Pixel Drop Or Pixel Dribble?

Hello and welcome to another edition of Android Faithful. 

We are your weekly source for latest news, hardware, apps, and fun discussion about everything under the sun in the world of Android. I am Ron Richards. I'm Jason Howell. I'm Huyen Tue Dao. 

Hello my friends. We got no MIshaal tonight because it's his birthday. So everybody should go on every social network in the world and wish Mishaal a happy birthday because he's on every social network in the world. I saw him. He was posting away on his birthday even though we told him to take the fault all day off. But we made him skip the show so he can go celebrate. So hopefully he's out there. And then date him with birthday love. But in his place, we are so excited to have on friend of the show, first time on Android Faithful. 

Mr. Will Sattelberg from Android Police, the phones editor over there. How you doing, Will? I'm good. Hi guys. Thanks for having me. I am no substitute for Mishaal. Well, who is? 

I will do my best. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But Will, we're so excited because we had you on the old show, but this is your first time on the new show. And this has been several weeks or months in the planning because we timed this right as you were no longer jet lagged after Mobile World Congress. 

Yeah, we knew. Tuesday, Tuesday the fifth, Will will no longer be falling asleep at 930 on his couch. So perfect. Well, we're so excited. We're going to get into the post game on Mobile World Congress a little later in the show. So we're so excited to have you on. 

But before we get started, we got a bunch of news to go through first. But real quick, just want to remind everybody, you're listening to the show, you're watching the show, you are the Android Faithful, you're fantastic. Help spread the word. Tell your friends, leave a review on Apple or anywhere that leaves reviews for podcasts on PodChaser or any of this stuff like that. 

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I'll be it. Indeed. So that said, let's get into it because we got a lot to go through. 

Jason, you've got the first news story. If we had a new bumper, I would play it. So take it away. Well, you know how we're all rooting our phones these days because they just don't do enough. 

And we realized like the only way we can get our phones to be overpowered and to do the things we want them to do is to root and run them. Oh, wait a minute. No, that was like 10 years ago. 

I was gonna say, what year is it, Jason? But still, people do. I'm sure we'll, I will hear probably from at least a couple of them saying, Hey, I heard that you like called out like root and rom people on the show. 

That wasn't fair. Well, I have a story for you all because RCS, you know, the real communications services is not working apparently on rooted phones using Google messages, which I don't think that is there another messaging client for Android that supports RCS at this point? Or is it still just Google messages? I think it's just Google messages. 

I mean, doesn't they are there like some like Viber or whatever? Doesn't that support it, but not Google's RCS spec, right? Right. Yeah, it might be the universal protocol, but not Google's flavor. Yeah, you might be right. 

Well, if you are running, sorry, I'm gonna get this here on the screen here. If you are a root user and you're trying to use Google messages and you're trying to send an RCS message, you might be having troubles with that. I don't think this is a far and wide thing because I'm not seeing any definitive declaratives in these articles. Like as of now, it's not working. But I am, but it does sound like a lot of people who have their devices rooted and romped are experiencing issues sending anything via RCS. 

And actually, Mishaal showed off this action in a video from a Redditor. Do I even have that? No, I don't have. 

Thanks, you're up. And it basically just kind of shows like if you're sending an SMS message straight, you know, no RCS, it sends the second you type out an RCS message and hit send, it's like it just disappears. It's like you never sent it. It just like it appears in the, you know, the cascade of messages, and then it just disappears poof. 

It's gone. And the reason for this is the play integrity API system. It has attestation checks. And basically what is checking for is if these phones are GMS certified, which is, you know, it doesn't have the clearance to be running Google services. Same thing would happen on a rooted phone when you try and do something like pay with Google Pay or Android Pay or whatever the heck they call it these days. 

You're not going to be able to get the clearance there either. And so RCS is kind of following into the same bucket really has to do I think with the fact that Google's RCS is not the free and clear wide open RCS that I think the standard began as Google really implemented its own flavor of RCS. And as much as we love it, it's not quite as open as the open version of RCS. So hence we are here. 

So I have two questions. One, who is rooting their phone these days and why? And two, how different is this than Apple blocking Beeper mini? Hmm, right? Like this is this is Google protecting their their the service, right? 

And if the phone isn't certified, they're not going to let the traffic go through. Hmm, it's an interesting point. I feel like I have to think about that one a little bit more to know. 

I mean, feel free to tell me if I'm wrong. But that's the first thing jumped out of me. Yeah, I guess I guess it is pretty similar. I don't know that. 

Well, no, I guess I was going to say I don't know that Google's necessarily targeting specifically. No, but just in general, the idea of the idea of protecting the garden, you know, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, well, at the end of the day, are they protecting the garden? Are they protecting like you know, are they on the hill screaming like no, this is how we reject you because it's and then encrypted with our implementation. The open version is not and then encrypted, you know, so maybe that I don't know what I mean, Google isn't is Google even really talking about this? Oh, yes, they are actually the communications manager, Ivy Hunt, said the OS is quote, ensuring that message issuing and receiving devices are following the operating measures defined by the RCS standard, to which I say which RCS standard the open one or Google's one says in this case, users that are not able to use RCS still have access to SMS and MMS messaging. So you can still send messages that way, you just can't do it this way. 

I don't know, well, what do you think what you take on this story? Yeah, I as the verge coverage points out as well, they Google has had issues with spam in RCS. So like if that is really why they're, you know, tackling this, I don't, I don't really know what the what the relationship is between router devices and spam, like that they would have to go into that a little bit more. But like obviously, I would, I'm tempted to take Google's word here that like they've pinpointed that like, routed devices can like, blow up spam on RCS. And so they might as well just block it because I mean, to your your first question, Ron, like, who is rooting their device anymore, like this really won't impact that many people, like that many like end users. So it's, you know, it's probably them weighing the risk of, you know, pissing people off and being like, well, like 0.01% of Android users are rooted anymore. So like whatever, just do it or, you know, whatever the actual stat is. 

Right. I just wonder if it's just a side effect of as Mishaal mentioned, the GMS certification, Google mobile services certification, which is like the certification that OEMs have to pass in order for you to be able to have like Gmail and other like, you know, very Google, Google Protector services. And not that it's like intentionally targeting rooted phones or that rooted ones are a problem, but just because of the nature of how rooted phones are and jail breaking phones that you, and again, this is like what Mishaal noted in his post is that it's just that because a rooted or custom ROMs don't have that, you kind of just basically get excluded, not intentionally, but just because you're, you know, you're not an official, you know, officially cleared OS or something like that. 

And because of GMS certification is, or because of all that play integrity is catching it, I don't know. But it used to work. Maybe they changed something. 

I don't know. They made something to a decision that changed things, whether that was intentional or not. Don't get me wrong, I'm being devil's advocate by making the Apple beeper, you know, kind of point. 

I get why they would do this. I mean, a rooted and a ROM, you don't, you can't, you can't police that device, right? You don't know what that is, not following the certification is not doing all this sort of stuff in order to play. You need to have these sort of things checked off. And if that doesn't check off, then you don't get in, like I get it in terms of, you know, especially with their position on user safety. 

I don't know, I just, if you're a rooted ROM person, you'd be probably frustrated. And is there a path? Is there a path for you to get on to that track would be the next question. But again, Will, to your point, how many people are doing that these days? Like seriously, you know, yeah, so not a lot of what a blast in the past. I mean, you know, even back in the day, it wasn't a lot back back when lots of people in air quotes were rooting and roaming their phone. It was still one of them. Well, yes, of course I was, but there was still a very small percentage of any of the users of Android. Were you flashing your device daily at one point? 

Oh, there were certainly times where I was flashing, not like every day for an entire year, but there were times where I'd like flash a ROM. And then the next day I'd be like, yeah, I don't like that one. What's a new one? Oh yeah. That night I'd flash another one. And you know what I mean? 

Absolutely. That was like, you with ROMs was like me with keyboards back in the day. At a certain point though, it was just like, keyboards and launchers. Yeah, it was just kind of a pain in the butt. Like, do I really enjoy sitting here for three hours, setting this up for a while? I didn't at a certain point. I was like, I just want my phone to work and be neat. 

