Hello everybody! What's going on? Welcome to Android Faithful. I'm Jason Howell. I'm Gwynnhut Howell. And I'm the Sauriman. Hey, it worked! It worked! I'm so happy! I was like, I was freaking out. I'm sweating bullets. You can't see them, but I swear they're there. Let me know in the context for those of you who are listening to the podcast, Audio Only. Before we played the intro music, Jason was trying to figure out how this whole stream yard thing worked.  Ron has been doing this show every Tuesday since it launched middle of 2023. He finally gets a Tuesday evening off for all those fun Tuesday evening shenanigans. Shenanigans. I don't know what they are, but you know. I'm sure they're fun and well deserved. Yeah, I'm certain there's something on Tuesdays that he's been missing. Or maybe not. Maybe now he feels like he's missing Android Faithful until never take the Tuesday off again. Anyways, it's good to hang out with you both in the new year. 2024 is going to be a great year. So excited. Everybody can visit our wonderful home on the web, androidfaithful.com. If you want to find all the ways to help and support and check out past episodes, it's all there. That's all we really need to say about that. But should we get into it? Because I mean, I'm looking through this rundown and we actually have quite a few big stories. Like I think the question was, do we have a show at the top? Like on the second, does it need to happen? Was there any news? And I think it's fair to say, looking at this rundown, there was definitely some news. So why don't we get into it? And you know, if we had a bumper, we'd play it right here, but we don't. So Michelle, why don't you open things up for us? Sure, Jason. So I think it was two weeks ago or last time. The time has been a weird happenstance with the break and everything. But Leaker Camilo Wojcowska, I always put her her last name. Sorry about that. But she recently received an update to Google Play Services and discovered while digging through it that the nearby share service that lets you share files between your Android phones, your Android phone, your Chromebook, your Android phone and your Windows PC might be getting rebranded to QuickShare. And for those of you with a Samsung phone might be familiar with the existing file sharing service called QuickShare, which is Samsung's version of nearby share. So this has led some to speculate, will Google and Samsung be partnering to rebrand nearby share into QuickShare so that you have only one file sharing service on Samsung devices? And then will this rebranded version of nearby share show up on all Android devices? So what is going on here? And I'm sure we'll find out the answer to that soon because we have some major tech events coming up, including CES and then also the Galaxy Unpacked, which we'll talk about more later in the show. But this is just a very interesting potential rebranding because nearby share has been... the branding Google's been using for ever since they launched nearby share since 2019, I think. And now they might just be calling it QuickShare, which honestly I think is just a better name overall. Like nearby share is something barely anyone still knows about. Like I still have to educate friends and family that, hey, you can share files between Android devices using this service and now hopefully with this new rebranding and marketing push, if that is what's happening, we'll get more and more users aware of the feature and more users actually using it. I hope so. When I first saw this, I think I actually shared it in our Patreon available Discord channel and kind of was just like, oh no, here we go again. They're renaming a thing again. But I mean, you're right, Michelle, there's not a lot of uptake on nearby share anyway. Samsung does probably have a lot more users of QuickShare. And I agree. It's a better name. QuickShare just is like really snappy. It's just the Google product name shuffle, a duffel duffel that is just so frustrating. But hey, why not, especially if it would be a united project and you made a really good point in your write-up that if they don't merge it, that there would be two QuickShare on a Samsung device because you would have like the native QuickShare and then the Samsung QuickShare, which doesn't seem like a good idea. And I feel like Samsung and Google talk a little bit closer, talk a little more closely than that. So that doesn't seem likely. Does QuickShare have, I have to imagine it does, and I haven't used it, have features that nearby share doesn't have? Absolutely. It actually has one really cool feature that allows you to actually share files with iPhone users, not directly like peer-to-peer, but what you can do is you can basically temporarily upload a file to Samsung's whatever their cloud storage is, and then you get a link that you can send to someone else to download it. So that file gets temporarily stored somewhere and then just quickly sends it to someone else. Interesting. Okay. So when this happens, I'll be curious to know if any of those features end up kind of being swallowed up by the Google ship or, you know, because if those two things are combining, if there truly is a Samsung QuickShare that offers all these extra features and then the Google version becomes the same name like that, that could get really confusing as well. Agreed. Yeah. So I suppose we shall see. Also, I think, I would agree. I think QuickShare is probably a better name than nearby share. Neither, well, I guess QuickShare is more descriptive, nearby share. I mean, it's not bad because it doesn't need to be somewhere nearby. Yeah, totally. It doesn't roll off the tongue very well. No. Yeah. Yeah, it's one less syllable.  Well, the real question is how does it compare to the name AirDrop? Well, that's true, because that was my initial thought. It was like, oh, well, is this descriptive enough? Like, is this obvious enough? Then I was like, well, OK, AirDrop like that. Yeah, AirDrop is like, what is that? Yeah, you just end up trusting Apple. People care more, I guess. Oh, and plus, Microsoft's version of this feature is called nearby sharing on Windows. Oh, right. That's right. Extra level of confusion there without having the two similar names. Super confusing. Oh, naming is hard. Naming is hard. I suppose so. And Google proves that every time they rename their products. All right, Wendy, you got the next one. Well, you know what else is hard keeping up with Apple and to kind of close. This is a bit old news, but to kind of close the chapter on something that we've talked about quite a bit in December 2023. On December 21st, Beeper basically posted a announcement of their last update to Beeper Mini in an attempt to, you know, re-repair their iMessage bridge and make it work. This fix isn't that great either. It's just like yet another iteration more or less of having a Mac device or some kind of Apple hardware like help you do the iMessage registration. In this case, you actually need Beeper Cloud or an iPhone to get this to work, but that's kind of really not the important thing. The important thing is that actually this is the last update and Eric Michikowski in that post announcing this update had said, we're kind of done playing cat and mouse with Apple, but he didn't really put, you know, close the book quietly. Most of the post actually, if you read through it, and I do highly recommend it up on Beeper's own blog, is actually directly addressing a lot of the claims that Apple made in a statement to the Verge kind of that one week where, you know, Beeper was really trying to keep up with Apple and continually fix iMessage and there was even talk of like US Congress folks getting involved. And then at that point, Apple did make a statement to Verge, kind of making all kinds of claims like, and we've talked a lot about these already, so I don't want to go into too much detail, but Eric kind of goes through some of the more, the most like kind of major claims that Apple makes about, you know, security and privacy of the user, you know, like and kind of addressing them directly, which I really appreciate. And Eric for much, much, much to his credit and the credit of his team has stayed on message. And I think the two that are really worth mentioning, which are basically claims of Apple that are kind of like counter to like basically trying to like, you know, overturn, oh, we don't need Beeper. You don't need Beeper, you just need Apple and hear the reasons. I