0:00

Coming up next on All About Android, it's

0:02

me, Jason Howe. We've got Ron Richardson wins

0:04

with Dow. Rishi returns. Great to

0:06

have Wynn back. I give

0:08

you my review of the Pixel

0:10

7a, the mid-tier

0:13

device that just came out from Google a couple

0:16

of weeks ago. I definitely have thoughts,

0:18

so you won't want to miss that. Also, we

0:20

talk about Android's recent feature drop that

0:22

happened last week. The Moto, the Motorola

0:25

Razr Plus. Is it Moto Razr

0:27

Plus or Motorola Razr Plus? Regardless,

0:29

we think

0:29

it's very nice. We play

0:32

with the generative AI for Google

0:34

Search, which is a lot of fun. Assistant,

0:36

killing more features, your feedback,

0:39

and so much more next on All About Android.

0:44

Podcasts you love. From

0:46

people you trust. This

0:49

is Twitch.

0:53

This is All About Android, episode 633,

0:56

recorded Tuesday, June 6th, 2023. Pixel

1:01

7a review.

1:03

Thank you for listening. As an ad-supported

1:05

network, we are always looking for new partners

1:08

with products and services that

1:10

will benefit our audience. 99% of

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1:28

Hello and welcome to All About

1:31

Android, your weekly source for the latest news,

1:33

hardware, and apps for the Android faithful.

1:35

I'm Jason Howell.

1:37

And I'm Ron Richards. And

1:40

I'm Wynterette Dow. And on today's show,

1:42

we are gonna do nothing but talk about Apple's

1:45

new headset. Ready? Let's

1:48

go. It's all Apple VR

1:50

or AR, or whatever they're calling it all the

1:52

time. Yes, that right there. Don't

1:56

even put it up on the video. Don't get me started on those, the

1:58

overpriced ski goggles.

1:59

that I was saying

2:02

in our chat during the WWDC

2:04

presentation that the whole presentation felt like a SNL

2:06

sketch. It was just felt, felt with gibberish

2:09

and like, you know, it just, I had a hard

2:11

time taking this seriously. It's $3,500 doesn't even,

2:13

I think overpriced is under, is

2:16

under, under, under, under

2:19

selling it. Overpriced

2:21

is underselling it. Possibly

2:24

quite literally, if it's too expensive, then it would

2:27

sell. So

2:30

yeah, I'm curious to see

2:31

how this whole thing goes, but

2:35

I still need to know more. Every

2:37

year, WWDC happens and

2:40

I realize like we talk about all

2:42

kinds of tech on this network, but I'm

2:44

so focused on Google and Android that

2:46

WWDC happens and occasionally

2:49

I'll drop in and I'll watch,

2:52

you know, as it's happening to, to just

2:54

kind of understand and know what it's

2:56

all about. But I'll be honest, yesterday I was

2:58

at the dentist during WWDC. Do

3:02

you want to know what was so funny? What was so funny, Jason, was that

3:04

I actually had a call with Renee

3:06

Richie yesterday.

3:09

And it was like

3:11

right before the presentation and one of my staff who

3:13

follow, who, who also follows and

3:15

stuff like that was like, Oh, weird that we're

3:17

talking to Renee on WWDC day. He'd

3:20

be all over that. But in turns out on the call, he was like, yeah,

3:22

it's the first time since 2009 he wasn't there.

3:24

So yeah, that was, that was

3:26

pretty funny. But, but yeah,

3:28

very much the same. I do have to say though, for the

3:31

Android of it all, as we're,

3:33

as I was watching the, the, the rollout

3:35

of whatever it's called the Apple vision, whatever it is, you

3:37

know, I was like,

3:39

Oh, fabric elements

3:42

on the visor. Hmm.

3:45

Where have I seen that before? Daydream. Once

3:48

again, there's always

3:49

a little, a little bit of Android

3:51

there in the Apple presentations. No, Ron,

3:54

you're, that's just Apple design

3:56

that is just classic, high

3:58

stance, the superiority.

3:59

Sorry, I don't, sorry, someone

4:02

take this chip off my shoulder, I'm sorry. Did

4:05

Google get out of VR too soon?

4:09

Because if they were still in VR, would they be,

4:12

you know, I don't know,

4:14

would they be on the same wavelength

4:17

as what Apple is doing here? I don't

4:19

even know what Apple is doing here, to be honest. I

4:21

don't know what this is gonna turn into, but anyways,

4:26

gotta at least get that in there on the week

4:28

of WWDC and Apple

4:31

unveiling a major new product that

4:34

is very untested at this point. You gotta

4:36

mention it at least once off the top of

4:38

the show,

4:38

even on an Android show. There, we've

4:40

done it. So

4:44

given that we have that out of the way, let's

4:46

talk about features, Android

4:48

features. We're gonna jump into the

4:50

news a little bit later. I've got a

4:53

review of the Pixel 7a, so

4:55

a completely different type of hardware

4:59

coming from Google, not hardware that

5:01

you wear on your face. But

5:04

before we do that, we have to talk a little bit

5:06

about the news and that's coming up right

5:08

now.

5:08

I

5:11

don't know about you guys, but I'm

5:13

glad to bring back my old templates

5:16

for VR and stuff. So seeing

5:18

what this show looks like in VR. Oh,

5:20

that's supposed to be the view. So,

5:24

okay, so can you do like, I

5:27

wanna dissect this and see, is

5:29

this a resized screen

5:32

that you're watching the Android news bumper on?

5:34

You've done whatever you

5:36

do with your hands to like resize it to be

5:38

large while you're sitting in the studio, is that kind

5:40

of the thought? Yeah, and like, you

5:41

know, when it's in like another room and stuff like

5:43

that. Or when you see a password. Hey!

5:47

Well, I like that.

5:49

For our audio viewers, there was a video

5:52

view of the Android news bumper within a

5:54

VR view. Of the studio.

5:56

So it's almost like

5:58

you're watching our show.

5:59

wearing VR goggles, almost exactly

6:02

the same thing. Good

6:04

work Victor. Yeah, I mean, we

6:07

had that for, you know, daydream and all that stuff,

6:09

you know. Yeah. That went

6:11

somewhere, right? But. Well, it went

6:14

into the garbage. I'm glad I didn't throw it away.

6:16

I'm glad I didn't throw it away. I mean,

6:19

even my VR viewer that's made of cardboard,

6:22

I didn't throw that away. I still have that.

6:24

Oh no, no, we find those. And it's made of cardboard.

6:26

It could have been recycled, easily,

6:28

but no, I didn't do that. I

6:30

still have it. You can't use it though anymore,

6:33

right? Like I think the

6:35

app that even, you

6:36

know, drove those things, I don't think that you

6:38

can really use it anymore, right? They, I

6:41

know that daydreams done. Yeah, I think they shut it down, right? Yeah, I

6:43

think it's all shut down, so. Anywho,

6:46

okay, so when you've got the top

6:48

news story, which let me tell you,

6:51

this is, these are some features that

6:53

we got to shut things down and talk

6:55

about this right now, they're so major.

6:57

You know what, Apple's not the only one

6:59

who can drop a life changing features

7:02

this week, okay? We got some stuff for

7:04

you.

7:04

It's

7:07

stuff and some of it's nice. All

7:09

of it's nice. It might change your

7:11

life, it might not. But, you know,

7:14

so we're gonna use it again in pixel, you know,

7:16

pixel feature drops, but this is one of

7:18

those more generic kind of like Google features

7:21

on Android drops, Google drops, Android drops.

7:24

So these aren't features that are specific

7:26

to Google. Here's just a laundry list of like

7:28

app updates, Google things, third

7:30

party things that are kind of cool,

7:32

or pretty dang cool, sorry, pretty dang cool. I

7:35

got to sell it a little bit better so we can. Or

7:37

somewhat cool, or cool-ish,

7:39

or. Cool-ish. Lukewarm?

7:43

Luke, nice. Yeah, they're nicer

7:45

than Lukewarm. They're nicer than Lukewarm. Well,

7:49

I mean, if you are a parent

7:51

who has a kid that is

7:53

learning to read and you

7:55

want to give them a little bit of Google

7:57

help with their reading, there

7:59

is now reading practice as

8:02

a part of the Google Books application.

8:07

So reading practice is pretty interesting. It's

8:09

a number set of features that I think is

8:11

meant for you and

8:14

your child to help reading. So

8:16

they have things like tracking reading positions, whereas you

8:18

all are reading, it will highlight the text and

8:22

kind of show you where the place are. If your child

8:24

gets stuck in a word, you can

8:27

actually click on that word and hear it out loud. And

8:29

not

8:29

only that, you can hear it broken down by syllable

8:32

so that kids can get help

8:34

sounding it out. And you can

8:36

hear sentences for each word to kind of give more

8:38

context and help kids learn what words are. And

8:42

just all kinds of stuff. And just

8:44

generally trying to keep reading sessions saved

8:48

on your Google Books so you can come back to them. And

8:50

yeah, there's even like, I'm not exactly sure how it works, but there is also practicing

8:52

challenging words where there's

8:55

a little mic functionality. I don't know how this works, but

8:57

it is supposed to help kids practice a difficult

8:59

word that they come across in their reading. And

9:02

yeah, so to get started with reading practice, you

9:04

can check out the collection of kid-friendly books on

9:07

Google Play Books. There

9:10

are some no charge options, but that implies

9:12

maybe there are some charge options. And

9:15

there's also kind of like a wide collection of

9:17

thousands of others in English language books that

9:19

practice can be enabled on. So yeah,

9:21

that's, I mean, this is generally like

9:24

a really nice set of features for you

9:28

to practice reading with your kids

9:29

on your Android and Apple

9:32

tablets. So

9:34

to go along with kind of like enhancing

9:36

tablets, not just tablets, but phone screens, there

9:39

are three new widgets from Google

9:41

Finance, Google TV, and Google

9:43

News. These

9:45

kind of seem like really adding on things.

9:48

I mean, obviously the Pixel tablet is there, but

9:51

these are basically new upgraded, visually

9:55

upgraded nice widgets that

9:58

will give you suggestions from Google TV.

9:59

stock tracking from Google Finance

10:02

and just daily curated headlines from Google News. So

10:04

just kind of like new and improved widgets,

10:06

presumably super handy

10:09

for your Google Home

10:12

Display, whatever flavor that might be.

10:14

In third party arenas,

10:18

if you have Wear OS and you're

10:20

a Spotify user, you're in luck because

10:22

they have released new tiles and watch face shortcuts.

10:25

So you can tap on your wrist to

10:27

activate Spotify DJ for a personal

10:29

mix of your favorite music. You

10:32

can stream your

10:34

favorite podcasts and you

10:36

can also, from a shortcut, you

10:40

can also play your current favorite

10:42

frequently listened to tunes. So

10:45

again, for Spotify users, a bunch

10:47

of new functionality on your Wear OS

10:49

devices. And I

10:52

think

10:54

I... Oh, sorry. Let's see. For

10:57

Wear OS, also there is Google

11:00

Keep. Actually I skipped one.

11:02

Sorry. So actually there's a lot of Wear OS

11:04

news. So for my hometown

11:07

friends in the DMV,

11:10

in the DC area, as well as in the Bay

11:12

area, you can now use your Wear OS

11:14

smartwatches to tap and pay via

11:16

its Google Wallet integration. So just

11:19

if you got that Wear OS, you go into the turnstile, you

11:22

can just... That's nice. Yeah.

11:23

Yeah. I mean,

11:25

is Google Play via phone

11:27

already? I mean, it's been a while since I've commuted

11:30

via like public transit, but presumably

11:32

phones already... This seems like phones

11:34

already enabled, but now...

11:36

Now doing this on your watch. Yeah. ...that's true.

11:38

So yeah. So there you go. And also,

11:42

if you're a Google Keep user, Wear

11:44

OS has a new tile for you. So if

11:47

you have some pinned note, like your shopping

11:49

list, you can easily swipe through

11:51

your tiles and get to that shopping list while you're on the

11:53

go. And

11:54

if you haven't heard of

11:56

Emoji Kitchen, you should use it. It's

11:59

dang crazy ending. awesome and there's

12:01

new recipes in the emoji kitchen, which are basically

12:03

the sticker mashups of various emojis.

