All About Android Episode 556 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 next on All About Android. It's one of my favorite episodes of the year. This is the episode where we take a look back at the year 2021 and pull out some of the biggest stories from the year. The news, the biggest Android news, the hardware news app news and our guest Huyen Tue Dao returns this week and gives us some of the biggest developer news from throughout the year. It's me, Ron Richards, Florence Ion. And of course Huyen Tue Dao. And it's coming at you right now on all about Android

New Speaker (00:00:37):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Jason Howell (00:00:41):
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Jason Howell (00:01:42):
Hello, welcome to All About Android episode 556. The last live episode of the year recorded on Tuesday, December 21st, 2021. Your week's source, the latest news hardware and apps for the Android faithful. I'm Jason Howell.

Ron Richards (00:01:57):
And I'm Ron Richards.

Florence Ion (00:01:59):
And I'm Florence Ion.

Jason Howell (00:02:01):
Oh, yes. It's the three of us, plus one welcoming back to the show. So great to get you back on when to Dow, how you doing randomly typing.com is the site. Yeah, it's good to see you. Good to see you too. Your friendly neighborhood and your developer is back that's right back. And, and back on a really wonder full episode, this is you know, we have little touch points. We talked about it from time to time touch points throughout the year. You know, moments where like we know those episodes are gonna be a lot of fun. Usually the pre slash post Google IO is, is a fun one.

Jason Howell (00:02:37):
Whatever the pixel release is, that's the big Samsung release, all those episodes that we know year after year, they're gonna be great. This is also one of my, my favorites. This is the last live episode of the year, which means we're looking back on the year to kind of pull out some of the, you know, the, the biggest news, the, the, both the ups and the downs, because, you know, as with every year in everything, but definitely in the world of Android, there's good. And there's bad when you go digging. And that's what this episode is all about. So it's really great to get you on win because we are gonna have we're of course, we're gonna do the, the, the staples, right? The news, the hardware, the apps. We are not gonna have any feedback this week instead. We're gonna do a little bit of a developer focus, look back. And yeah, I mean, you're perfect for that. So we appreciate you. <Laugh> I appreciate the chance to ramble about dev stuff as if I don't get that normally, but now you all have, I know, right? You live it, you breathe it, and we're asking you to do it again. Think it'll be a lot of fun,

Ron Richards (00:03:39):
But for a good reason. And this is, and this is, I love the look back. I love the end of the year show because every year with Android is an adventure, right. And like, and their do and turns and things we don't expect and things that happen that you could never have predicted and things that we predicted that didn't happen. Yeah, it's really just the greatest. So yeah.

Jason Howell (00:03:58):
Pixel foldable. Oh, to say it. Oh, pixel watch. There was, yeah. Yeah. Right. Yes. I, both of those followed the same category. I feel like

Ron Richards (00:04:07):
Those are still in the, not yet category. I think there's the, is still alive there, you know, I just, yeah.

Jason Howell (00:04:13):
So, hi. I, I feel the same way. I think that's gonna happen at some point. So to say that we have this, this rundown loaded would be an understatement. There's a lot in here. So let's waste no more time. Let's jump right in starting with the top Android news of the year, which gives Burke the chance to, to fire off that, that news bumper.

Burke (00:04:35):
Hey, Ron, Ron. Hey Ron, there's a lot of news. This here <laugh> a lot

Ron Richards (00:04:46):
Of news. Burke goes out the way he came in with a plan news bumper.

Jason Howell (00:04:52):
<Laugh> you were, you weren't even giving him an inch were like, no, he was doing

Ron Richards (00:04:59):
Flos what I was doing. Right.

Florence Ion (00:05:01):
Well, I'm, I'm saying Burke was doing the, the bit as the last live bit for the year.

Ron Richards (00:05:09):
Yes. And I was not playing with the bit because I had no problem playing for

Jason Howell (00:05:12):
The bit at all, so, wow. Okay. So we have a, we have a whole host, a whole selection of of moments from throughout the year by no means is this exhaustive and we're probably not gonna touch on every single thing. So, you know, as we were discussing prior to the show, we're probably just gonna kind of popcorn around here. And, you know, if there's anything that really grabs you feel free and speak up. I think, I think obvious the obvious choice for the top of the news, you know, the be, I guess news of the year has to be just the fact that Android 12 a is the current version of Android, but B was really a version of Android, unlike any that we've seen at least in probably five to seven years, right? This was a, this was a version of Android that looks a lot different. And I, I think that, you know, the argument could be made that, that some of the under the hood stuff, isn't quite up to par, you know, there've been people complaining about a lot of bugs and you know, maybe it didn't change enough outside of the visual refresh. Some people really hate the visual refresh, but no doubt about it. Android 12 looks different than Android has looked in a long time. And I like it. I don't know about y'all, but I'm enjoying it so far. What do y'all think?

Ron Richards (00:06:31):
I don't mind it don't

Jason Howell (00:06:34):
Don't say that don't mind it dot.

Ron Richards (00:06:36):
It's not like, I it's, it's not like I'm waking up every morning going, oh man, I'm so glad I'm on Android 12. Like, there are little things that, that are that I, I see the improvement and I feel it and that sort of thing. But then there are other things where I'm like, oh God, this is like, when I was trying to turn my phone off the other day and I felt like Burke because the button wasn't doing it right. But you know, so like, I, I don't feel like if it, like, I understand it was a major kind of, you know, this is, we talked about it being a major chapter and not a ma major paradigm shift, but a major evolution. And like, I do like the concept of the inheriting, the colors of your wallpaper and making it more customizable. But it just still it's, I can't get over the bulb ness of it and the little things here and there, I will say it does feel more refined than previous versions. It does feel more mature in that it feels like a, a, you know, a, a current version of a, of the OS, but it just, it, I don't knows. Not, not, not totally great. I don't know. What do you, what do you, what do you both, what is it?

Huyen Tue Dao (00:07:39):
You know, it's a lot. Yeah. When you wanna go, you wanna go first? Cause I'm no sure. I mean, okay. So kind of as a preface, I feel like I think I've been doing this too long, so I've been a inde for about 10 years now. And I think that in, in a lot of ways, like every new version of Andrews, Andrea is like a big deal, but it's also like, not a big deal for us. Because it usually means more work. And I think that after like 10 years of this, I'm like, it's all right. Like, I, I think that it's, it's, it's like one of two things, right? Like it might be like last year where there's not a visual refresh and can complain while it's kind of the same old, same old, or they do something drastic and that and then everyone hates it.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:08:19):
It's kind of like a never, it's like a no win situation. Right? No win. I, for sure, no win. There's no win, except for this win, I'm, I'm win, but that's true. That's true for Android point. You know, I, I kind of like certain things, I think that you, and, and it's never, you can never satisfy everyone, and this is like a dev thing, but you know, things like the overs scroll, which you might have come from, like other platforms, like some people like it, some people get nauseous with it. I kind of like the idea of using more space especially as a kind of accessibility issue. I like that they're trying new things. I like that it looks like, like, as you said, Ron, it looks a little more refined, but in terms of like big, like dramatic shifts, no. Like, and I think that for me, I've kind of like thought of like Android for a long time as like each, I think for the last, maybe five years, every new Android version has felt like a dot release. And what I mean by that is that it's just like a tiny upgrade, a tiny cleanup, a tiny little tweak of something. And I think even this with like the dramatic kind of visual shift, it still feels like a dot release, but one where they're kind of trying a couple different things. It's still like, the base is pretty, the same is pretty much the same. And from a dev perspective, like it's all just small improvements. So it kind of feels like, eh, it's alright, like trying new things it's

Jason Howell (00:09:33):
Right. But it looks a lot different. Yeah. But, but I think you're right. Yeah. It, it kind of seems like the, the majority of the Wang that came with Android 12 really is around this like material you around this spaciousness and and dead space. Some people might call it. What, what were your thoughts flow before we move on?

Florence Ion (00:09:53):
So I am probably gonna shift the commentary a little bit away from just like the core Android, because where I'm existing right now is on OnePlus is Android. And I'm, don't wanna talk about color west right now, but I do wanna talk about what is going to happen going into the new year's with the different skins, I guess, or whatever you, you wanna call it. I know Samsung has one UI OnePlus still has like oxygen, but I'm really curious how this is all going to be like, be implemented just like across the rest of the Android landscape.

Ron Richards (00:10:30):
Like, do they let the custom UIs inherit as much of the DNA of Android? 12 mm-hmm <affirmative>

Florence Ion (00:10:36):
<Affirmative> yeah. Right. Particularly of like material you two questions, but also the way that, like the new pixel six has very changed many structures, things like the consolidation of the networking settings and they, they just don't feel organic to me the a way they placed everything. And so I'm scared. That's also gonna make it to like the other, other manufacturers and then, you know, whatever Google decides, like, that's just the way it's gonna be for everybody else. And yeah, I just, I don't know how to see into that future. I feel like I could have maybe figured out a pattern before, but now I'm just, I'm, I'm really not sure where to go next in terms of like a food manufacturer, if you could see into

Ron Richards (00:11:25):
That future, I feel like you'd be much, much more wealthy than all of us <laugh> like,

Florence Ion (00:11:30):
I would, I would also be much less anxious, but right.

Jason Howell (00:11:35):
I mean, it's it occurs? Oh yeah. Go.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:11:38):
No, but I think that's a really good, a good point. And that's kind of, again, like speaking as a dev, I think that a lot of the kind of Blas Aness that I think sometimes, like I kind of approach these things is because that, you know, even if say pixel has like these new UI changes, how does, how is Samsung gonna handle it? How are other manufacturers gonna handle it? And things like material U it it's like it, it actually comes down to the developer and how much they wanna support this new thing. And that's kind of another thing when Android comes out, depending on who you are, like your team and what your app and what your needs are, you may not be rushing to use all the new cool things. You may not be rushing to bring material you into your app.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:12:18):
And it might be four or five years down the line when you actually come around to it. And then there's like a new thing. So it's exciting, but it's also, I think you're totally rightful that it's a question of how, how is it gonna be adopted? Is this gonna be adopted is gonna be something that, you know, takes off people. And it, it, it's kind of interesting because especially with material you, and I think it's fascinating because it's a great system. And I, I like, I like the idea because people have been using like gala, like for example, at galaxy themes for a long time, people have been using like custom launchers. So it kind of makes sense that, Hey, maybe Google should try a first party solution to try to allow people to customize their experience, but it still will come down to,okay.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:12:56):
Does an individual, does each app that I use actually take advantage of it? Is it going to show up at all? Is it gonna show up? Well, so it's like, that's a, it's, it's like a great opportunity, but then it's like, is anyone actually going to use this to a point where it's gonna kick critical mass and it's going to be like, how things are done from now on, you're just gonna have to build an app that respects material you, or you're just gonna completely ignore it. So I think that's a really great question though.

Jason Howell (00:13:20):
And there's so many apps and so many devices running so many different versions that you have to imagine, you know, as with everything on Android, right? Like this like material you adherence will be as just, just as fragmented as <laugh> as anything thing else.

Florence Ion (00:13:35):
Right. Has anything really changed? Sometimes it feels a little, like we're stuck in this stagnation and maybe it has to do with the fact that, you know, we're still in this pandemic. We really still are like living through the same thing every day. But in regards to Android, I do feel this sort of this lull. I wanna say it feels like kind of a lull and it feels like I've written this story 12 other times already. Mm.

