All About Android 625, 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. I'm back here with Ron Richards and Mishaal Rahman. We got a lot of news this week. And for those of you who don't like hardware news, hey, this is an episode without any hardware news. So you're gonna get your wish. We've got find my device actually working while a device is powered off. That's cool. We got Easy App Data Deletion for users. That's cool. Auto archiving apps is here. That's really cool. And that's all in the top News block. That's not even mentioning Free Money on Google Play. On Google Pay app streaming to Chromebooks. Swift Key, getting Bing Chat bot and the demise of the Google Now launcher. That's right. We got tons of a, of news app news as well. And your feedback next on All About Android

Ron Richards (00:00:49):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Jason Howell (00:00:58):
This is All About Android, episode 625, recorded Tuesday, April 11th, 2023. The Google Then Launcher. This episode of all that Android is brought to you by Delete Me. Reclaim Your Privacy by removing personal data from online sources. Protect yourself and reduce the risk fraud, spam, cybersecurity threats and more by going to joindeleteme.com/twit and use Code TWIT for 20% off and by Cachefly. Cachefly is the only CDN built for throughput. Delivering rich media content up to 10 times faster than traditional delivery methods and 30% faster than other major CDNs. Learn how you can get your first month free at Cachefly.com.

(00:01:50):
Hello, welcome to All About Android, your weekly source, the latest news, normally your latest hardware, but we don't have any hardware news to talk about. And the latest apps every week in the world of Android. I'm Jason Howell. And I'm Ron Richards. And I'm Mishaal Rahman. Ah, yeah, it is the three of us today. It's like every week you get a different recipe, a different, All About Android recipe. Well, well even more importantly, welcome back Jason after a two week hiatus. It's good to have you back in the chair, right? Yeah, it's good to be back in the chair. I know. I, I, today has been my day of adjustment. You know, when you step away from your job and you go on a long vacation, I mean, I was gone for two and a half weeks, so that wasn't just a little quick sprint.

(00:02:35):
That was two and a half weeks being totally disconnected from, from tech news. And I really did my very best to completely disconnect, which is great while you're gone, but then once you return, it's hard getting caught back up <laugh>. So it's, it, that's the challenge in doing that. But we should all get a little bit of a break like that every once in a while, even if it is hard coming back. So it was very enjoyable.

(00:03:00):
 We did, you mentioned there's not a lot of hardware in this week's show, but I feel like we covered the hardware beat pretty well while you were out. We had a couple of, we had, we had Matteo with his, with, with the, with the Insane Unihertz phones. We talked about the other new phones that came out. So we, we got a covered, Jason and we, we handled All right.

(00:03:17):
All right. Hardware's been covered. It's made room for this episode where we have, you know, a lot of a lot of just general Android news for the most part and some app news, which is, it's kind of refreshing. I fe I do feel like some, and, and we've certainly get this feedback from time to time from listeners and fans of the show that, you know, some of the feedback that I get who from people who aren't as interested in the hardware is like, well, I've got my Pixel. That's really the phone that I care about. Or I've got my Samsung, or whatever their device is. Like, I don't care about the, the next, you know, big hardware device. This is the episode for you because we don't have any new hardware to talk about. We just have a lot of news to talk about. So if you like your Android with news, then you're gonna love this episode of All About Android, starting with the news bumper.

Burke (00:04:11):
And you know how I like to make the Android news about me?

Jason Howell (00:04:14):
Yeah.

Burke (00:04:14):
If I had find my working with where you can actually have it running with your phone off, I would not, I would have two old phones that I didn't ha I don't have now. If that makes any sense.

Ron Richards (00:04:27):
Do, do you wanna, do you wanna do another take on that for, or do you wanna <laugh>? No, that was perfect. Know what? Print it. Do you wanna get one? Do you wanna get one for safety or <laugh>? Oh, but see, anytime that happens, cuz because it ha it does happen from time to time. I'm reminded of the times that I've been there, Burke. So on one hand, I, I want, I want to like crippling

Burke (00:04:50):
Hammer shyness.

Jason Howell (00:04:51):
Yes. I, on one hand I wanna rip you about it. And on the other hand I just, I I want to give you a hug because I've been there. I know what it feels like

Burke (00:04:59):
Running the show behind the scenes and

Jason Howell (00:05:00):
Setting up all of the pressure that is involved in keeping the show running. You know, the person behind the scenes, if you're doing your job right, people don't notice you. Right. It's only when the thing goes wrong. Yeah. Right. And suddenly everybody notices that you're there and maybe I've certainly, I've been there. I feel you man. Nice try. There's always next week. Okay, let's jump into the news. Starting with this. I thought this was actually pretty cool and apparently Apple devices have had this for I don't know how long. So this is one of those things like, okay, they had it first and finally it looks like it's coming to Android, but find my device even when my device is turned off. Cuz right now on Android, if you wanna locate your device, say you leave it in a cab or something like that, or someone steals it you only

Burke (00:05:52):
Really, or you leave it at the Lowe's parking lot.

Jason Howell (00:05:54):
Did that happen to you? Oh no. Oh, okay. Absolutely not. All right. That was, that was just interestingly specific if that happened to you or when it did happen to you, apparently Burke you can only really track your phone at least on an ongoing basis, like in real time if your phone is turned on. If it's turned off, I think that tool reports back to you, the last known place that it was reported as on which that information could either be very useful or not at all useful, cuz it's not there anymore. And it's off. So who the heck knows where in this world is Carmen phone? But apparently Google is working on this for Pixel phones. It's called Pixel Power Off Finder. Google's working to build a network of course for all Android devices. So including uwb, locator tags, phones, all that type of stuff.

(00:06:55):
So this would be a part of that source code reportedly Sure. Shared with OEMs in the Android 14 early access program seemed to point to this being in the works. It would require the Bluetooth chip to be kept on even when the phone is shut down which is, which seems like a, a oxymoron or what is that? Like how can the Bluetooth chip be on if the phone is shut down? <Laugh> well requires, I imagine, and Mishaal maybe you can speak to this, but I imagine it requires a certain type of Bluetooth low energy chip in order to do that. W do you No energy chip?

Mishaal Rahman (00:07:31):
Well, there's like broadly three things that need to be done for this kind of feature to pan out. So the first thing is define my device app itself needs to be updated to, you know, support this feature. The second thing is, at the OS level, there needs to be a way for the OS to basically send this data off to the Bluetooth chip. And that's what the, in the article that we're talking about, they mentioned a hardware abstraction layer. That's basically what they're talking about. The way for the OS to say here is my Finder device like my broadcast id, I'm gonna send this off and store that on the Bluetooth chip. And then the third thing that needs to happen is that the device needs to be designed in such a way that it can provide power to the Bluetooth chip even when the Android OS is powered down.

(00:08:19):
So the OS can be off, but maybe like the, there's a ba the battery's still hooked up to the blue to the system on chip and the system on CHIP is still able to provide power to the Bluetooth chip, you know, even when OS itself isn't running. So once you have all three of those things working, then you could have the device broadcast, you know, it's finder id, whatever it is, periodically like maybe every, every 10 seconds, even when Android itself is shut down. So when you have all that happening, that's how you get this kind of feature working.

Jason Howell (00:08:52):
Fascinating. And then what is like, but I guess what comes to mind for me is, but what about the battery implications of that? If the, if, you know, because I shut down my phone, my thinking is my phone's off, therefore my battery is de depleting so slowly cuz I know there's no real way to like stop my battery from depleting. I've, I've come across devices that I shut down, you know, that I've had a drawer for years and I'm pretty sure I probably left with, with a charge at one point. And you know, I I go to it now and it's completely depleted. So over time it just kind of empties. But isn't this gonna empty that faster if there's a B chip, a Bluetooth chip on the device, still sipping that, that battery juice even when the phone's turned off?

Mishaal Rahman (00:09:38):
Well actually think about like, you know, the Bluetooth trackers that you're familiar with, right? Yeah. Those things are really, really, really tiny. Right. And they last a couple of days on a minuscule battery much smaller than within your smartphone. Yeah. Think about how long a smartphone size battery would last with the same kind of feature, just broadcasting when there's no display running, there's no modem. That's, it's a great 5g. Yep. So it could probably last like weeks to be honest.

