More M3E for you and me

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What is it? Is it September now? It's September. I can't even believe it's September. May till September, I have been delving deep. We've all been doing it, but... I feel like I've been doing a lot of delving into QPR One. It's finally available. It's finally out there in the wild. People are installing it. People are enjoying it in its stable format. Tell me...

Tell me what you think so far. I mean, we've all been using it in beta format, but please tell me some of the highlights that you guys are really enjoying and I will go ham on this in about two minutes when you're ready. I think the first takeaway and I think the one that everybody will meet, we know.

is to redesign quick settings just from the fact that you can condense the tiles from two by one to one by one. and that you can have a max of 16 tiles on the first page or eight on the initial notifications drop down i think that drastically changes how people use quick settings in terms of There's no more swiping. I don't think most people have more than two pages. I think this is a very nice modernization, but also productivity wise, it's such an efficient update.

How do you feel about the quick settings, though, in terms of going from... Because this has been a bit of a culture shock for me. Going from that... material you redesign of like the long thin elongated almost like oblong shapes so then going down to Almost shaving them in half. Pretty chunky in the material you are. Always unnecessarily chunky. I think the, so Google's going back, I think the previous design was a nine by nine grid.

or whichever the previous design was. And the idea with Material U was it wanted to be more spacious. It wanted to add text labels to be clearer. I think this new design proves that... that premise was wrong like you don't you most people will be fine with just icons you don't need accompanying text labels because it's just the material you design was just so bad for dense info density

And I think this design, Google's going back to something that's, I think people recognize these icons they see every day. And for the ones they don't, they can expand it and keep the old look.

yeah it's a good job you mentioned that because i was about to say there's a few icons where i'm like i get confused with it because i'm so used to seeing the text so i'm like oh that which one's that one is that airplane mode is that quick is that cast i mean obviously i know the cast logo but there's certain ones where i'm like

which one is that one again like so it's kind of nice that you can expand them out right i will i will say it's like i'm looking at it and it's like the couple i don't like immediately recognize in my own are like also like Pretty like my first guess is always correct. Right. Because I'm like.

Maybe I don't totally like quick share is such like a relatively recent rebranding that I don't have the icon for it cemented in my brain, but it clearly looks kind of like a cue with two arrows pointing. It's like, oh, that's. probably quick share and it is right it's it's stuff like that where it's you know easy to uh same with like screen recording right like it's like well that's probably what that is and and you're right the first time i just feel like

So maybe this is where sometimes Google needs to double down on one icon style. So, you know, like they have, okay, this is the icon we're going to use for this. This is the icon we're going to use for this and be like, hey, we're not going to change this too drastically in the next few years because.

We've seen some big changes in this update, right? Everything feels... How would I describe it? Softened? Is it softened? This is going to sound so disrespectful, but they've comic sansed up the... rest of the ui like they've made things like but almost bubbly almost like instantly visible like i don't know am i being disrespectful there or is that kind of a

a good way to describe it. I don't really know. I feel like I'm probably being disrespectful. I don't think it's disrespectful. I know what you mean, but like... I don't know. I've also been using this since like May or I don't know. I might have waited until June to install it just because I was between jobs at the time. But I. I don't know. I really think that this is maybe Google's like most cohesive overall visual design.

in a while? Like, even more so than like... Yes. I put a caveat on that, but yes. Oh, hit me with a caveat. Okay, on Android, which we were talking about, I think Material 3 Expressive is... pretty solid it's pretty cohesive like you're saying it's thought out but i will get to the app to the actual apps in a second but um i think if we stick to android for now uh have you customized quick settings in any clever way or are you going for full density i've kind of left it as as

They're like the default layout which are you let it do for oh my god, I know I'm a hundred percent psycho behavior Because I'm like I'm looking at it. I'm like no this pretty much has all the stuff I would add like I don't it does There are two things that bleed over on mine to a second page. And one of them is the security and privacy tab, which like I could pretty easily remove. And the other one is dark road, which I just let automatically turn on and off. And I almost never trigger.