12:06

And

12:07

there's a bunch of aquatic-y ones. I've

12:10

used it all the time. They get really frightening

12:12

sometimes, a little bit Cronenberg ask, but it's

12:14

still funny.

12:17

So if you are someone who likes sharks and dolphins,

12:20

but have been missing your shark and dolphin mashups

12:22

in your emoji kitchen, you got that. And

12:24

finally, a little more seriously, if

12:28

you are a Google

12:31

one user, you can now

12:34

pull up a dark web report on

12:37

either the app or the website. And this allows you to scan

12:39

for your Gmail address on the

12:40

dark web. By

12:42

the way, I have several services

12:45

that have offered dark web scanning and it is

12:47

just a concept horrifies me.

12:49

It's akin to

12:53

going to a doctor and getting my hearing tested, like

12:56

I don't want to know. I don't

12:58

want to know. I just don't want to know. No,

13:00

you know what I think about dark web testing? It's

13:03

let me plug this in and not see

13:05

if my email address is out there

13:08

on the dark web somewhere. It's no,

13:10

let

13:10

me see all the places that it's out there.

13:13

Like how is our email address

13:15

not everywhere at this point? You know what I mean?

13:18

Oh man. Yeah, I

13:20

have some identity, you know, identity

13:23

protection services. I think I probably got them free from

13:25

some kind of like, you know, security leak from

13:27

some years ago. And it does do that too, but

13:29

this is through Google one. So if that's

13:32

something that worries you or you

13:34

want to go ahead and be like Jason to be brave

13:37

and see what is actually happening on the

13:38

dark web, you

13:41

have it via Google one. And there's your,

13:43

what's, what's creepy is I just went to Google one

13:45

to the Google one website to set it up

13:48

just cause now I'm curious and

13:50

you can put in your, it's like

13:52

asking for your social security number,

13:54

which is like, trust

13:57

us. Yeah. Yeah. I know.

13:59

I mean, and like when you click the added, it

14:02

says, what does Google one do with it? What does it impact

14:04

your credit score? You know, like all this sort of stuff. But

14:06

it's like, but then like if that info

14:09

is out there, what can I really do about it? I don't know.

14:11

But it's it is neat that you can add.

14:13

It scans for the email address that

14:15

you're set up for. But

14:18

you can add nine more so you can have 10

14:20

total email addresses. So if you're like me, we've got 19 or 10

14:22

emails out there. You

14:25

might want to monitor more. I don't think I'm going to

14:27

do the social security number for right now. I think that's just

14:29

too far. Yeah. Yeah.

14:33

Right. I guess I guess you just ask yourself, you know,

14:35

do you trust? I'm looking

14:37

at that right now. Do you trust

14:40

Google with that information? I

14:42

mean, I guess. Right. I mean, I

14:44

trust them with everything else. I mean, that's what that was

14:47

going to be my point. Like what does Google

14:49

not have about me at this point? Like

14:51

it's

14:51

like borderline sunk costs. Like, well,

14:53

I'm all like in for penny in for

14:56

weight. Is it in for penny in for a pound? Right.

14:58

In for penny in for a pound. Yeah, like that. It's more

15:00

like like, uh, sorry. Well, here's something

15:03

even more creepier is that I said, fine, I'll do it. And

15:05

so it says confirm your social security number. It says on

15:07

file. And then it says on

15:10

file. So they already have it. So totally.

15:13

I just noticed that too. I'm like, I can't enter it in here.

15:16

Oh, right. Because they already have. They don't need

15:18

it. It's cool. We've

15:21

we've we've scanned your email and found

15:23

it, found it hiding somewhere in, in

15:25

your 500,000 emails that were archiving for

15:27

you. So

15:30

you messed up one time and now we know your,

15:32

your social security number. Okay.

15:34

Verification successful. I

15:36

am now

15:38

getting this, whatever

15:40

it is. I'm doing the same thing. Yeah. Hmm.

15:45

It only takes a few seconds. It tells me 57 data

15:48

breaches leaked my info on

15:50

the dark land. I'm doing it now. 55 55 data

15:53

breach. Oh,

15:55

I win. I'm less

15:57

secure than you.

15:59

Only one result of my social security

16:02

number, which is nice. And it's T-Mobile. Oh,

16:04

T-Mobile, cool. All right, I'm doing it. I'm

16:06

doing it too.

16:07

Zero for me. Zero social security

16:09

number. Heck of a lot

16:11

of email. Yeah.

16:16

Okay. So this is, oh, I see result.

16:20

Other info was found in the dark with the long side. Okay.

16:23

So, sorry. There's two different places where it does

16:25

the social security number. One of them said zero results.

16:28

Now I scrolled down and I saw one result and

16:30

that also was, oh no.

16:32

Payday

16:35

loan apps. What is that about?

16:37

Oh, uh-oh. Uh-oh. Yeah.

16:40

What is that? I don't even understand.

16:43

That's so it's like

16:45

none of this information is me. It

16:48

told me it didn't have my SSN, but I found

16:50

my SSN something in something. Oh,

16:55

this is, this is a, this is a rabbit

16:57

hole that we've decided to end this show

16:59

early. We've got some remediation to do.

17:02

And uh, so I hope you'll understand

17:05

that our podcast is only 15 minutes today.

17:08

We got some, all

17:10

my info is in, is in a 180 million cell phone leak. What

17:15

is that? What was that? What is 180 million

17:17

cell phone link leaking? Oh

17:20

my goodness.

17:21

Oh yeah. What is that? 180 mill?

17:24

What is that? It looks like 180

17:26

million on information leaked. Great.

17:28

Oh my goodness. This is fun times.

17:30

Okay. Well, I'll go

17:32

ahead and leave this tab open. Set

17:35

it to the side for now. Yeah, maybe we do that later. Maybe

17:37

we do. Well, actually this is, this

17:39

is an interesting segue to the next story, right? Are

17:41

we ready to talk about this? So,

17:43

um, Google announced this quarterly Android

17:45

feature drop last week, right? We always love a

17:47

good Android feature drop. Um, and

17:50

a lot of it, uh, wait, that's the last story. Sorry

17:52

about that. Um,

17:55

but speaking of Google wallet in there,

17:56

a big feature is rolling out this

17:58

month, uh, which is. is support for

18:00

digital IDs coming to states that support

18:03

them. So for example, Maryland

18:05

can use it right now and that's been supported

18:07

on iOS for a while. Arizona, Colorado

18:09

and Georgia are coming soon. And basically

18:11

the IDs are stored on a device but can be

18:14

managed via myaccount.google.com

18:16

if you lose your phone. So

18:18

if your state has a digital

18:21

ID, you'll be able to add

18:23

that to your Google wallet or whatever it's called these

18:25

days, Gpay, Gwallet,

18:27

whatever it is. What even is it

18:29

anymore? Google wallet, sure. Also

18:32

coming to Google wallet, the ability to scan a photo

18:34

of a previously unsupported pass card with

18:36

a barcode for future use. So for example,

18:38

if your gym has a barcode but

18:41

it's not currently in Google wallet, you can take a picture

18:43

of it and you can store it within your Google wallet. Doesn't need

18:45

to be like onboard with Google. It

18:47

can store health insurance cards and other private

18:49

passes that are protected with biometrics

18:52

or a pin, which is very handy because my insurance

18:54

card has beat the hell in my wallet. So that would be

18:56

nice. And you can save passes

18:58

from messages directly to wallet and

19:01

save company ID and access badges to wallet,

19:03

which is pretty cool. I mean, if I could get

19:05

all this stuff that are in cars on my Google

19:07

wallet, like I'm already, I'm loving

19:10

putting my boarding passes in there, like

19:13

all that sort of stuff. It's getting a little

19:15

more feasible or valuable

19:17

as an app on my phone. I'm already using it to pay

19:20

for things at not just

19:22

Walgreens anymore, but I do it at the supermarket.

19:24

I do it, you know, Bank of America,

19:27

the ATM. I just put my phone up to the ATM and

19:29

it scans my, it does my card. And so I

19:31

like it, it's coming together. So I dig

19:33

it.

19:33

I do too. I don't know. I

19:36

don't know at what point I will ever feel

19:38

comfortable just leaving my wallet,

19:40

my actual wallet at home. But

19:42

I

19:43

think my thinking around that, like that

19:45

was always my criticism. Like, well, I'm

19:47

never gonna be so confident

19:50

that everything's in here that I'm gonna leave my wallet at home. Maybe

19:52

I still carry my wallet. I

19:54

just don't have to pull it out 90% of the time. And that

19:57

would be nice too. So it's like-

19:59

Yeah, I'm really-

19:59

for this. Colorado

20:02

has their own system of like that has like

20:04

a web view or web, kind of like a mobile

20:07

webpage in an app.

20:08

So good to provide

20:10

you your state idea whether that's licensed or not. But

20:13

it renders like, but

20:15

it's really bad. And also it kind of suffers from

20:18

kind of like, as you would suspect, most state

20:20

run websites. Sorry. So

20:22

having Google take it over while again,

20:26

wondering how much data we give Google

20:28

is, you know, a question that we might

20:30

ask or not ask these days, but it'll

20:33

look better. Google will do it better. Sorry,

20:35

State of Colorado. You're awesome either way, but yeah,

20:37

looking forward to that. You're

20:40

still awesome, Colorado. Well,

20:44

there you go. There's some major features

20:46

that you can't wear on your face. These

20:48

are actual features that just exist

20:51

inside of your phone now, or if

20:53

you live in a couple of those States that we talked about

20:56

anyways, we

20:59

are going to take a quick break.

21:01

When we come back, I'm

21:03

going to give you my thoughts on the pixel

21:05

seven a, which I've been using for

21:07

the last couple of weeks. So I've got thoughts

21:10

on that and they

21:12

may surprise you. How's that for a tease?

21:16

They probably won't surprise you that much, but you know, you

21:18

want to watch because I do have, I do

21:20

think that it's a little different than previous

21:23

a series and I'll tell you why, but

21:26

first want to tell you a little bit about what we do

21:28

here at twit. We do, well,

21:30

we do shows like these and

21:32

really what is it all about? It's about hopefully

21:35

giving you the listener, the

21:37

viewer, you know,

21:40

conversation and information

21:43

about something that you love, which we

21:45

love as well. And that's technology, right? We

21:47

are all tech enthusiasts. We

21:50

offer you the knowledge. We share the knowledge

21:52

that we have with you because we're all part of the conversation

21:55

together. And in order

21:57

to empower us, enable us

21:59

to do that.

21:59

We create partnerships with

22:02

trusted brands. We make just

22:05

really effective and important

22:07

introductions between those

22:09

trusted brands and our

22:11

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22:14

many of our listeners, in fact, half of them are in management

22:17

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22:19

involved in their company's decision making. Our

22:22

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22:24

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22:27

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delivering the reliable tech news

22:32

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22:34

here. Partnering with Twitter basically means that

22:36

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22:38

with valuable services. And

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22:46

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22:52

in tandem to give you the most impactful

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and effective assets and

22:59

ultimately the best ad reads that we can. Embedded

23:01

ads that are unique every time. We also over

23:04

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23:06

We've got onboarding services, ad tech

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23:18

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23:23

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23:27

Bonus ads, social media promotion.

23:30

I mean, you name it, we've got our hands in it all. And

23:32

we want long-term partners that want to grow

23:35

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23:37

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23:39

So it's really important to find

23:41

the right partners, bring them in and

23:44

make that

23:44

introduction between you and

23:46

the listeners, viewers that we have. Tim

23:49

Broome is the founder of ITProTV. They've

23:52

advertised on our network for more than 10 years.

23:54

As you probably already know, they've been with us forever.

23:57

And Tim said, we would not be where we are today

23:59

without them.