Jason Howell (00:10:02):
Right. But the, but those devices exist only to do that. Right. And I just worry about a and admittedly like beat Bluetooth le stands for low energy. Right. But like the Bluetooth chip in the phone in a more complex system with a battery, like, I, I, I dunno, I I, I wanna see it before I believe it, right. That it actually doesn't drain, you know, not to be a little skeptical to it, but it doesn't, you know, I, I could, I could see a world where it drains a little more than they intend. But I guess we'll have to find out. I mean, clearly Apple can do it right. So they can, you're right to, yeah, I mean it's obviously, it's, it's possible. I'm, I'm trying to think if I've read any, you know, sort of s stories or seen any headlines over the past few years, you know, since Apple has introduced this. I honestly don't know when Apple introduced this feature. I should have looked that up. But you know, if anybody's really noticed that like, ah, my, you know, my powered off state used to last me X number of days, but now it's like five days shorter because, you know, it must be because this thing is, is sipping on the, the battery juice. But I don't, but I, I don't recall seeing those stories. So maybe it's really kind of minuscule. Maybe doesn't matter. I would like

Burke (00:11:14):
To add that everybody usually keeps all that stuff on anyway and doesn't turn it off like n normal Joe's. So

Jason Howell (00:11:21):
Yeah, that's true. You know, the major, yes, the majority of the time these devices are left on. But I think this is, this is a really powerful feature for, you know, for the, for the person who gets their, their phone stolen and, you know, the automatic kind of go-to for the thief might be powered off because then they can't track it anymore. And then we can do whatever it is the next step that thieves do with a stolen phone. Even if it's powered off. You know, I, I guess what does that mean? That the, that the thief would then have to wipe the phone the minute they get it, but they'd still need to be able to get into it. And if they don't know the security pin or, or password or whatever, then I mean that really diminishes what a thief could do with a, with a stolen phone.

(00:12:07):
Right. Well I think it just add, gives you the possibility of finding it more because you, right. Yeah. Finding it, what, what happens when you find it? I don't know. Yeah. <laugh>, just be careful if you're <laugh> if you're, if you're hunting down your stolen phone, you don't know who's on the other end of that stolen phone. So just be careful, just cuz you can't, it's a good rule thumb there. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. All right. I think that's great. Well, so in terms of more, some interesting stuff coming potentially from Google. Android developers will soon be required to give users the ability to delete their account data, both in the app and online. And this is gonna apply to any app that requires a user to create an account. Now if users wish to do this, oftentimes they have to contact the developer directly if it isn't already offered.

(00:12:56):
 And this basically would require a kill switch that would make it easy to delete their, the data for the user. Also this function must be readily discoverable and linked to from the play store page even and no word yet on how or if Google will verify that the data is deleted when the user requests it. But this is, this has been coming, I think I'm honestly on both sides of the fence. I, we ran, I ran into this with the, with our app with my app for Corbit that we, that we have, cause we have both iOS and, and Android versions. And I know that iOS has required this of developers as well to make it easy for people to delete their information via the app and all their information with you as an organization, not just within the app.

(00:13:38):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that layer of abstraction between the app and the website is an important, you know, layer to put in. Cuz sometimes some apps kick you to their website to create an account. Like it's a sneaky kind of way around it. Yeah. but this also screams and feels like, you know, EU compliance, you know, in terms of like use, you know, you know, say what you will about the eu, but nobody else protects the users more better than the eu <laugh> in that regard. Yeah. So unknown if this is, you know, to get ahead of that or related to eu legislation. But it's definitely a, a way to give users more control over their data that's owned by developers or, or take it in by developers. Yeah. Move by Google to get ahead of even further regulation in places like the US where, you know, these things are being threatened as well against companies like Google.

(00:14:25):
 How, how do we know that? So, and we, we talked about this a little bit on security now with Steve Gibson earlier today, and the question that I had for it is like, okay, this is awesome. I love this. It should be easy to delete this, this information. I I still don't know how much I trust when I tell a company, all right, delete my account, get rid of it. What does that mean to them? Does that mean all right, we, we delete your ability to log into this data that we hold onto indefinitely on our servers? Does that mean, you know, so we, we cut off the, the linkage between any sort of account access to that data. Does that mean we delete the data or does that mean we scrub the data after we delete? Like, I don't know. And, you know, I don't know whether I trust more or less the random person who created an app or a service to do this sort of stuff to delete it properly. And I don't know that Google, you know, is, is requiring any sort of ver verification that that happens. They just want the user to have the ability to request that deletion and, and to be able to do that without having to jump through a number of hoops. So I guess that's a, that's a whole other issue. Like, okay, what does deleting mean? <Laugh> hopefully they're actually deleting it if you, if you tell them to. That's what I'm

Mishaal Rahman (00:15:42):
Saying. Yeah. I mean, I think it's worth noting that this new data request, you know, the, the request to delete your data or accounts is being put into the data safety section of Google Play. And all the information that's in that section is all self-reported by developers. So, you know, if when an app says it's using your location for app functionality, for example, that's what the app developer says they're using it for, right? Sure. Google's not actually going in there and verifying that they're only using your location data for that specific purpose. But if an app developer puts it there and you find out maybe through an external audit that they're lying about it, then obviously that's the app developer's problem. And because they lied on that form, Google could potentially take action against them. Hmm. So even though Google is not enforcing, you know, they don't really have any way of verifying Yeah. How every app

Jason Howell (00:16:28):
Totally that

Mishaal Rahman (00:16:29):
Says they're deleting your data is actually doing that. But if they find out an app is lying about it, potentially, I guess they could take action. You know, because they misrepresented what they're saying they're doing on Google Play.

Jason Howell (00:16:40):
All right. That works. That works for me. I like that. You're, you're given, you're given lots of really great counterpoints today, Mishaal <laugh> love when you're on, it's like, okay, cool. I, I feel like I get some more, some more of a resolution on this. My questions have been answered. Cuz I think you're absolutely right there, there really is nothing that Google could do to assert and we want to know that you have verifiably deleted all that information when you say, you know, when the user says I want it done. But they can hold those developers responsible if it's found down the line that they're lying. So that's good. I like that. I can get behind that. And then also a lot of developer focused news for developers and for, for users auto archive, this is the thing that we've talked about in previous episodes coming to Android at some point it's beginning to roll out.

(00:17:33):
It allows the user to partially uninstall an app. Shrinking that footprint of that app by around 60% in the process is what Google says. Once the app has been archived, you would see the icon normally on your home screen, right? So that icon changes, it's like a cloud with a little download arrow on it. So that signifies that this app, you know, has kind of been off offloaded. If you want to reopen that app, you have to tap it and that downloads the necessary components those missing components that it had offloaded. So the idea here, of course is, is saving space on your device. This only applies to apps that are published with Android's app bundle format. That's what kind of powers this ability to compartmentalize the app and loads certain pieces of it, not others or have certain pieces left over but not others and then load them on a need bee basis down the line.

(00:18:35):
 One thing that I don't know, and I, I couldn't find anyone writing about the ability to do this, like intentionally to, to like, I don't know if there's gonna be a setting that says that allows me as a user to say, I wanna, I wanna archive this app. Like from what I can tell you get a popup. So if your, if your device is closed out of room and you go to install another app, the device or the the play store, I'm not sure what, what component of this recognizes that you don't have enough space, enough storage on your device to install that app and then says, Hey, you don't have enough space to do that. Might I suggest that you, you know, uninstall portions of some of the apps that you have installed that you aren't using and that will free up some space. So it's like optin once it's officially needed cuz you're outta space. Will users be able to just do this on their own maybe eventually if, if not at launch? I don't know. Mishaal, do you know anything about that aspect? Cause I'm sure you've been tracking this code <laugh> for a while now before this news.

Mishaal Rahman (00:19:42):
Yeah, I can give like a quick TLDR of how it works as well. Sure. If you're, if you want to know. Absolutely. So like as you mentioned, it relies on apps being published in the app bundle format. So what an app bundle is, is it's basically the base application and then a whole bunch of different assets and resources that are all in one bundle file. And then Google Play takes that bundle and it generates the actual APK files that you're familiar with, that you actually install on your Android device. So it generates a base PK that's like the base code for the application and then maybe an English language apk that in includes the English language resources and then like a specific APK for your density or your, you know, your specific display size. So what archive a p k? So what, sorry, what app archiving actually does is they're generating a new kind of a p k called an archived a P k.