You know, yeah. It just feels like Android more than Android growing up and getting a job or having a job, having to wear a suit or business, business casual to work. And yeah, I mean, like the thing is like with root access, you get like, so yeah, I think something is like that having having root access to the phone gives you access to privilege systems and services on the phone. And I mean, I think most, most people who are just enthusiasts aren't going to do anything nefarious, but there are a lot of issues when you gain privileged access to a phone that I guess I suppose most of the time, and I'm not an expert, that's not my field of expertise, but it feels like when you can kind of get privileged access to things you're normally not supposed to with a user on a phone, nefarious things can happen. I don't know. 

It's not necessarily like protecting the user from themselves, but maybe the user from other users, other interlopers, I don't know. Well, when you said it's kind of like growing up and getting a job and wearing business casual, I feel like at Google, it's all business every day, right? And every month is a new drop. There is a new drop, but this one, this one isn't just, you know, a fancy drop for those folks that are on the latest and greatest new things, although there is nothing wrong with Pixel 8, Pixel Pixel 8 Pro. But if you're on an older phone and we're feeling left out with all these, you about that only come to the newest phones, you might be in luck because this is a Pixel drop for, how can we say this? 

The more, I don't know, there's like a fine wine for some way. It's not even that old phones. The aged, the aged. The well loved, the well aged phones. There's basically just a bunch of wonderful Pixel features coming to some of the other devices, Pixel 7s, Pixel 6s, Pixel Folds. 

And a lot of them are really kind of worth talking about. For example, I mean, this is like an app special, but if you are an Instagram user still, they have actually enabled capture and share support for 10-bit HDR video directly in Reels as well as the ability to upload and support UltraHCR. Now this is going to be on your Pixel 7s, Pixel 8s and Pixel Folds. 

So hey, cool for me. And if you were missing out on Circle to Search, which I guess many of us were after all the hype from Samsung Galaxy and Pact and having the Pixel 8s get it, well, guess what? If you're on a Pixel 7, you're in luck because you'll be getting Circle to Search soon. I bugged my husband about this because he has a Pixel 7 and he's like, oh baby, you got to try Circle to Search. It's coming out soon. 

Can I interject here? I'm on a Pixel 8 Pro and I still have yet to get Circle to Search. Oh really? Are you serious? It's not on my phone. And you're up? Sorry. I'm up to date. I just checked. 

Oh, come on, Lynn. I just checked earlier. System is completely up to date. I go through all the how to enable Circle to Search gesture. It's not there. And even on my phone also, it says nearby share is still called Quick Share and Settings. So like, I don't know if I'm behind on a Play Services update. Well, Quick Share is the name. 

Is the name or is the name, oh, okay. It's nearby share. Right, nearby share was the old one. Oh, okay. So it says Quick Share. Not confusing that name change was. 

I know. Always. I will say though that my husband has gesture nav enabled and he did. 

So when I told him about it, he looked up and he was like, 95 Google has an article that says enabling Circle to Search from the gesture nav is very difficult. So I kind of just left it at that. So maybe that's also a thing that I mean, I mean, I believe you that maybe don't literally don't have like the update. But yeah, I think I don't have it. But anyway, interesting. 

But I'm really surprised that you don't run. Yeah, so do I. Yeah, I don't know. So I don't know. Did you did you peeve someone off on the update? Yeah, that's not a thing. 

But what did you do? Okay, so if you can't get Circle to Search, if you like call screen, I'm pretty sure everybody here likes call screen. There are a couple new features for call screen from the Pixel 6 up and include and the Pixel Fold. You have a couple new chips now when you have the call screening UI experience up where if you know, some the person that is being call screen just isn't answering, you actually have a little chip that can have the response, the responding, you know, voice say hello to try to get them to answer and even, you know, a lot have a button to say, Hey, hang on, if you are just not able to pick up the call, once you've decided it's legitimate. So there's that for all you call screen levers a little bit more for you. And yeah, there's just a lot. 

So this is one of those things where now we're talking about a bunch of features that are available, I think on 5a plus and all of these things need like a table to let you know which specific version and device you have these on. But hey, give it a shot, try it. Maybe you'll be like Ron and just be sad. I'm so sorry, Ron, or maybe you'll be lucky and have things like single appcast sharing, which is when you are trying to, you know, share your screen. And you don't always want to share the entire window. Well, now you can just like screen share just a single app kind of like you can do on your desktop with most, you know, call, you know, kind of call software now. Now you can do it on your tablets and your phones to question mark. Yeah, on your phones to your pixel 5a and above pixel 5a above folds and tablets are also getting kind of better like history like device history with fast pair. Fast pair previous pairings will now be kind of like propagated to like your new devices. 

So you don't have to, you know, go through the as nice as fast pair is we'd like to make it even faster, faster pair. And that will remember previous devices that you had. So you don't have to kind of go through the connection process, all eventually eventually Google run name it fastest pair, fastest pair, quick, quick pair, it'll be quick pair, faster pair, the quickest, quickest, the quick share device. Yeah, G pair and then Google pair, Google Android pair. And hey, if you were a Google docs person, you like to collaborate and you like, you know, kind of miss the old school, just writing notes on someone's documents to to get an annotate things. 

If you have Google docs, you don't need a stylus, you can now use your finger to, you know, mark up annotate, draw notes on Google docs from your pixel tablet. Isn't that fun? I think it's also this is also on 5a plus and fold as well. It's I need a table. It's, it's, it's, who knows, who knows. It they started to kind of drop off telling us what was available on what devices. So I don't know, just try it out. Maybe you're lucky and you'll have this feature. I'm sorry. 

I don't mean to be sound so mean about it, but it's a little unclear sometimes. But that is available, at least on the tablet. And one special tablet feature, which I think we kind of talked about as a leaky peaky, but is now out of a B presumably feature flagging, it is now fully released on your Google Pixel tablets is the new Google G board voice toolbar, which tries to make like voice typing and other voice interactions a little bit easier to use on your tablet, and giving you back a lot more space if you actually are using your voice to input into chat or something. So yeah, there is your Google drop. 

Bring in all the goodies to everybody else who doesn't have a pixel eight or pixel eight pro. I think it's nice that they're doing this. Right. No, it's good. They feel like they should do this is a good thing. Yeah. 

In the in the scope of pixel feature drops, this is a good one. I feel like we had like a spectacular one like the last time. Yeah. And I think probably you encounter a challenge following up like a really, really great something with anything. 

So what's the problem with the monthly with the monthly regime that they have on that's why I like seeing this focused on not the current phones. I think it's kind of a breath of fresh air. Yeah, totally. 

Yes, absolutely. Well, how would you rate this drop compared to other ones? Yeah, I mean, I mean, to your point, it's it's a little if you have the latest hardware, it's a little hard to be excited about this. I do agree. Having I have the table in front of me for which feature is coming to which pixel and it's still confusing. 

And I would start from the top and break it down for it. No, I'm just kidding. It would take it would take the rest of the show. Exactly. It's it's, you know, the the conversation around Android fragmentation, I feel like kind of slowly quieted down over the last several years. And now I just feel like we need to have a talk about pixel fragmentation, which is fair. Bonnie, because now I have to write this. 

You're welcome. We want credit. We want credit, Will. Run this segment through an LLM and then just you're going to bet it if you want. 

That's all you have permission. Yeah, I just think that like, you know, you compare this to to, I mean, to Apple is the closest comparison. And like, you know, the only devices that don't get the latest features, and you'll you'll find the list of footnotes on the iOS page at the bottom of it. But of, you know, the iPhone 12 doesn't get this. But at that point, you're talking about, you know, half a decade old hardware and not like the Pixel Fold still doesn't have circle to search. 

Well, why? It's a it's less than a year old. It's an $1,800 phone. You don't there's no successor to it. It's its own product category. Why isn't it there? Like, I, I, it's a frustrating thing where it's, there's no reason for us to have to refer to a chart on what's getting what, like all of this stuff, or a lot of this stuff could run on back to, you know, the Pixel 6, or even some of it, like is going to the Pixel 5a. 

And I would want to see them kind of get better at this. Because otherwise, I don't know how we take their, how we take Google's seven year software update policy seriously, if, if it's like, okay, sure, I'm running Android 18, but there's nothing on it. It's just like a software bump. Like, I don't know. Yeah. 