23:59

the twit network. Mark McCreary is the CEO

24:02

of Authentic. They've partnered with

24:05

Twit for 16 years and

24:07

they said the feedback from many advertisers over 16 years

24:10

across a range of product categories is that if

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24:16

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24:17

I think that speaks very highly about the

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to remember twit. Reach out to us at

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advertise at twit.tv today and

24:29

work with our world class audience.

24:32

That's you. That's advertised

24:35

at twit.tv. And yeah,

24:37

thanks for letting us talk a little bit about

24:39

why we're so cool. Yeah, we're

24:41

pretty cool. You already

24:43

know that though. You're, you're watching and listening.

24:45

So hopefully that means you think we're pretty cool

24:47

too. There you go. Okay.

24:50

And you know what else is cool? The pixel seven

24:52

a, so let's jump right into the hardware

24:54

block and talk all about it.

25:06

Well, well, well, look

25:09

what we have here. It's a

25:11

mid range pixel,

25:13

another a series phone coming

25:15

from Google. Google sent me this device,

25:18

the pixel seven a and

25:20

you know,

25:21

anyone who watches

25:23

or listens to this show knows that we are

25:25

fans on this show. I think year after

25:28

year we're, we're pretty big fans of the a

25:30

series pixel phones in general. Obviously

25:32

we love them. We talk about pixel phones all the time.

25:34

We're always talking about new updates and the

25:36

new phones and the rumors even and all that

25:38

kind of stuff. But the a series

25:41

obviously occupies a different category

25:44

of phone. It's not the, the

25:47

premium top of the line, you know,

25:49

a flagship model, but

25:51

it's kind of, I think the, the, what's

25:53

interesting about this year's offering is that

25:55

it's almost that like it's really close.

25:58

It's really close to the seven.

25:59

And I think that's

26:02

a good thing, but it's also a very confusing

26:04

thing. And so that's kind of my shortened

26:07

thesis on my time with the 7A. I've

26:09

spent a couple of weeks with this, have my SIM

26:11

loaded inside of the 7A. So

26:13

this has been my phone for two weeks now.

26:17

And so I'll go ahead and pop it out of the case, which Google

26:19

also sent. This is

26:22

their standard case. They no longer do

26:24

the fabric cases. Google does these like silicone

26:29

cases and I don't

26:31

know this. This is my second time having them.

26:34

And maybe the first time I use them, I thought they were

26:36

okay. This time I got to say it kind

26:38

of

26:39

kind of bugs me. Like it's super, I

26:41

realize the case is supposed to help protect your

26:43

phone, but it's so sticky.

26:47

It's like, it's like almost like too sticky,

26:49

like pulling it out of my pocket. I'm always like my

26:52

pocket goes inside out because it just

26:54

sticks to the pocket. You know, anyways, this

26:56

is not a case review, but that

26:59

aside, you can get the case if you like that kind

27:01

of case, but I'm not a huge fan. So

27:04

we got the 7A here. And as you can see,

27:06

just by looking at it. So Ron, you've got the Pixel 7,

27:08

right? Your device is a 7, not a 7 Pro. It's

27:12

a 7, correct. How close does this look like

27:15

the 7? It looks very close.

27:18

It's almost identical. Like if I

27:20

had a 7 to hold up against this, I think where you'd

27:22

notice a difference is that the camera bump is

27:25

not quite as steep. It's a shallower

27:27

camera bump. There's a reason for that.

27:29

The camera in here is different from the 7. Actually

27:32

it's the first time that Google has this particular

27:35

sensor, the 64 megapixel primary

27:38

sensor, first time in any of the Pixel family.

27:41

It does bend down to 16 megapixels by

27:43

the way. So you're not getting full 64 megapixel images. But

27:48

what that means is it's

27:50

a shallower lens. So

27:52

you end up with this kind of shallower camera

27:54

bump, which I actually like. I mean, the

27:57

trade off there of course, is that you can probably get

27:59

a...

27:59

you know, a nicer piece

28:02

of hardware out of the thicker camera

28:04

lens or the thicker camera bump

28:07

allows for, you know, more camera hardware,

28:09

larger sensors, that sort of stuff.

28:11

But, oh, Burke, is that a six?

28:14

That's, oh, that's the six A. Oh,

28:16

interesting. Okay. So Burke brought in his

28:18

six A. So this is, hold on.

28:21

Let me go ahead and dust off that

28:23

little camera bump area. Obviously you've had a case

28:26

on, because it's collecting a little bit. Wait

28:28

a minute. Is that a one plus? No,

28:32

not quite. This is a, is this like a magnet

28:35

thing? Yeah. A magnet thingy thing.

28:40

So I mean, this is, so

28:42

this is the six A, this is Burke six

28:44

A. This is the seven A. So this isn't obviously

28:46

the pixel seven, which is what we're talking about, but

28:48

you can kind of see there's a lot of similarity. This

28:50

actually the six A camera bump is even

28:53

shallower than the seven A. So we've

28:55

got a thicker

28:57

camera bump on the seven A compared to the six

29:00

A, which, you know, probably has something to do with

29:02

that, that upgraded 64 megapixel

29:05

primary sensor in there. But anyways,

29:08

oh, and it's a little bit, maybe a little bit thinner.

29:10

Yeah.

29:10

Anyways, thank you, Burke. That's

29:12

interesting. It's always interesting to put them side by

29:15

side. But design

29:17

wise, I mean, yeah, it looks a lot like the

29:19

pixel six or sorry, the pixel

29:21

seven. But you do have

29:23

the plastic back. So if that

29:26

bothers you, I mean, that's just a fact

29:28

here, but you know, it's a little bit lighter. It doesn't

29:31

feel cheap in any way. Actually, I

29:33

think it's a really great trade off. It obviously doesn't

29:35

help it protect against fingerprints

29:38

because it's covered as you can see, but

29:41

I always have it in a case anyway. So that,

29:43

that sort of stuff doesn't bother me

29:46

outside of that. I mean, it's really

29:48

very similar, right? You've got the same tensor

29:50

G2 processor on the inside. So proce,

29:53

you know, performance

29:55

wise, you

29:57

should, and I mostly did.

30:00

get very comparable performance

30:02

doing everything that I do with a phone.

30:06

It has eight gigs of RAM, 128 gigs

30:09

of storage. I say mostly because

30:11

I would get, and I wouldn't even know

30:13

how to replicate it, but just in regular

30:15

use, I would get times where I'd open up

30:17

an app and I'd

30:19

go to a posting. Like say, maybe I'd

30:22

open up Reddit or whatever and I'd go to a posting and

30:24

it would take like five or seven

30:26

seconds to actually populate it. It's like it would go

30:29

to that page

30:30

and then it would pause and

30:32

then eventually all the text would appear on the screen.

30:35

So I don't know if that's the app or

30:37

what, but I know I got it in a few different

30:39

apps. What would you think? When facing

30:43

something like that, does that feel like hearing

30:45

that

30:46

in your developer mind? You're like, oh,

30:48

that sounds like a developer who didn't button up this thing

30:51

in their app, or is that potentially

30:53

performance on a phone? Or

30:54

I guess it could be both, obviously. It

30:58

could be both, it's kind of hard to tell. It

31:00

kind of depends on like how often it happens, like

31:03

what else is going on with your phone to see if you

31:05

start it. I mean, you can always blame

31:07

us. That's fair.

31:08

I don't want to blame anyone. I

31:11

just want to know what's going on. It's

31:15

kind of hard because I would say like to

31:17

be fair, it could be combination

31:19

factors, but it could be like two things

31:21

together. Like something is a little bit less buttoned up and

31:24

then with like maybe slightly

31:26

less flagship hardware. Actually,

31:28

that's a really good point because I think sometimes a lot

31:33

of us tend to test

31:34

only on flagship because it's easier,

31:36

right? Because it's easy to say, hey, it

31:40

feels like a lot of people and this is just

31:42

weird mindset. A lot of people are on flagship, so it's

31:45

easier to test on flagships. And for us, it's easier too, right?

31:47

Because we don't have to deal with performance problems. So it could

31:49

very well be that as well. People aren't very

31:51

good at tuning apps and experiences

31:53

to mid-range. Sorry.

31:54

And I think you're

31:57

absolutely right there, Wen, because I think they're

31:59

just... goes back to fragmentation

32:01

and there's just possibly too many

32:04

phones, right? And like, that's why, that's why I think

32:06

a lot of people as awesome, and I

32:08

speak for this from experience with testing, you

32:10

know, my own apps, the,

32:13

when you upload the APK to the Google Play Store

32:15

and then they test it on

32:17

their side on phones and you'll get a report

32:20

saying this app, this app doesn't work on

32:22

a Google Samsung, whatever it is. Like you get specific

32:24

phone mentions in the Google Play Store, which

32:26

is really convenient, but you can lean on that because

32:29

you're just wait, you're just looking for functionality.

32:31

You're not looking for performance today. Right?

32:34

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

32:37

Yeah. It's hard to know. I

32:39

mean, I, I throw that out there just to say that I noticed

32:41

that with this phone where I wasn't noticing

32:44

it with my pixel seven pro. And

32:46

so things like that jumped out at me

32:48

where I'm like, okay, well, this is not something that

32:50

I've adapted with over the last six months.

32:53

I'm now using this phone and I'm noticing

32:55

these like kind of hiccup moments. And

32:58

so I don't know who, I don't know what is the blame.

33:00

I don't know if that's the phone or they app. I

33:02

mean technically thought that was sorry, you ever thought

33:04

that maybe you ever thought that maybe you're to blame

33:06

Jason, maybe, maybe,

33:08

maybe I'm just too fast at opening apps.

33:10

I'm just a user to slow down as a user.

33:13

Your eyes just move too fast. Your eyes are like 240 Hertz. Like

33:16

we have great expectations of

33:18

my heart. That's, that's what it is. So

33:22

who knows, but I did notice that

33:24

also notice some, some connectivity

33:27

blips. And here's where I wonder

33:29

if, because if you remember my one

33:31

plus 11 5g review, I dinged it

33:35

about that as well. I had moments

33:37

where my SIM would just

33:39

like my, my mobile connectivity

33:41

would just kind of blank out and for no apparent

33:44

reason. And the only way that I could restore it was to

33:46

do a re restart of the phone. I

33:48

don't ever experience that with my seven pro,

33:51

but I did with the one plus 11 5g, by the

33:53

way, one plus is sending me another one so that

33:56

I can test it because they didn't have that report

33:58

for anyone else. And I was like, okay, send me another.

33:59

other one, I really want to set the record straight.

34:02

And you know, if it's not happening anymore, I want to say

34:04

it on the show. So I've got one of those coming to me. So

34:06

I'll report back on that. But I did

34:08

experience that with the 7A. So then

34:11

I'm like, well, maybe it's the SIM and, or

34:13

you know what I mean? But, but if it's the SIM, then why does

34:15

it not happen with the 7Pro? These things

34:17

are so messy. It's like, there's no consistency.

34:20

I don't know what the problem is, but there

34:22

is a problem. And I certainly experienced it

34:24

a number of times. So that happened here.

34:27

I haven't seen any other reviewers that are really talking

34:29

very

34:29

much about that. I did actually see one review earlier

34:32

today that mentioned something along those lines,

34:34

but I don't know how consistent that is to

34:36

rely on it as like a, well, the

34:38

phone is just horrible because of this thing. So

34:41

I'm not even going to go there. The

34:43

display 6.1 inch FHD

34:46

OLED HDR display, it does

34:48

have,

34:49

this is the first A series that has 90 Hertz.

34:52

You do need to go into the settings in order

34:55

to activate that. It's not on by default. So

34:57

I think a lot of people get this phone and they'll never know

34:59

to do that. And they'll never experience the 90 Hertz. And

35:01

I think Google does that because of battery,

35:04

you know, when you've got, when you're running at 90 Hertz, you're

35:06

going to be churning through a little, a little bit more battery.

