So I've not worried. Same room for the first time for an episode of Pixelated. Yeah, we're at IO together, and we had a little bit of a strength drop the other day. Yes. Well, yesterday, technically. We're on day two of IO. And we're 16 QPR one. I think it was a little bit unexpected, but kind of welcome. I don't know, you tell me what you think so far. Absolutely welcome. A week ago. Last Tuesday, Anglid show. We saw it.
People have been gunning for it. People have wanted it. It's finally here. And... Wow, it's a big change. It feels different. It obviously looks different. We knew that. But it just feels different. I think the underrated things are the haptics, the sound, the animation, which we already knew of. But really, you can see the images, but you need to feel it. You need to use it on your... Dairy Driver, which I am. You know the I in that phrase.
What are you using it on right now? Because I've slapped it on the 9 Pro Fold because I wanted to see what it would do to a foldable device. And there's a few little changes that are unique to this. But what are you currently using it on right now? Because actually we have to separate it at I.O. so that I could go and dive into this straight away. So Pixel 9a is... I'm still using the Pixel 9a from the review. And yeah, it's...
Okay, Android 16 is by itself pretty boring. QPR One, it's... calling the QPR1 as a disservice because this Might as well call it Android 17. I can't. It is really... It makes your phone feel so much more vibrant. And to go on a little bit of a tangent, historically... I feel like Android has always been the more alive OS, the more active OS. Then iOS was a bit of a stale side. But I personally, I'm a fan of what iOS 16 or 17 did when they added widget.
I thought iOS made a big... They were really going after Android to make it a bit more dynamic, make it more alive. And I think... 16 QPR one material to expressive it gets it back it's really alive it feels vibrant I think most people are a bit hesitant about the animations like the... Like when you slide away a notification, the other notifications, the top and bottom, they move. There's a jiggle, there's a...
This animation, it moves. And I think some people are a bit hesitant on that, just seeing it on a video. But when you actually use it, it... Yes, there's a learning curve, but I think you immediately accept it. You immediately get, oh, this is nice. It's showing some dynamicness to it. Yeah, I mean, I'm an animation guy. We talk about it. I feel like we've talked about it at length, ad nauseum a little bit, but you did.
I do agree with you. I'm obviously using the phone right now as I'm speaking to each other, and there are so many little changes that I think just to kind of add up to something a little bit more complete. Complete, yes. I guess. We're going to see some more stuff because there's a few things missing here and I must admit I've seen a few bugs.
Even just before starting recording, I was messing around with the phone and there's a few little bugs there with regards to the wallpaper and style app. And to be fair, after that, it's pretty stable. We're not using it for 24 hours, right? So in general, QPRs, they're... They are just based on developer previews. As we've seen with the rest of Android 16 beta, they're still bugs. But this one is, I think it's par for the course for QPRs in terms of the first betas, absolutely. So I think...
You will get bugs. You will notice bugs. But again, I guess it's too soon for us to say 24 hours, but I'm not seeing anything impacting. my usage, and I'm not seeing any regrets on putting it on my 9A. I probably wouldn't but that's I'm just kind of the person where I'd err on the side of caution, just stay on a stable for a little bit longer just in case. I mean, I think it's more a case of like, you know, when you... I mean, I haven't tried...
to pay for anything yet. Have you tried to pay for anything yet? No, I haven't. So that's always something that I know that obviously most of the time it does work, but I'm always worried that I go and pay for something because I don't carry my wallet. Yeah. And I don't want to be that guy who's stood up and checked out and been like, oh, I can't pay for anything.
What do you think of the customization options? Because I think this is where there's some major changes. Quick settings. It is quick settings. Quick settings is good. Have you arranged them in any specific way? Yes, I have. I've arranged. So, honestly, I've been finding a 2x4 grid a few years old, the past four years. It's nice tiles. It's very tappable, et cetera, et cetera. So when I got mine, the first thing I did was switch them to the...
the smallest size, it's one by one. And so I had like six, maximum of 16 in the... on the first page and but over time but like immediately you you start adjusting it some make more sense as to uh for example too wide for example the bluetooth one um If it's just one, the one by one, and you tap it, it's just an on and off toggle. But if it's two by one, and you tap the right side, it opens the full list.
of Bluetooth devices like before. So there's some nuance there. And when you're customizing, you need to keep in mind whether you just want on and off or whether you want to access the side panel. the inline panels so a lot of nuance there but yes I've absolutely customized it it is feeding into my density desires and it is very dense it is So that's pages. I'm down to two pages for Mike 4.