Yeah, a little bit, though, and say, like, like on the Apple side, iOS devices, iPhone devices last a long time, but especially when they get older, you're not getting every single feature. It's a fine line. You know what I mean? Like, there is kind of a cutoff. Yes. 

That was the footnotes gets long. And it's, it's probably just as complicated as this table, but, but it is still older hardware than, than the Pixel Fold or the Pixel 7a. No, um, well, that's actually, I'm glad, I'm so happy you said that because, yes, I have a Pixel Fold. It's my daily driver. 

Why don't I get these things? Like, it's a premiere. It means that's weird. Yeah, that is a high level premiere phone. You're absolutely right. 

Yeah. Why, why can't I have Circle to search is ridiculous. Like, look, I had, look at all the real estate I have to circle. Like, come on, Google, like, come on, I could test the crap out of this feature. 

It actually really makes me wonder, like, what is it about Circle to search that's hard to implement? You know what I mean? Like, what, what exactly is it? Like, I realize it's using AI, but I mean, so, so many other features do. And that, yeah, that's so weird that, that Pixel Fold too much screen to search. Is that what it is? 

Maybe or all I can think is like maybe is there some weird exclusivity agreement that they made with Samsung and that they're, they just the loopholes were all sewed up minus the Pixel 8. Also, by the way, I'm so sorry. I somehow deleted the entire block about Pixel watch features. By the way, if you have a Pixel watch one, you're going to get auto stop and auto start, work out detection along with auto pause, you're going to get the Fitbit Relax app. And you're going to get both pace tracking, which is kind of like little haptics and voice cues when you're slowing, when you're taking a run. Ron, if you're not making your pace, you're, you're, if you had a Pixel watch one, I know you have Pixel watch two, if you had a Pixel watch one, it will now, you know, yell at you in the way that your Pixel watch two does. 

And similarly for heart rate tracking, if you're kind of like a heart rate zone targeting, you'll have that now you pixel watch one. I am so sorry. I somehow deleted that out of my nose. And I was like, something else is missing. Well, there you go. Pixel watch one fans. 

You get some cool stuff too. But neither here nor there. Fragmentation still pixel fragmentation is it. Yeah. Will I want you to write that article? I think I have to now. 

I think if my boss hears that I said that he's going to make me do it. But it's true though, because it's true. And I honestly think that I honestly think that that point that you made about, you know, holding Google to their, to their, to their seven year kind of thing, I just want to see consistency. 

Right. Like that was my complaint about the Pixel drops from a year ago was like they come out with the Pixel like monthly Pixel drops. And then you just quietly don't hear like by May or June, you stop hearing about the Pixel drops and then IO happens and it's the next version of Android is the next hardware. Like they're not monthly, they haven't been monthly Pixel drops. 

They like, you know, I'm sure they will point to the updates they've made and stuff like that. But like the meaty Pixel drop Jason that you were referring to, they don't do that on a monthly basis because eventually you run out of stuff. And that's why setting the bar too high is dangerous. Right. And so I would rather, I would rather a Pixel drop not be as frequent and be more meaningful. 

I think this is kind of my preference. If they were to do it once a quarter, which honestly, that's what I thought a Pixel drop was was like once every three months or something like that. But if they were to do a little bit screwing with it though, they just did one. Yeah, that's true. They have been out of the blue. 

But I mean, if it means less of them, but it doesn't feel like a, you know, we've talked about it on the show before. All right. Hey, any any departments here at Google, you got anything you're working on? Yes, that one. Okay, we'll include that. Sure. 

What you got? Yeah, I don't know. That's not quite okay. 

Whatever. We'll throw that in there too. I like that Jason just improved the product management meeting at Google live on the show. 

That was fantastic. So that's really what it's like in Mountain View, by the way. That's yes. Now, yes, Google campus is one bedroom that everybody works in. 

Yes, that's exactly what it is. I mean, this is all relevant because speaking of Pixel phones and Pixel features and things like that, it's a bummer. Mishaal's not here because it's his birthday and this would have been a great gift for him because he really wants satellite service on these phones. But we are all still waiting for satellite SOS to come to Pixel phones as promised for Android 14 to come to Android phones at all. A recent update to the adaptive connectivity services shows it's coming to Pixel phones sometime soon. And the feature will enable sending messages to emergency services via satellite with mobile network and Wi-Fi are unavailable. 

And the settings page will be located at settings, safety and emergency, satellite SOS. And it could come to more than just Pixel phones, but right now just indicates that it's coming to Pixel phones at some point. As we inch closer to a world where our phones are connected to satellites, which blows my mind. So, you know, this is a feature that when it goes out, I bet you Jason is going to be in a Pixel drop. Yeah, I imagine so. And now that this would be a pretty big feature to come to a Pixel drop, like that certainly. Yeah, I think this will be neat. Cool. 

All right. Well, that's going to be great. So, if you are a supporter of Android faithful on our Patreon, Patreon.com slash Android faithful, you had the opportunity each week to pick from a carousel of story options that we might talk about if it gets the most votes. And we usually put three stories up for vote, give our patrons are amazing patrons the opportunity to vote on them. This week, let's see here, we have let me sorry, I'm juggling a lot of things here. 

Also a reason to join Patreon to vote in this, because you also get to see the listener. That's wrong. That's the wrong one. The listener submitted bug droid reading the news. And this week, it comes from listener William Steele, who gives us a very dapper bug droid listening to a podcast while reading the newspaper. It's a bug droid wearing the suit. 

This was generated with Microsoft Copilot, by the way. So yeah, that's a solid generation. I like it. I like it very good. 

Remington steel Android like that old show. Very solid picture here. And right at the bottom of the voting count was Google's photosphere is still present on older pixels that got 16% of the vote. Second place was Google contacts minor UI revamp and new feature to view messages on widgets. Y'all didn't care that much about that. That was 19%. The majority, vast majority 65% voted on the story that we have here, which is about Google, not that one. We already talked about that one. 

Sorry, I've got a few things out of order here. Google making talking more fun as the blog post says here with sound reactions and effects. And do we get to, can I like play some of these things? Oh, you know what? I can only do that if I'm sharing. 

Here, Ron. I don't think you want to though. I'll try here. I don't know. Go over them. 

I'll see if I can get it to work. But yeah. All right. 

Well, it's fine if we don't. Basically, sound reactions. Is this just going to be like a sound board integrated with Android? Or what exactly is audio emojis? 

These links, by the way, Jason, are links to the OGG files that exist in the code. So I actually don't know if I can play those on the show or not. So instead of visual emojis, it's going to be audio emojis. There's also an animation like in Google Messages. Because if you scroll down, you can see that that's the animation. 

The drumroll animation is a drum and a chatting teeth, like teeth chattering guy coming out of it. So I have to be looking at my phone when I'm taking a call. Yeah. This is so weird. Yeah, this is weird. What's happening, you guys? I don't know. 

I'm so confused by this. Why does Google care about making us make phone calls? Why are they trying to make us make phone calls? Yeah, it's just so weird. 

What can I play OGG with? Quick talk. Yeah, I know. I was going to dive in and I was like, you know what? This is probably a wormhole that's not worth going down. 

Yeah, no, it's not. But what I like is that this is part of the Google phone beta, by the way. If you combine AI and AI listens to the conversations and can accurately do this like the sad trombone or the applause or whatever, and it turns your phone call into the Z100 Morning Zoo experience, I will make more phone calls then. If I'm on hold with a customer service agent who's like, oh, I was able to change that flight for you. And it goes, ta-da! Oh my goodness. 

This is very weird. I want a canned lap track. I want AI to make me feel like I'm funny so that when I make a joke, regardless of whether the person I made the joke to laugh, I want the canned lap track like in Full House or something. Or it's AI that analyzes the person you're talking to to understand what their laugh would sound like. 

So if they don't laugh at your joke, then they laugh anyways because the system just makes it play. See? There's a lot of ways you can go down this road. Oh, wait. Oh, geez. So I was a little concerned about the fact that the OG files that this blog post provided were sad, applause, party popper, laugh, drumroll, and poop. 

And that was the one I was worried about because really, what are you, you know, like, how is that going to work? And I pulled up VLC and I can't play audio, can I hear? But sadly, it is, I don't know if you guys can hear this. No. No. It's a farting noise, unfortunately. I don't want that on my phone. 