think the two that are super interesting or at least that probably will have the most room for debate is number one. Well, Apple's going to support RCS next year. And Eric basically echoes the same doubt that many, many of us have on this side of the bubbles that we're kind of doubting whether the Apple implementation would be a real viable solution that will kind of make put everyone on an even playing field rather than being just more performative implementation to get regulators off their back. And he also again reiterates that he said that before, but you know, Beeper worked and is here already. So why not have a solution now than some nebulous time in the future. And I think the one point that might be the hardest to argue or that I found kind of difficult to defend with friends, which I thought Eric did a decent job at bringing up again, is Apple saying that they are well within their rights to run iMessage how they see fit. And just to read off exactly what Eric said, like this might be true if Apple was a small company, but they aren't. They control more than 50% of the U.S. smartphone market and lock customers into using Apple's official app for text texting. And so Eric is basically calling into again, a lot of what we've been talking about over the last several months and a lot of the, you know, both the actual legal motioning, the kind of legislative motioning and just the general sentiment of, you know, government and, you know, various countries break kind of cracking down on the antitrust and any competitive, you know, markets that they see both from Google and in Apple and again kind of evoking, you know, a lot of the things that they've talked about and all the work that's been done in Congress. So I think if you're, if you had any stakes in the game, go ahead and please read Eric's article and just, you know, I still just say good job Eric and the team at Beeper for fighting the good fight. But for now the fight is, I don't know over but paused and we'll see what happens.  No, I mean, and nobody's surprised, right? I mean, we kind of saw this coming. It was just a point of when they would have. There was a lot of hope though, you know, like, I mean, this, this was not a got a little press sort of thing. This got major press and major coverage and people, you know, I don't know. I think the whole time, I don't know if I'm just cynical or whatever, but the whole time I was like, like I applaud the effort and I really applaud the reasons why, but like you're crazy. If you think that Apple is just going to be like, Oh, I guess there's nothing we can do about this. We'll just go ahead and acquiesce. Like they're just not going to do that. This doesn't surprise me at all. But I applaud Beeper for having the guts to like step into this war and do it. Even though it was a small moment in time for, for even to do it that long, you know, they really, they, they committed to it and I understand, you know, they, they hooked into a zeitgeist. They got like Congress people writing letters about it. People on both sides of the all right, writing a letter about it. And maybe that is enough for now. Totally. Maybe the story is not done. The story isn't Beeper mini saves the day. The story is Beeper mini, you know, put a crack into something that leads to a larger, you know, a larger thing down the line. And we just haven't got there yet. I can't wait to compare though, whatever Apple's RCS implementation is with what Beeper was, because I mean, for anyone that used Beeper mini, it actually was pretty nice. I mean, even though it was not, you know, fully featured, even though it was like very nascent in its implementation, it was just nice. And, and my iPhone friends were having fun, like, you know, using their iMessage features with me and likewise. So I guess we'll, I'm really curious to see whatever Apple has to test, has to show. And then of course I'll be directly comparing it to Beeper and probably making fun of them if it doesn't pan out. So just warning you it's going to happen. That 48 hours or however long Beeper mini lasted was amazing. Yeah, right. Exactly. Like it was, it was a glimpse into what it could be. Oh, yes. Right. If this was just the way it was, wouldn't that be a nice world to live in? Well, the world that we do live in is a world filled with premium smartphones, apparently, according to counterpoint research, who says premium smartphone sales for devices that cost more than $600 increased 6% year over year. They had actually, actually, I don't know if it was they or if they were just noting that there was a projected decline of the premium smartphone market in the past year. Yet, you know, it turns out 6% year over year increase last year, you know, it was, it was, it was less. And this year, instead of dropping even further, it's more. So 24% of smartphones now fall into the premium category. That's up from 21% last year. Yeah. What does this say about? Is this, is this foldables, you know, like partially related to foldables? I know that the markets that are driving this growth are markets like China, Western Europe, India, Middle East, Africa, at least that's what they denoted India, the fastest growth market, market for premium devices currently. But when we're talking about, you know, more than $600 phones and actually they even call out the $1,000 plus market responsible for a third of the premium market sales in 2023. And I have to imagine most of those devices are the premium foldables. Maybe, you know, you've got your Samsung Ultras and stuff like that falling into that category. But what, what do these numbers actually mean about where we're at with smartphones? I'm kind of curious about how a definition of premium hazard hasn't changed because if you're, if we're labeling phones costing $600 or more is premium. Like the price of flagship phones has steadily been increasing like year over year. You remember when the first phone that break the $1,000 mark, I think it was some Samsung like Ultra or Plus phone and then it was a big deal and now $1,000 is just the norm for like the highest end flagships. So maybe we got to like rethink that definition of what premium actually means. Yeah, I agree. So go. No, no, sorry. But because I feel like $600 is getting, it still could be mid-range. I mean, like I know we've kind of waffled a bit. I mean, I personally kind of waffle a bit on what I find mid-rangey, but I do agree with you. Like the way that I would count flagship at least $800 above these days, at least from what we usually talk about these days on the, on, on the show. But I do agree with the adhesion that there might be something there with like the ultra, ultra expensive phones. Like the foldable is just really pushing it up. And I also wonder, like, is there anything to a lot of the kind of, because it seems counter right, because we keep, we keep, we kept hearing research and, and opinions on, you know, the economy is bad people. There's a lot of, you know, instability in the market. People are really trying to hold on to their money inflation, all these bad terms. And it seems like that would point to, I don't know, at least in the U.S. And again, and maybe that's also the flaw in the logic is like, I'm thinking from a U.S. perspective to drive demand, you know, down for premium phones. But I don't know. Is there something also to be said that if companies are promising longer, you know, support windows and reputable batteries that it is more reasonable to, you know, it might open the market to premium more because people think that they can invest a thousand dollars and it might last them longer than two to three years. I don't know. I don't know. That's a great point. Yeah, absolutely. I think most people who are buying these phones aren't buying them at full retail price. There's so many deals, carrier deals, trading, etc. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. My kids over the holiday break kept noticing that there was like some T-Mobile ad where it was like, buy up. We'll give you up to four iPhone, you know, whatever the latest iPhones for free. You know, when you sign up, they're like, Dad, we should do that so that I can get a new iPhone. No. Yeah. Like my dad. Deals like that exist, right? Yeah. Like just for just one example, my dad recently got the Galaxy Z Fold 5. MSRP for the 512 gigabyte model is like $1,920. He bought it for $700 because they had a discount where they lowered the price of the 512 to be equal to 256. And then they also had like this $250 discount. And then he also got another $1,000 discount because he traded in his Note 20 Ultra. The trading in a Note 20 Ultra from like three and a half years ago to get $1,000 off. And then he also had like a first responder discount. So it's just crazy amount of stacked coupons and discounts to drive the price of that phone way down. So then our manufacturer is doing this for reports like this that say, hey, see, it's proven in the market. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, how many, that's a really great point. How many of those people are actually paying that cost for it? I mean, certainly there's a number of people that are. But yeah, it's kind of fuzzy math then when you think of it through that lens. It has a bigger story than just the numbers as usual. But it is. That is really interesting though. I really didn't anticipate like the title of this article coming up on my 2024 bingo card, which is very empty right now. I didn't either, right? Like that's that's a report that really goes counter to what I think a lot of people have been saying about the past year. Oh, everybody's, you know, really watching what they're spending. They're not they're not buying smartphones as much as they used to or whatever. And I suppose this report is not saying that more people are buying smartphones, but they are saying that the premium smartphone market specifically is doing better than you probably thought it was than I thought it was anyways. And speaking of doing better than you thought it was, I think I read in that report that Samsung and Huawei specifically actually grew year over year. Yeah. Apple declined. That's right. Yeah. In place of Apple. Which is kind of surprising like Huawei is not a name you would think to have grown, you know, in 2023 considering how devastated they were by the US trade ban and all that's been happening. But totally. I guess, you know, they kind of made a quiet like a really shocking resurgence because of their Mate 60 launch, their P 60 launch and all the the reports that Chinese government workers are no longer allowed to buy iPhones. Like there's a lot going on for them and kind of an interesting time to see Huawei come back as a potential player in the smartphone field. Yeah, indeed. All right. And one more before we get to the patron pick, Michelle. That's right. And this one might be an exciting feature for those of you who like to hold onto your phones for a long time. Because as you know, the longer you use your phones, the more likely it is that you might need to replace its battery because, you know, batteries the great over time. It's lithium.  And many devices now offer a feature that lets you see what estimated percentage of your battery is remaining. So like, you know, you have a 5,000 milliamp hour battery. Like you've been charging it, discharging it for a full year. Maybe the remaining capacity is now at 95% of its original. And like on iPhones, you can see this percentage on OnePlus phones. They also show this percentage. And it looks like Pixel phones may be potentially getting the same feature in the near future. While we were digging through the Android 14 QPR to beta, we, that is, nail from the Google news telegram group and myself discovered a hidden settings page that shows you the battery health as a percentage of the original capacity. And there's a whole bunch of setting strings and like some assets that indicate this feature is coming and in the works and we've been tracking the related APIs in Android itself that suggests this feature is also on the way. And there's also some related additions that might be coming to further augment this feature, such as the ability for the Android system apps to be able to read the serial number of a battery and also determine whether or not it's the original battery or it's a replacement battery. And we don't exactly know how Google or Android or OEMs might be using this information, but maybe they'll show you, are you using the original battery, are you using a replacement battery? Maybe there might be some lock involved, like there's been some criticism and controversy around Apple doing something like that, like we're at Warranty, you're using an unoriginal battery, but we don't know if Google is going to be doing something similar to that. Hopefully not, and hopefully all they're doing is just helping you to determine when you need to replace your battery if your battery has lost a lot of its capacity. It's kind of useful information because you can't really measure this kind of thing on your own. You've got to use an app like Warranty for weeks and apps like these only work after you've installed them, which might have been like a year worth of data charging and discharging is useless because the app can't collect any of that data, but your operating system and your battery itself can. So this something like this will be much more accurate and much more useful to the user. So it's not pulling any information specifically from the battery. It's really just analyzing how if at any time it's been replaced with the kind of calendar around or the schedule around when it's been charged, how much has been depleted and stuff like that over time to make an estimate as far as what it believes it's at. Well it actually might be pulling some information directly from like the battery, the circuit and like the charging circuit and things like that because like there's like low level code that suggests it's going to be whatever the Android OS is interfacing with the battery and the charging fields that suggest it can pull information that is provided to the OS from those chips. Yeah it does depend on the manufacturer though because that's kind of in the layer of software that OEMs have responsibility to implement, but I actually find this really interesting and I wonder you know it's kind of funny because it is available in API and it's kind of funny because it feels like there's like in my mind like two general groups that want this to be able to use it and it's just like, you know, it's just like a lot of people that write apps that help you with your battery health so I just find it really fascinating as an API but maybe it's an API to help like I don't know OEMs and other folks that do more kind of like their own kind of a proprietary flavor of things to do it, but I'm kind of interested to see if there's any interplay with this and whether Google will leverage this because you need to use adaptive charging because your battery health is low or your battery health has dropped like some percentage over the last week, maybe try adaptive charging instead of like, I don't know what I do just charge my phone up to 100% all the time because I'm nervous about not having charge so I'm probably just like defeating myself over the long run, but yeah it's just really interesting to see these kind of APIs come up, it's cool. I think you're actually exactly right because I mentioned in the article there's like code for like a tip to be sent to the user and already if you have a Pixel 8 or a recent Pixel phone on the QPR or the December release, there's like a battery charging troubleshooting page that gives you some instructions so they could easily tie those two together and like introduce more tips for what you need to do if your battery health is becoming poor.  