I think that's probably going to be one of those ones that I don't think it came across well on leaks. Like some of the stuff that we saw in the leaks prior to the time, and even when Google explains some of this stuff, when you see press images and press videos, I feel like...
How would I describe it? It's almost like you have a perception of what it's going to be before you get to try it out for yourself. I think the Pixel's done that for years anyway. I think we've talked about that at length in this podcast anyway. When you get an update on your device and you get to delve into it deeply and then you start to understand things a little bit more.
I feel like this is going to be one of the updates that really just grow on me. And I think this is, I mean, just going off on a little bit of a tangent, I think since Android 12 era, we've kind of missed... Delving into big substantial updates and year over year
I think a lot of people were getting a little bit bored. I don't want to say bored. Maybe they were bored, actually. Bored of the minute changes that don't necessarily affect usability. But this is a huge shift in terms of usability and visuals at the same time, which is like... I mean, it's rare, isn't it? I mean, who's the only one who's done that recently? Samsung, maybe? ColorOS to an extent? Like...
This feels like a good, happy medium of lots of different versions of Android at the same time. So, quick settings is a big one. And I have to agree that the single tap system for Bluetooth, and I think it's for modes as well. I actually didn't know that it was left and right side with the elongated panel, so that's a quick... It's only for the ones that have inline panels, inline pickers. But it doesn't apply to the Wi-Fi button, which I find really... Because you can't turn on an off-internet.
there's no there's two separate talks since they combined it which remember how big a deal that was yeah um you can't So it's cellular connectivity and Wi-Fi is its own things. So if they made it an on and off, they wouldn't put a universal on and off toggle for both those things. But I think that why not do what they've done on Apple devices and have a cellular option? Because we still don't really know why Google cares so much about one internet. They want to call it internet, which, whatever.
I mean, I like the fact that they've at least addressed two of these, right? The complaints that we had when we saw, was it Android 15 QPR 1 or QPR 2 when they introduced modes? Well, they introduced modes. I think a lot of people were kind of confused as, what is this new thing? I want do not disturb.
Yeah, I'm never on Do Not Disturb. Fair enough. I'm the kind of person who I have it on right now while we're recording so that you don't get pings and pings and pings. Yeah, I'm vibrate only on my phone, so I've never... You never needed to. You felt they needed to. Right, fair enough. I can kind of understand that. But yeah, these are the kind of little things that do start to... You think, why is it taking this long to do this again if they're going to make that unified panel?
The quick settings is probably the most notable thing you'll spot straight away, but there are little changes. I don't even think people have necessarily spoken at length about the new... I mean, there is a new system font, right? Yeah. The system font looks... I mean, I still don't know how I feel about it. It's growing on me a little bit. It'll take, like, all paths change still take a few days. The home screen. Did you get an extra rollback?
I got an extra row back because I'm five wide. I think you're four wide. Yeah, I keep it default on four, so I don't think I've gained an extra row. No, I may have because one of my widgets actually looks a bit smaller here on my home screen. I'm indifferent to those kind of changes, but I'm more aware of the changes where...
You can go in and make alterations to say, I don't know, icon size I'd really like to see, but we don't have that yet, right? Do we have a shape? No, not in this one by the looks of it. Unless somebody's managed to get it working. could get in contact with us and show us how they did it but yeah in the wallpaper style application
There's a lot of nice little tweaks here. The core customizations are pretty there. I'm very surprised it's here because I kind of think that's a pixel. I thought that a lot of the customization stuff was going to be a Pixel 10 thing. It's still exclusive or something like that for three months or whatever. Like they debut the latest on the 10 or whatever. So it's nice that we only have it now.
