0:00

This week on all about Android we welcome back

0:02

Mateo Doni to the show and he's got the ridiculous

0:04

unihertz tank phone Along with the unihertz

0:07

tick tock and Nokia G22 We

0:09

recap the April fool's gags from nothing razor

0:12

and aces and lots of app talk as Google

0:14

launches the new nearby share Shuffles Google

0:16

assistant staff to bard and much much

0:18

more

0:22

Podcasts you love from

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people you trust This

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is Tweet.

0:30

This is all about Android, episode 624, recorded Tuesday,

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April 4th, 2023, the Bard of Colorado. Listeners

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1:06

Welcome to All About Android, your weekly source for the latest

1:08

news, hardware, and apps for the Android

1:11

faithful. I'm Ron Richards.

1:14

And I'm going to it now. And

1:16

unfortunately, Jason Howell is still on

1:18

vacation. hasn't returned yet, but

1:21

we are very, very lucky to welcome

1:24

a returning special guest who is filling

1:26

Jason's chair at this very moment

1:28

there in the Twitch studio.

1:30

Everyone, please welcome Mr. Matteo Doni. Matteo,

1:32

welcome back to the show. Thank you

1:34

very much. Thanks for having me back, everyone.

1:37

It's a pleasure to be here in the studio.

1:40

Well, what's fascinating is that you are in the

1:42

big chair in the studio. You're

1:45

in the captain's seat. You're in the middle position. So

1:47

Mateo, I am just gonna hand the whole show

1:49

to you and you're gonna drive it from here on out, alright?

1:52

Well,

1:52

if you hand me the show, you know what that means.

1:54

I do. It's

1:57

playing with fire or playing

1:59

with goats. Exactly. Goats

2:02

and crazy phones.

2:03

Well, so yeah, so we're very excited

2:05

because you've got, I mean, it's your first show with Wynn when you've

2:08

never done a show with Mateo before, I don't think, right? Or

2:10

were you on the show? No, I was on the

2:12

show, but the first time I ever took

2:14

off the show, I think, well, the second time I

2:16

took off the show was Mateo's last

2:19

appearance. So I was really sad to miss

2:21

Mateo. So now, and I, yeah,

2:25

I think I almost missed this week too, but yeah, I'm

2:27

here and I'm

2:27

really- Glad you made it. There you go, yeah. I'm

2:30

sure

2:31

you last joined us in February of 2022, so

2:33

it's been an entire year. Uh,

2:36

so before we get into stuff, let's catch up a little bit. Hi,

2:38

how you been Mateo? What's a, what's your daily

2:41

driver phone these days? Very well. Well,

2:43

as any

2:44

proper person who wears cargo pants,

2:47

I tend to have four daily drivers. Um,

2:51

one is obviously the Google pixel seven pro,

2:53

um, that seems to be the best all-rounder for

2:56

my needs, especially

2:58

with the camera it has. I

3:00

then obviously for a

3:03

bit of balance in the force carry an

3:05

iPhone 14 Pro as, and

3:08

then whatever I'm reviewing, seems

3:11

to take the other two pockets.

3:13

So at the moment, the Nokia G22,

3:16

I take it the crickets are for

3:18

the iPhone. We won't speak about the

3:20

fruity one anymore.

3:22

Trust me. So the Nokia

3:25

G22 is currently one of my

3:27

review devices, as well as

3:30

the Unihertz tank, which I heard

3:32

mentioned a few weeks ago on AAA.

3:34

And so yeah, I do

3:37

have multiple devices, but

3:39

two tend to be review devices

3:42

and then the main one is the Google Pixel 7 Pro.

3:44

That's the one with the roaming SIM card in and

3:47

my main food number in it.

3:49

Cool.

3:50

Well we are gonna get to the Unahertz

3:52

as well as you've got some other exciting

3:55

stuff for us to look at as well as a tale of woe that

3:58

we will cover in the hardware section.

4:00

But we got a pack show

4:02

this week, so why don't we dive

4:04

right into the news and then we'll get on with it. So

4:06

Burke or Victor, whoever's back there, take

4:08

it away. What

4:10

up kid? Mattair's in the house.

4:13

I've been waiting to say

4:17

that for a long time.

4:19

What was that Victor? It was Victor

4:22

back on the mic. Welcome back, Victor.

4:25

Thanks. Ron I know your

4:27

your kids are a little young right now, but you're you're

4:30

gonna have to perfect the

4:32

you the the

4:34

old man cool sounding voice.

4:36

Oh Okay for your

4:38

kids on that. Okay, when

4:41

they get older All

4:43

right. I don't want to totally derail

4:45

us from the Android news yet, but

4:48

I was having a little bit of fun with

4:51

with AI,

4:53

we talk a lot about AI, and

4:58

I'll just show it to you. So

5:01

the prompt, so

5:04

if you ask a stable

5:06

diffusion or Leonardo.AI

5:09

for a goat using a

5:11

phone, gives you some pretty interesting

5:13

stuff. What? Oh, dear

5:16

Laurie. What is happening? What is happening?

5:18

What is happening? Oh, wait, go

5:20

back one more quick. Wait, we got it. I'm

5:24

horrified by this, but I'm also disappointed

5:26

that Mid-Journey

5:29

or Leonardo or whatever they use didn't give

5:31

any photo of Mateo and

5:33

a goat in this show in any of the artwork

5:36

from that because as we've learned with chat

5:38

GPT, AI seems to only know what it knows

5:40

from the internet and Lord knows we put a lot of goat

5:43

Android content out there over the years. I

5:46

tried to customize it for Mateo

5:49

and this one here

5:51

is a goat using a phone with

5:55

a crocodile. For

5:58

the audio stream listener. I don't

6:01

I actually I don't have anything for you. I don't

6:04

how what it The

6:06

crocodile looks like it's actually a pelican

6:09

that has been crossbred with a crocodile

6:12

With

6:14

human hand there's human hands coming out of a goat

6:16

head and The phone

6:18

has also been genetically spliced.

6:21

I it's it's in I okay. That's

6:23

it. I've lost the thread it What

6:26

horror is oh

6:34

That is that is a Android phone

6:36

or tablet it looks like it's

6:38

covered with the skin of a crocodile

6:42

Yeah Dali

6:46

as the word like the Necronomicon.

6:49

Yes, don't read

6:52

it, don't read it, don't open the phone. And

6:55

then either way it is stuff of nightmares. That's

6:57

actually quite a thing. Oh, that's all right. Here's

7:00

just, this is a nice goat smiling

7:03

with a human hand holding a phone

7:05

in front of it and the phone background is bright green

7:08

like Android. That is a decent

7:10

rendering of an Android phone. Something

7:12

going on with its toes, but yeah. Yeah,

7:14

I don't You

7:20

that are Mateo related I

7:22

think this one is tech

7:24

travel goat

7:26

Wow, but this is a Highly

7:30

rendered handsome man who I can only

7:32

assume is meant to be Mateo with a

7:34

goat with very right angle

7:37

horns coming out of its head while

7:39

the man is looking at the phone. The thing down

7:42

at the bottom right is

7:45

supposed to be a crocodile. So

7:47

that's what the air thinks

7:49

is a crocodile. I don't think majority

7:51

knows what a crocodile is. This is also on

7:54

the handsome man is crouched down on the beach each presumably

7:56

on a tropical island with

7:59

the goat. And

8:00

with what is not a crocodile, but we'll

8:02

go with crocodile, it kind of looks like a

8:04

capuchin mixed with a lizard

8:07

mixed with- I will say, doesn't the chat

8:09

room just ask, just ask, is that Olivier

8:11

Garoud, the French soccer player,

8:14

does really look like him. That's a good

8:16

eye. The tail looks just like that guy. That's a really good

8:18

call, cousin of Jack. It also happens to

8:20

be an AC Milan player. So

8:22

I'm all for that. Now I have

8:24

a goal for my next six years

8:26

of gym.

8:28

Goal. Oh, but a bunch and

8:32

This is Alright, this

8:34

has got to be the last one, but this is a and what

8:37

is it? anthropomorphized

8:40

Human holding an Android phone with a goat

8:42

head with not one But one

8:45

two three four horns two

8:47

of them purple coming out of its head while

8:49

sitting on a plane Which I also feel

8:51

like Mateo given your travels and your past

8:54

career and stuff like that. This is a very accurate That

8:56

is very very accurate though.

8:58

Maybe not the part where I'm

9:00

wearing a tie, but right It's a little

9:02

too formal. It's been too formal for me, but

9:05

that is a very good depiction I will need

9:07

to see if I can get a copy of that

9:09

and maybe have a print done Oh that looks

9:11

as if it's me to its studio. What

9:13

what's what's around this? Okay,

9:16

we got to do a show guys We can't do we can't do this little night

9:20

Anyway, thank you AI for my future

9:23

nightmares. Yeah. Well, yeah Thank you,

9:25

Victor, for crashing the top of the show. And humor

9:27

is a related theme, because we

9:32

are recording today on April 4th,

9:35

Tuesday, April 4th, 2023, which means that this

9:37

past weekend was in fact April

9:39

1st, which is affectionately known around the world

9:42

as April Fool's Day, which

9:44

historically has been a good, fun

9:46

day in the tech world. Although,

9:49

you know, Google used to to participate until

9:51

they stopped doing it during the pandemic and they have not

9:53

returned to the battlefield. but

9:56

there was a couple of uh... a couple

9:58

of tech androids specifically

10:00

ones that we thought we'd share and just kind of reflect

10:02

back on this past April fools. Um, and

10:04

the first one was from our friends at nothing, uh,

10:07

who posted on Saturday, April 1st,

10:10

uh, that they were announcing a beer

10:13

parentheses 5.1%

10:16

uh, and they posted onto Instagram

10:18

a, uh, a very bare, uh,

10:22

can of beer, a gray,

10:24

uh, minimalist can that says

10:27

beer 5.1%. Um, And

10:30

it says it's technically refreshing.

10:33

And they say crisp, unfiltered rice lager,

10:36

carefully crafted for a distinct and drier taste,

10:38

independently brewed in Wales, UK. Nothing

10:41

engineer approved. Technically refreshing.

10:43

Sign up for updates at Nothing.Tech. National

10:46

minimum drinking age applies. So

10:48

Mateo, Juan, if you had to rate this as far

10:51

as April Fool's jokes, what would you give nothing for

10:53

their beer? Good,

10:55

bad, cringe.

10:56

It gave it a four. I was sorry, 5.1

10:59

would be the ABV. Is that what

11:01

we're, I think it's a play on phone, phone

11:04

one and phone two in the parentheses, but the 5.1

11:06

is the ABV. Yeah. So sorry,

11:08

I'll give it a four, maybe a three. It's

11:11

interesting. Sorry. That's four

11:13

or three out of 10.

11:15

Yes. Out of 10. Yeah. Let's do it out of 10. Yeah.

11:17

So I'm actually going to go for an eight.

11:20

Uh, wow. It's not unheard of of

11:22

tech companies doing a food

11:25

product as a market. push.

11:28

We've seen food products

11:31

or rebranded food products to

11:35

do marketing. Just think

11:37

back to how many different partnerships Google

11:39

has done with the Android versions. I've

11:41

had quite a few Android Kit Kats.

11:44

So it's clear Mateo,

11:46

this beer is not real. I

11:48

know, I know. But it's believable that

11:50

they would make nothing beer as

11:52

in I would not not put

11:54

it past nothing to do something similar in the future.

11:57

To do something with nothing. All right,

11:59

cool. Well, it was nothing good. Nothing

12:02

getting in on the joke. All right, the

12:04

next one up, I actually,

12:07

I'm gonna preface this that I thought this

12:09

did make me laugh. Razor,

12:11

you might remember, the company

12:14

known for gaming computers

12:16

and gaming phones, and they bought the

12:19

next bit Robin back in the day. On

12:21

April 1st, they announced the Razor

12:24

Razor, which was

12:26

a mouse and facial

12:29

hair razor.

12:30

I love it so much. With

12:33

a complete video explaining

12:35

that, sometimes when you're

12:38

plugged into the game for so long, you don't have

12:40

time to take care of yourself. And so that's why they've

12:42

introduced the razor razor.

12:44

I'm gonna give this

12:46

a nine. I have to because we

12:48

are, oh. I

12:51

was, oh. So

12:54

we're watching the video now where the gamer has like

12:56

hairy eyebrows and overgrown

12:58

mustache and beard. And now they're showing the mouse

13:01

and he is trimming his eyebrows and

13:03

beard and mustache with his mouse as

13:05

an electric razor.

13:06

Yeah. And it's got a very,

13:09

I'm sorry, not my forte, not my

13:11

area of expertise, but you know, like a very Gillette style where

13:13

they're like showing like the, what is

13:15

it? Like the double, the little foil,

13:17

like rollers. Yeah. double

13:19

blades. Oh, feel sharp,

13:22

play sharp. I like it. We

13:24

are a razor house. My husband

13:27

and I are big razor fans for a long, for a long

13:29

time razor fans. He has all the razor things. He

13:31

also spends an enormous amount of time

13:33

in our gaming room and I could see him totally using

13:35

this. So I have to give it

13:38

a nine out of 10. But oh, you

13:39

can also man

13:42

scape with the belt there. You can man

13:44

scape with the, with the razor razor.

13:47

Yes. So my husband has hipster

13:49

shaving gear, so I think this

13:51

is great. I need to show this

13:53

to him after the show. Nine out of ten.