Jason Howell (00:14:03):
Yeah. I, I could, I can understand where you're coming from at the same time. I kind of feel like that's why Android 12 being a design focused shift was kind of the right time, in my opinion, because even if it's, even if it's a shallow amount of, of updates underneath, you know, the, the, the graphics overhaul, at least there's something that the average user can look at and go, oh, wow. The last time I used Android, it didn't look like that. It looked very different. It was a little bit more basic or blah, blah, blah. And no, this, this looks very modern. You know, at least there's something there to look and point at and say, yes, that's different. Or whether it's better or not, I don't know. But, or especially,

Ron Richards (00:14:45):
Or especially like, I, I think that the it's no surprise that the pixel six and the pixel six pro and the hardware launch that's timed with Android 12 has been so effective because not only like are people re-look at, you know, our, our, you know, customers are re-look at pixel phones, but the, the Android they see on that pixel phone looks different. Right. And the looks engaging and it looks, you know, kind of you know, draw wrong you in to try to, you know, why does it look like that? That's not the end, like to you mention to the point you mentioned Jason, that's not the Android. I remember. And so if that allows Google to get more, you know, kind of market share in the hardware space and then eventually give us a pixel watch and a foldable pixel and things like that, then all the better.

Ron Richards (00:15:27):
I mean, the thing is, is that you can't, I mean, you can't say stagnant, you know, like, like, you know, as much as it's funny, because it's like, I often hear a lot of friends and my wife and folks like that complain about like apps updating and changing. Why do they change it? I like the way it works and stuff like that because you, you don't want it to, you don't want it to be the same thing forever. So, you know, it's, it's gonna have to change the question is, you know, what goes from here once Android 12, 2, 12 L rolls out once we see, you know, kind of the bigger device kind of support, and then we see where they go with it. And then, I mean, honestly, I feel like it's gonna be no time before we find out what Android 13 is gonna be all about in what may like, or April, like, so

Jason Howell (00:16:05):
I know, you know, it never sleeps, right. I mean, it never does. And we, we have this bridge with 12 L so 13, once that happens, it's gonna be like my goodness developers, I feel for you, it's just constantly <laugh>. Do you think

Huyen Tue Dao (00:16:18):
They're gonna do 13 though? Cause isn't it like bad luck?

Ron Richards (00:16:22):
13 is my lucky number. So it's all in the eye that be like, oh,

Huyen Tue Dao (00:16:25):
Oh, that's very on brand for Ron.

Ron Richards (00:16:28):
Right. But also, but like, but that's like, totally like the, you know, like didn't, didn't Sam, so just skip the number. Right. Didn't they just jump to 20

Jason Howell (00:16:35):
Or they did. Did they went to 20? Yeah. Yeah. They

Ron Richards (00:16:37):
Jumped to you. Can't just do that. You can't or, or pull a Microsoft and call it Android, you know, XP or something like that. I mean,

Jason Howell (00:16:43):
I mean, Samsung did it and now, now nobody's still really, I mean, other than you right now, nobody's really spending a whole lot of time going, why didn't you do 13 instead of 20?

Huyen Tue Dao (00:16:55):
I won't be bad if we go back to sweets though. I kind of miss like the treat names for Andrew. Yeah. And like all the, the funny marketing and like the hints and all that kind of, I kind of miss it. And as, as, as a dev, sometimes someone is asking me like, what feature did this come in? I was like, I don't know, like there's number.

Jason Howell (00:17:11):
They gotta remember number numbers.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:17:13):
I, I treats, I remember Oreo. I remember marshal. I don't know what's going on anymore.

Jason Howell (00:17:17):
<Laugh> right. Dang it. Now I gotta remember a boring number instead of a treat that I can eat just for the heck of it. We're all

Huyen Tue Dao (00:17:24):
Just numbers in the

Jason Howell (00:17:25):
End. Yes. Oh, so very true. So very true. Well speaking of numbers we're never gonna get through all these stories I could already tell. So that's okay. It's okay. We'll we'll just do what we do. It's it's fine. But this, this, this is related. The number of of years that phones are being updated. This was a year where we got a little bit of, of transition there, right? Samsung now offering four years of security updates on its phones. Google came out with the five year promise, but then, or, or rather we knew that it was gonna be five years and then eventually they clarified, well, it's three years of, of major updates on pixel devices and two years of security, but that's a total of five. And then we had fair phone story not too long ago. In fact, this was back in September fair phone, four, five year warranty aims for six years of updates. So there's more, there's more attention being paid, I suppose. There's, there's kind of like a, a beating drum that is moving the update duration a little bit longer than it's ever been, at least in the Android realm. And that feels, that feels like a promising improvement, even if it isn't perfect. It's better.

Ron Richards (00:18:38):
Yeah. I, I felt like we, every time we turned around the story of, you know, update length kept on coming up this year, I feel like that, you know, this, this was one, this was the theme that happened quite throughout, I think is great. I mean, you know, it's Def you know, like we, you know, the, I, I was talking over, we had our, you know, first kind of holiday event this past weekend with family. And I was talking to somebody who, you know, who uses Android and another person in the family is trying to get them to use iOS. And we were talking about it. I was trying to explain planned obsolescence to them, you know, cuz they're all normals. And and, and the whole, you know, you know, the, the idea of a new phone every two years that the carriers came up with 20 years ago and you know, and apple and other manufacturers really have held onto and have, have, you know, have, have really, you know, supported.

Ron Richards (00:19:23):
But it doesn't, you know, it's not consumer friendly. Like you, you might, you know, you might have a, you know, I know a lot of people who are still rocking phones that are, or, you know, three, four years later, they should still have security updates. Right. So yeah, they should. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's part of that, that, that negotiation that every manufacturer makes with their, with their customers and consumers. And, and how can you be the most, you know, keeping your line moving forward, but also not forgetting about people who supported you in the past.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:19:50):
Yeah. I think it's real important, especially like even as like an individual active developer, I, I still continue to be surprised at what we call like the long tail of our clients. It's basically kind of like the oldest versions that we see people using and we, you know, and, and the, the OS is that they're running. And it's always nice to think about just the flagships. It's nice to think about what's new, but I, and I, I love this about the platform is that Android a lot is driven by, you know people that aren't using flagship phones, people that want affordable devices, people that hang onto their devices, and it's easier to dev for all the new fun stuff, but, you know, the long tail, the people that hold on are, who are, you know, who made Android. Great. Thank you all. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and so I, as a, as a dev, it's harder, but as a consumer, I really appreciate that. So I do I think that's, it's a good thing cuz that, because again, like the markets, like the, the non-techy people that aren't changing their phone every year are I, I think who, who has made Android great. And is who keeps driving Android on keeping our records share up. So it's a good thing overall.

Jason Howell (00:20:53):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That, I mean, that's exactly what makes Android the most used mobile platform on, in existence, you know, even though iPhone gets so much of the the, the news and the, and the, you know, I don't know, there's just a, there's, there's a lot of communication between, well, I guess, you know, what here in the us, which is where we, we do our show, obviously there's a lot around iPhone, but that's the point, right? Worldwide, it's, it's Android really at the top of the heap. So, you know, good, good to not lose sight of that for sure. There's a few others in here, but I, I realize I'm picking would, would any of you have one? Well, yeah. You know what,

Ron Richards (00:21:42):
Honestly, I think the, the one, two punch and, you know, happen to be the next ones in there, but like basically what happened in the world of gaming I think, is worth noting. You know, probably, you know, kind of like an up and I don't even know how to describe 'em. They were just crazy you know, Google kind of whatever's going on with stadia, you know, in terms of, in terms of shutting down the development studio. And, you know, we saw crazy offers about stadia all through the year where they were offering the service for, you know, if you were a YouTube TV subscriber and things like that. And then getting news like this it's really like the head is kind of spitting as to is studio, is stadia studio is stadia happening or not? Is it something that, that you can invest in or not?

Ron Richards (00:22:25):
And then at the same time as that's happening, just the drama of epic epic games that makers of Fortnite, you know, kind of you know, going to battle in court first against apple. And they're also in court with, with Google about, you know, the, the practices of the app store and how it affects epic and the ramifications that that will have to other developers, not only in, in gaming, but just apps in general. I think is just like, you know, possibly one of the stories of the year, because it has the opportunity to turn the entire ecosystem of mobile and, you know, Apple's app store, vice grip and the Google play store and, and all that sort of stuff, you know, honest year. And we saw for, you know, years, you know, decades old shifts in, you know, decades old agreements between apple and Google with developers shift to become more developer friendly and less, you know, and, and, you know, getting more revenue and that sort of thing. And I think it's, you know, it has the, has the opportunity to really change the landscape potentially for a, a subset of developers who have an, you know, push enough business through their apps and that sort of thing. I mean, it just, it was kind of, you know, a big year for that, in that regard. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>,

Jason Howell (00:23:36):
Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> how I'm curious from your perspective when, I mean, throughout the year, the apple versus epic, you know, and then also by extension epic versus Google. I mean, they were kind of going hand in hand, but I feel like we heard more about apple versus epic, even though it was kind of the same battle on both sides. How, from your perspective, and, and maybe, maybe you talked with developers about this maybe you haven't, and that would be the story too, is like, man, you know, they don't really care, but what, how are developers feeling about kind of the results of this case from the perspective of what they're, what you are now enabled to do when it comes to playing in these, in these wild gardens and, you know, choosing your own payments platform and all that kind of stuff.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:24:21):
It's really complicated to be perfectly honest, like, especially like where I work, where we're part of like a larger company. We have legal and marketing help us with that. And it, it is very difficult. I think that like for example, for us where we have kind of like a large company we generally are just very cautious. Like I think day to day, it doesn't matter too much to us. Like, I'm not like this is not something that kind of impacts us even, you know, say every week or every month, it's something that will kind of start kind of from our legal marketing departments and then trickle down to us. I'm sure that this is probably more scary for independent developers where playing in that space. But like, for example, just my experience is always just like, we have to think every single time that we even mention, like anything regarding someone giving us money for something we need to consult something we need to, we need to consult someone.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:25:11):
We need to determine whether our messaging, whether even just like the most innocuous, like little bit of text or image is kind of violating any kind of any, any of these kind of like policies. So it is something that we're kind of cautious of. I'd say, like, I would definitely feel for like independent developers trying to kind of monetize in this space. But yeah, we kind of just all watch and kind of wait to see what what the fallout is. Like for us, we, I think like, especially the way we monetize is pretty like straightforward. So it, it is more just kind of like a curiosity, but yeah, I would definitely say that the is again for especially game developers and in any developers trying to do interesting things in terms of how you can, you know, monetize and, and, and make money and, and, and like build services through Android. It's pretty interesting. But you it's, it's more like you kinda have to shake it out and if they make you dance, you dance yeah. Or legal or marketing makes you dance,

Jason Howell (00:26:12):
It's kinda like leave, leave, leave the dirty work to, to epic, to, to get in there. And <laugh> yeah, yeah. And to, to do all that, and we'll see where it all ends up. I mean, it really does seem like on the other side of that, it ends up being a better, well, it's just brings more choice, more capability from my understanding anyways, to developers, as far as how they want to represent their apps and how they wanna do business inside of their apps. So but it's a really big shift. I mean, things have been one way for years, you know, a mobile on these mobile platforms and now that's kind of loosening up and there's a whole bunch of reasons, not just epic versus apple that are the reasons why that's starting to change, but hopefully that's good for the developer, you know, and brings more, more options, more choice for the user.

Jason Howell (00:27:01):
So, absolutely. Yeah. and then we don't really have time for these last few, but I figure I'll just rattle 'em off anyways, just so that we got them in there. Another thing was the the Google finalized, its acquisition of Fitbit that started last year, but it finalized this year. And then in the next block, we're gonna talk a little bit about the galaxy watch four, which is kind of I mean, it's, it's sort of part of this, but I think it's, it's a question that remains, like how does this Fitbit acquisition really tie into Google's development of where, and trying to revitalize its wearable strategy galaxy watch four is kind of the, the prime, the first example of that. We'll talk about that after the break. And then finally, and, and, you know, anytime FIA comes up flow, I always think of you, it's just, it's attached to you at this point by Google actually doing something with FIA OS on a public facing way. This year, we saw our first devices running go Fusia OS and it started with the first gen nest hub, which really didn't seem to change much. Right. Flo it's kind of the same, just a different,

Florence Ion (00:28:12):
I'm not even, I completely forgot that it's running it until you brought it up. Exactly. The show doc today. So exactly. I think that was the point <laugh>.