I really like the... I mean, I like the idea of it. I don't like the execution a little bit. I don't know if there's an effects panel where you can kind of add effects to your home screen. Have you played around with this yet? No, I haven't. So in the WarPrim style application... There is an option to add weather effects or local weather effects based upon your location. You can choose rain, snow, fog, and sun, I think it is.
It's... I don't know. I don't know where this has come from. This doesn't feel like a Google addition to the phone, but obviously any kind of subjects of your wallpaper should technically... They'll react to the conditions, for instance, when it's snowy. You might have a pet, for instance, that gets coated in snow. I don't know if that feels in tune with the rest of the clean, almost. That's sad for me. Yeah, I've been playing around with it the last couple of hours.
I don't know if it's for me, realistically. They have these options, and I think this is the closest thing to icon alterations that you can do right now. is that you can create cut-outs for your wallpaper. The downside is that the edge detection for the subject is a bit spotty at the best of times, so I'd like to see some more refinement there where we can maybe make some changes.
But yeah, the weather effects are just... I'm going to say I think they're a bit cringe. I think it just doesn't feel in keeping with the rest of the OS. But I guess if it... It feels more like a... This is a hard distinction. It feels like a more of a Pixel phone feature than an Android feature, but the lines are absolutely blurry. Yeah, no, true. No, I can understand that. But yeah, there's some funny things in here that I didn't expect to arrive in this first release, but...
I guess if it's potentially going to release in, what, September? End of August, September? Yeah, around that time frame. It's going to be fairly nailed on of what is in it already, but yeah, I think... Other features that you may be interested in, I guess, there's options to, I mean, quick settings are still the biggest one.
How do you feel about the start of the spot? Yeah, I was literally about to say put the battery in a new icon shape. I'm... I don't know. Muscle memory tells me I don't like it. I don't know what the style they're aiming for is. It's like the 5G logo. Catoony? I don't know. That's taking some time to get used to this. There's a bulbousness. I think I'd call it bulbousness to it.
Need to get used to a bit. The battery and the battery percentage in the battery icon is... I'll get used to it eventually, but I'm not. crazy about it, but compared to one UI 7, it's actually a battery icon, so I'll take it. Very true, but I feel like the sideways icon, I don't know, is that just, if we just, Google just said, you know what, we're just going to follow the industry standard. It's an efficiency. That's how you get enough space in today.
to put this percentage. I kind of wish we could bring back the old icon now. I feel like if they're going to have remnants of the old, in air quotes, old Android. It would be nice to keep the status bar the way it was. I get that they've updated the font, and this is going to sound really disrespectful, but I do get Comic Sans vibes from the font a little bit. There's a little bit of extra space in.
It kind of fits with the rest of the aesthetic, I guess, but I don't know. I prefer a little bit of a sharper font rather than these rounded fonts. And the status bar kind of, to me, signifies that a little bit more. I know why they've changed the Wi-Fi. icon to be the way that it is because at a glance you can see I have full strength I have two strengths to separate this to make it
A broad thing about Material 3 Express is putting things into containers, grouping, that kind of thing. I'm not sure if the Wi-Fi and the cell signals are the best examples of that, but that's kind of why I'm thinking they put it in its own subcontainers. I kind of already miss the smoothness of the old one, the simple shapes, the... Yeah, we'll see how, a week or eight, we'll see how it works. outfit.
I just wish, again, if they're going to add some more customization in there, I don't know why they don't just lift effectively the customization options straight out of Android 11. Because you could change the icons slightly. You could change, obviously, home screen icons.
the battery and wi-fi icon well not the battery icon but the wi-fi icons and all that kind of stuff i think if you had to option if we're getting so many extra customization options in there the status bar would be kind of a nice one i think Maybe as well we could... I mean, maybe Google doesn't want to be too technical with it, but I like the fact that on some devices you can even have download and upload speed tracked in this status bar. But I guess visually it looks a bit too...