13:55

So you rate this highly then, when? Yes,

13:58

but it's kind of geared towards. People

14:00

living in this house including myself. So

14:02

not the landscaping. So if you'd give it a 1 to 10

14:04

rating What would you give that one?

14:08

Nine nine nine nine nine. All right, but

14:10

what's your score there? I'm easily amused

14:13

and I find this again quite believable So

14:15

give it a seven

14:17

All right. There you go. I give this one a

14:19

nine as well that one because it made me if it makes me laugh

14:21

out loud I'll take it Although the

14:23

next one might take the cake because

14:26

aces announced the ROG

14:29

the ROG Ali

14:31

Ally a LY I guess

14:33

an ally handheld gaming PC Which

14:36

is basically positioned as a steam deck

14:38

killer

14:39

But the joke was this

14:41

isn't a joke. It's actually an announcement of a product

14:45

Asis is actually gonna do a portable

14:47

gaming machine to compete with the steam

14:49

deck and they just happen to have posted

14:52

it on April 1st That was not a prank

14:57

I now have mixed feelings.

14:59

Like, what? Okay.

15:02

I mean, okay. Oh, I can't separate my

15:04

feelings of, oh, this makes a lot of sense. We're

15:07

obviously seeing a lot of cloud gaming, you know,

15:09

handhelds. The steam obviously is doing

15:11

well. And like, you know,

15:13

try it and you got like the G cloud

15:16

and

15:17

razor has one coming out. So it kind of makes sense.

15:19

And ROG is great with the heart. But now I'm just like

15:21

very distracted by the fact that they decided that it

15:23

would be a good idea to release this on April

15:26

1st because now

15:28

I'm questioning reality. Nobody believed it, right?

15:30

Is it real? I don't know. To

15:33

be fair, let's think about it. One of the tools

15:36

most of us use on a daily basis, Gmail

15:38

was also launched on April 1st.

15:41

True. True.

15:43

So what happened

15:45

was that at midnight on April 1st, Ace

15:48

is here. I have the tweet if we want to show it. I'll

15:51

throw it into the dock because I know there's a lot of

15:53

stuff here.

15:54

Where is it? There you

15:56

go. There you go. So,

15:58

Aces tweeted at mid- night

16:01

introducing ROG or

16:03

whatever. Did we say ROG? What do we say? It's

16:06

ROG. It's ROG. Introducing ROG's

16:08

first gaming handheld console. Taking

16:10

your PC games out of your gaming room is no longer a fantasy.

16:13

Play wherever you are,

16:15

whenever you want with the ROG ally. You

16:18

never have to stop gaming again with a link to

16:20

a page on Best Buy for it. And just

16:23

basically

16:25

everybody thought that

16:28

it was a joke. And

16:31

then two days later they confirmed that it was actually

16:34

real.

16:36

No really, no really, no for realsies. We

16:38

were serious about it, honestly. Like

16:41

for realsies, promise people.

16:43

And it was funny because a lot of people really analyze it because

16:46

it's announced like ally or a lie.

16:48

Like A-L-Y, you know, a lie,

16:51

you know. But it is real. It

16:54

is,

16:55

it's, it's legit. So more

16:58

is coming. So, uh, so if you're looking

17:00

for a steam deck competitor, uh, aces announced

17:02

that in a very odd way, but yeah, you can

17:05

go to best buy and put in your email address and find out more

17:07

about it and get notified, but yeah, it

17:09

exists. So,

17:11

so based on this, I give this one a 10.

17:16

I love it. So, all right. It

17:18

have long life as a product. Sadly,

17:21

it seems to be running Windows 11 instead

17:23

of Android.

17:24

Oh, that's a mistake. So,

17:27

oh well. So based on that, Mateo, what would you give this one

17:29

then? I will give it a 9. I

17:32

really, I like the idea that there's

17:34

some competition in the handheld space

17:37

and gaming, gaming is, is

17:39

definitely something that needs to be more mobile.

17:42

All right. Agreed.

17:44

And when,

17:45

what do you, what do you think of that one? I'll

17:48

give it a 6. I completely agree.

17:51

We are also ASUS ROG fans here, so

17:54

we will probably think about buying one, even though

17:56

we both have Steam decks. And I

17:58

think I think aces is

18:00

themselves very, you know, capable and consistent

18:02

with their hardware and their, their

18:04

current mobile hardware devices. But I'm just

18:06

confused. So I'm, I'm just confused by,

18:09

by, by who marketing, who

18:11

did who approved this. So I'm going

18:13

to just drop them down three points just because I'm

18:15

confused. Just for the confusion. Just

18:18

because I'm confused. But that's fine. The rest

18:20

of it is fine. And I, I look forward

18:22

to us talking more. Oh, and if it's not

18:24

Android, then you got to take off another minus two just

18:26

for the topicality and also just, you know, You know, Android dev.

18:29

It's like the Olympics where they knock off points because they

18:32

trip or something like that. For technicals.

18:35

For technicals.

18:36

Yeah.

18:38

All right. Well, why don't we get to some

18:40

more serious Android news? When? Why

18:43

don't you? Some big news dropped or

18:45

was shared nearby. What

18:48

exactly

18:48

happened there? Yes. Oh, good. So

18:51

if you were thinking that, hey, you know,

18:54

those iOS folks have their air drop,

18:56

which their technology

18:58

for allowing you to easily and wirelessly

19:01

send files between various Apple devices,

19:03

iPhones, Macs and otherwise. And

19:06

you were wondering, huh, wouldn't it be nice if Android

19:08

had something more like AirDrop?

19:10

And I mean, we already kind of have

19:13

it, which has sort of been around for a

19:15

bit nearby share, which is kind

19:17

of, you know, a new protocol that utilizes Wi-Fi

19:19

and Bluetooth to allow you to share, you

19:21

know, images, files, otherwise between

19:24

Android devices and also Chromebooks. And

19:27

it's kind of taken another step to be more of a proper

19:30

AirDrop, you know, competitor with a

19:32

recent launch of a Windows 10

19:35

beta. So now you have AirDrop

19:37

beta for Windows 10 and up, and

19:40

it will allow you to share files between your Android

19:42

devices and your Windows PC.

19:45

There are a few caveats about this. So this

19:47

was launched Friday. It is a beta, so

19:49

take that as you will. There's probably some weird

19:52

UI and UX issues.

19:54

I think both Flow and Ben Shune

19:56

over at 9to5Google, I just noted

19:59

some little kind of. You know, seems is

20:01

beta. It is

20:04

limited by region, but not by device.

20:06

So as long as you have a modern computer

20:08

with Wi-Fi Bluetooth and a 64-bit OS,

20:11

Windows 10 or 11, not ARM. So

20:14

like a Surface Duo, you're out of luck for now. Yeah,

20:17

you can give the beta a try or you can

20:19

sign up to give the beta a try. And I mean,

20:21

generally speaking between our own Florence Ion

20:23

and Ben Shun over at 9to5 Google, the

20:26

early feedback has been positive. It quote,

20:28

just works. A flow set, it quote,

20:30

already feels native. It's relatively

20:33

quick to, in terms of like

20:35

the file transfer speed. Um,

20:37

and yeah, so here you go. If you are an Android

20:40

user and you have a windows box

20:42

and you've really found yourself wanting to

20:44

an easy and very, you

20:46

know, more seamless way of transferring files

20:48

rather than say, plugging in your phone

20:50

into your PC as a mass storage

20:52

device and downloading Android file transfer

20:55

or some other, you know, doing some other

20:57

solution to being able to drag and drop

20:59

files from your PC to your phone

21:02

or vice versa, you have a lot more of a native

21:04

experience. Looking at the client,

21:06

it looks a lot like the Android experience

21:08

that we all well know, including things like

21:11

allowing the PC to have the

21:13

same visibility and

21:16

naming settings that you might think of with just

21:18

a nearby share on your Android device.

21:20

So yeah, if that's something you

21:23

are looking for, it seems like it's a really

21:25

good time to get in on that beta and give it a shot.

21:27

And then we'll see kind of in the future

21:30

how that support might expand. 95 Google

21:33

by the way has a hands

21:35

on video if you want kind of a little more like step

21:37

by step flow for blow tour

21:40

of nearby share for Windows.

21:42

So is it something that either of y'all are excited about?

21:45

Sharing, sharing files between your Windows computer

21:47

and your Android device? Takers,

21:50

anybody? As a creator,

21:53

someone who does a lot of video and uses

21:56

a Pixel 7 Pro to

21:59

record a lot of of B-roll, I

22:01

definitely am looking forward to this because

22:04

my workflow usually involves plugging my phone

22:07

into my laptop to transfer files over.

22:09

This will really make my life

22:11

easier. And thanks

22:14

to Cousin of Ja, I think

22:16

that in the chat he has the perfect name

22:18

for it. It should be called Androp.

22:21

Yeah. But

22:24

that gives Apple a little too much credit with the naming

22:27

thing. But yeah, that It is very funny. But

22:30

what I'm most impressed by this is all

22:32

the, like, and as you said,

22:34

all the positive feedback from everybody who's experienced

22:37

this hands-on about how

22:40

smooth it works and how great it is and how seamless, I

22:42

mean, Flo's comment about it, just, it

22:44

seems like it fits and it just like, and it just

22:46

works. Like they really needed to get

22:48

this right.

22:49

And it's nice to see that

22:52

it looks like they did, you know? I

22:54

don't personally, you know, have a

22:57

Windows machine anymore. So sharing

23:00

from Android to Windows isn't helpful

23:02

for me, but the promise of one

23:05

day being able to do it to a Mac or just

23:08

the Android to Android kind of device

23:10

transferring and stuff like that, it's just if the whole

23:12

nearby share experience

23:15

becomes seamless and delightful, then

23:17

that's just promising for the whole operating system as a whole,

23:19

right? Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised

23:22

that this is a bit of internal tooling that

23:24

Google internally has been using for

23:26

years And they're now just testing

23:28

the water of making it more widely available.

23:31

Yeah, we talked about the cross device SDK

23:34

a few months ago and Ryan over

23:36

at Google actually kind

23:39

of amplified our tweet. And

23:41

so the cross device SDK, which we kind of talked about before

23:43

is kind of a,

23:45

a re gathering and reorganizing

23:48

of a lot of these different kinds of connectivity like

23:51

functionality, whether that's Bluetooth, wifi,

23:53

and even kind of bringing and modern concepts

23:55

like shared sessions, being able

23:57

to transfer some kind of authentication session from your

23:59

phone.

24:00

your TV across devices and that

24:02

SDK actually does, at

24:04

least in terms of like looking at the documentation,

24:06

giving it a cursory glance, is meant to support

24:08

non-Android devices like

24:10

Windows and like iOS. So hopefully,

24:13

as you said, this is going to be just

24:15

taking some of those like, you know, nice

24:18

things that they had kept to themselves to do, you know,

24:20

some of the, you know,

24:21

this integration work that, you know, only

24:23

Google has been done, been doing

24:25

and hopefully, you This might be an example

24:28

or just a better direction

24:31

forward for any kind of cross-device communication

24:34

and experiences. Yeah,

24:36

it's really cool that they

24:38

got it right. But you know who, sometimes

24:41

Google gets things right, but they sometimes also

24:43

get things wrong.

24:44

In the vein

24:47

of file sharing or

24:49

cloud files, I can't think

24:52

of a good stay away there, but There was something very interesting

24:54

that happened, interesting in a bad way. So

24:56

Google had silently introduced

24:59

a

24:59

file limit on your Google

25:01

drive. Now this was a huge limit of 5 million

25:04

items, which is probably

25:07

for the average user, maybe the average,

25:10

you know, non-contact creator or not, like, you know,

25:12

someone who's not really generating a lot of files or data. That

25:15

seems, you know, not too bad,

25:17

but

25:18

it was done silently and it actually

25:20

became quite controversial

25:22

because it was not transparent

25:25

at all. It was an opaque AF,

25:27

I guess I can say. And also it's

25:29

weird because of the nature of

25:31

this limit. The people that were

25:34

running into this limitation, which by the way, wasn't

25:36

clearly communicated, all that these people

25:38

that were hitting this 5 million file limit

25:41

could see was that, oh, they got a

25:43

warning that they can no longer upload or create files.

25:46

And that's it, no explanation. So it was absolutely

25:48

opaque. And what's interesting is that the people

25:50

that got hit hardest by this file limit

25:52

are people that are paying for the you know two

25:54

terabyte, five terabyte tiers.

25:57

So not only was this not communicated well.

26:00

And the user experience

26:02

also again was the follow-up was also

26:04

very opaque. It was hitting people that are actually

26:07

paying probably the most upwards of $25 a month for storage.

26:10

So people didn't like it. People

26:12

don't like it when you take away their things and you don't tell them about

26:15

it, especially when they're

26:17

the folks that are paying you the most money. So Google

26:19

acknowledged the mistake and in April

26:22

3rd tweet, they said that they are going

26:24

to remove the limit. And

26:26

they're going to kind of, again, as Google likes

26:29

to say, when they do a bad, they're going

26:31

to take this, think on it some

26:33

more, mull over the mistakes and continue working

26:36

on improving experience while trying

26:38

to... And I

26:40

think that there's a reasonable... In

26:43

my personal opinion, there's probably a reasonable

26:45

balance here of giving people all the storage,

26:48

but also having to, as a company that is

26:50

the one maintaining and paying for the

26:53

actual storage stability and performance and all

26:55

that kind of stuff. So they did apologize

26:57

for that and they said in a follow-up

26:59

tip, if we need to make changes, we will

27:01

communicate them to your users in advance. So

27:03

I don't know.