And otherwise, it's like, you know, you've got your internet settings, your flashlight, which I have a hardware shortcut set up anyway. If I double tap or if I click both of my both of the volume buttons, my flashlight turns on. I thought you were going to say you're using quick tap. That never works. Oh, no, no, no. Not that. Not that. No, there's a there's I forget what the app is. Yeah. It's like flash dim or something. But once you map it to the volume keys and it works and it and it.

maximizes brightness instead of just doing half brightness like the pixel does by default um you know cast I already mentioned quick share, auto rotate. All that stuff is already there. That's the stuff I would have put in there. And so, yeah, I was just kind of like, oh, yeah. Done. So on the whole design, I had four pages. That's too many pages.

Yeah, that's too many pages. That is way too many pages. Like, what are you doing that you need to be spending that much time in there? You could open up an application, right? I just feel like there's so many pages. Okay, I laughed at your... psycho behavior but mine isn't actually that far away looking at it so i am a hypocrite i'm a major hypocrite okay so i haven't gone for the full 16 grid

I have a few elongated ones for like the cast tab, battery saver, because I always... It seems ridiculous because it's a battery icon, but I just forget. what it is all the time and I don't know why then I have one for my alarm so I can see the exact time of the next alarm like other than that it's pretty basic

If we can put it in the show notes, I'll send a screenshot and we'll put that on there. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, people can kind of see our themes and stuff like that. But for the most part, I think the way that they've handled it is... as abner alluded to a moment ago is it is really not i quite i like the fact that some of the where a quick settings tile is activated it's almost like a square shape and then it's it's like kind of round more

Yeah, like a smaller oblong if it isn't activated. It's a shame that there's still no one-touch Wi-Fi, but there's one-touch Bluetooth and one-touch do not disturb. I don't know what Google's thinking with that. They kind of want to force that little Wi-Fi thing with us. But for the most part, I'm definitely enjoying the new layout for this. I think, I mean, I think I've made no secret on the podcast before that I have absolutely adored One UI this past. 12 months or so and this is the

This is now my favorite version of Android to use. It's so smooth. The animations have been reworked in some cases. There's just those little touches. I think I've always been kind of one of these people who will spot what Google's doing. Hopefully I'm one of the people who do this.

Google's little touches for animations are always like, I know your favorite word being delightful, Abner. I do genuinely think some of these little like... tiny touches swiping away notifications as that kind of little bump bounce yeah flick there's almost like it's almost like a liquid slash um like amorphous kind of

animation i i love it i think there's a little extra touch it's just really tie everything together because material u was like that first the first time i think we'd seen a ui from google that was like completely different from what anyone else is doing right and i think this is a really like natural and nice progression i do feel like it's very much at home on the pixel 10 as well like it's great to be able to test drive it for the past couple of weeks and it's

effectively final form and um i'm just excited to see what they do with like certain aspects of it with qpr2 coming in in a few months time i'm getting ahead of myself but there's just so much i just adore about this new look Yeah, I think to round out quick settings and like control center is the competition, obviously. And my thing with control center, I know you were telling me earlier with four pages and 32 top.

Yeah, 32 tiles. It's quicker to open the app. My complaint with the control center on iOS has always been that it feels like a secondary home screen. that's it's just too much complexity and uh quick settings feels the opposite to me and yeah like you were saying the more thing i think quick settings is something the primary thing people notice but also the thing

primary thing people will get a productivity benefit out of. So I think it's been a long time coming. I think this is a solid design for them, and I hope they continue. Moving on to the rest of the system, consistency. I think my second biggest thing is... that this introduces a lot of consistency. So like with the most recent stable Android 16 release, the initial release, there are basically like three sets of volume sliders. The one that you use with the physical...

the full panel overlay and the one in the settings app. All that is now consolidated into one design, one consistent slider design. And I think that goes a long way because... After every major Android release, let's say Android 12, for example, Android 13, 14, 15, Google spent every year making piecemeal changes.

new designs and interfaces and all that redesigning existing things but it was like i said piecemeal it looked inconsistent year to year and the benefits of these big redesigns these big overhauls give Google a chance to unify everything. And I think it's something people appreciate. And I think Android is getting much better for it. Yeah, I think as well.