(00:20:35):
It has the same signature as the A P K that you're going to be archiving, but it basically has no code, no resources or anything. It's basically an MT a p k and they push that and they install it on of your app. So what you're left with is the app that has basically no code, but all the data intact and then everything else is gone. But when you tap the icon, it re downloads the base a bk and all those things that you had before. So that's basically the trick they're using and it's, it's pretty clever and been waiting for this app to roll out for a while, as you said. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and as for the automatically archiving apps as for like why Google chose to make it this strange opt-in way, like they haven't, I don't have like an official word from Google, but my theory is that they wanted to make it opt-in only to users who are low in storage because they don't want, because I, I'm guessing they are, or they heard from developers that they were worried that we don't really want users to archive our apps when they're not using them.

(00:21:38):
Like periodically, say for example I'm just gonna name drop like a ride sharing app, right? You don't really open it that often until you actually need it. But how many times do you get notifications from those apps? Like, I, I'm not gonna name names, but I get notifications from them all the time. Right? Yeah. <Laugh>, I agree. What happens if you archive them because you're annoyed by them and you don't want to use them and you only want to use it whenever you need it, right? A lot of things they can do, they can't do anymore. So I think, you know, they don't want to anger developers who, you know, are worried that users are gonna start mass archiving their app and all of a sudden they can't communicate with users anymore while still giving users this chance to who actually really need it, you know, to opt in. Yeah. So I think that's maybe the reasoning why it's rolled out this way. Like a, again, Google hasn't confirmed it, I'm just speculating, but I think that would explain why, you know, it's done this way.

Jason Howell (00:22:31):
That's interesting because I, I think that makes a lot of sense. At the same time, we have other ways of, of managing this stuff too, right? Like it's pretty easy to when you receive a notification from an app that you don't wanna receive anymore to, you know, long press that notification and turn off notifications for, for that app entirely, which I've done a lot more in the past year, I'd say, where I'm just like, ah, I'm, I'm, I don't need to hear from this app, you know, every other day. It's, it's just junking up my notifications than to do that. So there are other ways to kind of silence these apps. And I, I guess when I look at this, I'm like, well, what's really the difference then? Like, they're, they're both very similar in that regard, but like, what I envision happening is, and I think you're right.

(00:23:19):
Like I, that makes a lot of sense where you're coming from and I envision Google a year or two down the line being like, and now you can auto, you can archive any app you want, you know, it becomes, maybe it's a pixel, it becomes the next drop down the line. It, it becomes the next bit. Robin, you mean <laugh>? Yes, exactly. Well, I mean, anytime this this topic has come up, come up, that's exactly what jumps to my mind is Yep. The, that this really, the genesis of this idea was the next bit Robin. Robin was very forward thinking in that regard, but even then I remember how many years, how many years ago? I mean that, what was the Robin six years ago is just a guess, but something like that. Yeah, it was let's see, an expert Robin came out in, what year was it?

(00:24:07):
Cloud first, 20 16, 7 years ago. Okay. All right. So, so about that. But I mean, even then the idea of offloading apps to save storage felt like, yeah, but we have so much storage. Like, why is this an issue? You know what I mean? Like, it was really cool. It was like, and I just don't know that I really need that, but that's neat. And here we are seven years later and it's, it's like, come full circle again. It's just interesting how all this stuff works. So, good job, Robin. You are seven years ahead of the game. <Laugh> <laugh>. All right, we're gonna get into more news coming up, but first we're gonna take a break and thank the sponsor of this episode, actually a new sponsor on the TWI network and All About Android. Really cool stuff. Delete me. Have you ever searched for your name online?

(00:25:01):
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 Because these data sources are so wide and we've been on the internet for so long, you know, we, it just happens. And so it was, it was interesting and actually very cool to go through the onboarding process with Delete Me. There's a, there's a part of it where it asks you, you know, if you want to, you can upload a photo of your id, right? And that's primarily, which at first is like, wait a minute, why am I uploading my id? Well, because certain data sources won't remove, or data brokers won't remove data unless they know that it's coming from the person that's requesting it. And that's a way of verifying you are who you are and I don't want this information out there. And they go, okay, well that lines up with your id, let's strike it. And so I'm really curious to see what it does.

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Make sure you use the code twit. When you sign up, you'll get 20% off if you use that code. That's join delete me.com/twit. And again, that code twit, easy to remember, you'll get 20% off when you do that. And we thank Delete me for keeping us safe and secure and private online. Thank you. Delete me. It's great to have you on board. All right. No need for any of those bumpers or anything cuz we just got more news. We'll throw it over to you, Mishaal, because you got a couple of things here. That actually this first one is just, it's just kind of like what, like, this didn't happen for me, but it seems like it happened for you. It's a Google Pay. I don't know, does this qualify as a kerfuffle that ended up paying you $46 and I don't know, tell us a little bit about how this is going down for people with Google Pay.

Mishaal Rahman (00:31:37):
Well, I mean, like a lot of users, like myself included, all of a sudden noticed that when we opened the Google Pay app and swiped over to the deals tab, we noticed that there was a whole bunch of money, like free money just given to us just sitting there. And when we tapped on it, it said it was for dog fooding, the Google Pay remittance experience, <laugh>, and of course, none of us are employees at Google, so we can't be dog fooding their products in the first place. You know, that term means that you're testing internally some feature or experience. So clearly this was some kind of mistake and users were just getting money for nothing. Some, maybe some Google Pay like engineer was testing something and accidentally selected the wrong cohort. And a whole bunch of random users got a whole bunch of free money. I only got like $46 in my inbox.

Jason Howell (00:32:25):
I I was gonna say, did, did anybody here get, I got $70, like $70 and 82 cents or something like that. And I was like, as soon as it came in, I went to transfer it to my bank and then I got distracted and then I saw like the, then I got the, oops, sorry. You know, I was like, damn it. Dang it. Yeah. List it by that much <laugh>. I know. Yep. No, I don't have any look out hungry. Just the, the, the, the, the larger question though, Mishaal, is that, is that, yes, it was like clearly a, a mistake and clearly a problem, but like, did that cash actually go into people's account or did the app think you had that cash, right? Like,

Mishaal Rahman (00:33:01):
I think it was actually like, it, it reflected in my total. Cause I already had a balance before and it was added to that balance. And I can't verify it myself, but some people are saying that they were actually able to transfer that money out. And I do believe that because Google Pay in the email they sent afterwards, you know, confirming it was a bug. They said that if you had, if they can't retrieve the money, then you get to keep it. Which means that, geez, there were definitely people who

Jason Howell (00:33:25):
Out go, go, go, go able to transfer out. Right? <laugh>, wow, that's crazy. Yeah, no, I, I wish I was fascinated. I mean, your finger then. Yeah. Yeah.

Mishaal Rahman (00:33:36):
I assumed it was a bug, right? So of course if you transferred out right, they're probably gonna do a chargeback or maybe even close your account. So I didn't do anything, I just let it sit there, but, so I was surprised to see they didn't do anything to people who had just take, took the money and ran.

Jason Howell (00:33:49):
That's funny. That's interesting. Funny. Although it encourages people the next time there's like a site issue, you know, that happens or whatever, it encourages people to, to benefit or capitalize, make mistakes. Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, I've talked about slick deals on this show in the past, and I've realized over time that slick deals, it's kind of like, which for those who don't know, it's and I promise it will, it will make sense in the context of this. But Slick Deals is an app that follows when it's like a community driven app that monitors when the price of something goes so low that it's worth everybody in the Slick Deals community to know about. Because I think a, you know, a lot of people are just kind of, whoa, suddenly I can get this, you know, this laptop stand that's normally $50 on Amazon for $10, that's a really great sale, and then suddenly it just gets bombarded and everybody goes in there and buys $10 laptop stands or whatever.

