Fellowship of the Droids - Pixel 5a with 5G review, Galaxy Z Flip 3 hands-on, Android 12 Beta 4 By All About Android

Coming up on all about android, it's me Jason Howell. We go tron Richards and Florence ion they're back. They missed last week, but it's so good to have them back. Also, our guest Damian Wilde from nine to five google. We talk, android 12, beta 4, Google's find my network that's actually coming along. I review the pixel 5a with 5g flow goes hands-on with the Galaxy Z, flip 3 Damien goes ears on with the nothing ear 1, plus your email and a lot more coming up.

Next on all about android podcasts, you love from people. You trust hello and welcome to all about android episode, 538 recorded on tuesday, August 17th 2021, your weekly source for latest news hardware and apps for the android, faithful. We never throw in like feedback in there, that's kind of like the fourth rung on the ladder, but anyways community, maybe community instead of community yeah. That works too fellowship. That was a popular word in uh church camp fellowship the fellowship of the droids.

Oh, there you go man, we might already have a title yeah one robot to rule them all good job, and with that I'm Ron Richards, and I'm Florence ion I'm wearing a collar yeah. Oh yeah, I was gonna, say nice collar. If I was wearing a collar, I'd pop it, but I'm not, not today anyways it's good to have you guys back, missed you last week. It's getting me back last week was a week, that's for sure yeah. So uh, I'm glad to be on this week.

Um, I'm Jason, I'm so mad. I missed the Samsung event with you last week we were supposed to do it together and my little guy that was last week that was last week yeah. This is the world. We live in technology right now, yeah we missed you on that too it went. It went fine, you know I have to say I have to say I know we're gonna talk about it later on, but I got 500 burning a hole in my pocket for a flip phone.

I think. Oh, do you.500 might not get something 500 but anyway, but that would only give you half of a flip. It only gives you half of this screen. No. Is it a 4.99? It's a thousand, I think you're thinking of the pixel 5a right. No, no! No! I got a Facebook ad saying, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! A minute! Wait a minute! You know what they're really trying to get like to push people towards uh trading stuff in, and they're, like, oh just like trade in whatever you got around you, you'll get like up to 500 off.

I wonder what it was yeah it was. It was telling yeah. Oh wow, it is a thousand yeah. It was telling me you get it for four yeah from 499 with traded. That's what it yeah all is.

Maybe you have something to trade in I mean. Do you really need that other phone you've got stuff around your house, I'm not on Verizon but apparently on Verizon? If you pre-order you get up to 500 off, oh well, so I guess, then you have to ask yourself: is it worth it enough to switch? No horizon not the Verizon's bad coverage, but you just might not like interesting new and existing google phi subscribers can get 400 off the Galaxy Z. I saw that they really want to get. They really want the Galaxy Z flip to be 500 dollars. They really want yeah, they're they're, throwing everything deep inside deep down.

Really you got to manifest that price joining us. It's taking us a long time to bring you into the show, and I apologize Damian Wilde from nine to five. Google is great to have you on here, sacrificing your sleep for android, a joy to be here as well. You say this every time, but the sleep does not matter we're only young once, so we're going to make the most of it we're going to enjoy the time we have with our friends across the pond. That's what anyway, I feel the same way.

I feel the same way when people on the east coast invite me to hang out at like 7 a. m. Their time right, that's true! That's true! One time Ron invited me to virtual breakfast at 7 a. m. It's 4 am my time.

I thought I figured with your child you'd be up anyway, so well David, it's great to get you on uh, no matter the time of day. It's always uh. It's always the right time for Damien Wilde. That's that's what I say. That's what's printed on my t-shirt, you just can't see it you're, the only woman.

My girlfriend definitely wouldn't have that print of my t-shirt, so I'll have to box it up and send it to her that she uh. Then she has no choice. Uh, it's good to have you here, uh, real, quick before we dive into the show. I just want to point out one of the things one of the threads on last week's show that we had a lot of fun with was OnePlus's um, promotional tweet, where they alluded to with the image that there was going to be a dual screen phone on the eve of Samsung's, um unpacked event and we kind of went through all the different scenarios and I think, at the end of the day we ended up on we landed on. This is totally a prank like it's not going to be a foldable.

What the heck are they going to do and sure enough? It was not. It was not real. Furthermore, it was totally a prank. OnePlus is good at this. It was a trick 50 off sale.

So basically what they're, showing there are two phones, because you could buy one, get one plus good at this, because it sounds to me like you're telling us that OnePlus did something bad, which is that it hijacked people's already precious time in preparation for this very massive event, and we know how big Samsung events are like these: it's live blog worthy, and they hijacked it in a pr play to have their name stay in the press and what's wrong with that- that's that's good marketing. I mean you're you're right Ron. If that's that's one uh angle to take on it, but the other angle is, you know, was it really did necessary? Did I want to know how many phones they sold because of that prank? I bet they sold some I mean well I mean what they did. Are they got one word out that is 50 off sale and I guarantee you: they sold phones with 50 had half off um and there was more awareness around it? Because of that, no question Damian. What do you think? How do you feel about this? My initial thought genuinely was that it was two OnePlus nine pros, not the standard OnePlus 9 taped together, so it kind of fits with the way that OnePlus would do their normal marketing kind of thing um.

I kind of agree with agree that, to an extent that it's a little shady doing that at the expense of another brand, but um OnePlus doesn't have the same customer base as Samsung anyway. So I feel like it's its, maybe their edgy sort of clientele that would maybe catch on to that I'll kind of like tag onto that yeah. It's a tough one, because it's a tough one, because obviously Samsung is still gonna. Take the majority of the headline space over the course of the 24 hours that the deal was set to run from but um. It is genius marketing in a lot of ways and then in other ways it's not great.

Is it so well and that's kind of the OnePlus marketing kind of playbook right is okay. That was smart, but I don't have a good taste in my mouth about it like. I guess it was smart. You know there's nothing like that says. You can't do that, but should you mean they were? They were trolled.

They were trolling and yeah they're good at trolling, they're good at trolling, and are they good at trolling? Are they good that was pretty effective, troll yeah? Maybe I mean? Maybe we've been talking about it for five minutes, yeah yeah, it's true right, like we just gave them a lot of air time yeah. Those are the things that we could talk about. I feel like they duped a lot of people. I think people thought that it was going to be maybe not a device, at least like an accessory like the lg flip phones of the last two or three years. But um I mean that's a big deal, isn't it like? If one plus can kind of garner those column inches uh they keep growing every year I mean it's incremental.

Growth is still massive by OnePlus standards. But yes, is it good? Is it good? I? I can't decide I'm kind of on the fence with it. It is good marketing, but it's not good marketing. At the same time, yeah I mean it's not like. I understand trying to build a buzz around the name.

I understand it's a marketing play, but maybe like next time you know let your press friends know I'm purposefully making this personal. So we can move on, and then I can bring a know. Personal touch to everything else that we're going to have done uh. Did you? Were you on the hook flow for writing about this, for example? No. I wasn't okay well at least solidarity.

We're going here all right. Well, that wasn't even the news we haven't even started the news. So how much look how much they get? I'm just! Oh! I know it's true. It works every time. I even said that last week I said I'm perfect at falling for this stuff, but I can't help it click line and sinker.

That's why it ends up on the show anyways. It's also fun to talk about, even if uh, even if they got away with it. Even if we're coveting correct, yes, yeah there, we go all right. Burke, we've, given you plenty of preambles, it's time for the news, the real news, android news. Well, that summed it up pretty much there.

You go uh, that's all right! Well, let's go! Oh, there you go we'll, do it again: okay, it's on Luke yeah! It never stops. Oh, it's breaking! Never ending android news is always happening and as such, uh wow um, the android 12 and android 12 beta marches on. We are close to the end. People uh android, 12, beta 4, was released last week, and it is the first platform stability release uh, which means that the APIs are finalized, so developers can start locking in their apps we're getting close to release everybody. Android 12 is coming whether you like it or not.

Damien, you did a great breakdown of the new features and here's just a quick some highlights from it. Um settings page makeovers that follow the system-wide dynamic, color uh, the phone indicator, chip in status bar a new game dashboard that we heard about with gaming features like do not disturb screen record and fps counter uh pixel launcher has a material. You themed, google search bar um, adapted adaptive, charging tweaks and, of course, the official android 12 Easter egg. That shows off the dynamic theming engine of material. U you go to settings and then about phone android version tap it repeatedly uh, and you can see the Easter egg, which is fun there.