27:06

Were they right to implement

27:08

a limit? Is it just that they communicated

27:10

it badly? Was it because

27:12

it's kind of attacking their highest

27:14

paying? What do you all think? Was this

27:17

unreasonable?

27:17

Well, yeah. I

27:19

think to your point, the average user, this probably would

27:21

never even encounter 5 million files. I've

27:23

been using Google Drive for over a decade, right?

27:26

So like that, files add

27:28

up, you know, they definitely would impact

27:30

it. I do think that, you know, we've seen

27:32

the slow,

27:34

you know, kind of like, remember when everything was

27:36

free and like you had unlimited storage and

27:38

it was Google and it was great. And we've seen the slow

27:40

degradation of that to get more, you know,

27:42

wrap more arms around it. We see Google one introduced

27:44

to add more storage and you know, charging

27:47

and that sort of thing. And so, you know, I'm

27:49

not surprised to see that this happened but it's

27:51

embarrassing to see how it played out in

27:53

terms of quietly putting it out

27:55

there and then people calling them on it. I mean, Matteo,

27:58

you're self-taught.

28:00

you know, self-subscribe creator there, you know,

28:03

I got to imagine you, you, you rely on Google drive

28:05

a lot, don't you? I do. Yes. Um, I

28:07

use Google, uh, not only as a creator,

28:10

but also for some, some of my stuff in the home

28:12

automation, as in I have little

28:14

reports dumped to my Google drive regularly,

28:18

and then I have something else that goes and reads

28:20

to them. Uh, so I

28:22

haven't actually encountered this issue, but I

28:24

was surprised to hear that there was one because

28:27

I had just read through Google

28:29

drive and Google One documentation,

28:31

I am a two terabyte Google One subscriber

28:34

and had never seen anything about a file

28:36

number limit. Yeah. So

28:39

this is surprising to me, but it's good that they've

28:42

fixed it eventually. Um, at the

28:44

end of the day, these consumer products

28:46

are often used, uh, by important

28:49

organizations. Um, for example, it's

28:52

not a Google issue, but, uh,

28:54

the UK government during the pandemic was

28:57

keeping all its stats

29:00

for the daily briefings on an Excel

29:02

sheet. And at some point they run out

29:05

of columns or rows. I believe,

29:07

I think it was actually rows. They run out of rows

29:10

to be able to share or capture that data.

29:12

And that's became an issue. Uh,

29:14

but at least Microsoft had informed,

29:16

uh, their users in

29:19

the really fine print about the limitations

29:21

to, uh, to, to Excel. Whereas

29:24

we didn't know about that in Google

29:26

Drive. But

29:29

I usually upload files which

29:31

are over a gigabyte in size because

29:33

it's video, it's

29:34

4K video. And

29:37

so I was going to be unlikely to hit

29:39

that anytime soon.

29:41

Yeah, it's just, I mean, and

29:43

good on Google for, you know, owning

29:46

it, right? And making the adjustment

29:48

and rolling it back. But I feel like this is going to

29:50

boomerang back or there's going to be some sort of limit.

29:52

The number of files is a weird limit, is

29:54

a weird number. Yeah, yeah, it's like storage.

29:57

Yeah, yeah, because I could because I can have five

29:59

million 15K text

30:01

files and I'd hit that limit versus 5

30:04

million, you know, 3 gig,

30:05

you know, video

30:06

files,

30:09

right? Like it's like, you know, and they,

30:11

you know, they claim, you know, performance and capacity

30:13

and all stuff like that. But the number of files is an odd

30:15

thing. But to be fair,

30:17

they are an entity. And so they have to

30:20

be sort of indexed somewhere.

30:22

Sure. Yeah. In a database, it's

30:24

natural to have a potential limit

30:26

there. Yeah, so

30:29

very strange. Well as

30:31

far as strange things being a foot of Google Here

30:35

we are. It is a you know early April

30:37

and everybody's everybody's all excited for the

30:40

monthly pixel update

30:42

And sure enough It's

30:44

late

30:45

And this marks two months in a row that the

30:47

pixel update is being late

30:49

You know so they and

30:51

this was as of yesterday. It still hadn't rolled out yet

30:53

So it may have started rolling out at this point because

30:56

Google did post the pixel update bullets

30:58

in April 2023 On the

31:00

Google website with the full factory and OTA

31:03

images that was all posted yesterday

31:06

But as at the time of reporting Carriers

31:09

have yet to detail they haven't let detail

31:11

the carrier support of it and has it

31:13

actually rolled out to it Now that said,

31:16

you know, there's little expectation. This is going to

31:18

be a big a

31:19

big patch or big security patch or upgrade

31:22

since Android 13 QPR 2 rolled out

31:24

last month. That was a big one. And

31:26

the next feature drop is scheduled until June.

31:29

But still the fact that it's

31:31

April 4th and

31:33

it hasn't rolled out yet, it's weird. Like this used to

31:35

be on clockwork, like what's going on? And

31:38

then you add on to the fact that

31:40

last week it actually did roll out

31:42

to one user,

31:44

last week

31:47

with no other reported people getting it, someone

31:49

got it on a pixel 5 a week ahead

31:51

of schedule which one

31:54

has to assume something went wrong with internal testing.

31:57

But it just seems like, like,

31:59

what's going on? over there Google everything everything

32:01

okay like can you can you check in like what's

32:03

the deal so I wonder

32:06

the mechanics of that just as a developer how

32:08

does one person on a pixel 5 get

32:10

an update I just want to understand the mechanics

32:13

I don't really know much about OTA but yeah

32:15

not only that how does one person on a pixel 5 get

32:18

the update and how does it make

32:20

the blogs how does that one person know to

32:22

go post to reddit or XDA and

32:24

have it get picked up by writer like that's what always

32:27

baffled me like

32:27

one person gets something that's like does

32:29

it needle in a haystack how do you find

32:31

that but sure enough here

32:33

we are they do so I

32:36

don't

32:36

know I mean I've devil's you

32:39

know like or what devil's

32:41

advocate I give Google a break it's good they've

32:43

done the work it's coming out the carriers will roll it out

32:46

everybody's just like you know breathing for

32:48

these monthly updates but like this there's nothing planned

32:51

that's major for this one you know

32:53

patching is It's not like there's a

32:55

huge zero day patch or something like that that's needed. So

32:58

I don't know, it'll roll out. This might be much ado about

33:00

nothing. I don't know, Matteo, you use so

33:03

many phones. How, you know,

33:05

were you waiting by

33:06

your phone yesterday to see if the monthly update rolled

33:09

out to your Pixel? No, not at all. And just

33:11

before the show, I checked on my Pixel 7 Pro

33:14

to see if there was an update. There was nothing

33:16

there. As with

33:18

all security updates, I believe

33:21

there might be something going on the background

33:23

we don't know about yet. And I trust

33:25

Google will

33:27

include as much as possible in the update.

33:29

When

33:29

it's ready, it's ready. I would prefer to wait a

33:31

few extra days

33:33

to get something slightly better than it could

33:35

have been.

33:37

That's just me being old, old grumpy

33:39

person who's been through. You old

33:42

grumpy now,

33:43

as a developer, I very much

33:45

appreciate that sentiment. Um, because

33:48

there's always pressure to get it out faster rather than

33:50

better. So as a developer, I appreciate that

33:52

statement. As a consumer, I get a little less

33:54

patient, but

33:55

that is just the two sides of the coin. So

33:58

yes, I appreciate it. men

34:00

grumpiness when it comes to getting

34:02

it right. But

34:04

also as someone who supports software,

34:07

I will say that it's always best to deal with a better

34:10

release than a release and a quick hot

34:12

fix shortly afterwards.

34:14

Yes, yes, I have.

34:16

Yes, yes, I've been. Yes,

34:19

yes. You got to have feelings about that

34:21

right when there. I don't

34:24

want to necessarily, I was on a team

34:26

where we had to hotfix

34:28

three or four times in a day. And

34:30

I think a lot of that was like we were a small team and

34:33

there was less process

34:35

on that team, less rigor on that team. And we had,

34:38

I think we had a manual tester. And

34:40

I think all of us were at a conference.

34:43

And so it was just a bad week for us to have a

34:45

release. And I think

34:47

that the hotfix was necessary,

34:50

right? So we had to get this out. pressure, we

34:52

hot fixed like three or four times because we figured, okay, now

34:54

we have it. We sort of tested it. Again,

34:57

our tester was with us at the conference.

34:59

So, no, I, it's

35:01

weird because in the moment you're

35:03

doing these things and like, I can sit

35:05

back now as like a 40 year old developer, like, yeah,

35:07

that wasn't the best idea. And of course we all

35:10

the next day figured, yeah, that

35:12

was not the best way to handle that. But when you're in the moment

35:14

and you want to make sure that, you know, your app

35:16

is, you know, you're, you're like minimizing

35:18

downtime for your customers, you want to

35:20

minimize one's start reviews, it's

35:23

tough. It is tough. And I think that sometimes

35:25

it does take someone to just say,

35:28

hey, we need to pause and

35:30

just do it the right way. And that can be surprisingly

35:33

very, very hard depending

35:35

on who's telling you what

35:37

to do, your stakeholders and who your bosses are and who's

35:39

managing you. It can be really hard. So

35:43

it's,

35:44

it's, um, when you're under pressure,

35:47

sometimes common sense or the bet, like the better

35:50

option goes out the way, like this kind of leaves your head

35:52

and you just kind of respond to the pressure. Anyway,

35:55

I sympathize and I'm going to stop ranting about

35:57

that. That wasn't a great day.

35:59

This is because... a sort of developer therapy

36:01

group when it is, I think I, I,

36:05

a little bit, but I mean, you know,

36:07

anyway. Um,

36:10

yeah. So, uh, in, there

36:12

was actually some ado about something that we

36:14

talked about last week. I was trying to like segue

36:16

a little closer to your much into about something. So, uh, last

36:19

week with flow, we kind of covered an

36:22

interesting little back and forth where there

36:24

was some reports from, you know, fairly

36:27

trusted and consistent leakers slash like

36:29

Max Jambore and SimpyTech about

36:32

Oppo and kind

36:34

of like some of its sub brands, like OnePlus leaving Europe,

36:37

UK France, Germany and the Netherlands.

36:41

But then very quickly that was kind

36:44

of disavowed or kind of

36:46

Oppo released

36:47

a statement saying, no, no, we

36:50

don't have any plans to leave Europe. And then now

36:52

we have another kind

36:54

of

36:55

nugget of information coming out that really,

36:57

you know, what was happening

37:00

is that due to some legal action

37:02

with Nokia in Germany, Oppo

37:05

is temporarily halting operations in

37:07

Germany. So it feels like, you know, we, we kind

37:09

of covered the story because there felt like, you

37:12

know, we cover leaks all the time. We cover, you know,

37:14

kind of

37:16

rumor, the rumor mill a little bit. And this

37:18

seemed like a very odd, you know,

37:20

missed out for a lot of people that have

37:22

generally been on the mark and we kind of

37:24

were trying to pontificate on what, why

37:26

might that be? What might that be? So I

37:29

don't know. Does this make sense that maybe this,

37:31

is it this just legal

37:33

action in OKEA and Apo did

37:35

a bad job at kind of making a clear

37:38

statement or do

37:39

y'all still think there's something nefarious

37:42

hitting my mic? Nefarious going on.

37:44

So I wanted to get Mateo's take on this

37:46

because being our man of

37:48

the continent on the other side of the Atlantic.

37:51

You're kind of closer

37:53

to it. Do you

37:55

smell any smoke with this Oppo one plus story

37:58

or? I think there is.

38:00

Let's face it, OPPO and

38:02

their parent company BKK are a massive

38:04

organization and it's

38:07

even in the best of times, organizations

38:09

that size will have contingencies

38:12

plans. They will have teams of people dedicated

38:15

to working on contingency plans

38:18

if anything were to happen. And

38:20

the lawsuits that

38:23

Nokia or Nokia have taken

38:25

against that group has been

38:28

ongoing for quite a while now.

38:30

So

38:30

they probably had the plans all in place

38:33

and circulated some internal documentation

38:36

saying we need to be ready for this if

38:39

it were to go south. And

38:42

that's probably what got leaked to

38:45

Max. And he then announced

38:47

that. I think that's what's happened.

38:50

But I've reached out to someone I know in

38:52

the group. I have not had

38:54

a confirmation of what

38:57

I've heard, but this

38:59

seems to be what's happening in my

39:02

view. And I

39:04

think it's normal, as in we've had multiple

39:07

cases of that. Sony, for example,

39:09

didn't sell smartphones in the US

39:11

because of ongoing issues

39:14

regarding patents on certain components

39:17

they were using, or they released products

39:19

that didn't have fingerprint scanners. It's

39:22

quite common for these back,

39:24

uh, that these sort of back

39:27

channel, uh,

39:28

conversations to be happening for the contingency

39:31

plans to be made up. And I think that

39:33

someone leaked the wrong thing at the wrong

39:36

time. Uh, but it's still too early

39:38

to say because these

39:40

product launches are not expected

39:43

for a while. We already knew that the Vivo,

39:45

sorry, the OPPO, uh, six

39:48

pro or six X pro, uh, was

39:50

due not to be released in Europe anyway.