I'm sorry. Do you remember those apps? Do you remember all the apps that sound like? Yeah, they're the same farting app. All the apps, right? Oh, man. 

Push the button to play the sound effect and fart. Oh, time is a flat circle, y'all. Yeah. Oh, boy. Well, patrons, you asked for it. 

Wait a minute. I found a web-based OG player. Oh, if this works, this will be great. 

Let's see. Just remember in StreamYard, you got to share. Oh, yeah, I got you. I'm on it. I'm on it. Yeah, you got it. 

There you go. He and it, Ron knows. I got to share the chat. Ron knows what he's doing here. Here we go. 

It's all in the pursuit. All right, you ready? This is all. Okay, so this is the applause one as we watch it upload. 

Here you go. Oh, did you hear that? Yes, I did hear that. 

All right. So you would hear that when something good happened. Or if for some reason something bad happened, you would hear this. Oh, my goodness, really? Oh, my God. That's an extra, slightly extra gross one. 

That code exists on the phone somewhere. You know. What's on it? I'm actually really surprised that Google put that in there to me. Yeah. That was in product. That was in a project management. 

Someone had a ticket that said, hey, like Fred, implement a fart noise. Yeah. Man. 

And that was probably Fred doing the hands on the face thing. Yeah. Yeah. And he had to put that in there. And then he went home and said, what was my life? Oh, boy. Well, it really makes you wonder. Thank you. I mean, but this is a beta, right? 

So who knows if it's actually going to get out or not, right? Here's one more just to refine it. This is the drum roll. So let's see. Ready? Yes. 

Ready. A rimshot. Rimshot. 

Yeah. I just don't know that I'm ready for this. I'm just labeled. So here's the question. 

If you're on the phone with somebody and it's enough to like you want to tell a joke and then also play this rimshot, like the timing of being on a phone call and just doesn't work at all. Let's move on. This is awful. So no, I'm super curious about this. I said, there's something doesn't feel right about this. Yeah. 

It's very, very bizarre. Anyways, you asked for it patrons. That was that was because of you segment. So yes, and I'm talking to you, Chris Pictore from the UK, Roger Martin from Arizona, David Arnold. Yeah, I'm calling you out from Indiana. 

That's right. The three of you and so many of your peers in the Patreon, at patreon.com .com, slash Android Faithful, made that segment happen. And you can make another segment like it happen next week. 

Just got to be a patron, patreon.com, slash android Faithful. You can make us talk about stories that involve farts. Will, we're sorry. We really apologize. 

This is not normal. I just don't know how to follow it. I just don't know how we're going to say it. Talk about how on. 

Talk about how on. That's how you follow it. Exactly. No, no, no, no. 

We don't want to associate how on and for it. Come on, man. No, no, no, no. 

Oh, no, no. All right. We will talk about it with Will in a second. All right. Let's get into hard work. Okay. 

Well, from that, like, I don't even know what to do. Well, well, unlike the rest of us Shmucks, who are sitting here wondering how fart fart sounds get into our Google dialer, you actually got to go to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. And I think what's interesting is that, you know, in our in all of the talking that we've done about mobile world Congress, it is inevitable that we talked about a lot of the kind of more wild and fantastical, you know, products and demos that are good friends, friends of the show and and fam got to see their even like things like there's apparently with a Lenovo transparent laptop, not quite our area, but obviously something that had a lot of attention. We could not help but talk about the Motorola bendable phone and all kinds of other things. And I really liked that you had a little bit of a different take on kind of where are we going with all this? Whereas mobile world Congress going with all this and I know just go ahead and like just kind of walk us through your thoughts and feelings as you're kind of seeing this interesting trend or maybe this interesting. Yeah, I guess trends with what what companies are doing it mobile world Congress. 

Yeah, so this this was my second MWC and I basically last year's big splash, right? Was the was the the Motorola riser, right? Which which I spent the entire show calling the Rizzer before I realized it was I was making a rise joke and I didn't get it and it took it truly. I said it so many people. I said it in Rizzer in my head. Rizzer. It was it was in my I hadn't said it out loud until we recorded the AP podcast last year and then like 30 minutes before I was like, oh my God, it's Rizzer. I hadn't said it out loud. 

Anyway, neither here nor there. So I think but that that phone got a lot of publicity and rightfully so it's really cool. They had it again this year. They had it next to the bendable and I think not just Motorola, but but everyone kind of wanted to follow their lead in terms of having some sort of futuristic concept. 

So the bendable, right? Which which shout out to Nick Gray at Fandroid. I think I put this in one of my pieces too on it who who reminded me while we were getting the hands on that like they had this in 2016 and I had just completely forgotten but like they had, you know, obviously it's it's up. 

It's gotten updated design, but they had the same like bendable attached to your wrist like demo, you know, eight years ago and they basically I don't want to say they dug it out of a drawer, but they kind of dug it out of a drawer and we're like, look, it's back. Yeah. You know, so you've got that you've got the Lenovo transparent laptop which like Lenovo and Motorola were were sharing a space at MWC. So it was like literally go in the basement. You can see the laptop go upstairs and you can see the phone like truly they were they were the teams were like right next to each other. Techno who who sponsored my trip to MWC. 

It's why I got to go. They had a rollable although it was a different shape than than the Motorola one from a year ago. Samsung display which is like it, you know, technically its own company away from from Samsung always has concepts. I wrote in a whole article about the concept displays they had at CES. 

They had even more this time including their own bendable that I would have loved to try someone broke it before I got there. They like slap banded it on their wrist like to see if it was. Yeah. They fully slap bracelet it. 

It's not a verb, but yeah, they did that. It is now and and yeah, it is now but like to see, you know, oh, well it wrapped because it was like a different build than the Razer one or the Motorola one I should say and so it wasn't working anymore by the time I got to it. And I was talking to my boss and we were talking about the show and and I went back and looked at like what was announced you know a decade ago right so what was it MWC 2014 and it's like. You know less there were a couple concept products but it was like the Galaxy S5 was announced there right like Nokia's first Android phone like hot off being purchased by by Microsoft like you had like Project Tango which was Google's like AR thing, you know a decade ago. All sorts of heart like HTC held the the one M8 but they they announced some desire models like all of this stuff right like there were new wearables and and I can't rub LG I can't forget LG LG had the G Pro 2 like all sorts of stuff that you would eventually be able to buy like on store shelves and and it's not to say that like concepts aren't cool but at a certain point when you've seen your fifth concept of the show you're like okay. But what do you want me to take away from this like like you know the the riser in particular a year ago I thought was like okay this is a phone that. Grows into like a standard size but then can can shrink down into something that I think we're all a little nostalgic for like a form factor a smaller form factor we're all nostalgic for and I didn't see that this year right like Motorola's big selling point on like the idea of a bendable phone was that you could attach it to a bracelet that you just I guess wear all the time like and it doesn't do anything when you don't have the phone on but you could do that and then they were like oh you can go for a run and I was like okay. Putting aside the fact that I don't know if I trust the magnets in this bracelet to hold the phone for a full run like putting that aside what does that get me that like my smartwatch doesn't right like it's I'm going to view Strava on a bigger screen I guess but that's about it and otherwise like you know it's heavier it's like it's like it's more dangerous it's stuff like that where I'm like you got it does feel a little bit like everyone's just building things to build things and and that's exciting and it's cool and I'm not trying to take away from that like all of the stuff I held was very cool the transparent laptop like very impressive even just seeing Microsoft Paint with like a clear background it's just neat but I would like to see something a little more concrete a little more Where are we going with this? Does it feel like, I mean, I think we talked about this, and especially like when we were looking at all these kind of crazy prototypes and we wondered out loud, is this just, you know, obviously like, and we've talked about this for a few years that smartphones are kind of get not boring, but that there's very little, you know, mind blowing advancement. 

There's not like a, you know, one more thing moment, very rarely these days. And even like foldables and flipables are great, but it there's not nothing like kind of like industry shaking. And is it, do you think there's any merit to, to, you know, maybe trying to give companies a credit and that, okay, maybe they want to balance risk, but also kind of throw, you know, swinging for the fences and just throwing out concepts. Is there any merit? Do you think to them just getting feedback, be like, Hey, here's a bunch of crazy ass ideas. 

What are people responding to? Do you think there's any merit in that? Or do you think this is really just kind of a little bit too hand wavy, wishy-washy? Like, do you feel like that your feedback, your impressions, your interest is going to drive anything? 