like you say, that consolidation and kind of unifying everything. As ridiculous as it sounds, I think getting rid of the Pixel Tips app has been a great choice and creating that MyPixel application because it's something that I didn't think... When I picked up the Pixel 10 for the first time, I was like, oh, this is a new application. And it gives you more of an overview of why. I say why. The tips there are a little bit better because they feel more.

cohesive to the new version of the system and have an application that is the home for everything you need to know as opposed to what why would I want a tips app I'm a power user this feels like the best way to do it and It does feel like everything is starting to get more unified across Android and Pixel. I mean, hopefully that's a sign of things to come in the future. But I just love that it is...

I mean, it isn't a double down of Material U. It's just the next version of it. And it feels like the... It just feels like they're in their element almost. If that makes sense, I'm guessing we've seen a lot of OEMs out there try and emulate what iOS does. I'm very, very hopeful that people don't go down the liquid glass route in the next...

six to twelve months. They're going to. I'm wishful thinking, right? But I'm glad you said that because that's exactly how I feel about... google's build of android and and how i have felt since material you as you said which is that like they they are the only in my opinion the only company that is not

taking at least some amount of inspiration you know i i like one ui7 in general but like you cannot say that that is not at least like partially inspired by of course by ios and i would say that like for for other smaller oems it is you know especially especially um like chinese oems in particular it is that this has been true for a long time but it is you know typically the new features are like oh yeah that's like their take on like apple's blank like in like fill in the blank here and

google doesn't really do that and when they do it is because an idea is so good that there is just no like something like live updates where it's like yeah that is like obviously pulling from like um the dynamic island but but like that was a really good idea on on apple's part it was a little half-baked at launch because apps needed to support it but i would say by you know 12 months in um uh the dynamic island in my opinion is like

pretty you know ignoring the fact that it is a huge cutout on the screen the actual utility of it like the software side of it is really smart and i'm happy to see that stuff kind of coming to to Android slowly. And it's one of the few things where I can point and be like, yeah, OK, that is like taken from like an idea Apple had.

in a good way like in the rest of it feels so cohesive including that where it's like it doesn't stick out as a in an apple idea um it it comes together to feel like a a cohesive mobile vision that just doesn't feel like anything else which is kind of the whole reason i would i want to use android or one of them right is that i don't want to use like something that just feels like an iphone

then i should just go get an iphone at that point um and and i also real quick damien just because i had not really dug into the my pixel app super deep uh since i got my pixel 10 last week yeah yeah uh

I really do like this. The new way they have the pixel tip stuff laid out, which I never found useful before. Now it feels and listeners will not have this experience, but but the two of you will. It feels like a. a consumer focused version of reviewer guides. Like this feels very much like they took the reviewers guides that they hand out during a review cycle, which is a very long PDF that has tips and whatnot, like instructions on how to test out features.

It basically just kind of put it in the phone and gave it to people, which is good because there's so many software features now that it's really even for us, it is hard to keep track of sometimes. And I think it's like a great way to make sure that like. You can easily find all of the information on this stuff and how to use it in one single spot.

I don't know. It just feels to me like a tips app is aimed at the first time users. And this is like kind of integrating it into this because this is obviously a storefront as well. A storefront with, I mean, it even has offers if you have a Pixel phone, for instance, which I think is... hey, Google wants to sell products, right? They need to get products in people's hands. And it's kind of one of those things where it makes sense if someone is going to use this, they're going to...

go here for information. There's some, obviously they have that. Exactly. You can tell that my, my phone decides that it wants to speak to me about things. So yeah.