39:53

So this may be the backstory that we

39:55

were missing. Interesting.

39:57

So we'll see what happens.

40:00

It's big business is happening

40:02

in the background. The legal conversations

40:04

are active, we know that. And

40:06

it may just be Oppo saying, well, rather

40:08

than selling our phones in Europe, we

40:10

just won't sell them. And Nokia, you

40:12

won't get any of the patent money

40:15

at all.

40:16

So it might just be a negotiation

40:18

tactic as well. Yeah,

40:20

like we talked about last week, and I agree with

40:22

you, is that like that rumor was too,

40:25

there had to be like, there was some smoke, there was some fire

40:28

to match the smoke there had to have been, right? And

40:30

I think, I think with your observations

40:32

are pretty correct, you know, or,

40:34

or close there. And it always comes out of business.

40:36

It always comes down to either patents or

40:39

licensing or like the things that drive

40:41

revenue. Right. And so, um,

40:43

yeah, so I wasn't

40:45

surprised to hear this. And, uh, and I imagine

40:48

this is going to continue to develop. Uh, we'll

40:50

probably hear more of it. So, all right,

40:52

cool. All right. Well, that was a lot

40:54

of news for the week, but, uh, the wait

40:56

is over. Mateo is the man with

40:58

the devices in his cargo pants.

41:00

So let's jump into hardware.

41:09

Here it is.

41:11

It is Mateo's hardware shack. Mr.

41:13

Mateo, what do you got for us first up?

41:15

Right then. First up, I have the

41:19

Unihurt's tank. Now I heard you mentioned

41:21

this recently on the show when

41:24

I was listening at home. The

41:27

Unihurts tank is from a plucky

41:29

little startup in Hong Kong called

41:32

Unihurts, who

41:34

to most of us is unknown,

41:36

but for those in the know is

41:38

a company who really riff quite hard

41:41

on hardware. And

41:43

they really do crazy stuff. The Unihurts

41:46

tank is special because

41:48

it's quite the chunk.

41:49

I apologize in advance. I do not have

41:52

a banana for scale here, but it

41:54

is a thick, heavy

41:56

phone,

41:57

which is I'm apologetic about wearing...

42:00

weighing

42:00

more than half a kilo. This

42:03

half kilo is probably due to

42:05

the fact that it has

42:07

a 22,000 milliamp power battery. So

42:10

for a bit of context, that's more than four

42:13

times the battery capacity

42:15

of the Google Pixel 7 Pro.

42:18

Now, attached to that power bank, you

42:20

have a pretty decent smartphone. This

42:24

is a device

42:26

with an LCD display,

42:29

with a dodge or a cutout for

42:32

the selfie camera in the top left-hand

42:34

side of the screen. In

42:37

terms of battery, I last charged this,

42:40

I took it off charge on, let's

42:42

see,

42:43

I took it off charge on Wednesday

42:46

last week. So it's been almost seven days

42:49

and it's still at 58% charge. You're

42:52

getting, get out, Matteo, get 58%. Oh,

42:55

no. It's still at 58%. But

42:57

to be fair, I have not had a SIM card in it. accidentally

43:00

picked up the wrong SIM card at Walmart and

43:02

got one of the Verizon compatible ones. It

43:05

has only been used on Wi-Fi. But

43:09

I would say a week's charge on a smartphone

43:12

is more than most people can ask for.

43:15

As well as that it has

43:16

an IP68 rating

43:18

which means it can resist dust

43:20

and water up to a certain

43:23

amount.

43:25

that is achieved by actually having a rubber

43:27

lip that

43:28

I'm putting my fingerprint in to

43:31

show you off the USB type-C

43:33

port for fast charging and a courage

43:36

port. That is a 3.5 millimeter

43:38

audio jack. So yes, you have a courage

43:41

port and USB type-C. The 22,000

43:44

milliamp power battery is charged

43:47

rapidly with a 66 watt

43:49

charger and obviously

43:52

a 22,000 milliamp power battery is quite big so

43:55

it will probably generate a lot

43:57

of heat but I haven't really noticed that because

43:59

I've slo-

44:00

charged it overnight when I needed to charge.

44:04

Now obviously the power is not just

44:06

for the phone. At the

44:08

back you have a triple set of cameras

44:11

which is quite handy. So you have a

44:13

main sensor which let me just check

44:15

the spec here. The main sensor

44:18

is

44:20

in this case I think it's a 64 megapixel

44:23

sensor but

44:25

it has a 20 megapixel infrared

44:27

camera. So Victor,

44:30

if you've got the link

44:32

in the spreadsheet,

44:34

we have some examples of Burke

44:37

in the Twit studio in the server

44:40

room, in the TriCaster

44:42

room. There's a link

44:44

there that shows you the

44:48

pitch black picture

44:49

and then Burke in the server room taken

44:52

with an infrared camera. The way this 20

44:54

megapixel sensor works is

44:57

that it actually shoots infrared

45:00

lasers from the bottom here, bounces

45:03

that laser off and then captures a black

45:05

and white image. So this is my kitten

45:07

Ronan. In pitch black

45:10

I could not see anything. It still managed

45:12

to see a slightly angry kitten

45:15

looking at me and that's one example.

45:17

And then we have the the picture of Burke

45:20

in the the twits studio in the

45:22

cupboard it was pitch black if

45:25

you go right one you'll see

45:28

this is what the main sensor saw at the same

45:30

time so

45:31

really really interesting camera

45:34

setup I think this is mainly

45:36

aimed at the construction industry but

45:38

I could be wrong if you can think of a reason

45:41

why you would want an infrared

45:43

camera on your phone please do let

45:45

us know but That's a really cool

45:47

one. And then there's that all-important

45:50

sticker camera. It's a two megapixel

45:53

macro camera, which is, in my view, completely

45:55

useless. But it looks good on

45:57

a spreadsheet. account

45:59

now and I, I love

46:01

this phone. Who is this

46:03

phone for? Aside

46:06

from, aside from when, who is this phone

46:08

for?

46:09

I didn't say it was for me, but I want

46:11

it. I imagine like, I dunno,

46:14

just back, you know, super like

46:17

rugged outdoor, like, uh, you know, places

46:19

where you have to actually get in a Jeep, like a proper

46:21

Jeep and like, you know, forward across the river because,

46:24

you know, you don't have to charge it very long. So if you're out, you know, if

46:26

you're not near an outlet or

46:28

some power source. It has infrared cameras. So

46:31

if you need to be like adventuring at night or you're

46:33

like chasing, you know, if you're, I don't know, an

46:35

animal documentary and wildlife documentary

46:37

and I love it. And it's got that

46:39

big old like light in the back. You

46:41

know, which I mean, you should always have headlamps, but yeah.

46:44

I mean,

46:46

Torch enthusiasts are a thing. The

46:48

Tech Travel Geeks YouTube channel has regular

46:51

Torch and flashlight reviews because

46:53

travelers do use them. This

46:55

one has the usual LED flash torch,

46:58

which you can activate by long pressing the

47:00

custom button at the back. So

47:03

it's a normal LED light, as

47:05

you can see here. It works

47:07

just the same as most smartphone torches

47:09

work. But then you have this massive

47:12

panel at the side.

47:13

I believe that's a,

47:15

what is it? We've

47:16

got it in the spec sheet here.

47:20

It's a 1000 lumen lamp, which

47:24

should

47:24

long press the

47:26

other button for.

47:29

And I'm gonna have to look away here. Oh,

47:33

that's ridiculous. Oh, wait a minute,

47:35

look at this. Oh my gosh. It

47:37

is a thousand lumen lamp

47:40

at the back of the phone. So for our audio listeners,

47:42

there is a trapezoid

47:45

shaped panel on the back of this phone

47:47

that lights up like a flashlight. This

47:51

is a proper camping lamp. This

47:53

is amazing. So part

47:55

of my vacation is

47:58

here in California is that

48:00

My wife and I are planning to

48:02

go to Humboldt County. I'll

48:04

switch that off now because I can't see anything.

48:07

We're going to Humboldt County where there's

48:09

very little light pollution to do some

48:11

nighttime photography with Google Pixel phones.

48:14

And whilst we're at it, I'm going to try out this amazing

48:18

torch lamp thing phone,

48:21

which

48:22

I think is for outdoor people as

48:24

much as construction worker people. But

48:27

I think the real audience for

48:29

this, the real consumer

48:31

base for this smartphone is people who

48:33

live in maybe in rural areas or

48:35

regions where there's not regular access

48:38

to electricity, where the

48:40

cost of illumination,

48:43

or

48:44

just generally the life comforts

48:47

that most of us have are not always available.

48:50

This phone will probably solve a

48:52

lot of problems for people who live

48:55

in

48:55

different parts of the world without

48:58

regular access to electricity.

49:01

That's my take on it. Unihurts

49:04

do this as the tank, and

49:06

they do a lot of really interesting phones

49:09

similar to this. One of the things I like

49:11

about it is Unihurts are using the side-mounted

49:14

fingerprint scanner. It's not under the screen.

49:17

It's much more accessible in my view. So

49:19

you just pop your finger on the scanner and

49:21

it unlocks the phone. It's

49:23

really good.

49:24

So overall I'm

49:27

obviously not at wins levels of fitness,

49:29

but my hands are a lot stronger after

49:32

the last few weeks of using this phone. Uh,

49:34

and once you get used to it, it's actually

49:36

a great little phone for gaming too. So I've

49:39

been playing call of duty. Uh,

49:41

that's probably just to the Helio,

49:43

a six, seven, eight, nine chipset, which

49:46

is also known as a Helio G 99 chip

49:48

set, uh, which is perfectly

49:50

good for everyone's day to day use.

49:53

The only thing it lacks is 4K video recording

49:55

in my view. But

49:57

that's just me as someone who creates video

49:59

for...

50:00

for YouTube.

50:01

For everything else it's a good phone, it

50:03

works well. The problem is that

50:06

if you live in the US you won't be able to use it

50:08

on Verizon or similar networks.

50:10

It's a GSM sort of standard,

50:13

a GSM base phone which

50:16

interestingly doesn't require a SIM ejector

50:18

tool, just pop your finger fingernail

50:21

underneath to take out the dual SIM

50:24

slot and pop it back in. It

50:26

has a nice rubber gasket to keep the waterproofing

50:29

and that just goes back in next to the infrared

50:31

blaster. So you can also use it as a TV

50:34

remote control

50:35

if you can't find your remote control or

50:37

your batteries run out. So

50:39

unihertz tank great the device. I'm

50:41

really enjoying my time with it and

50:44

I like the carry on using it in the future because

50:46

I can use it as a power bank to charge other

50:49

phones if needed.

50:50

You can, you could power your house

50:53

for a day or so. Like it's like a generator.

50:57

I wonder if I can reverse charge a Tesla with

50:59

it or similar election.

51:02

This is the phone for zombie apocalypse.

51:05

This is when the infrastructure of our society

51:07

has fallen and we only have like, you

51:09

know, far distant like powering stations.

51:12

This is the phone for the zombie apocalypse. I want

51:14

to get one as

51:15

part of my zombie apocalypse prep. So

51:19

that is also a tool

51:21

for natural selection. you were to be using

51:23

this in bed and drop it on your face that

51:25

would be one way you could hurt yourself with it. The

51:28

other is it has a nice little lanyard strap

51:30

here where you can put a

51:32

lanyard through it and wear it around your neck and

51:35

probably snack. Or use it as a melee

51:37

weapon.

51:38

Yes, there we go. Both. Put

51:40

it on the lanyard and spin it around.

51:43

Exactly. I don't know what

51:45

kind of weapon that is. Well Mateo, I mean

51:47

clearly this phone is packed with features. It

51:50

must be expensive, right? I mean, how much does this

51:52

thing cost? Well,

51:53

expensive is a relative term, but I

51:55

would say for 369 US dollars, this is a bargain. You

51:59

can-

52:00

A power bank, a phone, an

52:02

infrared camera, a camping torch

52:04

light, and a remote control, as well as a smartphone,

52:07

all bundled in one device.

52:10

That's 369. That's

52:12

unreal. That's ridiculous. How

52:14

does this exist in this world? Oh

52:16

man. But it is a

52:18

lovely, lovely device. And Unahertz

52:21

are not only doing crazy stuff in

52:23

this space. The next device

52:25

I have here, and I'll put it

52:27

next to the Unihurts tank, this

52:30

is the Unihurts TikTok S.

52:33

Now, one thing that I should probably explain

52:35

is that Unihurts do some pretty crazy

52:37

stuff with phones. They try a form

52:40

factor, and then they just add

52:42

letters at the end of it. So this is

52:44

the TikTok S, which is the third

52:47

iteration on the TikTok

52:49

form factor, which is a normal smartphone

52:52

at one side. As with the tank, you

52:54

have your side mounted fingerprint scanner,

52:57

volume rocker,

52:57

two custom buttons

53:01

which can be programmed within the OS, and

53:04

infrared port at the top. At the

53:06

bottom you don't get a courage port, but you get

53:08

the little plastic flappy bit with

53:11

USB type C. And

53:13

at the back of the rugged construction,

53:15

you get what is a little glass

53:19

screen at the side, which you can turn

53:21

on. I've programmed one of the quick action

53:23

buttons to turn on the smartwatch

53:25

feature. Now essentially this is... So

53:27

it's TikTok, so it's the TikTok, not

53:30

in the social media platform, but in the fact that

53:32

there's a watch on the back of it. It

53:34

is. And

53:36

I've spent a lot of time with this device

53:39

and its previous iteration, the TikTok E, and

53:42

investigating how this works. Now

53:45

my gut feel is that there was a lot

53:47

of not quite smartwatches

53:49

left over in the Chinese market

53:52

a few years ago and they just bought them all up.