And I think your point is really good that we're at a point now where more and more with the update promises with the level of the hardware and the quality of the hardware that's hitting a lot of these smartphones, as consumers we will have more of an expectation of longevity out of these devices and so knowing things like this especially when batteries are such a huge point of failure long term for why a device doesn't make it years and years, like you're going to need to know this stuff in order for those companies to be able to maintain their commitments to a seven year update cycle on a device and for you as a user to actually enjoy the experience when you do that. I didn't said how advanced our phones are and how indispensable they are and then the batteries just go to poop so fast. We're in the future mostly and then there's like this part that just feels like a little bit like why are we in the dark age of these batteries that don't just last like forever. Yeah. Some step up. All right. Well it is time to talk about the patron pick so every week we post on Mondays three stories and we let our wonderful patrons like this week's patron shout out receiver Muhammad Alayar I am sorry if I'm pronouncing incorrectly but if you're like Muhammad and you're a patron you get to vote on three stories every week for us to cover today on Tuesdays and there were some good stories this week y'all. But the ones that did not win this week on episode 25 are first tick-tock music could get a lossless audio option. Maybe as our demographic is less tick-tocky and more I don't know something else the other unfortunate loser this week with well the tick-tock story got seven percent one percent of you wanted us to talk about Google messages custom bubble colors being limited to RCS but unsurprisingly and also you know I'm with you there I would have voted for this one too if I voted the winner this week for the patron pick is Google Maps driving mode on Android might go away in 2024 and this is yet another in the Apple in the Apple feature hokey pokey where you put a feature in and we take a feature round we put a feature in and rename it all about you do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around and that's what Google is all about so you committed to that I did I really I had to I was a little too excited about doing the hokey pokey for everybody for the new year but yeah so the folks over at 9 to 5 Google's APK inside have been seeing signs specifically UI text that indicate that the Google Maps driving mode which is part of Google Maps that activates whenever you start navigation directions and is this little black bar that you kind of can pull up like a bottom sheet and that contains you know tiles of like you know audio apps media messaging all kinds of things that have a driving mode that comes up automatically well if you like that it might be going away very soon and they basically just found some hidden not yet displayed UI text that indicates that it will be kind of being deactivated I think it said February maybe for some reason I have figured in my head but yeah it looks like it's going away and what will be left without it just navigation I mean that I say that and it feels funny because we used to just have navigation you had to pay attention but it's just so weird because we talked while driving 100% without music I mean that's kind of sad and boring but we talked last year about when they tried to add a driving mode to Google Assistant which I think I remember one of us liking especially those of us that already have Android Auto which was that dash 40 thing card thing that showed up specifically in Google Assistant I remember I didn't like it and that already went away yeah didn't like it didn't fit as well I did I do use Google Maps driving mode all the time and now that's going away so I don't know maybe they're just refocusing efforts on Android Auto who knows but yeah if you use it don't don't get try to try to try to give it your thanks thanks it thank it for service and then say goodbye go ahead and push one of those three buttons that shows up there I mean don't get me wrong like I use it because when I'm using maps and I'm playing media on my phone which happens a lot like it's down there and so I would interact with it sometimes but it's so it was so limited like it was it was like the opposite of what the other mode was you know where it kind of like gave you all the options and laid it out this one was like no we're only giving you two things you can do you can pause or you can skip forward 30 seconds that's all you can do that's all you'll ever need to do and then if you need to do more than that then you got to go into the app experience and that just requires more tapping than less and more danger and more more distraction yeah I just wanted that's it I don't know I wouldn't be surprised if it just had really abysmal usage rate like use statistics because for me whenever I had to rely on just my phone for navigation I would just have Google Maps running and then I would separately have already started some podcast just YouTube music and I would never I'd never even bother I don't think I don't remember the last time I actually used the driving mode in Google Maps like actually open UI and change anything else all I did was add music playing in the background or a podcast and then just the maps navigation yeah that's it yeah yeah like I never I never used it or I shouldn't say never I rarely used it to like open up the the icons and go into some other mode or whatever yeah the only time I ever really used it for the most part was to pause what I was listening to pretty much or skip through but when it's connected via bluetooth like I could do that on the screen you know in my sequoia which is my main vehicle and it's just on the screen there anyways so I would have little reason to do it up there it just yeah it probably got really horrible usage that's got to be the explanation yeah it would be nice if Google opened up a way for you to run Android Auto on device because it is possible like Android Auto is literally already running on your device your head unit is just a wireless or wired display for Android Auto being run on your device and there are third-party apps that let you launch the Android Auto server and then stream the display onto the device so you're technically running everything Android Auto on your device the only problem I'm guessing is the dealing with scaling issues because like most phones are just not designed with the appropriate aspect ratio and resolutions to run your auto nicely like a lot of head units are very predictable they're like 16 by 9 7 inches or 10 inches or whatever you know but if you were running Android on your phone with this wonky 21 by 9 22 by 9 really tall stretched out aspect ratios or even foldables with even weirder aspect ratios it just doesn't look very good yeah well that was our patron pick of the week and if you want to participate in the patron poll and pick a story for us to poke you poke you I wanted to put more things in there like Muhammad you can go find our patron at patron.com slash Android faithful and thanks again to our patrons for both supporting us and for voting in the poll this week and letting us talk about Google maps or I'm surprised the messaging didn't get the most votes again maybe people are finally getting sick of the messaging thing I don't know when I saw it as one of the options was like all that things are going to win and it didn't I hoping for the driving mode because it makes me there we go we should all cover more things that make us now more happiness more happiness coming up next we're going to talk about some happiness all right it's time for some hardware and I get to tell you a little bit about what Samsung's got hiding up at sleep we've been hearing a little bit of rumor here and there that there was going to be some sort of event that is January is now 2024 January 2nd today at January 17th it was rumored that there was going to be an event and sure enough it's happening shortly before the show the announcement was made that there would be a Samsung Galaxy unpacked happening in San Jose January 17th now that's a Wednesday it's happening at 10 a.m. Pacific so you know Samsung does this on purpose they're like when is Android faithful recording Tuesday okay we're going to go the day after so that Android faithful will talk about the event and the developments when they come back the following Tuesday so it's totally done on purpose just trust me on that behind the scenes just a spider just a spider Michelle you going you're going to be amongst the people there is that happening I hope so you hope so I hope so too I've not received an invite yet I'm hoping to see if I can dig it up because San Jose is like right around the corner so so hopefully I can get there and take a look at the S24 the S24 ultra is it the S24 S24 plus in the S24 ultra I think yes yeah they're rumored to be doing the same three devices in the series again so regular plus and ultra as you go regular plus and ultra as you can see leaked images if you're watching the video version this is an article on Android authority that shows some of the leaked images and pieces of them anyways you know kind of more of the same as far as the design is concerned I think you know this is just kind of the Samsung you know Galaxy S series design language with the I don't know what you call them are those teardrop cameras whatever when they're kind of like alone by themselves camera bumper anything like