All About Android 615, Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Jason Howell (00:00:00):
Coming up on All About Android. It's me, Jason Howell. We've got Huyen Tue Dao and Ron Richards joining me on, you know, I'm flanked on both sides with some TVs pretty used to it. By now, we've got smartphones on the decline at least that's according to the Q4 data from last year. One plus has a tablet and some foldables on the horizon possibly happening this year. Definitely a nothing phone(2) happening this year. What is the difference exactly between Google News and this new artifact app created by the people who created Instagram JR Raphael reviews the Andi Smart Search Assistant, plus some really great feedback from you coming up next on All About Android

Announcer (00:00:46):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Jason Howell (00:00:55):
This is All About Android episode 615, recorded Tuesday, January 31st, 2023, Flipping OnePlus. This episode of All About Android is brought to you by Decisions. Don't let complexity block your company's growth. Decisions' No code rules-driven process Automation software provides every tool needed to build custom workflows, empowering you to modernize legacy systems, ensure regulatory compliance, and renew the customer experience. Visit decisions.com/twit to learn how automating anything can change everything. And by Bitwarden, get the password manager that offers a robust and cost effective solution that can drastically increase your chances of staying safe online. Get started with a free trial of a teams or enterprise plan, or get started for free across all devices as an individual user at Bitwarden.com/twit. Hello and welcome to All About Android your weekly source for the latest news, hardware and apps for the Android Faithful. I'm Jason Howell.

Ron Richards (00:02:03):
And I am Ron Richards.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:02:06):
And I'm Huyen Tue Dao

Jason Howell (00:02:07):
Yes, indeed. And it's good to see you both this week.

Ron Richards (00:02:12):
I like the, the core group kind of, you know, let's ending it. Ending the first month, you know?

Jason Howell (00:02:17):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. It's been a few episodes. Things have kind of been all over the map, so figured

Ron Richards (00:02:21):
Why not? We do have for a video viewers, Burke, if you can pull back to the wide shot, I think Huyen picked up on it as well. Yeah, we do have, that's what I was look, oh, we do have a, we do have a little bit of a, of a, well, no, we go to the wide shot. We do have a little bit of a of a little team. Team. Two, two reds and a black in the middle. Yeah. In fact, if you watch the pre-show, you were treated to a photo of Jason as a, as a young preteen. <Laugh>. And yeah, there it is. Oh. And he's wearing a red shirt with a black over it. Wow.

Jason Howell (00:02:52):
Look at that. You're right. That's so interesting.

Ron Richards (00:02:55):
And now here we, now Huyen and I are red shirts flanking Jason's black shirt tonight. So audio listeners go check out the YouTube link or the video link on twit tv. You can see what we're talking

Jason Howell (00:03:06):
About. Totally planned. Wait,

Ron Richards (00:03:07):
We did not Red shirts. Yeah, we red shirts. We red shirts. Oh. Oh God. Are we red shirts?

Huyen Tue Dao (00:03:11):
No, no, no, no. We're not. I'm not.

Ron Richards (00:03:13):
I'm not gonna the planet. I'm not going down on that planet. I'm

Huyen Tue Dao (00:03:16):
Not the planet. Nope. Not it.

Ron Richards (00:03:17):
Nope. <laugh>.

Burke (00:03:18):
Wait, the engine engineers were red shirts too though. Not all of them died.

Ron Richards (00:03:22):
Not all of them. Red shirt. Scotty was the best.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:03:24):
Oh, I guess, yeah. Oh, I can tell you why. It was red shirts that went

Jason Howell (00:03:27):
Quite

Burke (00:03:27):
A lot of them died. <Laugh>. Most of them.

Jason Howell (00:03:29):
<Laugh>. Let's pause. Let's not looking so good for you two. Let's, let's, I'm okay, let's

Ron Richards (00:03:34):
Pause. Now that we've navigated to Star Trek, let's pause for a moment and give respect to the greatest moment of Star Trek and computers in history. Star Trek four, when they go back to 1987, San Francisco and Scotty sits in front of a Mac and holds up the mouse and says computer and starts talking to it like a microphone. So

Jason Howell (00:03:52):
<Laugh>. That's right. Oh, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I don't know the last time I saw that movie. It's, it's been far, far too many years. Have you have either of you seen that particular Oh yeah. Movie recently. That's I

Ron Richards (00:04:06):
Love. So

Huyen Tue Dao (00:04:07):
Recently.

Jason Howell (00:04:07):
Yeah. Yeah,

Ron Richards (00:04:08):
Yeah. What let's define recently. It was recently within the last 10

Jason Howell (00:04:11):
Years. Yeah, sure. Yeah. The last year. Well, it certainly is for me, <laugh>. None

Ron Richards (00:04:16):
In the last two years, but last 10 years. Yes.

Jason Howell (00:04:18):
Yeah. Okay. Nice. That

Burke (00:04:20):
Is not recently.

Jason Howell (00:04:21):
Oh, five years. We even had the animated gif in the in the Club TWiT discord. It is.

Ron Richards (00:04:27):
So you joined Club Twit. There

Jason Howell (00:04:29):
You go. See actually, we've got different versions of it in the Discord. That's amazing. That's all it takes. That's all it takes. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Well, not only do we have random Star Trek factoids for you, we also happen to have Android news, Android hardware news, Android app news, an app recommendation by our good friend, JR Raphael and Android feedback. See, we've got the whole nine yards for you tonight. That's what we do here on All About Android. So why don't we also give you the Android news bumper courtesy of Burke.

Burke (00:05:06):
And you also have me stumped on what, what to say about it.

Jason Howell (00:05:11):
<Laugh>. Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:05:12):
<Laugh>.

Burke (00:05:12):
Thank you idc.

Jason Howell (00:05:14):
<Laugh>. Tha did you just say thank you idc?

Burke (00:05:18):
That's what I said.

Jason Howell (00:05:20):
Sure. Just throw that out there. Sure. let's see here. Okay, so what are you even talking about? Sometimes? I don't know. But in this case, I do. The last quarter of last year, apparently not so kind to the smartphone industry because Berk's, afore mentioned Idc report published some numbers on worldwide smartphone sales for the fourth quarter of 2022. Saw the largest ever quarterly decline in smartphone shipments. 18.3% drop in that quarter. The year saw 11.3% decline. Also the lowest annual shipment total since 2013. 1.21 billion phones for the year. Hard to put that in context cuz I don't have what the other numbers you know, like last year was, but just know that it's 11.3% decline there. Apple and Samsung down 14.9% and 15.6% respectively. But Xiaomi, which was one of the one of the biggest manufacturers of the year dropped to whopping 26.5%. So lost a quarter of what they have normally been doing in, you know, in their business of shipping phones. Lost a quarter of that business last year. So I don't know what is this just kinda like, oh, everybody's worried about the economy and so that's what happens in, you know, a tight economy. People hold onto their phones a little bit longer or is this something different? Are people getting bored of smartphones? What do you guys think?

Ron Richards (00:07:01):
I think you've touched on it a little bit with the economy aspect of it. Mm-Hmm. We're seeing, I know in other aspects of business, not just consumer electronics, but like other things I do in my day job, stuff like that. There is a slowdown happening. The holidays were soft, you know, like, I think I think the, the, the last year with all the inflation br haha and, and you know, what, what's going on? Just kind of in the, with the markets and stuff like that. I think it's, I think after a year of a rough financial year in 2022, it's starting to have an impact on just average user, average people, you know, and, and what they're spending is, I don't know. I mean, I, it is for me and my family, I don't know how it's for you guys. Huyen, what do you think?

Huyen Tue Dao (00:07:39):
I I mean I can't imagine the same that it is, you know, the economy and inflation and I mean, as necessary as smartphones are today. I I think most people will hesitate to buy a brand new smartphone just for the holidays when things have been going the way they are. And I, I think it's kind of interesting cuz we keep talking about manufacturers lengthening the terms of, you know, support. Like, you know, from three to, from two to three up to to four to five. Because it, it seems to be there's an appetite for, for not, and, and maybe probably independent of this, but not probably disconnected from this is the desire to be able to keep your phone longer. I mean, I mean, I think naturally that's just a thing that people would like, you know, to be able to not have to update every two years as some of us enthusiasts might like.

(00:08:25):
But I think the average person might feel a little differently. And I don't think that was driving this at all. But I kind of wonder also whether, you know, in some small part, there there is something of the, this desire to hang onto phones longer and maybe some yeah. Boredom. Like it, we, nothing we just talk about is kind of like all the little kind of minute innovations or lack of innovations and, and things like that. So who knows, maybe people are just, you know, given, given a good excuse to stop buying smartphones between like the actual legitimate problems of like, you know, inflation in the economy as well as, you know, like not a lot huge is going on. At least that isn't a price range that people like, you know? Right. Like we, you know, I know Ron you love midrange smartphones. The kind of most innovative things we've talked about are $2,000 foldable phones, which are exactly absolutely J. So I don't

Jason Howell (00:09:15):
Know of reach out to reach of most, most people, especially those who would be deciding to not buy a new smartphone, you know, sooner. Maybe stretch that out, you know, they're not <laugh>, their next smartphone's probably not gonna be foldable, you know, <laugh>, it's probably gonna be okay what through, through the deal with my carrier, what am I allowed to get? You know, that's, that's less expensive. But for as far as consumers are concerned, this might actually be good if you are nearing the time to upgrade. Because, you know, in, in time, in a time where these hardware manufacturers are having a harder time selling the, the hardware that they do have, you can imagine that you're gonna be seeing more favorable trade-in values like something, you know. And actually we will put this to the test probably tomorrow, tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM Pacific is Samsung's event to, you know, announce the latest and greatest Galaxy s devices that they have in store.

(00:10:15):
I'm actually doing live coverage here at twit. I don't, I'm not sure if Leo is going to join me or not, but it's cool. Like I've done 'em solo before, so tomorrow Wednesday February 1st 10:00 AM Pacific to see what Samsung's doing. But I bring that up because Samsung has in the last couple of years been really kind of pushing the envelope as far as the trade-in values for their previous phones and for phones outside of, of what they make. In order to get into their latest and greatest, you get high value for them, especially at launch. So I think, I imagine we would see more of that cuz these manufacturers, they still wanna move their devices even if people aren't buy-in, they wanna figure out some way to encourage them to, and that's one way they can do it.