It is okay and then there we go now we got it there. It is its a clock, oh okay, okay, and that's what he's doing? How do you get the wallpaper to do its thing? Damien? I can't remember you need to put both of those hand, hands the yeah the minute and the hour hands to twelve uh. Okay, midnight is yes. There we go. Oh, that's automatically themed based upon your actual, your wallpaper and the entire dynamic color theming, which I think is quite cool.

It's not the most in depth of uh, Easter eggs, but it's a nice little touch yeah. I think that make quite a nice wallpaper to be quite honest, yeah yeah, it's the good color array, like I like I, like with all the functional changes in this latest, build we're. Looking at the pretty colors and circles, sometimes look it's the Easter eggs that are the funnest part yeah um, but there is a little bad news with this release. There's a VPN bug that makes the phone pretty much unusable with a VPN running. So hopefully they fix that before they release it.

Yeah, really hope they fix that yeah. So, Damian you've had some time with you. Did this great write-up what are your thoughts of uh beta for um? Apart from the instabilities with the VPN um yeah, I'm a VP. I use a VPN all the time, so it's kind of like made it such that I'm kind of going to have to switch to my Pixel 4a running android, eleven for a little while um, but apart from that, it's its probably less stable than the third release. The third beta releases um in terms of like the actual usability and things like that, but the little extra tweaks that they've made are really kind of pulling it all together, and I'm I'm looking forward to seeing what the next, I believe, there are two more betas planned and then put the stable release in and around September time, but so far I've really enjoyed android 12.

I didn't think I would at first, but all the changes kind of make a lot of sense to really differentiate from the age-old stock android that we've all kind of come to know, and I'd say get comfortable with, but it just kind of now feels like this. This new beast with all of these associated extras and the tweaks that we've we've kind of come to know, but just with a new veneer and all I really love the material theme, and I think it's phenomenal in terms of like for a change. It really does tie everything together a little better than probably did previously um, but yeah. I can definitely see. There's going to be a lot of like polarization from fans uh as to how they kind of adapt to it straight away anyway, but I hope it goes well, especially with pixel six coming up, but I guess time will tell I think pixel 6 is going to be the perfect kind of launch for it, because you know um, there's a lot of new happening with the pixel 6, where there wasn't a lot of new that happened with the pixel 5, or even really the pixel, 4, necessarily, and now we're at this point, where google's going all in on their high their high-end uh premium phone with the brand-new OS and their brand new uh.

You know system on a chip on the inside. It's just a lot of new and so brand new OS with a brand-new interface right with right. Will you yeah like it? Definitely is a know. We've described these previous moments and times as either as um. You know chapter breaks or just continuations of the chapter, and it feels like we're in a moment that is a chapter break into a new.

You know kind of uh, a new era for pixel and yeah yeah. It's a good way to put it. It definitely feels that way, um just to follow up on something Damian said earlier. Actually this beta 4 is the one that's platform stability. So it should be the last one before the full release, and yet it's more it's less stable than three.

So it seems that it seems that way. I think the platform stability is those for developers purposes, there's still going to be some little changes that are going to come in. I think, there's two more planned. Furthermore, I think, there's two more there's two more potentially plans. Well, sorry, I didn't see that time, but the platform stability is for the um.

It's for the developer side of things. So all the APIs are in place. Developers can kind of like target those APIs now you're right, uh, candidate and final release, yeah um guys I have to tell you this thing is so the beta is so unstable on the pixel 5 that I'm using like I can barely get any app to launch from the really home screen uh. I just it's kind of just been dormant too, because I've been busy with Samsung stuff but you're, and you're on the beta 4 right, not the beta 3. , I'm on beta 4 on the pixel 5, and it's just.

I had some random issues with three uh four has seemed to kind of take care of a lot of the issues, but then I also had that issue early on in the betas, where I put it on the five and nothing worked for me, and the only thing that I could do at that point was actually done a factory reset because I kind of just moved everything over um. You know into the beta instead of like starting fresh and once I started fresh, it was fine, so that might be the case with you too. Maybe I'll find a view, because I'm not encountering that sorry to interrupt yeah. I kind of do that every single time I start from scratch, with the beta phase or the preview phase, but for some reason I'm kind of having the same issues as flow with the fact that I can't open certain applications. I can't open title.

Furthermore, I can't open YouTube studio. Furthermore, I can't open YouTube, sometimes the application will. It will just open and then crash um yeah. This release has been the worst for me now. I think the beta four oh interesting, yeah yeah I've been on beta.

I've really been like sorry, I was just gonna. Add that's not that's why I have not really been reporting on it because it's like yeah well might as well just wait till this thing is final, and then I'll tell you what to expect yeah. That makes sense. Um yeah! I admittedly have not been using beta for as much as I've been using all the previous betas um, because I have a different phone that I'm going to talk about later. The pixel 5a that I've been using as my majority of the majority of my time the past week.

So I haven't, even you know, had as many opportunities to run into those speed bumps as you guys have, and that is annoying. When that happens. You know, but it's its a beta. It's meant for developers um, but I will tell you the uh beta 3 had this annoying bug on it, where your missed calls would stay in your notifications forever and like I'd, want to clean them away and swipe them away, but they just stay there. They persist and that's no longer there.

So I'm happy to see that at least that's one thing that they fixed anyways, um, yes, so more to come on. Android 12 super excited to see how that uh develops out. As we get closer to the official release flow, you got the next one. I do have the next one um all right. Our next little news piece is actually about something that you may have been reading about, which is find my network, we're not talking about apples, we're talking about google and the android ecosystem having its own.

So apparently, there's a ROG footed version of Google Play Services. That's revealed some details about Google's own find my network. Now. This would be specific to the find my device app where you'll be able to mark a device as lost and then once you do, that any other android devices that come across it via Bluetooth will report it to the network. Basically, pinging, like this thing is lost over here um also, this is going to allow the find my app will allow you to do device sharing.

So if you're sharing a phone with, maybe your kids, or you just have a bunch of phones as part of like your small business. If, in the event one of them gets lost, you'll be able to concurrently track it along with the person that usually uses the phone, so you know how they say: two heads better than one that sort of thing: uh also there's going to be. Apparently, apparently, there's some code that reveals that this is going to be a similar service. It's going to be offered within cars with android automotive built into him. So imagine the terrible you know losing your car but then being able to find it do an app dude where's.

My car yeah. That movie would be a lot less entertaining um. Well, actually it probably wasn't very entertaining I never watched it but uh. Maybe it would be more entertaining if it was tied around the find my device network. I have a feeling it wouldn't, I don't know if that's really a good comedy but uh dude where's my car, and they just like oh they're in that device.

Finn, it's just yeah. It's a short movie, yeah, really short um cool. I'm excited for like a really well-thought-out. Uh, broadly kind of implemented, uh find my network for android kind of sounds like that's. What's uh what google is working on here? Um, I don't know.

What do you think uh I mean you can already track other people in your family yeah? You know through Google Maps, so I might as well be able to track devices I'm very curious about this, so I pre-ordered Galaxy Buds, and they were doing an offer with like basically get a Samsung tag for five dollars, so I'm officially going to like go into this little. Whatever this network is because apparently Bluetooth tags are cool again, all the rage. Apparently it just took apple to make a leather case for it, and now everybody seems to want one. I remember uh, feverish years ago we had the sponsor tracker on the network. It was all about this.

I still got my all about android tracker. I've form response on the network. Yeah, I've got it too, and now it's just implemented into the OS. It's just the way things go eventually. It just all gets swallowed up so, but very useful and more useful.

This way, I would argue than what, like a company like tracker had like tracker was great, but the only way that that network is very usable is, if you know more and more people like there's a critical mass point that has to be passed for something like that to be truly useful, and it's way easier to see that critical mass being hit if it's an OS level thing implemented by the per by the company, that's creating the operating system. To begin with that, it's just inherently in all of these devices and active um the way apple's doing it. The way google seems to be working on it, so good, stuff um. I thought this was interesting. I haven't read any of the chapters from this, yet I think I'm kind of saving myself to read the book um in its entirety, but there's a new book just released any fan of this show is probably going to enjoy uh this book.

Furthermore, I imagine it's called androids the team that built the android operating system by friend of the show chest Haas, who was on a few years ago. Um. Furthermore, I you know it's for sale, you can get it on kindle. Furthermore, I got it for 9.99 um. Furthermore, I think you can buy it.