Pecky, I guess. I mean overall I gotta say I don't think this feels It seems ridiculous to say it doesn't feel like techie. Like old Android would feel like it's nerdy. And I don't mean that in a disrespectful way, because that was why I fell in love with it. No, it's absolutely right. Harwell was extremely nerdy. It was going for Tron, Futurism, whenever they debuted on the tablet, the Honeycrow. I forgot. Ice cream sandwich, whatever. The Zoom, the most part of the Zoom.
Yeah, but yeah, that was peak futurism. That was straight out of the movie Tron. I'm pretty sure they had the Android figurine on a light bike. So yeah, that's how far we've come. But at the same time... As of 12, I kind of still felt shades of that. With this material to expressive, I feel like that's completely gone. It's bubbly. I think that's how it calls the entire OS. It feels bubbly.
But, yeah, I kind of like that they're going to lean into this a little bit. I mean, it does feel like the natural progression of Material You, I guess, in some respects. I don't know where they can go from this if they want to do another. if they want to go down another route in future and go and do another redesign in a few years' time, where does it go from here? Does it just get even more bubbly, or does it go back to the more... Yeah, it's... So in OS redesigns at a high level, I think...
All OSs need redesigns, let's say, within five or ten years. Like, maybe seven is a good compromise. I think OSs, they need to be refreshed every so often. It's not just redesign for a redesign site. Styles change, design languages change, people's perspective, relation to technology changes as they get more retro or not. So I think... Yes, but OS changes, they need to happen every so often. And I think what Google is for... four years out. I think it's a good time for this to happen.
But I'm still continuing to refine it over the next few years, I'm sure. I mean, one thing I want to talk about a little briefly is... At the moment, this is all just OS level, right? So we don't have any applications that really delve into this and kind of tie everything together, you know what I mean? So my thought process is that...
This is just the beginning. And I guess you kind of said it there, if Google's going to do this every three or four years, if you have an older device, like the Pixel 6 particularly, because that would... I mean, they've had an extended support window. This is like, in some ways, you getting a brand new refresh because you've had your phone that feels the exact same since the day you bought it, which is a good thing. I don't know. Yeah, it's... And the Pixel 6 was so...
I matched it with Material 3 so closely. It felt like a hard riff. hardware taking after software, vice versa. That was such of a time, even the design language, the physical design language. I mean, this year, or this coming year, we all know if we accept to believe Pixel 10 looks exactly like existing devices. So, it's of an era, it's... Yeah, it's...
I don't think it's too much. Again, they're calling it Material 3 Expressive. It's an extension of Material 3. So it's not too far departure in that respect. But in other respects, they're really... trying bubbly. I just have to keep going back to that. But then bubbly with an element of, I call it, I don't know if anyone out there used to jailbreak their iPhones back in the day, but there was a theme for...
a city, a theme called Glass Cart. Or Glass Cart, I think it was called. I made my jailbroken iPod touch look like Windows phone. Okay, well, you probably were in the... Minority doing that. But yeah, there was a theme back in the day called Glass Cart. I think it was called a Glass Cart. And it reminds me very much of that with these glassy elements and blurred elements.
I kind of have an affinity for it, especially when you merge it with these almost like firm pastel colours and stuff like that. I genuinely, I'm enjoying it so far. I'm hoping it grows on me more than it already has. I mean, I always like the Pixel experience, but...
I think this is one of the first times in a long time where Google is trying to do something to differentiate themselves from the crowd a little bit. I want to talk about cars in a second, but I think we're right now in the better Silicon Valley. We're pretty close to the Apple campus for... Just because. And next. Next month, we're going to see a big iOS redesign. This is their time for a new design language within that 5 to 10th on Switch Park, closer to 10 years, I think. iOS 7, yeah.
I'm curious whether both of these are at a high level. I'm just curious whether they end up converging visual language-wise, maybe in terms of the glass, in terms of the blur, whether they end up converging and what that says about... UI design and how interaction design and how people expect from the technology these days. I'm very curious whether iOS is going to look drastically different from this or whether they end up sharing some key similarities.
I think it's a fantastic point. I... Because like... It's funny, like one of the crazier conspiracy theories is that the iPhone will keep its camera always on and with the blur. So there's all of glass, its upcoming version of iOS apparently, and they're going to blur it. We have Android has dynamic cover, but what if iOS has real-world cover?