that I've been calling it a hole punch hole punch but like whole protrusion not as much of a punch as it is protruding out it's like the back of the page of a hole punch when you pull punch things in school it's like the back where the punch is going out is that how punches work maybe it's been a long time since school y'all it's okay we don't need to know math here or schooly things we just need to know that we look at these devices we go that looks pretty some of the things that we're going to see the s-pen working with the ultra so you can see it kind of on these renders anyways paired with the ultra so that's going to happen 200 megapixel camera on the ultra is going to be one of those cameras that you're going to see nitography zooms that zoom even in low light for and I think that goes for all of the cameras are going to have that feature so I have to imagine with the ultra you're going to get probably a better you know a better optical zoom sort of experience so that that might look better rumors are that the ultra will have a titanium build I don't know if that's an option or a standard but titanium build there and then we also got some leaks of some features of galaxy ai which is something the samsung is definitely going to be talking about there and some leaky goodness around that terminology live language translation within a phone call so if you're talking I guess I'm assuming if you're talking to someone and you don't speak the same language but you're on the phone which that's interesting Samsung phones will do live translation and I'm sure there's going to be a demo on stage that's going to show off how that goes because that sounds like it could be really confusing but if done well that sounds amazing and then a generative edit which is you know kind of kind of what you would expect generative ai doing things like moving or of you moving objects from photos filling empty space maybe depending upon what you tell it to put there although that requires I think this is interesting requires the Samsung account and an internet connection which tells me that some of this stuff is not happening on the device which I feel like 2024 with the AI improvements that we're going to see in smartphones as a user I want it on device and we know that the the pixels going to be doing that because Google is really leaning into that and emphasizing that I'm kind of surprised that Samsung is not at least according to what these rumors are saying what do you all think? I'm really excited because this will be the first smartphone with the not the first smartphone but the smart first smartphone the first smartphone we can buy in the U.S. with the snapdragon HN3 processor and like all the as you mentioned Jason there's a whole bunch of generative ai features that are in the works some of them will be on device some of them won't be I'm I really want to see like how they're going to be leveraging the HN3 and its processing capabilities to run ai tasks on device yeah yeah indeed I'm still kind of caught up with the Smurf fartphone I think this really needs to be really needs to be a phone I would love to see that and not smell it so don't smell that phone that's a horrible phone to smell smell that one but not that one yeah I'm looking forward to it hopefully we can get our hands on some of these devices get into the event is my hope so we will be keeping track of this as we get closer which is it's only a couple of weeks away so we're going to get an avalanche of hardware here in a couple of weeks oh yeah by the way if you're on the internet on the Samsung galaxy unpack day I am planning to be on DTNS later that day so unfortunately we are on Tuesdays but DTNS on on that Wednesday will have me on to pontificate about what got announced so if you're interested tune into DTNS talk about Samsung on the Wednesday and then you'll get all of us the next Tuesday but in case you can wait for us you can get me at least on Wednesday excellent yes yes yes well it's time to talk about nothing the joke that always keeps on gaming well so we've had some leaks or kind of like rumors about the nothing phone 2a being of course nothing's flavor of everybody's favorite name for their mid-range series a series so the nothing phone 2a is continuing to be leaked and we have a few more specific details about the specs and these come from Roland Kwant Kwant Kwant Kwant Kwant Kwant on Twix Twitter or X formerly known as Twitter I feel like X has become like Prince now like for that phase where Prince it wasn't it was the artist formerly known as Prince and that was just the whole name the social network formerly known as Twitter but now X but so anyway Roland has released some specs on the nothing 2a for a little leaky peaky so far it seems we're going to get an 8 RAM 128 gigabyte sub 400 euro which as the time of this recording is 438 USD version as well as a 12 gigabyte RAM 256 gigabyte storage plus 400 euro version whiter black rumors say that the phone 2a will be rocking the MediaTek Dimensity 7200 and likely have an FHD plus display and I mean we don't know much else about it but we are kind of looking forward to MWC in February and seeing if it gets announced and actually Carl Pay himself tweeted a New Year's message that seemed to maybe hint also at New Year new phone it was very enigmatic it was just kind of like a tweet with I don't know just something very new I didn't quite get the tweet itself but it said new phone in there so it came from Carl Pay himself that's an aerodactyl from Pokemon yeah it's a Pokemon okay that's the code name for the phone supposedly is it okay I wasn't sure if it was also referenced because this is the next Lunar New Year's and you're the dragon but okay cool so it's a Pokemon where's flow they've been using Pokemon names for their previous oh really code names yeah like I think nothing phone 2 was Alec exam or was nothing phone 1 either way it's continuing a trend okay so yeah if you are looking for a proper mid ranger and you want some other a series not just the Samsung a series not just not just a pixel a series you might get your nothing a series in February so we'll keep an eye on that and they you know how do you guys feel about these specs that we're seeing interested not interested cheap enough like 438 USD for a for these specs how's that feeling I mean it's a hope hopefully the software will be nice I'm more interested in they are hyping the zone up a lot and I hope a lot of users don't get their hopes up too much like expecting a flagship pure device because clearly what this is not oh yeah absolutely not yeah people can have that expectation they're going to be disappointed what I want to know is is there going to be some flashy deal in the back better for I mean right like it's kind of lame that that's like the you know the thing that I'm thinking of but but at the same time like that that is kind of of they're doing they've really leaned into the our design is different than anything else out there largely because of this like identification you know notification system on the back with the with the glyphs and everything like that a $400 you know mid-range device that yeah how does it compete with the other mid-range powerhouse devices out there and it has you know kind of a unique notification flashlight system on the back I guess yeah that could that could be interesting cousin of John chat maybe laugh I had a hold back by laughter because they said nothing is nothing without the back LED which is perfect there we go I had to like hold back my laughter on air but that was I think I think that's true and I think it was very apt because man nothing really does that's an interest keeps on giving so thank you for that they knew what they were doing they were like they were like just wait until we watch all the press just like stumble over themselves trying to like pronounce our name you know in sentences and not you know do double takes all the time they knew what they were doing all right Michelle you got the last one what you got so for this next smartphone we're going to talk about we don't have to wait nearly as long to see what it's all about because the one plus 12 are as we mentioned on our last show will be coming to North America and the launch event supposedly is happening this week January 4th in China to be more precise and then followed by January 23rd global launch according to noted one plus leaker Max on Twitter who shared the rundown of specifications