Gadgetory

welcome to android authority on air the original android hangout show on google+ I'm dare across London Charlton and I'm Johnathan Franklin this week we have all sorts of fun stuff to talk about mainly how why app rollouts suck and over the past few weeks you if I experience that we're also going to talk about a google glass update we're going to talk about the samsung galaxy s4 active which was officially announced this past week and then we're gonna have a little bit of State of the Union discussion we're going to talk about the new Nexus program the Nexus user experience program and how a keyboard being released to the google play store is much more significant than an actual keyboard it's how Android is evolving and how Android is changing all right so so let's get started so I said app rollout suck and you know it's an awesome feature but we'll get to that in a minute but ever since I Oh google has been touting one of the latest and greatest features of the Play Store and that is to do a pro louts so if you've r you know I got in the music update calendar hangouts gmail yada yada yada you've seen all your friends on you know social networks posting hey I got the new gmail you go and you check and oh I don't have it yet now you check for hours later oh I don't have it yet the next day damn it I still don't have the update where is my update you know you know it's available all your cool all your friends have it you're not the cool kid with the update and you want it makes you want it more it makes you mad your friends get the new hangout the new count a new music new gmail and you don't have it where the hell is my update so yeah they're bad they make you wait but uh but they do have some good to them Dan the so yr appt rollouts good well they really do have some benefits for developers people who are hosting these apps on their own servers not Google's servers can't necessarily take the kind of pressure that you know tons and tons of people trying to download it all at once for you know an update or a new app launch so it gives them the ability to stage that and stagger the load on their servers but when your google load on your servers really ought not be an issue and if that's really the reason why they're using these staged rollouts that's kind of embarrassing because they ought to have better service than that so let's say let's say Dan so so Twitter for example which they should have better service tube that's the first app that came to mind say at a recent update so let's say I don't think they did staged updates but let's say so Twitter's servers don't get hammered with everyone saying well I want to see what's new in going and downloading it and testing out the new features yeah I would understand why a smaller company maybe Twitter wasn't the best example no but for independent developers it's definitely a benefit even for for you know mid-level developing companies for like just app companies you know like one louder apps for example although I think they're a bad example because they have some authored larger parent company but groups that are just add companies not platforms like Twitter but you know they they don't have that kind of massive infrastructure for servers because they don't need massive server farms usually but they can't necessarily handle that kind of load so it gives them a way to you know offload it in stage it over time but even wouldn't that it gives you a way to put out your app have people try it downloaded use it and maybe come back and say hey there's some glitch something you missed because let's be realistic especially for smaller developers it's easy to miss thinks it's easy to overlook something if you are going through some rigorous quality control process and if you are it's easy to miss a typo or some of your bug on some weird device and so it gives you the ability to call it back stop the rollout fix whatever the problem is and then redo it without having tons of users experiencing whatever that problem is you only have a very small population does it vary developer friendly yeah it's definitely good for developers it's not really good for a huge company is that ought to be able to take that kind of pressure in those kind of fast rollouts I think maybe maybe Google is demonstrating disability showing developers that hey look you can do it and this is how it works cut dogfooding you know to eat your dog food % sure you comment John did you have a comment it just if you release something like that you know in terms of not just getting it to the users but affecting your overall reviews on the Play Store cuz you know most the reviews on this update broke my whatever fix it you know I mean you're talking about because developers really look at their average on the reviews and wonder where they're at so that's one big thing is that anything that's believe that's the reason the beta program doesn't affect you know reviewers can't post on beta just because of the same reasoning so okay and and speaking of app data programs let's talk about that that's a new feature that once again launched at i/o and over the past week or two has been becoming more popular more and more app developers are starting to take advantage of beta app bait as the beta program some of these are dashclock widget Joe which I i love that I'm sure a lot of you love it if you're on Android 4.2 AOKP backup has a beta community Falcon pro the very popular Twitter client has a beta community slide-out messaging as it and they're really popular nova launcher has a beta community i'm sure there's others these are just ones that i found once i'm a member of and the you know what if you found another beta community for another popular app go ahead and drop it in the comments and let us know and we'll add it to our list alright so so why are these beta communities significant well as jon was it was saying it allows developers to test new features of an app to get some feedback on it how does it work does it work on XYZ device do you like this new feature what do you want to see but but also it really is is actually really significant it actually pushes google Plus even more you see if you're going to use the beta program as a developer whenever you upload your new app and you