Or just just like, as you said, is it just purely just what are we doing? Um, so I would like to think so, but, but in, but on all of my hands on, it's really, it's never been about like, let's get feedback, you know, like, like I said, they had the, they had the riser there again, right next to the bendable. And like, it was unchanged down to the plastic case that, that they used to keep it safe. Like, it, they hadn't done anything on it in a year. And, and, you know, it's one thing if you're talking about new phones, but like, it's a prototype, like they can change the prototype in a year and they hadn't, um, you know, it's, it's the same with like Samsung displays concepts, like a lot of times, like you can, you can dig through the archives and they very often don't, you know, appear anywhere. Um, I think, I think it's an issue that for me, this, these sorts of experimental form factors, this sort of, um, unique, uh, the unique offerings that you can get only on Android, right? Is like, what, what is going to like, I don't want to say save this platform because that sounds too dire, but like certainly get, uh, get it back to a place where it's not just like, oh yeah, that still exists to like the vast majority of like mobile people, particularly in the U S, which is like the market that I'm, I'm focused on covering. Like, I, I, and, and I've written about this and Jason has had me on other podcasts to talk about it, but like the, the amount of like teenagers who have just like, it's like 90% of teenagers are on, on iOS at this point. And I think that like stuff like this where like, if they, you know, accompany like Motorola will take the plunge and like be like, you know what, like actually we're going to go out there, we're going to, we're going to try to sell this bendable. 

It's a thousand dollars or however much it is. And like, you know, we're going to establish ourselves as like a fun, you know, a fun company. Like that we're not like trying to just do like the standard slab, you know, iPhone or whatever. 

Like I think that energy needs to be there to kind of get interest backup, especially among younger users. This is all anecdotal, but, but I'm 28. Most of my friends are, are, you know, let's say 25 to 30. And like the one, it's not a particular phone, but the one form factor that like all of them, because they all have iPhones, the one that like really wins them over is, is, is clamshell phones. Like they're always like, Oh, like I would maybe consider switching to that. And I think there's an in there that at the same time, like none of these companies are particularly brave enough to like fully like jump in like even Samsung, like five years ago, and I wrote a little bit about this too, when I saw the Z Fold six leaks, like they felt really ready to kind of push forward on this hardware innovation, right? Like the first fold was five years ago now. And now it's like, Oh, like the Fold six, it's a little wider than the Fold five. Like it's still the thickest foldable basically at this point, right? But without the battery to back it up really, and, and at least if the, you know, leaks are to be believed in, and the flip six leak looks identical to the flip five. And, and there's a stagnation in changing the hardware that I worry will essentially make these products not as exciting. 

But isn't, but I'm sorry, I'm interrupting you. But isn't that the, isn't that the history repeating itself of Android, right? Cause like, and Jason, and Jason, we've, you know, we've been doing a show like this for 13 years, right? How many years? Like we go through this phase of like burst of excitement, difference, and then years of stagnation, and then burst of, burst of change or difference or a different approach, and then years of sameness and copying and all that sort of stuff. 

And so, you know, Will, I was going to say to you, it was like, I feel like the, the folding phones were the prototype seven years, six, seven years ago, and we're like folding folding phones are coming and now they're here. And, and I guess something must happen in the supply chain or in some reason why they can't make big deviations. But you do have companies like we were talking before the show, like tech, tech mo or techno tech mobile, tech, no. 

And, and like, and, and what were the phones that we were talking last week with the, with the music phone who had that ZTE, right? I feel like some companies are trying, right? I mean, Well, so, so this is actually, this is the other issue and it kind of ties back into why I, I offhandedly was like the US market that I mostly focus on, which is like, there is excitement in mobile on a global scale, right? Like, there are lots of smartphones that I think even like just slab smartphones that I think are interesting, particularly when it is a smartphone, you know, you can buy a smartphone with a one inch sensor and like that's been a standard thing on Android flagships for like two or three years now, like on a global scale. You know, so, so to me, if, if these companies, if companies like Samsung aren't going to push forward heavily on, you know, I've been, I'm back on a, on a S24 Ultra and I like it, but if they're not going to push forward on like making a big deal of like why anyone should switch to it, I would want them to kind of dive headfirst into the prototypes that they're all very proud of and be like, no, no, no, like you did it once with foldables, like do it, like do it again, you know, establish yourself as a leader and then point it Apple, which, which is the competitor here and be like, well, they're stuck in their old ways, like we're pushing forward on what we think the future of mobile technology is. And we think it's like, we don't think it's this like rigid form factor that like you put in your back pocket because it's too big for your front pocket now, like it's, it's something completely different. And I'm fine with, you know, concept phones, if I think that they're going to, you know, eventually become something of a reality, but I haven't seen the evidence there so far. I know we're running long, but I kind of want to go back to that because like, I think you also made a good point in the article about how, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, is that just where this is going to go? 

And is that why, is that why in part maybe NYC is all prototypes because people like the companies want to control or spotlight their actual, sorry, actual tactile substantiated, substantiated products, not their vaporware. I don't know, is it going to get any better? Or is it just everyone's going to do their own press conference? No, I think everyone's going to do their own press conference and some of them will, will do it from MWC and some of them like, like Samsung won't and don't have to. I would say, you know, the bright side, right, is that unlike E3 where when Sony pulled out or, you know, it's, we're kind of in the phase where, where it's like 10 years ago, E3, where Nintendo was starting to do their like digital events, if we're going to continue this analogy, their digital events, but they were still on the show floor, like Samsung is on the show floor. 

Google has, still has Android Alley, right, that you can wander and you can go find all your free pins, right? Like that's all still there. It's just that like the announcements aren't there, right? So Samsung's entire booth is set up to show off, you know, everything they've announced over the last three months. You know, stuff like that where it's, it's, you know, Google will announce some like software stuff for Android and show that off at the, at the booth. But like, I will, you know, their booth was smaller than it was at CES. And it would say the announcements they had were, were smaller than what they had at CES and so on. And obviously the big stuff they're saving for IO, which is two-ish months away at this point. So in fact, we should get an invite like any day now, which is crazy. But yeah, I need to know those dates. Cross fingers. Yeah, I know. 

I, I, I looked recently and I was like, Oh, it was like early March last year. Okay. Like I should, it should be sometime soon. 

Get nervous. But, but yeah, I don't know. I think, you know, there will always be enough small players for something like MWC to, to continue existing. But, but, and, and, and Samsung wants to be there to make an impact and show that they're like the dominating factor that they are. But it's, it's certainly like a very different show than it was 10 years ago. Well, I, I do wonder, and I want to transition to our next topic because we're just still on Mobile World Congress, but, but is there a space for an event like this to let other folks shine other than the big hitters, right? 

Other than the Samsung's and things like that. And what caught my eye as, as we were prepping for the show. And I was like, all right, well, what was the stuff that was happening at MWC that we didn't talk about that was kind of under the radar. And there was a wired article that caught my eye that was focused around AI, you know, drink, right? But you know, the premise of this was like, you know, these are companies that have a plan to collapse, right? And, and it was basically saying how, you know, with the emergence of AI, how is it being integrated into phones? And it really, you know, it mentioned the rabbit R1, which we saw at CES and that kind of announces, you know, kind of a handheld device, but it was a bunch of devices that I hadn't heard of. 

And so, well, I was curious to see if you had seen these or got your hands on them. But, you know, so Deutsche Telecom and T-Mobile, I believe teamed up and they were, they have a concept smartphone featuring an LLM that will replace apps on the phone and acts as a concierge to what the user wants. And it will generate interfaces on the fly based on that request. The humane AI pin was at the show. And I saw friends of the show Miriam and Michael Fisher were posting videos of them using it. The laser projector on the humane AI pin, that looked like the real deal, man. That looked like it was actually something that could be real. 

And then the other one which cracked me up from, which gave my head, gave me a headache from an SEO standpoint. But I guess a Lithuanian company is building a phone called a phone, a friend, which by the way, if you Google a phone, a friend, all you get are who wants to be a millionaire websites about phoning a friend. But, yeah, but this one is interesting because they're building a smartphone that acts as a personal assistant via AI. It's going to be based on Android. 