35:09

I didn't find the battery life on this phone to be

35:12

outstanding. I also didn't find

35:14

it to be horrible. And with

35:16

the 90 Hertz on, you know, it's kind of like a dynamic 60

35:19

to 90 Hertz thing. So, you

35:21

know, it's ramping up smartly

35:24

at times. And I

35:27

don't know, I like things to be visually

35:29

smooth. So I put it on having

35:32

said that I just had the Reddit app open and I was,

35:34

and I was doing some scrolling and things were jittering

35:37

a little bit for me. So, you know,

35:40

there you go. But I think

35:42

the display, you know, the colors, the brightness

35:45

and everything is fine. I mean, there

35:47

was nothing that really jumped out at me as I was

35:49

using this phone, like, oh, this display is horrible.

35:52

And I have seen other reviewers who

35:54

said that the display bothered them, but I, I

35:56

certainly didn't see it. I didn't experience

35:59

that. Now I mentioned.

35:59

the battery by the way, 4385 milliamp hour battery. Obviously

36:06

non-removable. We don't even mention that anymore because

36:08

once the last time we saw a removable battery. But

36:11

like I said, battery performance was fine.

36:13

Not top of the heap, not bottom of the pile.

36:16

But it is worth noting

36:18

that this now has, the A series

36:20

now has wireless charging,

36:22

which is awesome. You've

36:24

got wireless charging. If you've got a pad, you can just set

36:26

it on it. It will snap into gear.

36:29

The downside though is, I mean, yes, it's wireless

36:31

charging, but it's five watt. So it's really

36:33

slow, which doesn't

36:36

matter if you're doing overnight charging.

36:38

Yay, just set it on the pad and you'll

36:40

wake up and it'll be charged overnight, you know, with

36:42

the five watt trickle. But if you're

36:44

looking to do like a fast top up,

36:47

you're not going to get it with wireless charging. You're hardly going

36:49

to get it with wired. I didn't write it down, but I think it's

36:51

something like 15 watt wired

36:53

charging. So it's not really a fast charger

36:56

in any stretch. What

36:58

else is there to say? Well, the camera, the

37:00

A series phones and pixels in general

37:03

just always have really great cameras. Like I said, this is

37:05

a little different because it's a brand new primary

37:07

sensor,

37:08

the 64 megapixel. And

37:10

I would say the quality is pretty darn,

37:13

you know, it's as

37:15

expected. I mean, in really

37:17

great light situations, you get

37:19

some really fantastic images. I got some

37:21

really nice low light images.

37:26

Saw some wonderfully adorable dogs when

37:29

we were visiting family in Atlanta. There

37:32

you go. You know, I think

37:34

the pixel camera is two things in my experience. One,

37:37

it is pretty dependable good quality.

37:41

Like no matter the lighting situation,

37:44

I can usually pull out

37:46

a pixel phone and this one included and take a picture

37:48

with it. And, you know, it's

37:50

going to be great quality. And

37:53

just two, like it's really hard to mess it up. You

37:56

can almost always take out your pixel phone and

37:58

take a shot at it.

37:59

Like I said, in

38:02

most any condition, and you're probably

38:04

gonna end up with a pretty great picture. So it's

38:07

kind of good quality and it's hard to mess

38:09

it up. And I think that's what's really appealing about the

38:11

Pixel family of cameras.

38:13

Oh, we painted our cabinets this weekend.

38:16

Apparently we like the color blue.

38:18

And let me tell you, that

38:20

was our project. I

38:22

didn't have a weekend. I had a painting all

38:25

weekend. Anyways, there

38:27

you go. And there's the finished product

38:30

before they were really ugly. Now they're blue.

38:32

The blue is really popping in that photo. I know,

38:35

thank you. That's what I was looking for. I was fishing

38:37

for compliments. So, oh, that hard work.

38:41

There we go. Okay,

38:44

so I think at the end of the day,

38:46

the A series is about value. It

38:48

has been, remember the Pixel 3A

38:51

way back when that launched at $399. At

38:54

the time, the Pixel 3, which was

38:56

the next step up was $799. So

39:00

you

39:00

had a $400 phone that they

39:02

just launched the 3A and then an $800 phone, the next

39:04

step up.

39:06

Probably there were some sales and stuff that brought that down

39:08

to six, but still it was a couple of hundred, two to $300. What

39:11

you have now is you have the 7A at $499, so $500.

39:16

And then you have the Pixel 7 at $599, $600. So

39:19

it's a $100 step up. You

39:21

do have some of these features that we've been waiting

39:24

for, the higher refresh display. You

39:28

still have the great camera. You have the wireless charging.

39:30

That's a feature that every year people are like, but

39:32

it doesn't have wireless charging. Now it does. But

39:35

I think

39:36

as much as I do like

39:38

this phone, I think it's a great phone. It's

39:41

kind of like the price

39:42

differential is so close now that it

39:44

isn't quite as knee-jerk

39:47

as I think it was before. When it was a $400

39:50

phone and then the next step was $800, there

39:52

was no question. I mean, you get that 3A because

39:55

you're getting so much of the same experience.

39:57

You're saving half the cost. Now you're saving $100.

39:59

And I guess 100 is 100. And

40:03

you're still getting a lot of really great features. I

40:06

guess you have to ask yourself, what are you getting in the 7

40:09

that you aren't in the 7A? You're getting

40:11

a 0.2 inches of display and

40:16

you're still getting that 90 Hertz. You're

40:18

getting a few other handful of features.

40:20

You're getting the glass design on the back

40:22

instead of plastic. But I think at this

40:24

point,

40:25

it's kind of diluted a little

40:27

bit to where it's kind of less

40:30

obvious, if that makes sense. And

40:32

I don't know, I'm curious to hear

40:34

what you all think. I

40:37

mean, I haven't gotten mine yet. I

40:39

still need to chase it down, but my

40:42

limited time at Google I.O. of holding

40:44

this phone, I was really impressed with the phone

40:46

feel, right? Just the feel of the phone

40:49

in terms of like having felt

40:51

previous A devices compared

40:54

to the regular

40:56

or the Pro versions. The

40:58

gap between the phone feel in

41:00

this one and

41:02

the Pixel 7 was very thin. It

41:06

did not feel cheap in any way, shape or form.

41:10

Now that doesn't speak to the camera quality

41:12

or the battery or the performance

41:15

or stuff like that. But to your point,

41:18

I do agree that on the price

41:20

standpoint, if someone's looking for a new phone,

41:22

7A versus 7,

41:25

if they've got the extra money to spare, I'm gonna say

41:27

go for the 7, but not everybody does have the extra money

41:29

to spare. And additionally, there

41:32

might be, there might a hundred is a

41:34

hundred, there might be trade in opportunities,

41:36

there might be like other ways to get the phone

41:38

even cheaper and you still

41:40

get a really quality mid range phone

41:43

in the process. So I think that's still important.

41:45

That's a good point. If I do

41:47

a search for Pixel 7 and go to the Google

41:50

store,

41:51

I'm happy you mentioned that.

41:54

It looks like

41:55

trade in right now. So Father's Day

41:58

get up to $350.

41:59

back with eligible trade in. So if you're

42:02

spending 600 on a pixel seven and you

42:04

can get up to 350 back, you're

42:06

hardly spending anything.

42:07

Here's a, here's a fantastic example. Um,

42:10

so I've enrolled in Google search

42:12

labs and I have the generate generative AI

42:15

search results panel in my search results.

42:17

Okay. So I just typed all I typed in was

42:19

seven a deals and

42:21

I got generative AI results. Uh,

42:24

here's some deals for the pixel seven

42:26

a Amazon $50 offer free Amazon 50 Amazon

42:30

gift card for $50 best buy. You

42:32

get a free $50 best buy gift card and $50

42:35

off of the same day activation. All right.

42:37

Google store, you get free pixel buzz

42:40

a free pixel buzz a in a

42:42

limited edition phone case. Come on Google store,

42:44

you can do better. Um, AT&T

42:46

get $2 per month for 36 months with no

42:48

trade in required mint mobile. You

42:50

get a hundred dollars off in six months of free data. Verizon

42:53

is free with select 5g and limited plans

42:56

and T-Mobile is free with a new line

42:58

or a trade in.

43:00

So a

43:01

hundred is a hundred, but there's a bunch of deals

43:03

on there that'd be had on that seven a and thank

43:05

you generative AI. No

43:07

kidding. That's quite a, that's awesome.

43:10

It's like, I got, I got this research for you. You

43:12

go ahead and have dinner, which is a larger

43:15

conversation, a question about like, why go to webpages

43:17

anymore? That is a

43:19

big question. Yeah.

43:21

Okay. Well then you've got a lot of like

43:23

a deal opportunities to get

43:26

that price even, even further down then. That's

43:28

what that tells me. So, um, in

43:30

which case,

43:31

I mean, it does become even more of a value.

43:34

Um, that's, that's really interesting. Thank you for doing

43:36

that.

43:37

So there you go. I, yeah. And, and all

43:39

of this is to say it is not a bad phone. It's a great

43:41

phone. As I expected, I always

43:43

tend to like the a series devices. I'm

43:46

always kind of impressed by them. Um, they,

43:49

this is now, you know, the fifth

43:51

year of the a series phone. Maybe

43:54

my, my, my impressed

43:56

is has lessened because we've

43:58

gotten so used to it.

43:59

And the price has come a little bit

44:02

closer, but it's a great phone. If

44:04

that's what you can afford, you're going to get a fantastic

44:07

device. And of course you have Google's longer

44:09

term commitment to updates, which

44:12

is nice to have as well. So

44:14

Pixel 7a is a solid choice, but

44:17

really understand the

44:19

difference of what you're getting between the 7a

44:22

and the 7 because you might

44:24

want that faster wireless charging that

44:26

you get with the 7 that you don't get on the 7a. These

44:29

features might be worth $100 to you and

44:31

you might actually be able to get a pretty good deal on a 7

44:34

right now if you have a trade in, you

44:36

know? So

44:37

take a look for yourself and

44:40

thank you to Google for sending me this device to review

44:42

the Pixel 7a.

44:45

There you go. If you end up getting

44:47

one and you want to share your thoughts with

44:49

us, we would love to hear it. AAA at

44:51

twit.tv. Indeed.

44:53

So I do

44:55

love it when manufacturer

44:58

announcements catch up with the leaks that

45:00

we've been talking about. It's always nice because

45:02

we get stuff confirmed, right? And Motorola steps

45:05

in and announces two new foldables, things

45:08

that we've previously talked about in leaks format,

45:11

the Razer and the Razer Plus, but

45:13

still these are worth discussing now they're official. The

45:15

Razer Plus is coming to the United States on

45:17

June 23rd, a couple

45:19

of weeks for $9.99. And

45:22

the Razer Plus has a huge

45:25

cover screen. It's

45:27

a 3.6 inch OLED with 144 Hertz refresh

45:29

rate covered by Gorilla Glass Victus

45:33

and can run most apps on that display.

45:36

It's basically like having a tiny, so like

45:38

a half height smart phone. It's insane.

45:41

The inner OLED unfolds to a 6.9 inch 1080p

45:43

panel with 165 Hertz refresh. And

45:47

this is all running on the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1

45:49

chipset and it's got 8 gig of RAM, 256

45:52

gig of storage, 12 megapixel

45:55

F 1.5 stabilized main camera, 5 watt

45:58

wireless charging. And it is.

45:59

not resistant to water immersion, IPX8

46:02

like the Z Flip, but it

46:05

is IP52, which is dust and water repellent.

46:07

So there you go. Just don't jump into

46:10

the pool with it. No taking a shower. Yeah.

46:12

And the hinge can hold at 90 degrees.

46:15

So if you want to use the phone like at

46:17

a 90 degree perpendicular format, that's fine,

46:20

but it will not hold at any degree like the

46:22

Z Flip. So if

46:24

you look at a tilt, the phone

46:26

itself, don't do that. But

46:29

so there it is. I

46:31

love this cover screen. I mean, like honestly, like we've

46:33

seen a bunch of little, you know, tinkering

46:35

with cover screens and smaller versions and things like

46:37

that, but making it the whole front panel

46:40

or nearly the whole front panel. That's pretty cool.