say you want to enter into this beta program you have to select a Google+ community meaning that you have to have it's a requirement to have a Google+ community for your app so that's making developers use Google+ and it's making appt fans you know us the consumers use Google Plus and it's not making be an active user because the developer is going to say hey guys here's my community and then all the all the people that are a member of the beta program are going to go to the community and they're going to talk about things they like things they don't like things they want to see their say hey good job thanks you know and they're going to actively engage one other so baited the beta program is great for us as Android users but it's also great for Google+ as a platform to keep pushing google+ and so forth yeah I mean it's it's not just so much the dog food in Google+ which I'm sure is a a goal of Google's in that front but it's also a value added for developers right like they're giving developers a free place hope free hosted place to channel all their comments all their questions all of their development all of their forming all of their everything into this free community that we're going to host for you no charge here you go right if app developers and ROM developers start taking advantage of that same sort of platform that's going to the end of some major Android communities like XDA and roots wiki and even the android central forms right if google pushes this hard enough and right into the right people they could really take over the android 40 market too mm-hmm I could see that happening I in some regard I know like paranoid android you know there are official forums you know it's just pretty much the Google+ community cyanogenmod has a massive Google+ community now they also have their for their forms still AOKP has you know mass of you know forum you know here so I yeah I could see it happening a little bit but but back to betas yeah it's a very neat it requires Google+ use of google plus and and i like it so once again if you found any other ones besides the ones I mentioned dashclock widget AOKP backup Falcon pro slide-out messaging nova launcher go ahead and let us know in the comments and we'll go ahead and check them out cuz u bettas are fun I like Vegas definitely everybody low status but how about some devices that man watched actual okay so let's talk about the the galaxy s4 active so it was it officially announced this week and it came with an ip67 rating so what exactly does ip67 mean well it's actually two ratings to two numbers the six means it has complete dust resistance so that means dust isn't going to get inside it yeah that's good all phones should be resistant to dust you know you you would want that I would assume the the seven is something more than you know the average phone has the seven mean it protects from between 15 centimeters and 11 meter for 30 minutes in water so that means your device can be up to a meter in water for up to 30 minutes and you can take it out and use and it'll be fine so it's not you know waterproof it's water-resistant so dust resistant and water resist and that's what 67 means so a lot of people are calling it a a rugged device yeah I mean if they called galaxy s4 active because that's you know what it is it's a it's not a rugged device a rugged device you know would be a device that you dropped and it didn't go splat you know a rugged device would have a harder shell it would have maybe some something more to protect the screen it already comes a gorilla glass 3 may we have some type of screen protector or I don't know either way it should be more robust than than just dust than water than plastic yeah um so besides the ip67 ray what's different what actually looks a little different um and some of the specs are slightly different it's a little heavier and a little thicker maybe a four because the water resistance has become the guy that's padding in there to protect everything yeah mate dust resistance yeah so it also has an 8 megapixel camera the standard the regular galaxy s4 has a 13 megapixel camera and the neat thing about the camera is it it just it's rated to take photos underwater so that's maybe that's why it's an 8 mega mega pixel camera arm the screens actually different technology to the regular version uses the Super AMOLED screen that we've all come to know and love from Samsung devices and the regular I'm sorry the active version uses a TFT LCD and some of people speculate you know why they use a different screen well you know an LCD is better in direct sunlight and since it is an active phone it's an outdoorsy failure to be using it in more outdoors I don't know that's why I'm thinking Dan John any other reason why they may have changed the screen I can't think of any other good reason why they would not go with there anyhow technology maybe money I mean LCD screens are cheaper for them to produce you know they do have their own LCD division 2 so that's true yeah it is a little cheaper to build the sld lcds and it is the there a moment but yeah it's probably mostly the light though because annelids traditionally don't do particularly well and drank some light on the other hand they're typically a lot more battery efficient than call CDs so let's talk about you know active devices rugged devices more resistant devices real quick so galaxy s4 came out but roughly two months ago or so depending on your carrier month ago you know pick up smokes here verizon yeah so uh you bought your device you love it you realize huh I want to like my phone to be waterproof or water resistant and dust resistant uh here comes the active version in your pasture 15-day or 30 day return period you know you're kind of screwed you have to buy a new device so why are manufacturers putting out devices with this rating from the get-go or at least releasing the two of two gekka the same at the get-go some of them are the Sony Xperia Z has an ip67 rating and it's they didn't have to release a rugged version or an active version it's that version so some manufacturers do do this some don't well one thing to know with the Z is that it's not really ruggedized either on the outside and it's a glass outside but one of the biggest usage cases of what they