53:55

what this is is

53:58

similar to the Huawei one.

54:00

Remember that watch Ron?

54:02

Oh yeah. Yeah. Separate operating system,

54:04

not Android's Wear or

54:06

Wear OS. It

54:10

was running its own operating system

54:12

which I believe is known as Light OS.

54:15

So it can control the music

54:17

on your phone,

54:18

it can have a compass in it

54:20

which is quite handy if you're out in the wild

54:23

and needing to

54:25

to know you're bearing. It

54:27

has this camera option which

54:29

allows you to use the rear screen to

54:33

take pictures of you using

54:36

the main sensor. So it's essentially a rear-facing

54:39

screen. Now

54:41

the way I know that this is a separate device,

54:43

it's not actually an integral part of the smartphone

54:46

is, I'm demonstrating

54:48

this here, you tap on the camera option and it And

54:50

it doesn't actually let you take a picture

54:52

if the camera app in the phone is open. That's

54:55

because you're using the camera API,

54:58

trying to use the camera API when it's already

55:00

engaged with another

55:02

application. So I'll close all apps

55:05

on the phone

55:06

and then lock the phone. If

55:08

we tap on the camera there, you can see

55:10

I can take a selfie of myself using

55:13

the screen.

55:16

So it's a handy feature if you want

55:18

the best selfies your phone can take, use

55:20

the main camera. And that's

55:23

a 48 megapixel main sensor. It's

55:25

a pretty decent camera. And then there's another

55:27

little two megapixel macro

55:29

camera, which is a sticker camera. So

55:32

this is even more affordable. It's about 260 US dollars.

55:36

It's a great smartphone. It's rugged. It's

55:39

waterproof. It doesn't have a courage port

55:41

sadly, but for 269 US dollars, you get

55:43

a decent amount

55:47

smart phone with an outstanding

55:50

rear screen which would

55:52

stand out if you want to make a statement about

55:55

being different.

55:56

The Unihouse TikTok S does

55:59

do

56:00

good job at that. They're

56:01

pricey,

56:02

they're affordable, the

56:04

price is right on these wacky unihertz

56:07

phones. I just want to sit in on a brainstorming

56:09

R&D meeting at unihertz for the like, wait a minute,

56:12

what if?

56:14

Well,

56:16

the crazy thing is I've had the

56:18

pleasure of doing something pretty close to that and

56:21

going and visiting a few of these

56:23

sort of startups in Southeast

56:27

China, and it

56:29

is pretty much like they say a

56:32

lot of software companies say, well, you

56:34

need to have pretty much continuous integration,

56:36

continuous deployment, and continuous

56:38

releases. They're pretty much doing

56:41

the same thing with hardware, with weekly releases

56:43

of products. So

56:46

I'm all for it. This is the sort of craziness

56:48

that then brings great things to the world. And

56:51

hopefully Google will be watching this and

56:53

say, this is great. is what we're

56:55

here to do, we're enabling these companies

56:58

to worry about the hardware, plus we do

57:00

most of the work with the software.

57:02

Having said that, one of the downsides of Unahertz

57:05

is their software updates. They have lots

57:07

of custom hardware, they're using mainly

57:10

MediaTek chipsets, so

57:12

in terms of security updates and software

57:15

updates, it's not great. But

57:17

their products do solve a problem, and most

57:20

people buying these phones

57:22

don't really care if they're getting the monthly

57:25

security update from Google for Android.

57:29

On that note, the sort of

57:31

people who buy the next device will probably

57:34

believe the marketing and purchase,

57:37

in this case, the Nokia G22.

57:39

This is the repairable,

57:42

affordable smartphone from Nokia,

57:45

which

57:47

in terms of specs, I think you ran through

57:49

them recently on the show, It's

57:52

an affordable smartphone around about 170, 180 US dollars. It

57:57

has a 50 megapixel mean camera.

58:00

It has a 6.7 inch screen. But

58:04

when it comes to updates, they use

58:06

to promise regular updates in

58:08

the marketing before launch. I'm sitting

58:11

here on April 4th, 2023, and it's sitting

58:13

on the January 5th, 2023 security update. So

58:18

in terms of software updates, HMD

58:21

Global,

58:21

who are the company who make

58:23

Nokia smartphones, Sadly,

58:26

have a really bad track

58:28

record in promising

58:30

a lot of month three or quarterly

58:32

security updates to their smartphones

58:34

and not delivering them. And I've been

58:37

covering Nokia for years at this point. Sadly,

58:40

they promise a lot on their website,

58:42

but don't deliver. Maybe it's just

58:44

because I'm in the UK and I have a UK SIM cards

58:47

in the devices. Uh, but that's

58:49

something that I'm quite concerned about

58:51

is they're promising those security updates,

58:53

which never seemed to be delivered regularly.

58:56

Whereas Google maybe

58:59

delay them. They definitely give us

59:01

the updates. And in my experience

59:03

at the moment, uh, the best company

59:05

for Android

59:06

updates seems to have become Samsung

59:09

after years of being the worst.

59:11

Yeah. So the

59:13

cool thing about this phone is that it's affordable.

59:16

It has a nice big screen. It works well.

59:19

It's running on a chip set or

59:22

a system on a chip made by a company

59:24

called Unisoc. And I think this is

59:26

an important thing

59:28

to look back at the pandemic

59:30

for. We had supply chain issues.

59:33

Qualcomm couldn't make chips fast enough.

59:36

MediaTek couldn't make chips fast enough.

59:39

And so along came Unisoc, who were

59:41

best known for making chip sets and

59:43

systems on chips for TV set-top

59:46

boxes, for cable set-top boxes.

59:49

They came along and started

59:51

using their 28-nanometer chips for

59:53

smartphones and in the entry level

59:55

in the sort of sub 100 US

59:57

dollar space in the market.

1:00:00

that actually works really, really well.

1:00:02

So they've been filling that

1:00:04

gap in the market, and even Nokia

1:00:06

or HMD Global have

1:00:09

now started using

1:00:10

Unisoc chipsets.

1:00:13

And in terms of performance, you only

1:00:15

get full HD or 1080p video

1:00:18

recording, but

1:00:20

you get a perfectly functional

1:00:22

phone, which for most people is more than

1:00:24

enough. The other

1:00:27

key feature of the smartphone, apart from price

1:00:30

is the repairability. This is an iFixit

1:00:32

device where if you

1:00:35

were to break the screen or damage

1:00:38

the device you can take it apart

1:00:41

and replace it yourself. So you should have

1:00:44

kits available from

1:00:45

iFixit to replace the battery on the phone

1:00:48

and to replace the screen. Now I

1:00:51

haven't had reason to do that yet but at some point

1:00:53

on the Tech Travel Gates YouTube channel I will

1:00:56

be breaking this phone to then

1:00:58

go through the fixing process. I might

1:01:00

actually drop the unihertz tank on it. What

1:01:02

do you think Ron? Do you think that's a feasible

1:01:05

use case? I think so. I think that's a good idea. So I drop this

1:01:08

on the screen. I'll then get the iFixit kit, which is what you need

1:01:10

to repair this yourself. My

1:01:14

boots are also available.

1:01:15

So it should be easily repairable,

1:01:18

which is commendable. I'll just

1:01:20

need to make sure I'm I'm filming

1:01:22

in slow motion at 120 frames per second, capturing

1:01:26

that drop

1:01:27

of the Unahertz tank onto the phone. Jeez.

1:01:31

All right, well, so Nokia, Unahertz,

1:01:34

Tank and TikTok, some interesting stuff. Real

1:01:37

quickly, Matteo, you've had some adventures with

1:01:40

Android Auto while you've been here in the States? I

1:01:42

have. So at home in the UK, I am

1:01:44

a regular user of Android Auto. I

1:01:46

have a Fiat 500 little car

1:01:49

which has Android Auto. It just works

1:01:51

seamlessly with both my phone, my

1:01:53

wife's phone, I should say my

1:01:55

phone's plural.

1:01:57

And it's a great system.

1:01:59

I love it. Android auto and I use it as

1:02:01

much as I can when driving because it's safer

1:02:04

and

1:02:05

solves a lot of problems in my life, such as messaging

1:02:08

whilst driving. Uh,

1:02:11

so we

1:02:12

had our car rental when we

1:02:14

arrived at Los Angeles international airport,

1:02:17

picked up a 2022 Chevrolet

1:02:19

Malibu, uh, which I

1:02:21

call Stacy and, uh,

1:02:24

it has Android auto.

1:02:27

And

1:02:27

I was really, really frustrated because I couldn't

1:02:30

get my Google Pixel 7 Pro to work in

1:02:32

it. So it supports wireless Android

1:02:34

Auto, wired Android Auto. I've tried 12

1:02:36

cables. I've

1:02:40

tried using the wireless Android Auto. My

1:02:42

Pixel 7 Pro just won't work. The

1:02:45

Nokia and the Unihertz phones

1:02:47

work, but not the one with my good

1:02:49

SIM card in it.

1:02:50

Ironically, the Unihertz one works,

1:02:52

of course. The Unihertz

1:02:54

slows the car down several miles

1:02:56

per hour. Oh, it's so heavy. The human efficiency

1:02:59

will be terrible because of the Unihertz tank.

1:03:02

But we couldn't work out quite. It's

1:03:04

got to charge it too. Even my wife's Google Pixel 6

1:03:06

Pro worked great. And

1:03:09

then I figured out what was happening. It

1:03:11

was a VPN. If you have a VPN

1:03:13

service on, apparently it stops

1:03:16

Android water from working. And

1:03:18

this is completely new to me because in

1:03:20

the

1:03:20

UK, I don't have this problem. I

1:03:23

can run surf shark express

1:03:25

VPN, Nord VPN, uh,

1:03:27

and wind scribe with no issues.

1:03:30

And it just works. Whereas when I come to the U

1:03:32

S when those services are on,

1:03:34

or maybe it's the Chevrolet Malibu, um,

1:03:37

maybe that's why, uh, that's

1:03:39

happening, but it was quite a head

1:03:41

scratcher and sadly it's, uh,

1:03:44

it's

1:03:45

drained my wife's data allowance for

1:03:47

this trip will probably need to top up

1:03:49

her ECM as a result. But

1:03:51

that's an interesting learning

1:03:54

that I

1:03:54

had on this trip so

1:03:57

far with regards to Android Auto. Turn

1:03:59

off your view. if you have a Chevrolet

1:04:01

Malibu, or you're having issues with Android Auto,

1:04:04

that will likely solve the problem. But

1:04:07

as always, I always recommend using VPN

1:04:09

when you're connecting to public Wi-Fi services. It's

1:04:13

the best practice when traveling. Sure.

1:04:16

All right. Well, sorry, it hasn't

1:04:18

worked as smoothly, but luckily that Unahertz works. So there you

1:04:20

go. Well,

1:04:23

that was a fun journey into Mateo's

1:04:25

hardware shack, goat shack. a

1:04:28

couple other quick hardware notes to get through real

1:04:30

quickly. And Mateo, actually this one, I'm curious to hear what

1:04:32

you think of. The Motorola

1:04:35

Edge 40 Pro was announced

1:04:38

earlier today. And

1:04:40

it's going to be aimed at Europe and Latin

1:04:42

America, pricing out

1:04:45

at 899 euros, about $982 in US dollars.

1:04:46

And

1:04:52

it could come to North

1:04:54

America this year. And it just seems

1:04:56

like everybody has been very excited about this phone.

1:05:00

It's running the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. It's

1:05:03

got three rear cameras, 50

1:05:06

megapixel primary, 50 megapixel ulti-ultra-wide,

1:05:09

12 megapixel portrait on the rear with

1:05:12

a 60 megapixel primary camera

1:05:14

on the front. It's got

1:05:16

a 165 hertz refresh rate, 6.67 inch display.

1:05:23

It looks beautiful. This

1:05:26

seems, yeah, this is Motorola doing

1:05:28

the flagship. We talked recently about

1:05:30

Motorola doing mid-range and affordable,

1:05:32

and here they are with a flagship. Matteo,

1:05:35

is this phone worth up to all the hype?

1:05:38

I haven't had hands-on

1:05:40

time with it. I'm glad to see Motorola

1:05:42

doing a proper flagship again. I

1:05:45

really hope the cameras live up to the marketing

1:05:48

hype.

1:05:49

In the past with Motorola Edge

1:05:51

branded devices, been a little bit disappointed

1:05:54

by the quality of the cameras

1:05:56

in actual use. On

1:05:58

on paper looks great,

1:06:01

it looks like it's got a great main sensor,

1:06:03

but more importantly it has a proper 50 megapixel

1:06:07

ultra wide sensor which is great

1:06:10

not only for video but also for stills

1:06:12

if you're trying to use that ultra wide to

1:06:14

either make your cat look like a giant or

1:06:17

to get really good architecture

1:06:20

or landscape shots.