Furthermore, I don't know if it's an if it's a hardback or not, but you can buy it in book form, for I think five bucks more than that um apparently chest interviewed a bunch of early android team members and googles um. Dozens uh is the article that audio mentioned, so it is available in paperback and paperback. Okay, all right there we go hard hardback, maybe somewhere down the line. There's no audiobook, I'm bummed about that it. Well not yet I mean it's early.

It is the number one bestseller. Somebody does have to record it. The audience is the sum. It is the number one bestseller in the mobile technology business category on Amazon. So there you go.

Oh, wow. I think it just released yesterday. So it's um. You know it's! It's nice, nice book, full of tech, nerd goodness I would imagine what I love is like Amazon is so great, I scroll down, and it's based on androids. It suggests a book called podcasting how to start a podcast and create a profitable, podcasting business.

That's a book! You might need to read Ron, I'm really hoping to make this profitable podcasting business. I have to tell you, oh here, make money on YouTube. Oh, I feel bad for these people who like to buy these books and then uh, but all right, that's a whole other conversation um. Yes, I am going to read this. I'm going to read this book as well.

Um I'll probably buy the Kindle version, although this is a good time by the way to do a write-in, um, and maybe we'll talk about it more next week, but I'm in the market for a new tablet. Everybody um, I you should wait. You should wait a little Ron because I know I might have a re. I might have something for you in a couple of weeks: okay, maybe I'll wait a little we'll talk about it next week, but uh my beloved ASUS uh, zen pad um, I didn't realize I was working on an app for work and I couldn't get it to install and uh. The developer was working with like what version of android is it running? I'm like oh 7.0. I was like what was the last time.

There was a security update done to this 2018. We love this ecosystem, so I'm pretty much ready to throw the old zen pad into the river and then uh get a new one, but uh I haven't decided what yet, but we'll talk about that on a future. Show, that's a tease Damian. What do you do with an old tablet that uh is no longer good as a tablet, but it still works like what would you do? I think I know that you talked about last week you had a reader um yeah, asking using it as like a calendar. I really would love the idea of using it as kind of like the main control hub for all of my smart home devices, but yeah I have like.

Furthermore, I have an iPad, so I got the iPad Pro last year, and I'd never had an iPad before, and I can kind of see why people get tied in and stick with iPads indefinitely, but I use goo. Furthermore, I use all the Google services anyway, so that would be just as good to do what I do normally anyway, with an android tablet. So I thought I've really thought about my purchase over the last few months, and I'm thinking, maybe if, if I could get, I don't know something like a Galaxy Tab or a Galaxy Tab. I think the s7 is the most recent one. Something like that would probably would have been a lot of cheaper option to do all the things I do on a normal tablet anyway, but yeah yeah.

I ended up buying the iPad and I kind of don't regret it, but I also do regret it to an extent, but really I'm reusing and all that we're using an old iPad as a kind of like an if you're not going to use it for content consumption. Surely there's some you can stick it on a wall somewhere or use it as a thermostat frame control, your lights. I don't really know what else you can do yeah. What's that what's fascinating about my zen pad, was that, like I've been using it since 2018 as a reader for the Kindle app as recently as like this past winter, you know like, and so it still worked um. I wasn't doing much else with it so like I could probably keep it and just keep it as an e-reader um.

But you know this fantasy of having the tablet and watching videos on it and reading comics and doing all that stuff, but uh at least now. I need it for work. So that's another problem, but going back to the topic at hand, um, I'm I'm interested in the fact that there hasn't really been any definitive business books about android to date right, and I'm sure there are I'm sure. I'm sure Amazon would recommend me several about how I can have a profitable business using android but um, but like from a history standpoint it does like being around for 10 years. I would think that there would be a more there would be more books about it and, admittedly, I haven't searched there could be, and- and maybe we just haven't discussed that like it is interesting to see this is like going back to the beginning, the android 1.0 era and like the team that built it, but like you, think that there'd be more books about the know the largest operating system in the world, right yeah, the history behind it. That's that's.

I think what is intriguing about this is uh. You know it's, it's everything that happened before android won, and you know, chest is just he's he's an institution within android itself. You know, and so he's such an uh entertaining engaging person. So I have a perfect feeling. He probably uh has perfect relationships with a lot of these people to get some fascinating nuggets.

So it's probably full of a lot of information and for everything else. We have random audio at rs technical to write the complete android history from 1.0 and on maybe Ron will write a White, a book about all this stuff and the next one and get in touch with everybody. I wouldn't be surprised to see that at some point, but anyways it's called androids, look for it and uh. I will, I'll tell you as I'm reading through it. It takes me a while to read books to be honest but um as I'm reading through it, I'll.

Let you know what I think uh we are going to coming up here. Talk about a little of hardware, oh yeah, that that loop gets me every time. I love it any. Any bumper worth playing once is worth playing three times. Four times I don't know what's going on, autoplay is not set.

No! It's not! You know what it is. It's loop, ah yeah loop will do it that'll. Do if it's? Okay, it's okay, it's uh or not. I don't really care I like it. It shows that you're, human, and you're, not a robot berk, all right, it's cool um, and you know it's its hardware in and of itself, and we love hardware around here and uh.

Sometimes we get the opportunity to play around with hardware that just released like today. Uh I'm sure you saw this morning, all the uh all the NDAs lifted, and suddenly everybody was talking about the pixel 5a, the next pixel, not the pixel six. We still have to wait for that, but what we got this morning was uh the embargoes lifted for uh pixel 5a with 5g happen to have it right here. I've had for the past week. It's been my primary phone.

You know. I even have this case, which I thought that was another phone, but that's just the case. I see what you do. Now that's the case. Yeah, and um.

You know so, as you can see the phone itself, that's nice yeah little flashiness to it. Um. As you can see, the phone itself you know is muted. In color same as the pixel 5, I mean it's a little different shade. The pixel 5 is more like a dark, gray blackish and this is more, and it almost has like a faint, green kind of hue to it and then the Pixel 4a, you know similar to the 5a, so very um, very dull, color scheming on the pixel 5a, but they make up for Google makes up for it with their cases that are splashy colors.

Just the problem is they're really kind of slippery. So they're, not my favorite kind of cases. I think I'm so used to the fabric cases that um are super drippy. You know so anyways, that's not about the 5a, I'm here to talk about the 5a. So, yes, you've got 5g support in here the 5a runs uh 449.

Now the 4a 5g, which I actually don't have been 499, and I almost feel like that's. The comparison right is not to necessarily compare this against the 4a because it's the same size as the 5a. Sorry, the 4a5g, mostly it's like slightly taller. It has 5g support it's just more directly comparative comparable to the 4a5g um, so 50 bucks less than that. One of the downsides that you're going to find here, though, and I'm curious to hear what you think about this Damian- is that it's only available in the US in japan, so there's no UK, no Australia seems like a very limited release for a phone that, I would imagine you know the in the mid-range category.

The series has really um has really impressed a lot of people and get has a lot of sales. How do you feel about that? Like? What's your interpretation of that on a personal level, I'm absolutely livid, because I can't complete my collection of all the pixel devices now, but I'll have to import it and that will be proved to be an absolute nightmare. Um! It's its a strange one, because the pixel 4 a5g is its kind of like that or last year. It was that perfectly priced like device in Google's lineup, even though the entire lineup just seemed to be a confusing mess at times, but I feel like the pixel, 5a kind of didn't have much fanfare, and it's like 100 more than the Pixel 4a, which I absolutely adore, the Pixel 4a. I think it's just like a breath of fresh air compared to some other devices.

I've used the having used. Furthermore, I'm sure, like you, guys, use a lot of flagship devices, and you can get a little spoiled with all the little extras and tweaks and things like that and then and then the series pixels kind of like just brush away all of that excess and give you something. That's just really cut back and streamlined, and just has everything that you need, or that you perceive need, is really like kind of adjusted, and I'm disappointed that it won't come to the UK, but the guys in the US and Japan. I would hope that it will be a device to pick up. I'm sure there'll be some perfect deals um over the next few months, leading up to the pixel six launch and then hopefully it will fit into that really nice, like entry-level kind of position, just ahead of the pixel six and six pro later this year, but yeah.

