of photo archive doesn't be google photos I mean google photos. We think I think is superior, but amazon we we often people tell us about amazon's photo Archiving feature. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, but if nothing else read chaka's article for some a good starting place To kind of kick off what your backup strategy might look like exactly. Yep. There you go All right cool So thank you shaka and to move on from there. We're going to move on to our patron pick every week All of our loyal patrons over at patreon.com slash android faithful get to vote on a news story for us to talk about In the in the podcast here itself. It was a slow slow news week. It was but uh, here's what we got Coming in last was the list of devices that samsung has updated to android 14 that only got 13 of the vote slow news week Coming in second with 19 of the vote google quietly adds support for quick phrases and picks with pixel buds pro Which was the early leader? But the winning story this week was that google cast control notifications now appear in the android media player And this is a an interesting development that you know media controls for cast devices Were historically as a standard notification, but now with and in the last week or so google's updated experience So it looks like other app alerts and I did also notice that in the past week where I was like Oh, look at that like that looks you know that I noticed the change in the notification pane On on that media player for casting because I do a lot of casting to our google home or to google tv and things like that But it's still a little bland like I feel like the new screenshot Give me album art. Give me a little more. You know, like I feel like there's a lot of real estate being taken up with Not a lot of design But hey, it's a start. I completely agree. Did you guys notice this or Well, not not only noticed it the the thing I really like is this is another data point that we can look at to say Even though there's this idea of operating system fragmentation in android when new features come This is going back. I think to android 11, right? So going back two or three generations Even if your phone is off the reservation for new os updates the functionality is there you're I had the exact same experience because I was listening to podcasts going like this looks totally different now And why isn't it showing my podcast? But at least there is now proper functionality for where this stuff lives for when I want to send it to other streaming devices or like the soundbar in my office or something like that So I appreciate the the functionality Still needs a little update polish it up for some of the pretty stuff. It's a starting point Cool and I want to thank make sure we thank I forgot to do this last week But we want to thank our patrons for helping us do this and so a quick shout out to uh to Enda mccollig and mickey dixon to loyal Android faithful patrons helping us bring the patron news week this week. So, uh, thank you Enda and mickey, uh, you guys are awesome. Thanks for supporting us. Go to patreon.com slash android faithful where you can sign up There so good stuff Cool. So, uh, there was a little bit of hardware news though That we can discuss here this week as it seems as if the next big phone release isn't samsung But rather the one plus 12 Um, so we talked about it last week how the one plus 12 launch date was going to be uh on december 4th Uh in china to celebrate one plus's uh, 10 year anniversary They have now moved it to december 5th instead of december 4th So they're going to celebrate the 10th anniversary. You know why they did that, right? No, why is why is that? Because my anniversary is on december 4th. Oh, of course Right is 28 years. So they can't compete with that. They've only got 10 No, no, that was actually really considerate of them. I don't think one plus gets enough credit for just how How they handle those personal relationships. They care about us influencers So, uh, they care about you and your anniversary But also, uh, so they're going to celebrate their anniversary on the same day as your anniversary on december 4th And then they'll launch the one plus 12 in china on december 5th And as part of that, uh, they started, uh, they rolled out their first teaser Which gave gave us a a glimpse of what we can expect from from the one plus 12 It's got some color options. They move the alert slider Um, and they also confirmed some other details like it will have wireless charging and other things like that Um, so are you guys excited for the one plus 12? What are what are our thoughts here? What do you think after using the one plus open? I am so much more excited for the one plus 12 Like if the one plus 12 is basically the one plus open in a non-folding form And it can bring a perk like wireless charging that people got real persnickety about I don't really care when I've got real fast charging But the camera improvements the performance improvements running that new snapdragon chip Uh, this this is looking like it's going to be a really fun phone to test drive early next year And I've always loved one plus phones. I really just have enjoyed their design I've enjoyed the things they've done with the software for the most part on on some of the earlier one plus devices and They're you know We we review so many products