(00:34:49):
And the, the kind of the controversy around it is that there are a lot of people that use that app to, to monitor for like, errors that sites will make. So, you know, that MacBook Pro that accidentally goes up on mom and pop electronic store, you know, website for a hundred dollars and then suddenly it hits slip slick deals and everybody goes there and scoops up all the a hundred dollars MacBook Pros. And, you know, the controversy around that is, well, you're hurting, you know, the the company by doing that. But then the flip side of that is, yeah, well don't publish incorrect information and, you know, anyways, so it just kind of, I think something like this, you know, has the potential to encourage people to capitalize on those mistakes when they happen. But it's coming from Google, so like I think Google can handle it. It's some other companies probably can't, but Google can definitely handle it. Uhoh of all people. What's their market cap? Yeah, they can handle it. The, they're, they're doing okay, I think now this is in the G app, right? It would Yes. G same as Google Pay. Like I, I, yes, Google the old wallet, whatever. Yeah, I know, I, I gave you wanna

Mishaal Rahman (00:35:57):
Get into that mess? Yeah, the G app, the one that's available for Americans and I think also in Singapore. Yeah, I don't know what other countries it's available in. I think it's expanded to a couple of others, but yeah, the new G app, not the old Google Pay app,

Jason Howell (00:36:11):
Right? Yes, I know it gets confusing. Like, I opened up G and I still have $7 and 50 cents in total rewards, so I don't have a bonus in here. And then I was like, well, maybe I'm in the wrong app, maybe I need to go into the other one. But anyways. Okay, well there you go. If you got some extra rewards, congratulations, let us know. AAA twit tv, we'd love to hear about it. <Laugh>. and then Mishaal, you also you also had this app streaming kind of trifecta of tweets or at least tweet threads. Anyways, tell us a little bit about this streaming apps from your Chromebook, right? Am I getting that right? Android 13

Mishaal Rahman (00:36:53):
From your phone.

Jason Howell (00:36:53):
From your phone. Chromebook. Okay, got it.

Mishaal Rahman (00:36:57):
Right. So back at c e s 2022. Yeah. All the way back in early 2022, Google announced that you'll be able to stream your messaging apps to your Chromebook. And so it's an over a year. And finally that feature has soft launched. Like Google hasn't made a formal announcement. They just quietly rolled out the update to the Android app that makes this possible. So what happened is users noticed that there was an update to an app called Cross Device Services on their Android phone. And this app under the hood basically creates a secondary display on your phone. It launches an app of your choice on that display, and then it creates a web stream that streams that display to your Chromebook. Oh, see? And then your Chromebook sends taps and touches and even microphone input back to the app that's running on that virtual display.

(00:37:47):
So you're literally like creating like a web stream and streaming like a, a hidden display on your phone with an app running on it to your Chromebook. So that's kind of like a, the nerdy under the hood scene behind the scenes of how it works. And yeah, this basically just lets you stream any app. You know, Google initially said it'd be messaging apps, but it's actually almost any app on your phone with a few exceptions. Like they don't let you stream financial apps or medical apps. I'm presuming for, you know, health and safety reasons mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and yeah, you can do whatever you normally do on your phone with those apps just from your Chromebook instead of your phone. You don't, you can even when your phone is locked, you can just open your Chromebook and launch from the app list on your phone and then just launch an app directly on your Chromebook and interact with it. There are some limitations right now, like you can't sync the clipboard because it's not set up for that. You can't move the window.

Jason Howell (00:38:38):
That would be so handy though. That would be so helpful to sync the clipboard. That seems like something, yes,

Mishaal Rahman (00:38:43):
There's, there's a in there, you know, people have been giving Google feedback on this stuff. I'm sure they've heard a lot of it. Especially the, the fact that you can't move or resize the window right now. I'm sure they have that like, time

Jason Howell (00:38:53):
Forward that's Yeah, like immediately in my head I'm like, oh yeah, you open up like a, you know, a Twitter client or whatever and then stretch it to full and that part of your screen is, you know, is that you can't do that. It's just

Mishaal Rahman (00:39:06):
Another, yeah, another key thing to note is that kind of, a lot of people assume that this would be a Pixel exclusive feature. Like you'd have to have a Pixel phone to be able to stream an app to a Chromebook, but it turns out that this is probably going to be available to a lot more Android devices. The only caveat being that they have to be running Android 13 or later, and they also have to have this app that I mentioned earlier across device services that has to be pre-installed by the oem. And so OEMs could ship that on new devices outta the box, or they could, you know, push an update to include that app on their devices. But if it's not pre-installed, then it's not gonna work. You can't just go to Google Play and download it and have it work on your device.

Jason Howell (00:39:46):
I wonder if that's, that's something that's gonna be baked into a future version of Android kind of as a, by default, not requiring that, that to be installed piecemeal.

Mishaal Rahman (00:39:56):
Well, it seems to be like the implementation of it, like that a cross device services app, it's like completely proprietary. So like Google offers it two OEMs, you know, who, who ask for it. So I, I don't think it'll ever be part of the OS because that would be, you know, in aos P or open source. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:40:14):
Oh, okay. All right. That makes sense. Interesting. Well, that's a great start. Kind of nice, nice extra feature to make to make Google's hardware feel a little bit more ecosystemy, you know, the way Apple's hardware does, right? Where it has kind of these cross device kind of communication slash streaming, you know, send this to that screen, that sort of thing Google's getting in on, on that with Chromebooks and other devices. And that's a good thing for the ecosystem play. So I, I will say this, this, this whole, the, the streaming thing sounds like visor. Yeah, right. Pfizer again, which I used, mines are still around, visors still around. In fact, I used it, we were doing a we did a livestream for IAM Boy and, and we decided to play Marvel Snap on the live stream and we were trying to figure out how to get the livestream to see my screen while playing the game. And I, and I was trying to figure out the best way to do that and I, I settled on Visor, which worked like a charm which was awesome. And it was, it was basically just Chrome casting my phone to the, my Mac desktop, and then I was able to pull that into the live stream and came out great. But it, it, it, it's neat to do that natively on a Chromebook because why, right? Yeah. Yeah. Neat.

Mishaal Rahman (00:41:35):
So yeah, that is, that is something I kind of wanted to differentiate. Like as you guys mentioned, there are other services that offer, you know, app streaming capabilities like Microsoft for example on Samsung devices and a couple of honor and other devices you can do the similar app streaming, but they all use different methods to do it. Like I think Microsoft's solution involves actually recording the screen and sending that as like a video feed, which is kind of sounds similar to what I just mentioned with what Google, but Google's using like platform APIs that are only available to system applications. And so it's a little more integrated Google's approach. Whereas Pfizer also uses, like, it requires you to have a D V enabled for example, so you have to enable developer options and so on. So there's various different approaches. Like Google's is the most integrated into the OS because it's Google. They can do that. But you know, it's not the only one that works. Mm-Hmm.

Jason Howell (00:42:29):
<Affirmative>. Interesting. Yep. I was just doing some searching on Visor and remembering it's pretty cool, you know, just remembering Kosh, how yeah, Kosh Kosh Duda Duda who was the developer of Pfizer and I guess still is friend of the show, a friend of the show was on many years ago a handful of times. I'm just kind of, I'm just reminded like, oh man, there was a time when Kosh was like constantly in Android News Circle, you know what I mean? He was, he was featured a lot in Android news cuz it was so much happening in the, I'd say probably the early 2010s. He was probably very, very active and I wonder what he is up to now. I'm looking at his Twitter feed and it's not very informative as far as like kind of what his current day-to-day is, but just kinda

Mishaal Rahman (00:43:22):
Curious. He's a, he's a very politically active commentator on Twitter. Yeah,

Jason Howell (00:43:26):
Yeah, yeah.

Mishaal Rahman (00:43:27):
Hopefully find out quickly <laugh>

Jason Howell (00:43:28):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Yeah, <laugh>. I'm looking at, I'm looking at his GitHub to see what if, what his latest has been. I mean, 2003, two thou over 2000 contributions in the last year to GitHub. So he's Okay, he's working. Yeah. So active. Yep. Right on. Keep it up. Kosh clockwork mod. Forgot about that. Yeah. Right, right. Yes, indeed. Yeah. <laugh>, I mean, I, I mean I paid for Visor, like, like he's probably making money. It's pretty good. If you go to, if you go to clockwork mod.com, you see his projects and you got Visor all cast Helium Manager visors had more than 1 million installs, like, yeah. Yeah, that's good. Good for him. Yeah. All right, well it's round this out a little bit. Some third party smart displays just, you know, just fell off the Google bandwagon a little bit. They lost a little, they got pushed off the bandwagon as as, as Google's falling outta love with them.