Furthermore, I'm really just really, really disappointed. It's not having a global rollout. This time around yeah- and I don't know if that'll open up at some point down the line or what the case may be, but uh very interesting to see such a limited rollout. You can pre-order today it would be available August 26th, and I think, what's interesting about the 5a is to start with. What's the same and what's new because I mean really when you're, comparing it against the 4a5g, almost all of it's the same right, snapdragon 765g, like I said the design is, is uh nearly identical.

Um camera system is the same.12 megapixel main 16 megapixel ultra-wide. It doesn't have a laser autofocus though um like the 5 does. So you missed that. I can't remember if the 485g had that 128 gigs of storage, six gigs of ram those are the same. Headphone jack is still there, so courage port for Matteo uh if he was on he'd, be dancing in the streets on that one uh three years of OS updates three years of security updates.

You know at this point. It kind of doesn't make sense that google isn't matching Samsung's, four-year um update pledge, but there we are um. This does have a charger in the box, but that's actually kind of a hot button topic, because today we found out that this is the last pixel phone to have a charger in the box. So that means that when you get the pixel 6 you're not going to find a charger in the box and of course, google, you know as apple and other companies have said this is about in their words, is about being green right, like I can't tell you how many chargers I have in my box in my drawer or whatever just stashed away like, I don't need another charger. Having said that, I'm not the everyday user right like I'm a tech reviewer.

So I like I, I just I collect a lot of these things through the inherent fact that I have a lot of phones that I test and stuff. So it might be different for my dad. If he goes out and buys the pixel, he might expect to have a charger, and if he wants it, he's going to have to pay for it if he doesn't already have it so that, so I get both sides of that, and we've talked about that on the show before so. Those are all the things that are the same. What's new well, you've got a larger 6.34 OLED display uh the largest battery in a pixel. Ever from my understanding, 4680 William hours uh, the four a5g had 38.85, just as a point of comparison uh, it is the first a series phone to be water and dust resistant ip67, so that's three feet of water for 30, minutes, um and then the power button. I mean you know the power buttons on all This is are a little all across the board.

The five has like a nice shimmery one. The 4a had a kind of plastic flat one. Now it's like this beveled plastic power button. So, there's not a lot different right like it's just the display the battery, the water um, the water resistance and the power button are really the majority of the things that are even any different on the 5a uh 5g you're, not getting the high refresh rate, so no 90 hertz display you're, not getting wireless charging, uh you're, also not getting unlimited. Google photos uploads, remember that perk is done for new pixel phones, uh, including this one and um so outside that I mean you know, I've been using it for a week and prior to that I was using the pixel 5 and honestly, it's like the same.

Like my experience is the same. The only difference, actually that I could even you know, tell like tell about right off the top, and you can see it right now is the fact that my pixel 5 is running the beta of android 12, and this isn't, so it's kind of like I stepped backwards in time a little, but the performance is the same. The camera's as good as ever uh. The display looks fine to my eyes, except the 60 hertz refresh, like I do kind of notice that I think my eyes have grown accustomed to the higher refresh rates at this point, so I really do notice it when I'm scrolling, I even did like a slo-mo record of swapping screens and I could see how you know with every frame. It's just jumping um in places.

So, but you know, these are all little things like the battery life is incredible. Like it's a really fantastic battery, I mean it's a much larger battery, that's in here, so that makes sense um. I guess I didn't expect. You know fireworks and roller coaster rides. Necessarily it's an it's a pretty boring phone, but that's not a ding on it, and I think I say that with every a series release is that it's you know for the mid-range it's not going to wow you or impress you with crazy features that you never knew.

You wanted it's going to give you the features that you hope to have, but done really well, and I feel like this does that, so it's hard to recommend it. I saw a rev a review I forgot which outlet, but, but it had described it the same way you just did Jason and that is boring like boring, but good, you know yeah, some people just want a boring phone like yeah right, I mean you know, and I don't know I guess I could see how that that could be uh construed as like a ding on a device. It's just like I've had my I've reviewed many phones and often when I get a phone, I'm like. Oh, I'm so excited to try this feature or like I'm like I'm pulling it out of the pocket, and I'm like yeah. This is the new phone.

You know like there are moments like that, where moments little moments of joy in using it, and I'm so used to the series phones now that I guess the joy is gone, but that's kind of the point right like it's a mid-range device, that's just supposed to be good at what it offers, and it does that. So it satisfies my expectations. You know it may be boring, but it's also the mid-range phone that I recommend so take from that. What you will, you know what I mean so anyways um, that is it. That's the pixel 5a with 5g um, pretty solid 25's too many fives.

We have to, like we have to, stop doing the 5g thing like just yeah. I totally agree. I totally agree. Furthermore, I was thinking the same thing um. They could just get rid of that at this point.

You know at this point we're a couple of years into this whole 5g thing and say what you will about 5g technology, but um phones, you know most phones, I'd say, are supporting 5g. Now, maybe that's maybe that's an inaccurate statement, but that's the way it feels yeah. I think, over the last 18 months definitely a lot more fun to come with 5g as standard now, even at the low end, yeah yeah, even at the high-end right in the mid-range. Definitely so at a certain whether your carrier has the infrastructure for the 5g. It's another thing entirely, you know totally could be paying as much as I do.

Every month and still not getting a sim card that catches on to any towers, because you just so happen to live on the edge of the 5g rollout, but also who needs the cell phone tower. Really I mean you don't need that connection. You know what abolish cell phone towers. It should be something else. Oh, so there we have it um.

I don't have much more to add 5a uh, pixel 5a, it's its! It is what you thought it would be there. That's the tagline! It's what you expect. You know what that's good! It's like that! Guy that you have on the back burner. You can go to him when everybody else doesn't work out, and you know exactly what you're going to get with my life. I suppose so, and it's a tall drink of water.

So it's very like I think it's yeah exactly what you're talking about flow all right. That's my review. Uh flow. What you got! Okay! I've got! I'm sorry about that metaphor. You know wow, don't be sorry embrace it anyway, um speaking of being hip and with it uh.

I've got here exactly blah blah blah blah blah. Last week there was a huge Samsung event. I forgot that that happened last week and then this week I ended up with this flipping phone and I don't mean that flipping in the way you think you might be saying you got a flipping phone, a flipping phone flow. So Flo, can I ask you before you get into it um, have you been able to use the best feature of that phone which is uh too angrily? Hang up on someone by flipping the phone closed? Yes, you have okay, yeah right was it with a family member, or what tell us about the conversation? Why were you? No, it wasn't uh. Well, admittedly, I haven't had a phone call yet, but I have um.

You know I've done some social media and dramatically just be like. Oh, I'm over this Instagram dm and just done that. But I mean you have to hang up on someone. You have to be like. No we're done goodbye right.

So here's the point I'm trying to make Ron, which is that in 2021 our flip phone has changed the meaning of the flip phone. Oh, yeah completely. How has it changed? Well, like I said now, you can angrily hang up on an Instagram dm uh. If you know you don't get that Pok?mon in Pok?mon Go, you could just hang it up stupid game. How does the hit? How does the hinge feel does it feel? Does it be it started? Does it feel secure like what is it, so it feels so sturdy.

But here's the thing remember back in the day we had our flip phones, and you would get it and the flip phone felt like it came fresh off the factory belt. You know it was um, it was smooth, and it was a fluid motion, but it wasn't loose, and you know you're just kind of waiting. You would wait for a little while, for those hinges, just kind of wear, sometimes you'd end up with a phone where the hinges we get too loose, and then the darn thing just never stay closed. But I'm waiting for this to soften, and I tried really hard yesterday. I was taking photos of it for my review, which I'm working on right now for gizmo do, and I was trying really hard to like open it one-handed, and it takes effort man.

I do not have that satisfaction that I did back in what 2008 2009 yeah, but it's actually kind of hard by the way to close it without the case. The case that I'm using, which is the signature Samsung case, they're um, releasing it's a silicone case, fits it very well, and it has a little belt loop on the back, or in this case this is a keychain which you can kind of loop. Your finger through like a pop socket to hold on to it. So this case actually adds a tiny bit of density to it to be able to actually flip it closed, but without it is takes a little pressure, which is just a further reminder that what is making this phone flip is not a hinge as in the flip phones of your but an actual, it's a screen with a bend in it, and I'm very curious how this thing is going to hold up after a year of use, because always the consideration with the modern foldable right, whether it's justified or not, that is always on the mind of, I would say the majority of people that either look at them or think about buying. One is like how long is this going to stay? Okay, before that fold becomes an issue, it's a new form factor, and so I showed it to a couple folks on video chat last week and a lot of the folks that gave me the oh, my gosh reactions were people who had iPhones, and I appreciated that.