Jason Howell (00:28:21):
Yeah. Right, right. If they, if they wanted it to just be a replacement for some reason, maybe, maybe we're like, it's still too early. Maybe we still don't truly understand what Google's overall vision is for FIA mm-hmm <affirmative>

Florence Ion (00:28:34):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and let's not forget, Google's gonna be doing some new things to like the nest, the new nest hub beginning I next year. I think they're gonna start like charging for no, excuse me. Beginning in 2023, they're gonna start charging for like sleep tracking. Oh,

Jason Howell (00:28:50):
That's right. Yeah. A few years after that, that feature was rolled out onto, onto yeah. A device is like a key feature. Yeah.

Florence Ion (00:28:58):
Interesting. And I don't know if that necessarily has anything like immediately to do with the few show. S but it's making me think about what's coming next from that realm. So

Jason Howell (00:29:06):
Yeah, no question 22. Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:29:09):
<Laugh> I will say I was gonna make some snarky joke that maybe in those changes they can make it work, but period, but I, I will, I will give it credit that I pulled my I don't even know how I, I didn't even know it existed, but the kids were going crazy and we were in the, a bedroom and there's a Google mini, Google home mini still in there, the little hockey puck, and I just needed them to calm down for a second. So I go, Hey, Hey kids. And I said, you know, Hey, GE call Santa. Cause I'm like, they must have done something. And there's an, an entire call Santa Claus bit that you can go to where he talks to you and asks you questions and things happen. I won't spoil what it is. I'll tell everyone to do it, but oh, okay.

Ron Richards (00:29:51):
What was, what was great was after the first, you know, the first couple times they didn't quite understand and we get it hours later, I was with my son and we did it again and Santa the question and he was like, shouting the answer. Like he totally under he's like I saw the moment that he got it and we did, we did it like five more times. And like, when you finish it, Santa goes, oh, that was great. Do you wanna do it again? And if you say, yes, you do, you go through the same thing, but it goes through different paths. And every time my son would be like, no, and so then Santa would say goodbye. And then like two seconds, he go call Santa. And so then we call Santa again. <Laugh> so, so like good job, Google home for like, you know, engaging the kids during the holidays that said after 24 hours of it, I wish there was a different game to play with Santa. So that's

Jason Howell (00:30:38):
Yeah. I can understand

Ron Richards (00:30:39):
That. I think we've heard, we've heard every, I knew that I can go down. So <laugh>, <laugh>

Jason Howell (00:30:44):
That choose your own adventure? You you've, you've exhausted all adventures. All right. Well I'm sure that we missed some top news in there, but that's what we got for right now. We've got plenty more coming up, but first let's take a break. Thank sponsored this episode that is imperfect foods every day, delicious groceries fall through the cracks of our food system, primarily because of how they look, right. When you go to a grocery store and you see the food on the shelves, most of the time, often what you're seeing there ha has been kind of picked and chosen to be represented there. Some of the imperfect foods that would normally end up on the shelf, aren't placed on the shelf. For whatever reason, they believe that a fruit should be completely perfect and unblemished in every way, whatever it may be.

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35% well visit imperfect foods.com. And you can see if they deliver in your area, hopefully they do. And once you sign up, you can personalize your weekly grocery order with fresh seasonal produce pantry staples yummy snacks. I got a bag of these chocolate covered pretzels, but with like candy canes sprinkles on them. Oh, they're so good. <Laugh> like, I was, I started one night while I was watching a movie and then I looked down and half the bag was gone. Like I literally could not stop. <Laugh> your is gonna arrive on the same day each week. And that cuts down on, on delivery, right? And instead of having to go to individual trips throughout the week, imperfect foods actually has this really cool model. They deliver weekly by neighborhood and that produces 25 to 75% fewer emissions. Then those individual trips that you might take to the grocery store, and you can say goodbye to packaging, guilt and perfect foods is the only national grocery delivery company that makes it easy to return your packaging after every order really cool stuff.

Jason Howell (00:33:36):
You get that box, you know, all of your food is cold inside. It's ready to go into your refrigerator or cook up immediately. The, the ordering process is awesome. You know, you can tell them, you can tell in perfect foods, if you choose to shop organic or you don't, or you kind of don't care and they can kind, and then you can kind of tailor your box. They'll, they'll come up with ideas for what the should be in the box, but you can also tailor it and say, I don't, you know, actually eat radishes, but I do eat, you know, apples or whatever the case may be right now, imperfect foods is offering our listeners 20% off your first four orders. When you go to imperfect foods.com, make sure you use promo code Android. Again, 20% off your first four orders. That's up to an $80 value@imperfectfoods.com and make sure you use that promo code Android. That's easy to remember imperfect foods.com, promo code Android, and we thank imperfect foods for their support of all about Android. All right. We've got some hardware, top hardware news of the year right now, The, the top hardware, you know though. Yeah. The, and no doubt, no question. I think you would all agree. The top hardware new of the years, the Microsoft duo two. Am I wrong? It sounds like I'm wrong.

Florence Ion (00:35:09):
Laugh. It's it's my, it's my new watch face. Oh

Jason Howell (00:35:13):
Man. That's the top hardware is your new watch face. That's the top news. My top hardware. All right. So what is your, what is your new watch face for those

Florence Ion (00:35:21):
Listening? Wow. Ron can see it. It's it's the 9 0 2 oh Walsh family. Christmas portrait portrait, of course. Right on of course my galaxy watch four, which is why I brought it. I wasn't just showing it, you know, I made that on the galaxy watch four.

Jason Howell (00:35:37):
So, so you bring up galaxy watch four. Let's talk about it. What do you, what do you like about galaxy watch for,

Florence Ion (00:35:43):
I know we could have like gotten in straight into the pixel, but nah, everybody's gonna talk it's yeah, we already know. It's like whatever the biggest thing and the, yes, we get it. No, but the galaxy watch four is kind of the first Android smart watch in years that has come out that people actually wanna pie and use. So it's no surprise that it comes from Samsung because whatever Google is doing the last couple years with fossil and Michael cos and all those fashion brands that were coming on. Yeah. It just wasn't working not to mention the Qualcomm to that everybody was using was just supremely, subpar. Yeah. It's been a journey to kind of get back to where we are. And so when Samsung announced this watch, I immediately preordered one, I was already on an older galaxy watch. Active is what they were called in the first gen.

Florence Ion (00:36:38):
I've been mostly satisfied with the what's happening here. It's still a hybrid wear OS ties, well, not ties, but a hybrid wear OS Samsung situation. And I'm, you know, I don't have like the ability to back up Android apps on it. I can only back up the Samsung part of it. So there's still like kinks that need be, need to be worked out, but it was very indicative of the journey. It's very indicative of where we're headed and kind of the journey that's ahead in wearables. And I'm just kind of praying that it's not too late.

Jason Howell (00:37:16):
Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the big question, right? Is it it too late? Is, is it too late for Google to care about its wearable strategy that it really, you know, for quite a while, felt kind of like, it really didn't or it had other priorities. I liked that watch and then I stopped wearing it, which is what I do with all wearables. And so I just, again, once again, I'm, I'm reminded like, maybe I'm just not a wearables guy, like every time. And I really liked this one too.

Florence Ion (00:37:43):
I'm wearing it every single day. And I work from home. Like, I, I don't, yeah. Even on my busiest days, I'll like, know how much I moved, which is whatever, but <laugh>, it's, they really Samsung really kind of figured out how to make this wearables thing work for them. And I now if only OnePlus would take a note

Jason Howell (00:38:05):
<Laugh> with the, that watch OnePlus had the,

Florence Ion (00:38:08):
That watch that they put out this year.

Jason Howell (00:38:10):
Yeah. Now, I mean, totally different, different category too. You know, that, that watch actually I have that watch right here. It's got a little layer of dust on it to forgive the little, the little here. I'll wipe it off. I'll wipe it off. This is my life. But yeah, you know, it was a total different price category, the OnePlus watch. So kind of apples to oranges. It wasn't wearing it wasn't running where OS right. It's running OnePlus, his own wearable OS. And I mean, it's just, it's fine. I mean, this is a hundred, some odd dollars, pretty inexpensive.

Florence Ion (00:38:47):
Isn't it? I thought it was a maze fits OS.

Jason Howell (00:38:50):
What is it?

Florence Ion (00:38:52):
Maze fits OS it's like called art T O S realtime OS. Oh, at least. That's what I read. I read it on like a,

Jason Howell (00:39:01):
Like earlier custom OS based on RT OS.

Florence Ion (00:39:04):
Ah, okay. Sorry. Based on memory. There you go. But

Jason Howell (00:39:08):
Good memory. Yeah, we

Ron Richards (00:39:12):
Really buried the, we really buried the lead on the ear here.

Jason Howell (00:39:15):
Hey, we can go. We, we know we're gonna talk about the pixel. Of course we are. Why start with it? Wait. Cause here's the thing, Jason,

Ron Richards (00:39:21):
Do we have? Here's the thing, I don't think we talked about the pixels, the pixel six or the pixel six pro enough this

Jason Howell (00:39:27):
Year, enough this year. Yeah. There's some people that are yelling at their pot at their their phone right now. Like you don't even need to, you've talked about it enough. I mean, what, what else is there to say that we haven't already said, you know, that you either love it or you hate it. I really enjoy my pixel six. I know that it, that, you know, a lot of people have complained about the fingerprint sensor and, and other bugs with it. And I suppose at times I've encountered those, but I'm so used to encountering those on literally every phone I've ever used. That I, I guess I, I forgive it, but when you have the six as well, like mm-hmm, <affirmative> like, I don't know. What's, what's your feeling like as far as, you know, the devices, why, why were you moved to get the six and you weren't moved to get it like the, a OnePlus phone this year? Let's say

Huyen Tue Dao (00:40:12):
I mean, I'm always curious to see what Google is doing. And I think that, especially with, you know, pixels always being kind of like the Android prime experience, it's always kind of important as a developer to kind of see what stock Android is. Even though probably, I mean, it's fair to say, like, I think a, a majority of Android users not using stock, it's always kind of important to see what's going on. And I think that the hardware did excite me this year. Like I loved like this you're like bump in the back, like, okay, that's different. And I don't know, like the screen looked really good. Like everything kind of fits together. And for me, I I've really enjoyed using it. I've enjoy, like I don't, I have, I have meat moderate to small hands and it's a big screen pardon me, but I, I don't mind using it.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:40:56):
And I just, I've just enjoyed it. Like I, as a rule, I try to get the pixel phones just to see what all the fuss is about. And this is like the first year where I feel like, okay, fus, fuss kind of justified. And I'm excited. Yeah, just, just that. I actually, I was with my sister and my new niece recently and, you know, taking pictures and it's kind of the quality. Like, I, I think the cameras in general have always been at least a talking point for pixels ever since like, they, they were first manufacturer and, you know, they, they've kind of been like a little bit plateau, but like, I remember like taking a video of my little niece. Who's like, you know, this from just little eight month old tomorrow. And the it's really obvious kind of like the difference in like, kind of like how interest, how, how high quality the video is and how many options there are.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:41:44):
I even got to use like the magic eraser, because we took a really cute picture of her and there was like a vacuum, like right over her head. So I think there's a lot to be said about this. And I think this is a good return to form. And I, I like the idea that they're trying to push the pixels in a unique direction. You know, we, we don't need another okay. Like standard, like Google phone. We, we wanna see like, what are the craziest things that you could do? You know, Samsung's got like the flips and the folds and everything. What can you do with the <affirmative> pixel? What can you do with a regular form factor phone? And it it's good. I actually was really impressed also by the screen, like another thing, like my sister was watching me kind of like do things she's like, what is, why does your screen seem so alive? And I was like, yeah, dude, that's like that high, you know, frequency screen. That's right. That's right. Yeah. So, yes. So I, I, I, I love it. Like, it's like the first phone I've actually genuinely been like, okay, this wasn't just like a, I'm gonna buy the pixel phone because I'm a dev it's, it's a device that I actually enjoyed.