so many different phones It's always fun when you have a fun phone To review that's going to you know, throw you some Extra things here and there that you may not be seeing on some competitors. So it's always been a fun phone So i'm always looking forward to what one plus is doing even when everybody was a little concerned with Some of the mergers and some of the os stuff that was going on You know Excuse me. I I look forward to whatever. Yeah, there's there's been a lot of uncertainty around one plus And I've been I've been a very vocal detractor over the past two years Because it seemed that like once carl pay left they were like Seeking an identity and they were doing a lot of sameness There was a lot of stuff that was like, okay, what are they doing here? And like you on the one plus open like open my eyes, you know, kind of like revitalized the The excitement around the brand Um, and I'm excited to see it continue with the one plus 12 just just by offering a white black and green version Of the phone alone. Oh, yeah, you know with that camera with that with that round camera You know camera is bigger than a bump camera section of the back of the phone. Yeah Plus with a dynamic color like green, you know, the phone will stand out and um, I'm excited I think that I think what they're what they're going to bring to market is going to be really interesting and worth checking out As we mentioned it's going to launch in in December in china and then launch globally in january How funny is it that our phones are now like cars like we're already test driving the 2024 models We're still at the tail end of 2023 Like the game has just gotten so accelerated So I was really concerned about one plus going into the one plus 11 As a more price Compromise device. It's a screamer phone, but it's a very practical Phone phone. It doesn't really do a whole lot else. It's not a pro device And the one plus open is the best of everything that one plus has currently offered And so we can get a little more of that flavor going into a price competitive device a good camera competitive device I'm hoping it'll bring back features like video output through the usbc port for some of your power users I think we'll have a one plus that's finally figured out the opoefication Opoefication of the brand and what it means for making a north american phone Yeah Yeah, I I thought they were going to get absorbed by opo and it was going to be a lot of sameness and They're innovating and i'm so excited to see that so yeah, well and opo using them as kind of a Like like a little wedge brand. Yeah, we still have relationships in north america We we're not the scary chinese company that is going to get shut down You know like not we're not a huawei or an honor And so it's an opportunity for them to kind of still be a little enthusiast player In this market and hopefully they can build on that and they can kind of make their their offerings unique So that consumers will actually seek them out And I I don't so hope that's the case because the the whole thing with uh Huawei and honor being kicked out of the states for things that companies in the states are doing to us Is just it was just nuts. So I'd love to see them Make some inroads and and bring us Solid devices at price points that are well below, you know, 1200 dollars. Yeah Because we can always use a little more competition here and you know, the one plus open kind of helped Kind of Shock waves through the foldable lineup Well, so so it's interesting because like so one plus will be the next phone coming out and hot on the heels of samsung And so what we did see in the past week was some samsung galaxy s24 ultra leaks That uh that make one laugh but What we've got is We're gonna get into this i'm laughing not at the samsung or the because we know it's not really a leak I'm almost positive at this point that samsung is just like hey guys pay attention to us too Our phone's coming soon before mwc and so that's that's the game now It's hilarious. So so so the the key thing with these quote-unquote leaks is that uh, it looks as if the the samsung galaxy s24 Is gonna have a a flat screen And a thicker looking design But also, you know, as we've as we've heard also samsung might be flirting with titanium to To compete with apple in terms of the the iphone titanium So you so one you think these leaks are legit you think this is we're looking at what the s23 is going to look like I don't believe samsung is going to do anything radical with the s24s I I feel like they're in a holding pattern right now the s23 sold respectively well um I'd be very shocked if they're retooling or significantly changing the design of these products just to kind of reign in costs because we know that premium android has been getting hammered There is not a lot of interest on in android above four hundred dollars What I have to kind of pick at the nine to five google folks is already Highlighting a conversation about this phone being just so thick Oh, look at this. It's just so I mean you can see from the photos. It's gonna be thicker You're talking about a note With an s pen built into it. This was never gonna be the svelte phone And and this to me is is I mean like they're making me defend samsung Which is already kind of bio in my mouth because I'm not a fan of this A night in disguise It doesn't look that thick