46:43

I like that. I think we talked about this in a leak, but

46:45

it does look like there is a gesture

46:48

bar, a very tiny gesture bar to the

46:50

left of the cameras. And I believe that was very specifically

46:52

mentioned in like an early render we looked at. So

46:55

yeah, for real, it's functional. Like,

46:57

I mean, usability aside on how tiny that

47:00

is, but it is functional. It looks like you can actually like

47:02

search for apps, go back and all kinds of stuff. So

47:04

that's

47:05

that's pretty unique. I think even

47:08

the Oppo Flip and

47:10

the Z folder are kind of more like, you know, abbreviated

47:13

experiences, you know, just like kind of a subset.

47:15

But wow, like

47:17

bigger screen and bigger functionality. And

47:20

the hype, I mean, I've been surprised. I've seen a lot of

47:22

really excited hype around this phone, which

47:25

is fantastic for Razer, because obviously the first

47:27

time they released the smartphone version of the

47:29

Razer, it was like, wow, wow, that's cute. But

47:32

this seems like they actually kind of

47:34

not just caught up to Samsung, but

47:37

leapt ahead a little bit and did something

47:39

special. So good on them. And you're totally right,

47:42

because the screen is bigger, but get that hinge to

47:44

be at any angle.

47:46

And then they're better. That's a weird one. Yeah.

47:48

Like, like one step forward, like

47:50

half step back, maybe. That's

47:53

a strange one to not have, because

47:55

I feel like Samsung has gotten

47:57

a lot of praise for that. Maybe that's just

47:59

really.

47:59

hard to do, although it's Motorola, like

48:02

I'm sure they probably have the R&D to

48:04

pull that off, but yeah,

48:07

that was a little weird. Like why can't

48:09

you go at any angle? That seems strange

48:11

to me. Also, maybe

48:14

there should be like

48:15

a little button that you push

48:17

on the side when it's open so that you can do

48:19

the old school slap

48:22

it shut thing. It

48:24

like removes the resistance. You hold down the

48:27

button and do that and it goes like,

48:29

yeah, remember that flip it

48:31

open. See, I just,

48:33

I just remember really enjoying

48:35

that. So you go.

48:37

It was satisfying. It was. It was.

48:40

Uh, good

48:42

job. Motorola. All right. We're

48:45

going to take a pause for a moment. Right.

48:47

Before we get into our app news, we're just

48:49

going to think really hard about something. Okay.

48:53

We did it. Let's go to app news.

49:04

I know that was confusing, but you know,

49:06

it's essential. Um, okay.

49:08

Sometimes you just got to take a break.

49:10

You got to catch up. Yeah.

49:13

Uh, what you got when,

49:15

oh, Google assistant. Yeah.

49:18

So, um, you know how Google has seemed

49:21

like it's not getting a lot of love lately

49:23

at all. Assistance

49:25

like, really? We used to be your favorite.

49:28

Well, guess what? They're taking more toys away

49:30

from Google assistant. So Google assistant

49:32

is killing support for notes and list

49:35

integration with third party apps. If you

49:37

are using Google keeps though, you get

49:39

to keep your notes and lists. And

49:42

obviously this is just yet another, you know,

49:44

dance in this, in, in the Google

49:48

product feature shuffle shuffle

49:50

shuffle. Um, especially with the,

49:53

uh, advent of Bard

49:55

and AI assistance. Uh, it just looks like

49:57

they're maybe just

49:58

trying to consolidate stuff. Speaking

50:00

of consolidating, to

50:02

go with this is of course the

50:05

fate of reminders.

50:08

And so to go

50:10

on hand with the fact that they're removing third-party

50:13

integration for notes and lists for Google

50:15

Assistant, if you are still using Assistant

50:17

Reminders, it is now time to start migrating

50:21

to Tasks. Now, Task is...

50:23

As much as a pain it is

50:25

to feel like we have all these things that

50:27

we've used for years and years and they work, Google

50:29

Tasks is a bit of an improvement on Reminders. It has

50:32

a newer user

50:34

interface, user experience, and integrates more places.

50:37

It's going to be a dedicated app that

50:40

is also going to be integrated into the sidebar of

50:42

Gmail, Drive, and Docs, and

50:44

of course Calendar. So you're going

50:46

to get your Reminders and

50:49

what's

50:51

a non-Task word for Task? Things

50:54

to do. You're going to get your things to do in

50:56

more places and you will be able to use

50:58

the familiar prompts of, hey,

51:02

girl, remind me to do this, or

51:05

set a reminder to do that, and it will save

51:07

to Google Tasks. And there is

51:09

a migration process that is in place.

51:12

So right now, if you create any reminder in Google Assistant,

51:14

you'll get a little card that says, see reminders

51:16

in Google Tasks, and it will

51:18

kind of help you through the process of migrating

51:20

any of your current existing reminders over to Tasks.

51:24

Alternatively, if you just want to rip Band-Aid

51:26

off, you can go to assistant.google.com slash

51:28

reminder slash move and get it done.

51:31

And to make sure that it stays confusing,

51:32

Google

51:33

does note that Reminders created in

51:36

Google Keep won't be turned

51:38

into Tasks. They can stay in Keep.

51:40

So there's... So,

51:45

yes. So in general... Someday this

51:47

will all make sense. Maybe,

51:50

maybe. We'll need to like make a matrix of

51:52

like functionality... Yeah, the things you can and

51:54

can't do. And just check marks and then just

51:56

erase and check as possible. But Reminders

51:59

got to go to...

51:59

You got to go to keep for

52:02

your list in your notes, but

52:04

you can also have reminders there still and

52:06

take that as

52:07

you will. Sorry, Google. You know the thing

52:10

that you won't be able to do that you could do

52:12

with reminders that you can't do with tasks?

52:14

That's location-based. That's

52:17

right.

52:18

Yeah, and actually, so I activated

52:20

Google's generative search thing and

52:22

I forgot that I did it and I just went in and searched

52:25

Google tasks location-based and

52:27

the generative AI answered, Google tasks

52:30

doesn't support location-based reminders.

52:33

If you attach a location to a task, the location

52:35

will be automatically added to the task details

52:37

field, but you won't receive a notification

52:39

based on location. That's a bummer because I think a

52:41

lot of people use those.

52:44

That seems like a feature that should really

52:46

be there and probably will be, and when it is,

52:48

it'll be touted as like a really big deal.

52:51

Like, oh, hey, guess what we've done? Because

52:53

this is how it goes.

52:56

Take it away so we can give it back and pretend like it's

52:58

a new thing. Yes, yes, exactly. Get you all

53:00

excited about it again. Also,

53:04

I just want to say, I went to killedbygoogle.com

53:07

to see if any of this stuff was listed there and

53:09

it isn't, but I really appreciate the

53:11

work that they're doing there because Google

53:14

optimizes at the top of the list and

53:16

apparently on the site, they

53:19

now have the ability to like count down, or

53:21

they probably had this for a long time, to count

53:23

down

53:24

when in the future it's going to be not

53:26

just on this date, but in four months

53:29

or in five days or whatever. And

53:31

I just, I appreciate all the different ways

53:35

that a product is listed as

53:37

about to be killed. Off to the glue factory

53:40

in four months, floating belly up

53:42

in eight days, done for in two

53:44

months, to be flushed

53:46

in six days. Anyways, killed by Google. It's

53:48

a lot of fun to spend some time there and remember

53:51

all of the Google things that

53:54

no

53:54

longer exist. It's

53:57

a really long list too. Anywho,

54:02

okay. So

54:05

Google weather, apparently

54:07

there's conflicting

54:09

thoughts and opinions on what's happening

54:12

here. So I saw, you know, a lot

54:14

of people

54:15

getting really excited about the possibility of

54:17

Google weather becoming its own app,

54:20

which in my mind kind of makes sense. Like the

54:22

way the weather experience

54:24

has been is it's been integrated

54:26

into Google search, right? It's

54:29

a search app. So

54:31

it's not an app that you can launch on its own

54:34

or all that you can get to it through, you know,

54:36

like on the pixel, if you've got your time in your

54:38

weather area, if you tap the weather that that

54:40

opens up the weather portion, but it's feeding from

54:43

the Google search app. Well,

54:45

nine to five Google did

54:47

an APK

54:49

insight

54:51

and found

54:53

clues that they thought were pointing to

54:55

the possibility that

54:58

Google weather was going to become its

55:00

own breakout app and

55:02

upcoming revamp in fact, and you can kind of

55:04

see the revamp is this like dual

55:07

screen, obviously shown on a pixel fold

55:11

experience that looks very different

55:13

from the Google weather experience

55:15

that we're used to seeing right now. The thought

55:18

according to nine to five Google was that it was going

55:20

to end up in its own app

55:22

and wouldn't be tied into the Google

55:24

search

55:25

update anymore. It would

55:27

kind of, you know, minimize the size

55:29

potentially of, of everything that's happening

55:31

in the Google search app. But shortly

55:34

before the show, our friend Michelle

55:36

Roman pointed us to

55:39

a couple of tweets like a thread

55:41

that he posted earlier today where

55:44

he posits a few things here. He says,

55:46

quote, instead of a standalone app you

55:49

interact with, I think this new

55:51

app could just be a location based

55:53

weather provider for not just the clock

55:55

app, but potentially other Google

55:57

apps down the road. And the new experience.

56:00

would remain part of the Google app, adding

56:02

location-based weather directly into clock

56:04

or other apps would require requesting

56:06

location permissions, having an external

56:09

provider would avoid that.

56:12

There's a lot of skepticism and concern lately

56:14

around apps and location access. So

56:16

Michelle does not believe that this is

56:19

gonna be a standalone app, but rather that

56:21

Google is working on kind of building in

56:24

an official

56:26

location-based weather provider

56:29

into the Google search experience at

56:31

the benefit of the Google weather experience,

56:34

but also potentially others.

56:36

So that's kind of news in and of itself, if

56:38

that's what is to happen. And I'm

56:40

also reminded that Michelle Roman is very

56:43

smart.

56:43

Sure

56:46

is. He looks at these things like, oh yeah,

56:48

actually, you know what? I don't think it's that. This

56:50

is what I think it is. Yeah.

56:54

So we'll see who's right.

56:55

Yeah, totally. We don't know when we'll see who's

56:57

right, but someone's right. They're

57:00

on opposing sides of the field, which one

57:02

wins this? My money's on Michelle. I'm

57:05

gonna double down on our guy. So,

57:07

all right, we'll find out.

57:10

Breaking news. Breaking news. Is there news

57:13

or is it just breaking news that Michelle's awesome?

57:16

Yeah, just that Michelle's smart.

57:19

Okay. Breaking news. That's

57:21

not breaking news. We knew that all along,

57:24

Victor.

57:24

Well, it just took me a while to find

57:27

the button. Okay. I

57:29

mean, if at the end of the day, Michelle

57:32

just needed a bumper of some sort, I think

57:34

that's the right bumper to play. So, there it goes. Good

57:36

work.

57:37

Well, so earlier in the show, I was

57:39

referring to the generative AI results that I get

57:41

in search results now, that was shown at Google I.O.

57:44

And other AI features

57:47

and benefits that are beginning

57:49

to roll out specifically within, you know, the Android

57:51

ecosystem. Image

57:54

generation feature is rolling

57:56

out for Google Slides, for custom backgrounds

57:58

and presentations. So if you use Google

58:01

Slides for your presentations, you can use generative

58:03

AI. You can click the help me visualize

58:07

and then enter a prompt and it'll help create

58:09

an image. You can choose the style,

58:11

whether it's photography, illustration, a flat

58:13

lay background clip art, or just none.

58:16

And Google generates six to eight designs to

58:19

start. So that's pretty cool.

58:22

The Gmail help me write gets

58:25

contextual suggestions for replies taken

58:27

from the previous thread. So for example,

58:29

the names of the people you were replying to at any times

58:31

or dates in the thread. So it's parsing

58:33

through the conversation and giving

58:35

you some prompts to help you write in your response back. And

58:38

of course, the messages magic composed,

58:41

the Ballyhooed magic composed and messages

58:43

beta began rolling out over a week

58:45

ago to beta testers with

58:47

priority given to Google one subscribers who are

58:49

not rocking in the corner due to their

58:51

dark web search results. And

58:56

currently shocking, it

58:58

only works with RCS messages. So

59:00

I can count on maybe one hand the number of people I can use

59:03

this with. It's there.