Jason Howell (00:42:42):
Right. And it is the device that flow does not actually enjoy. In fact flow. Would you consider, so your daily driver is the one plus nine pro, is that right? Would you consider no, just the nine, the nine, just the, just the, do you consider that one of the top devices of the year? I mean, you're, it's the one that you're using over the, over the pixel. It's fine.

Florence Ion (00:43:01):
Look, nothing beats that camera on the pixel. Okay. I'm gonna tell you that and true. The pixel I'm probably because I have, I have both of them on loan from GOs. I'm probably gonna put them on little trip odds on Christmas because I wanted my Christmas photos to be with the pixel, but, you know, but, but for an everyday carry like an everyday phone, the one plus nine was awesome. And part of the reason that I started using it is because it had so much room. I have 256 gigs on it. And I just, like, I'm saying this out loud, I loaded it up with ROS of games that I own and have purchased in the past. And it became like my little handheld gaming thing. And so that's my kinda held onto it. Yeah. Yeah. So I understand that's kind of where OnePlus does it for me. That's what they're like good at. Whereas Google's good at like, Hey, everybody can get a nice experience outta this. I will say anecdotally, the pixel was the first time in years that I was out for the one or two times that I went out during this pandemic that I was out. And somebody said they were truly excited about their phone. That was not like an Android fan person. Like we are.

Jason Howell (00:44:17):
Oh, wow.

Florence Ion (00:44:19):
Okay. I know. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:44:21):
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's an exciting phone. There's, you know, I, I can understand that and it's, it looks different and it probably shows really well in the, in the sell stores, you know, the sell stores.

Florence Ion (00:44:34):
Oh yeah. It's not even available. Do you know these thing? It's sold out everywhere.

Jason Howell (00:44:39):
Oh, that's right. Yeah. You've been having a hard time with that. Right. Trying to, trying to locate one.

Florence Ion (00:44:44):
I didn't buy anything. I just, just throwing money cards, problem. Yeah. <Laugh>

Jason Howell (00:44:50):
You're like I give up here's some money. Well, speaking of OnePlus, was this a good year for OnePlus? I can't tell is it because

Ron Richards (00:44:58):
Isn't it, I feel like every year we asked the question, was this a good year for OnePlus? And it's literally the flip of a coin.

Jason Howell (00:45:04):
<Laugh>. Yeah, but I mean, but I mean, in previous years there's been a lot. Yeah. You're probably, I don't,

Ron Richards (00:45:11):
I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it was not a good year for one plus

Jason Howell (00:45:15):
I

Ron Richards (00:45:15):
Feel like, plus did car pay leave this year? Or was that last year too? When did car Carpay leave? Oh,

Jason Howell (00:45:22):
<Laugh> I think that was last year. I'm I'm doing a quick to do

Ron Richards (00:45:25):
Nothing 20, 20. Yeah. That was October, 2020. So yeah. So, but still, but that pretty much set the tone for their 2021. I feel so.

Jason Howell (00:45:34):
Yeah. I mean, and we heard, you know, about his nothing, you know, nothing I'll I'll we made much a do about his nothing. Here's

Ron Richards (00:45:41):
The thing about, here's the thing about his, nothing is that there's actually a band called nothing. That I'm a big fan of that I actually was supposed to see last night, but they canceled cuz somebody in the band got COVID cuz everybody has COVID now. Oh boy. And, and now the fact that now the fact that there's a band that I actively listened to called nothing and a electronics company that I'm actively tracking called nothing. It's very confusing. So

Jason Howell (00:46:02):
You've got a lot of nothing in your life.

Ron Richards (00:46:04):
Really? A lot

Jason Howell (00:46:05):
Of nothing, whole lot of nothing. So, okay. And then there was the color OS the, the emerging OnePlus merging with oppo oppo, oppo. I never know op I say

Florence Ion (00:46:20):
Oppo in my head oppo

Jason Howell (00:46:22):
And ultimately, you know, oxygen OS and color OS merging in some way, which, I mean, I haven't had as, as much direct experience with the result of this as you probably have flow, if, if that's your daily driver, does it change much for you?

Florence Ion (00:46:39):
I haven't. So I haven't I didn't deal with the beta. I'm not doing anything with it. I think they retracted the beta. Okay. I recall correctly because it was super buggy and people were complaining about it. I'm a little behind on, so just today we had news that OnePlus is confirmed. They're announcing a new phone next month. So things are still moving along in the company, but sure, sure. As for 2021 yes, I agree with you. It was a very quiet year on like the public side. And then those of us living with the phones, I'm kind of, I'm scared that this is gonna be the end of a pretty good thing. That one plus is not going.

Jason Howell (00:47:27):
Yeah. That's, that's what I'm wondering too. That's kind of where I'm, where I'm headed with that is like has have the wins of progress kind of shifted. So many things happened in the last year and a half for one plus, and then this year felt really quiet. They didn't actually end up releasing the one plus nine T. Right. That was, that was expected. It didn't end up happening. I'm, I'm curious, I'm curious to see if OnePlus, I don't know. I, I feel like for enthusiasts, OnePlus is a brand has had a little bit of energy and excitement around it for years. And this was the first year that like that energy and excitement really seemed tampered like, eh, well, OnePlus is another smartphone company now, you know, they really, you know, for whatever reason. And so I'm curious to see what that leads to

Florence Ion (00:48:15):
It's also okay. Just to kind of end it on this note. It's also going to be interesting because with the ban on Wawe and how that's kind of changed it, hasn't super changed the landscape in the us. But I see a lot of changes. I don't know. It's gonna be if in the business side of things, I'm very curious to see if we'll get more overseas manufacturers like coming to the us. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:48:42):
Because yeah. Do that too,

Florence Ion (00:48:43):
Of the Wawe band. So now there's like a slot to slide into, so that's what I'm, I'll tell

Ron Richards (00:48:49):
Curious, there's a, there's another slot to slide into and that's the one left by LG. Oh yeah. True. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> right. I mean, I

Florence Ion (00:48:57):
Dunno of my washer and dryer

Ron Richards (00:48:59):
Bet. Me too. Burke. I don't know if you've got the funeral music to play, but know this was the year that the, that the LG adventure came to an end with LG announcing that they're getting out of smartphone business. Yeah. Completely. And so like the wacky R and D phones wings, and like yeah, the wing and all that other stuff, just kiss a goodbye. And like, and honestly, honestly, I, I think it's a huge loss for options in the marketplace. You know, LG offered, you know, really interesting different phones that brought different things to the table. I was thinking more the, the, the horns, the, the, the, the funeral music, but youre

Jason Howell (00:49:35):
Thinking of taps,

Ron Richards (00:49:36):
You're thinking of taps. You usually giving TAs, but like, you know, that's, that's, that's just the same thing. It's okay. I it's

Jason Howell (00:49:43):
Okay. Don't hurt yourself. It's it's fine.

Ron Richards (00:49:46):
LG was a, LG was a recognizable brand to normal consumers that would walk into a, a into a, into a carrier store and recognize the brand that they, you know, felt as if they trusted say, you know, say what you will about the phones and say, well, you will, if you like them, but it was another option that's now gone. So maybe,

Jason Howell (00:50:03):
Maybe they didn't trust 'em enough if, if they had to shut down their mobile department. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a loss anytime. Smart mobile ma smartphone manufacturer decides to stop making smartphones, cuz it's less, less choice, but LG wasn't just an also ran, you know, LG, LG made one of the, the devices that's in the hall of fame, the nexus five, you know, so solid Samsung also in the hall of fame. And actually this was a big year for foldables. I feel like this was the year. This was the first year with foldables. What is this year three at this point where we finally had a device, the flip three primarily where where I remember are seeing the flip three and then getting it in, in my hands and kind of knowing the price, you know, under a thousand dollars and everything and going, okay, this is a foldable that has the, the ability, or has the potential to really break through and get a lot of people buying. And I actually, I haven't seen the, the sales numbers on it, but I know that it's been pretty successful in that regard. So I, I think that's good for foldables in general to, to have like a, a device that is way more accessible for a lot more people.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:51:18):
I'm gonna break general Android dev protocol and say some nice things about Samsung. Wow. Wow. Like, so no, like I, so as a dev, like I feel like we, many of us have like a contentious relationship with Samsung, Samsung made like Android great. Right. Because Samsung in a large part drove like the market adoption of Android. So we should always be grateful for that, but yeah, Samsung likes to do their own thing, which is not very fun for us. But I will say I actually got a full three. I know we were talking about flip through, but I actually got a full three a seven days ago. Yeah. I, I meant to bring it with me, but I was like running down here and like barely made it into the, my office alive, but I got the full three and I have to admit sorry, Samsung fans, but despite the fact that it was a Samsung phone, I actually really enjoyed the fold.

Huyen Tue Dao (00:52:06):
I, I think sitting there with the kind of like folded open experience and having a large screen that was roomy, that kind of fit like the split keyboard, it felt really good. And, you know, in the same way that Samsung kind of drove the initial adoption of Android, I'm actually okay. More nice things to say about Samsung, please take note that the way that they're pushing foldables, that they're able to use their resources, their market share to just give us a bunch of foldables that, to able to be able to write out criticism and any kind of like totally misfires I would actually, and, and feeling very optimistic, especially how much I like my fold that they're going to push this and that maybe it is with Samsung kind of doing the new things. And I, I think I saw some like interesting, possible, you know, design for the fold core that in the, in the same way that Samsung helped Android get adoption, that maybe they're gonna help, foldables become a thing. And it, and it is a really great experience. So

Jason Howell (00:53:06):
I think you, I think you're absolutely right. And I think that's happening. That's, that's kind of what seems to be paving the way for everyone else. You know, everybody's got foldables in the works. Samsung was there early and they did with foldables what they did with the note and the larger kind of fabric or whatever you wanna call it. Smartphone displays, they were there early with that too. And people thought it was ridiculous. We probably said that it was ridiculous on this show. We like who would ever want a smartphone with that big of a screen, and then sure enough, like that became, you know, a very, very standard standard for the industry. So so yeah, I think, I think you're absolutely right. And they're there right now. And speaking of the note, this was also the year where the note basically the N well, it's not that the note's dead.

Jason Howell (00:53:52):
It's just that the note in air quotes is dead. Next year it's expected that the note this, the Spen functionality is gonna come to the S 22 ultra. So kind of seems like, and this the is ties in with the no pun intended with the foldable, you know, aspect of Samsung's business as well. Instead of having the, the note be the second part of the year, big, you know, major release, they're gonna fold the, geez. They just keep coming. They're gonna fold the, into the regular S series earlier in the year. And then the second later part of the year announcement sounds like it's gonna be all about foldables and that's so they're, they're going all in. They're saying this is the next category that we will dominate. So that's a big deal. I'm excited

Ron Richards (00:54:43):
Domination,

Jason Howell (00:54:45):
Dom, are you char and then domination. Yeah.

Ron Richards (00:54:49):
<Laugh> well, well, in terms, but in terms of, in terms of foldables, let's not, let's not touch on the, let's not forget about the Microsoft duo two, right?