1:06:22

So on paper, this all looks great.

1:06:25

I'm a bit ambivalent.

1:06:29

I don't feel great about Motorola as a brand.

1:06:32

I think the Lenovo side of the Lenovo

1:06:35

Rolla name has taken over, and

1:06:37

they're a bit more limited in what they're doing in terms

1:06:40

of their product development. They're

1:06:43

still doing great in their key markets

1:06:46

on the affordable segments. I

1:06:48

just see them half-heartedly

1:06:51

working on flagships. them. I

1:06:53

really want to spend some time with this

1:06:56

device to be able to pass judgment.

1:06:58

Sure. All

1:07:00

right. Well, we'll see. And we'll see. It's going to

1:07:02

be available in Europe soon

1:07:04

and might become in North America. So we'll definitely see if the

1:07:06

Motorola flagship is up to stuff. And

1:07:09

then there was another phone announcement already

1:07:12

this week. When, what do you got?

1:07:14

Yeah. So today actually OnePlus

1:07:17

had their, hold on. I want to get this right. They're

1:07:19

larger than life a one plus Nord

1:07:21

launch event which by the way if you start the live stream there

1:07:24

is a Nord amount of weird screaming at the beginning

1:07:26

which was very surprising to me when I was

1:07:29

looking watching things for the segment

1:07:32

and for the show but yet early today April 4th one

1:07:34

plus officially announced officially launched

1:07:37

rather the mid-range Nord

1:07:39

CE3 light It

1:07:42

is a 6.72 inch 120 Hertz

1:07:44

full HD plus rocking MLS

1:07:47

display it rock and phone it

1:07:49

carries the QC outside the QC

1:07:52

minutes Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 up to 8 gigabytes of

1:07:56

RAM 128 gigabytes of storage and And

1:08:00

not quite as big as the tank, but

1:08:02

a sizable 5,000 milliamp

1:08:04

battery with 67 watt super vogue,

1:08:08

super V-O-O-C, how do

1:08:10

you pronounce this? Super

1:08:13

vogue, super vogue charging. It

1:08:15

has a courage port and

1:08:19

a 108 megapixel main sensor. That's

1:08:21

an audio jack, by the way, in case

1:08:24

you were just wondering what I was just talking about there and

1:08:27

what we've mentioned before. And also

1:08:29

a 2 megapixel secondary depth sensor for

1:08:31

adding that nice, slightly

1:08:34

artificial, but always lovely portrait

1:08:36

bokeh effect. There's a 16 megapixel

1:08:39

hole punch selfie camera, and this phone

1:08:41

will ship with Oxygen OS 13.1, which

1:08:45

is based on Android 13. And

1:08:47

with the Nord CE 3

1:08:50

Lite, you will get two full

1:08:53

OS updates, and we'll

1:08:56

see about security updates, unfortunately

1:08:59

for now that couldn't really tell. Um,

1:09:01

and it does come into very nice colorways,

1:09:03

pasta lime, which just looks very

1:09:05

festive, uh, and a chromatic gray.

1:09:08

And then to go with your Nord,

1:09:11

uh, you with your Nord, um, you

1:09:13

know, CE3 Lite, uh, for your mid

1:09:15

range phones. We also got the reveal of the

1:09:17

Nord's,

1:09:18

the Nord buds too, which are

1:09:20

very much like the original, uh, OG

1:09:23

Nord buds, a budget friendly option.

1:09:25

but this time you're getting noise cancellation

1:09:29

and a bit of a jump in price. So the

1:09:31

Norbuzz 2 will come with noise cancellation

1:09:35

that will drive the price up 50% for that

1:09:37

noise cancellation from all the way from $39

1:09:40

US to a whole stink and $59 US. So

1:09:43

still hyper affordable in

1:09:44

regards to buzz, but it is a significant

1:09:47

increase.

1:09:48

A lot of the design is the

1:09:51

same. It has the same 12.4 millimeter

1:09:54

drivers as the previous version. And

1:09:57

it does have the same base

1:09:59

seven. hours

1:10:00

of battery life. Now that is without noise

1:10:02

cancellation turned on. If you are

1:10:04

using noise cancellation, you'll be able to get five hours

1:10:06

out of it. And yeah, it's still

1:10:09

IP35 rated. I got

1:10:11

Bluetooth, got OnePlus fast pair. Design

1:10:14

of the case is mostly the same, just a little softer

1:10:16

edges to make it easier to go in and out

1:10:18

of your pants, pockets, cargo, or otherwise. So

1:10:20

yeah, a couple of things from OnePlus

1:10:23

for y'all. And we like us some mid-range phones

1:10:25

and some affordable accessories to go with.

1:10:27

So there you go. The OnePlus

1:10:30

larger than life event pack

1:10:33

in some really good mid-sized goodies.

1:10:36

So there you go. Cool. Yeah.

1:10:39

I'm not sure what I did with the fishy face, but

1:10:41

yeah, sure. Yeah, I love the color too. But

1:10:44

the mid-range. Theo, what's your take on the Nord? Oh,

1:10:46

sorry. The mid-range musketeer

1:10:48

in me is very, very happy at the moment. We

1:10:51

have quite a good selection of affordable

1:10:54

smartphones in that price range. For

1:10:56

example, the Honor Magic 5 Lite, which

1:10:58

I've just finished reviewing, is running on

1:11:00

the same Snapdragon 6 series chipset

1:11:04

and is a really good smartphone. I'm

1:11:06

looking forward to getting my hands on this device

1:11:09

and seeing how OnePlus handle it, but

1:11:12

on paper it looks like a third tier

1:11:14

chipset from Qualcomm. In day-to-day

1:11:16

use, most users will think they're using a flagship.

1:11:19

It is really a great platform to

1:11:21

build a smartphone on. And knowing

1:11:24

OnePlus, they'll have made the experience quite

1:11:26

delightful. So

1:11:28

more mid-range phones at this price

1:11:30

point offering those feature sets. And

1:11:33

more importantly, the courage port is

1:11:35

good news for me. Yep.

1:11:39

All right. So that was fun hardware

1:11:41

time. And now we're going to get

1:11:43

into a couple quick apps things. So

1:11:45

let's do the apps.

1:11:55

So this first story

1:11:58

actually called, you know, a little, a little banter.

1:12:00

here and all about Android HQ as we were talking

1:12:02

about it today. You know, there's been a lot we've been talking

1:12:04

about on the show for the last couple of weeks. There's been a lot of much

1:12:07

ado about chat GPT and AI

1:12:09

and the effect of it. And Google

1:12:11

released their response to chat GPT

1:12:14

called Bard, which doesn't

1:12:16

stand for anything as we discussed on last week's show.

1:12:20

But, but, but here we are

1:12:22

with some news coming out of Google as

1:12:24

a leaked memo revealed

1:12:28

that they are shuffling

1:12:30

a bit of the staff on the Google side of things. And

1:12:33

then actually the team behind Google

1:12:35

Assistant is going to be

1:12:38

shifting over to focus on Bard. Actually

1:12:41

specifically one of the long time

1:12:43

VPs of Google Assistant is leaving the company

1:12:45

for personal reasons and another

1:12:49

engineering vice president is shifting over to Bard. Now,

1:12:52

additionally, not additionally, but

1:12:54

initially, sorry, my thought was like,

1:12:57

well, we often blur

1:12:59

the lines on this show between what is Android

1:13:01

specific and what is Google

1:13:04

specific, right? Because it's hard

1:13:06

to talk about Android without talking about Google,

1:13:08

but it's very easy to fall down the rabbit hole of talking

1:13:11

about Google and having have it had nothing

1:13:13

to do with Android, right? I mean, when we fuck, I

1:13:15

feel like we toe that line a lot. I mean, it

1:13:17

also has this week in Google, right? covers all

1:13:20

things Google, but sometimes

1:13:22

it's hard to separate the two. And

1:13:25

my thought was like, well, Bard really isn't Android

1:13:27

specific. Let's not put it in the show

1:13:29

this week. But actually, as we were chatting, our

1:13:31

own Florence Ayan chimed in. And

1:13:35

her point that I wanted to make on the show here was

1:13:37

that, you know, that this actually is very

1:13:39

Android Pacific because they're consolidating the teams.

1:13:42

And considering that Assistant is such a big

1:13:44

part of Google's business, it eventually

1:13:46

will have a downstream effect and will absolutely affect

1:13:48

Android because it's going to, it's

1:13:50

going to eek its way into the user interface

1:13:53

and it's going to affect how people interact with their phones

1:13:56

and this all shows that Google is shifting

1:13:58

the focus from Assistant

1:14:01

to Bard as an AI-based

1:14:04

kind of platform and what that means

1:14:06

for the future of Android and the future of Assistant

1:14:09

and the future of everything that we do comes

1:14:11

into play. Now, a lot of that is

1:14:13

conjecture, who knows where it's gonna go, but

1:14:16

it seems pretty impactful for all things that Google

1:14:18

is doing in terms of taking what is seen as

1:14:21

one of their more successful teams with Assistant,

1:14:24

despite my battles with Assistant on my Google Home,

1:14:27

which go on on a daily basis. It is ridiculous.

1:14:30

But just try requesting a song on YouTube

1:14:32

Music on your Google Home with Assistant. It's

1:14:34

maddening. But

1:14:37

shifting them over to Bard shows this kind

1:14:39

of investment in AI. I'm

1:14:43

super curious to hear what your take on this is and

1:14:46

what you think this means about the future of Google's kind

1:14:48

of software development.

1:14:50

Yeah, so I think it's really interesting because,

1:14:54

and to kind of give some background, I think all of

1:14:56

us in

1:14:57

the Android,

1:15:01

I think all of us in the Android Dev space have,

1:15:04

you know, had

1:15:08

some meeting or some conversation with a PM

1:15:11

about,

1:15:12

is there a way that we can all leverage a system?

1:15:14

Because it seems like the drive is to, you know,

1:15:16

having this conversational

1:15:20

natural language way of interfacing

1:15:22

with not just your phone, but the apps and the content

1:15:24

within it, right? And

1:15:27

up until now, I think for a third

1:15:30

party app, a non-Google app,

1:15:32

basically, it's been really difficult to do that because it's

1:15:35

a whole other level of experience

1:15:37

of product design of effort

1:15:40

that needs to be done on top of the regular

1:15:42

application development.

1:15:44

And it's

1:15:47

interesting because I think when

1:15:50

it comes to Android development, I've mentioned this a lot.

1:15:52

is not there, we're going to, whether we like it

1:15:54

or not, not do a thing. And

1:15:57

so I think that because of the effort.

1:16:00

that assistant has required to make third-party apps

1:16:02

integrate with it. And the fact that, you know, even

1:16:05

the avenues that devs have had

1:16:07

to integrate with assistant are a little bit,

1:16:10

um,

1:16:12

still primitive, I guess, and still

1:16:14

like not, you know, like assistant has

1:16:16

kind of tried to gear itself to be more conversational.

1:16:19

Was it like two years ago at the first, like,

1:16:21

you know, uh, Corona Google

1:16:23

I.O. where they had like someone talking to the

1:16:26

planet Pluto or something. And so there's this like

1:16:28

kind of move to

1:16:30

making communicating with your devices

1:16:32

more like having a conversation. It's been like that

1:16:34

for a while, but it's not something that I feel

1:16:36

that

1:16:37

most third party devs

1:16:40

even feel like is an option or

1:16:42

feel like it's like a big, you know, it would

1:16:44

be a big driver for business. It just feels like the

1:16:47

APIs feel kind of rudimentary or

1:16:49

just take a lot of work to really make them sing, or it's

1:16:51

just not something that we have to deal with. And

1:16:54

that's just something that even extends to say, like accessibility

1:16:56

and things where, you know, non-touch

1:16:59

interface and non-touch interactions tend to get deprioritized

1:17:02

because it's harder and

1:17:04

it's not, it's not a right thing, but a lot

1:17:06

of these kinds of things that are not, again,

1:17:09

high ROI, high engagement

1:17:11

from users tend to get put in the backburner. So what

1:17:13

I would like to see, and

1:17:15

what I hope this means is that as,

1:17:17

you know, you know,

1:17:18

like Bard,

1:17:20

chat GPT, the way that if we're

1:17:23

moving towards a different way of interacting

1:17:25

with our devices

1:17:26

that will necessitate

1:17:29

developers, designers, PMs,

1:17:32

thinking

1:17:32

about how, what is the

1:17:34

app experience? What is an app anymore?

1:17:37

And I can see that being a very kind of top-down

1:17:39

change in how we approach things. It'll

1:17:42

probably start with like, okay, how do we integrate?

1:17:44

How do we make our app work

1:17:46

better with Bard? Maybe we don't have to,

1:17:48

maybe Bard or whatever other AI

1:17:51

chatbot will figure things out. then

1:17:53

it also goes to how can we maintain the

1:17:56

consistency

1:17:57

like the consistency and the

1:17:59

integrity.

1:18:00

of our app experience when, you know, Barb

1:18:02

will just figure out how to do stuff. You know

1:18:04

what I mean? And, and,

1:18:05

and figure out how we can maintain a brand experience.

1:18:08

Like there's always really interesting questions that

1:18:10

will change, that change when the way that you interact

1:18:13

with

1:18:14

a thing changes, and I can kind

1:18:16

of see that being something that we're all going to have,

1:18:18

we're all going to have to think about and

1:18:20

start to take more into account. I'm all for things

1:18:23

like widening

1:18:25

the accessibility of technology to people.