59:04

But it's there.

59:07

We talked about this a couple of weeks ago.

59:09

I

59:11

find the Gmail email

59:14

response prompt to be extremely

59:16

useful and fascinating and actually

59:18

really, really effective. Messages

59:21

is such a short, text

59:23

messages are such a short specific

59:26

thing. I

59:28

don't like, other than, okay, great. I'll

59:30

see you when I get there or like little prompts

59:32

like that, which I feel like we already have. I

59:35

can't imagine using AI

59:37

for thoughtful responses and text messages seems

59:40

like an extra step or an extra

59:42

bit of friction in a context

59:44

that I don't want any friction. Yeah. We'll

59:46

see. Are you, do you have the

59:49

Gmail? I do. The

59:51

right for me thing. I

59:53

don't know that I have it. I do. So

59:56

when did it appear for you? Only in

59:59

one of my accounts. I signed up for my OG

1:00:01

Gmail account that I use,

1:00:07

not my Google workspace accounts. So

1:00:10

that might be the difference. So like my original

1:00:13

signed up with Google Gmail account, that's the one I

1:00:15

signed up for and it all unlocked and it's all there.

1:00:18

I don't have it for any of my workspace accounts,

1:00:20

even though I tried to sign up for it via those accounts. Yeah,

1:00:25

I don't have it on either of the

1:00:27

accounts. Pretty sure. Did

1:00:29

you have to sign up for it in the labs?

1:00:32

Like is it found in that labs page? Oh,

1:00:34

okay. All right, maybe I overlooked

1:00:37

it because I have not used that feature yet and I

1:00:39

haven't seen it. I'm on the labs page. Code

1:00:41

tips, SGE, the search

1:00:43

generative experience, I have that. The

1:00:47

add to sheets, make planning

1:00:49

easier. Oh, that's not AI. That's

1:00:51

not AI, turn off. That's not AI.

1:00:54

Go away. No, I don't have it yet. I

1:00:56

don't have the ability to do that. I'm super curious. So

1:00:59

you have been using it and you like it?

1:01:00

I've used it here and there. I played with it, but unfortunately

1:01:03

I have it in an account that is not my primary

1:01:06

email account. Right. So

1:01:09

I played with it, but not really,

1:01:11

not in constant

1:01:14

use. So.

1:01:16

All right, well, hopefully

1:01:18

we all get the opportunity to do that because I'm super

1:01:20

curious. I'm very curious to know

1:01:22

how much I will use it and

1:01:25

in what context and how much,

1:01:27

if I'm getting

1:01:29

that information, how much I'm trimming

1:01:31

away from it to add my own voice

1:01:33

versus using what it says. You

1:01:35

know what I mean? I'm trying to find an email

1:01:37

from you that I can respond to.

1:01:40

Here it is. Okay,

1:01:42

so reply all,

1:01:44

help me write, thank

1:01:48

him for the email. Thank

1:01:52

him, assistant. So.

1:01:57

Yeah, see this actually didn't do that great. It

1:01:59

just said hi.

1:01:59

bracket name. Thank you for email. I appreciate

1:02:02

you reaching out. I look forward to chatting you more with more

1:02:04

with you about bracket topic. Oh

1:02:06

my God.

1:02:07

Wait. So what does it do with the bracket

1:02:09

name and bracket? It doesn't automatically fill that in for

1:02:11

you. Yeah. And I'm going to insert it highlighting

1:02:14

that so that you know, to

1:02:16

replace it. Nope. It just, it just, yeah, it just

1:02:18

literally, it literally put it

1:02:21

into that went into the email. I just put

1:02:23

it in the Slack for you. This is high bracket name.

1:02:25

Thanks for your yes. So

1:02:29

make sure you change name to the name

1:02:31

you're sending it to. But now admittedly I was responding

1:02:33

to an email from you that you did not say

1:02:36

Jason, like you were forwarding an email. You

1:02:38

only wrote one line. There was little, little time.

1:02:40

There was, so, so that

1:02:42

probably not a good example. Just

1:02:45

make sure you don't ever send this email

1:02:47

when you use Google to write things.

1:02:50

And that's the thing. Once again, these AI

1:02:52

things are tools to be used. They're not

1:02:54

going to take over your life because

1:02:57

they're stupid, right? They're they can,

1:02:59

they can glean some information to help

1:03:01

give you a nudge or a push or

1:03:04

whatever. You know, and I do have, I do

1:03:06

struggle with generative AI for images because

1:03:08

I do worry about the sources and

1:03:11

artists, uh, appropriation and attribution,

1:03:13

um, because that, that, that the,

1:03:16

the AI brain needs to learn from something.

1:03:18

And, and I'm sure Google's doing it responsibly,

1:03:21

but other AI sources and other

1:03:23

AI models are just ingesting art.

1:03:25

That's on the web and then regurgitating it

1:03:28

out, slightly modified, right? Um,

1:03:30

so, you know, a generative AI on the images

1:03:33

is a little murky, but these

1:03:35

text prompts I find to be immensely useful. So.

1:03:38

Interesting. All right.

1:03:41

Thank you. All

1:03:44

right. When over to you. Over

1:03:47

to me. And I don't want to give this too much preamble.

1:03:50

Um, you know, we're talking about, you know, it's WWC

1:03:53

week and there's like, you know,

1:03:55

a lot of announcements going on, but if you want

1:03:57

something really, really freaking cool that

1:03:59

you can.

1:03:59

on Android. Our very

1:04:02

own J.R. Raphael has something for

1:04:04

us. What you got, J.R.?

1:04:24

Find

1:04:30

time for us to zoom in

1:04:32

on one of the many mobile tech possibilities

1:04:35

that's available only here

1:04:37

in the land of Android. In today's

1:04:39

tip, yeah, it definitely qualifies.

1:04:42

So an Android intelligence

1:04:44

reader just recently alerted me to

1:04:46

this really awesome app I hadn't seen before

1:04:49

called Raise to Answer.

1:04:51

Raise to Answer is such a smart,

1:04:54

just thoughtfully executed idea.

1:04:56

I just had to share it with you.

1:04:58

The app does one thing

1:05:01

and it does it really well. Once you install

1:05:03

it, it automatically answers

1:05:05

any incoming call for you

1:05:07

as soon as you raise your phone to your

1:05:10

ear. That's it. Well, okay,

1:05:12

it can also automatically decline

1:05:15

a call for you when you set your phone down

1:05:17

if you want. But the raising to answer

1:05:20

is the main thing and really what's most impressive

1:05:22

about it because

1:05:22

that means there's no need to tap

1:05:25

swipe or do any of the other usual stuff

1:05:27

you've got to do when a call comes in and you

1:05:29

actually want to answer it. You just lift your

1:05:31

phone up your face the same way you would when you

1:05:33

actually start talking. And that's it. Based

1:05:36

on that motion and the proximity

1:05:38

of your phone to your hefty old noggin,

1:05:40

the app will instantly

1:05:42

accept the call and let's just start talking.

1:05:45

Raise to Answer is completely

1:05:48

free to use without any ads

1:05:50

or eyebrow raising permissions. Just

1:05:52

install it, set it up once and

1:05:55

boom, you'll never even think about it again.

1:05:57

Hey, speaking of spectacular

1:05:59

things, you'll set up

1:05:59

up once and then enjoy eternally.

1:06:02

Are you getting my Android intelligence newsletter

1:06:04

yet?

1:06:05

If not, you're really missing out. Subscribers actually

1:06:07

saw this tip in their inbox

1:06:09

yesterday afternoon. It's

1:06:11

part of a special Monday tips roundup

1:06:14

email, included a bunch of other

1:06:17

off the beaten path, Android efficiency

1:06:19

enhancers too, where you can

1:06:21

get in on the action and make sure

1:06:23

you never miss out on a single juicy

1:06:26

googly goody by making your way

1:06:28

over to Android Intel.net slash

1:06:30

twit and signing up now. It's

1:06:33

completely free for you. That site again

1:06:35

is Android Intel.net slash

1:06:38

twit.

1:06:39

That's all for today. Now, if

1:06:41

you'll excuse me, I've got that call coming in from Cupertino

1:06:44

again.

1:06:45

I better take it. It's not going away. Hello?

1:06:50

Hey Tim. Yep. Yep. I

1:06:52

can help you set that up on your pixel. I

1:06:54

promise I won't tell anyone. I'll

1:06:57

see you guys next week. Okay. So

1:06:59

open up the Google play store. Yep. Google

1:07:02

play store. Hmm. I

1:07:04

can hold you

1:07:08

got to give him credit for doing a bit. I respect

1:07:11

that he's doing a bit. Uh, I like it. Good,

1:07:13

good job. Jr. Oh, it cracked

1:07:15

me up now, but it also cracked me up the first

1:07:18

time I watched it. Just that I was laughing.

1:07:23

I said,

1:07:23

chat a message. Like y'all I'm laughing. It's like 15 seconds

1:07:25

in into Jr's video on the Mario. He

1:07:29

stuck the landing. I got to give him credit. Sometimes

1:07:31

bits are hard, but he nailed it. Thank

1:07:34

you. Jr. Ray field. That app again is called raised

1:07:36

to answer. And, uh, if

1:07:38

you were watching the video version, you saw it work because

1:07:40

it called did come through. And when he raised it up, he

1:07:42

didn't do anything extra. It just kind of answered.

1:07:45

So that's pretty sweet. Check

1:07:47

it out in the play store. His,

1:07:50

uh, newsletter can be found at

1:07:52

android Intel dot net slash.

1:07:55

Twit.

1:07:55

Okay. We're

1:07:58

going to check in on some. of

1:08:00

our feedback from this week.

1:08:03

And that's coming up next. AAA,

1:08:06

twit.tv, 347, show AAA. Ron

1:08:10

has the first email. I

1:08:12

do, I'm very excited because James

1:08:15

writes in with kind regards and says, love

1:08:17

the show.

1:08:18

And I'm just wondering if any of you might have

1:08:20

any recommendations for magnetic battery

1:08:22

packs that effectively wireless charge

1:08:24

a Pixel 6 Pro. I bought a few

1:08:27

random ones and they seem to attach but don't charge

1:08:29

properly. And with and without

1:08:31

my Mag-Back case.

1:08:33

I'm just wondering if any of you have a magnetic battery pack

1:08:35

that really works well on Android devices. There

1:08:37

seems to be loads for Apple, but I'm struggling to find a good

1:08:39

one for Android. Any ideas?

1:08:41

And James,

1:08:43

we have not used them. So

1:08:47

we cannot give you a testimonial in any regard,

1:08:50

but Jason has done some great research

1:08:54

as and Burke has charged in as well too.

1:08:56

Burke has chimed in as well. So

1:08:59

digging in, our friends over at Android

1:09:01

police, they recommend the Mophie Snap Plus

1:09:04

Juice Pack as long as your phone

1:09:06

is fitted with a snap adapter. 5,000 milliamps

1:09:10

that is normally $50, but on sale on Amazon

1:09:12

right now for $27.99.

1:09:13

I mean, that's half off basically.

1:09:16

So if you can get it now, now's the time.

1:09:18

I actually went to Camel, Camel, Camel, which

1:09:20

is what I use to check Amazon

1:09:22

prices. It's a really great site to see

1:09:24

the history of prices on

1:09:27

Amazon to see. And this is kind of the

1:09:29

lowest it's ever been. And it's only been there for like a couple

1:09:31

of weeks. So usually it is at $50 and now it's half off.

1:09:35

So yeah.