Jason Howell (00:54:57):
Yeah. Not a joke about it at the top, but yeah,

Ron Richards (00:54:59):
I know, but still I want, you know, I want call attention to it, you know, we, yeah. You know, like it, like, we, it takes a couple of times at it. Right. And now we're on, you know, we're on version two with the duo. Maybe Microsoft is inching closer. Who knows? No, no.

Jason Howell (00:55:14):
Yeah. I mean, I think, I think initially out of the gate it was like, oh wow. They made a lot of changes to the two that the one really needed. Could this be a hit? And then it seemed like reviewers, like, yeah, it still need some work. Its there, so maybe third, like, like this article on Anne police says maybe third times the charm <laugh> maybe, but maybe that's what it takes for foldables

Ron Richards (00:55:36):
I don't know. Yeah. And we also, I mean, I know we don't have a story here to pull up, but, but I, you know, I felt as if, you know, towards the end of the year we started see a little bit of a tablet surgeon, surgeons happening or at least some rumblings, you know, Lenovo, Lenovo got out some great tablets at the end of the year and, and we saw, you know, we had so much chatter, at least on the show about the what the, what what's the term, the convertible, you know, like the, the Chromebook, you know, tablet,

Jason Howell (00:56:04):
The two in ones,

Ron Richards (00:56:05):
The duet two in ones, the two, one to dot that's the one I'm thinking of the, a duet mm-hmm <affirmative> right. Like low price two in ones that that are, are pretty interesting options. I still think there's an audience for tablets in Android, but I know there know the, that you think there is flow. Yeah. Well, I mean,

Florence Ion (00:56:23):
Google's got like the kids mode and the entertainment mode, you have like these different ways that you could repurpose an Android tablet. If you didn't wanna just use it as, you know, a slate. And so I can see like Google still investing in it. And I think it's just gonna become an extension of your Android phone. I don't think it's gonna become like an iPad situation, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:56:49):
Or we'll just get fold and rolls the, the phones that unfold and then they roll out and then you've got a full size tablet

Florence Ion (00:56:56):
<Laugh> by the way, can I just roll up?

Jason Howell (00:56:59):
Yes. Right. Fold, roll up. Fulls. Yeah. Cool. Now, now I want a fruit roll up anyways.

Florence Ion (00:57:06):
I, I just wanna bring up something very quickly cuz I mentioned the kids mode on Android tablets. Apparently you can't block YouTube.

Jason Howell (00:57:15):
Wait a minute. What really that's

Florence Ion (00:57:17):
For kids. Yeah. You can't block it. It's it's just, you can, can block YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube

Ron Richards (00:57:25):
Kids, or the YouTube app.

Florence Ion (00:57:27):
Well, in the kids mode on the Android tablet, you can't walk YouTube from launching. Well, that's

Jason Howell (00:57:33):
Ridiculous if that's true that's that's not, no, not okay. We

Florence Ion (00:57:38):
Reverted back anyway. I've just was thinking about this tablet situation and <affirmative> Google needs something a little more formidable than

Jason Howell (00:57:48):
Once, once again, a long way to go <laugh> yeah.

Florence Ion (00:57:52):
You don't have to push YouTube on everybody.

Jason Howell (00:57:54):
No, no, absolutely. And especially on kids' tablets because parents really do care about, you know, screen time and, and having, you know, on a kid's tablet, you as a parent, you wanna know that your kids are, are doing content that you approve of. And sometimes you just,

Ron Richards (00:58:08):
Well, it's, it's funny cuz I, I just, cuz I know for a fact through, through my career that YouTube and kids protections and Copa restrictions and government regulation and all this sort of stuff has really, YouTube's made a lot of changes this past year and specifically a lot of those manifested the YouTube kids app. In terms of like, you know, on YouTube. If you look at what's, you know, if you, if you're a creator, I know this is not Android specific, but if this is actually in my wheelhouse, let me talk about it. If you're a creator, you know, there are controls where you, you signify yes. This piece of content is for kids or not for kids. And if you say that it's for kids, it automatically turns off the comments. It turns off the the recommendations on the video at the end of it. Like there's all these, all these kind of new restrictions or new you know, kind of guardrails that are in place for kids content. So that's why I flow. I asked if the difference between the YouTube app or the YouTube kids app. Cause if the YouTube kids app, I, I mean, I think that's fine because they've done all this work. If it's YouTube in general, that's a left up, but I

Florence Ion (00:59:07):
Know, but do you really want your kid watching videos of other kids playing with monster trucks in mud? Well, no.

Ron Richards (00:59:13):
I also mean anyone can watching as much themselves. Yeah. And I don't want my kids watching as much cocoa melon as they do, but they do like it's, it's

Florence Ion (00:59:22):
Coco Mellon. I ox on my life <laugh> that I paw

Jason Howell (00:59:26):
Patrol <laugh> that's those, those are kid trends that I have I've narrowly escaped, but I had to deal with Dora. So there yeah.

Florence Ion (00:59:34):
You dealt with other stuff,

Jason Howell (00:59:35):
So yes, exactly. It's always something. And you have tell you, you have

Florence Ion (00:59:39):
Preteens going on also

Jason Howell (00:59:41):
It's true. Other problems. So <laugh>, it's kind crazy kind of crazy. All right. We've reached the end of our time with hardware, but I do wanna mention Ron finally got his his Android auto wireless thing I did and, and has loved it. It sounds like. And and I also wanna mention the pixel buds a, which I was a big step up, even though they were yeah. Like half the cost of the pixel buds, big step up from the pixel buds even is so a great value you know, value device for that reason. Yeah. And once again, you know, we probably missed some stuff, but that's what we got. So Ron, on, I think you've got this app.

Ron Richards (01:00:24):
Yes. So the second break in the episode is brought to you by our good friends@userway.org. And user way is amazing and has a vision that I, you know, as a content creator and as a internet business person, I really connect with, you know, every website with that exception needs to be accessible. The, because it's a public entity and frankly, because it's the right thing to do. It's a federal ADA law that mandates equal access to services for all Americans. And you could be liable if your website does not meet ADA laws for accessibility, I've been through accessibility reviews of websites. It's so important. You wanna make sure everybody can access your content and user way has an incredible AI powered solution that enforces the hundreds of WCA guidelines with just one line of JavaScript user way can achieve more than an entire team of developers, user ways, AI and machine learning solutions, power accessibility for over 1 million websites trusted by Coca-Cola Disney, eBay, FedEx, and many other leading brands.

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Speaker 6 (01:03:11):
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Ron Richards (01:03:27):
User way can make any website fully accessible and ADA compliant with user way. Everyone who visits your site can browse seamlessly and customize it to fit their needs. It's also a perfect way to showcase your brand's commitment to millions of people with the us abilities. So go to user way.org/twi and get 30% off user way's AI powered accessibility solution, user way, making the internet accessible for everyone. Visit user way.org/twi today, and thanks user way for making the internet accessible and being a sponsor of the show and just being awesome. Thanks user way. Happy holidays.

Jason Howell (01:03:59):
Thank you. You user way. I love what they're doing. All right up next. We've got some of the top app news or app related news of the year. Oh, where do we even begin? I I'm looking at the order. He I'm like, eh, you know what? We'll go ahead and boost that to the top. That seems like a good first go-to here. RCS, RCS, rich communication services. Oh,

Ron Richards (01:04:31):
S don't get me started. Don't get me started. Well,

Jason Howell (01:04:34):
I'm going to get you started. Cause that's what we're talking about. That's why we're here. Ah, man <laugh> are you not liking RRC us? I mean, last year

Ron Richards (01:04:42):
Was I love RCS it's I'm pro RCS don't get me wrong. Like I, I was connect. I was, I was messaging with somebody who has a, who I could see their typing. It was like, it was the dream of RCS coming to be a reality. It's just, you know, and it's great that Google has, you know, kind of led the way here and that the carriers have finally like, you know, got over themselves and, and got caught up the speed, but who's always lasted the party. Apple. Yeah. They're the problem as always.

Jason Howell (01:05:10):
So apple yeah, not jumping on the band, they don't care. And we found out all about that through the epic ruling,

Florence Ion (01:05:17):
Which is that apple does not care and they're fine with their exclusivity and it's perfectly working for them. They did give us FaceTime though,

Jason Howell (01:05:25):
Through an invite. That's true. Sort of,

Ron Richards (01:05:27):
But who wants it, but who wants it?

Florence Ion (01:05:29):
And by the way, nobody uses it. Cuz it's too complicated.

Jason Howell (01:05:32):
Yeah, exactly.

Ron Richards (01:05:34):
I don't of this is unpopular and not on topic, but let's do a quick poll. I don't like video chatting on my phone. I don't like video calls. Am I an old man yelling at the sky? Am I the only one? No,

Florence Ion (01:05:43):
I hate it. I would rather I could talk to my best friend for three hours on the phone. No problem. But I don't even want like five minutes on video because it's, something's so invasive.

Ron Richards (01:05:53):
So there's something so innately awkward about holding your phone and talking to someone and having to do it. And I see people around where they're like, they're on video, but they're not even looking at it or they're like, and it's just like, I don't know. I just don't feel like it's a good experience. Am I, I mean, are Flo and I, the only ones, what do you both think? We're we're old.

Florence Ion (01:06:10):
It's it's young people. I was at target and the target employee. She was on her break. She was hanging out with somebody on FaceTime. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:06:17):
What do you think, Juan? I'm curious to know what you thought. Oh no, I'm

Huyen Tue Dao (01:06:20):
Old. It makes me barf. Sorry. It just like it lets use charge, hanging out steady cams and stabilizers to everyone. Not

Jason Howell (01:06:26):
<Laugh> honestly, I, I don't mind it. I I'm, I'm fine to do video call, but but I'm not doing it all the time. It's it's not like my, my every time replacement for the phone and it's just, but if I'm calling my, my parents, I would much rather look at my mom and say, Hey, than, you know, talk to her on the phone. Although I talk to her on the phone too, like, it's just, it's really situation dependent if I, if I've got the time and I've got a place to like, sit at, sit back and relax. I'm not gonna be the one that's like on a video call or walking around like this and waving it around. Like I'm too dialed into video quality, you know, it's, it's like my hand, my, my elbow is like planted on the table and I'm making sure that I'm framed properly, you know, but whatever, I don't mind it. I like the extra context, man. It's nice

Ron Richards (01:07:14):
Every now. And it's, it's nice every now and then it's like the kids like to see, you know, wanna see my sister or their, their grandmother or another baby, something that, yeah. But I just, it just, I can't have a re like, someone's like, oh, do you wanna do what's that video call? I'm like, no, just call me just it's like, just call that's fine.

Jason Howell (01:07:30):
<Laugh> let's

Florence Ion (01:07:31):
Try that. I, I just, yeah, I just, anyway, I know this is not what we were talking about, but RCS.

Jason Howell (01:07:37):
Yeah. Well, and I think and, and why is this in AP news? Because this was also the year that at least here in the us, the carriers, you know, they, they got, they got rid of their own combined. They had their own combined kind of collaboration on RCS that they were gonna make happen. And then of course got EV they all seemed to kind of pitch that to the side and get serious about Google's RCS and ultimately in the, in, you know, the grand scheme of things that meant that they all kind of dedicated themselves to having Android messages on all of their devices by default, which, you know, has improved, I would say largely the adoption of end usage of RCS. And it's kind of nice, you know, because actually I feel like Android messages is a pretty, pretty solid app coming from Google. So yeah, it's just too bad that, that apple doesn't care <laugh> but whatever, they're the ones missing out, not us. Yeah.

Ron Richards (01:08:35):
Yeah. So annoying. Yeah.