Ron Richards (00:11:02):
I am curious, I know, I know that we're not talking about Samsung here, but we're always talking about Samsung, aren't we? <Laugh>? I am, I am very curious what tomorrow's event will be given. It's in-person in San Francisco, you know, Florence ion, I think she's gonna be there in person. So we'll hear from her what it'll be like. But again, I know we always make this joke, but I'm praying, you know, like we've had the very middle of the road, Samsung, you know, just kind of like very slickly produced, but you know, pretty standard kind of rollout over the past couple years. I want a theme I want, I don't want, I don't want, we don't need Broadway again like we had, but just give me something else, you know, to work with Samsung, but Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:11:43):
Yeah, they've been, they've been going the, the straight, the straight route recently, which has been good enough. I don't know, you know, was talking with Leo earlier and we were just kind of talking about kind of like the excitement or lack thereof around events like Samsung's tomorrow, you know, once again, year after year after year, we already know everything. Like it's all leaked. Like at this point it's, it's just kinda like Sam, you know? Yeah. There's nothing new to be learned other than for things to be official instead of unofficial. And that's, do

Ron Richards (00:12:18):
You remember when we didn't know? Do you remember? You remember back when it was like, oh my God, it's a, you know, like, like there was a point where it's Yeah. Like I don't know how the world got so leaky

Jason Howell (00:12:28):
<Laugh>, you know, <laugh> it enough leaking became part of the marketing campaign. Exactly. Yep. Right? Yep. The snakes

Ron Richards (00:12:37):
Started eating its

Jason Howell (00:12:38):
Own tail. Yeah. They started, I'm sure to realize that Oh, wow. A certain sector, the people who are really motivated to get the new device right. Like Uber fans. So it's cheap way really cares to every and cheap. Yes. A really good point. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> it's a really, really great way to get people excited early so that they have those launch numbers when they come out the door, but it makes things a lot less exciting. <Laugh> on, on announcement day. It is what it is.

Ron Richards (00:13:04):
It is what it is.

Jason Howell (00:13:05):
Each one is mm-hmm. <Affirmative> when you've got the next one.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:13:09):
Yeah. So we've got some kind of continuing, I guess, bad news for Google. And this is in the vein of the continuing sagas, these kind of parallel lines that we have of this different news about user choice billing, about Google being the primary search and search, you know, it not just user billing choice, but user search choice. And this comes from India, and last week there was a pretty big ruling where the Indian Competition Commission of India has actually fined Google $161 million for basically restricts on manufacturing partners. And there's a whole antitrust ruling against Google and India. So part of the changes that Google is implementing in response to this kind of cross a lot of our kind of news streams in a sense with third party billing being implemented Yes. As well as third party search engine selection on device setup.

(00:14:01):
So yes. In, in kind of continuing the current like news like zeitgeist of, hey, the, I can't think of a good phrase for this, but you know, people are coming after Google and Google's having to kind of change, change the way they do business and the way they operate a little bit. What I think is actually extra interesting on top of this, on top of user Choicey spell on top of search engine selection is also the fact that in India, Indian phone manufacturers will be able to basically a la carte include goo applications and bundle like a carte Google applications in phones. So what normally happens and what prob probably a lot of us who have, you know, some kind of Android device that isn't like an Amazon device or, or maybe even like some other, other device is that these devices are licensed using the Google Mobile services, which is basically kind of like a bundle of, you know, all of the kind of main Google apps that you think of when you think of a Android experience, like, you know, Gmail and all those other things along with the proprietary services like Google Play Services.

(00:15:07):
Well, so this is kind of like, you know, their way of ensuring a, you know, some, some standard of Google experience, but it is bundling, it is making, you know, it is kind of requiring manufacturers to have, you know, a certain list of yes. Like you know standards of like hardware, but also like requiring that you have all of these different things if you wanna be, you know, like a GMs certified device. So now in India, you do not have to do that anymore. You can, as a manufacturer, you can choose what Google apps come to be bundled on your device, which is kind of huge. And I think is is for me, a particularly interesting part of this story, but I don't know, like, what do y'all think? It's just like another good step, another, I don't know, maybe crumbling of the monolith that is Google, Uhhuh <laugh> with Android in, in regards to serv like billing and all this other stuff. Is this a good thing?

Ron Richards (00:15:57):
Well, I mean this, this on the heel, I mean, I'm sure Jason, you guys on, I haven't been listening lately to this week in Google, but like, aren't they trying to break up Google? Isn't the DOJ trying to break up? Oh, Google. Like, doesn't this seem like

Jason Howell (00:16:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, 100% what we're seeing in India, what we're seeing in the eu, it's all happening here, albeit, yeah, it seems like it's happening in in slow motion by comparison <laugh>, right? The eu, India, they've been a lot more decisive about like, no, you know what, boom, we're doing this here, here in the US it's been this slow rumble, but it really seems like that's the direction that this is headed. And that's, that's what I find kind of interesting about this news and what's going on in the eu is the changes that Google makes to satisfy in those countries, will they inevitably, you know, reach across the shores and, and end up over here at some point. And I, I kind of feel like why wouldn't they, you know, if <laugh>, if the US has has the same you know, the, the same concerns with Google and its business as these other places, then why wouldn't Google just take the solution for those other places and move it over here?

(00:17:09):
And what does that do to, to Android as a whole when that happens? Like, is is the net effect positive or negative? I, I'm kind of like, like I, I, I think choice is good <laugh>. So if people have, you know, have the ability to choose a different payment method, great. If they have the ability that, you know, if, if the user decides like, Hey, you know, Google's great and all, but I don't want that to be my default search. Why shouldn't they have the ability to change that upon install? I mean, I guess they could do it still as an Android user. But but I do think that the, the really interesting part here is what you point out when is the detaching of these apps, and this has been something that has been critical and core to how Android has reached in especially Google's version of Android has become what it's become over the years, is that Google says, well, hey, if you wanna play ball, you have to install not one of our apps. You have to install the whole suite, and you have to abide it by these rules in order to do so. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that's how you play a ball and everybody's willing to play a ball. And so, you know, because they want those, those valuable apps and things like this show that it is possible to detach those things. What does that do to Android and to Google's business as a whole? I don't know.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:18:30):
Yeah. We might have to all get comfortable with that other f word fragmentation.

Jason Howell (00:18:35):
Well, yes, and I think that's Google's kind of resistance here, or mm-hmm. <Affirmative> or how they're spinning. This is like, Hey, you know, you wanted a less fragmented thing. So we made these decisions that say, Hey, all this has to come with, because if it all comes with, then we've got a more stable ecosystem, which is, you know, kind of what Apple does, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, although they do it differently, but that's essentially what they do. And so Google's kinda like, well, it's okay, so now we're just gonna have to get more used to fra a fragmented ecosystem once again. And yeah, that could be true <laugh>.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:19:09):
I guess we'll have to wait and see how it goes. It, it is fascinating to me, and that's always kind of an interesting tension with like Google or Android as a pla an op open platform, but then also Android as a part of Google's business is this tension. And of course, yeah. Obviously, as you said, the Apple iOS ecosystem benefits so well from that kind of wall garden our way or the highway. And certainly they, there's advantages to that. So Google has had to stride this line, right? Of like, we're open, but like, y'all want like a really tight experience. So here, if you want the Google like sanctioned experience, here's all the things, but obviously, I mean, I mean, India is now the most popular country in the world, is that right? Doesn't they recently bypass China? And 97% of the smartphones in India are Android devices? So there's not really any not paying attention to that. There's not really any kind of conceivable way, I think from a kind of logical and probably a business perspective that Google cannot have to adhere and bend and figure this out. And it, I guess we will see what happens mm-hmm.

Jason Howell (00:20:11):
<Affirmative>

Huyen Tue Dao (00:20:12):
With the ecosystem.

Jason Howell (00:20:14):
We'll just have to wait and see. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I love it when that's the end of the story. <Laugh>. I mean, this happens so often. <Laugh> stay

Ron Richards (00:20:21):
Tuned. We were talking the free show about sitcoms. We're just gonna have to wait and see and then freeze. Yes. And then

Jason Howell (00:20:26):
<Laugh>, right?

Ron Richards (00:20:29):
Yeah. I mean it's definitely gonna be a, an adventure for Google over these upcoming months, years. But I have a feeling it's, it'll be fine. Microsoft survived

Jason Howell (00:20:38):
It, it's fine. Yeah, they're fine. They'll figure it out, you

Ron Richards (00:20:41):
Know, it'll all be fine.

Jason Howell (00:20:42):
Speaking of intelligence will save us all.

Ron Richards (00:20:44):
Exactly. Well, speaking of artificial intelligence and speaking of Google this isn't necessarily Android, but it, it is super interesting and actually topical here. Google last week unveiled music, lm, which is a generative AI that, that turns text prompts into music samples, ah quote the, the main soundtrack of an arcade game. It is fast-paced and upbeat with a catchy electric guitar riff. The music is repetitive and easy to remember, but with an unexpected sounds like symbol crashes or drum rolls. And they, they, there are samples of that out there in the world that you can hear that. Another, another problem.

Jason Howell (00:21:19):
There it is. That's it. That's it. Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:21:21):
Play it. Let's hear it. Burke.

Jason Howell (00:21:23):
Okay. <Laugh>. Although, turn it down, cuz. Holy cow. Yeah, that's it. I mean, it's a video game soundtrack. Totally. It, it's like outrun, you're racing your car.

Ron Richards (00:21:35):
Yeah. It's, it's a little, it's a little more fast paced, I think than I, than the writer intended, but yeah. Burke, can you cue up the second one? I'll read the description and then I'll play the second one. Epic soundtrack using orchestral instruments, the peace builds tension creates a sense of urgency and acapella, chorus singing in unison. It creates a sense of power and strength that's a little more like y than I would think

Jason Howell (00:22:00):
<Laugh>, you know? Oh,

Ron Richards (00:22:03):
But it's making music. It's, you know, so like, what I want to do now is I, so Google says they, they have no plans to release this models at this stage, but I really want a user interface where we can do this. And what I can do is ask chat g p t to write a description to give to music. Lm Right. <Laugh>.

Jason Howell (00:22:22):
Oh my goodness. Oh man. Yeah. It's AI feeding itself. Exactly. That is definitely the ml eating its own tail. This is the third one. The r and b hiphop music piece. Are they saying actual words? Are they saying actual words? It's a good point. I think they're not, I think it might just sound like words. No, I don't think they are. I don't think those are real words. Is there anything to the foreign language that Yeah, it could be a foreign language.

Ron Richards (00:22:59):
It could be. Yeah. That's fascinating.