(00:44:22):
Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Exactly. <laugh> nine to five, Google actually spotted in a Google support article for Duo calls on Smart, smart displays the following update and it says quote unquote important, Google no longer provides software updates for these third party smart displays, including the Lenovo Smart Display seven, eight, and 10 inch. The J B L link view in an LG xbo AI think WK nine smart display. This could impact the quality of video calls and meetings. And all those third parties smart Displays first hit the market in January, 2018. They're announced at CES that year. Google had already disabled the web browser on third party Smart displays on February, 2022. And any development since then for Smart Displays has been for the first party, the first party Nest Hub displays, the, the products that Google does own and consider that Google's, Google's new smart display strategy is hinging on fuchsia, unsure if that has anything to do with this, but it's, you know, important to note that as well when you're thinking about the future of Smart Displays. And this appears to be the latest casualty of Google's retraction of enthusiasm in the assistant catalog <laugh>. And the thing is, is that like they just noticed that in our, but who knows how long it's been? Yeah, exactly. Right, right. Like, yeah, I, it's just hidden away in some Google Duo support thing. It's like, oh, by the way, third party Smart displays not really supporting those anymore. You gotta

Mishaal Rahman (00:45:47):
Get your, I mean, I, I think the writing was on the wall for a long time, considering all the features that have been coming to, you know, Google's, Google's first party Smart Displays and not third party ones. And then the fact that they killed off Web brass support, you know, because they didn't support Safe Search. Like I think this was expected to happen eventually. And yeah, I actually don't see this is like gonna, this is gonna be a hot take right now, but I actually don't see the current crop of Smart Displays actually being, you know, a thing for the long term. I think the feature is going towards full Android powered smart displays, such as the upcoming Pixel tablet. The

Jason Howell (00:46:23):
Pixel tablet being the format

Mishaal Rahman (00:46:24):
Of the feature.

(00:46:25):
Yeah. Yeah. I think that, you know, the full Android powered slash the the tablet hybrid smart display is going to be, you know, what's what we're gonna be seeing a lot more of in the future rather than these underpowered smart displays. I think there was another news article actually, like thing came out today. Like a lot of the, the new assistant, those games, those party games you can play like those stop working and there's a couple other things that just stop working on even Google's own smart displays. So like, you know, this stuff's kind of just breaking left and right and then they're killing off third party Smart Display sport. They're building a new tablet that doubles as a smart display. So like, and then there are the layoffs in the future department, and I think the Nest Hub Max itself doesn't have Fusia yet, or I think I recently got it. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but it's like, I think these non Android powered smart displays don't have a long life left. I think Pixel tablet and devices like that are where Google is headed.

Jason Howell (00:47:21):
But what about fuchsia man? Think of the fuchsia, not fuchsia. Poor Fge. Think of the fuchsia <laugh>, let's go back to the fuchsia <laugh>. It was a great experiment. Is fuchsia in anything else other than these smart displays right now? I, I mean, kind of seemed like, oh, Google's actually doing something with FIA now and it was the smart displays and now it seems like with the Pixel tablet, that's probably, you're probably right, they're pro probably moving away from that. So what happens with fuchsia now? It was a fun experiment along the way, I guess. Okay.

Mishaal Rahman (00:47:54):
Actually yeah, it's the, the Nest hub. Max does that fuchsia, but it's the second gen nest hub that doesn't have Fusia the most recent one. So,

Jason Howell (00:48:02):
You know, like, okay, what's going on that we tried it, we did the fuchsia thing and we're moving on <laugh>. It's not, it didn't, it wasn't revolutionary the way we thought it might be. So anyways, there's nothing to see here. Move along wild. All right, well move along then indeed. And we're gonna speaking of move along, speaking of move Along, we're gonna take a break before we talk about some apps to thank our next and final sponsor of the evening. Cause this episode of All About Android is brought to you by the fine folks at Cash Fly. And listen, customers won't hang around for your content to load. We've learned that, so don't give them a reason to leave dramatically. Increase your sites and app speed over long distances for global audiences with Cash. Fly with more than 3,500 clients in over 80 countries around the world.

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(00:51:25):
Just flowing into the app news. The app news is flowing from our fingertips and from our mouths as we talk about personal loan apps. And Google has been targeting had, had personal loan apps in its sites in its targets for a little while now. You may remember sometime in the last year, I think Google banned apps that offered an annual interest rate that exceeded 36%, if you can believe, loans at 36%. That's, that's horrible. So good on Google to make sure that, you know, at least attempt to make sure that apps that offer those horrible terms aren't available in the Play Store. But that's not all apparently. Some of these personal loan apps, you know, they require data setting, setting it all up. And that information, you know, can spell a lot about the person who's signing up for the loan.

(00:52:24):
You know, it could be access to photos, videos, contacts precise location, call logs, all this information that's shared with an app. And I think, from what I understand, it's come to light that, you know, some of the collections approaches for these personal loan apps has in some, at sometimes involved using that data to then go after, to leverage, essentially getting the money back. And so they might contact the relative of the person who loaned and, and put pressure on them, or shame, you know, them into paying back on these high interest loans, essentially. So not great conduct. Google wants to protect, you know, its users from that. And so they are making some changes to their rules. Debt collectors let's see here. Sorry, Google is making a change to, its, there it is. The personal loans policy.

(00:53:30):
So this applies to apps on the Play Store. Of course, Google can't do much about apps outside of the Play store as far as this is concerned. But new restrictions for these apps include being prohibited to access things, those things that I listed. Photos, videos, contacts, precise location, call logs, all that stuff. So if you have a personal loan app, you can't have access to those things. This goes into effect on May 31st. So that's the end of next month. And yeah, I think that's, that's pretty good news. I mean, you know, this is just one of those examples of like, okay, we're we're saying yes to sharing this, this data. Do we actually understand that? We're then also arming them with kinda like, you know, the, the leverage that will come back around to us later and bite us in the butt.

(00:54:22):
And I mean, in general, you probably don't want to be using these personal loan apps if you don't have to, because they can be a little skeezy. I mean, there's people who do well, of course. And you know what? Unfortunately, like some people are just in a horrible situation that yep. You know, they believe that this is their only option. And in some cases, I'm sure that that is probably true. 36% being the cap still, man, 36%, that's, I mean, 35% is allowed and that's just horrible. But I guess, where do you draw the line? But anyways, I, I support this. I think that's good to protect. Oh God, can you imagine it's 36% interest rate? Oh my God. No, I can't. It's horrible's little no good. Well, so well in, in better news if you, with all this AI and chatbot stuff and all, and all this sort of stuff, I, if you had keyboard integration on your Bingo card, you win.

(00:55:22):
You win. Because, because Microsoft is spreading the chatbot all around. And now the latest is swift Key. Remember Swift Key? We, we, we used to love Swift Key here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, now Microsoft who, who acquired Swift Key years ago and has also developed Bing Chat ai have now brought the two together and an awkward blind date as Bing Chat AI has been added to Swift Key with the tap of a button on any app. So this includes the, this includes AI chat with the bot as well as the tone mode feature that will rewrite text within the keyboard. And you must use the beta version for now as it's being openly tested. So if you're not happy with the way you write, let Bing write for you. There you go. Swift key. So there it is.

(00:56:06):
I mean, this seems to, in my mind, lean lend credence to the idea that these chatbots are nothing more than like you know, next level auto correct <laugh>. Yep. Pretty much. Which, I mean, it's kind of true in this context. It's like, I wrote this instead of my grammar, you know, correcting your grammar is like one step rewriting the entire sentence to say the same thing differently is the next step. And so I'm, I guess I'm not surprised. And Microsoft is all about, it's Bing chat. You know, they kind of got there before they got the scoop on, on chat G P T integration before anyone else did. They're really driving that hard. So I'm not surprised that this has come to Swift Key. Did anyone, anyone here still using Swift Key? I mean, I used to be Die Hard Swift key.