I mean, it's a fantastic concept. I just don't know if it works in reality, especially for a company so, in air quotes, privacy-focused. No, but at the same time, like, historically... This has changed recently with Qualcomm, Nuvia stuff. A series ships they have so much overhead like in the early like maybe five years ago like the the thing that people always said was that there's so much Google app iOS is doing so much extra animation
that Android phones haven't been able to catch up with. Like the fluidity, that's changed now. But I'm kind of wondering if Apple ends up taking a leapfrog there and they do something crazy like... something crazy and battery intensive and like real old dynamic color. Again, I think everybody in the mobile space should be excited by this redesign and what Apple brings to the table next year and next month to see where all this mobile design stuff is going.
Anyways, tangent aside, colors, they're so vibrant in this one. My Gboard theme, my dynamic color Gboard theme is so stark. I honestly think... too much for some apps like in Gmail like I just use it briefly but I can't tell I kind of can't tell what's unread and what's not based on colors alone looking more at the bold attacks. So I think we... We need app updates, and I'm sure they'll come before the next pixel, but the colors are so vibrant.
Which I think is a good thing, because like you say, if we do get a convergence of mobile OSes, I think there's a lot of elements here that do fall under certain networks. This is more playful. Versus the current version of iOS, this is already more playful. Which I think is a way that Google can effectively...
endear themselves to specific people. I think sometimes, I mean, especially if you've used an iOS device for a long period of time, that has barely changed, really. It feels the same layout, effectively. And having those options elsewhere, I mean, just a quick sentence is good.
Like iOS can theme your home screen, but that's like the extent of customization. On Android, dynamic color themes your apps. That's why it's so important. That's why adoption is so important and providing a consistent experience. If you pick a new dynamic theme color, everything changes, and that's so underrated.
Yeah, I think if anyone out there has any, like, worries about putting this on another phone, I would say just go for it. Genuinely, it's the first time in a long time I've said go for it. Yeah, if you have, like, a second, if you have an old phone, you're trying to almost...
Well, most people might keep it on their old phone. Well, they also trade it. If you have a non-primary device, absolutely put it on. Try it on. I'd probably even say if you have a Pixel tablet, try it on. But if you only have a primary device, Yes, waiting for beta 2 in a month is wiser, but you're getting a lot, and I think it's pretty stable right now. Again, 24 hours, we'll tell you more next week.
The only thing I would say is, with any beta, still err on the side of caution, but at the same time, I think... Especially because a lot of people have been disappointed with what we're going to see as the initial release of Android 16. I think this is effectively the flavor of Android most people have wanted to see. And obviously Google did this with Android show. It revealed a lot of the changes that were coming. This is your best way to test drive what is going to happen with the...
in air quotes, real Android 16. This is the real, to me, this is the real Android 16. I feel like, understandably, it couldn't get released. Or it's not going to get released at the time that we were hoping for. Will Android 16 be released next month? I don't know. Like, now that I'm using this full thing, it's pretty feature-rich, it's pretty solid at this stage. We have recapped the last year's Android cycle.
Possibly. Possibly. But yeah, it's a strange one. It's a strange one because you only get one chance to make a first impression and I think Google... It's kind of missing that with this base Android 16 and the QPR one. So we'll see how it plays out in the coming months.
damn, this would have been a good first impression for Android 16. Yeah, yeah. It's overshadowed a little bit of IO, though, right? We saw some cool stuff. Obviously, we're Android guys anyway, so we're going to talk about Android, but we saw some really interesting stuff with Gemini yesterday that I think A lot of stuff that's already ready, I'd say. Again, we'll talk about $250 Google AI Ultra. We'll talk about that next week. That's a lot, and we need to play around with it.