though. I mean, I don't know It doesn't look any thicker than a so so what what they've said is that they said they said the the fact that the Glass is flat the side effect makes it look thick. They said, um, they said in all reality It's very likely it isn't any thicker but by removing the curve the device appears a little chunkier I'll just say they probably had a word limit to reach for seo You know so we added some some other descriptive adjectives like as many adjectives and descriptives Just like the pixel 8 pro going to a flat screen, which is absolutely a benefit I am not a fan of curved glass edges on premium expensive devices that are hard to fix and easy to damage They changed the aspect ratio slightly and it is Functionally, it is we're talking like a fraction of a millimeter difference that your fingers cannot detect when you put a pixel 7 pro Against a pixel 8 pro the person who is going to shop a note 24 This is the crown jewel productivity phone Is not going to care and if anything they're going to appreciate that their screen is flat So s-pen functions aren't getting messed up at the curves and the edges of that glass screen Samsung did a very good job of accounting for that. It's just better if you have a flat screen So i'm already over people that are going to complain about oh looks thicker. No one cares This is a tank of a phone that is for work So grow up and use the phone for work like the grown-ups will and the aesthetic of this Which has been the same design we've had since the s20 No one's going to care put a case on it. You're fine And you know what and personally The whole thinner ultra thin super thin paper thin that whole it just really gets irksome to me because look Functionally, give me a chunky phone so I can have more back Yeah, period. I'll take a fatter phone a thicker phone. So I have to charge less So, you know, so I don't have battery FOMO At the end of the day and I'm sitting at eight percent, you know, so this this this race to the thinnest device Is is to me ridiculous unless we're talking about Future technology that looks like something from star wars or star trek where it's literally, you know, just a thin display I mean, let's be fair. This is already significantly thinner than a tricorder Future technology at every level of star trek, by the way, too Exactly Oh, I know I still I still the to s tricorders were like, yeah, they're there. There's a t and t tricorder Right. Yeah, this does not there's a reason why There's a reason why uniforms in star trek don't really have pockets Because you can't put stuff like this at a pot at a belt point. I love the star trek world. I just I wish So, uh, it's a shocker. What what phone are you using as your daily driver these days? I'm between a couple different phones right now. Um, I'm using The iphone 15 plus and yes, I know And uh a google pixel seven pro those are the those are the the the daily drivers from me and and and You know, just to what wan was talking about with people not wanting to buy phones over 400 dollars You know, and actually, uh, you said, you know, I have down here andro essential. I'm more I just wrote an article about the iphone 15 plus And how going to disneyland Convits me. This is the best phone for most people Just because of the battery life and and like wan said earlier the cost and so You know, there's a lot to be said for andro devices that are, you know, giving people Uh a lot of value For their dollar Compared to other phones where you really look at and go am I really getting that much more buying a $1,200 phone than I am of five six $100 phone Well, it's interesting that that came up because we we do have an a listener email later in the show On this very topic. So yeah, I I wasn't going to say like shut up shocker Save it because we actually have So so let's get through the rest of stuff that we get to it one more quick thing on hardware And I feel bad because one shocker while I love having you guys here I wish uh jason or flow or michelle or when we're here to celebrate this moment because uh in the in the in the array of Black friday and cyber monday deals articles. I did catch the fact that uh walmart's new google tv stick has been released And they all know a favorite of this group of people who podcast the the the walmart brand Onn period They've now released the uh the chrome cast like or roku like, you know hdmi stick form factor This thing runs google tv and it's less than 15 dollars yeah And we joke about Ananana and it's lesser quality and being a Walmart brand, but honestly, you could give someone Google TV as a stocking stuffer this holiday. It doesn't suck. At this price point, this is not a bad, from all of the things I've heard, this is not a bad device. Well, and the truth be told, so something that's remained a constant, I think throughout history, throughout recorded history, my father before me, my father, God, I sound like Star Wars. My father before me was a post-production editor. He was a film and TV editor, and he used to get so annoyed back when TVs had tint knobs and all that stuff way back when, because he'd come home and everybody'd be watching a green TV. And my dad would go, oh my God, how can you guys sit here and watch? Cause he's an editor. His job is to fix images, but regular people, that would have been my mom, myself and my brothers, my siblings