But then there were also a tiny subset of people in my life who saw this and were like. No, no, no, absolutely not! I will not go near it. I refuse so um. I'm first, I'm jealous because I of the two foldable last week the flip was the one that I was really excited about. Actually of all the announcements, the flip was the one that I was like.

Okay, that that's actually pretty cool. I love that they, cracked, the 999 dollar price point, but I haven't had my hands on one of these. Oh sorry, but also not only the price, but we were talking about in the pre-show is that, with all the incentives and stuff like that, yeah different carriers, you can get. You could potentially get the price on the flip down to sub five hundred dollars, so 4.99 uh yeah after trading and stuff yeah, with trade-ins on Verizon they're they're, offering up to 500 in rebates like they're, trying like yes, it's 9.99, but they're really trying hard to get it as close to 4.99 as possible. So they want you to know by the way that you can trade in all your old stuff like they really want you to go around the house, pull up the couch cushions and like look for any old tech, you have around that you could trade in so right.

You probably have something. So I'm curious Damian, because you had some hands-on time with both the flip and the fold right. I did yes, I did. What did you think? I really like the flip. I think the flip is the that's the piece of resistance of the new, the zed series, as I would say, um, but there's just something about it.

Like uh, like you said you just kind of want to close it, even though it is a screen. So like the kind of the trying to slap it closed, like you would you know, you know the wrist motion, you'd use with an old folding, yeah uh flip phone, you just kind of go like that and slap it around. Maybe I was the only person did this. Maybe I no! You can do this, but I found that really difficult to do and obviously the Samsung reps were like. Please don't do that.

Um, the z, um z, flip three very easily the z4 3 felt just I mean it's clearly a marquee device enough, and it's going to overtake the note line and that's going to be that it makes sense for that to be the note series moving forward, but the flip just feels like it almost feels like a turning point for the potential for normal people to take foldable seriously. I just hope. I just hope that the battery holds out. That was my biggest concern. You know, I'm going to tell you.

This is just problematic as a reality TV star on social media, all right, it's its got some issues, um, I'm going to run the official battery test tonight after we get off the phone goodbye, we're going to hang out now go to set the headset down after I'm going to run. The official battery test tonight see how that fares, but I am dubious because just from using it, I've noticed that the battery will shrink string shrink really fast, especially oh, my god, especially if you're watching video and I mean I've, still got some benchmarking and things to do with this device. I love watching video on it, but I'm going to tell you. I barely watch video um, laying it out this way, you're watching it in the front on the front screen or um. What am I guess this would be the main screen.

Let me turn on the brightness just in case you can kind of see this but um. I don't watch video in landscape mode right. I watch it um, let's see. If I can. Let me see if I can at least show you guys, so you can have a little um.

Visual audio for audio listeners flow is fumbling with the phone yeah. So here we go um, I'm just going to launch Pluto TV for funsies and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to hit this hinge up. I was watching Pluto romance last because so you watch it, so you watch it in portrait mode in a very in the half screen with fascinating yeah, the 90 degree hinge kind of it's just awesome, isn't it? It just looks so that that convinced me straight away as soon as I saw that with the original uh, z flip and now this one's just kind of like taking it to another level, but that that's awesome for, like I've, seen people doing on social media, where you can kind of have it at 90 degrees to take uh top-down photos of your food using Instagram and that or like holding the phone kind of like. I don't even have anything to show you with it kind of like kind of like that and take the image like that and press the shutter button. That again, that to me, who is a lazy photographer, that's phenomenal yeah, yeah and the thing is, is like now I'm getting some pushback in the chat for going vertical.

But let me explain wow that, because I don't so, I have really built my life around, and I'm kind of working out my thoughts on all you all right now, because there's a lot that I want to say about this phone, and I'm just not quite sure like. I have no idea what the thesis is of this thing, because it's its such a new form factor compared to what I've been using over the last 10 years. So I'm re-acquainting myself with a flip phone, but it's a different experience from what I had back in the day in the early aughts like because now I've got a full functionality device in my hands that also can convert in this fun little like pocketable size. By the way this cover screen, it's like 1.9 inches, now super AMOLED. I mean they really like beefed it up, and they put the SLO like you guys, can see um yeah camera right now.

I freaking love this ability to be able to take a picture like a selfie. With these, you know with the excuse me. Let me start that over again with the main cameras of the phone, but the bummer is that if my kid is running across like she was the other day- oh my god. Yes, we were in the grocery store, and she was pushing the cart by herself. This tiny little toddler was pushing this giant cart of groceries around the grocery store because she's, somehow like an Iron Man now or something she's in a strong mood, but I could not open the phone fast enough to double press the power button and snap that photo or that video so completely missed moment.

I mean I saw it in my memory, but that's a good point, though I mean how many times do I pull the phone out, and I don't need to think about unfolding. I just tap snap versus here, okay, so I've got this one, plus my one, the OnePlus 9 I've been using right. Furthermore, I carry it around like this with my pop socket all the time. This is the way that I've sort of trained myself to think about how I'm holding this phone, and so I've developed all these maneuvers- and this is like this is my third year fourth year using a pop socket, so I'm very trained on this mechanism, and it took me a long time to just get used to swiveling this, how I'm handling it in my hands. There's all these new.

I have to evolve to use this phone, I have to evolve, but it's its challenging. You yeah, I think that's a good thing! Yeah, that's good! Yeah, yeah! I mean it's good for overall brain health. You know I'm getting up there into the elder millennial years. So it's good to keep me going a little gym exercise here and there you elder millennial you, but in all sincerity yeah, it's I'll obviously have more to say about it when I finally pen out the entire uh review, but this is a big decision to make before you switch to it, and I think that's also why Samsung's like, by the way trade in your old stuff. If you want to like to try this out, because they really want to encourage you to try it out, since that's the whole premise of this release that they did last week, yeah, yeah, okay, so then you're working on the full review, that's going to go up on gizmo do sometime soon, so everybody uh should definitely check out your pray.

For me, when that happens, tomorrow's going to be a very long day. We know you can do this. You got this all right. We are not done with hardware. We've got more coming up next, all right Damian! You have um well, you're, not wearing them in your ear holes right now, but you have for your ear holes, the nothing ear ones which we've talked about on the show in previous weeks.

I'm so fascinated! I want to hear all about this because yeah so tell us what you think about it. Furthermore, I have yet to review them. That's what I'm going to say. I think that um they are, they look phenomenal the case I like the fidget spinner aspect of them. Unfortunately, mine has taken a lot of damage already um, it's barely clear anymore and the design of the case.

I have to say about the case. That's one thing that has stuck out to me is that it, it looks really like the case, looks really cheap, like it looks like a little like throwaway plastic container. That might you know, encompass that you might have like uh breath mints in or something as opposed to, but so maybe it's not maybe in person it's like. No, actually it's made with you know thick high quality plastic or something, but that's been my impression over the internet yeah. I can kind of get where you get that impression.

Um. It doesn't necessarily feel as cheap as it looks. Okay, the earbuds themselves, um I've not tried AirPods Pro I've heard from other people that they sound really similar to the AirPods Pro, which I suppose at 99.99 pounds or 99 euros, is gonna, be a good thing, because obviously, there's cross-platform support with the um with the pairing, nothing a1 app, and it's kind of like one of those strange things whereby are people who use multiple um kind of platforms. Are they going to want uh one ear bud over another, and maybe that's why nothing have targeted them again? It's uh Carl pays from the school of OnePlus marketing, so he's managed to garner a hell of a lot of column inches with what is essentially just earbuds 99 earbuds that they sound. They sound pretty good they're, not the best tables I've ever used, but they do what they say on the tin.

Basically, they are pretty solid noise, cancelling earbuds at 99 bucks. That's it that's, basically, and that's how I would summarize them um the only downside. I've had a few issues with them at the moment, though, in regard to the charging and the case, because of the case design, it kind of lets certain aspects of it down, just because of the I don't know what they tried to go through it, because they, they told me pre-release that this is essentially part of the design. The fidget spinner, there's like a dimple, and that holds the earbuds in place, and sometimes it means that they're able to rock in the case- and they don't actually align correctly with the magnetic charge portion um, which, which means there's been a few days when I've taken them out of my bag or my pocket and all of a sudden one ear bud, has 17 charge the other one has 90 and obviously your leftover goes dead, and then you're right here, but that lets the entire package down a little. But overall, I'm struggling to give it a full seal of approval, but they're not they're, not particularly terrible they're, not particularly great either.