(00:56:53):
Me too, all the time. Me too. I think my wife still uses Swift Key. But I mean, I, I just used the default now because it got good enough that I didn't, I didn't feel like I needed Swift Key anymore, so I don't use it. Yeah, no, I, I'm, I'm Gboard fully gboard another ca another case of Google seeing what was being done in the marketplace and then doing it to the point where you don't consider a third party option. I don't know. I mean, Mishaal, did you ever, was Swift Key before your time? Or did you ever play a swift key where, how do you feel about it?

Mishaal Rahman (00:57:21):
I think I was a big swipe user, if you'll remember.

Jason Howell (00:57:24):
Yes. That was the battle, right? It was, are you on swipe or Swift Key, if you like your swipey typing.

Mishaal Rahman (00:57:31):
Then Gboard got, when, when they got swipe typing in and it became as good a swipe, if not better. That's when I switched over.

Jason Howell (00:57:37):
Yeah. Yeah. So the, so this actually now that, now that we're talking about the talking through this makes me wonder, when will Google bring Z hard into Gboard?

Mishaal Rahman (00:57:51):
I think it's the only

Jason Howell (00:57:52):
Time now. It's now it's not. It's not, it's not. So, yeah, it's not, so it's a matter of time. It's not so much about innovation, it's about keeping up with the Jones, right? Yeah. Right. Microsoft is doing it, you know? So yeah. So we'll see. We'll see about that. Whew. Ah, so, yes, and I mean, we've, we've seen the, the integration of assistant into all these apps. Prepare yourself for the integration of Bard into all these apps. Cuz it's, it's common. It, it's like NextGen assistant, you know, as far as the playbook is concerned, I, I have a feeling but I haven't actually played around with Bard, but I haven't heard really great things about it either. So even cousin of John Chad is saying Bard is very undercooked at the moment. So yeah, there's that. Well, kind of along the same lines actually the Google now launcher, so fire up the Taps Burke, because Google now launcher first launched in 2013 on the much celebrated, at least on this show.

(00:58:54):
And I think beyond Nexus five shutting down for good, it began its life as the Google experience launcher. Remember that gel? I remember, I remember talking about gel before being renamed as it saw a much wider release in 2014 as the Google now launcher. And the benefit of the launcher at the time, if you reme if you recall, was all those handy Google now cards. Google now was the thing. Those cards were useful. And this launcher really featured them. This was before the assistant, this was before the Pixel phones which, you know, all came kind of like as, as successors to this, the beginning of all that stuff. Yeah. And if you install the app now, you're gonna see one of those screens where it says this is gonna stop working in April, is I think what it says. So we don't know the exact date. It is now April 11th at the time of this recording. So could happen any day. We can now refer to it as the Google then launcher <laugh>. Oh, Jason. Wow. Ah, not only, not only did you come back after being gone for two weeks, you came back ready to play. Let's go. I, I respect it. <Laugh> the Googled, then to

Mishaal Rahman (01:00:17):
Play the, the contrarian a little bit. Okay, cool. It's all, you know, it's, it's a meme at this point to dunk on Google for killing, you know, old products. But this one's like, I, I don't know why it wasn't killed a long time ago, because yeah, the whole point of this launcher was to provide an integrated experience with, at the time it was called Google. Now, now it's, you know, under con multiple. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:00:39):
Name changes. What is Google? Now, now it's certainly not that.

Mishaal Rahman (01:00:42):
It's already around the time with Android NuGet, Google provided a way for OEM launchers to integrate Google now slash Discover slash Google Feed. And now you have that in most launchers. Now in know, first party launchers, you have the ability to swipe over to the leftmost screen and there's your Google interface. So yeah, what's the point of Google now launcher when every other launcher has that capability now? Absolutely no point. So that's why they discontinued it a while ago, and finally they're killing it off. Good.

Jason Howell (01:01:12):
Goodbye. Google, now, launcher. No, you're absolutely right. They, it really has no need to even exist anymore. But still, I mean, any, any time, like the, this is a big deal. When it came out, I remember, like, I was, I was all about it. I was super excited about it and just, you know, so, you know, it's kind of sad to say to go by officially, you know, sometimes it's gotta take by 10 years is a good run. That's a good run. I mean, I don't know how many of those, the last handful of years it was actually being used at all. Maybe if you had a device that old that hadn't received any updates or whatever, maybe, but even, even then, are those cards still working the way they used to? You know, I don't even know that they are. So I just remember when it came out, it was just so revolutionary.

(01:02:01):
Yeah. So, yeah. Oh man, it just, it it, it definitely felt like, oh, wow. You know, and, and, and the thing is, is that like, it's, it's the concept of bringing information forward to you versus you, you, you know, you going into Google, like the idea of pushing stuff relevant to your interest and all sort of stuff, you know? Yep. It, it's, it's not a new concept like, you know, getting back to the nineties with like Pointcast and stuff like that. But to see it integrated on the phone level at the time felt really game changer. E you know mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So it's funny how lo how fast 10 years goes by Jason. Yep. Yes indeed. 10 years flies by the Blink Vinai. So much. So. All right, well, now is a good time to hear from our good friend JR. Raphael who's been doing a Jason while you've been gone. I dunno if you've been watching Jr's tips. Yeah. But he's, he's been doing a, he's putting together a nice little series of YouTube related tips. And this is the third one in that series. And it's you know, YouTube Android tips power round. So hope, hope you're ready for some power. Jr take it away.

JR Raphael (01:03:10):
Hey, good to see everyone as always. So we're in the midst of a multi-week YouTube tip extravaganza, in case you haven't been paying attention. And this week we're turning our focus from tucked away settings in the YouTube Android app to some out of sight shortcuts that are well worth burning into your beautiful bird brain <laugh> and remembering to use some really, really good stuff here. So let's get into it. All right. First things first. I constantly find myself forgetting this, but you can skip back or forward by 10 seconds in any video you're watching by double tapping the left or right side of the video box while it's playing handy. Right? If you wanna skip even further, double tap once on the left of the box to go back or on the right to go forward. And then keep tapping. Every extra time you tap will add another 10 seconds onto your fast skip total.

(01:04:10):
And one more thing on this topic. If you find yourself skipping by more than 10 seconds at a time, more often than not, you can actually increase the YouTube android apps. Skip time increment. Yeah. Who knew? Just tap on your profile picture in the upper right corner of the app's main screen, then select settings followed by general find the option label, double tap to seek and change it setting from the default 10 seconds to 15, 20, 30, or 60. You can even bring it down to a five second starting point too, if you'd rather, whatever value you pick will be the amount of time that skipped for you when you first double tap on a video, and also the amount of time that's added onto that skip with each additional tap. Beyond that, all skipping related shenanigans aside, we've got five more invisible shortcuts to feed into our brains, and I promise ya, they're good ones.

(01:05:06):
Here we go. Once you tap on a video to open it in YouTube on your phone, you can swipe up anywhere on the video box, whether it's playing or pause to quickly move into a full screen landscape style view. Now, from that full screen view, you can then swipe up again to see related video suggestions and other available commands in a translucent overlay. And you can swipe down on the video to exit out of full screen mode and go back to the default vertical view in that standard vertical view. You can swipe down on a video box to minimize the video and get back to the YouTube home screen or whatever screen you're reviewing last. And last but not least, try tapping the little three.menu icon alongside any video in the list beneath the one that's actively playing, that'll give you access to shortcuts for sharing that video, saving it to a watch later list, or even downloading it for later viewing.

(01:06:04):
If you've got a YouTube premium subscription, whichever way you go, you'll never have to even open the video in question or stop what you're currently playing. Whew. That was like a rapid fire power round of YouTube Android tips. It's a lot to remember. I know. So if you want a cheat sheet, come sign up for my Android Intelligence newsletter. It gives you three new things to try every Friday. And if you reply to my welcome email, let me know that you came over from twit and you want my complete YouTube power user guide. All right. Back and send you a massive guidebook I put together with all the tips we just went over, and a bunch of other useful stuff for the YouTube app and website too. Just head over to android intel.net/twit to get started. That's android intel.net/twit. Next week we'll keep the YouTube theme going with a look at some worthwhile privacy enhancements to consider for your Android video watching adventures the joys of effective Time Wasting. Doesn't get much better than that. Back to you gang.