sitting around watching TV. We don't even notice those things. So for somebody who's gonna have this sub $15 device to put on their TV, if there's some part of the imaging, the video that's not quite as polished or pretty as a more expensive streaming device, nobody, generally, very few people are gonna notice that. But here's the thing, and the more I talk about this, I'm watching Juan's squirm at his seat. So it definitely is a lower price device. It's only got 1.5 giga RAM, so you're gonna be limited by the number of apps you can install on it. It does have micro USB connectivity, 1080p output, no storage expansion, so don't think you can hook a hard drive out to anything like that. We don't know what the internal storage on it looks like beyond the 1.5 giga RAM. Hopefully, it's meaningful. But it's running the same chip set that the 1080p Chromecast with Google TV is running. Yeah. And so it supports AV1 decoding. So it's not bad. To your point, Shaka, it's probably like do people don't know, this is not bad. This is the kind of the mandatory option that we need. Because I don't know about you and your circles of family and friends, but I end up visiting family and I have to play tech support for like Roku TVs and LG TVs and Samsung TVs. And one other family member has a TCL with Google TV built into it. And at some point, we're all just frustrated because after like a year, the smart part of our TV is kinda useless. And so I've slowly been getting other family members to do things like, if you want Roku, just buy a Roku box. Then it doesn't matter what TV you use. You know exactly how this thing is gonna work. And for the Google side of this, a lot of people still have full HD, 1080p TVs. So you're not gonna wanna spend $30, $40, $50 on like a 4K streamer when you can walk in, grab something like this, your accounts are gonna transfer over. I have to hope that because it's Google TV and properly certified that it's not too much of a problem with maybe additional apps or bloat or trackers or something like that that might run off of it and be kind of malicious with data. I feel like Walmart working with Google, they probably have to have something, some kind of relationship that it's not gonna be a security nightmare. But 15 bucks and now it doesn't matter what TV you get, what interface we can finally get away from all of the terrible, smart aspects of these other TVs and use something familiar that can go with you from TV to TV after you upgrade. So I am on the Walmart website now and confirm that it's selling for $14.88. It is also out of stock. It's out of stock. Yeah, not surprised. I'm not surprised. Now that said, looking at the specs of it on the website they do indeed not mention the storage on the device. I have to imagine it is almost nothing. Almost nothing, yeah. So know that as you're going into it. But yeah, but you have a guest room, you have whatever, just throw that in the TV and it's a great solution. So yeah, I just had to call it the, no, no, no, no, no, which just cracks me up. No, I mean, I wasn't really squirming, squirming. You were squirming a little, I was squirming a little. No, but I'm right there with you. Never use the smart TV software in the TV, plug in a Google TV Chromecast, plug in an Nvidia Shield, plug in a Roku, like Patrick Norton gave me that advice, geez, like 2008, right? And it was like, yeah, just get a dumb monitor that shows the best image you can and plug things into it. And as much as I like my Chromecasts on our main TV in the living room, I'm back to a mini PC, just like I keep running into a limitation here and you're like, you know what? Nope, I flip a table over and I'm like, go full computer. Just like, go get back up. Yeah, no, I hit the device storage limit on the Chromecast with Google TV and the 4K one and like I did the lead apps and I got so mad I was going to pull out my Nvidia Shield and I just, I was too busy. God, I love the Nvidia Shield still. Nvidia Shield is still one of my favorite devices. It's still good. It's not like past tense, it's still good. Yeah, so. All right, cool, a couple of apps news before we get to our listener email. Google Messages is getting support for ultra HDR images over RCS. Hooray! The RCS revolution continues, HDR images, that's great. That's awesome, right? I don't know, like this is good news. Yep, yep. I gotta say, you know, we've been talking about RCS on like almost every single visit appearance that I make on your podcast. This Thanksgiving, my immediate family, all Androids and it was the best functionality we've ever had in sending messages back and forth, not having an iPhone ruining our conversations. Wow, glorious. Look at that, look at that, look at that rhetoric. Well, here's the question I asked everybody. This is the question I asked folks last week, I'll extend it to you guys. Where were you when you heard that Apple would be adopting RCS? Cause it's a real, that might be the highlight moment of the year, it's like, I remember exactly where I was when it happened. You know what's freaky, we were, so TK and I were at the MediaTek Summit and they're going out, they're talking about Dimensity 9300 and all big cores and we're going big this year. Did everyone start looking at their phones? You see this flurry of techies in the audience all like, oh my God, oh my God, check this out, check this