1:09:36

So, and that will let you wirelessly

1:09:39

charge any key device, it's

1:09:41

key, right? Chew, I cheat, cheat,

1:09:43

any cheat device at 12 Watts, also

1:09:46

USB-C. And all over

1:09:49

at Android authority, they recommended just

1:09:51

last week, the Anchor, which is a very reputable

1:09:53

brand. Anchor 622 magnetic

1:09:56

battery with 5,000 milliamp battery and USB-C

1:09:58

for $59. and the Anker 633

1:10:01

magnetic battery with 10,000 milliamp battery

1:10:04

faster 20 watt USB-C and

1:10:06

USB-A and that's $80 and

1:10:08

both require a MagSafe adapter or magnetic

1:10:11

case. So those are two

1:10:13

very good choices, a little pricier than the

1:10:15

Mophysnap Plus. But

1:10:18

I said that, I teased you that Burke had chimed in as

1:10:20

well. He's written here in our little document. In

1:10:22

all caps, he signed it Burke. So just so you

1:10:25

know, but Burke says wireless charging

1:10:27

is 100% dependent on correct rotational

1:10:30

orientation of the device and charger

1:10:32

slash battery. So if you've gotten

1:10:34

some that don't seem to charge properly,

1:10:36

it might be because you're not,

1:10:39

uh, the orientation of the device and charger

1:10:41

battery is not in place in a good spot.

1:10:43

So thank you Burke and all caps for

1:10:46

letting us know there. So, uh, yep,

1:10:48

there you go. So James,

1:10:50

let us write back in, let us know what you got, let

1:10:53

us know what your experience was. Give us a little testimonial,

1:10:55

send in a video of it, show us off.

1:10:59

Yeah. But yeah, but you can't

1:11:01

keep it short, but keep us posted. Let us know. Let us know how

1:11:03

this drama plays out. So I'll

1:11:06

bet. Hopefully that's helpful. And if other people have,

1:11:08

have suggestions as well, let us know. Triple H without.

1:11:10

And I truly wish everybody, I wish I could wish

1:11:13

this on everybody in our audience to understand what it's like to work

1:11:15

with Burke because a he's the best,

1:11:17

but the email that not the

1:11:19

email, but his note also included the word wireless

1:11:22

and dependent, which was spelled wrong. Uh,

1:11:25

or also in all caps. And so

1:11:27

like he really like has

1:11:29

text communication from Burke is very specific

1:11:32

and pointed and clear. And I appreciate

1:11:35

it. He wants you to know when he's talking and

1:11:37

when he's yelling,

1:11:38

exactly. Or emphasizing.

1:11:41

I don't see it as yelling as more of an as far as an

1:11:43

emphasis. Yeah. I can hear Burke's wireless

1:11:46

and dependent, you know, like really driving those

1:11:48

home. So yeah, thank

1:11:50

you. So also his name serves a breaking

1:11:52

news bumper.

1:11:53

There you go. The

1:11:56

breaking the Burke news bumper

1:11:58

with a break in Burke bumper. like a burke bumper.

1:12:01

There we go. I like that. All right, Wayne, you got

1:12:03

the next one. Yeah. And the next

1:12:05

one is from Tyler. Listening

1:12:08

to your discussion regarding the Android 14 unsafe

1:12:11

volume notification discussion. While

1:12:14

I think this is a good thing in practice

1:12:17

as probably the predominant use of Bluetooth

1:12:19

use is with headphones, the other

1:12:21

day I had this pop up in my car

1:12:23

while driving. I have a Bluetooth

1:12:26

dongle that plugs into my car's auxiliary

1:12:28

jack. I leave my phone volume at full

1:12:30

as that gives me the most dynamic range of control

1:12:33

with my car stereo. Not loud at

1:12:35

all. So my phone is ignorant

1:12:37

of the actual volume level present.

1:12:40

Maybe there needs to be some info handed back

1:12:43

from the Bluetooth device to shape these notifications

1:12:45

per their actual use context.

1:12:48

I don't know. Would love to

1:12:50

hear thoughts. Tyler. And

1:12:52

Tyler, I do the exact same dang

1:12:54

thing and I think that's an excellent point. And

1:12:57

I do it for the exact same reasons because on

1:13:00

full volume, you still get

1:13:02

that extra, you know, whatever range

1:13:04

on top of the car volume. So

1:13:06

that's, I didn't think about that. I think

1:13:08

that's a great idea. Yeah.

1:13:10

I think that's important, right? If

1:13:13

we're listening in headphones, it's one thing, but

1:13:15

if we're listening in our car, absolutely. You

1:13:17

want that full volume to send

1:13:19

through the car. So you get the dynamic range. If

1:13:21

you got it too low and then

1:13:23

you turn it up, you're going to get that noise floor.

1:13:25

So, you know, a feature like that

1:13:27

can be a big disadvantage if

1:13:29

it's used in the wrong, the

1:13:31

wrong place, even though it's, it's well-meaning,

1:13:34

you know, it's, it's meant to protect your hearing, but

1:13:37

in the car, less useful.

1:13:39

So how do you communicate that either to

1:13:41

the app or to the car stereo or whatever, whatever

1:13:44

that needs to be? I don't know. But

1:13:46

good point, Tyler.

1:13:49

Thank you for sending that in. Oh, sorry. And

1:13:52

so as a dev, I think there actually

1:13:54

is a way to get the Bluetooth, like, so with modern APIs,

1:13:57

this is just a very cursory look. So

1:13:59

I think there is

1:13:59

away on some Android

1:14:02

APIs to find out the Bluetooth device class.

1:14:04

So this probably could be done. I don't

1:14:08

have the updated information on that, but generally speaking, that

1:14:10

does seem like it should be a thing. So, hey,

1:14:13

Google. Good idea. Can we check the device class?

1:14:16

Great idea. Good idea. Do it.

1:14:18

Do it, Google. All

1:14:20

right. And we've

1:14:23

got the email of the week

1:14:24

right now. And

1:14:27

we award this to Nick this time around,

1:14:30

who wrote a lot of words. Not going to lie. And I

1:14:32

cut this down, but it's an

1:14:34

insight into

1:14:37

Pixel flight. That's

1:14:39

what we can call it. Pixel flight. Or

1:14:42

maybe not Pixel flight. This is more like Android

1:14:44

flight.

1:14:46

Nick says, I'm

1:14:48

pretty die hard, Google, but I've

1:14:51

been on Android since the OG Motorola Droid

1:14:53

currently using the Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel Buds Pro

1:14:55

and the Pixel watch. I use Nest wifi,

1:14:57

have a Nest doorbell, six Nest minis and

1:15:00

three displays across my house in the past,

1:15:02

at a Motorola zoom and Nexus 10 tablets.

1:15:04

I'm just going to stop right there and

1:15:07

say, okay. All right. You got it. I

1:15:09

think you've proven your point. You love, you love

1:15:11

the Google and the Google hardware. Nick

1:15:13

says, I was eagerly awaiting the Pixel tablet.

1:15:16

I'm disappointed that there doesn't appear to be a stylus.

1:15:18

I have a feeling I'll be looking at an iPad in

1:15:20

the near future as my tablet needs will be more

1:15:23

on the productivity side, but

1:15:25

I'm starting to find myself considering a switch

1:15:27

to the iPhone.

1:15:29

I really liked the Pixel watch, but

1:15:31

I'm a frustrated with some things

1:15:33

that have been brought up in the past, like no pocket

1:15:35

casts. Why on earth don't

1:15:38

routines work with assistant on

1:15:40

the watch? I have some home automation set up

1:15:42

that use routines like that I trigger like

1:15:44

opening my garage and you cannot do it on

1:15:46

the watch. I do think that's pretty ridiculous. That

1:15:48

should totally be a watch feature. Why is that not

1:15:51

Nick says, I mentioned the tablet concerns

1:15:54

above, which like the watch feel like

1:15:56

some things were either half baked or compromised for

1:15:58

some reason. Granted the speaker.

1:15:59

and is a cool idea, but if Google really wanted

1:16:02

developers to get on board with building apps for big screens

1:16:04

so you can multitask, doesn't it seem like

1:16:07

you should just aim for productivity as well

1:16:09

as just being a family media device? Yeah,

1:16:11

I would agree with that. That's important too. And

1:16:14

finally messaging. I'm pretty much the only

1:16:17

person in my immediate circle that uses Android.

1:16:19

My wife, her whole family, colleagues, they're

1:16:22

all on iOS. None of them pressure

1:16:24

me, but I'm starting to get really frustrated dealing

1:16:27

with not getting high quality videos. My wife tries

1:16:29

to send me of

1:16:29

our kids or issues people have

1:16:32

when trying to send me messages. Nick

1:16:35

says, I know this is primarily Apple's

1:16:37

fault for not getting on board with RCS. And I've

1:16:39

always told myself that I would never switch just because

1:16:41

of iMessage, but it's getting close to becoming

1:16:43

a reality. I wish Apple would just make an

1:16:46

iMessage Android app and even charge

1:16:48

for it. They make a killing I'm sure. And

1:16:50

what's more is I'm sure that they

1:16:52

wouldn't lose customers that already had iPhones.

1:16:54

I'd happily pay five or even $10 a month

1:16:57

because I know that if I do switch, I

1:16:59

will hate the

1:16:59

rest of the experience of using an iPhone. But

1:17:02

if the next version ends up coming out with USB-C

1:17:05

instead of a lightning port, I may have to

1:17:07

suck it up because I'm beginning to get sick of

1:17:09

Google putting out unpolished products

1:17:12

at premium prices, treating their customers as

1:17:14

beta testers, then killing everything

1:17:16

good and this stupid messaging

1:17:18

debacle.

1:17:20

So what do y'all think?

1:17:23

I mean, he certainly sets a, paints

1:17:26

a scene and

1:17:27

I can understand his, his criticisms.

1:17:29

I mean, I think it's, it's, uh, it's

1:17:32

built up over time.

1:17:33

I will say while

1:17:34

you're reading that, I literally was

1:17:37

on a text chain with my wife and two

1:17:39

of our friends. All three of them are on iOS

1:17:42

and one of them is at an event and set

1:17:44

a video and nobody can see that because

1:17:46

the quality is so crunched and I'm literally

1:17:49

writing, send a direct to the

1:17:51

other people. Stupid iOS is ruining

1:17:53

it cause it's being sent to me, you know? And,

1:17:56

and, and, and knows like the blame could be like,

1:17:58

Oh, it's doing that cause you're on Android.

1:17:59

But I said, no, it's doing it because iOS is doing

1:18:02

it to us. You know, like, yeah. And, but

1:18:04

it doesn't, but it doesn't matter. It's

1:18:06

whatever side you are on

1:18:09

is the side that's right. Cause that's the phone

1:18:11

that I have. Right.

1:18:13

Yeah. And no matter what, it's

1:18:15

just a bad experience. I mean, but the

1:18:18

thing is, is that like my wife, my wife

1:18:20

is on iOS. She's been on iOS

1:18:22

for as long as we've been together, which

1:18:25

this year will be eight years. And

1:18:29

what did I do within two months

1:18:31

of dating her? I said, oh, go download WhatsApp.

1:18:34

Hmm.

1:18:35

And that's, and that's what we

1:18:37

use. And she sends me high quality photos and videos

1:18:39

and I get them every time. Like there are

1:18:41

solutions and there are ways to mitigate it. It's

1:18:44

funny because like this one text

1:18:47

group is like the only one that I haven't really

1:18:49

like pulled over to my solution to like

1:18:51

to solve it. But like there are solutions

1:18:53

to be had. And like, you know, you might have a lot

1:18:55

of random people who are texting you once, you know, new

1:18:57

friends or anything like that, you know, everyone's scenario

1:19:00

is different, but like you can mitigate

1:19:02

a lot of the problems

1:19:04

with, at least with the messaging side, if you

1:19:06

put some effort into it, not to say that, that

1:19:08

effort's not being made. I'm clearly, I'm

1:19:10

not suggesting that he's clearly, clearly has Nick

1:19:13

really has, but you

1:19:15

could solve some of it. I don't know. And

1:19:18

that doesn't argue the rest of his points, but that's just the messaging

1:19:20

point itself. So yeah.

1:19:22

I don't know how good of a job I'm going to be

1:19:24

able to do with this, but go ahead

1:19:26

and do the breaking news bumper. Because

1:19:29

it ties in with this story.