1:18:28

We should be doing more with

1:18:30

that now with TalkBack, with

1:18:33

mobility devices, all the kind of these different avenues we

1:18:35

have for communicating with people via devices. And

1:18:38

this is just going to speed that up

1:18:40

because we're taking leaps and bounds with

1:18:43

talking to our devices in a more natural way. So that's

1:18:45

kind of my quick, not quick, two

1:18:48

to three minute rant on, I think, you know, it's going to

1:18:50

be, it's

1:18:51

going to change how we design and think

1:18:53

about apps and hopefully make them more accessible in the

1:18:55

positive light. I think there's a slew

1:18:58

of other negative things too that we'll have to think about,

1:19:00

like

1:19:00

liability. I think

1:19:04

Flo wrote about this and kind

1:19:06

of had some good, I think, thought experiments

1:19:09

on

1:19:09

what are the negative impacts of this

1:19:12

as a user and otherwise. But

1:19:15

yeah, it'll definitely change how

1:19:17

we do things. We're all going to have to care about this at some

1:19:19

point, I think. For

1:19:21

sure. For sure. So thank you, Lynn. That's

1:19:23

a great point of view. I hate to make

1:19:25

you talk more, but I know this next story

1:19:27

is right up your alley though in terms of the wind

1:19:29

So I love

1:19:32

Google keep and I love foldables

1:19:34

and Kind of in the vein of

1:19:36

making you know, the the the various

1:19:38

Google workspace apps whether that's slides Sheets

1:19:42

and notes, you know kind of more

1:19:44

Conducive to large screen experiences

1:19:47

because that's kind of like a big focus for Google

1:19:49

is who do we who do we get to use? large

1:19:52

screens, who to get to use foldables, and a lot of that has been

1:19:54

kind of productivity workspace, right?

1:19:56

People that might be, you know, like...

1:20:00

warehouse workers, like kind of like day-to-day

1:20:02

things where you're carrying around spreadsheets, you're carrying around, you know,

1:20:04

a larger, you know, surface area and making, being

1:20:06

able to leverage that surface area. So there's been

1:20:08

a lot of stuff on Google workspace and making them

1:20:10

more, you know, conducive

1:20:13

or more finely tuned

1:20:15

experiences for Android tablets. So Google

1:20:18

Keep,

1:20:18

along with having, you know, better widgets, we've

1:20:21

talked about their kind of enhanced like double pane

1:20:23

UI that's meant to take advantage

1:20:26

of the large space is now letting you open notes

1:20:28

side by side. So you now

1:20:31

with Google Keep on Android tablets and foldables

1:20:34

will be able to open, you know, notes side by side.

1:20:36

So that, you know, if you're taking notes, you

1:20:38

kind of compare things. I do

1:20:40

this a lot in my everyday where maybe I'm

1:20:42

like, you know, I have a bunch of, I don't know, it always

1:20:45

comes back to working out with me. I

1:20:48

have like my workout plan on the left side. And then

1:20:50

like if I have kind of notes for my coach like, oh, this

1:20:52

felt weird or hey, or hey, I got like three unassisted

1:20:54

pull-ups, which I did today, yay. You know, it

1:20:58

was kind of make more use of the space, right? Because that's

1:21:00

one thing that happens a lot with large screens is

1:21:02

that content's only so big, large

1:21:04

screens got a lot of space. So how can we kind of create

1:21:06

a higher visual density? And

1:21:09

then to go along with that, again, in the theme of making

1:21:11

these productivity apps more useful on large

1:21:13

screens, you're going to get full mouse

1:21:15

support on slides and sheets, which

1:21:17

is something that has been available in 12.0

1:21:20

for a while, But is again,

1:21:22

kind of,

1:21:23

it reminds me of the story we did like two weeks

1:21:25

ago, Ron, where we talked about packet casts,

1:21:29

finally supporting watches. And you're like, do a little

1:21:31

too late. Um, I won't say that here,

1:21:33

but it feels, does feel like finally,

1:21:35

you know, Google

1:21:37

bringing their productivity apps to

1:21:40

another level, you

1:21:42

know, with these screens that, you know, have

1:21:44

a large, I think use case for

1:21:46

productivity or a large, you know,

1:21:49

there's a lot of space there for

1:21:50

them to get some

1:21:51

engagement market share, however you want to call it, insert

1:21:53

the business term here with

1:21:55

large screens and folks that use productivity

1:21:57

apps. So anyway, there you go. If you're

1:21:59

on Google, we're... spaces and have a large screen, have

1:22:01

you some fun with Google Keep and, you

1:22:03

know, side by side notes and all the other

1:22:06

features that are making your large screen

1:22:08

life better.

1:22:10

Awesome. Um, Matteo,

1:22:14

uh, how do you feel about the, the, the upcoming

1:22:16

tablet revolution that's coming? Um,

1:22:18

I've been waiting for it for a while. I'm, I'm

1:22:21

a bit of a tablet enthusiast.

1:22:23

Um, but, um, it's

1:22:25

good to see the signals are there, uh,

1:22:28

that's Google is getting ready for the

1:22:30

complete relaunch of Android on tablets.

1:22:34

Until we see the upcoming pixel tablet,

1:22:36

it will be, it's still under

1:22:38

shroud, but we see

1:22:40

little things here and there. We

1:22:42

see Honor with the Honor Pad 8,

1:22:45

which I'm currently using as my main tablet

1:22:47

computer have already solved

1:22:49

a lot of the UI issues within

1:22:52

a magic UI to make

1:22:54

the tablet usable as a productivity

1:22:57

tool and also mirror or have

1:23:00

a window onto your phone from the tablet. So

1:23:02

having seen what Honor is doing and

1:23:05

what likely Google is refining

1:23:07

at the moment, I think we're in for the

1:23:09

year of the Android

1:23:10

tablet 2023. Having

1:23:13

said that, in Google Keep

1:23:15

I had a note that

1:23:17

because I had reached out to someone at

1:23:19

Google about the naming bard.

1:23:22

Last week we talked about, or

1:23:24

you talked about bard and

1:23:28

what bard stands for. Now

1:23:30

have you heard of the

1:23:32

infinite monkey theorem?

1:23:37

No, enlighten us. So the infinite

1:23:39

monkey theorem states that

1:23:42

a monkey hitting keys at random on

1:23:44

a typewriter keyboard for an

1:23:46

infinite amount of time will almost surely... He's

1:23:48

in Rome with typewriters. Yeah. Yeah. We'll almost

1:23:51

surely type a given, any given text,

1:23:54

such as the complete works of William

1:23:56

Shakespeare. Now William Shakespeare

1:23:59

is also known as

1:24:00

the bard of Avon. So

1:24:03

I think that what Google's hinting

1:24:05

at with the name bard, oops, one of my

1:24:07

phones fell, I think that what Google's hinting

1:24:10

at is that

1:24:12

in this case they have access

1:24:15

to most of what's on the internet,

1:24:17

they have the infinite monkeys, they're

1:24:19

eventually going to hit bard

1:24:22

entity.

1:24:25

If anybody could do it, I imagine they would and

1:24:27

then they'll rewrite Hamlet and then we'll all be better for

1:24:30

it. So that's the hint I was

1:24:32

given, but that's just one take. Who

1:24:34

knows? Only the real Googlers know.

1:24:37

Yeah,

1:24:37

well fine. Time will tell. I also

1:24:39

want to know what just,

1:24:41

oh, sorry, go ahead Ron.

1:24:43

Not you, fun fact. Oh,

1:24:44

fun fact. That's why

1:24:46

my website is randomly typing because

1:24:48

I figure I'm a code monkey. There's

1:24:51

not infinite of me, but I'm infinitely typing on a

1:24:54

keyboard and hopefully at some point something

1:24:56

interesting will come out of it. So that was why my website's

1:24:58

called randomly typing. Sorry. That was, there you

1:25:00

go. Look at it. Bring it

1:25:01

around. Love it. So you, you could be the bard

1:25:04

of Colorado. I could,

1:25:06

I could, oh, that's, that's a lovely,

1:25:08

that's a lovely title. I like that very much. That's

1:25:10

pretty good. That's got a ring to it. Like I wander around the mountains

1:25:13

and sing, I don't sing, but perhaps

1:25:15

I play a lute or something similar.

1:25:18

Anyway. Alrighty. So, uh, we're

1:25:20

moving right along. I know this has been a fun night

1:25:22

with Mateo, But we're going to take a quick time out

1:25:25

to hear from our good friend, JR Rafael

1:25:27

of Android

1:25:27

intelligence. He's got another

1:25:30

super simple tip for using YouTube

1:25:32

on Android. So, JR, take it away.

1:25:35

Well, hello there. Great to

1:25:37

see everyone as always. So,

1:25:39

last week we talked about two

1:25:42

easy ways to give yourself a better YouTube

1:25:44

experience on Android.

1:25:47

This week I want to pick up right where we left off

1:25:49

with that. And I want to show you one more super

1:25:52

simple step you can take to make watching

1:25:54

videos on your phone about

1:25:56

a zillion times more pleasant. It's a

1:25:58

highly, highly-

1:26:00

scientific measurement, let me tell

1:26:02

ya. So here it is, prepare to have your mind

1:26:05

blown, few mere mortals realize

1:26:07

it, but YouTube's probably showing you grainy,

1:26:10

low quality videos instead

1:26:13

of crisp, clear goodness most of

1:26:15

the time on your phone. This

1:26:17

was a major wakeup call for me when I stumbled

1:26:19

onto this a little while back. And here's the explanation,

1:26:21

the YouTube Android app has

1:26:24

an option for video quality that's

1:26:26

typically on an auto setting by

1:26:28

default.

1:26:29

That's supposed to adjust to give

1:26:31

you the best experience for your conditions

1:26:34

at any given moment, as Google puts

1:26:36

it, but more often than not,

1:26:38

it seems to result in most videos getting

1:26:41

dumbed down to a disappointing

1:26:43

480p resolution.

1:26:45

Translated out of GeekSpeak, that means

1:26:48

fuzzy wasy bad bad. Sorry,

1:26:50

I've been spending a little

1:26:53

too much time around my children lately.

1:26:55

The good news though is that this is

1:26:57

incredibly easy to fix. Just

1:26:59

prance your way into the YouTube app

1:27:02

settings by tapping your profile

1:27:04

picture in the upper right corner of the app

1:27:06

on your phone and then selecting settings

1:27:08

in the panel that pops up.

1:27:10

Tap video quality preferences

1:27:13

in the main settings menu and in

1:27:15

the video quality on Wi-Fi

1:27:17

section, change the option from auto

1:27:19

to higher picture quality.

1:27:22

Now I'd suggest leaving the setting on auto

1:27:24

for mobile network connections, unless

1:27:26

you've got a truly unlimited data plan without

1:27:29

any asterisks attached. But

1:27:31

with Wi-Fi, it's well worth your while to treat

1:27:33

your eyes to the better quality video and

1:27:35

let that stunning screen of

1:27:37

yours shine.

1:27:39

And there you have it, one setting, 15 seconds

1:27:43

of effort, and an infinitely improved

1:27:45

Android YouTube experience. It's one

1:27:47

heck of a deal.

1:27:49

Hey, speaking of phenomenal deals, if you

1:27:51

haven't signed up for my Android Intelligence newsletter

1:27:53

yet? Hoo boy, are you missing out?

1:27:56

You'll get three new things to try in your inbox

1:27:58

every Friday. All sorts of sup- super useful

1:28:00

stuff. One email a week from me

1:28:02

to you all for the oh so affordable

1:28:05

price of zero dollars.

1:28:07

I think I'm much better than that. Head over to AndroidIntel.net

1:28:10

slash twit to get your first

1:28:12

issue and get a few extra bonus

1:28:14

tips now.

1:28:15

That site again is AndroidIntel.net

1:28:19

slash twit. We'll keep

1:28:21

the YouTube theme going next week with a look at some

1:28:23

spectacular hidden shortcuts

1:28:26

sprinkled throughout the YouTube Android app. For

1:28:28

some of my all time favorite discovery,

1:28:30

some of the tricks I use more than any

1:28:32

other in my own day to day life. Hopefully

1:28:35

they'll be useful for you too. We'll

1:28:37

pick up there soon for now. Back

1:28:39

to you, gang.

1:28:42

All righty. Well, thank you, JR. That's a nice,

1:28:44

handy YouTube trick

1:28:46

there. I need to adjust that on my side as well.

1:28:49

I do watch YouTube on my phone a lot. So go to

1:28:51

androidintelligence.net slash twit and check out

1:28:54

all of JR's great awesome Android intelligence.

1:28:57

And with that, We've

1:28:58

got some emails from you, the community, so let's

1:29:00

get into emails next. Sorry.

1:29:03

Is

1:29:08

that the sound of an

1:29:11

infinite number of goats typing on a keyboard?

1:29:13

Yeah, yeah. Mateo, how many goats does

1:29:15

it take to recreate the work of the bard? I

1:29:18

have no idea, but it's an interesting

1:29:20

thing I'll have to look into. And

1:29:25

obviously we need to define which part, the bard

1:29:27

of Colorado or the bard of Avon.