They're definitely listening to me. It's nice to see the best phones forever stuff. I think that's kind of cool as well. It feels like there is more of a... It's not totalitarian, but it's like a totalitarian... terry and vision of what they want to do with pixel phones if this is the vehicle for someone who has an older device potentially to go and get a newer device then that makes sense having the store at the end and support involved in one place

And this is just an application, like everything else then ties in together with it. And yeah, I'm really, really pleased with it so far. Well, to your point, Damien, aren't you like, I was just going to, I just want to add on is that like, before we get too far from it. I don't think I ever opened pixel tips because because to your point, oh, that's for people who are new to pixel or whatever. But like when you put them in the my pixel app, it feels a little more inviting to even.

like a power user to be like, oh, I forgot it had this feature. Or, oh, I didn't even know, like, this one slipped by me or whatever, you know? It's exactly the same. Pixel tips in my, it's exactly the same. There's no new information. No, but I'm saying the layout, the layout, the way they are presenting the information is... No, it actually hides it behind the second tab now.

But but like I think my point is that like I was never going to open the pixel tips app because I didn't feel like I needed it. And now and like it is I think it is genuinely a smart, a smart idea to make it more inviting by putting it in this larger application that feels like a hub where you are more likely to stumble into it rather than just ignoring the app.

the pixel tips app in your app tour which is what i did i've done since they put there i'm just saying all the information is exactly oh no no yeah the information is new it's the way it's laid out and especially in this new

uh material 3 expressive ui i think it's just like much more uh inviting in so like in terms of the functionality though really a lot of it is just it's almost just new, it's new clothes. Emperor's new clothes. There are a few cool features in there. I agree with Abner. I think that the unifying of certain like pull tabs or like volume slider, um,

The brightness bar, it just makes it clearer. I think it's kind of nice as well that you have like a draggable tab. Like, I'm really excited though because... while testing this out and showcasing the if you haven't already seen my deep dive in the video on youtube go check it out when i was playing around with the desktop mode this to me is it's one of those underrated features and i say underrated because

We have DeX on Samsung phones, right? Samsung phones have had this for a number of years. It's kind of, it feels like one of those features that if you are going to use it, you're going to be an evangelist for it. I feel like this is a little bit of a, Google's way of doing it is a little bit more.

how to describe it like try and see kind of deal at the moment but I've been playing around with it it feels like that perfect combination so far anyway because it's in its early stages of like Chrome OS a little bit of Windows But I can definitely see this. If Google can improve the performance of the devices in terms of gaming and stuff, this could be the ultimate emulation option. You could just plug this into your TV, mouse and keyboard. I've been playing Bellatro on it almost...

I played for hours. Like, this is where... So you've been using a mouse mouse when you... Yeah, I've been using a mouse mouse, and I have been dragging it around, and it's literally like playing on Steam. It's insane. I was like, I got carried away and lost 45 minutes just playing.

I mean, I'm addicted to the game anyway, but just dragging windows around. I had the podcast open in the background. It was awesome. Using a mouse is interesting because I've been so laptop first, like my entire... technology whatever and that is having to use the map right what i need is to get a trackpad to use this but using a mouse has been it i think to me that's contributed to desktop mode feeling so old

uh the fact that i have to get a mouse a separate user cursor in the first place um versus something like a built-in keyboard to the trackpad and whatnot but yeah it's Chrome OS is it's the inspiration, so to speak. It feels like it still feels very first gen. It's not first gen in that it's been in the works for a few years for a few Android versions in developer preview. But I still am getting that it's a mobile.

inspired take on what a desktop operating system is it's I don't know I'm still getting used to the fact it doesn't like my longest thing with Chrome OS for sure it felt like Chrome OS felt such like a web-based operating system. It felt like a website as an operating system. And that...

That was the case for so many years for me. In the past few iterations, it's finally stabilized a bit to me, and it feels native. But for the longest time, it felt like... a web approach to an operating system which it was but there was still some clunkiness on the corners but with the android take um i've primarily been using on a pixel tablet so

That's not the biggest screen. That's not the most ideal screen for desktop stuff. But yeah, I haven't connected the phone to a monitor yet, but I'm still... Yeah. I highly, highly recommend it. I can definitely see this being, so for me, I mean, I'm not going to use this all the time, right? But I can definitely see this when traveling in a pinch. You know, you can just throw it into your TV, potentially have like...