Jason Howell (01:08:37):
<Laugh> also talking about chat Hangouts you know, which, which I feel like is old news, but Hangouts went away officially, like for good and replaced with Google chat, which at first I think I was a little like, why are you gonna do that? But I'm, I'm totally fine with Google chat. I don't know about anybody else. I use it all the time 

Ron Richards (01:08:59):
And never use it. Never use it. I only

Huyen Tue Dao (01:09:00):
Use it with my husband. That's it? That's our official private chat channel.

Jason Howell (01:09:06):
Yeah, no, I actually, I say I, I use it all the time. That's because I use it all the time with my wife. So is <laugh>. Yeah. That's, you know, my wife and my daughters have it on their computers down stairs. What about you? When have you used Google chat? Did you care very much about Hangouts and the transition there?

Huyen Tue Dao (01:09:21):
We, we CA like we cared like, like my close friend group, which is all tech people. We cared a lot cuz actually Google, wait, let me make sure I'm getting the right one. Google Hangouts was kind of our thing for a long time. So when it was announced, it was going away, we all evacuated to signal I and dragged most of our parents there. So unfortunately it's kind of like, okay, we've moved on. The entropy to switch again is low. But I actually, I think my mother-in-law is the one person that messages, both my husband and myself with Google chat and it's fine. It's fine. But like one person, just one person. Right.

Ron Richards (01:09:53):
It's, it's really funny. Cuz I was thinking about, I was thinking about chat the other day, the shower cuz you know, as you do. And I was thinking about, I was thinking about all the different chat platforms that we've used that I've used since the nineties. And I just wonder, I, you know, like, you know, because you know, obviously we're all on aim and the messenger and then, then, then you know, those of us that were on the Hotmail chat or whatever it was, you know, and then, you know, then we got William and, and, or whatever, whatever, you know, app that you got that unified, all those chat platforms. So you talk with other people then G O came in the, into the mix and all these, you know, kind of things. And, and I think about all the chat platforms we've left behind hang us. And I was just like, I was kind of, fancifully thinking like, I wonder if I logged into that old, that old app, if these like dead chats that were sent to me 10 years ago that I never responded to, you know what I mean? Like, is there someone on, you know, on G talk trying to get in touch with me, right. <Laugh> yeah.

Jason Howell (01:10:49):
Or, or some sort of docu yeah. Documentation of it, even if it's not available anymore, still log. Well, I used to

Ron Richards (01:10:55):
Keep, I used to keep the transcripts of all my, of all my chat logs, I, and all this sort of stuff I used to have that meticulously say in the same way in that like I obsessively keep all my SMSs and my one WhatsApp. Yes. It's like, cause like I'm gonna reference a chat from 2015.

Jason Howell (01:11:07):
I was gonna say, how often do you go back in time to those old messages

Ron Richards (01:11:11):
And check? I did actually just recently something came up me and my wife were trying to figure out when something happened. I said, oh, let me look back in our chat. And I found the, the vaguely the month in 2016 that it happened. Right. But wow. Okay. But but, but not that often, but I, but it's funny because I just do think that like, you know, with, you know, Google Hangouts, moving to Google chat or whatever, it just, it's just continu this parade of platforms. And I think about the chats that have stuck at least for me in most recent years. And it's like, and again, I, you know, you know, when similar, similar to you with, you know, with moving your family over, I moved everybody over to WhatsApp and that's where we all are. And I literally now have, you know, like six years of chat history on WhatsApp.

Ron Richards (01:11:52):
And then, you know, and on flow, I know you're all, you know, discord queen and it's so it's so great, but slack has been ever present in my life, both professionally, but also personally in that I've got some social slacks that have, I've been, you know, since the, you know, you know, the early, you know, early 20 S or whatever, where, you know, like there's a I'm in a bay area, pinball, slack that was like started very early on. And it's like, every time I open up my phone, like start when I set up my pixel six, I set up slack and like, let me add work. Let me add pinball. Let me add this, this group. Cause that's where my friends are, you know? And so yeah, it's, it's fascinating. Let me think about it. So yeah,

Jason Howell (01:12:28):
Yeah, yeah. The messaging mess continues.

Ron Richards (01:12:30):
The messaging indeed.

Jason Howell (01:12:32):
<Laugh> yeah. This was also the year we talked about this on the show many times throughout the year, the transition from Android auto to assistant driving mode. So the Android auto phone app experience, this is actually a pretty recent thing too. Cause I feel like we've been fielding emails in the last couple of months about this quite frequently, but a lot of people not so happy about the transition, even though Google signaled this quite a while ago, you know, at Google IO and then they finally did it and it's like, it was just another one of those examples of like, why are you replacing something that actually works? You know, it, it does all these things, something this full featured with something that's like half the feature, like why is it replacement? Why does it have to be like this Google? A lot of people, not very happy about it.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:13:20):
One of those people was me for as much as I'm supposed to pay attention to Google news. And I do watch Google, I owe things. I did not realize this. And I found this out in the middle of a drive where I was trying to get Android auto appear on my phone screen. Yeah, don't do that. Don't do that. And I, I have to admit, like I was really upset mostly because, you know, I love in general, I love Android auto. I've had in my last couple Subarus and I find it like invaluable. We have like numerous other cars that have their own kind of like whatever manufacturer proprietary, you know, driving experiences. And I've always found that Android auto is actually one of the most consistent well featured ones, but the, the problem with like connectivity and Ron, I I'm gonna steal your wireless, like Android auto thing, cuz that's exactly what we need.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:14:06):
But I think, yeah, sorry, we kinda lost around on that because I'm like thinking about how I almost like didn't did it, did it bad when I found out that they killed the phone screen. But anyway, like comes, give is problem like the, the, just with all the different auto manufacturers and the wire connection that some of us are still using for their Android auto. This seems like a miss. And I don't mean that because I ski, I got scared half to death trying to like, not look at my phone while trying to get to where I was going. But yeah, I, I totally agree. Especially with kind of like the gap for the wire connection and like with the wire, like I, it just feels like I, I don't know. I don't like less. Yeah. I don't like less help when I'm driving. Maybe that's just cuz I'm a best driver,

Florence Ion (01:14:45):
But I now I don't have a system in my car cuz my car is from 2008. Like I do have Bluetooth, but I had a proprietary iPod connector in there. I yanked it out, revealed the ox and that's how I get music in my car. So the Android auto for the phone screen was absolutely perfect. I had paired it with the Rove bolt. I thought I had absolutely something perfect going you, we also got a Subaru this year. It has Android auto built into the dash and that has also been it's so buggy, oh God, I'm gonna admit this out loud. I had a fight with my, I had my husband had to leave the car cuz I was so off that nothing was working. It was already a bad day. So it was just like the last, but it's the last thing that you need sometimes I'm I'm so stressed out <laugh>

Jason Howell (01:15:41):
Yeah. Pandemic and everything. I just need you to work technology. I

Florence Ion (01:15:44):
Mean, I'm being serious here. I don't have time for a beta situation, but in all seriousness I'm really bummed about it. Android off for the phone screen. The that's like the biggest,

Jason Howell (01:15:56):
Yeah it's beat loss.

Florence Ion (01:15:58):
It is. I'm still using it by the way. They haven't like completely deprecated it yet. I'm not using that map. Spotify integration it's so it doesn't even like go into dark mode when I want it to. So I have like this white light flashing at me.

Jason Howell (01:16:14):
No good. Just I'm I'm surprised that you're still using it for phone screens. I didn't, I didn't realize that you could still be using it. I thought it was all well I need maps.

Florence Ion (01:16:24):
I need maps and I need, I need maps. No, no

Jason Howell (01:16:27):
Voice commands. Are you saying that you you're still using Android auto for phone screens or you're still using the assistant driving mode because that's all that you have. Yep. Here we go. Okay. All right. I misunderstood. Okay. Yeah, exactly. We're using it because it's the option that we have. Yeah. Is the trick. Oh, okay. Okay. other than that, you know, outside of Google's own apps, this was the year where we, he finally got finally got clubhouse for Android and then immediately forgot that it existed. Maybe I'm just speaking about myself, but who cares? Everybody seems so stoked about clubhouse at one point like, like a year ago

Ron Richards (01:17:11):
It was just fun. It was just funny because I, we, I was talking recently about Twitter spaces. I was at work and some, and somehow it came up and, and like all this stuff and someone's like, well, what is Twitter spaces? And I was like, remember clubhouse, like a year ago. I was like, oh yeah, those think everyone's crazy about, yeah. Well Twitter scrambled and replicated it. Do people use that? I'm like, wait, well, some people use it. Just like some people use clubhouse now. Like I, I know that there are like, I have friends who have like met like random people on clubhouse and then became IRL flow friends. I was channeling your use of abbreviation. I yes, but, but you know, like had had meetups and things like from, you know, groups of people that met on clubhouse, which is great, which is the same thing that's been happening since chat rooms in the early nineties. Right. So like it's another way to people connect for people to connect. But like the amount of hype that was around clubhouse when it was invite only on iOS and then to the wide rollout, Android is just like, whatever, whatever. Yeah,

Jason Howell (01:18:07):
Yeah. Whatever. last PA last pass of course announced that they were changing their free tier. Also along those lines, Google photos, free storage went away. This is like one of those years where well, yeah. Where, where things that were once free, suddenly kind of shifted around and people weren't so happy about is like, they, they got used to their free and now they're not getting the free and they don't like that.

Florence Ion (01:18:35):
No such thing as a free lunch, as they said in the nineties. Yeah. Repeatedly to us.

Jason Howell (01:18:42):
And it's true. All lunch costs, money. <Laugh> Pokemon speaking of money Pokemon, a continuing freight train, 5 billion in five years, 1 billion in 2020 alone. Geez. Which I realized was last it's

Florence Ion (01:18:58):
Cause they give you no space. You have no item space. So every time you log onto the thing, they want $2.

Jason Howell (01:19:07):
Okay. Yeah. I'm, that's lost on me. I don't really play Pokemon. Haven't haven't really played Pokemon.

Florence Ion (01:19:13):
It's an item bag. You can't keep collecting things and they're like, but you need more space. Why

Jason Howell (01:19:18):
Not? You need, why not buy more tokens? <Laugh> I see.

Florence Ion (01:19:23):
Okay. Here's $2.

Jason Howell (01:19:25):
Were you are, are you a player or were you a player of Pokemon go? When did you get swept up in that at all?

Huyen Tue Dao (01:19:32):
We were my husband and I were huge on Ingres back in the day. And so that in Pokemon go, but there's actually a stop right in front of our old house, like literally in front of our house. So we kind of got into a turf war with our neighbor, like at first it a really cute way to meet our neighbor. But then we kept like, it was like the two of us versus our one neighbor back and forth. It's like this too stressful. I, I don't want a bad relationship with my neighbor. He can have to stop. And then after we kind of like had to give that up, I was like, I'm done. I, I can't, I can't, I can't do this. I've been beaten down by this turf war. So I, I mean, I, I still have friends at play and I, I there's a lot, there's something that's very like as a former game sort of gamer still. I, I find it fascinating. This has taken off so much and I, I love, I, I still love the idea of it. I love like the mix of the AR and the real life. And then like, you know, obviously Pokemon is a huge IP in general and no, but this is cool, but I'm not gonna do it. I can't, I can't sometimes you just gotta say no and then just, yeah, try to keep your neighbors.

Jason Howell (01:20:34):
You just gotta, you just gotta back away. Yeah. Back away,

Huyen Tue Dao (01:20:38):
Play

Jason Howell (01:20:38):
It safe. You gotta play it straight, play it safe. And and finally in here, I don't, I certainly don't have a whole lot to say about it, but apparent windows 11, you're gonna be able to play Android apps. And this, this comes in, in a couple of different directions. Microsoft was working with the Amazon app store to bring certain, you know, Amazon's Android apps into windows 11. But then we very recently heard that Google is bring, is developing it own play store for windows, if I'm not mistaken or at least Google play games, they're, they're making for windows themselves. And so apparently now there's a big push to do what, you know, we've been able to do on, on Chromeo west for quite a while. Now, now they wanna do that at windows 11. So if you have windows 11, which I do not you'll be able to play your Android games and, you know, run your Android apps there too, which is I, I mean, it's great for developers actually. That's a, that's a good question for you when, how, how much of a Bo is something like this in your opinion?