1:29:30

We'll see. We'll see. Take that time from

1:29:32

me. All right. So you can

1:29:35

get it on the action. You can email us at AAA at twit.tv

1:29:38

and when you got the first one. So take it away.

1:29:40

Yeah. So our first email

1:29:43

comes from Hilton Young. Hi

1:29:45

AAA fan. Do you guys have any inside

1:29:48

info on what Google plans to do for

1:29:50

its customers who have Nest secure? I

1:29:52

have heavily invested in the entire Google

1:29:55

ecosystem and spent $500 on the system

1:29:57

and today.

1:30:00

They sent an email saying they were going to end

1:30:02

the Brinks monitoring at the end of the year.

1:30:05

Is Google planning on giving us a refund

1:30:07

like they did with Stadia? Why did I

1:30:09

say it like that? Stadia, are they

1:30:11

going to make the Nest Secure hardware work with

1:30:13

ADT since they appear to have bought

1:30:16

into that company? I need answers

1:30:18

and Google tech support isn't helping. I'm

1:30:20

assuming they are slammed with people wondering

1:30:23

the same thing so they can't handle handles the call

1:30:25

volume as it goes. I'm a Google

1:30:27

fan boy who has a Pixel, Nest

1:30:29

Secure, Yale Lock, Nest Cam,

1:30:31

Google Home, and every iteration.

1:30:34

It feels like Google wants me to get Samsung

1:30:37

and Amazon instead. Say it ain't so,

1:30:39

give up the good work, Hilton Young.

1:30:44

Hilton, you certainly are a

1:30:46

very loyal Google fan boy in

1:30:48

your investment in Nest Secure,

1:30:51

But it does sound like

1:30:54

there were some articles, I think, recently from 9 to 5

1:30:56

Google, basically

1:30:59

about Google and ADT together launching

1:31:01

kind of like a DIY security system. And

1:31:05

it's meant to work with the existing Google

1:31:08

or Nest hardware. But

1:31:10

I

1:31:11

mean, the Nest Secure was its own kind of set of

1:31:15

security keypad and things like that too, right?

1:31:18

I have, I'm not as familiar with

1:31:20

Nest Secure,

1:31:21

but it does seem like they are

1:31:23

kind of going in on their

1:31:26

partnership with ADT. I

1:31:28

don't, it's,

1:31:30

someone can like correct me if I'm

1:31:33

mistaken. I don't see much mentioned here

1:31:35

about Nest Secure. So

1:31:39

I think there's still options for you to,

1:31:42

you know, integrate, you know, with ADT and your

1:31:45

Nest cams and you know, kind of some of your

1:31:47

other like Nest devices, but I'm

1:31:49

not exactly sure where Nest secure fits in this ecosystem

1:31:52

right now. So yeah,

1:31:55

it's another mystery. Yeah, I know a lot of people

1:31:57

were really liked it, but It's

1:31:59

leaving lots of

1:32:00

open questions for sure.

1:32:02

Yeah, and it's a bummer because obviously, I

1:32:04

feel like many of us, Android faithful, have

1:32:07

had this, I don't know, buyers

1:32:09

remorse, but more like one's bitten

1:32:11

a heck ton shy

1:32:13

about investing in

1:32:15

Google things and then kind of them taking

1:32:17

a very hard turn to some other

1:32:20

partnerships, some other things. So I hope that's

1:32:22

not the case. I would just

1:32:24

kind of maybe

1:32:25

see what this ADT self, this

1:32:28

ADT DIY self-serve

1:32:30

kind of security system is. And

1:32:32

hopefully there's a place for your nest secure and

1:32:35

related peripherals in it. If not, I

1:32:38

don't, yeah. Yeah. The good

1:32:40

one. $500 is a lot of money.

1:32:42

You can buy a unit house tank and use it in self-defense.

1:32:45

You can almost buy. With

1:32:48

lanyard. That's like two and a half tanks,

1:32:50

right? Or two and two thirds tanks. Yes,

1:32:52

you can have one in each hand. With

1:32:55

lanyards, yeah. So, all right, well,

1:32:57

definitely stay tuned. And Hilton,

1:32:59

if Google does refund you, let us know. Hopefully they

1:33:01

do, because that is not cool. All

1:33:06

right, our next email comes from Joey, who says, hey

1:33:08

all, about Android crew. I love the

1:33:10

show, big fan. Thank you, Joey.

1:33:12

I do wanna comment on the RCS discussion.

1:33:15

I do agree that Apple should support it.

1:33:17

I also agree that companies should pressure them, but

1:33:19

I don't think Google should be one of those companies. Google

1:33:22

has over 10 different messaging clients in the last 10

1:33:24

years. They get all excited about something,

1:33:26

then they kill it.

1:33:27

Apple has had one messaging product called iMessage.

1:33:30

Google has no credibility in discussion. They do more

1:33:32

to hurt the discussion than they do to help it. Whether

1:33:34

you like Apple or you don't, they stick with things

1:33:37

and Google, when Google doesn't, and consumers

1:33:39

know that us in the tech community all the

1:33:41

time talk about, should

1:33:43

consumers jump on the latest thing Google gets excited

1:33:46

about, like inbox or Stadia, and then eventually 18

1:33:48

months, kill it. So all this advertising and

1:33:50

how Apple should move to RCS that's coming

1:33:52

from Google to me just brings me back to the past or get

1:33:55

excited about a Google product and adopt it

1:33:57

and then they would kill it. I don't think Google should comment

1:33:59

on this. I think. Google needs to focus on making the next

1:34:01

product they're going to announce. They kill in 18 months.

1:34:04

Let other companies that have a history of sticking with things,

1:34:06

they announce pressure Apple, not Google. Thank

1:34:08

you for the wonderful show. And Joey,

1:34:11

you, you echo, you share

1:34:13

an echo, a sentiment that is absolutely right,

1:34:15

which is that Google does

1:34:17

not have a lot of earned credibility

1:34:19

in the space because of their, you

1:34:22

know, move fast and break things and,

1:34:24

and, and, and develop and discontinue

1:34:26

and roll into the next thing and kind of go like that.

1:34:29

And they have, you know, we've seen the

1:34:31

the the great and the killed by Google graveyard

1:34:33

that shows that And

1:34:35

I'm sure somebody from Google would have an intelligent

1:34:38

response as to why they operate in that way But

1:34:41

you're right, you know, Google Google does take

1:34:43

a lot of flack and it does weaken

1:34:45

their argument in arguing for RCS But

1:34:48

it doesn't mean that they're wrong and

1:34:50

also in the space when

1:34:52

you say somebody else should pick up Who's

1:34:54

gonna do it Samsung? No,

1:34:56

you know what I mean? like who else has the

1:34:58

clout

1:34:59

to pressure Apple in that direction or

1:35:01

not

1:35:02

other than Google? Like you know, you won't see the

1:35:04

carriers doing it. The carriers tried and failed. So

1:35:08

yeah, so I definitely think you've got, you know,

1:35:10

your point is valid, but I also think

1:35:13

that it's there's really nobody else in the space too.

1:35:15

I mean, Matteo, how do you feel

1:35:17

about the Google Google's a peer

1:35:19

pressuring Apple campaign to adopt RCS?

1:35:22

Do you think it was effective or cringy?

1:35:24

From the outside, from outside

1:35:27

the US, it looked a little

1:35:29

bit like infighting over

1:35:31

something that's pretty much no longer

1:35:34

relevant.

1:35:35

Between WhatsApp, Telegram,

1:35:37

WeChat, KakaoTalk, I

1:35:39

think globally most people have moved away from

1:35:42

text messaging.

1:35:43

Text messaging or SMS

1:35:45

used to be a mainstay

1:35:49

of the telecoms industry. But

1:35:51

because the phone companies kept the

1:35:53

pricing

1:35:54

relatively high,

1:35:57

it's essentially, we've moved over to... in

1:36:00

messaging that's not

1:36:03

related to SMS and the RCS

1:36:05

conversation is pretty much redundant.

1:36:08

It's the swan song of

1:36:10

messaging over the network

1:36:13

itself. I think we're

1:36:16

moving into internet service-based

1:36:18

messaging and that's

1:36:20

where things are

1:36:22

really interesting. So from

1:36:24

the outside it looked a bit interesting

1:36:26

to me. It was good to see a bit of posturing,

1:36:29

but I think that's pretty much what it is.

1:36:31

The real people with power here are the networks,

1:36:34

the likes of Verizon, ATT, AT&T,

1:36:37

T-Mobile, and all the other network

1:36:39

operators around the world. They're the ones

1:36:41

who can make the final decision and

1:36:44

just make it happen.

1:36:45

Apple will have no choice if the networks

1:36:48

decide to side with Google. But

1:36:51

I think it's at this point a

1:36:53

pretty redundant conversation. So

1:36:57

is that a bit too grumpy of me? No,

1:36:59

it, I personally, yeah, sorry. I

1:37:02

always think as also, I think

1:37:04

we do mention a healthy amount on the show, but

1:37:06

that a lot of this is a very

1:37:09

American North American or, uh, you

1:37:11

know, very, we have, we have a very us centric

1:37:14

point of view of these things. And I mean, obviously the us

1:37:16

is a huge market, but as you mentioned, a lot

1:37:19

of countries have their own local,

1:37:21

you know, messaging services that they develop,

1:37:24

you know, both business and culture around

1:37:27

how talk line, all that kind of thing. And

1:37:30

it's weird because I mean, these are, you know, these are also,

1:37:32

you know, heavily, you

1:37:35

know, tech centric company or countries like Korea,

1:37:37

Japan. And so it's interesting to

1:37:39

kind of always think about these conversations

1:37:42

in the context of the broader world. And what

1:37:44

I mean, regardless of what happens with

1:37:46

RCS, is there is there some future where

1:37:49

the conversation is still going to include

1:37:51

more than just, you know, as

1:37:53

text messaging or text messaging

1:37:55

carrying as

1:37:56

RCS impacted

1:37:59

folks, I guess. or more impacted folks. So

1:38:01

I don't know, I think it was a good point to bring up.

1:38:03

All right, when

1:38:06

do you get to wrap us up now? I do,

1:38:09

and it is time for the email

1:38:11

of the week.

1:38:13

And the email of

1:38:15

the week comes to us from South Carolina

1:38:18

from Daryl Hilson. I have been

1:38:20

a huge fan of AAA since nearly

1:38:22

the very beginning and look forward to each

1:38:25

weekly episode. Great work everyone.

1:38:27

And I appreciate the fun and hard work that

1:38:29

you all share each week with the viewer and listener

1:38:31

community. Last week in episode 623,

1:38:34

an email from Joseph indicated that he

1:38:37

couldn't get the March 2023

1:38:39

OTA security update on his Pixel

1:38:41

6a, even though it was

1:38:43

available and rolling out. There

1:38:45

is a way to force an OTA update onto

1:38:47

your device, but it is not necessarily

1:38:50

something that every user may feel comfortable

1:38:52

with doing. I

1:38:54

found a video from 9to5Google on YouTube

1:38:56

that I used to walk through sideloading the

1:38:58

OTA onto my Pixel phones whenever

1:39:01

I don't want to wait for the carrier rollout

1:39:03

of the monthly Pixel update for my phone or

1:39:06

waiting for the slow optimization process

1:39:08

when using the normal check for update process.

1:39:11

I hope this helps Joseph and others in

1:39:13

the audience who may be comfortable with attempting

1:39:15

this process. Thanks everyone for your hard

1:39:18

work and dedication to the audience and

1:39:20

bringing some weekly fun talking about Android

1:39:22

and have a blessed day

1:39:24

regards, Daryl Hilson

1:39:26

from South Carolina. And here is our,

1:39:29

and here is Daryl's hot

1:39:31

tip on the 9-to-5 Google

1:39:35

walkthrough on sideloading the

1:39:38

OTA. And yeah,

1:39:40

so definitely if you're like Joseph, you

1:39:42

just need you get, need you some

1:39:44

security update

1:39:47

and for kind of like helping out some fellow Android

1:39:49

faithful. Uh, Daryl

1:39:51

Hilson. That is why you're

1:39:53

our team

1:39:54

of leads. Sorry, Ron.

1:39:56

My bad. I love the community

1:39:58

helping one another. It definitely

1:40:01

is neat to see folks chiming in

1:40:03

and especially given the April update is late.

1:40:06

Maybe somebody's going to side load it. So

1:40:08

there it is. So a good one. All

1:40:11

right. Well, that's going to

1:40:13

wrap us up for this evening. Matteo,

1:40:15

thank you so much for stopping by for sitting

1:40:18

in Jason's big chair. Why

1:40:21

don't you tell everybody where they can find

1:40:23

you after they listen to the show? Where

1:40:25

can they follow you in your adventures, Matteo?

1:40:28

Well, you can follow me on most social

1:40:30

media channels, including the Twitter

1:40:32

social mastodon on my

1:40:35

handle, which is TodoLeo. That's

1:40:37

Tango Oscar, Delta Oscar, Lima

1:40:39

Echo Oscar. My

1:40:42

videos are uploaded to

1:40:44

our YouTube channel, the Tech Travel Geeks YouTube

1:40:46

channel. You can find that on

1:40:48

YouTube and subscribe and like. It's

1:40:50

always appreciated. We

1:40:54

mainly cover consumer electronics and gadgets

1:40:56

we think make the travel experience better. So

1:40:59

you can subscribe there. It's

1:41:03