1:19:31

So if you got breaking news, it's time for breaking

1:19:33

news. Boom, boom, boom, boom. So

1:19:38

along with the Apple news

1:19:40

of yesterday,

1:19:44

I wanted to say yesterday, your, because how many opportunities

1:19:46

do I get to say your, but I

1:19:48

don't even know if that matters or

1:19:50

makes any sense. Anyways, I'm getting

1:19:52

distracted. So apparently

1:19:55

something they didn't announce in

1:19:57

the keynote is

1:19:58

that,

1:19:59

is in Android Authority's words, Apple

1:20:02

is changing how Android affects iMessage,

1:20:04

but not in the ways you want. Apple

1:20:07

has taken the Google route and making

1:20:09

interoperability better for its own users

1:20:12

alone. And so their breakdown of this,

1:20:14

mind you, I have not read through this, so I'm

1:20:17

just going to go by what Android Authority says

1:20:19

here. iMessage

1:20:21

will handle Android users in group chats a

1:20:23

bit differently in iOS 17. Unfortunately,

1:20:25

the experience will get better for iPhone users, not

1:20:28

Android users.

1:20:29

It's possible Apple has more changes in

1:20:32

store for future iOS 17 beta

1:20:34

rollouts. So I'm

1:20:36

curious to know what this does, but I think

1:20:38

it ties in directly with what you're

1:20:40

talking about is my understanding, Ron, is

1:20:42

that when an Android user is in

1:20:44

a group text message thread, it

1:20:48

kind of, it forces everybody

1:20:50

into that, air quotes, broken experience.

1:20:54

And it sounds like there's going to be some changes to

1:20:56

iOS 17 that kind of side with the iPhone users in

1:20:58

the chat

1:20:59

and

1:21:03

will

1:21:08

impact Android users as a result.

1:21:10

So if messaging with

1:21:13

iOS users from an Android phone is

1:21:15

difficult now, it sounds like it's about

1:21:17

to get more difficult.

1:21:19

Awesome. Great. I mean,

1:21:21

I kind of feel vaguely embarrassed

1:21:24

sometimes

1:21:26

for Android by how

1:21:28

hard Google is pushing

1:21:33

the RCS. Yeah.

1:21:37

But this kind of stuff, nevermind.

1:21:41

Nevermind. I mean, it's

1:21:43

actually, because I'm literally like this, I'm live

1:21:46

doing it. Like, cause the, my friend just

1:21:48

wrote back to me and said, yeah, Apple's the problem. And

1:21:51

I wrote back and said, Hey, they're the ones who are compressing your video.

1:21:54

Like they are like, and

1:21:56

that's exactly it. Right. Like whichever side

1:21:58

of that, of that.

1:21:59

that

1:22:01

battle you're on is the right

1:22:03

side, depending on where you are.

1:22:06

So text editing, I don't want to just

1:22:08

like read this article, but I'm super curious. Like

1:22:10

I want to know how this is changing. So apologies,

1:22:13

but anyways, everyone should read the article

1:22:15

at Android authority, but it highlights three

1:22:18

different elements of this. Text editing, thread

1:22:20

replies, and image and video quality. I'm just going to

1:22:22

skip to that one, because that's the one that we're really talking about right

1:22:24

now. And if you want the rest, read the article. It

1:22:26

says in iOS 16, if an iPhone user

1:22:29

sends an image or video to a group chat

1:22:31

that involves an Android user, like we were talking

1:22:33

about, everyone in the chat sees the same

1:22:35

thing the Android user sees, a very compressed

1:22:37

file, depending on the original's quality

1:22:40

could barely be comprehensible. In iOS 17,

1:22:42

this gets slightly fixed for iPhone users.

1:22:45

Now images stay uncompressed for iPhone users,

1:22:47

videos get compressed slightly, Android users

1:22:49

see no changes. So

1:22:52

we'll still, so, okay, I mean,

1:22:54

which I'm, I guess I can kind of

1:22:56

understand, of course you're going to make it, if

1:22:59

you have the ability to, you're going to make it

1:23:01

at least good enough for the other

1:23:03

people running your hardware, but it's

1:23:05

just a bummer because you know what?

1:23:07

RCS would address this. If you

1:23:09

built in RCS capability,

1:23:12

then everybody would get good

1:23:15

quality. And instead it's just

1:23:17

like, no, you guys don't, but

1:23:19

you guys are okay. But maybe it will

1:23:21

lessen the hatred

1:23:23

of

1:23:25

that Android chatter

1:23:28

in the group to not have

1:23:30

them reducing the quality

1:23:32

for everyone else. So maybe there's

1:23:34

that, I don't know. I'm trying to look

1:23:36

at this in real time.

1:23:38

Does that make sense? Yeah,

1:23:40

no, it makes sense, I follow it. I

1:23:43

don't know, I think J.R. got to call Tim back

1:23:45

and we got to have some comments. Yeah, exactly,

1:23:47

yeah. True. If he's on the hotline. J.R.,

1:23:50

you got the direct line to Tim. You

1:23:53

guys need to figure something out here. We're going to

1:23:55

task you with that. Anyways.

1:23:58

All right, well Nick, let us.

1:23:59

know where you end up.

1:24:01

Um, do a follow up when you

1:24:03

decide what you're doing and, and,

1:24:05

uh, and all that. And we'll look forward

1:24:08

to that. And in the meantime, congratulations

1:24:10

for your email of the week

1:24:14

that had a bonus breaking news bumper in

1:24:16

it. Good job. You got two songs. All

1:24:19

right. We've reached the end of this episode of all about Android.

1:24:21

It's been a lot of fun and when it is great,

1:24:24

it has been great to get you back. I'm sorry

1:24:26

that you had to miss last week. It was not

1:24:28

a fun week for you, but it's great to get you back. Tell

1:24:31

people what you want them to know about what you're up to.

1:24:33

Um,

1:24:34

yes. So I'm so

1:24:36

happy to be back. I was very, very sick last

1:24:38

week. Uh,

1:24:40

163 fever, but I I'm over

1:24:43

it. And I think if my brain is not baked

1:24:45

that I am an Android developer and I

1:24:47

do tend to talk about Android technical things,

1:24:49

and you can find all of those technical talks,

1:24:52

video and code on my website, randomly typing.com

1:24:55

and otherwise find me on the interwebs

1:24:57

at queen code monkey. I am so

1:24:59

happy to be back with you. I really missed you last week,

1:25:02

especially in

1:25:03

the, in the fever, 106 fever

1:25:06

dreams and whatever it was, it was bad, but

1:25:08

I'm black, but you made it. It's

1:25:10

good to have you back. Thank you. When, uh,

1:25:13

and then Ron, what

1:25:15

you got to promote. Yes. I've

1:25:17

been on, I've been on some podcasts for you.

1:25:19

Uh, you should, you should head over

1:25:22

to our old friend, uh, old friends

1:25:24

over at daily tech new show. Um, I

1:25:26

hopped on to talk with, uh, rich and

1:25:28

Sarah lane and Roger Chang about,

1:25:31

uh, uh, Android of all things, or

1:25:33

they were talking about the IO, the, the people

1:25:35

leaving, uh, Android for iOS

1:25:37

survey that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, we were talking

1:25:39

about that. And then

1:25:40

we talked to, uh, talked a little bit about pinball.

1:25:42

I got to talk about score a bit a little bit on there. Um, so

1:25:45

it was the last Friday's episode.

1:25:47

So June seconds episode of daily tech new show,

1:25:49

you can go check it out on their podcast or on YouTube.

1:25:52

It's out there for you. Um, it was a blast to be

1:25:54

on there. Um, always good to be back on that

1:25:56

show. Um, and

1:25:58

if not enough of.

1:25:59

me need to listen to more head over to I fanboy

1:26:02

dot com where me and the guys were talking

1:26:04

about Return of the Jedi's 40th anniversary.

1:26:06

I saw in the theaters and

1:26:09

was excited to talk about the movie and and

1:26:11

reaffirm my love for Return of the Jedi. So go

1:26:14

head over to I fanboy dot com. You can listen to that

1:26:16

episode as well. So I I

1:26:18

love Return of the Jedi. It's it's got

1:26:20

some moments, but it's perfect. It's a great

1:26:22

it's such a great movie. It is a great movie. So it's

1:26:25

been it's been far too easy over the years

1:26:28

for people to bash it, whether it's

1:26:29

a box or the director, Richard Marquand

1:26:32

or whatever. But like, honestly, the whole

1:26:35

job is palace scene. Solid.

1:26:37

And I was fantastic. The

1:26:40

space battles. Fantastic. The emperor. Fantastic.

1:26:42

There's so much fantastic in that movie.

1:26:44

I just I love it. So the final

1:26:47

scene where they're all standing around smiling and

1:26:49

laughing and stuff. Well,

1:26:51

I'm OK with that if it's original

1:26:53

release and Yub Nub like I do

1:26:56

take issue with the special edition in

1:26:58

in three specific three specific

1:27:00

spots in the special edition. One

1:27:03

is in Jabba's palace getting

1:27:05

rid of the original original band song

1:27:07

and replacing it with Jedi rocks, which is just

1:27:09

awful to when

1:27:13

Vader stops the emperor from

1:27:15

killing Luke and they dubbed in him

1:27:18

go new like Episode

1:27:20

three, like, nope, not good. And

1:27:22

then lastly, the elimination

1:27:24

of Yub Nub in favor of

1:27:27

a annoying new agey whimsical celebration

1:27:29

song. Nope. Yub Nub for life.

1:27:32

Yub Nub for life. That's got

1:27:34

to be a T-shirt. I'm even good with

1:27:36

the Ewoks. Like Ewoks are great. Like some of

1:27:38

the Ewoks scenes are awesome. Yeah, exactly.

1:27:40

So but look, there can be

1:27:42

there can be cute aliens also

1:27:45

out there. They don't all have to be menacing,

1:27:47

weird looking beasts. Listen, and

1:27:49

I talk about on the podcast, I was six years old when

1:27:51

I came out. I remember standing in line at the

1:27:53

movie theater, like stuff like that. And like I didn't walk

1:27:56

out of there going, oh, my God, you are so cute. I

1:27:58

need a plush of it. Like, no, there's like, oh, cool. They're

1:28:00

just like little you know, like it was it

1:28:03

it's very once again much like Android

1:28:06

and messaging It is very easy to dunk on ewoks

1:28:08

and they're actually pretty good. So

1:28:12

You should not you should not judge a book by its cover

1:28:14

and you should not underestimate someone cute and fuzzy

1:28:16

as being incapable of taking care of themselves

1:28:18

Exactly. Now that said

1:28:21

they do take some liberties of Fighting

1:28:23

stormtroopers with sticks and rocks maybe

1:28:25

a little too far, but I'm gonna go with it because it's sci-fi fantasy

1:28:28

Like the E tier stormtroopers,

1:28:31

you know like the junior varsity storm

1:28:35

What we don't realize is that stormtroopers actually have very

1:28:37

flimsy armor That's that's that's what

1:28:39

this is very tuned for very specific Sticks

1:28:46

point pointy sticks just goes

1:28:48

just gets right through there That's

1:28:51

exactly it. All right. Cool. Very

1:28:53

Tolkien a Tolkien esque

1:28:55

commentary on technology Good

1:29:01

Stuff. All right. Thank you, Ron Thank you win

1:29:02

always a pleasure and so much fun to hang

1:29:05

out with you guys talking Android each and every week

1:29:07

Thank you to JR for

1:29:08

giving us his his Android

1:29:11

intelligence And usually

1:29:14

an app form every week Android

1:29:16

Intel net slash twit Thanks to Victor

1:29:18

and Burke who might be in here But

1:29:20

it might just be Victor and then it works

1:29:23

me and then Burks in another room listening

1:29:25

and we'll put in some comment and

1:29:27

slack But thanks to you both couldn't do the show

1:29:29

without you two You can find

1:29:31

me at Jason Howell on Twitter Twitter social

1:29:33

slash at Jason Howell on mastodon

1:29:36

Tech news weekly every Thursday

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to it TV slash T&W with Micah Sargent

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1:31:32

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