so this smartphone will have a 6.78 inch pro XDR display with LTPO 4.0 so basically it's just going to have it's going to support the 1 to 120 hertz refresh rate dynamic changing between the refreshes instead of like discrete refresh rate modes it will have a snapdragon 8 gen 2 instead of the new 8 gen 3 but I guess the reason for that is because the R series has typically been more their value flagship the one plus 13 which should be coming out I guess in the near future should have the 8 gen 3 but this one meanwhile will have the previous generation 8 gen 2 and also have 8 or 16 gigabytes of LPDDR 5x RAM 128 or 256 gigabytes of UFS 3.1 or UFS 4.0 storage of 5500 million which is pretty significant for the slab smartphone of this size and then 100 watt supervooc charging I'm kind of curious if it'll actually charge at that speed in the US because does you remember the one plus 10 pro it supported 80 watt charging outside of the US and only 65 watt charging in the US and one plus said that was because of the fact that they're charging supervooc didn't support the 120 volt AC power in the States so who knows if that 100 watt will remain when they release the phone in the US but it's still interesting to see such a staggeringly fast charging rate and then the camera has a 50 megapixel IMX5 890 plus an 8 megapixel ultra wide plus a 2 megapixel macro so it kind of seems like where they're skimping out is the good cameras you have a 50 megapixel which is probably the only one you're going to care about the 8 megapixel ultra wide and 2 megapixel macro kind of seem like they're always here hopefully if the price is not too high it's not going to be too much of a compromise here because this really seems like you just focus on the one main camera you have these crazy fast performance you have a really nice display and hopefully if it's not too expensive this will be a pretty good value pickup is this what what category is this is this going up against the nothing phone 2a or is this going because actually this seems like it's a nothing phone 2 competitor nothing phone 2 which in my mind and I'm kind of making a connection earlier in the news we're talking about the premium smartphone market growth and how that was what was it $600 and up I think $500 $600 and up but there really is a differentiation between the 600 to like 800 or 600 to 900 and the 900 or a thousand and up from there so it's almost like there's like a low premium and a high premium this would be like a low premium you know I don't know what the better word would be for a low premium but anyways interesting alright the one plus 12 are okay well and then we have some app news we've got it all this week on android faithful starting with you win I know we just mentioned that you know the google maps driving mode is going away which you may or may not be sad with but hey in exchange you're going to get a fun feature with android auto which actually is on by default so if you have a static wallpaper not your fancy live wallpapers or anything like that but if you have a static wallpaper and you connect to android auto that unit will actually reflect the wallpaper on your phone on the android auto display and it is on by default if you for some reason don't care for that no worries you can go to the settings in your android auto UI and turn off what was it called again sorry I had my notes and I was just reading off the screen you can turn off use phones wallpapers in android auto again no static images or only static images no fancy specialized or live wallpapers but if you wanted to adjust up your android auto hub there you go google is doing it for you with your very own wallpaper I really want to try this but I feel like I'm not going to see the wallpaper very much because I was used like the tiled mode because I'm always going somewhere I have my tunes up so right yeah you always have an app running like how often do you see that background anyways yeah yeah for audio stream users only listeners only the the main images that are promoting this show the application tiles over the wallpaper I don't drive around with the the application icons up personally but didn't want to poo poo it too much it's still pretty cool and you should see it again by default if you have your android auto gone and have kind of a phone connected so there you go your personal wallpaper brand following you all over all of your android devices yes so other people can see your good or bad wallpaper choices they're in the car with you choices of wallpaper okay well um that's that's that I I mean okay fairly useful feature I suppose I still don't have android auto so I can't I can't enjoy all of these amazing features um but I do have the google clock Michelle so at least there's that tell me what what I can look forward to there yeah so google clock app is now showing a redesigned version of the page where it shows you like the the weather forecast whenever you dismiss an alarm so for a little bit of context when google release the pixel 8 they also released a new pixel weather app that integrates with the google clock app this weather app just provides weather information to the google clock app so that you can add like a home screen widget and then you can also see the local weather for the place you put on the clock and they also started rolling out this page this like page that you get whenever you dismiss an alarm it shows you the weather forecast for the day in that location wherever you are and now they're rolling out a redesigned version of that just looks much better if you're on the video you can see it after on the 9 to 5 google article of what the interface looked like before when they initially rolled it out and what it looks like now and this looks like to be like a server side rollout a lot of people on the December update with a pixel phone mind you because this pixel this pixel weather app is required for the google clock app to be able to show weather information I don't know why it's architected like that I'm assuming for privacy related reasons but I also don't know why this isn't just available to everyone who uses the google clock app but that's just the tangent of mine if you have a pixel phone and you use the google clock app as your clocks and reminders app when you set an alarm there's like a toggle you can set to show weather forecast be sure to turn that on if you want this updated weather forecast interface after you dismiss an alarm I really like that I might need that although to be honest as much as I like the new design from an aesthetic standpoint when I first wake up in the morning I'm gonna be able to read so like totally was just like more big text very plain big text spelling like literally writing out the weather for you today will be this tomorrow we that when I'm like just waking up that's honestly what I need so I don't know I kind of like the previous one just from a winds getting old I'm getting bad yeah no I completely agree actually I think both of these like when I wake up sometimes when I wake up first thing in the morning I can't even see the clock on my on my lock screen you know what I mean that that's kind of showing right next to my bed let alone like up this little this little fonti stuff you know I'm just I'm gonna be a little too bleary eyed to be able to read that but I like the feature and I do think like though that the old implementation has a little bit more context like a little bit you know a little bit more information there versus the new one which is really just relegated to here's what you need to know in very very simple terms about today and not tomorrow and I appreciate knowing a little bit of the forecast but you know maybe they're just simplifying and just cleaning it up which kind of feels like the pixel way this almost feels like Google assistant five years ago versus pixel you know pixel experience today lots of good information but just not just kind of plainly laid out for you as opposed to more like you know very the new design is very material it's got like shapes it's got like cool fonts everything is kind of like flowing and like kind of fitting everything else so I don't know yep I like this I like it spelled out for me I'm not I'm actually not that smart I need things spelled out for me so but good feature though I will I actually will turn that on tonight I think alright well finally in app news Microsoft co-pilot got its launch for Android so this no longer do you need the