Yeah, the Gemini, I think what I was at a high level, what I was looking for was to give a vision and to put some examples behind personal, proactive, and powerful. And I think the one I have to focus on immediately is proactive. They mentioned an example. This is just an example. This is not live yet. But they mentioned Gemini seeing your Google Calendar. seeing your Google account and seeing that you have an upcoming test.
and then Gemini making a study guide for you. That is the kind of proactiveness that we've been waiting for ages. And if Gemini allows that, that's going to be fantastic. That's going to be a powerful, intelligent. Add to Android. I'm excited by some of the Gemini stuff, which I didn't think I would be, in terms of the opportunity to have more astropowered stuff in the real world. Yeah.
That makes the most sense. Phone control. Okay, so Project Astra is their research name for technology making a universal AI system. And a key part of that, last year we got to talkative aspects to it. Camera, input, multimodality. And this year, we're getting agent use cases, computer use, or in this case, smartphone use. We saw a two-minute demo.
of Astra, being able to navigate PDFs, being able to browse YouTube, being able to place phone calls, just really putting everything that Google has been doing for the past few years together. I kind of thought you'd see that already, but if we look at the timescale, last year we got the Ask for Stuff, the live camera input, it launched in Gemini Live. Yeah, this year? Time? April. April, yeah.
stable and all that. Oh yeah, March, it got announced at MWC, whatever. So, I think we're on a, hopefully, fingers crossed, on a similar time scale. I do feel like this kind of level of control might take a little bit longer than camera input, but this is such an exciting roadmap. I think it's the... I mean, it's the...
I mean, it is the future of phones, right? Whether or not people are going to use it, I'm not really sure. I think that the use case that they had was obviously a very controlled demo. and it looked very very impressive and i feel like When I've been using Astra in the real world, like I've been using it weirdly. So I saw some fruit in the trees around here. I'm not from California. I don't know what fruit grows in the trees. And I had a feeling it was a pomelo fruit.
and i was like okay how do i find this out do i use take a picture or do you know what i'll just use astra it absolutely nailed it like simple things like that it's kind of cool for But this concept of having your phone fully controllable with input from Gemini, Astra as well at the same time.
And having contextual awareness of what you're currently doing and the tasks that you're doing is just, that is impressive to me. Will I use it every single day? Probably not. And obviously this was a specific use case. If you've not seen the trailer for this, I'll try and get someone to put it in the show notes. But it's like a three-minute demo, about a three-minute demo, and a young guy fixing his bike.
Even just finding a page in a PDF, like a 45-page PDF, that to me would be the ultimate time saver when you're doing troubleshooting and stuff. So that kind of stuff I find really interesting. As for the rest of the stuff, again, these are those things that you have to test in the real world. Sometimes it gets scaled back, but I do think Gemini Live Astro Video has been... Very close. It's so natural. It's like if it's asking a friend next to you what this is.
They had a very funny demo about them. I remember the Gemini Live demo asking incorrect things. Yeah, that was pretty cool. That was a funny IO moment. Yeah, I think IO in general, like I said, there's a lot of stuff that we can't really cover here in one podcast. We'd have our own keynote, effectively. There's a lot of information on our website, all these little mini announcements, big announcements, stuff that may have slipped through the gap.
And we're going to delve into that in the next 24, 48 hours anyway here. We still have one day left. We're actually still technically on day two of Io. So expect us to hear and see more in the next few days. Yeah, I've thoroughly enjoyed having such a big Android release at I.O. because usually we're at the end of the phase, right? We're at the end of the phase and everything's almost behind us. Whereas now with the Android 16 QPR one, it feels like everything's in front of us.
we've had an opportunity you get your opportunity now to dive into a really really big update and um yeah i think you should definitely go out and try it for yourself if you're able to do so it's well worth it And especially, like I say, if you have an older device, Pixel 6, Pixel 7, this is a new lease of life on an older phone. Yeah.
I'm excited to see what we see today. And thanks for joining us. Yeah, it's great to be doing a podcast in the same room for the first time. It's a different dynamic. Which is definitely a different dynamic. Making eye contact on a video is very, very different to making eye contact in real life. So yeah, hopefully this has come across on the pod. But yeah, thanks guys for listening.
it's always good to chat with Abner when we're talking about Android. I think we get into it probably more so than anyone. But yeah, thanks for joining us on Pixelated. And we will talk more, everything I.O., everything in between, next week. Bye.