Huyen Tue Dao (01:21:42):
I, I think, I think it's important. So, you know where I work well, okay, so enjoy the, you know, when you have any kind of app, the question is how do we get our app on all the things it's no only a question of, do we have an Android and an iOS app? It's like, how do we do it? So there's always this question of how do we cross platform? How do we most efficiently get our presence on as many platforms as possible? Do we just a separate app for all the things, which is actually what my company Trello has right now, we have a separate desktop app along with an iOS app along and an Android app and a web presence, but that's a lot, that's a lot of resources. That's a lot of dev, that's a lot of like managing, that's a lot of like trying to keep all these experiences consistent.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:22:26):
So I think that this is awesome. I think that this is just another opportunity for especially smaller and independent devs to kind of get more places. So, you know, the, the dream of, I guess, any like app developer is right once run everywhere or, you know, build fewer times and run everywhere. So I think this would be a boon. I think that, especially with like, like testing it's, it's always good to have more places to see how your stuff runs. So I think this will be a benefit. I, I'm not sure how much is gonna take off. So, so then, then the question becomes, do the apps on windows 11 actually take off, cuz I think a lot of times when something like this happens, there's a little bit of a disconnect from, okay, this thing is available. That doesn't always lead to users on that platform saying, oh, Hey, I can get X app now on windows on ChromeOS. So it'll be interesting to see whether windows users actually kind of take this opportunity and you know it, and, and it opens up market share for a dev on like a windows machine. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but I think it, I mean, what's the worst gonna happen? It's just gonna, you know, gonna fade into the background, like many things, but I think always more opportunity and more ways of being able to use the same resources and effort in multiple places is, is what we like is what we like

Jason Howell (01:23:51):
To see. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's not it. The, the expectation isn't, I'm, I'm imagining isn't an Android apps on windows 11, suddenly we're gonna sell tons more games or we're gonna make, you know, or whatever, it's, it's more, Hey, here's here's yet another place that our app or our game can be used. And the ability for that to be used in all of these places is better than for some of these places. So might as well. It's almost like don't, don't have the expectation that, that it's gonna mean like a large number of like, you know, new say necessarily. Maybe it will, but but just being represented in all these platforms is better than not.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:24:33):
Absolutely.

Jason Howell (01:24:34):
Yeah. Cool. All right. Well coming up after this break, we're gonna talk about some of the developer news from this year and when I'm so happy, you're here for this part especially for the whole show, but especially this part. So whole tight this episode of all that Android is brought to you by better help. It's better help online therapy. You can actually check them out at better help.com/android. The best way to think about therapy is, you know, you could use a bunch of analogies. We get our car tuned up and that's because we wanna prevent bigger issues down the road, right? Take care of it. Now, before it becomes a bigger issue, we get annual checkups. We go to the gym that's to, you know, make sure that physically we're well going forward. And as we get older and you know, to prevent injuries and disease, that sort of stuff, we do chores regularly.

Jason Howell (01:25:27):
At least some of us do. And that's because we don't want that mess to build up in the house and maybe, you know, roaches appear in the corners, whatever. So we're doing the work up front to make sure that later down the road, things are as good as they could possibly be going to therapy is really a lot like all of these it's routine maintenance for your and emotional wellness, and it's gonna help prevent bigger issues down the road. It really does therapy doesn't mean something's wrong with you. Of course it means you're investing in yourself to keep your mind healthy. It gives you an avenue to explore certain things that maybe you don't feel comfortable exploring, or you're, you're afraid to explore. This is, this is an avenue to do it in a trusting environment. And ultimately it's better to do that than it is to lock it away.

Jason Howell (01:26:15):
Better help. Isn't just any online therapy it's customized for you by offering video phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist. So you don't actually have to see anyone on camera. If you don't truly want to, you totally have that option. It's much more affordable than in person therapy. And you can start communicating with your therapist in under 48 hours super quick. When I signed up for it, like I was chatting with my therapist in a matter of just a couple of hours and it was like, oh, well, there you are. All right, let's set this up, let's do it. And it was pretty awesome. Why invest in everything else and not your mind, not your wellbeing? Well, this podcast is sponsored by better help of course, and all about Android listeners get 10% off their first month@betterhelp.com slash and I'll spell that out.

Jason Howell (01:27:04):
It's B E T T E R H E L P. Better help.com/android. Check it out for yourself. You're gonna be really happy that you did, and we thank better help for their support of all about Android. All right. So we'll round things out with some of the big developer are focused news from the year. There's always, you know, new bits of, of news, new versions of some of the developer tools that developers are using. And usually when we talk about it on the show, we preface it with, and we're not developers. So we think this is important because, or we read this is important because, but it turns out we have a developer with us. So when it's awesome to get your perspective on some of this stuff, and actually I'm looking through this, this block here, you, you really threw some, some pretty solid stuff in here. You did, you did the majority of the populating on this. So tell us what you think, what, what, like if you had to play something at the top of the list from a developer perspective, what would that be?

Huyen Tue Dao (01:28:04):
Oh, easy, easy peasy. So as I kind of like mentioned at the beginning, like last few years, it felt like solid, but kind of just like incremental improvements in Android. And I don't think we've really had any kind of big news since 2017 when Android adopted a new modern programming language as a first class, kind of like way to build Android. That was Kotlin. And I think the, this year with the release of a new Android toolkit called jet pack imposed, we have kind of like the big bomb, I guess, in terms of like Android developer news. And this is probably by far the most important and also probably well known new thing that we get. And so what jet poses is basically a new way, a new toolkit for building Android UIs. So the interesting thing about this is that Android is however many years old now, and we have the same system before jet pack pose.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:28:59):
We had the same system called the view system for building apps. So think about this. We have like an over decade old technology for building UIs. And in that time, you know, Android has grown we've, you know, materials come into life, you know, like phones, keep getting better device, keep getting better. So as Android develops and adds more features, we're still using the same, like kind of old view system to implement a lot of these things. You know, motion design becomes a thing. We've got kind of all these advances and we're the enter team has had to work really hard to make kind of a modern experience work with this again, 10 year old system. So what Jack jet back poses is basically just a re basically just WIP, whole slate, clean and using modern language. Kotlin, it's all written in Kotlin which is like the, the language that, that was absolutely love. And that I, I think is, is I can confidently say kind of like the primary language now it's like the recommended language. It uses kind of modern so

Jason Howell (01:29:57):
Fast from my perspective that happened so fast. It was like, I feel like it was just yesterday that we were at that Google IO and everybody was flipping their lid over the announcement of Kotlin and then boom. Now it's just the primary, that's just the way it is.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:30:11):
It is. And I think that's one of the benefits of being an Android dive when you really like something and you tell Google that they like it. They'll try very hard to, they listen, make it a thing they do. Yeah. They, they do listen. I think that is one thing that I love about being an do is that I do feel like they're listening. You don't always get what you want, but occasionally as you know, the rolling stones say, you get what you need and we definitely need popcorn <laugh> so I guess, without going into too much technical detail, this is basically very modern, like, and, and something that's very interesting about and development is that because, you know, we've kind of carried some of these old since through 10 years. And as we try to develop like new patterns, like new things, new features, a lot of that stuff kind of gets tacked on like, think about like a road and it gets potholes.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:30:53):
Or you kind of like, like have like new types of traffic lights or new like technologies. You kind of like put it on the same road and you keep putting stuff on the same road. And the road keeps getting like potholes and you keep telling, filling 'em up. This is basically just like scraping all the concrete off and laying a fresh new road down. It's just like that. Now why do people who aren't devs care? So a lot of reasons, basically the, there are a lot of things that are hard to do with Android development. Animation's hard like beautiful transitions are hard, making sure that things like render scroll beautifully when you have a lot of stuff on the screen load. Well, and what jet pack post lets you do is kind of do all this, do all this beautiful stuff easily and quickly.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:31:33):
So basically instead of having this kind of like old row that has all this stuff kind of attached to it, you have a bunch of modern features, modern UI kind of, and kind of coherently put together. And there actually was a lot of challenges during the summer where Google challenged says, Hey, do something cool with jet pack and do it within like 30 days or a week. So it's, it's huge. I, I love it. And like, you can just, I I've dranken the composed Koolaid. It's probably yeah. Composed Koolaid. It's very exciting. I'm a big like UI person. I love animations and the ease with which you can do cool things with composed is amazing. And it kind of fixes a lot of the problems that we've had. So I, I think what, what this is gonna mean is that whether you're a beginning dev or you're an established team, you'll be able to do a lot of stuff, cool stuff faster and better.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:32:28):
And that's basically it it's like, it's really exciting. And yeah, like jet pack post easily, the, the number one thing, it's an entire rewrite of the toolkit. <Affirmative> and hopefully, you know, as things go, we'll be able to, you know, people will be able to do cool things faster. And that's kind of just another thing, like a lot of times, you know, Android announces Android, like 24 has this new thing. And you wonder why your favorite app hasn't like gotten like the, gotten the new thing or like, mm-hmm <affirmative>, Hey, there's a new version of material and its takes your favorite app like four years to get there. It's because like there's a bit of a, there's always been kind of a dissonance between cool new thing and getting, you know, kind of like the, the old view system and things that kind of go with it kind of to catch up and to be able to easily do the new things.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:33:14):
So now we have a whole bunch of just new toys. So that is like the number one kind of biggest thing this year. And thing that will probably change the way you work as at Android dev the most. And again, like hopefully you're gonna start seeing a lot more cool, delightful motion driven and hopefully more stable. Well, that's kind of, that's the hope, but kind of more modern modernly built apps. So that's, that's the huge thing I'm excited. I could talk about it for hours and I'm, but it's great. If you hear, if you a dev ask them what they think of Jack pack post, hopefully they'll be excited about it.