Okay, that's basically, it yeah for 99 bucks with uh with noise, cancelling which active with active noise. Canceling at 99 I wouldn't expect that they'd be the most amazing noise, canceling earbuds in the world, but it's a nice feature to have. Definitely so I mean yeah, it kind of sounds like 99 dollars uh. You could probably do a lot worse, but they're not like. I think that I think the pixel buzz a series now they're available across the globe.

I think they're, probably they're a better companion if you use android exclusively um the sound on This is it's probably marginally below the um ear one, but the ear one doesn't get the same isolation as this kind of like plug design. So personally, I'm a fan of that because it can block out much more background noise without having ANC anyway um. The ANC is it's not too bad. It can drone out sorry kind of block out traffic drone noises in the gym that kind of thing, but yeah, you kind of have to set your expectations a little low and I think that the drip feeding of all the features and what they're going to change the industry and who's backed the company have kind of. Maybe elevated the product way above where it should be positioned, but it's not too they're, not they're, not terrible they're, not great.

That's literally about as much as I can really say about them, I'm still fat, at least it's not nothing. Um. I'm still fascinated that this is this was their first product and like and then and also the positioning that this was like the first. In a line like this was the entry point like you're if you want to be on the nothing train, get these earbuds. But I don't know why.

So it's the don't know, I'm I'm mystified by this entire company and their approach so yeah, and what this is it's going to be yeah, I feel like there's going to be definitely some integration with like the smart home ecosystem because they mentioned it in previous uh caf?s mentioned in previous interviews, and things like that. So again, I I I'm mystified as well Ron in the sense that, where does earbuds tie into that, because there's no there's no direct Google Assistant integration here or Alexei or Siri or any of those, it's just a long press, and it activates the assistant or any device. So there's not really much in there's not really much smart home integration as it stands, so I'm mystified as well to an extent. You've made me question my own thoughts about this product this product now. Well, thanks for that journey, it's a journey.

Damien yeah. At least you haven't finalized your review because now that can all be part of the know the destination. Just everything off the desk. Everything goes delete empty start over again all right. Well, thank you for that.

Definitely, a curiosity. I'm really curious to see how the company kind of progresses uh, into whatever their vision, is still kind of a little confusing to understand exactly what they're going for with this being the first device, especially but um, yeah, still kind of intrigued to pop it in my ears and see what it sounds like, I suppose uh, but a little less moved to do so, because I totally I love the galaxy um, the Pixel Buds, not the galaxy, the Pixel Buds, a series like I'm just I'm really digging those so for the same price as it would be hard to pull me away from those. It sounds like justifiably so, um all right, lets uh, let's check in on some apps. Let's do that right now. Why don't we? If the bumper doesn't play three times? Did we still talk about the stories? Yeah? We don't we don't talk until the bumper plays three times yeah.

Thank you! Okay, all right! It's like saying: bloody, Mary, bloody, Mary, yeah, all right, um, all right, you're, good, some real, quick, app news, uh, a long long long long awaited feature is finally rolling out to google phones, call, recording native call, recording is coming to eligible pixel devices. Worldwide. Um will only be surfaced in regions where call recording is legal because it is a privacy, legal kind of thing um but Damian you, you kind of wrote about this. You know that for years and years and years there have been, you know, call recording, apps and things like that, and now you know it seems like you know, I'm I'm fascinated by the fact that it took 10 years for it to become you know, native to you know, within the operating system um. But what do you think of the solution that google's rolling out here? I think it's the way it's integrated into the application is its kind of good for the regions where, unfortunately, in the UK, it's not legally allowed.

So I can't comment on what how it works in to an extent, but I think that if it's eligible, or you're in an eligible region, I think the way they've integrated is really nicely done. Um like with a lot of Google's implementations to these things, it takes them a while, but once they get it down, it's usually kind of unobtrusive, really well integrated, and I like the fact that you can kind of have it auto, delete the files um after a certain preset period. So, obviously, even if you live in a region where you can record calls, and they have to be deleted after a certain time period, or they're, not useful to you, I kind of think that's a really nice way of doing it. It doesn't clog up your device if you have limited storage as well, um but yeah. It's nice to see that there's a toggle within the actual phone app for people to do that, rather than having to use a potentially sketchy third-party application where they might have to make in-app purchases, or they're connected to a cloud service where they don't know where the data's going.

So yeah, I trust google with that kind of thing, a lot more than some third-party developers out there, but then again, there's going to be people who don't have an iota of trust in google to keep their private conversations private, I'm personally of the site that I would rather have Google doing that with their native phone app than some developer. I have no clue who they happen to be yeah, yeah agreed, agreed, cool yeah and I also wonder um. Is there any information as far as like? Does this announce, because I know with Google voice there's recording capability, but it announces. This is called being recorded. That sort of thing, I wonder if that's the top of my head, I'm not sure, I'm not sure off the top of my head Jason, but I think that potentially now I've now I've put a noose from my neck that I definitely think it could be, but yeah like legally in some regions, because I think in California like you're supposed to that's.

Why? Well yeah yeah! No, that's that's um! That's my understanding of the law, at least like in California, is that someone when the recording is happening has to announce it? I think google and like zoom, is another example of this. They sometimes go the extra step of taking that you know making that someone, not the person making the call, because often that person's not gonna, announce it potentially, but just baking it into the software itself. I imagine because they do it with Google voice. I imagine it would also do it with their dialer, because they have the same kind of rationale and reasoning behind it, um to bake it in there, and it also covers their butt and in case you know, it's used for something, and somebody gets in big trouble about it at least then they're covered, they said. Oh, we did our thing um so, but I was just curiosity.

I haven't heard either way whether it's implemented or not, but there you go there. You go yeah, I would hope, so I'd hope so yeah yeah, I wouldn't want my calls, be recorded and nobody telling me no absolutely. Then again they wouldn't get garner any interesting information anyway. So but still it's its nice to know that somebody isn't recording your calls yeah. If you don't know, yeah um remember way back when at least 2019 there was a driving mode that was uh that was announced coming to google assistant.

It took a while, but it happened earlier this year, assistant driving mode began to launch, at least in I don't know if it's like a full launch or if it's a preview or what, but I've certainly seen it in maps and I actually kind of like it the way that it's in maps. Currently, I appreciate it. It's nice to have the audio controls kind of suddenly appear down there, so I've gotten kind of used to it, but there was a stopgap uh app that was created along the way. It was really you know in the way that google itself is just perfect at confusing people. They created an app called android auto for phone screens, because android auto wouldn't work on the phone, but then they created this app.

That's basically like a shortcut to allow it to work on the phone until the assistant driving mode launched. Well, some users are now reporting that that app is not working. So it seems to be the case that google is kind of moving towards fully removing android, auto for phone displays and favoring assistant driving mode on devices which uh you know on one hand great they're they're doing what they said. On the other hand, there's a lot of people pushing back and saying this assistant driving mode is like a fraction of what android auto offered, and I just thought this was interesting. It's like a talking point like flow.

It sounds like you have thoughts on this like what? What do you think? How do you feel about this? So I haven't used it in its current implementation, just yet while behind the wheel, but I did use the trial that they were showing at Google. I o in 2019 remember those times, and I remember just being really not, not on board what they were attempting to do, because the idea of it was that you just have this like one long screen of commands that you can kind of paw at, but that the primary way to interact with this is with your voice. However, when your car isn't rigged to work with voice commands and what you're doing is just commanding the phone itself, the phone is also working with, like all that atmosphere going on in the car, and I found that if it's too loud, if I'm driving like I'm, I'm driving I'm on the freeway windows down right, even without just like the windows down just trying to get. You know the assistant to hear me and to uh actually carry out. My command is very frustrating, and then it's like well.

What is the point of this? I guess we'll just whatever do whatever you're going to do so, and the other thing that I just quickly want to bring up is that now that I've used android auto in the car and on my phone in my car uh, I have noticed kind of the differences between the two, but at the same time I still have that like same UI, so I can go from either car and I know exactly how to use it. But this one just feels like so is this? What you're showing me right now the driving yeah driving mode yeah? This is the driving mode and when I actually I take back what I said, this actually looks a lot like android, auto, currently baked into the car with that dock at the bottom and then like the full page, yeah, and you've got your little. You know kind of your mic for um assistant commands. You can hide that if you wanted and it kind of shrinks it down, you have very limited controls like sometimes I wish I had like a skip back 30 seconds for listening to podcasts and stuff. Furthermore, you don't have that down there, and then you have your more apps, which gives you kind of like your quick shortcuts and everything I mean it's totally different right, like I mean there are, there are features that are similar to what you got in android auto, but it is really, I don't know it seems so in incredibly just tied into maps the only way that you really get it is by navigating somewhere.