I mean, you might not run loads of applications, but you might want to do some basic gaming on the go. And I potentially would do this quite a bit going to events and stuff. There is an option there where I can just have one cable, HDMI to USB-C. I'm probably going to have a trackpad or something with me or a game controller. It sounds like it's still content consumption first. It definitely feels like that, right? What's productivity looking like?

okay because the docs web app i'd use the docs web app over the docs android app at this point and i'm not sure if that's That's what Google wants. But the DocsTabit app looks nice. It looks very material. But in terms of productivity and functionality, I'm going to the web app and Chrome. And I kind of feel that defeats the purpose of all this.

Yeah, that's the only stumbling block I've found so far is like the limitations of Chrome on Android versus Chrome on, say, PC, Mac, whatever it is, even a Chromebook.

the utility is a little bit yeah it is it's stymied it's it's kind of softened because you can only currently you can only currently have two tabs side by side you can't run any more than that you can't have potentially three tabs of chrome floating in windows you can only have the two you can snap the windows so it's kind of useful for that you could do cross referencing and things you could maybe edit a document

in the web app like you say rather than using docs application but you could kind of get around it it definitely feels like at the moment there's going to be a lot of workarounds but yeah i'm excited to see what they do with it i do genuinely think that dex is probably going to be there

the de facto leader in this space for a long time. And I don't know anyone who actually uses decks for work purposes. It's a video editing. You're a video editor. I could never see myself. You could use LumaFusion, but I haven't tested it out yet. Um, maybe because I don't know if I have a license on Android on my, on my, uh, my work email. So I didn't actually test it. I was testing it on a, on my, um, test device, which has not got my personal email logged in.

I need to go out and try that because I do genuinely think that could be useful. I know a lot of people will go, you go on vacation, for instance, and you might want to edit a video quickly. That could be useful, I guess. You could edit it on the go, but again. you're kind of reliant like you say there is definitely a big fallback on traditional keyboard and mouse yeah

Are you going to carry that? I don't know. Are they going to make them... Hey, if somebody makes a MagSafe version of a keyboard and mouse, I'll be there. I will be first to test drive. And I don't want to speak for you, Damien, but if someone handed me a different video or audio editing application, it would take me...

four times as long just because i don't have a decade of muscle memory built up for keyboard shortcuts like i would truly be like it's it has to be premiere or has to be audition for me to use this stuff because that's just like what's built into my brain you know So it gets tricky when you don't have those dedicated. Those could come, though, right? We've seen Adobe push pretty hard on iOS, and then Android typically lags behind.

Those apps are coming. It's just a matter of of when I think we're probably still several years off from them. But I would love to see that. Like, I would love the idea of like. I'm traveling and I want to edit, you know, pixelated on the go and I don't even need to use my laptop to do this. I can just like plug it into whatever and, you know, be ready to open.

you know an adobe app or if i switch to something else that but but yeah i i think it it does depend on which which piece of software you use yeah i mean the only upside is and this goes back to the cohesion comments is that Because of the work on Android 12L...

We do have a lot of application scaling that works really well with this. So a lot of apps I thought wouldn't work and would be terrible are actually not bad. I know that we still need a lot of work with Android tablet applications, but most of the time these are going to be Android tablet apps running on your screen. for the most part if you want to play around with it i highly suggest doing so if you're like me and you're a bilateral addict

go for it because it is, it runs like a dream. I mean, it can run on a calculator. I think I've said it multiple times already. It can run on anything. It could probably run on a smartwatch and I actually would like to see that. I was going to say, I want to see like a TI-84 running. I actually, that is where I want to play.

Well, maybe someone out there can get in contact with us and put that into reality. That would be amazing. There is a lot of more modest changes in QPR one. I think most of them... Definitely pertain to cosmetic changes. Usability-wise, there isn't anything drastic, like desktop mode is probably the biggest, cute, quick settings. There are some big changes to how wallpaper and style works, but for the most part...

you are mostly getting quality of life changes, a bit of a visual overhaul. And I think that kind of... is the best way that Google could have done it. It's the best way that they could have done this update because it's not going to just throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were. You're not changing things for the sake of it. It just feels like they've done things in the right way. Yeah, there's no performance, Bob. There's no performance.