Jason Howell (01:07:11):
Dang. He unearthed my my singing on X factor. He sure did. Sexy, and I know it. I don't know how he found that, but there it was. And I look a lot different. You can find it. If anybody can find it, it's him. Yeah, I know. Not surprised. He's always searching. I know. <Laugh>, android, intel do net slash twit. Thank you JR as always for your awesome tips and your awesome newsletter. So everybody's check him out over there and we have some of your feedback coming up next. AAA at twit TV 3 47 show a a a Oh, wow, that's disturbing. We've got a, oh yeah, you, you, you missed last week. Yeah, that's just the ta that's just the taste of it. That's just a taste. Oh boy. Okay. So we have, our first email this week is Ian Winkler, who's a subscriber since episode Zero.

(01:08:15):
And Club Twit member. Thank you, Ian, for all of the support. That's a long time you've been with us the, the whole time. So that's, that's pretty awesome. Ian says, I have a question about security updates. I have a Samsung Galaxy S 10 Plus that I got about four years ago. I recently found out that it will no longer receive Android security updates. I'm still happy with the phone. It still makes phone calls and texts. The pictures are of acceptable quality. It runs all my apps and the screen looks great still. Do I need to get a new phone? What are my risks if I keep using it? Thanks, love the show. I mean, I think in general, the, the, the general, you know, sense is that yeah, once you stop receiving these regular updates, which it is confirmed that the S 10 series the initial S 10 devices that were released, I think there were some released later in the year, like the fan edition, I believe that isn't cut off entirely yet, but will be later, you know, probably in like six months.

(01:09:18):
 But the initial galaxy S 10 series will not be receiving any more updates. They've received them for the past four years, I think, at this point. And so that was Samsung's commitment at the time. Or maybe it's, yeah, no, that's, that's about right. You know, if you're not getting your updates, if you're not getting security updates, it does leave that device potentially exposed to something in the future. You should know that the update that the very last update that you received on this device does patch the XOs modem vulnerability. That was a big deal that we talked about on the show a little less than a month ago. So that does at least patch that, so that's good. But I mean, any future discoveries that relate to this phone, like, you're not gonna get those security updates, so it leaves you vulnerable.

(01:10:13):
 You could, I suppose you could install third party you know third party rom of some sort if you, if you trusted that. And the community, you know, is, is pretty active, I think still in creating things to allow you to kind of elongate the health and the life of your device. But maybe you don't feel comfortable with that. I mean, there, there's really no easy answer here. It's just a bummer when, when you reach the end of your update cycle and security is important to you. I hate to say it, it's probably you get a new device if you really wanna, you know, if you wanna be on that train, that's just what you have to do. I don't know, am I missing any, any important advice? Would you, is that where you land on this, Mishaal? Or do you have a different opinion?

Mishaal Rahman (01:10:59):
I think you kind of nailed you know, you hit the nail on the head there for the most part. There is one thing, you know, I'd like to put a caveat on is like the custom rom recommendation mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So yeah, there are custom ROMs or you know, o s p, you know, projects you can install that would extend the usable longevity of your device. Like if you want new features, new OS versions, but if you want to actually be fully protected against security vulnerabilities like the X and os modem ones, then you're gonna have to get a new phone because those kinds of issues can only be patched by the vendor who makes those components, which in this case would be Samsung. So yeah, if, if you, you really gotta look at your own threat model, right? Like, are you concerned about some of the vulnerabilities that you're seeing, like the XOs one, that sounds really bad, right?

(01:11:49):
 There was like the Android emergency calling bug, you know, a, a while back that, you know, could impact your ability to make emergency calls, right? Are you concerned about that affecting your device, right? Are you gonna put this in a closet? Are you gonna turn it into like a dedicated gaming device that you only turn on occasionally to play some mobile games, right? Like, if you're not intending to use it, putting any sensitive data on it, or, you know, you're not gonna do anything really important on it, then maybe it's okay to keep using. You know, as long as there's not some really nasty bug that exposes your other devices at home to something else, you know, like it's, it is really your, your own personal belief. Like, what are you comfortable with? Because like right now, if you keep using it, you have to, you're accepting that down the line there might be something, or there might already be some vulnerability that hasn't been disclosed yet and your device is vulnerable to it and the vendor won't do anything to update it. So you're, it's basically risk management, you know, what are you comfortable with? I personally would update, but that's just me.

Jason Howell (01:12:51):
Yeah. I mean, I don't know what else, what other option you're really left with. I'm, you know, someone in the chat room posted, traded in for a new thing. And that's a really good point. You know, Samsung often has pretty good trade-in values. Particularly, you know, there are some times a year where they have better trade-in values than others. We've seen some pretty insane trade-in values that Samsung has offered right around the time that they announced a new device. So right now might not be the best time as far as value is concerned, but like if you were getting the S 23 and what, what phone did you say? Yes, yes. S 20, S 10 plus. I did it for the S 10 and it's $180 trade-in, it's not very much, but so the S 10 plus is probably gonna be a higher trade-in value.

(01:13:39):
But you know, that cuts down the, the cost of a new device by a couple of hundred bucks. So that's helpful. That's, that actually gives you some extra value out of that device towards a new device. If you're gonna have to buy a new device anyways, you might as well get a couple hundred dollars off of it in the process and get, you know, a fully updated Samsung phone. If, if Samsung's your bag is that's what you wanna stick with, that's great. They've got a really great update promise now, you know, I think it's a year longer this time around if you're getting the S 23 so, or you could trade it for any Samsung device. So anyways, something to consider there. Because I think that is the only real option if security updates are really important to you. If you're really, you know, if you've analyzed, like Mishaal said, your threat model and you realize you need those updates, you're just not gonna get it on your phone anymore.

(01:14:32):
And you just kind of have to accept the fact that, hey, you got a lot of life out of that device, a lot of value, and if you can trade it and get a couple hundred dollars back from that value, then it's, it was an even better deal, <laugh>, right? And you get a new phone with an even longer security promise and you don't have to worry about it for the next five years. Boom. That's not bad in my opinion. Yeah. So there you go. So thanks for writing in Ian, I hope that's helpful. Thanks for sticking with us since episode Zero. It's awesome to have you here, <laugh> love, love, a long time listener. Sure. Yes, yes. Our next email comes from Jason in Chicago, who writes in and says, I've had the Pixel watch since launch. I came from a garment and there are definitely things I missed slash preferred on my Garmin.

(01:15:20):
However, I committed 100% to the Pixel Watch and kept myself from going back and forth. I could go on with the six month review of the Pixel watch, but this is about my recent vacation. The family went to New York City for spring break. Woo. Spring break. First time taking the kids parenthesis. Yes, Ron, we took 'em to carve. Good man, Jason. Good man. Show your kids the carve love. I I, I I respect you. Good job. Okay. <laugh>, so he says, and first time with the Pixel watch. Obviously they're the u they're the usual, usual, useful features of to track steps 18,000 to 25,000 a day. But the best feature was using Google Maps on the Pixel Watch. I could start the walking directions on my phone, then click the little map icon on the watch. The screen would show my next direction in a distance to turn of the location.

(01:16:04):
When I was a hundred feet away from my turn, I would get a little vibrate so I didn't have to stare at my watch. And even better, didn't have to pull my phone out every few minutes to make sure we're still going in the right direction. The Pixel watch isn't perfect and it definitely needs better app support, parenthesis hanging on and ho hanging on hoping Pocket Cast finally makes a watch app. But I have hoped that it'll continue to get better from back home in Chicago, Jason. And that's great. I'm g Jason, I'm glad to hear that you're happy with the Pixel watch, the Google Map kind of navigation a aspect is, is a, that's a nifty little thing of buzzes. So, you know, you have to, you, you, that you've got a direction change coming up. So it keeps your focus on seeing the great sites of the city, the best city in the world that you're, that you were visiting.