Furthermore, you know what I mean um, whereas I think android auto kind of stood on its own outside of maps. It could be an interface that didn't require you to navigate somewhere in order to integrate with it so or interact with it, and I kind of like yeah yeah I mean some people really did I mean I. I went really back and forth with android auto on my phone like I, I wanted to use it more than I actually ended up using it. So at a certain point it was like don't lock me into this UI, because I want to do this. One thing you know- and I probably shouldn't be doing that one thing, but that ends up being the reason that I like turn it off, and I never ended up using it again.

This, like I use maps when I need to navigate somewhere. Obviously you know I'm using maps all the time and having that suddenly just appear in the apps. The maps interface is nice. It's usable. I find myself using it a lot um, but I can understand how for a lot of people, this is like small potatoes compared to what they used to have pay sci, maybe I'll use it, and I'll.

Let you all know how I feel about it, because the thing is this would be what would replace my car's dash like the android autos and the family car, which is not. You know, yeah, it's not my car, so it's not the one. I usually drive, not everybody's balling, quite like Ron with android auto in his uh vehicle. With my wireless with my wireless awesome, so yeah. What about you Damian? Do you have a lot of? Do you have any kind of like I don't I do interaction? I do not know I'm trying to actually cut down on my driving, but I did manage to try android automotive fully last week in the pollster 2.

Um. I've had that for a week, and I've I can kind of understand why people will be really annoyed about the direct integration in this way. Um because kind of, like you can't force it off. If that makes sense like having a separate android auto for your phone is kind of nice in the sense that you can kind of separate it and not have to worry about. Okay, I'm not used to this navigation kind of screen and having all of these applications confuses things.

So I did use to use it previously um when it was a standalone app for a little while, just after it launched, I think for a few months. But then I'm a little like you Jason in the sense that I found it a little kind of discombobulating, and I was like I'll just stick to the stick to the maps that I know and have it on a dash uh kind of like a dash arm for my phone mount and things like that. But I unfortunately I don't have a car with an android auto head unit, and I probably won't for a long time so yeah, I'm kind of holding out and hoping that my next vehicle will have android automotive and being its own separate thing. But I can see why people are annoyed about the assistant driving mode, but it probably is a natural progression in the grand scheme. I'm sure that google will have looked at the numbers and thought well we'll just integrate it there and make it a little more accessible for everyone without really having to do too much.

Yeah, there's, probably a lot of data behind any move. That Google makes even when Google makes moves that you know tick. A lot of people off like inbox or whatever. There's probably data behind that. Like I doubt google's just like pulling up pulling a note out of a hat and saying well, I guess today we're going to kill inbox, or we're going to kill reader there's some sort of data behind that decision.

Don't underestimate it Jason I mean all these years of following this stuff like I, I do want to believe that google is making data-based uh data-driven decisions, but sometimes it feels like someone's throwing a dart at the wall. It does it feel that way for sure I hear you yeah all right, uh we're going to get to some of your emails up next AAA twit. TV 347 show AAA and Flo you have the first one. Oh, my goodness, we've got a first email. Today, it's been a while, since I've read one of these um hey by the way, remember that you can email us at triple a twitter.

TV. If you have something like to say, we're still taking voicemails 347 show AAA number um all right, so this first email comes from Chris Walters and Chris writes in regarding the question about playing white noise through a Nest Hub. There's no reason to pair your phone with the hub, simply say: hey g play white noise for 10 hours done. I do this every night in both kids bedrooms and my own enjoy. Chris is right.

Also, one of my favorites by the way is rainy night and then there's also forest sounds. Oh, there you go yeah yeah, so this was in relation to or uh, uh related to last week's email of the week. Oh, I did I'm sorry. I threw it off there we go there. We go.

I wanna, be you know full disclosure. I had to say the word uh Steven miller. Sorry, it's just the way it goes man you got to be on your toes he's. Going to hang out with us. It's true, gangsta uh, Steve miller, wrote in about his white noise app, which is the white noise app that I actually use as well by Microsoft um.

I think it's like called like white noise pro or whatever um anyways, connecting to his Nest Hub and at three or four in the morning. Every single morning, the white noise just completely stops, and it wakes him up, and so he's trying to figure that out. So this is in response to that uh, which is a great alternative, except the teems soft white noise. App has like tons of different white. You know, like you, find the app that works for you.

You want to use the app, and it used to work for him through uh through the Nest Hub. He sent a follow-up email that I read today: uh it used to work fine and then suddenly it just stopped like suddenly every morning at three or four a. m. It just stops playing the white noise and can't figure out. Why so that's frustrating? I could totally make a suggestion, an alternative yeah for this.

Absolutely, if you really, I mean look, these app solutions, definitely work in a pinch um. I really do appreciate that the smart displays and smart speakers, both all the different ecosystems they'll, offer some sort of like ambient. You know sound mode to kind of help you with whatever you're dealing with, but if you really rely on white noise, pink noise, blue noise, that kind of like background just get yourself a white noise machine. I know it's like forty dollars. Oh yeah, it kind of puts you out you.

No, it's even cheaper I've got I've got. I've, got two white noise machines in my kids rooms and like lex, sound or something like that. Like it's, not Amazon. Well, there's this brand yeah, the dome is the one I'm I use for money. It's spelled d-o-h-m, but there's like other brands that make it.

I read the reviews before you buy. Oh yeah, that's great! We have those too yeah yeah, see you've got already three people telling you to just get a white noise machine. If this is something that you really rely on well, because there's like digital white there's digital white noise, which is what we're doing when we play it through a speaker and then there's true like analog like moving air white noise and what you're talking about flow. That's the that's my favorite one too. We've got a couple of yeahs: it's a fan, natural fan based sound yeah, yeah yeah, and we tried a lot of stuff with money and then, as we tried it out with her, we realized that it benefits us as well so totally.

I love sleeping a white noise, I'm like converted, yeah and that didn't have that wasn't the case before we had kids yeah there, you go um all right. So thank you Chris for that uh suggestion. That's a good tip that a lot of people might not have known. Jeff wrote in to say I watched Jason's coverage of Samsung's, new products, great job Jason, thank you, and I'm liking. The new galaxy watch 4.

I currently have a galaxy watch 3, and I'm wondering if the apps and watch faces on my current watch will work on the new watch. I was unclear about the relationship between ti zen and the new operating system, which happens to be wear os3 by the way uh and whether I would have to start over with apps. If I get the new watch, so I'm I'm curious on this. I mean I I I think the answer is relatively obvious, like ties in and android are not compatible operating systems. So if an app is made for ti zen or a watch face is made for ti zen it's its just you know, operating on different, a different code base than android is, so I think the easy answer is no they're not going to work.

I think the question that I have is: are those developers of those apps that you're used to of those watch faces that you're used to? Are they going to offer them up on the new version? And that's I mean that's a huge question mark. I don't know what they're going to do. I imagine if they're, big name developers, yes you're, going to see that if they don't already have it because it's Wear OS, so it's its the android based one, and I imagine a lot of the developers would have made their app for that anyways. But certainly there are certain developers that just created for Samsung's ti zen devices and um yeah. I think you cross your fingers and hope that they um redo their app.

So that it works on the new watch, and I'd, say it's probably pretty likely that a lot of them are going to do that you just might have to wait a little for them, but yeah. I looked around for like an article or an interview that specifically said that, and I couldn't find it, but I mean it's pretty cut and dry taken and android are not the same thing so yeah we were talking about. We were chatting about it actually, this afternoon, um between the three of us and I think, Jason, you and I were like we don't know if this kind of the complications that were introduced in where OS are called complications, which is why I can't remember them ever if those translate over to ti zen and what Samsung did over there, because I have all the watch faces on my gear on my galaxy gear. Galaxy active, but I don't know if I'll be able to use them. If I buy the watch, 4.