It will have an app mode to access your favorite apps. But the idea, and right now this design is just a concept, we'll go back to your point of just showing the concepts. But the idea of that, this little device will remind you of things or play videos for you or show, like becomes a full screen photo scrolling kind of thing when you want to do it. It'll know what you want to do, yada yada. And it has a key chain. Yeah. 

And it's just a concept, but they do have an app called a radio friend that delivers news to you in the voice you choose. So did you get to see where you, did you check out any of these companies or anything going on there? I didn't get a hands on with humane. I did, they were at like Qualcomm's booth. And so I was there for a little bit. 

So I saw a bunch of people wearing them and trying them out. I didn't get my own hands on it. And then the T-Mobile, the Deutsche Telekom concept phone, I again, didn't try, but we have a whole hands on at the site. 

Manuel, I always grew up Manuel's last name, I'm so sorry Manuel. He wrote an entire hands on about the ups and downs of using this AI concept phone because it's so weird because it's like, oh, we don't want you to use apps, but we're just going to kind of do the apps in the background. It is very much one of these early AI devices where you look at it and you're like, so I'm just kind of using, I'm using apps, but not using apps. And they're like, yeah, exactly. And it's like, okay, well, like, I don't, you know, we're getting there. It's early steps, right? 

Like we got to maybe hit some speed bumps before because you look at this stuff and you're like, I'm pretty sure I can order an Uber faster than this. I could see it totally being the way it goes though, because it reminds me a lot of when Google Assistant was still a thing and Dev still had kind of like ways to, you know, provide functionality to Google Assistant. So I don't, apps will go away in that they'll be self contained, you know, interfaces in themselves, which makes me sad because I'm a UI specialist, but that's here or there. But what matters will be the service and the function, like the underlying functionality that can tap into this conversational, you know, more natural interface. I don't, yeah, I don't think apps are going away. It'll just look very different. 

It really already does remind me of how we used to be able to tap into Assistant when that was a thing or with action. So it makes a lot of sense to me. I'm not mad at it. 

Although, no, I'm not either. I think it's actually, I think it's interesting because it kind of goes back to the concept phone stuff, which is like, it does feel like everyone is kind of looking at their phone and being like, why don't I don't know if I like where we ended up? Like, let's, let's try thinking about, you know, this in a different way, whether it's on a hardware level and it's like, we want it to wrap around your wrist or it's a software level and we're like, we want, you know, apps to go away and forever for the phone to just know what you need at all times. Like, I do think it's really interesting that everyone is kind of being like, okay, maybe, maybe something else, but like no one has like fully locked into what that's going to look like. Yeah, it's really, it's really kind of like a gold rush mentality right now. Like, okay, AI is a huge thing. Everybody's really excited about it. You know, and I think it also really helps that like Johnny I've, you know, and this was a rumor from like, I don't know, a year and a half ago, I think that Johnny I've was partnering up with open AI to create some sort of mobile device that was AI centric, you know, that was different than a smartphone. 

And I'm not saying that's the reason why all this other stuff is happening, but that's certainly very validating to hear that rumor, whether it's true or not. And so everybody wants to be in on that and everybody wants to know like, what is a future where smartphones are not as app focused and instead it's really a digital assistant or personal assistant that I just ask questions with my, with my normal words, no syntax, and it knows exactly what I'm looking for. And so they're all, yeah, they're all trying to jostling around trying to figure out what that what that looks like. And so we look back at 2024 MWC as the moment in 2015 when Samsung had a foldable prototype at MWC, right? You know, I mean, like, I think that's, yeah, that's the era that we're in right now for all this stuff. It's early. I mean, it's first inning, right? But it's, yeah, yes. Five, seven years down the line, things are going to be a lot clearer. 

But yeah, it's going to be, and, and we're going to have the same reactions to it now that we did back then where we're like, Oh my God, that's so ridiculous. So can look at that thing. And then, you know, I mean, I, I mean, I want it. I want it. I mean, I want it. I want, I mean, like, I can't wait. I'm waiting. 

I'm anxiously waiting for rabbit to ship me there. The my R1, right? I want to get my hands on it. I am. 

And I'm also prepared to be disappointed by it. Fair, fair. But you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, I just think it's cool. 

Like the phone a friend thing looks silly, but like, that looks cool. I want to get my hands on it, right? The humane pin I want to get my hands on it. I want to play with it. 

I want to see what it looks like. I don't know. Yeah. But so I know we're running long. 

We still got a bunch more to go through. But Will, was there anything else at MWC that you saw that was worth talking about or interesting that we didn't touch on yet? We kind of, I mean, I mean, the concept stuff was really what I was, I was focused on. There were a bunch of actual like new phones or at least at least new on a global market, right? Like honor was there. Xiaomi was there. I'm very jealous of some of that stuff. 

Just again, like I said, from a, from a camera perspective, like I would love to see some of that. The OnePlus watch to launched. That is a bizarre gadget. 

I didn't review it, but I was around seven people reviewing it. And I was like, Jason's got it on his wrist. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. 

It's Jason. I need to, I need to ask you how many egg tarts have you burned today calorie wise? How many, how many slices of pizza? Wait, what? So in the, in, in, in O health, which is of course the OnePlus health app, it will tell you on the watch, like congratulations, like you've burned 800 calories today. That's three egg tarts. 

I'm not really getting many of these notifications. Definitely not egg tarts. That is a thing in this app. That is a thing. Like my fitness app will tell me that I lifted X number of pounds and that's equal to three elephants or something. I think I think it's a positive reinforcement thing. It puts it in real tangible things. 

I've been hung up on egg tarts because it's such a like specific thing. What if that plays more to like an international audience? You know what I mean? It does. That's definitely why it's there. Yeah. It's that and sometimes it'll say serve, like one serving of fries. And I'm like, I don't know what that means. One fried. 

Yeah. Small, medium, large, extra large, five fries, 10 fries, 20 wedges. Like what is it? Exactly. 

You know, the really important things. While speaking of international audience, maybe that's a good segue to, and we don't have to spend a huge amount of time on this because I literally just got it yesterday, but I have the nothing phone 2a that was delivered to me yesterday. Have it right here. 

Very cool. And actually, I also have with me the nothing phone 2, which and I don't know if this webcam is going to do a great job. Now you're just bragging. The nothing phone. You can kind of see that they're like the same size. The nothing phone 2a with the camera, with the camera, it looks like a robot. 

Right? Like with the horizontal with the horizontal camera bump and where it is in the circle, it looks like it looks like a Battlestar Galactica or like, you know, like some like, you know, kind of robot. They definitely, they definitely resemble eyes when they're centered around the little circular area. It reminds me of the gyro robot from Nintendo Entertainment System when we were kids. Okay. Yeah, that's except except it's it's got its intestines spilling out underneath it. 

It's like the gyro robot with its intestines spilling out. So the 2a this is this is this one is actually 349 because it is the 12 gig 256 12 gigs of storage 256. Sorry, 12 gigs of memory 256 gigs of storage. There we go. But the 2a has kind of a plastic build as opposed to the glass that you have on the two. That's a pretty standard replacement when you're kind of revving down on the spec list, right? 

But it still has as you saw kind of like the see through design, kind of hard to show because I ended up getting the dark gray. I actually did get this direct from nothing. They sent me this phone. 

It's funny. They actually sent me like they ran out of units to ship out like the normal ones that are all boxed up and everything. I can't remember what they called it, but it's basically like a production unit. And when I got it, it was encased with those stealth like plastic phone cases that you see in photos of like, oh, I caught someone on the street, you know, I think it's the pixel eight weekend. 

You know, meanwhile, it's like in this like plastic case. Whoo, that's loud. Sorry. Yes. 

Well, yes. And so I did like an unsteal thing of it because the only way that I could get to the phone was to find the screw head that actually fit the very particular and specific tiny little screws that hold this thing together and really work it apart. It took me a while to actually get into it. But it was fun. It was like, okay, cool. 

Like, you know, it'll be a journey of discovery. So anyways, inside MediaTek Dimensity 7200 Pro. So I'm curious about the processor going to put that through its paces. I don't expect obviously that it's, you know, like premium flagship processor quality because it's not, but I want to see what it's capable of. 