Jason Howell (00:23:01):
But yeah, I'd be curious to know, like, is that a foreign language or is that just totally gar garbly. Yeah. Interesting. Fascinating. Well, here we are. Do you write out some words? You get a fully realized song by computer. I mean, pretty impressive. It's not perfect, you know, but interesting. Less,

Ron Richards (00:23:25):
Yeah, I mean ai, I mean, and my thoughts on ar ai are complicated because I do think it's fascinating. I do think it's amazing. I saw a news article that real estate agents can't Imagine Life without chat Chief PT now. Which I find mind blowing. They're just, you know, write, write a description of a house in San Francisco and it, and it just does it and then they copy and paste it. Right,

Jason Howell (00:23:52):
Because cause a lot of those agents have to write that copy themselves normally. Exactly. Not all of them are very

Ron Richards (00:23:57):
Writings hard. Writing's hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they get paid, do it.

Jason Howell (00:24:04):
That might not be their skillset.

Ron Richards (00:24:06):
Yeah. But also in the, in, in my day job, I, I get a lot of work with a lot of artists in the comic book world and things like that. And like the AI generated art is very controversial.

Jason Howell (00:24:15):
I'm somebody Sure. I know it

Ron Richards (00:24:16):
Is. Somebody has made a comic book based on entering in the script and the text into an AI and have the AI generate the artwork and it looks like a complic. It looks great. Like it's, it's, it's, we, it's weird, man. We're definitely, we're definitely getting somewhere. So

Jason Howell (00:24:30):
We're, we're going somewhere right now. Maybe we don't know where the, where we're going exactly, but we're going somewhere. It's obvious.

Ron Richards (00:24:37):
I thought we would've got, honestly, I thought we would've gotten to Mars before the singularity happened. That's what that

Jason Howell (00:24:42):
The singularity is what will get us tomorrow's. You'll see,

Huyen Tue Dao (00:24:46):
Apparently someone said it's gonna be within seven years, so I'm just going to try

Ron Richards (00:24:50):
To Mars or Singularity.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:24:52):
Singularity. So we might hit, so I mean, I guess then we can just beam ourselves to Mars super fast or something. It's really interesting cuz like this is all, you know, it's happening so fast and there's all the ethical legal, like all these other kind of like, I'll call 'em loose ends, but that's not really the appropriate word to tie up, you know, especially as you said, like with AI generated art. Like it's fascinating. They're good tools, but then we as human beings need to refine what are the bounds with, within which the use is. Okay. And hopefully we do it quickly before more genie, you know, bad genies get popped out bottle, sorry, this is a reference to the pre-show, but <laugh>, you know, between before we let too many Genie out and then, you know, it's like a genie Stampe. And you know who

Burke (00:25:36):
<Laugh>. I have a related thing on this, like I don't know if you guys have heard of a place called Art Station, but it's like a place where we can go to sort of view computer art, you know, whatever it is. Graphic arts that, you know, graphic artists

Jason Howell (00:25:48):
Make art station.com.

Burke (00:25:50):
Yeah. And you can buy art also there. And a lot of them, the profiles of a lot of the artists, they have like all this like anti ai, you know, like AI with a cross through it, like things mm-hmm. <Affirmative> because it's like a big deal. Like a huge deal.

Ron Richards (00:26:06):
Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:26:06):
Yeah. And I mean, I can understand that for a community, right? Like if there's, if there's rails around a community to say, here is where the AI generator art goes, then, because prior to that, if you went to art station.com and you looked at all the art, you knew that you were on level playing field with everyone else that's there because you're all just an artist making art. But then once you introduce a computer into it, and it's this thing that takes five seconds with prompts and whatever, which is not to devalue the art that the computer makes, but it's just they're playing different games. One's playing soccer or the other's playing volleyball. Right?

Burke (00:26:42):
So artists have secret tools a lot of times that they don't share with everybody as to how

Jason Howell (00:26:46):
They make

Burke (00:26:46):
Doesn't necessarily, and it doesn't necessarily matter.

Jason Howell (00:26:49):
Yeah. like yeah,

Burke (00:26:51):
A lot of artists all the way back to the end of time.

Jason Howell (00:26:54):
Ah, yeah. It's, it is interesting. We are heading somewhere and I'm not certain we all know where we're heading exactly. But it's fascinating. I, I am really intrigued by, by it. The last couple years have been really interesting, brave New World, that's for sure. Yes, indeed. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. We'll see. All right, let's take a quick break and when we come back, we will hop into some hardware news. But first, this episode of All About Android is brought to you by Decisions. Decisions Gives IT and business experts, the tools to automate anything in your company, all within one no-code platform. Actually decisions is proven to fix any business process and prepare you to withstand economic uncertainty. So you know what we're talking about. Recession resilience actually requires a deliberate management of resources and the flexibility to adapt at a moment's notice. You need to be able to adapt in the time of recession.

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They avoid downtime and manage their service technicians efficiently in the process, right? They're getting ahead of the problem. So if you happen to be riding in a notice elevator, you can rest assured you're gonna arrive safely to your destination. Now, as a recession approaches, the durability of Businesses Foundation is gonna directly impact its performance and its ability to survive. So you gotta ask yourself, how strong is your foundation? Well, decisions automation platform provides the solution to any business challenge, automating anything, and then changing everything to improve your company's speed to market, your company's financial growth, your operational success. And they help industry leaders alleviate bottlenecks and automate pain points in their business. So you can do what you do best. And that's, you know, changing the world ultimately. To learn more about decisions, no Code automation platform and Scope, your free proof of concept, all you gotta do is visit decisions.com/twit. That's decisions. D E C I S I O N S decisions.com/twit. Check it out for yourself. And we thank decisions for their support of All About Android. All right, let's get into some hardware news. We got a few things to talk about today.

(00:31:38):
Oh, yes. And by the way, I passed on the Coca-Cola phone story. Just, just want to throw that out there. We, there is a, there is a phone branded Coca-Cola. That's all you really need to know. It's probably not a really great phone, but it has Coca-Cola on it. So if you like Coca-Cola go nuts. Something that's for you. Yeah. There you go. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> for the rest of us, there's one plus.

Ron Richards (00:31:58):
Well, I gotta say so if I did not have this on my Bingo card, but like going into 2023 I know I've been trying to push for the year of the tablet in previous years, but I think this is it. 2023 might be the year of the tablet. It keeps

Jason Howell (00:32:12):
Happening. <Laugh> it keeps happening. One of these days. You'll be right. I thought he was gonna save the Coca-Cola phone. <Laugh>.

Ron Richards (00:32:18):
No, but we, we all, we all know we're hotly anticipating the the Pixel tablet coming from Google, but I did not have on my Bingo card a one plus tablet. What, what there's actually a lot going on with one Plus. So let's sit, sit down, we're gonna buckle in and see what's going on. First up with One Plus before we get to the tablet the one plus 11 will be unveiled in the US on February 7th. But the company released the teaser image that shows a tablet form too. The quote unquote one plus pad, according to a tab on the one plus Indian India page on leaks also published some unofficial renders of the tablet. They say it'll be an 11.6 inch tablet with metal uni body chassis. I, I, I'm intrigued. I am very, very intrigued. All right. I, we've talked about the one plus the one plus 11 already.

(00:33:08):
I think it's an intriguing looking phone with the big, with the big round camera stuff on the back. One plus I feel has been like under the radar kind of to the side of us saying, oh, they're boring now remember, like, we haven't really been impressed by what they're doing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Coming out with a tablet, so there you go. But it, it doesn't stop there. A trademark listing through the China National Intellectual Property Administration now shows entries for the one plus V flip and the one plus V fold which likely means similar foldables to Samsung's own foldable lineup. Internal testing has begun, so we shouldn't expect to see that at the February 7th event. But one plus new phone earbuds, tablet, foldables on the horizon. One plus you, you talk about going into 20 20, 23 New Year, new you job,

Jason Howell (00:34:02):
They ecosystem systeming. I'm gonna make it better for e ecosystem. Eing. E E systematizing. There you go. Oh yeah, that's a good one. <Laugh>. Yeah, there we go. So they got their own fold in their own flip. I mean, the names Yeah. If that's the names that if, if that's the name that they choose to release with, it's just a little, kinda like really you can, like anything, I dunno, a little more creative, but still, nonetheless. That's, that's interesting. That's exciting. Who was it? Scooter X and Chat was pointing out that the tablet, the one plus pad could have, well it's 11 inch, like you said, Ron, 144 Hertz display seems to be fashioned very closely to the Oppo Pad two. You know, because the oppo is in the same family and it seems like lately a lot of their phones have very similar comparisons or kind of, you know, you can draw lines very easily between like oppo phones over to the One Plus phones. In many ways not, it's not like that's very new either. It's been that way for a number of years at this point. So it could be the same with the tablet. Check out that the camera, like that, like, there, there is no way that lens is that big. Like that's a, that's a chunk or of a, like a camera. That

Ron Richards (00:35:23):
Is is it the same, is it the same unit as in the phone then?

Jason Howell (00:35:28):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the four,

Ron Richards (00:35:30):
Whatever the multi lense is, why would you do that on a, the tablet? Yeah. The hassle

Jason Howell (00:35:34):
Blood. I know that the design of the one plus 11 that I've seen online has, what are we looking at? Is this the, oh, these are the renders of the tablet. Yeah, it's the renders. Those are unofficial of the, of the tablet. Yeah. And they look like they don't have the actual camera part. Yeah, potentially maybe. But what we've seen of the one plus 11 is a, a like a circular camera bump mm-hmm. <Affirmative> on the back. So maybe they're doing that like a, it sounds like it's just a single camera. And if so, yeah. Then that's a single small camera inside of this large circular, you know, circular bump. But maybe it's done to just kind of have some design cohesion, that sort of thing. But, or maybe they're, yeah, there you go. There you go. Good. Good Calber. But you can see yourself New year, new you, that circular thing going mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Yeah. So yeah.

Ron Richards (00:36:26):
New look One plus coming

Jason Howell (00:36:28):
At you winter. Interesting. Well, I mean, they're more curious.

Ron Richards (00:36:32):
They're not the only, they're not, they're not the only ones making waves, right? There's other companies happening, right?

Huyen Tue Dao (00:36:38):
Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I honestly gotta tell y'all, well, we got nothing to talk about. Nothing because the nothing Phone Two has been confirmed for a US release in late 2023. So that's right. The follow up to, I suppose one of our most kind of like introducing stories of last year. The Nothing Phone one is being followed is, is coming out with a sequel and actually in a really great I found it actually a really great interview that Ray Wong over it inversed with Carl Pay. You know, Carl Pay cited that, you know, the, the phone one was not, you know targeted at the us but you know, they, he, that Carl Pay noted that in terms of like their earbuds, they sold like a third of their earbuds in the us So obviously the US is a large priority for them, and you can, we all kind of were like kind of curious about whether, you know, phone one would be released in the US but instead and now that kind of like nothing as a company has had some time to kind of establish itself, kind of like test the waters and see how well, you know, they, as a hard work company can do, they're going to be making, you know, the, the us the company's top, top priority this year.