out, RCS, RCS, hi message, hi message. That's so funny. Oh, that's so funny. I felt terrible, but I mean like, I feel like MediaTek, they still got some good coverage but it was like for a good like 10 minutes in the middle of their executive conference, a whole bunch of nerds were like flurrying to the social medias to talk about RCS on iMessage. That's too funny, I love it, that's a good one. All right, so that's gonna wrap it up for the news. I'm gonna skip the other apps stuff cause that wasn't really big news as it was but I'm anxious to get to our listener email which was always a highlight of it. Everybody in the audience you can email us at contactantandroidfaithful.com, we'd love to hear from you. And our first email is a long one. This is in response to Juan Sharko. We talked I think on last week's episode of the week before about Amazon moving away from Android and developing their own operating system. So we got a great, great email in from Dave who writes in and says, I'm a developer that has developed an open source app for both Fire TV and Google slash Android TV, Serenity for Android. Amazon early on was promoting devs to use the Google guidelines and Leanback framework for Android TV. However, over the last five years or so they stopped making recommendations to use Leanback and go to the web wrapper route. So the writing on the wall has been there for a while. Developing for both platforms was relatively painless except when it came to supporting older Fire TV sticks. While Fire TV for much of the time had a larger ecosystem due to their Amazon Prime video service, there were always several major versions behind on the OS. This change away from APK to ABB for app packaging probably also something to do with the switch. Amazon would need to invent similar infrastructure to support this distribution format. And as far as I know, Google hasn't open sourced many of its tools needed to support this. Amazon and Google both need to bury the hatchet and work together on these open source operating systems. Something neither of them did well in this case. Keep up the good work and check out Serenity for Android for an app that started off as an original Google TV app to Android TV, Fire TV, and finally back to Google TV. And that email came in from Dave Carver and Dave did share the link to GitHub, github.com, github.com slash nineworld slash serenity dash Android. And I'm sorry if you search Serenity Android, you can find it, but all the files and everything you need in there to install Serenity. And basically Serenity is a client for the MB media server. So if you're using that, it's a pretty cool tool. So definitely check out Dave's work. So definitely hard on that. I've definitely been playing around a lot more with some of these other tools for like locally stored file server, streaming services, stuff like that. I'm trying to maybe walk away from building everything on like Plex. But it's really great to hear from a developer in this space because I was vaguely anxious by the announcement, but I don't know WTH what we would have to worry about. And then it starts, you start spinning on some of the other Amazon ecosystem. I have really enjoyed having the Android subsystem in Windows 11. So I've got a little Windows on arm tablet that is now one of the most powerful and sort of flexible slates that you can buy. And you can run Linux apps, you can run Windows apps, you can run Android apps, but so much of the Android functionality is built directly on Amazon's app store. And it starts to kind of erode the confidence of Amazon products and services like, well, if you get a fire tablet at some point, are they gonna start walking away? Now fire TV isn't gonna be built on sort of the more Android-y aspects of this. That means developers have to work on other apps and packaging and support. It bifurcates a lot of their support efforts. All this stuff gets crazy more complicated when you think about what the longer term ramifications might be when, I mean, it was never easy, but it was at least a little more familiar. You pick up an Amazon fire tablet, you're like, okay, I kind of know what I'm doing. If I've ever picked up an Android tablet, they're not that dissimilar. So that to me is the big concern is like looking down the medium term distance. If this kind of continues to split and they continue to fork like this, I don't see where Amazon is really gonna be able to fulfill the entire ecosystem that they've been able to develop kind of piggybacking on some of the work from developers making Android apps. It's a big question. It's a big question. So we'll see what happens next year when Android, when Amazon has, they're going big with the connected TV space next year apparently. We'll see, probably post CES and all that sort of stuff. What happens with it? But according to Dave, this has been years of the making. So, which I think that that insight is really, really interesting. For sure. All right, well, up next is our next email that we had teased a little earlier. Good evening, Android Faithful Crew. I've been a long time listener for the last four years. The three of you turn an otherwise semi-boring genre of tech into something interesting every week. This might be, this is our pull quote by the way. If I ever need to get an ad on a poster, it's gonna say, you turn a semi-boring genre