um penalty rather from material to expressive and no i think in comparison again uh with wicked glass is it's i'm running it on an older device and it's has a pretty big performance penalty it feels so i think that's going into this seat going into this upcoming uh fall and os release season which at google went first

I think that's going to be something that people talk about. And I don't think with Android, even on the older, much older devices, I think it's going to be fine. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Anyone who's run it on anything less than a Pixel 7 so far, I know that it is available for Pixel 6, but I don't know anyone who's running it on Pixel 6 personally. But if you do, please let us know because I want to see how it runs on Pixel 6. I imagine it would be absolutely fine.

if you've had a pixel six you've seen the full gambit of material you right to where we are today it's quite a big i don't want to say drastic visually it can seem drastic at times like For me, the biggest one is a new system font. I wanted to ask you guys, what do you think of the new system font? Do you think it's a good change or a bad change? Because initially, I don't know if I agreed with it.

To be honest with you, I think I noticed it the first day and immediately just I was like, oh, yeah, right. And then like for me, it was it's not in my eyes. It was not a particularly extreme.

change from what was there and i've always kind of liked google's font choices to be honest like i i think they have you know they have switched fonts several times uh since i started using android with i think gingerbread and like you know it's a froyo maybe and and so like it's not like i haven't seen those changes before but i don't know it just looks clean and pretty easily uh readable to me and

Yeah, I've been I'm struggling to think of a thing about about material theory expressive that I that I don't like. Like it really does feel. even like i liked android 12 and i liked material you but obviously that was such a an unfinished update and and one that was i think really polished out with android you know over The 12 months and then Android 13. And like that doesn't feel like that here. This feels like.

the android 13 update where it's kind of already cohesive and gelling together with the exception of the fact that we're still like having the app updates roll out yeah on that note

let's talk about what material tree expressive looks like on apps specifically google's apps which by the time uh material by the time android 16 qpr1 is rolling out I'd say the vast majority, with some standouts, have been updated, like your basics. So how do we feel about material to be expressive in apps? Because I...

While, again, I praise it on the OS and think it's a cohesive experience, I think the apps thing is a more mixed bag that betrays how Android apps within Google work, how the team... teams approach it's it's not a centralized team or anything like that um it's there's nothing i actively hate i like some of the modernizations like um

something called the search app bar, where the search bar at the top of your screen is no longer full width. It's narrowed with the hamburger button and the account profile switcher outside of it. Like most workspace apps have that right now. I like that. Modernization. I like Kagu Keepworks. But it's a new... New color paint, but nothing has drastically changed, which I guess you could say that about the OS. But at the same time, while the OS feels expressive to me, I don't feel that in apps.

Yeah, it's a strange one because to be quite honest with you, I don't use tons and tons of first-party applications beyond the dialer and messages here and there. But I agree with you, there is... Functionally, there is no change. I think some of the little changes do feel nice. Okay, the biggest updates are Google Messages and Google Phone. Those are the biggest, most comprehensive updates we've had so far.

And I like the phone app. I like messages. Yeah, the phone app is the best, I would say, or at least the one that feels like the biggest change and I think needed it the most, right? Like I think it kind of needed... to feel a little bit, um, fresher compared to the rest of the apps versus like, I don't know, like Gmail's got that like big green archive thing now when you swipe a message away, which is nice, but that's kind of expressive.

It's expressive. Yeah, like it's not a bad update, but it's kind of or like Google Drive is like very similar to what was there before. Just like kind of slightly different icon shapes. You know, I wouldn't I wouldn't say there's anything I've spotted in these apps that I.

that i actively dislike but some of them obviously uh again drive is like did did it update oh i guess it did update okay you know it's like you're looking at it you're like it's like playing spot the difference in a couple of these versus versus more um you know, cohesive reimaginings like the phone app. Do we think that's a good thing, though, that they haven't gone whole hog on some of the updates for certain applications because...