(01:16:45):
 But it, it's funny cuz that's a Google app, right? And of course it's optimized to work right on the Pixel Watch. And to your point, it's, it's still, you know, the other app developers need to embrace it. Good news for you, if you haven't heard the News Pockets is developing a updated where Os two or where yeah, where, where whatever the latest version of where os they're doing a new version of the podcasts podcast app for Pixel Watch. Just wish they had done that when the watch came out. That would've been a little better, but hopefully it will be better than the garbage podcast app. That's on the phone already. So so there you go. <Laugh> Ron. Not Minson words on that. Eh, you know, I just gotta be honest. Yeah, well, your, your experience was was painful, so Yeah, it was, you've earned that. You've earned that. Yep. <laugh>, thanks for writing in though, Jason and letting us know about your experience. Yeah, sounds like it's working for you and it does work for a lot of people. It also does not work for other people too. So I think it's kind of both sides of the, of the coin there. But thank you Jason. All right. And with that it is time for the email of the week.

(01:17:53):
Boy, the, the horn players got a little frightened there for a second. They sure did. They had to restart. Mark from Albany, New York writes in says episode 6 23. You talked about the short message dichotomy between Apple and Android. I've been on Android since 2011. My wife has been on Apple since, shortly afterwards. I've long embraced the green bubble life. The advent of rcs has been long awaited, but still too many of my messages are not in rcs. Anyway, yesterday I had the first of many conversations with my daughter, also 12 years old, of why she can't message her friends through iMessage. She doesn't understand how come iCloud doesn't work on her fire tab, how come she can't message them via meta's Facebook messenger kids. The conversation ended in tears and stomping up the stairs into her bedroom. I can't wait for the next round and ready yourself for having that parenting conversation with your next of kin, all of them to organize playing Roblox where they all chat.

(01:18:56):
Anyway, hopefully you get some April showers to start your summer mark from Albany, New York. Yeah, the oof the messaging pressure is real when it comes to school. Yeah, my older daughter, she's 13 I can't remember if I men mentioned this on the show before, but we recently, you know, finally kind of acquiesced and created rules about her getting a phone and everything and basically said, look, I've got an Android phone, you can have it for free. You know what I mean? Like, I've, I've, I've got a drawer of phones, it is like you <laugh>, I've got one that I can give you. You want a phone? Use my phones, kid, anybody? What kinda fuck do you want? I'm your dad. And I do phones for a living and I've got a phone. And she's like, Nope, I want an iPhone.

(01:19:46):
You know, her friends, they all have iPhones. And I was like, okay, well great. You can g you can have an iPhone you just have to pay for it. You have to buy it. <Laugh>, yes, because I've got a phone <laugh>, so I'm not gonna buy another one. I have a phone. It's this, if you want an iPhone, you gotta buy it. And she had already saved up some money, so she bought herself an iPhone. And you know, that that messaging pressure is, it's real, you know, but I'm, but I'm also the, the dad, like having conversations with her, like about the whole green bubble, blue bubble, you know, outta curiosity. Like, so what do your friends say about Green bubbles? And we talk, you know, she agrees about the ridiculousness of the whole thing and everything. But anyways, that's my perspective on this conversation.

(01:20:29):
How does it land for you, Ron? Because your kids are much younger, but this is probably in their future at some point. Oh, yeah. No, and, and I'm, I'm delaying it for as long as possible at this, at this point, they, they, they don't even know a phone is a thing that somebody can have. No, for sure. Yeah. It's gonna be a wild before you actually have to, although, although my daughter does now know how to take my wife's iPhone and take photos with it with the camera, so that, that's, that's horrifying <laugh>. And unfortunately my son has taken to playing Marvel Snap with me whenever I'm playing it. So which is, which is maddening because little, little four year old fingers trying to drag and drop things on the screen, like no, no, no, no. Over the, over there, over there.

(01:21:06):
Like, you're ruining my stats kid. I know. Exactly. <laugh>, that's how I feel about YouTube recommendations is my Spotify playlist. You know, my kids are just always ruining my stats. I can't trust any of these recommendations because they're all formed around them and not me. Anyways, <laugh> lot to look forward to in <laugh> in the coming years for you, Ron. But yeah, I I feel your pain, mark. I feel your pain one parent to another. Thanks for being the email of the week. All right, with that, we have reached the end of this episode of All About Android, and I don't know, it's kind of refreshing to not have the like, dive into specs of hardware and stuff this week. I gotta say. It was nice to have a news heavy episode this time around and awesome to have Mishaal on to talk through it because Mishaal, you offer a perspective that runs you know, on many of these stories runs deeper than Ron and like knee-jerk reactions, like, oh, I don't like that. And you're like, well, actually, let me tell you why it's like that. <Laugh>. Oh, okay. I get it. So Mishaal, always a pleasure getting you on the show. Thank you for for joining us once again. What's you up to? What do you want people to know about plug Away?

Mishaal Rahman (01:22:27):
Well, if you like learning about Android and you wanna find out what's gonna happen in Android 14, follow me on Twitter. I know that's a naughty place right now, but follow me on Twitter at Mishaal Rahman Mato on pretty much all the other socials like Telegram, Mastodon, et cetera. Same handle. So if you want Android News, that's where you can find it.

Jason Howell (01:22:48):
This is, this is the guy when it comes to Andrew Android News. He's the guy, Mishaal Rahman. Thank you, Mishaal, always a pleasure. And Ron, great to podcast with you once again. I, again, I have to thank you for any of these times that I end up taking off and, you know, you end up doing so of the legwork to allow me to do that. So I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah. all good. I, I happy to do it so you can get a, a well deserved break and, and I'm actually gonna miss next week, so There you go. There you go. So, yeah, so one, one good turn deserves another, et cetera. Yeah, yeah. But but yeah, so yeah, just follow me over on Twitter and Instagram at Ron xo. Nothing really else to report just, you know, working hard, getting ready for a, a, a vacation next week.

(01:23:35):
So excellent. We'll, I'll be, I'll be back on the 25th for our to talk about Android refreshed. We'll have a refreshing and awesome vacation while you're away and we will miss you. Big thanks to JR. Rayfield android intelligence, Android intel.net/twit. As a reminder for his newsletter, go get it. Big thank you to Burke for pushing the buttons and making all the tech work this week and every week on the show. Although I should say last week, Victor was in your, in your hot seat. So big thanks to Victor for filling in and ha well, that's what you get, Victor. I didn't play that sound effect. Burke played that sound effect, so you can throw your blame at him. You can find me at Jason Howell on Twitter. Jason sorry. Twit do social slash Jason Howell on Mastodon.

(01:24:30):
I'm just not doing a whole lot of social stuff right now and especially after the vacation. Wow, I went really silent, so sorry about that. But, you know, it's kind of refreshing. It's kind of nice. We'll see how long it lasts. Don't forget Club twit, our ad free subscription tier, all of our shows with no ads. You also get exclusive TWI plus podcast feed content, tons of extra content, including probably our pre-show from today where I talk all about the, the, the ups and the downs of my recent vacation in Costa Rica with my family far more ups, just a single story that that indicates the downs. But anyways, you can get that in that TWI Plus podcast feed. If you are a member of Club Twit, you also get access to our members only Discord. That's seven bucks a month at twit tv slash club twit. As for this show, we publish every Tuesday evening. Twit.Tv/A a a is the place to go. You can find all the ways to subscribe to All About Android, but going there jump out to YouTube if that's your thing. It's all there, including all of our past episodes, so twit.tv/a aa, and that's really about it. So thank y'all for watching and listening. We'll see you next time on All About Android. Bye everybody.

Ant Pruitt (01:25:51):
Hey, what's going on everybody? I am Ant Pruitt and I am the host of Hands-On Photography here on twit tv. I know you got yourself a fancy smartphone. You got yourself a fancy camera, but your pictures are still lacking. Can't quite figure out what the heck shutter speed means. Watch my show. I got you covered. Want to know more about just the I ISO and Exposure Triangle in general? Yeah, I got you covered. Or if you got all of that down, you want to get into lighting, you know, making things look better by changing the lights around you. I got you covered on that too. So check us out each and every Thursday here on the network. Go to twit.tv/hop and subscribe today