(00:37:43):
Now they kind of have doubled, you know, the size of the company going from like just, you know, a handful of engineers to, you know you know, even more, more resources. They're going to focus on a premium phone and focus on software for the phone to, for the us. And the article is really interesting. It touches on a few things that we've already, we've already discussed. Like there's a bit of a callback. And I think Ray notes again that he find what he finds interesting is of course, as we've mentioned on the show and have, you know is kind of like we speculated a little bit about in terms of the IDC reports that, you know, phones are kind of, you know, kind of samesies, like there's a little, you know, changes here and there, but I think Ray Wong gives in the article some credit to, to nothing for trying to be a little different, to try to be eyecatching to try to drive interest.

(00:38:30):
Whereas companies like Apple and Sam and Samsung will kind of give users, you know, good solid standbys. There's not a lot of innovation, there's not a lot of, lot of niche phones. And so there're, you know, like nothing sees you plank in that space. Hmm. so we'll see how it goes and what the nothing two phone will look like. I mean, Carpe goes a a little bit into depth with Ray about what he kind of sees. There's not a lot of detail mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but kind of like nothing. Phone two is premium and Pay makes a really good kind of distinction of not calling it flagship. He considers the phone one a flagship phone, even though we kind of, you know, call it a mid Ray phone. And he's trying to like, just say that, you know, flagship is the phone that, you know, they're putting out there and that they're putting all their resources on and they're excited about that. That's what flagship means to pay. But he does wanna make the distinction that the phone two will be premium. So presumably, you know, maybe higher and hardware and of course like a, a strong emphasis on the software. 

Jason Howell (00:39:31):
A step

Huyen Tue Dao (00:39:31):
Up experience in that regard. Yeah. Yeah. A step up. So, I don't know, I I would definitely read it. I, I kind of, you know, I'm not, I have, I wasn't a big one plus fan in the past, so I've kind of been like, oh, this is very interesting. But I kind of like really appreciated the point of view. And again, interviews taking room salt, you know, everyone always kind of sounds great interviews, but <laugh>, I found it like a really interesting kind of look into what nothing is trying to accomplish.

Jason Howell (00:39:55):
Turns out they're trying to accomplish nothing

Huyen Tue Dao (00:39:57):
This year trying to accomplish nothing. I this

Jason Howell (00:39:59):
Is the year Missed it.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:40:00):
Yeah. It's the year. Nothing

Jason Howell (00:40:02):
<Laugh>. It's the year of nothing. Yeah. This, and, and I should also clarify the phone one, or maybe you said this already and, and I just, it didn't register, but the phone one is getting a US release with that kind of like, yes. Sorry, yes. That, that beta. So we are getting that in the us but it's a, you know,

Ron Richards (00:40:18):
But it's not a,

Jason Howell (00:40:18):
It's a beta beast, right? It's exactly, it's like a beta 99 thing.

Ron Richards (00:40:22):
I mean, we, we, we, we, we atta we went through it when they announced that it's a beta, they're disclaiming the heck out of it. That stuff like, oh, I don't know, YouTube or Google Wallet might not work. Like those were very specific things to call out in that thing, by the way. Like they know Google Wallet, it doesn't work, but but you gotta start somewhere, right? Like, and so like given, given this and given the, like the, the nature of the releases, I wouldn't expect phone one to come out, like the, the, the the phone one beta in the US is gonna fuel the phone too, right? Yes. Wouldn't that make more sense? Yes. So

Jason Howell (00:40:54):
Yeah. Yeah.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:40:55):
Right. That sounds exact precisely, precisely what happened is that they wanted to see how the phone one would do and it's almost like, almost like a proving ground for the company in terms of like hardware and like being able to put out a phone that people would respond to. And now that they have more connections and resources, they can actually kind of go with the go for gusto for the US market, which is again, their top priority and a huge market. So I think that's exactly how it played out also, or at least from the article. It seems like

Jason Howell (00:41:20):
For, for both of you. But I know especially for Ron, cuz you have been very vocal of your your appreciation for your nothing Eart stick. One third of all of nothing's sales. So well so confirm the US market counted for one third of all of nothing earbuds sales. So, so

Ron Richards (00:41:41):
I wanna

Jason Howell (00:41:41):
Know from their case so that they have some sort of like us mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, gathering or following. As a result of that,

Ron Richards (00:41:48):
What I would like to know, and I don't know if the data shows this is that of the one third of all their US sales beating Eart sticks, what percentage of those are directly driven from this show? <Laugh>.

Jason Howell (00:41:59):
<Laugh>?

Ron Richards (00:42:00):
Because I'll be honest, it's like, you know, a lot of people have posted to social and saying that they've, based on our conversation, they purchased it and I'm so glad to hear that, that people are happy with it. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:42:09):
So when they do that, are they then saying also like, I also love it, like, it's working great for me. Yeah. Blah blah.

Ron Richards (00:42:14):
Yeah. Like, like did, did we start a flywheel for nothing and hey, nothing. Can I get a phone too? Out of the, out of the, out of the boom. Oh. But yeah, <laugh> yeah, please.

Jason Howell (00:42:24):
<Laugh>. Like

Ron Richards (00:42:24):
We helped. Right? We'll see,

Jason Howell (00:42:26):
We'll see, we'll see about that. And then finally there had been a murmurings, I don't know if we talked about the potential of a Pixel tablet Pro in, in past episodes we mentioned. We mentioned it, yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I, I couldn't, I couldn't recall if we had actually addressed those rumors. It had kind of been bubbling up for a little while now. And the reason why is because the code naming the Tango, is it Tango or Tango? Tango and the Tango Pro, those were the two code names that had been kind of paired up to the Pixel tablet. And so people were like, oh, well then obviously there's two different versions, right? There's the regular pixel tab and then there's Pixel, tab, pixel, tablet, pro. That's why would it say Pro otherwise? Well looks like Kuba Wadowski <laugh>, that's really hard to pronounce her last name.

(00:43:21):
Sorry. Kuba. But Kuba has been behind many very big leaks in the past year, I would say see her name coming up more and more and sharing new details about things and being accurate. Well, she shared new details about the Pixel tablet and basically shared that the Tango refers to the version of the Pixel tablet that had the OG tensor chip in it. The Tango Pro would have the Tensor G two. And this might, this leads to speculation that that is possible that the Pixel tablet was originally intended to release last year with the tensor chip. But now as we know, right, it's releasing this year, it's gonna have the tensor g g two chip and probably at Launch, we can imagine they're not gonna release a version of this tablet that has an outdated, you know, almost two year old chip in it. I mean, maybe they do, but it's probably not gonna be the kind of thing that we were wondering, which is are they gonna release a version of this, of this tablet that's gonna be supercharged and amazingly powerful and do all these things and do your dishes and whatever. 

Ron Richards (00:44:35):
Wait, it's, it's not gonna do my

Jason Howell (00:44:36):
Dishes. Not gonna do your dishes, Ron, come on. Not this year.

Ron Richards (00:44:40):
I've already got one Google device in the kitchen. Not hold, not pulling its own weight. I gotta worry, worry about the tablet. Not doing

Jason Howell (00:44:45):
Do look Google Home, you're in the kitchen. Okay. Do kitchen things

Ron Richards (00:44:50):
Clean up.

Jason Howell (00:44:51):
Geez. <laugh>, can

Ron Richards (00:44:53):
You put a dish away for

Jason Howell (00:44:54):
One? Seriously. You know what? Just put away the dishes that you use. Google Home. Okay, let's just start there. Anyways, so there you have it. No pro version of the tablet. Still there will be a Pixel tablet this year. That's something to be excited about. We have to wait until, you know, another six months probably. But that's gonna go by like that. Don't you wait. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> worry about it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Oh yeah. So there you go. All right. Alright, cool. Well that is it.

Ron Richards (00:45:21):
That's it. Well with that we're gonna take a break and thank our next sponsor cuz this episode of All About Android is brought to you by Bitwarden and Bitwarden is the only open source cross platform password manager that can be used at home, at work, or on the go and is trusted by millions, even by our very own. Steve Gibson has switched over and with Bitwarden you can securely store credentials across personal and business worlds. And not only is Steve Gibson switched over, but listen up folks. So have I, we've talked about password managers recently and I made the jump and switched over to Bitwarden and could not be happier. Bitwarden is really the solution that we all need and that we're all looking for because all of your data in Bitwarden in the Bitwarden Vault is an end-to-end encrypted, not just your passwords.

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(00:47:46):
The transition was seamless. I installed the Bitwarden app on my pixel, on my Pixel seven. It's fantastic. I love the, it's got an integration into the Google keyboard so that when a password comes up I can just tap the little Bitwarden Nik icon and it comes right up. I can use biometrics to fingerprint unlock my vault. I feel so secure at Bitwarden. I'm so glad I made the jump so much so that I paid for the family organization option. I'm getting my wife on board, getting the rest of my family on board so that we're all safe and secure thanks to the folks at Bitwarden. So really, really happy with Bitwarden and want you to be too. Cuz you know, at Twit we are fans of password managers and Bitwarden is the only open source cross platform password manager that can be used at home on the go or at work and is trusted by millions of individuals, teams, and organizations worldwide. You can get started with a free trial of a teams or enterprise plan or get started for free across all devices as an individual user at Bitwarden.com/twit. That's Bitwarden.com/twit. And we thank Bitwarden for being a fantastic option for keeping your password secure and protecting your private life. So thank you Bitwarden. We thank you.

Jason Howell (00:48:52):
Thank you Bitwarden. And now speaking of amazing apps, it's time for app news.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:49:07):
Let the bumper play. Gotta let the bumper play. Gotta let the bumper play this week. Gotta let the bumper play this week.

Jason Howell (00:49:12):
<Laugh> what?

Huyen Tue Dao (00:49:13):
Because last week I ran over the bumper so I was like just holding on to like my notes real hard. Just like, don't go yet. Don't go

Jason Howell (00:49:20):
Yet. Don't do it, don't

Huyen Tue Dao (00:49:21):
Do it. Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. Move,

Jason Howell (00:49:24):
Go. Don't go move

Huyen Tue Dao (00:49:26):
<Laugh>. Okay, well in really interesting app News is an app called Artifact, which is being created by the co-founders of Instagram, Kevin Sister and Mike Krieger, who of course you know, sold Instagram to Facebook in 2012, but then less than 2018. And artifact is super interesting. It's basically the idea of applying the success and the strategies of TikTok to news. So Artifact is a personalized news feed driven by artificial intelligence. And it is currently in private beta though you can sign up for the wait list@artifact.news. I did so this afternoon. And what's really interesting is that artifact is trying to combine kind of a lot of different, you know, things in a kind of like tick talkie twittery niche. So there's, you know, basically an idea of combining high quality news information. So artifact will basically include news from certain publishers that they're trying to filter for, you know, high quality news information for publishers that only adhere to quote ed editorial centers of quality.