Bing mobile app on your Android device if you want to use co-pilot you can now just download the app I downloaded it and used it a little bit and checked it out and I mean you know it's it's kind of what you expect out of kind of the current large language model thing you know if you've used one you kind of know what you're going to get here is text generation kind of along the lines of chat gpt it is image generation via Dolly 3 in fact there is one feature that's interesting free access depending on the mode that you're in to GPT for which if you're going through open AI that's a paid feature so you can get access to that through here for free so that's kind of interesting but yeah Microsoft co-pilot doing it's doing this thing you know with the with the standalone app I suppose that's that's useful there are so many of these now AI guy how integral do you think the standalone app is to like the everyday user just because it feels like you know it feels like especially from my dev way of thinking it's all about integrations integrating into your app but from your observations how valuable is having a standalone app for these LLMs? I think it's certainly valuable I think it's nice to have this especially like not a feature that you can only get if you happen to know that you need to use the Bing browser and go in you know kind of sideways I think people in the past year have gotten used to the idea at least the way these things are presented now that if I want to use chat GPT I gotta go to the open AI website and use it you know it's the more advanced users that start getting into the integrations and getting into the kind of pulling the API into over here and over there and doing those kind of advanced things but the general public that's using AI to do some of the interesting generative AI stuff you know they're just going to the website and plunking things into the field and this is kind of akin to that in my opinion this is like Microsoft saying alright we have an app for the people who just want an app that they can tap on and ask it a question or they can tap on and take a picture of what that is and give me some context around it versus the integrated the integrated approach which I agree with you I think that's where things get really exciting that appears to be Google's mentality with what they're doing you know with their app sorry their AI experience across all their apps and services really kind of making sure that the AI is where you are already not that you need to remember to go to this place in order to use it but I think both are beneficial you know both have their uses and some people are going to be looking for one versus for the other if that makes sense one thing I really hope to see from Microsoft and OpenAI like their Android developers is please add like a direct shortcut or like default assistant integration with Android so that we can launch your app and chat directly with GPT for chat GPT whatever and then tap a button because one thing I wanted to try out was like when OpenAI released their chat GPT app for Android there's like a button you can launch to go into the voice mode right but you have to open the app and then manually tap that button I wanted to see if it was possible to launch directly into that voice mode so that I could set that activity you know that shortcut directly from the lock screen or like just by holding down the home button just like Google Assistant that would be super useful but the Android app isn't allowed for that it's doable just in my opinion but it also depends on how they've written it but that should be doable but they have to add support for it right please do yes indeed what was the phone recently that has the like well I think actually it might be an iPhone although I'd be surprised if Android phones haven't had this in the past that like programmable button that can be kind of whatever you want it to be I can totally see you know assigning that to something like what you're talking about that would be super useful and I have to imagine that is coming because that appears to be one of the things that you know the people who are making these AI services really want you to do they want you to think about that particular service when you have a question that you want to ask and use your voice and you know however you want to ask that question that seems like that's that's got to happen if it hasn't already well I just like that Google is doing it it's like this is going to happen with them and I think Microsoft is missing they're going to miss out by not having this level of ease of access on Android phones I just think it was funny I can't really, was it three or four years ago where everyone was making fun of Samsung for the Bing button there was like a Bing button or the Samsung there was someone had a Bing button and it was just like really easy to make fun of and now it's like you know 2024 now and it just makes a lot of sense now to launch not Bing of course but you know a very Bing adjacent now product the Bixby button Bixby, I'm sorry it was Bixby Bixby, am I bad the side button, the Bixby key yes, you're right, okay now it all comes full circle because that's what I was reminded of I was like God I feel like we've seen this on Android phones even though I know that and all I wanted to do was just reprogram it but now it's just like oh and now every Android phone you hold down by default it opens Google Assistant right, right which drives me crazy still but I get it, they're driving us to a place I'm just a little annoyed by it they're taking you to a place maybe not the place you want to go but they're taking you there to where they want just a power button y'all you can give me a Bixby or a Gemini or an Assistant button just make it separate give me a Gemini key and write Gemini on it give me a Netflix key and then write Netflix on it with the red background and our phones will just be surrounded with buttons, shortcut buttons all labeled to the places well that's how they subsidize these premium phones yes, exactly our phones suddenly only cost $200 that's because every time I put it in my pocket it launches Netflix I don't know why it does that it keeps doing that, it's lame okay, all right we are officially in the feedback portion contact at androidfaithful.com if you want to send us an email, you should because we love reading them like Wynn is about to do with this one yes, and our first email is from Zach who is just north of San Francisco I've just switched from iPhone to Android Pixel 8 Pro and moved my contacts to Google Context but I am still a lifelong Mac user but Mac's contacts app was dropping contacts they were just disappearing randomly so I switched to Google anyway, my question is, are there any Mac contacts apps that will sync with Google Context and its label system Mac contacts will sync but lose the label info and is unreliable anyway it's hard to send emails from Google Context using the Apple Mail app without cutting and pasting which is not elegant any suggestions would be appreciated are any of the new Android faithfulcast Mac users, thanks Zach I'm a Mac user but I'll never do this I gave up Zach long time ago decades ago now on syncing contacts or mail with anything Google I just do everything in the cloud on Google Context and any of the stuff that I guess if I was an Apple user I'd be more inclined to sync things to my desktop into one of the apps that ships within everything but I'm so embedded in the Google world and doing things in the cloud it doesn't even occur to me to do that you know what I mean? You should at least be able to export all your Apple contacts there's going to be a lot of fields that will be missing because it might be custom to Apple contacts and vice versa but that should at least get the names, emails, addresses the most basic information over to Google Context I don't know about the label system directly that Zach mentions here but I think that's kind of what you're touching on is that some of those might import correctly, some of them might not it's not a one-to-one sort of thing there used to be a lot more third-party apps that tried to do this bridge and I feel like I did use one of these maybe about 15, 16 years ago when I switched over to using Macs so I basically have used a Macbook for most of my adult career using development because Unix system it's a Unix system and I think initially I did try to integrate all my things but I think, like Jason, I pretty