6.7 inch AMOLED. The display actually can ramp between 30 to 120 Hertz. So it doesn't go all the way down to one Hertz, but I feel like that's reasonable. Like, you know, maybe you're not going to get as much battery savings out of it if you're reading text and all you really need is one Hertz refresh, but whatever. I think it's pretty reasonable. 

1300 nits, IP 54. So you probably don't want to go nuts, you know, in the in the rain with this thing. 5000 milliamp hour battery, which is pretty large. 

I feel like considering, you know, the price category 350. No wireless charging. So if you love your wireless charging, you're not going to get it on this, but it does have a 45 watt wired charging capability. So it charges pretty fast. 

And then real quick, because again, we don't need to spend a huge amount of time on it. But I do want to point out the Glyph interface code. So basically, instead of having on the nothing to you got all these different areas where you can imagine, I don't have the power down right now, where you can imagine those kind of lighter strips or all LEDs and part of the glyph interface of the nothing to and the nothing one actually of all nothing phones is kind of like an LED lighting system that you can use for like notification and general flashiness for different things. And the two a does have it, but it's a lot more pared down. It's got one strip right there. It's got one little one right there. 

And then it's got one rounding out here. But this is like multiple steps. So, you know, the example that they like to use is when you're waiting for an Uber, it this light will go from full to empty, depending on where the Uber is, is it close to you, then it'll be emptier, which I think is a really funny use case for this stuff, if I'm completely honest. But anyway, so that's what that light enables is things like that or a countdown timer, that sort of thing. In the US, it is only available through the nothing developer program, which is what they did with the original nothing phone. 

So I wouldn't consider this necessarily a phone that you can get freely in the US the way that you actually can get the nothing phone to I think it's a much wider release with the nothing phone to but the two you can get it through the developer program. I'm not certain because I haven't tested it yet. How that impacts kind of the bands, the frequency bands that we rely upon here. I asked the nothing representative, you know, like, what is the impact there? And they said, no, it should work, you know, just the same in the US as anywhere else. 

But yeah, there you go. Nothing phone to a. I believe it's only 5G on T mobile. And I can use it on 4G and on Verizon and ATT. 

Okay. And that would actually make sense because I told her like, I'm going to be using this on T mobile. And she did say, yeah, I think you'll be fine. You're good to go. Yeah, I'm good to go. 

You Jason are good to go. And all of my T mobile, you know, cohorts, yeah, but people on Verizon, and you know, some of the other networks, you might not get the full speeds. And that's probably part of the reason why they're doing it through the developer program. But I am, I will say, like from a build quality standpoint, like, you know, sometimes the difference between glass and plastic and you can really feel a difference. And, you know, I don't really feel much of a difference. Like and looking at them, they're, they're pretty close. 

Like, yeah, I think it's, you know, so far so good. But literally got it yesterday. So good price though. Geez, I love those low, those low cost midrangers. I love them. 

Well, yeah. And I think, you know, the, I think the real story here is when you're in the 300 to $400 price bracket, when you are firmly in that mid range, you're looking to save money, you have to make a choice as far as what you're willing to sacrifice in order to get there. Because you will have to sacrifice something when you're comparing it to a premium smartphone. I think in the case of the nothing phone, like I'm sure I'm going to figure out, you know, what those sacrifices are, is it the camera? Is it the processor? But what you get out of the nothing phone to a is you get this like stylish, doesn't look like anything sort of device, which a lot of other phones in this price category, all kind of have that similar kind of, you know, mid-rangey look and feel they aren't very impressive to look at. They're just like, yeah, they're serviceable. They have, they have benefits in other ways. But the design is rarely like cutting edge. And I think that's what you're paying for here. You know what I mean? 

So what is the trade off that gets you that? That's what I have to find out. Cool. So yeah, nothing phone two way. There you go. Insert nothing jokes about nothing. 

Yeah, yeah. Something from nothing. Very cool. 

All right. Let's take this home. We got some app news to quickly touch upon. Windows folks. 

This pertains to you. Windows 11 Android support has an end date. And marker calendars. 

It is in one year from today, March 5th, 2025. Microsoft announced its plans to deprecate the Windows subsystem for Android. And this is actually what enabled the Amazon app store to run Android apps on Windows 11 since 2021. Already installed apps will continue to work, so you won't lose access to them. 

Newly installed apps will no longer be done via the Microsoft store. So this is well, I think you did a review of this that made me smile. Yeah. A while ago. Yeah, it was like two years ago when it when it first like really, really came out. 

It's it's I don't I have not stuck with using Android apps on Windows. So like part of me is like I am I'm surprised that they that they are fully killing it off. But at the same time, like it doesn't seem like something they ever really built out. 

Like when was the last time you really thought about Android apps on Windows 11? Yeah. You know, like I I forget they're there and and to be honest, like a lot of what I do is is already in the web anyway. And so like a lot of the stuff that I would want from an app is probably it's just like, well, just open up a new tab. 

It's fine. You know, like I reserve dedicated apps for stuff like photoshop, right? Like, you know, push all and even then, but they're there, you can edit photos in the browser. But yeah, I don't know. It's it never quite got the like attention. I think it needed to fully be a thing anyone wanted to use regularly. And then on top of it, like I think just like relying on the Amazon App Store, there's just not enough apps there. And they're not kept up to date enough. 

I think that's really the the one to punch. And you got to imagine that Microsoft has those usage numbers and they know who's using it. Oh, yeah, I imagine they're pretty low. Yeah. So I mean, all along with with features like that, when it was like, you know, run run Android apps on on your Windows PC, that's like how many, you know, millions upon millions of apps that you now have access to. And like it never really worked for me. Like, I don't I don't personally see the value in it. Because like you said, will so much of this stuff anyways is found on the web. 

If it's like services, you're probably going to find one that's more tailor made for your desktop, you know, through a through a web service, because that's what they're designed to kind of work within. And then games like maybe, but I don't know, it just it never it never quite sat with me that there would be this large rush of people looking to do this. And I think this is just kind of proof of that. 

All right, they're word. So what about YouTube, Jason? Excuse me, picture and picture is the story of YouTube right now, apparently. So this was a feature that was available for everyone. And then I think removed at some point from everyone and isolated to just premium subscribers. Then in 2022 was activated. Sorry, no, in 2022. 

Yes, that's right. 2022 is when they basically kind of opened it up, at least here in the US so that people who were not premium subscribers could enjoy picture and picture, which is kind of like the overlay of the video playing on top of the other app that you happen to be using. And I actually use that feature pretty regularly. 

And I am not a premium subscriber. And Google has been promising to bring this feature to a worldwide release in this capacity. And in recent weeks, some international users have been noticing that the feature is working for them, though it hasn't been officially announced. 

And it is not, I should say, working for everyone internationally, but it is working for some. So I guess that's kind of an indication that it's near or happening or someone messed up. I don't know what the answer is. 

Take your pick. Yeah, one of those things. Oh, well, picture in picture used to be like, I remember, they used to have commercials for TVs that had picture in picture. So you could watch that. 

Oh, yeah, that's right. And watch any channels. Well, two shows at the same time. 

Exactly. So it's an inherently TV feature to me. But, you know, we have other features come into TVs, and particularly Google TV is not really a new feature. But your apps, your apps, the your apps, sorry, quotations, your apps, your apps, my apps, everybody apps are getting a makeover in Google TV. There is like a your app's row if you have Google TV. And basically, they're just redesigning it to take make better use of the real estate. It's going to have smaller circular app icons, take a space, you're going to have free channels, which is like everything from local news to movies and sports. So you'll always be able to find something to watch, even if you don't even if you're rebelling against the, you know, streaming service, Renaissance. 

What's what's the more negative word than Renaissance? I don't know. If you just don't feel like paying for all the streaming services, you want some free TV, you're going to get it. And more importantly, and something that we're going to do is be able to utilize the reordering and add apps feature to the your apps row, which is just very needed because again, we don't have too many of those streaming services. 

So we're just going to shuffle those all to the back or off the edge of the fold. So anyway, if you've got a Google TV and you've really wanted to like just have more and have it in the order you want, you're going to get that soon. So, you know, knowing all this stuff has come into Google TV, I sat, we sat down to watch TV the other night and I was like, let me just check to see if I have an update on my Google TV. And sure enough, it's like, yes. So I sat on the couch and forced my wife to gasp, just chat with me while it updated and went through the whole update thing restarted. And I was like, I wonder what we're going to get. 