(00:50:36):
And then combining that with a recommendation algorithm based on post and stories similar. So if you tap on a story, the idea is that artifact will generate kind of like, or provide to you, you know, similar stories and posts, not unlike what you know, TikTok does, where it tries to show you kind of like related content based on what you view. And then on top of that, what I think they also see as part of their, you know, experience is also bringing the conversation into it. So that's kind of maybe where a kind of Twitter esque, you know, vibe comes in because a lot of Twitter is not just, you know, as a news, not just it being a news source, but also the conversation that happens around it. So the idea of artifacts is to combine all of these things, throw in a whole bunch of, you know, ml and then to create basically TikTok for news, which is like a very kind of like simplistic way of like phrasing it.

(00:51:25):
But that's kind of where they're, where we're at. And you know, it is, you know, using I, what is really interesting is that kind of part of what is making this work is the Google invented transformer, which is a utility that allows a system to understand language and t i l it transformer, which again is this Google invented kind of like system is the in chat G P T. So again, this is kind of playing off the technology that are currently fueling the AI ML zeitgeist. And yeah, so that they have that cooking. It is in private beta, it's, you know, still in the works and you know, there's all kinds of things, all kind of questions that I get to be answered. What's the business model? What, you know, what, what is the end goal of this gonna be? But, you know you can join, join the beta and they're trying to like admit people as fast as they can and see what it's, but kind of very interesting things coming. Very, very interesting machine learning driven things coming from the co-founders of Instagram. So yeah, keep an eye for that if maybe you feel like you have a Twitter sized hole in your Internet's heart right now, in your heart and in your heart right now. And you wanted to maybe fill it up with some, something a little ml. So

Jason Howell (00:52:38):
Yeah. Do you think that's, that's what this is really gonna end up being kind of like a replacement or a potential replacement for, because I, I definitely have used Twitter over the years as kind of a news, you know, a way to tap into news in a, in a way that is not me visiting a news site and reading all of their stories from the front page or whatever. It's like, open up Twitter and see what people are reacting to right now, and then I know what the big stories are right now, or going to the trending tab and finding the news. Yeah. You know, stories from there. And that's how I look into that. Do you think that's kind of what this is aiming to do better, is like a replacement for, let's say Twitter as a news source?

Huyen Tue Dao (00:53:21):
It, it really does feel like it. Especially, they really do emphasize that they're trying to serve news from publishers that are high quality. You know, and, and that's regardless of political spectrum.

Jason Howell (00:53:32):
Yeah, I was gonna say, how do you define high quality,

Huyen Tue Dao (00:53:34):
Blah, blah, blah. But they, they, they, it does seem that Sister and Krieger are not, are, are opinionated on the idea that you know, them, they as a company will need to step in when it comes to moderating for safety and, you know, ethics and, you know, social responsibility. So that, so that's there have it as you will. And I, I, I do think it would be kind of maybe if you're the kind of person that's kind of jumping off the bird site, it does feel like it's positioned and trying to be that. Right. And there is a se there is a kind of feed where there's gonna be curated mm-hmm. <Affirmative> postings, which is kind of like, you know, part of like maybe more of a discovery kind of thing. Right. And then there's more the, hey, here are posts from people that you follow.

(00:54:17):
So I, I do think, so I'm super interested in that regard because I think that, you know, discovery and also the kind of like, emphasis on news is something that's less, you know, like a stream of news that, that is a little bit kind of outside maybe necessarily what I might be following directly in terms of like, people that I follow on mass on or whatever. I do think that is missing from like, by not having Twitter, right? It's, it's discovering, you know, people and voices and like content that you might not necessarily, you know, have discovered on your own and to kind of avoid the kind of echo chambers in a sense. So, I don't know. I, I think that could be it, especially, you know, if they have a good algorithm. Cuz that's kind of what made TikTok tick talk right? Is their recommendation and, and the virality that could be generated by a really good, you know, recommendation system. So, yeah.

Jason Howell (00:55:07):
Can I ask another question? Yeah. What then is different between this and Google News?

Huyen Tue Dao (00:55:13):
I

Ron Richards (00:55:14):
Don't know. No, I mean, it's, it's not Google, right? It's, it's, that's

Huyen Tue Dao (00:55:18):
A good throw. That's a good

Ron Richards (00:55:18):
Point, right? It's a new player. But to your point, this is, this is way more of a goo I agree with you. It's a Google news competitor more so than a Twitter

Jason Howell (00:55:26):
Really seems to be that way to me. Yeah. I mean there's, there's, maybe there's a social aspect that is missing from Google News, but, but what you get outta Google News is definitely sourced by the zeitgeist, but, you know, sourced by the people using it. And it has a personalization aspect of it too. Like, these are stories that are important to you, you know?

Ron Richards (00:55:47):
Yeah, no, well go, I mean, Google, Google News is, I mean, as we all know, it's 100% driven by your own cert. Like, I, I see a direct correlation within hours of a search for something with a news item popping up in my Google, Google News feed mm-hmm. <Affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, like, it is, it is, the only thing that comes close to the quickness in responsiveness is how quickly I see an ad in Instagram based on something I talked about, like verbally mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, like I'll talk about Fender guitars and then I'll see an ad for Fender Guitars in like three hours <laugh>. But and yeah, cuz you know, Facebook and Meta, they're not listening to on our phones at all. But

Jason Howell (00:56:20):
I think this guy over here wants to buy a Fender guitar here, serve him a of ads Go,

Ron Richards (00:56:24):
Go. But that said, it does work because then I'll see ads, I'm like Google and I'll buy it. But no, but the, the, the Google newsfeed is absolutely personalized to me. I guess where you could differentiate from that, and what I'm, I'm curious about artifact is like, what is the ai, what is feeding the AI because mm-hmm. <Affirmative> there. I do think that there is a crossroad between the Twitter as a news service, as a curated news service by people I trust V versus a newsfeed based off my search and what Google thinks my interests are. Yeah. Okay. Because I use Twitter as a news. I use Twitter as a newsfeed because I followed, you know, Jason, I follow you when I now follow you, you know, I follow Tom Merri, I follow other, you know, like other great amazing people in the text space and they post interesting stuff that is, you know, that that I, they used to post things that I found interesting. You know, to that is, you know, I, I use it la I I rely more on Google News now than Twitter as a news source, but back in the day when I did it was the idea of like, here is a group of several hundred people who I know and trust and think that if they find something interesting enough to post a Twitter mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I also will find it interesting. Google can't know that.

Jason Howell (00:57:31):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> <laugh> or at least probably doesn't know it. They gave up on, on their social, you know, Google Plus. Exactly. They, they could have, but they gave up on that. It also actually reminds me of Nuzzle, right? Like that was what you're describing Nuzzle was how I did exactly that.

Ron Richards (00:57:49):
Nuzzle

Jason Howell (00:57:49):
Was rest in peace. I guess it part, part Nuzzle. Yes. And I, and I, I don't know if it's still part of Blue or if they got rid of that or, or what, because I don't subscribe

Ron Richards (00:57:59):
On Twitter. Bought it, right?

Jason Howell (00:58:00):
Sorry. No. Yeah. No. Did I say Google Twitter bought it? Yeah. Yeah. And it was part of Blue and I don't know that it's still part of Blue in the mascara. I honestly have no idea. But

Huyen Tue Dao (00:58:11):
Actually that's something really on like how, oh, sorry, go ahead.

Ron Richards (00:58:15):
I'm sorry. May 21, they said Twitter is killing Nuzzle, so, oh,

Jason Howell (00:58:19):
Well they bought Nuzzle, they killed it, but then they brought back core functionality from it later with the launch of Twitter. Blue, blue, blue was one of their main selling points was, and now you can see what you're, you know, what the people you respect are or you follow, are sharing, you know, the news stories that matter most to them. And it was obvious that that was like, okay, they took what they took the sauce from, from Nuzzle and put it in Twitter blue. It wasn't as fully featured as Nuzzle was. And I don't know I don't know if that part of the service is gone now, but

Ron Richards (00:58:53):
In, in the Twitter blue offering, yeah. Now it does say top articles is a shortcut to the most shared articles here, your network, this feature

Jason Howell (00:59:00):
Automatically, oh, there we go. Shares articles

Ron Richards (00:59:02):
For people, you know, so it's still doing,

Jason Howell (00:59:03):
That's still in there. Yeah, it's still in there. Which would be maybe the only reason I would ever subscribe to Twitter Blue. But obviously it's not important enough for me to have done that. What were you gonna say when,

Huyen Tue Dao (00:59:13):
Oh, sorry. So kind of to Ron's point about how kind of, how maybe the artifact algorithm might differ, might differentiate from Google News, and I have no idea how the Google News algorithm works, by the way. But something else that they did mention Sister Man Krueger mentioned, is that they're gonna focus on the amount of time that you read something rather than just straight up clicks. So I think there is a desire to kind of look for deeper kind of interest rather than just kind of like a shallow, like, Hey, you clicked on this, this and that, you must like this and this and that. Oh gosh, I hope so. Hey, bought that thing, so you must wanna buy 15,000 more of that thing. So I'm just gonna serve you more of the same thing, even though it's not necessary. So the, I I think that, that there is a sense that they're trying to take certain lessons from, you know, current competitors and maybe going for more depth.

(01:00:00):
And I, I do think now thinking about it, the conversation is gonna be a big deal because I think not just, so what I liked Twitter for was not just, you know, seeing what people that I trust and respected to, you know posted and shared, but also their personal kind of like, takes on it. Whether that was like a journalist sharing an article on Ukraine and sharing kind of like related kind of anecdotes and experiences and their perspective on it, kind of to add context, flavor, and also sometimes counterpoints to things. So I think that also that kind of conversational thing might be an advantage over Google News because at the same time as as as you are wa reading and consuming things that people you trust present to you, you also are taking in some of their, you know, kind of additional, you know, opinions and takes and kind of maybe even like, you know, changes in the stream of the conversation or in the story or things that might follow up on which I think is I, which I do think is genuinely interesting to see not just the news, but what people are saying about the news

Jason Howell (01:00:59):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Oh yeah, for sure.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:01:00):
Maybe that's a difference. Mm-Hmm.