of tech into something interesting every week. Thank you. I often listen to the podcast while constructing massive cities in SimCity 4 or driving along the coast of Spain or the Balkans in ETS2. My question for you three is what is the best budget phone I can buy unlocked for Verizon? My current phone is a budget Samsung phone which is about five years old, five years old is borderline useless on some days due to its slowness. I don't need a flashy phone with all the latest specs or the best camera as I use a DSLR to do most of my photography and video work. I mostly use my phone for checking emails, finding an address in Confusing Queens, New York, which I can attest that it can be confusing, watching YouTube while waiting for a bus that never comes, LOL, banking, paying for transit. I don't game and nothing too demanding like having 30 browser tabs open at the same time. My budget is $140 to $220. I would also like to have good battery life and this comes in from Corey. So throw it to the groove. What is a good low-cost phone? I actually did pull up Verizon's website to see what was available and I don't wanna chat with them. So it looks as if- It's tough. It looks as if they've got the Motorola G Pure for $149, the Nokia 2V Tele for $168, the Samsung Galaxy A14 5G for $199 and then you get into the Motorola G Power for $249. Here's where I get a little, and Corey, I'm not saying you shouldn't be, like I don't have a problem with your presentation or your budget, but I always worry that in my circles of family and friends when someone says, oh, I'm not doing a whole lot on my phone, I don't need a whole lot, that's kind of the family member who comes back to me six months later and says, this phone is so laggy or so stuttery, I ended up replacing it and I just got myself an iPhone because they just work. And then you're like, but I know the phone that you got and you got this older iPhone was like two, maybe two and a half times more expensive than the phone that you got as an Android when you didn't need a lot, but then you wanted something smooth. So I would still try to consider the higher end of your budget just for maybe getting an older premium tier device that can still be fluid, be a nice sort of smooth experience for doing your day-to-day stuff. You don't need the horsepower, you're not playing a game, but I think you'll still appreciate having something that's a little bit more performant. And I think you also might wanna strongly consider looking used and refurb. Right now, now that the Pixel 8s are out, you could probably score a really good deal on a Pixel 6, right? So knowing that Verizon is already gonna be sort of a price premium for a lot of your phone-to-phone comparisons, like if you could go totally unlocked versus a Verizon branded model, that would be where I would start kind of pointing. Look at like the sort of premium tier option from two years ago and you'd be in a good market to kind of satisfy something like that. I don't know that I would go $200 phone today if you can, especially if you're watching a podcast or listening to a podcast like this, that means you're already a little techier than the average bear, excuse me. So you would know, you buy a $200 phone today, you might get a year of software support. You buy a Pixel 6, you probably still get two more operating system updates. Already, it's still a better buy in terms of your software security updates and patches. Yep. Yeah, and overall, you're just going to get a better, you know, something back when I was playing paintball, I had a guy that I knew who made a custom part who had his own shop and he said something that just stuck with me forever since then. And he said, quality only hurts once. And, you know, it just speaks to what Juan was talking about with family members who want to, you know, buy something inexpensive and I don't blame anybody for wanting to do that. We all want that. But at the end of the day, your other compromise is going to be worth it for you. And so when you pick up that $200 phone and you're waiting, and it sounds so silly because we're in a society where we've become accustomed to computers and things that are moving in darn near real time, but when you're trying to do things on your phone and you're having to wait a minute, two minutes, three minutes because something's moving slow, something's laggy, 45 seconds, whatever, compared to something that when you touch it, it responds immediately or almost immediately. That really does make a big difference in today's world because we're so used to everything happening in near real time. So spending a couple of dollars more not only gets you something that is going to not have you waiting for it to do what it needs to do, but it's also gonna last you a little longer. To Juan's point, I hear people talking about how they can use a Mac and 10 years later that Mac laptop is still functional and it still works. Well, yes, because you paid for hardware that's going to last you in years. That is always my example. I had that aunt who was like, oh, my new Mac is so much better than my old Dell and you're like, well, what was your old Dell? And you're like, it was a 10 year old laptop that I got for like $400. Well, what's your new Mac? A $1,500 MacBook and you're like, so you don't see like a decade of difference and you spent three times more. If