You could see backlash a little bit like Apple saw with, for instance, the... Is it their gallery of photos? Like, I know that... Are they rolling that back right now? There's a bunch of, like, they're... bringing back a bunch of different things and i was 26 that were that were like removed or like reformatting it and and i've never been an apple photos person obviously but um

Yeah, that they they really wrecked that app with with last year's update and have clearly been trying to pull it back. And I don't see anything like that here where. If the biggest accusation you throw at Google is that they maybe played it a little too safe. I think that's fine because, you know, at the end of the day, I want Gmail to look pretty, but I also am opening it to.

to respond to an email yeah i don't it functionality matters more in basically all of these apps you know and and you can see you know we were talking about like my pixel right like i feel like they embrace it a little bit more in something like that where you were not opening it to

get a task done you're opening it to explore the phone or something and so they can be a little bit more free with how they display information as opposed to again you know something like something like gmail where it's you need to know where your, where all of your email commands are. Yeah. I just, I like, I,

I appreciate that. I just don't think there was no point trying to reinvent the wheel. Exactly. If you're just going to add a fresh coat of paint, absolutely fine. If it doesn't affect the functionality. And like you say, there's apps that take advantage of that that maybe people haven't seen before, haven't existed. Go all out. That's great. Go for it. I'm very interested to see what Google does with widgets because I think that's one of the biggest problems I think I have.

material through expressive so far is a lot of the widgets are just I mean, they're hungover from Material You Design. I'm having to use a third-party application at the moment. If anyone gets to check this out, this is just a plug for an application. I think it might be free as well at this point in time. I think it's called M3 Expressive Widgets.

It's about 300 or so, genuinely like 300 or so widgets I've been using on my home screen. And it's kind of like a really nice third-party widget application that ties everything together. makes your home screen look a bit cooler, a bit nicer. But for the most part, yeah, I guess there's some sort of like, how would I describe it? You kind of...

You want them to go all out on this, but at the same time, like we're saying, with functionality, just don't throw that away because you can really alienate your user base by trying to change things for the sake of it. And I like the fact that...

Certain things are going to be slowly updated over time because, I mean, Google has so many users of, like you say, applications like Gmail. What is it? The world's biggest email platform. You could potentially piss off a lot of people very easily without... without making any changes, let alone making big wholesale changes. But all the little tiny accenting, I love all those accents in any way. I love that stuff. Yeah.

Credit where it's due. I'm not going to be critical of the app so far. I like the new call screen for the dialer, and it looks awesome. I don't know how you guys feel about the simplified no contacts option in... there it's just keypad and then that's hidden in the hamburger menu how do you feel about that so i think that oversimplifies that i will criticize that option um i think i'm i put

i do i am a scroller i i do i do agree that that's my default behavior versus search but search is always there and i think have we used favorites so you can pin that at the top yeah but yeah that's phone being the most comprehensive messages it's more of a reskin for messages um yeah but yeah just looking at these other apps um like

Speaking of photos, they changed some stuff up, but I guess that's materially expressive, but it kind of feels like they are on their own roadmap for updating, modernizing their own thing. So it's not exclusively...

I don't think it can exclusively tie to this. But yeah, I think that the point to what you said was that... it's going with we're already seeing more material tree after the expressive after the initial wave of stuff i think gmail is still adding more stuff versus what's already rolled out to people so it will be a process and i think as more and more screens updated we're in this for the long haul um but i guess the thing the credit you can say about wicked glass is that their overhaul

is comprehensive on day one and i'm somewhat envious of that and that everything rolled out one update versus with the play store updates and then plus server side it's been a process cat cataloging all these things but it's nice that google hit most of it by the time um by the time that the the stable release is rolling out so there's that which is another big change from from material you because i remember you know

material that you was still rolling out to to apps in like december of 2021 like maybe even into 2022 like there were there were applications that were not absolutely ready at launch for that and and and and to be fair again that that whole operating system was kind of not ready for launch. But that felt very much like the beta period extended into full launch. And, you know...

That's not here this time. Like Google has learned over those four years to like, nope, we've got it ready now. Like maybe Android 15 was a little bit more of a safe update than you would have expected. But it's probably because they were getting this ready. think they kind of crushed it yeah i cannot agree

More, really. I think, yeah, it's nice as well to finally get a device with an operating system that looks inherently different. So you buy the new device, it has a brand new operating system on it. that looks different from the previous version. I think that's something that we've all been critical of over the past few years. I think Android 16 even, as short a time ago as June, definitely felt like...