Jason Howell (01:01:02):
<Affirmative>. Yeah, that's a, that's a really good point. Google News does definitely does not show that to you. It might, it might surface a lot of the same stories, but it doesn't show you what others feel about it. If that has a social, you know, if, if artifact has a social component to it, that's gotta be a big part of it, right? I, I care about the people, you know, that I follow their opinion on these things. That's why I want to read, you know, want to read this news because they all said that it was important enough to read. So, yeah. Interesting. I'm, I'm super, I'm certainly curious I signed up to get in, i i up for the wait list. They ask you to use your phone number and then you get a text message that says, alright, we'll let you know soon. So if you feel comfortable giving your phone number, that's, that's kind of one strange thing about that. But there you go. Artifact. And real quick and just full disclosure Ron is a Marvel employee, but we have talked about this game in the past Marvel Snap, a the, it's the collectible card game that we showed off when it first launched, probably like what, like the year October ago, was it? No, it was October. October. Really? It feels,

Ron Richards (01:02:19):
Yeah. Crazy enough. It's only been, it was only been asked since October.

Jason Howell (01:02:21):
Well, what's interesting to me, and the question, one of the questions I had for you is it seems like it's been really like, it's, it's done really well. It seems like it has a very active community of people.

Ron Richards (01:02:32):
It very much does. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:02:34):
Yes. Super popular. Anyways, they announced a few months ago they were gonna be getting a new battle mode. So if you like this game now actually today it launched with a new battle mode. So you can play against your friends, you're betting on your health. So it's gonna, so you're putting your health on the line and you each start with 10 health, the winner wins the Wagered health as the damage. You use the same deck throughout the entire match. So what that does is it introduces kind of like a, a pred, as a, as a player, you're kind of predicting your opponent's moves because the deck is not so vast that you don't know what they have after a couple of rounds mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you kind of know what's there. So then you kind of have to compartmentalize and understand, all right, well if I know what's there and they haven't played this yet, then they have this, and that means I'm not gonna play this, or whatever the case may be. It just intensifies the, the gameplay strategy approach and yeah. Matches last round, 20 minutes. Sounds pretty cool. Haven't played it myself. Yeah. But

Ron Richards (01:03:39):
I got, I gotta say, it's, it's addictive. I mean, and, and yeah, like you mentioned, I do my day job, I do work for Marvel, but in a completely different group than the video games group. And in fact, and the video game, the people who make Snap is a separate company, right? So like, it's right, it's several steps removed from me. So I'm purely speaking as a fan and as someone who plays the game, it's a ton of fun. I mean, it is like the, the, if you like Marvel and you like comics in the movies, there's so, there's so many characters and so many little hidden Easter eggs and things like that. But the games are fast. They happen in like two to four minutes most mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, like the, the joke now is it's taken over the toilet, basically <laugh>. But but it's, it's, it's a ton of fun in this battle mode.

(01:04:19):
Like, and it's funny cuz it's been, it was in, it went into beta last year, like in the summer or spring, and then it launched officially in October. And since October, like their websites have cropped up and I see so many people talking about it. And like, the way the game works before today was that you just got matched with a random other player. So I never knew who, you know, we see their username, but I don't know who they are. They can be anybody in the world. Right. now a battle mode, I, you know, me and some of my coworkers, some of my friends outside of work all play it. And so we can actually like, okay, cool, let's play together. Yeah. And like actually be able to play with your friends. And to your point, like, you know, the leveraging the deck strategies and knowing what people have and knowing what cards and how they play 'em it's just a ton of fun.

(01:04:55):
And so like, it's a, this is a big deal and this is, you know, the community's super excited about it. So it was fun to see that come out, you know, again, as a fan, like yeah, I'm really excited for it. So, all right. So definitely, definitely check it out. The great thing about it too is that it is free to download. It is free to play. There are ways to spend money to buy credits to do stuff and stuff like that. But you don't need to do, you could play 100% for the rest of your life. I don't know about the rest of your life, but as of right now, you can play 100% free and not drop a dime on this game and still get the same experience as someone who drops hundreds of dollars on it. So which I really like, I like that aspect of it. So

Jason Howell (01:05:30):
Yeah. Interesting. Awesome. Well it is a fun game. I have not played this new update, but I will definitely check it out. Marvel snap, check it out for yourself. On the potty or not on the potty. It's really up to you.

Ron Richards (01:05:44):
It's up to you. Yeah. Yeah. That's all. Yeah. We're all looking for ways to, we're all looking for ways to pass the time <laugh>. And in fact, that's a, that's a good segue cuz our good friend JR Rapha is here this week with another Android intelligence tip and it's it got a little bit of a smart search assistant at hand. So let's hear what jr's got for us that we possibly could use on the potty <laugh>.

JR Raphael (01:06:06):
Hey gang. So last week we talked about a cool little search tool called Swirl Swirl. Remember that it's the thing that let's you see results from a whole bunch of different sites side by side together at the same time. Kind of like tweet deck research as Jason Astutely observed <laugh>. Well this is what you're continuing on that same theme, I wanna introduce you to another really useful off the Beaten Path search site. And this one man, this one is something you are definitely gonna wanna hang on to for future reference. It's a handy little something called Andy, Andy with an I at the end. It's kinda like a mashup of an AI chat bot, like a chat G p T and a more traditional search service like Google or Yahoo or Alta Vista or whatever you prefer. At its core, Andy lets you find any info you need by asking simple questions or typing in regular old search queries.

(01:07:03):
And it shows you answers both in a simple conversational form and in a more standard scrolling stream of regular web results. Now that's all well and good, but let me tell you, that is just scratching the surface here. There's a lot to say about this tool about Andy and what it can do for you. I wrote a whole in-depth profile of a startup behind it over at Fast Company the other day, if you're interested in more of the backstory and the tech behind the sites unconventional search setup. But today, today I wanna focus on one super specific, really subtle feature that Andy's got tucked away into its virtual corners. And that is a better way to read any old article that you happen to run into anywhere on this wide wild internet of ours. Look, we're not gonna name any names, we're not gonna point any fingers, but let's just say certain websites, certain publications out there have a tendency of overloading their pages, you know, like with a God awful stream of over the top ads, pop-up videos, all sorts of obnoxious nonsense that no one wants and that makes it really unpleasant to read what you went there to read.

(01:08:12):
Well check this out. Any time you find any article within Andy, whether just incidentally during some random search or cuz you were searching specifically for its headline or u r URL to find it, Andy will put a little option in the corner of that article's card, write in it search results called Read. Yeah. Can you see where this is going? Click or tap that option. And who, boy would you look at that? Andy pulls up the entire article right then and there in the search results in a super stripped down, really nicely formatted and oh yes, completely ad free view, not bad, right? Works pretty much anywhere too with any publicly accessible article on the Internets. And the whole thing does raise some slightly prickly questions about rights and all that fun stuff. And I'm sure publishers aren't gonna be too thrilled about it if and when it comes to their attention.

(01:09:07):
But for now at least, man, it is just a much nicer way to read any article anywhere on the web without all the usual clutter and annoying distractions. You can check out Andy for yourself and give it a whirl@andysearch.com. And again, that's Andy with an i a ndi search.com. The entire sites ad free, it doesn't collect any manner of data or even login of your activity company behind. It says it's gonna launch some premium plans and enterprise search products eventually to help pay the bills. The founders tell me they very much intend to keep the core search service completely free and free from ads indefinitely. And hey, while you're hopping around the web, remember you can find out about all sorts of awesome new resources and tech tricks like this each and every week by signing up for my Android Intelligence newsletter. You'll get three new things to try in your inbox every Friday, along with plenty of other fun surprises. Gallop on over to android intel.net/twit to get in on the action if you haven't already, site again is android intel.net/twit. Well, happy galloping, my fellow cow poke <laugh>. I'll see it back here for even more digital sleuthing next week.

Ron Richards (01:10:25):
I I need to go get my coconuts, do the yes. Old holy grail kind of galloping <laugh>. Yes. I, I gotta say that Andy thing, it seems very interesting and it actually reminded me of a very specific website and app that I use that does basically does the same thing but for recipes. It's called just the recipe. And you can see that it's just the recipe.com where you can, in this case, you can copy and paste any recipe url. And if you've ever been to a recipe online, it's almost worse than news. It's horrible. Oh, I hate it. Not only, not only all the banner ads and all the video assets, stuff like that, but all the prologue and nonsense before you actually get to the gosh darn recipe. Because they know and all that's scrolling. You're just gonna

Jason Howell (01:11:12):
Get all those popups that appear every five seconds also between the recipe

Ron Richards (01:11:16):
Sections. Yeah, it's brutal. Yeah. But, so just the recipe.com, you just, you go in and you copy and paste a URL to any recipe and it, it parses the whole page and just pulls the recipe and gives you a clean, clutter free view. I put it in the link Burke, if you wanna pull it up to show our video viewers what the, what the website looks like. But it gives you a clean recipe and you can sit and you, I i you it's, you know, small amount to pay for it, support your devs. I pay for it, you know, a couple of bucks or something like that. And it allows you to keep a library of your recipes and all stuff like that. It is just very simple and very clutter free. And it, you know, it's not, I like how it says, it says no ads, no life stories <laugh>, which is

Jason Howell (01:11:56):
Pretty good <laugh>.

Ron Richards (01:11:56):
But so yeah, so, so Jr's tip of Andy doing that for search reminded me of this, which is basically doing it for recipes, which I feel like there definitely is a trend for a clutter-free internet. And I hope yeah, whatever Web three, web four or whatever internet two is, whatever we can be clutter free cuz that's that, that's what I want.

Jason Howell (01:12:15):
Here's five paragraphs on why we chose Russ potatoes <laugh>. Yeah. Before we ever, you know, and, and all the other ingredients in their own little thing. And why I

Ron Richards (01:12:26):
Just get so fresh. I just get so frustrated because we've been, I've been on records saying that like, I support the digital advertising ecosystem cuz it helps, you know, fund and pay for content creation as a content creator myself for 20 plus years, you know, like, it, it has been a, a key lifeblood as was Amazon Associates, which now is an echo of its former self Yeah. As was podcast advertising, which has gone through the ringer, right? Like, it seems like all these efforts to monetize, continue to squeeze out the content creator and ultimately give a negative experience to the content of you know, absorber the content, you know, the, the target, whoever's, you know, enjoying the content. It's just incredibly frustrating. And I do hope we can figure out another model to it because Lord knows it's got to the point where there's some websites I just don't go to anymore because Right. I can't, nothing drives me more crazy than having a page come up and then going to click a link on the page. But the link moves because

Jason Howell (01:13:19):
The Oh rather right. Wrong. I hate that. Or you're trying to scroll and then it's floating it more. It's the worst. Yeah. Oh yeah. So, such a nightmare.

Ron Richards (01:13:29):
I hope we can declutter in the future.