Yeah, not, not trying to think. If that's the case, I think some of the pre-installed ones that you might be used to from the older galaxy watch series are already pre-installed on the okay and watch for classic. I'm not sure, that's good. That makes sense if you've downloaded them from, like the galaxy store, I'm not entirely sure at all. Unfortunately, right yeah that'll, I guess that'll be interesting, because anything in the galaxy store for wearables has been in there as a ti zen.

You know, as a ti zen app now you're going to be going to the same store as I. I don't know how Samsung's going to choose to surface that you know do they have two separate downloads on the same entry or does one entry say this watch face in parentheses for Wear OS, you know 3.0 or whatever, I'm not sure how Samsung's going to do that, but I think ultimately it will be incumbent upon the developer to make the choice to actively develop this thing that they made for ti zen for android, so that you can get it over there, and I think a lot of them are going to choose to do that. I would imagine so anyways, but yeah there we go, I'm I'm I just put through an order for the galaxy watch for uh classic, but the 40 is. Is it 42 and 46 millimeters? I went with the smaller one. I did go with the 42 46 and then the other one's like 40, 42 44.

, or something like that. So yeah, I'm excited we'll get that soon. I'm excited we're going to have to do like a whole segment on now I haven't. I haven't pre-ordered any watch, yet I'm I'm gonna wait just a tiny bit yeah. Let's do it, I'm game all about watches, all about watches all right uh, and that brings us to the moment.

You've all been waiting to waiting for. It is thanked you, Burke, uh, and it's funny, because this week's email of the week uh actually taps into something we were just talking about earlier in the show which is great. We didn't even plan this. Indeed, jams writes. It says from episode: 537 was wanted multiple tablets to display.

Only the calendar was should try the full kiosk browser and app lockdown app on the Google Play Store. Also, on the Amazon app store, if he wants to use fire tablets as long as he can open the calendar from a web browser, the app turns tablets into a kiosk where it will go to that web page only and can turn the screen black after a set time and use motion detection to turn it on there. You go and that's pretty cool. It's pretty good solution. There's a cost for a plus license upgrade to get motion, detection and some other features.

And of course you know, pay your devs so um, but uh jams further says. I personally use the full kiosk app on a fire tablet, with action: tiles as a smart home control center mounted on the wall to control lights, smart plugs and view outdoor cameras, so Damien there you go, there's a change converted into a smartphone controller yeah. Yes, jams is a sensible gentleman, and he knows exactly what he's talking about. I've never heard that application before, but that sounds phenomenal. I mean it sounds like exactly what we're looking for uh last week and then also what you were talking about.

Damien I mean and to have the motion detection baked into it. That's that's what I love it brings it full circle because we were talking about like I guess you got to get tasked, and you got to set this up because any of the motion detection apps that I was finding- are all tied into like security cameras and not like. If motion then launch this app or show this web page. So this is perfect, I mean I haven't used it, so I can't speak to it on a personal level, but I don't need to because jams did, and apparently it's awesome. So if you've got a tablet lying around, and you want to convert it into a calendar, you want to convert it into a smart home controller.

It seems like this is the way to go. Um, I'm actually it's funny, because I've been flirting, I've been we're trying to solve our calendaring. You know uh solution between me and my wife and the kids and schedules and all this sort of stuff- and my sister has an elaborate uh whiteboard system in her kitchen, where she has. She has four white boards, uh mounted to make a square, and three of them are the month we're in and the next two months and the fourth one is just like miscellaneous notes, and she rotates the white boards as the monster by which is a great system. But it's very analog, and I'm like there's got to be a digital way to do this, and I've been getting Facebook ads.

For this thing, called hearth, which is a vertical oriented touchscreen display that you can mount on your wall and import calendars, and things like that, probably more than we need, but uh. It seems like if you have a. I don't know an ASUS media pad tablet lying around the house uh, and you want to throw a calendar on there and limit uh. You know kind of other people going from the fully kiosk browser and app lockdown app is the way to go. So.

Thank you, jams um, it's very cool, and this gives you the email of the week. All right hearing you talk about uh, converting old tablets makes me realize I was just down uh in my den, which uh slowly over time has become a collecting ground for all randomness in our lives, and so I was trying to kind of clean it out and everything, and I found at the bottom of a box. I found the Walmart on and then tablets, and I was like what can we do with this, and so here you go the problem, though, that I realized with that. That tablet is that the display it's its, not a glass display, it's a plastic display, and it was at the bottom of the box. So something was on it.

So the display has like these little like creases in it. Now oh cool, like dang, it just created e-waste yeah, don't feel very good about that, but anyways uh, all right. We've reached the end of this episode and uh just in time, because Damian is about to die from lack of sleep. No, I'm absolutely fine, I'm absolutely! Well! We really appreciate yeah right. We really appreciate you coming on and hanging out with us and spending uh, some of your late, late night with us Damian.

It's always a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you. No, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's good to speak to you guys. I think it was a year since I have last been on so yeah yeah there you go yeah um! Well, we'll get back on sooner um.

What are you being? Do you have anything that you're working on right now that you want to tell people about, and where should they find all the work that you're doing um? You can find most of the work that I do either on nine to five google. com or on the associated YouTube page. I haven't. I can't really talk about some of the projects I'm working on right now, but I do have a big android automotive kind of deep dive in the next few weeks, um that I've been working on for a couple of weeks already um. But apart from that, now this there's nothing.

I would love to tell people about certain things that are coming up, but unfortunately I can't divulge that. But if you just tune into to YouTube and to the website, then you'll see everything that I post on there, and hopefully you'll enjoy it, because not everybody enjoys everything. You part there. If you read your own YouTube comments, don't do that, though, that's just a recipe for disaster. It's its never worth it.

Is it no well. Thank you Damian. That's that's a lot to look forward to right. There he's working on stuff that he can't tell you about yet, so you're going to have to follow him uh to find out exactly what it ends up being uh appreciate your time Damian. Thank you again, no problem.

Thank you and flow hat you got going um well, I kind of teased it a little. Obviously, there's an article to look forward to from me about this Galaxy Z, flip 3. , um that'll be up when it's up you can find you can find that out by following me on Twitter, or you can bookmark flow rights. Tech, which is my author page at gizmodo. com um last week.

I also did a what was I saying right. I was shilling my wares um. Yes. Last week I did a mechanical keyboard review. I actually looked at racer's got these new key caps that you can easily put onto any mechanical keyboard.

So if you're interested in that, you can go check that out. That is one of my beats at gizmo do, but other than that see you guys next week right on. Thank you Flo good, to have you back and thank you Ron. What do you want to leave people with you're welcome story? Welcome, sir. You can go.

Follow me on Twitter and on Instagram at rondo, and if you're into pinball uh go check out in the Google Play Store the score bit app, that's s-c-o-r-b-I-t, where you can track your pinball scores um and do all the find places to play. Pitbull we're working on some cool stuff. That's going to be coming out um very, very soon, uh around playing pinball with friends, and things like that. So uh yeah stay tuned there, but go check out scored, it's uh square bit. Io on the web.

Do it orbit is awesome all right. Thank you Ron good to have you back too and good to have good to have burked in the studio good to have victor um, not in the studio but editing the show and turning it all around hi, victor hi, victor and hi Burke um. I do tech news weekly on this uh. You know every Thursday twitter. TV TNW with Micah sergeant and um yeah mike, is actually going to be out of town next week.

So I'm going to be doing smart tech today uh in his absence. So I'm really looking forward to that always uh. You always know kind of changing and shifting around and filling in and everything so just check out. Twit. Tv and you'll find me all over the network.

Um, don't forget twit TV club twit. This is our club. It's going awesome. We have so many people getting in the discord. It's a members-only discord uh, so many people subscribing uh to club twit because either they want our shows with no ads, because we offer up uh individualized feeds that don't have the ads included in them for club, twit members or because they actually like the ads, and they just want to support the network and that works too.

So we appreciate it either way. Also, there's an exclusive twit plus podcast feed that has lots of extra content. Pre-Post show content some extra content that we create uh, especially for twit plus uh members, so um go to uh twit. TV club twit, and you can check it out seven bucks a month and totally worth it. That is it for this week's episode of all about android.

We do this show every Tuesday evening, so you know just go to twit TV AAA subscribe, and you won't miss a single episode, and that means that you'll see next week's episode when it appears in your feed, we'll see you then on all about android bye, everybody hey. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you are interested in checking out all things- smart, home and internet of things, then you should check out smart tech. Today, the podcast I mica sergeant to do with my co-host Matthew, Campanella, it's all about the smart home and improving your automations.

Source : All About Android