Android 12.7 or something like that. 12.5, it definitely felt like that. That was the end of that road, and it's like, fine, we basically now need to start renovating properly. We've put the framework in there. Yeah, I think it's a really good update. I've seen...

I've seen a little bit of performance uptick on my Pixel 9 Pro XL, which is now becoming a test device. It feels a bit snappier. I don't know. It's always placebo with these things, right? You always think, oh my God, my phone is so much smoother now.

And it could just be the extra animation frames. It just always looks really good when you get a brand new update. But yeah, I want to see how other OEMs react to this now because we're going to have this weird frag... fragmentation of design languages now right where if chinese oems go down the liquid glass route yet

if we're going to use Google applications on those devices, it's going to feel really at odds with each other, right? So I'm fascinated to see where that goes. Yeah, the biggest question is what Samsung does here. Are they still doing the One UI thing of like that big... header with empty space to push content down. I mean, we're still waiting for One UI 8 to roll out Android 16. Android 16?

Yeah, 16. 16? Yeah, it is 16. It will envelop all of these changes from QPR, though, I do believe. I'm not sure. So all of the under-the-hood stuff will be there. But, yeah, I don't know. I think at least we have to wait till 9. before we start to see if how they're doing M3E in any way. Yeah, probably. But it's going to be a really interesting period of time now because, like I say, there was a lot of brands that did adopt.

material you um some of them are definitely going to go down that that apple route again and we're going to have this real weird change so yeah um fast material man and you know what liquid glass and material three uh expressive are not gonna be those things so oh samsung please don't please like because like even if they like half embrace like...

if they were like oh we've got you know whatever the uh water um class i don't know i'm trying to think of another way to say uh uh you know we've got this new new design language to like you're you're gonna open up those google apps and you're going to feel that level of... I can't think of the word I'm looking for. Yeah, exactly. That...

we've been talking about over the last few weeks where it's like, oh, like these do not mesh together at all. And so hopefully Samsung's like at least kind of. They can put their own Samsung twist on it, but I hope that they steer in the direction of like what Google's been doing and or come up with their own thing. I'm fine with that, too. I just I just don't want to see them be like.

well, Apple did this thing that nobody likes and now we have to do it, which they are hit or miss on. They do not always follow in Apple's footsteps as much as some people will try to throw at that. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they do not. Yeah, I don't think they've been as... bad in the past few years and I mean I guess

They have, like, we're three months out probably from the Galaxy S26 Ultra. Oh, my God. So we'll probably know then. We'll know by then. Four months. You can't say four months. God. I was going to say, and I think that probably is a really good note to leave it on. So I want to thank, thanks. Thanks for joining me talking about something that I'm really passionate about. Hopefully if you haven't already seen my deep dive, please go check it out. It's linked in the show notes for sure.

Yeah, it's a labor of love. It's around about 30 minutes or so. You can see every single individual change that we spotted. There may be some things that I might have missed out. Hopefully not this time. Sometimes things do slip past, but it is a pretty massive update compared to previous.

one so this has been a fun one to dive into and really fun to talk to you guys about as well i always love talking i love talking with you guys anyway but this is just like my bread and butter as it were i mean i feel like i'm in my element and um hopefully that came across from you guys listening out there but thanks for listening this as always is pixelated if you haven't as well go please go check out wills

latest podcast with the guys from nomad yeah i have had a brief listen and i'm going to go listening to it very shortly after we stop recording here and i implore you to do the same thanks guys i i got them to uh uh at the very end of the show i got them to tease they're working on so you got to listen in the end yeah amazing amazing and we will have some we will have some magsafe stuff as well in the next couple of weeks i haven't been able to test any because of this down update but yeah

and then we will have some stuff we will be testing that out because i think a lot of people will be asking oh what magsafe stuff are you using and i don't have an answer for anyone just yet but yeah thanks guys and uh i'll speak to you soon bye