Jason Howell (01:13:31):
I hope that we can too. Alright, well I know, I hope that we can read some of your feedback and I know that we can. Up next that's coming up your feedback. AAA TWI TV 3 4 7 show a a a I had to go into the Google voice mailbox for that number and send out a random text to show Google that this phone number is still active. It's still out there. If you wanna leave us a voicemail you can, but remember, keep it short. I get these voicemail like I got a, a voice voicemail today. I wanna say it was like four minutes or something. I'm like, we just can't play a four minute voicemail on this show, so doesn't matter How awesome. And, and I'll be honest, I'm probably not gonna take the time to like cut it down like in an audio software, you know, so, so there you go. So keep it short and succinct and we will play it when you've got the first one.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:14:31):
Yeah, our first mail tonight is from Tom from nyc. I need some help from the Android faithful during the Christmas season. I somehow but dialed my local 5 5 5 1 2 1 2 4 times. Hmm. I never thought about it so much until I opened my bill today. Each of those calls was to directory assistance and was 2 99 each with taxes and fees. Four 22nd calls to directory service was $14 and 50 cents. Dang. Let's face it. Who calls directory assistance these days? True. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. I've been searching both my carrier's website and the universe for how to prevent my phone from dialing a number and I'm getting nowhere has anyone made this mistake? And how would I go about preventing my phone from dialing such numbers? <Laugh>, any help is appreciated. Bama Wallet coming from nyc,

Jason Howell (01:15:23):
How do we prevent a phone from dialing a number? Like I was like, you know, this is something that I've never thought of before. You can block a number, can't you? But that blocks on the incoming, that doesn't block on the outgoing. Oh

Huyen Tue Dao (01:15:34):
Yeah. So I, I did randomly find right before the show and I just popped it in. Is that it? So this is a shammy thing, so not, you know, helpful to any of us on the show or to Tom because we can get shammy phones. So Shami as an example though, has a thing called fixed dialing numbers where you can go into settings, advanced settings, presumably on the shammy software and actually block an outgoing call. So it, the answer might be that there might be a OEM specific feature that maybe you might have on your flavor for Android. But I

Jason Howell (01:16:07):
Think, I can't even, I think you can do this on Google five too, maybe. Oh really? I feel like outgoing. Cause I feel like this, so this is a feature I've never, in my many years of doing Android stuff consider like considered like, I wanna prevent my phone from making a call to this certain number. It's just not something I've ever thought of. So I wonder how many people I are in that situation. If I had, if we had that feature in the phone app, I could think of about six people. I would like to block myself from calling <laugh> <laugh>.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:16:37):
It. There might be parental control too. Maybe, I don't know if maybe some flavors of parental control allow you to do that cuz presumably you don't, like if you, I don't know, give a smartphone to your kid, maybe. Nevermind. I can't what I mean you'd want them to be able to call like the important numbers.

Jason Howell (01:16:54):
Yeah. Or maybe, you know, I think maybe I'm reading this, this question wrong because I was thrown off by the how would I go from preventing my phone from dialing such numbers. My thought was how do I get my phone to not dial certain numbers? Maybe the question actually is how do I get my phone to not butt dial <laugh>? Yeah, right? Like how can I have my phone in my pocket and have it not dial numbers? That's probably actually now that I think about it, the question and I mean if it's locked, it wouldn't call, right? Like it doesn't make call. I mean, other than maybe emergency services and you probably don't want that, but when it's Locked you can't do anything.

(01:17:37):
Well, but even when it's locked you can get to like, I've had it where I've pulled my phone outta my pocket and it's on that like emergency dial screen because even on the lock screen there are ways turn that off to get, that's how <laugh> Oh, do you disable it? I

Burke (01:17:50):
Don't, well there's a couple way to it. There's a couple of options at least I know on Google phones.

Jason Howell (01:17:56):
I'm trying to not unlock by looking at it. Let's see. I don't do that. Yeah, so like I just swiped up on my lock screen. You see down at the bottom there's that emergency button. If I tap that, follow

Burke (01:18:08):
Me. Don't, don't, don't. What are

Jason Howell (01:18:10):
You doing? It goes here. Don't do that. And okay, good. Wait. I think I should, oh no, no, I'm just kidding. But yeah, I, that takes me through to, to the ability to call emergency services and I don't know that you can disable that, but you know, another way to prevent butt dials is to put your phone in your front pocket. There you go.

Burke (01:18:31):
Not true. Is there an equivalence to Nevermind, but I understand the joke. Ha,

Jason Howell (01:18:37):
I'm, it wasn't a very funny

Ron Richards (01:18:38):
Joke. I'm currently going through a, a rabbit hole of the growth in cost of, of 5 50, 520 12 Uhhuh <affirmative> because there's a whole bunch of articles in 2001 about how it increased the price to a dollar 25 per call. And then in 2007 it went up to a dollar 99 and then as of February 27th, 2021, it went up to 2 99 per call. So, cuz I was like, did it always cost $3 to call information? Because I used to call it a lot as a kid. Like you would just call any, you call any area code and ask for information to try to track somebody down, right? Yeah. but yeah, no, apparently the growth of information services over the last 20 years has been a steady increase. So that's, I

Jason Howell (01:19:22):
Mean, who's using it? So yeah, they, they have gotta charge.

Ron Richards (01:19:25):
But I used to use it all the time. Yeah, seriously. Like, oh man. Yeah, I remember if you knew where somebody lived, just called information and just ask them what's their phone number and you got it. It's

Burke (01:19:36):
Crazy. I did not know this was a thing until

Jason Howell (01:19:37):
Reading this email. I really did not. No, you didn't know about 5 55 2 2. No. Never. I mean, never, never, never. It's, it's a, it's a relic of of days gone by. It really is. In this modern age, like who would ever dial 5, 5, 5, 1, 2, 1 2. Someone must like, there, there must be someone on staff that answers that call cuz they're, they're charging for the service. Who is it? Scooter X of course in chat shared a link to to show that as of January, 2023 at and t stops offering directory assistance. So oh

Ron Richards (01:20:12):
Four 11.

Jason Howell (01:20:13):
Okay, so it was the same

Ron Richards (01:20:14):
Thing. Yeah, it's

Jason Howell (01:20:15):
Four 11. Yeah, it's same. Okay, mum.

Ron Richards (01:20:17):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I also found an article in the New York Times from 1973 about how the phone company moved the people who the phone from five five five one two one two out of Manhattan and into other parts of New York. So it says now callers from Greenwich Village seeking telephone numbers of the five boroughs in New York may connect someone in Rome, Utica or Al Myra, New York or Valley Stream, Hempstead or Riverhead on Long Island. Super relevant. And, and these locations are, are seven remote remote bureaus outside New York City that employ 400 telephone operators that handle the rectory assistant calls for the two 12 area code. Think about that.

Jason Howell (01:20:52):
Four operators,

Ron Richards (01:20:54):
400 or

Jason Howell (01:20:55):
400. 400 operators. Oh, okay. Oh,

Ron Richards (01:20:57):
Fascinated. Wow. And, and it said, and it said about 30 of the older bureaus remain in New York City itself. A total of 2,200 employees are employed at these bureaus. So at one point in time there were over 2000 people whose job it was to sit in a room and answer a phone and tell you what the phone number of the Chinese food restaurant that you're trying to call is or track someone down for you or whatever it might be, 2000 people.

Jason Howell (01:21:23):
But wait, how did they look? How did they supply this information without computers?

Ron Richards (01:21:29):
They looked it up in what? They had computers, I dunno, in book it doesn't say

Jason Howell (01:21:32):
Yeah. In 75 the phone

Ron Richards (01:21:34):
Book 73. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:21:35):
Big, big computer book. Maybe

Ron Richards (01:21:37):
They did. It doesn't say. It doesn't say they they're talking about the employment that they're talking about race. Hmm.

Jason Howell (01:21:46):
Maybe it's training.

Ron Richards (01:21:48):
It doesn't say never know if the callers give us enough basic information, we can usually find the number for them.

Jason Howell (01:21:53):
Yeah,

Ron Richards (01:21:55):
That's, I think they're literally like, they literally sat with phone books.

Jason Howell (01:21:58):
Yeah. <laugh> cousin and Chuck Gofer. Archie, there's plenty of ways back in the 1970s. <Laugh> micro fi. I like that <laugh>. That's Oh,

Ron Richards (01:22:07):
Fascinating.

Jason Howell (01:22:09):
That is fascinating. Don't know if we've answered your question, but it's, but it's fun fodder to

Ron Richards (01:22:15):
It was a good, it was a good journey. It was, it was

Jason Howell (01:22:16):
<Laugh>. Sorry.

Ron Richards (01:22:17):
It's about the friends we made along the way. Yes. <laugh>. Okay. Our next email, our next email is from friend Russell in Brisbane in Australia who says, I'm a longtime Android user. Had a View Sonic tab, a Cgen mod. It was great before the iPad came out. Sonic

Jason Howell (01:22:32):
Wow. <Laugh>

Ron Richards (01:22:33):
Wow. As well as a Xmi Miax and a Red me as well as a few pixels after coming across from Windows phone r i p as an owner of one of the older Sony Walkmans running Android nine. I bought it and not my phone for the audio processor that works with my Sony XM three headphones. Although like all audio things, I'm sure it's all marketing. It does have a cool screensaver in case that makes it look like a vintage Walkman playing a tape through. And he, he sent us a picture of what that looks

Jason Howell (01:22:59):
Like. Oh, I forgot to attach that.

Ron Richards (01:23:00):
Sorry. Sorry. No worries. I also wanna mention that the cat ruggedized phones, Hey, I looked at one of those for the longest time, but ended up going with a Pixel five with an F L I R U S BBC camera and haven't looked back six since. I'm now on a Pixel seven pro, as the cat seemed the generation behind. I always want the newest. Anyway, this brings me to my actual question. I want to f I want to film a more stable video with my Pixel seven Pro. And I've been looking at the DG dj I gimbals, but it seems like their features are limited when not running on iOS. Do you have a suggestion for a good and reasonably priced Android compatible gimbal? And I feel like this is a Burk question to be honest with you. I, I know nothing about gimbals.

Burke (01:23:39):
There are Android compatible gimbals, but I don't know what they are and the best ones do are do run non iOS, I think.

Jason Howell (01:23:46):
Right, right. How fully featured are they? That's I think the question. Yeah, the big question. The,

Huyen Tue Dao (01:23:51):
The all the big, I mean, so I've looked at DJ one s, I've looked at dang it. The Z so Chinese company starts with a Zay Zed Z and they do have Android apps. They suck. At least last I checked two, three years ago, they suck. I actually got an iPod an iPod like when they still had 'em as at a desperation. But yeah, Android apps, it, it might just be because talking to hardware is really hard on Android. They're not,

Burke (01:24:21):
It could use an analog gimbal.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:24:24):
Yeah, that's a, that's totally an option. I maybe things are better. I doubt it, but I would not spend a lot of money on something and count on the Android app for Gimbals. My bad. I wish it was different.