Jason Howell (01:33:46):
Like I am don't don't apologize. Don't be sorry that I love that. I love that. You're so excited about, about toolkits like this. This is the kind of stuff that like, you know, from the outside looking in, like, I, I can understand why it's useful and why it's important, but but really picking up on the energy that developers like, like you feel about these tools shows shows me, I mean, it shows me that Google is at least doing something, right. They're, they're play these sorts of these sorts of tools and announcements around these really play to Google's advantage, right? Because at its core, Google is a company that is built with developers in mind, by developers, for developers, largely to the point to where a lot of the things that they're trying to put, you know, position as for consumers and everything. It's like, they're just a little too, you know, too, something else. Then they are like a true consumer play. And that's just because like, they're, my minds are in a different place. Their minds are in places like this and that's why they do them so well. So that's great. What, what is composed multi-platform? Cause that seems to tie into that.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:34:52):
Yeah. So I kind of mentioned Kotlin before. So if you're unaware Kotlin is a very, I mean, it's a relatively new programming LA language that that you can write Android in. So traditionally you would write Android in Java Java's much, much older Kotlin is a kind of a relatively new language done created by the company jet brains. Jet brains is also the company that tend that, that has made all of the tools that us Android devs you. So if you're familiar with Android studio, which is the main IDE or integrated development environment for Android, they make that too. So Kotlin is just really fun language. Like if you are looking to get a dev development and do Android work, I would highly recommend you use both Kotlin and jet pack and post. But anyway I mentioned before that I kind of a, a long, long, long, long standing like hope for dev is to write once and run everywhere.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:35:46):
It's like the, the multi-platform cross platform problem. I know I personally have been through many, many iterations of, Hey, like we got this new like toolkit or this new platform, and you can write once and run everywhere. And generally they haven't worked for various reasons just because, you know, sometimes you get an app and you can kind of tell that it at least maybe as a dev, my husband and I are dev. So we tend to just like open up new apps and kind of play the guest in game of, was this written in Android or was this written in some cross cross platform? We can kind of tell somebody with apps that don't feel like they're are either making use of Android or they kind of feel a little bit not like your typical Android experience. So I think a lot of companies have unfortunately gone the route of, okay, we're gonna have a whole Android team.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:36:28):
We're gonna have a whole iOS team. And, you know, they're, we're always trying to solve this problem as like, how can we bridge gaps? How can we not have to write everything twice? So we've got things like flat are, and now something like Kotlin multi-platform so Kotlin multi-platform is basically taking Kotlin, which was originally written as a way to make Java development better, like was aiming for the Java virtual machine and kind of being able to take Kotlin and write stuff for all kinds of platforms. So you can write, take, write Kotlin for the web. You can write Kotlin for iOS, you can write Kotlin for desktop. And what's really interesting is that it's actually gain traction. Usually, you know, you have like apps written in examen or Cardova or other platforms that do well, but they're not, I think it's fair to say they're not that mainstream.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:37:19):
I think the vast majority of apps are still written kind of natively, which is just again, an individual Android team, an individual iOS team. So what's really interesting about Kotlin multiplatform is that it's yet another, Hey, you can write once and run in multiple places, but it's actually kind of taking off. And what this, what is interesting about this is that kind of build on their success of making a platform that works for code sharing, where we kind of maybe take parts of an application that are the same, whether, regardless of whether you're on iOS or Android and being able to write it once and then running that same code in multiple places. So you don't have to write it twice. They're now combining that with compose which is the Android UI tool that I talked about before. And so we're kind of getting to a point where maybe cross-platform development is actually gonna get actually super mainstream and you could write an actual, you actually may be get closer to right.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:38:15):
Once run everywhere. And it's really exciting. What's most exciting about this, is that Colin, like, as you said, Jason has taken off very fast. It's kind of like a huge success story in terms of like a new thing that got adopted really quickly. We were all a little bit skeptical about multi-platform but that's kind of been taking off not quite the same way, but it's still kicking and to have this kind of new delightful toolkit that we can do really interesting things kind of be applied now to this right. One, you know, this kind of multiply thing is pretty exciting. I don't know if it's, you know, I don't know the future. I don't know if it's actually gonna result in all of us writing for everything with Kotlin and, and compose, but it's really interesting. And I think it's worth if you're a dev taking a look at because again, like everyone always wants to do less work <laugh> everyone wants to try to not do things two to three times. So it looks like there are more options now. So yeah.

Jason Howell (01:39:10):
Awesome. And then let's, let's wrap this up with this one final thing here, cause I know we're running a little long is is the app store fees for developers changed this year, which I imagine is pretty good news from my understanding. I mean, it kinda lowered the barrier for developers. Is that right?

Huyen Tue Dao (01:39:29):
Yeah. I think that's always like a problem too, especially for independent and small developers. I mean, that's just a thing I remember like starting out as first was a mobile dev and having, or, and I actually started out with actually I started Android. Then I went to iOS for a while, cuz this was back when there was more iOS jobs than Android jobs and having to pay like that developer registration was not fun cuz it was 99 hole dollars and being first outta college, that kind of sucks. So I think that you know, anything that can promote pent and small developers is awesome. And I think it's always a contentious thing about when you are on like how much, how much is it, how much is the platform taking is always pretty contentious. So I like this a lot. I think that especially with maybe hopefully the ease with which people can get into development now with these new tools and kind of like the efforts that Google's making with education that people are gonna be able to get more out of their efforts with this. I just, I just like seeing it, I think it's awesome. I I'm always happy to see developer friendly things, so yeah, go for it. Yeah, if you have that great app idea

Jason Howell (01:40:31):
Indeed, indeed. Right on. All right. We have, we have to cut it there. Cuz I just realized since seven o'clock, this has been a little bit of a longer episode and, and quite, quite honestly, this episode always runs a little bit long cuz I mean, as Ron, just yeah,

Ron Richards (01:40:47):
Yeah. There's so there's so much that happened this year. It's hard to sum up an entire year in one episode, but yeah mm-hmm <affirmative> but man we do was a year for the, this was the year for the books in Android. That's for sure.

Jason Howell (01:40:57):
So pretty sure we say that every year too, but this year it's really true. I

Ron Richards (01:41:02):
Can definitively say this is way better than 20 17, 20 17 was just a boring year. So <laugh>

Jason Howell (01:41:08):
I have no idea. So boring. I can't even remember it. Yeah, exactly. I'm

Ron Richards (01:41:11):
Googling 20, have an 18 and Android. So let's let's do what it

Huyen Tue Dao (01:41:14):
Says. That was when Colin was announced. So Android dev actually 2017.

Jason Howell (01:41:19):
Sorry. So there you go. There you go. <Laugh> when it was, it's always a pleasure getting you on the show. Thank you so much for hopping on with us today and being here for this very special episode and sharing all of your knowledge on all this stuff. We really appreciate you tell people if there's something you wanna point people to, or let people know kind of what you're up to and where this a great time to do so what's you up to? Yeah.

Huyen Tue Dao (01:41:42):
If you didn't get scared off by me ranting about Android things Android development things I often do talks on the internet, but I am@randomlytyping.com. I said this last time I was around, but it's a little empty right now, but I'm working on some stuff in terms of like Andrew development. So keep an eye out and you can also follow me on most social media things at queen code monkey. But yeah, thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun and I apologize. I'm so excited about these things and I talk so

Jason Howell (01:42:08):
Long. You don't, you don't need to apologize at all. Love it, love it. Yeah. Love having you on. Thank you again. We and flow. What do you wanna plug?

Florence Ion (01:42:19):
Before I plug anything, I just wanna let you all know we're gonna have a slight schedule change. Well, no, excuse me. A roster change to all about Android starting in January and by which I mean that I will be returning monthly beginning in 2022. So I just wanna let everybody know

Jason Howell (01:42:41):
That's right. I'll be here.

Florence Ion (01:42:42):
Not you'll be here single episode. You'll be here. I'll

Ron Richards (01:42:45):
Be here when you can. Let's say, you know, we support it. It's great. We want, we want a little bit of flow versus no flow. So this all works for,

Florence Ion (01:42:51):
I do have three other jobs. So

Jason Howell (01:42:53):
<Laugh> flow. You are incredibly busy. We are, we are honored and happy to, to have you on the show even once a month, whatever, whatever we can get. You're awesome.

Florence Ion (01:43:05):
I love you guys. I can't be without you. That's the truth. And I love what I do, which makes, which makes it hard because then I do too much of it and yeah, I understand.

Jason Howell (01:43:15):
And a child now out. Yeah. Apparently

Florence Ion (01:43:17):
They need time with their parents. Yeah,

Jason Howell (01:43:20):
They do. It's actually pretty important. My son,

Ron Richards (01:43:23):
My son told me put the phone away dad the other day and oh, that's the

Jason Howell (01:43:29):
Yeah, yeah. That, one's a lot of fun.

Ron Richards (01:43:32):
Yeah. So

Jason Howell (01:43:33):
Yeah. Well what do you wanna point people to Flo?

Florence Ion (01:43:36):
There's plenty of other places to also find me on the weeks that I am not here at all about Android. So I will be back in January, but until then you can find me at Florence, ion.com. If you'd like to come join my discord, I have my own little discord community called the flow feed. It's really great. Please come join us. Flo writes tech. That is my Gizmodo RSS. So you can see everything that I write at gizmodo.com. And please don't forget that. We just recently launched GA jets, a new podcast from Gizmodo it's me and my co-host Caitlyn. MCIR also friend of the show here at All About Android. We publish weekly. We'll be publishing toward the end of the year and you could check us out. We're on Pocket Casts. We're on Spotify where wherever you get your podcasts. So please check us out.

Jason Howell (01:44:24):
Do indeed. Thank you, Flo. Thank you guys. Good to see you here in happy new year. And what about you, Ron?

Ron Richards (01:44:31):
Yes. So if you are looking for another extra long podcast to listen to, to wrap up the year, please head over to I fanboy.com where you can listen to me and Josh and Connor over there where we did our year end wrap up podcast, where we talk about all the movies, TV, books, music comics, all the great stuff from, from 2020 anyone talked about my, my two favorite, my favorite movie of the year, which was licorice pizza and my favorite TV show of the year only murders in the building. So great conversation, a lot of good stuff there. It's like a two hour plus podcast. So go listen to that. And as always you can follow me over on Twitter and on Instagram at Ron O and if you're in the pinball, go check out score, but IO or you download the score bit app from the Google play store and everybody have a great, happy, healthy holidays. And can't wait to be back here in January with Jason and, and flow monthly and all other great folks. So yes,

Jason Howell (01:45:23):
Indeed. <Laugh> thank you Ron happy new year. Big thank you to Burke at the studio. Big thank you to Victor at his home. Both of, of whom we could not do this show without for you are the backbone that drives this show behind the scenes. So thank you for everything that you've done this year. As for me at Jason Howell on Twitter, that might be the easiest place for me to point you to. I did wanna mention that and I actually are doing something pretty awesome on new year's Eve. We're doing something for extra life.org. It's a fundraiser, it's a livestream fundraiser on new year's Eve for children's miracle network hospital. And so Ron and I are gonna be on the livestream. Basically the idea of this livestream is it's. I think it's a 24 hour a live stream with different folks, different people, podcasters and all sorts of other people each occupying an hour.

Jason Howell (01:46:21):
And we're gonna be there live just kind of hanging out for an hour, taking questions talking with people. The, the whole idea here is that that no one is alone on new year's Eve. So we're gonna hang out with you and that so many other people are gonna hang out with you too, but at 10:30 AM Pacific for one hour on new year's Eve, Ron and I are gonna be chatting with y'all answering questions. It could be Android related. It could be anything related really. I think the, well I'll just read it is twitch.tv/dc stream athon. And I would say probably the easiest thing to do since this is a little ways down the line. Just go to my Twitter my Twitter ID on that day at Jason Howell and I'll have it pin, I'm gonna pin the information. So it'll be really easy to find. But we'll be there at 10:30 AM Pacific and would love to see some of you or all of you hanging out on new year's it'd be a lot of fun and it's real for really great cause.

Ron Richards (01:47:20):
And it's a support of you go to extra-life.org extra-life.org is the organization. And so, so excited to be doing that. It's it's, it is love that end of the year stuff with all our, you know, our podcast and friends who are all rallying to do this. And so the least we can do to spend an hour on new year's Eve with some of our, our, our closest friends in the internet. So please join us. It should be fun. So

Jason Howell (01:47:43):
Yeah, it'll be a lot of fun looking forward to it. And I will just say real quick Club TWiT, twit.tv/clubtwit go there seven bucks a month, add free content. It's really great discord TWI plus podcast feed. It's the fastest Club TWiT promo that I've ever done, but there you go. twit.tv/clubtwit, thank you so much for watching and listening. We've reached the end of this episode. We publish every Tuesday. So go to twit.tv/aaa, and you'll find this podcast and you won't even have to think about it. It'll appear for you like magic once you subscribe to it. That's what we hope you do really. And that's it happy new year happy holidays. It's all coming up. Have a wonderful break and stay tuned next week for our best of 2021 clips show. Take care, everybody <laugh> bye y'all. Bye. Everyone.

Speaker 7 (01:48:28):
Happy holiday, happy new year holidays.

Ant Pruitt (01:48:33):
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Speaker 9 (01:49:37):
I.