you buy a $1,500 Razer laptop, it's gonna last you a long time. It's just- So I've got, I've picked it out. I've got it for him. You can find the Verizon LG Wing for $198 on Swappa. There you go. That's your- It's Wivel Hinge. Yeah. Classic LG design. No, don't do that. Don't do that. I was gonna say, really? You're gonna do that? No, actually, I mean, because he's a Samsung, he's a former Samsung owner. I mean, even going back to like a Galaxy S25G, that's a sub $200 phone now. And even in today's software, that thing is still a monster. Yeah. I'm trying to look up the Google Pixel 6, the Verizon branded Google Pixel 6 is 175 bucks used. So those are your ballparks. Those are really good phones, which are gonna be overkill for your needs today, should last you a couple of years into your style of usage. I mean, especially if you can maybe look at shopping a refurb on some of that stuff, I think you'd be in great shape looking at that era of phones. Yeah. I'd like to comment in the chat. I interest you in a gently used Palm Pre. You don't have your Microsoft Kin still rocking? You don't have like a... Don't make me break out my Sony Clier. Oh, I had a Clier. I had a Sony Clier. That was fantastic. Love those. Yeah. No, Juan, I was gonna go with you with the go back, you know, because clearly if, you know, Corey's not looking for the best camera and all the kind of stuff that the bells and whistles go back a couple of years, because those premium phones are now super affordable and you get them... I've given that advice to a couple of people and then they get surprised by how much they now enjoy using their smartphone camera because their old smartphone camera was mediocre. Of course you don't like taking pictures on an old mid-ranger Samsung. You might like it a bit more on a newer, a Galaxy S20 would be a really nice upgrade for you. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, but even then, I mean, and what's great now is that those lesser priced premium phones that are several years, still had better cameras than what he was working with from previous stuff. Huge step up. It's gonna be a huge step up. For sure, yeah. Awesome question. Thank you, Corey, and thank you, Dave, for writing in. You can write in at contact at androidfaithful.com. We love to hear from you. It's fantastic when you do. We appreciate it. Well, gentlemen, thank you for joining me on this slow news week, which turned out to be a great conversation. Who's next? Yeah. So Tashaka, where, if people want to see more of your work, where can they find you? You can find me anywhere on the web, at Tashaka Armstrong, TSH-AKA Armstrong, AKA, and this was a joke that happened kind of organically on Twitter, villain McBeardface. Somebody had a Twitter thread about bond villains and somebody made a joke about me and my beard and villain McBeardface stuck. So there we are. So yeah, you can find me anywhere on the web, at Tashaka Armstrong, but you can also find my work currently on androidcentralandimore.com. Excellent, yes, androidcentral, we do enjoy your work as evidence is earlier, so. Mr. Juan, where can folks find you? I'm all over the place. Somegadgetguy.com is probably the best place to just kind of find some of it. And then social media, some Gadget Guy YouTube, some Gadget Guy, and a huge shout out to all the people supporting on my Patreon, patreon.com slash somegadgetguy. And yeah, lots of stuff coming up for the holidays. So I make a lot of noise. So it's not difficult to stumble upon some of the things that I've done. It's good noise, it's good noise. We like having you as part of the android faithful family, Wolfie. My aunt actually, over Thanksgiving, is like, you make a lot of stuff. You're like, oh, you're not interested in tech at all. Okay, great, you've noticed. Excellent, and of course, if you listen to the show, you know you can find me at Ron XO across all the various different social media stuff. I'm most active on Instagram these days, so you can see my nonsense there with music and movies and stuff like that. But you can find everything you need for this show over at androidfaithful.com, our lovely website where we've got links to our Patreon, as well as to all the links to subscribe to the podcast, which I always think is funny, like just a little podcast convention. The common podcast thing to tell everyone where to go subscribe to their podcast at the end of the podcast that they just listened to, clearly they found it already, right? But still, anyway, it's all there. It's what we do, it's weird if you don't have it at the end of your show. But yeah, we're also, as I mentioned earlier, we are live on every Tuesday at 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern, on YouTube at YouTube.com slash Daily Tech News Show and on Twitch.tv slash Good Day Internet. We love our DTNS family for helping us and welcoming us to their playground to do our little show in. But I wanna thank Juan, thanks Chaka, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I believe when and Michelle will be back next week, which will be fantastic, because we only got a couple more weeks left in the year and I'm sure there's a lot more stuff to come and talk about. So make sure you go subscribe, go to patreon.com slash Android Faithful. We thank everybody for their support and we'll see you next week on Android Faithful.