And nothing, it looked exactly the same. Oh, no. I think it's unfortunate you. I think Google, there's like a Google. I think something, I got blacklisted or something. 

I don't know Google TV stuff. Yeah, we'll see. Oh, no. Google, please help. All right. 

Please help Ron. Interesting. All right. Well, we're close to the end of the show. Now is the time where we want to hear from you, the audience. Quick reminder, you can email us at contactandandroidfaithful.com. We love to hear from you. Please send your emails in. If you have bug droid AI generated images, send them in. 

We'll use them on the show. Email us. We'd love to hear from you all. 

And our first email comes from Yannick in Montreal, Canada. And he said, long time AAA listener and happy AF listener here. In a recent episode, someone asked if there was a way to get the volume to adjust automatically when connecting to different Bluetooth devices. Tasker and other automation tools were mentioned, but I wanted to say that I've been using a dedicated app made for this purpose for years, simply called Bluetooth volume manager. And with Bluetooth volume manager, you can set different volumes for different Bluetooth devices and will adjust the volume when your phone connects to the device. 

That way you can have the volume full blast in your car, but lower in your headphones. Thanks for the great show every week. Yannick from Montreal, Canada. And he said along the Google Play Store link, so you could see Bluetooth volume manager and the little icons get the Bluetooth icon with the volume slider on there in the Google Play Store. What was the last updated? That's always the question. Good question. 

September 10, 2023. Yeah, so still an active element. Yeah. And that was Blake from Corpus Christi, Texas, who asked, who had that problem with last month. 

So Blake, if you're listening. Yes, there's your answer. Bluetooth, what is it called? 

Bluetooth volume manager. I love it when we don't have the answer. You all write in with the answer, which is fantastic. Yeah, it's great. 

It's so great. You guys do our work for us. Thank you. Apparently, that was an old, all about Android arena app from how many apps did we have in the arena? Yes. 

So pardon us for not remembering. Can we feed it into AI and then we can ask AI, did we, was this app featured on app arena? Let me tell you, for many years, I installed an insane number of apps on my phone. I've definitely slowed down on that one too. 

For sure. Not rooting in ramen as much, not installing as many apps as you know, as they used to also drive and root in ramen. Robert Freimering wrote in to say here, let's see here. Oh, there we go. Wrote an email to Android. Sorry, contact at android faithful.com to say I had a routine set up in the default clock app on Android and noticed lately the routine hasn't been starting. I checked my alarm and routine is gone. There's only an option for weather. The default clock app tried making a new alarm, but no option to add a routine. 

I didn't see anything about the clock or alarm in the assistant settings. Any idea what happened? Did I miss something? If you're curious, my routine was turn on a light in the room and update on the weather. Yeah, I'm super curious. So I texted Mishaal on his birthday to see if he knew about this and he hadn't heard anything either. 

I did. I mean, when if you've got your pixel fold handy, go look on the clock and on alarm. I checked on my clock app and routines is not available. I thought maybe it was related to the fact that I had Gemini installed and was there some Gemini assistant nonsense happening? So I uninstalled Gemini routines did not show up. So if you click on a, if you go into the clock app and then go into an alarm, where's my clock app? Yeah, go into the settings for an alarm and there at the bottom of it, you've got, you know, pause alarm to sound, vibrate, weather forecast, and then that's it. 

No more routines. I still got Google assistant root. Sorry, you can't see it, but I still have Google assistant routine on mine. Fascinating. Let me click on it, see what happens. Yeah, it's sending me into the wizard for it. 

So I wonder if it's because I installed Gemini. Did that do something to it? So I don't have it. What's your point? I don't have it. 

Robert doesn't have it. When you have it, will you're nodding? Yeah. Yeah. 

So I don't have do any. So I would be curious to see if Robert had installed Gemini and like if that lines up with, uh, with when this started happening. Interesting. Some folks in the chat saying that they have it as well. So I don't know. 

I don't know how to get it back because I thought uninstall on Gemini put everything back to assist it the way it was, but maybe you need to clear cash or something like that. Yeah. I don't know. So if anybody has a, if you have Gemini and then got rid of it and got it back, email us at contactantandrefable. 

Let us know. So. Yes, indeed. 

All right. And of course, if you have any questions or anything, you always email us. We'd love to hear from you. 

Will, thank you so much for hanging out with us for a couple of hours. Yeah. This Tuesday night. We appreciate it. You're awesome. So. Yeah. No, thank you guys for having me. This was, uh, this was a lot of fun. So, uh, why don't you tell folks if they want to hear more from the world of will, where can they find you? 

Uh, yeah. Android police.com. Um, I'm, I'm all things phones there. If I didn't write it, I probably edited it. So it's, you know, it's, it's, it's got my fingerprints on it somehow. Um, and then the, the Android police podcast, if you want to hear more of my voice, uh, it's me and Daniel Bader right now. Um, um, so if you guys miss like old school, Android central podcast, like he's still doing it. It's just with me. And then I'm, I'm taunting him into talking about, you know, movies instead of sometimes are the, uh, the philosophical side of AI. 

I don't know. We get weird on that podcast. Sometimes it's, it's, uh, it's a lot of fun. Excellent. Right. Well, you're doing the Lord's work over there and we appreciate it. 

That's for sure. So thank you. Thank you. All right. So Jason, what's the latest from yellow gold studios, my friend? You know, yeah. Well, I mean, I've just been, I challenged myself and I said, all right, every week I got to put up a video and let me tell you, it's hard to put up a video every week like a fully edited video. But anyways, just go to yellow gold studios.com. It's, uh, where, uh, I am putting, you know, like the last one I put up was a one plus watch two versus the original, um, you know, doing playing around with some shorts. 

The other day, Ron was like, Hey Jason, do any shorts on your channel? I said, no, not really. It's like, you better, you should. Okay. And so I started doing that. And, uh, you know, I'm, I'm just learning about the YouTube thing. 

It's, it's been a really interesting journey. Also have all of our episodes of AI Inside appearing there. So just go to yellowgoldstudios.com and you can find all that stuff. 

And yeah, I'd appreciate it if you do that. Thank you, Ron. Awesome. You're doing great work. I love the shorts. Thank you. It's good stuff. Appreciate it. 

All right. When, where can folks find you? You can find me on my website, randomlytyping.com where I talk about Android dev stuff because that is my day job. You can find technical talks that I do include, including associated code and video and find me on probably Instagram, maybe one day again, we'll master on and other things like that @Queencodemonkey. And I just want to say, well, I'm so glad to have you, uh, back on the show. 

I think you were like my first like guest when I started hosting AAA. I just remember I didn't know that. Yeah. 

Yeah. Like that you were on February 8th, 2022. And I started January and you're like our first guest. So I was anyway, just, yeah, just really glad to have you back in here on the show. 

So anyway, this is so, it's so full circle. I have in that time started doing the, the AP podcast and now feel much more at home and talking about this. You were great. Yeah, I did. I did. 

Yeah. I mean, I hadn't even been at AP for a year, the last time I have some of you guys. So I know it's been literally three, three years and 10 days. So yeah, it's been a long time. Yeah. Well, it's good to have you back. 

Yeah. I'm here. I'm here trying to get the clock after give me a cheat. I'm really good at that. 

Cause some people in the chat were like, try and move. You know, so I've removed Gemini. I'm on Google assistant and it's still not there. So I'm, I really want Robert to listen to this and to write in and let us know if he had Gemini in for me when I'm not messing with my clock app or enjoying Will's work at Andrew police. You can go find me on all the various shows, socials at Ron XO across the board. Just that's where I am. 

So you'll find me Instagram is probably I'm the most busiest. So cool. Excellent. Let's go to wrap it up for this week's show. Again, thank you to Will for joining us. 

Wish him a shallow happy birthday. This podcast publishes every Tuesday evening. We live stream on daily tech news shows, YouTube channel and over on twitch.tv such good day internet. We live stream every Tuesday at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific. You can find everything at Androidfaithful.com links to subscribe links to support links to Patreon, all the fun stuff. 

It's all there at Android faithful.com. We love doing the show. We love that you enjoyed us doing the show. We love the world of Android. 

So let's keep it up because there's just so much to talk about because we are the Android faithful. So there you go. Have a great week everybody. See you next time.