much gave up because something was missing, probably like UZAC where there was a feature like Labels or something that just lost the metadata that was a little bit too much for me to kind of manage on my own and I just kind of went for the cloud good suggestions just cloud, cloud it Y'all remember when HTC used to have a sync feature that would like pull avatar information from Facebook? For like your contacts? Yes! My contacts have been permanently like polluted by HTC data Absolutely Similar Oh that HTC in the notes field or whatever all the metadata that they'd store in there Yeah, totally I do remember that Thanks for reminding me of those memories Alright, thank you Zach, just north of San Francisco How north of San Francisco? Because I'm just north of San Francisco too but anyways, I'm just curious Okay, Michelle, you got the next one Yeah, our next email comes in from Chain from they didn't specify and they wrote in to say that hey guys, can you discuss on the show how at least at the time of writing this Google has failed to meet their already delayed deadline of the end of the year for the launch of the Find My Device trackers? Thank you and this is kind of interesting because one of the news items I was proposing for this week's show was to talk about the status of the Find My Device Network and before the year ended I noticed that the the unwanted device tracker specification that Google and Apple are jointly working on, while Apple and Google actually submitted like version 1 of this specification, it's still in a draft phase so it's not been finalized Google said they expected it to be finalized by the end of the year, that hasn't happened but it looks like we've made significant progress and it looks like hopefully soon it should be finalized and I talk about this on Twix, if you're watching the video I made a tweet or Twix, whatever they call it now about this draft being uploaded to the IETF, the Internet Engineering Task Force and once this is finalized then Apple will roll out its implementation of unwanted tracker alerts on iOS however long that takes and then once that happens Google is expected to roll out their Find My Device Network because the explanation is that Google is waiting for Apple to do their thing and roll out unwanted tracker alerts so that when Google rolls out the Find My Device Network Android users can't use these trackers to stalk and harass iPhone users because there's billions of Android users billions of iPhone users, you know there's going to be a couple of bad eggs who are doing just exactly that. Are we looking forward to being able to track all the things like this? I mean, it sounds like a pretty darn useful feature to me. Especially if the Android ecosystem version of AirTags and stuff are finally deploying, let's get all that together, keep people safe keep people safe, keep that Pandora's box closed, looking forward to it just because I know no one's going to stop no one's going to stop Bluetooth trackers they're there. They're there. Okay, thank you, Shane. Shane? One of those must have been right and I apologize for the other ones though we're not. Chuck in Thousand Oaks wrote in oh I forgot I can show the emails okay so here's the first email here's the second email for those watching the video I forgot that I can show these and then here's the third one Chuck in Thousand Oaks wrote in to say with regard to the comments that people have friends that complain about them being shown up as a green bubble I say that if your friends are that shallow then it's time to get new friends I've been using Android phones exclusively since 2008 and have never ever had anyone even mention a green bubble to me it's insane if someone should ever bring this up regards Chuck in Thousand Oaks I agree Chuck I don't yeah I don't know I'm trying to think if anyone has really actually brought this up to me well no you know what it has happened I've had friends that have mentioned it but it was more joking it was not like a shame outcast like you're out of the you're out of the group sort of thing it was you know it was just a noticing slash joking sort of thing and I can take it I can I could let it roll off me it's fine yes I've only had jokes it maybe just one person and they immediately apologize for the joke because they're like I know I know but I have and I've mentioned before Eve's dropped on people just totally dumping on their friend that has an Android phone and so Chuck I heartily agree with you I think it's silly and especially I thought someone on the show mentioned about not wanting to or watching those horrible videos where someone said well I wouldn't even date anyone right better off anyway which would you swipe is it swipe right is rejection whatever swipe swipe the bad way swipe the no thank you way to that stuff I'm with Chuck just swipe the bad way on that one sick brain guys y'all I'm so sorry I'm happy to say I don't know the direction I don't know I just don't know but whatever the bad way is swipe it all right well we reached the end of this episode of Android faithful Ron I hope you've enjoyed your Tuesday evening and know that you know you your Tuesday evening is like you can have one to yourself from time to time it's totally cool because you know what we got you covered as tonight is our evidence of that when what do you want to leave people with do you want plug yes hi I'm an Android developer I do that as my day job and occasionally I talk about Android development things you can see my talks associated code and video at my website randomly typing calm and if you want to find me on the interwebs I technically am on twix but you're more likely to find me at places like Instagram and threads queen code monkey and I haven't been a Macedon in a bit but if you if you want to find me there I'm at queen code monkey at mastodon dot social and yeah happy new year everybody thanks for being with us still in 2024 it's gonna be a fun year thank you Michelle what do you want to leave people with what you gotta go on well now that the holidays are over I'm back in the news grind trying to dig into Android releases to figure out what's new and if you want to follow my work and see what's going to happen in Android 15 you can find me everywhere on twix on mastodon on threads just look me up on one of the numerous websites I usually crosslink cross post all the time and if you want to support my work and see some exclusive posts related to Android you can follow me on patreon.com slash Michelle Armand and I just busted two things today in fact so there's a couple things to look forward to and I appreciate your support and happy new year happy new year thank you Michelle as for me well god where do I even point people to right now free jason newsletter.com is where you can go to kind of get updates on what I'm up to because I got a lot of stuff that I'm working on behind the scenes and I think this month I'm going to have actually have some launches of a few things so I've got my work cut out for me so if you go to free jason newsletter.com it's just a substack newsletter and it is free it's not free jason is it like I'm trapped help me let me out it's more like it's free it's jason and it's a newsletter.com so go there and you can kind of keep up to date with what I'm doing my socials can be found at reagan.fun and then patreon.com if you want to support me directly but we of course are here doing android faithful that's why we are here so you can support us directly as a show go to patreon.com slash android faithful to show your support you can do the patrons news pic that we did earlier that when introduced in the news segment we get an ad free feed of the podcast exclusive content we just had some exclusive content hit the feed over the holiday got merchandise all sorts of things if you want to support this show and you know no matter what if you just want to subscribe for free that's an option too just go to android faithful.com you can find all the ways to subscribe to the show I love it when you set off your fireworks when it's just it's just so wonderful it it's exactly how we feel each and every time we do android faithful for you also we are so happy to be here with you each and every week every Tuesday evening android faithful.com send us an email contact at android faithful.com what else I don't know we're on the socials look for us and thank you everybody we'll see you next time on android faithful have a great night and week