Jason Howell (01:24:37):
Yeah, I mean I was looking into some of the DJ I one s and of course, you know, Russell, you pointed out that the DJ I Gimbals that you were looking in were feature limited when compared to the their iOS counterpart. I did encounter the dj, I pocket two and read a couple of reviews and everything and no one really even on on some Android, you know, sites. I think Android Authority did a review of the the pocket two. Actually they did. I linked to it. Well wait,

Burke (01:25:05):
You know who I know who would know this answer, but he's not here an

Jason Howell (01:25:09):
Oh yeah, an would probably know. Yeah, for sure. Or may. Maybe he would. Yeah. well and if you're, listen has an Android device, so he probably would. Anyways, the pocket two seemed pretty feature full. I didn't really see any, any knocks on it for being incapable compared to iOS. So that's a positive. The negative of that is it's $349. So it's not an, it's not an inexpensive gimbal, but I don't know like what, you know, what is, what is reasonable in the world of Gimbals. Is that a reasonable price? That seems kind of expensive to me.

Burke (01:25:44):
They're all over the place no matter what they are. Yeah,

Jason Howell (01:25:45):
I mean you go on the Amazon, you can find like a $50 gimbal, but you're probably gonna get a $50 gimbal out of it. You know, <laugh> probably, it's probably not gonna be very good, especially on Android.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:25:55):
I actually bought my sister of the pocket too to chase around my little niece cuz when she got mobile. It's not bad. I mean the, the unit itself as a piece of like, you know, DGI hardware is nice, but I don't think I was blown away. I mean, the Android integration is fine. I don't think I was blown away by it. And a lot of the little things that are nice is like using the phone as a controller. Yeah. Again, a little, but again, I, I didn't use it that much. I use it for like a half an hour and then, you know, she moves around so much by the time it took us to get the pocket too, we're just like, okay, pull out your pixels, you know, kind of thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I don't have a, a, a long term review of it, but it's not bad, but it is expensive. Real expensive.

Jason Howell (01:26:36):
Yeah. It's expensive. It is pricey. So there you go, Russell. I hope that's helpful. Today's the day of reading emails and we can't be much help, but we enjoy reading them nonetheless. Does that apply to our email of the week?

(01:26:56):
I don't know. Let's find out. Robert wrote in to say, I was listening to episode six 13 with Father Robert and you guys spoke briefly towards the end about authenticators. I've been using the Google Authenticator for a while. It works fine. It's offline, maybe gets the job done. My work provides a work phone. It's an S 10 and my personal is an S 22 Ultra. I had a dodgy situation when upgrading to the S 22. I turned in my old phone and as I wiped it, I realized that I also wiped my password manager after that incident. I made sure that this would not happen in the future. So I grabbed an old phone in a drawer, set it up again and I have it as a spare chat phone and streaming phone next to my computer. It also has the authenticator app with a backup of my codes.

(01:27:40):
Then I realized that my work phone was pretty secure because of how the company manages the phones. So I have Google Authenticator on all three phones, one in a drawer and two that I always have with me. So every time I set up a new code or two fa for an account, it doesn't matter if I grab my work phone or my personal phone when I require the the code and I realize that I'm using my work phone to send that particular code up. What I do is at that moment, I usually transfer the account to my personal phone. <Laugh>, man, this sounds so confusing. This kind of keeps me one authentication code behind, which I don't think is a big deal as most of the time I do it on both, pretty much all authenticators let you export accounts. And I do this about once a month or whenever I set up a new account, which is not that often. And yes, I do write it on a piece of paper, which I lost already. <Laugh>,

(01:28:27):
I love that last sentence. Had to keep that in there <laugh>. So one way to go about this is just have the authenticator apps on three different phones that you manage and maintain on a regular basis and then you'll never lose access cuz you have it on, on multiple phones. That's great if you've got multiple phones that that, that, that's a pretty good approach. I dunno how that really ties in with the discussion with Father Robert. Were you guys talking about kinda losing access to authenticator information? Oh, can't hear you Ron.

Ron Richards (01:29:01):
Sorry, I was muted. Yeah. whenever I, I feel like we are in a spot where we're I, we started talking about Authenticators and Authe authenticators a couple of weeks ago, and I feel like it's, this conversation has extended for weeks onto months because people keep writing in chiming in and that like, and Father Robert was just, was chiming in with his latest

Ron Richards (01:29:25):
With his opinion on the topic and we were talking about that. So that's where it came

Jason Howell (01:29:28):
From. That's how it works on this show. It seems like. Yeah, a theme happens and we're talking about it for like three months in, in feedback every couple of weeks. So, so there you go. I thought it was an interesting story. Thank you for writing in Robert, and, and congratulations for being the email of the week. All right, with that, we have reached the end of this episode of All About Android. Always a lot of fun. Thank you so much for watching and listening and joining us for all this Android Chit chat. When, what do you wanna leave people with?

Huyen Tue Dao (01:29:59):
Yes, I am an android dev. That is my day job and I occasionally talk about Android things and you can find my Android things@randomlytyping.com. And generally I am in social places at Screen Code Monkey. Find me there. And yeah, that's

Jason Howell (01:30:16):
About it. And that's that. Thank you. W good to see you. And what about you, Ron? What you got?

Ron Richards (01:30:22):
Yes, I'm trying to drive Burke crazy by dropping in a link to Pad right <laugh> the

Jason Howell (01:30:26):
Last minute. You can't believe that. Take that

Huyen Tue Dao (01:30:30):
News.

Ron Richards (01:30:31):
Yes. But yeah. So as Jason mentioned earlier I do work at Marvel by day. Please go to marvel.com. You can check out all the fun stuff we're doing over there. Also Corbit, if you're in a pinball, check out Corbit in the Google Play Store. We gotta a fun mobile app to keep track of your pinball scores. But I also podcast every now and then with my good buddies over at I fanboy. And last week the, our, our Monthly Media Explode came out where we caught up on what we've been watching since November. Lot of good movie and TV conversation, talked about and or talked about Avatar, talked about Babylon, talked about the, the menu, like a lot of great stuff that came with the fables. A lot of cool stuff. So if you're into tv, Cobra Kai, the la the last season, Cobra Kai. So if yeah, you like TV and film, go to iam boy.com or search for I fanboy in your favorite podcast catcher and find the Media Explode episode and you can hear me Babylon with two of my best friends for about an hour. So there

Jason Howell (01:31:24):
You go. I really enjoyed the menu by the way.

Ron Richards (01:31:27):
I, I mean, I enjoyed the menu, the menu, but it also was like, oh, talk about feeling seen Yeah. Out <laugh>. Yes.

Jason Howell (01:31:34):
It was like, oh man. Totally. No, I mean, I worked in the restaurant industry for quite a while and it was like, oh, it was kind of painful to watch, but yeah. Well they're ripping on every in Silicon Valley and everything. Yeah,

Ron Richards (01:31:46):
Yeah. Everybody was harsh. It was well, well done.

Jason Howell (01:31:50):
Yeah. Very, very worth the watch especially if you like food and you've got any sort of foodie.

Ron Richards (01:31:58):
What's really interesting is, I don't know how much you dug into it, Jason, but the and I talk about this on the podcast, one of the, I think one of the second unit directors was one of the guys who worked on the David Chang shows on Netflix. Okay. So all of the shots of the food Yeah. Were done by a crew that specialized in doing food photography Oh. For cooking shows and food shows. Right. And like,

Jason Howell (01:32:21):
I mean, it was really well done. Yeah.

Ron Richards (01:32:23):
Yeah. Once I found that, I'm like, oh yeah, that makes perfect sense. Right? Yeah. Perfect sense. Yeah. And they, and they, and they ripped

Jason Howell (01:32:28):
On foodies too.

Ron Richards (01:32:29):
Oh yeah. That's why I said talk about being It's great. Yeah. Nicola Nicholas Hu's character up to, I was like, Ooh, this is really uncomfortable for me watching this

Jason Howell (01:32:37):
<Laugh>. Yes. It was so, so to the Bone <laugh>. Well, y'all should watch that. But only once you're done listening or watching this, listening to this thank you to j r Ray Phil and ray intelligence.com. Keep him coming, man. Appreciate it. And I love that. Like he did, he did a, a random search. He, he told me this anyways. He said he did a, a random search about the host on all that Android and it pulled up his article, like it was an interview that I did with him, or he did with me like, I don't know how many years ago. It's weird that that was the thing that it pulled back. I don't know if it had anything to do with his own history with it, but he seemed to say that it didn't. So, very interesting. But anyways, JR keep it up.

(01:33:18):
 Big thanks to Victor. Big thanks to Burke for helping out behind the scenes without you guys doing what you do, we wouldn't have a show to put out, so thank you. You can find me at Jason Howell on Twitter. Twit social slash at Jason Howell on Mastodon Never gets easier. Just look at your low third. I know. Look at your, that's what I, that's what I ultimately had to do. And every Thursday twit TV slash tnw for Tech News Weekly. Also, don't forget, we have club Twit, that's our subscription tier. So if you like our shows and you wanna support us even more than just watching our shows with ads, you can subscribe to all of our content and then we remove the ads for you. We also give you access to a whole lot of extra content that you can't get outside of the club.

(01:34:11):
 That's our TWI plus podcast feed. And then we have a members only Discord, which is insane fun as well. $7 a month, you can pay for a full year, $84 per year. And yeah, it really does help us out, especially right now, as, as some of the sponsorships have kind of dipped down recessions impacting a lot of different things right now, the ad economy. And podcasting is definitely one of those things. So the Club is really helping us out, twit.tv/club twit. But as for this show, not really much else to say other than twit TV slash a aa. If you want to go there, you can see our show notes for today's episode and all of our episodes are lined up there. You can subscribe, audio, video, everything you need to know about this show, including some really cute pictures of us on set are at Twitter tv slash a a a. Thank you so very much for watching and listening each and every week, and we'll see you next time. Not All About Android. Bye everybody.

Speaker 7 (01:35:14):
Hey, I know you're super busy, so I won't keep you long, but I wanted to tell you about a show here on the Twit Network called Tech News Weekly. You are a busy person and during your week you may want to learn about all the tech news that's fit to, well say, not print here on twit, it's Tech News Weekly. Me, Micah Sergeant, my co-host Jason Howell. We talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. And we love the opportunity to get to share those stories with you and let the people who wrote them or broke them, share them as well. So I hope you check it out every Thursday, right here on TWiT.