say from people in Japan or they use their phones so much that especially women wanted to actually take their phone in the shower with them which was one of the motivating factors between making a phone that you know was more waterproof not just the rugged side but you know making sure that it was waterproof or water resistant was because of so many people in Asia you know with that usage case that they wanted a the phones in the shower with them so so so John so that's so so the advertisement that Deutsche Telekom did t-mobile did in Romania was that they had they had a woman in a shower in a mall talking on her phone and playing with her phone so it wasn't just a sex sells thing was an actual legitimate people actually want to use their phone in the shower he really dismal actually used its case scenario at the mall yeah definition or is it the mall well everything you know it may look apparently apparently you do that alright so uh another device here um glass yeah I still haven't gotten my purchase link yet and that's a sad face still crying about and I'm still crying about we won't talk about anymore fingers cross confidence high for next week so if you are rocking glass right now you if you're not it's actually good it's a neat update uh XE which stands for Explorer edition xe6 over-the-air update came out this past week and it's a major camera software update um it whenever you take a picture with the new camera software it takes three photos sequentially similar to how HDR works you know takes one with low exposure average medium exposure nor and then high high exposure so similar to HDR and that's actually what it is it alleviates the overexposure when there's a lot of light or the under exposure you know when there isn't a lot of light and you know google says you know it allows you to not be afraid of the dark because apparently with with glass previously on the xe5 software revision if you took a picture it was kind of dark you know it's very very hard to see the person or the object you took a picture of but and similarly if you were outside and it was a sunny day and you took a picture of a scenic mountain or something he had some sunlight in there it was very overexposed up for the Sun was you know it just wasn't wasn't as good as it could be so they fixed this and you should check out some of the photos that they're gorgeous I mean they're in high and low light they look normal and and where the light is great we're light is very good you actually get an HDR effect and so it's pretty awesome um besides better pictures the ex Aoife or xe6 update gave voice dictation to your photos and your videos for captioning so you take a picture you want to say hey this is a picture of my buddy Dan Charlton I don't have to type that in later I can go ahead and voice dictate my caption before I upload it and share it so that's cool so besides glass I think we had some Samsung tabs thanks to computex over in Asia right John just uh then else from this week and if you want some good news um if you have a note 10.1 or a galaxy tab 2 you're not going to be jealous at all some of these tablets coming out because it's almost exactly the same as the last one and the one before that they'll launch both of them is 8.1 a 10.1 both of them will be launching with android 4.2 the answers slightly eight-inch is going to have a 1.5 gigahertz it's an unknown they didn't announce what type of dual core we're assuming an arm dual core with a gig and a half around the 10-inch is going to be a 1.6 gigahertz dual-core with hyper-threading Intel um it's an atom z2560 clover trail and it has 1 gigabyte of RAM um they may give me the 8 inch is going to get a 5 megapixel camera with no flash and 1.3 front 10 inches going to get a 3 megapixel camera also with no flash and a 1.3 front camera Intel is going to be supplying the 3g and 4g radios for this as the xmm 6262 for gsm so if you're on t-mobile you might have a chance to do this and that's for hspa+ 21 only and the LTE radio was straight up l 2 years and I'm gonna have any cdma support whatsoever I'll a tantalizing there spreads yeah no verizon or sprint no Orihime international carriers such as in Europe ahead stadium cdma 8 inch 1280 x 800 TFT LCD display which is 189 pixels per inch so maybe you know about on par with the nexus 7 in pixel density almost a 10-inch also has a 1280 x 800 TFT LCD display which is the exact same as the last galaxy tab and the one before that and it comes in at 149 pixels per inch but if you really want a reference Samsung makes the displays for both of the ipad 3 m 4 and the nexus 10 in which the nexus 10 is still the highest resolution tablet display at 2560 by 1600 so it effectively has double the pixel density at 300 pixels per inch and samsung makes this display so I mean to me it just seems like Samsung doesn't take their tablet seriously at all because they produce better components for you know their partnership with Google but also for app and it's almost like they throw it I mean to me it just seems like a disappointment because they're putting out so much effort in phones and they're puttin nothin in tablets and in a lot of ways Android tablets even though they have the market share feels almost like Android was when it was on gingerbread where the market share was there but it just wasn't quite there yet yeah Who am is just more putting the effort into it that's kind of what the Android tablet market kind of feels like to me right now because the OEM is just aren't getting behind it on the other hand you can get a nexus 7 yeah you can get an exorcism but you know it's just sad to see the OEMs put so little effort into trying to come up with something groundbreaking on the family front no I agree i think asus is probably one of the better tablet manufacturers right now if not the best no um be a speaking a samsung they've been having some issues with their xedos processors lately there's rumors coming out of various sources that they're having some pretty significant supply issues getting the x and o's chips together which is probably why the s4 active in addition to being different in a couple of other way or excuse me have the s4 active the s4 mini is coming with a Snapdragon 400 the note 3 is rumored to have a Snapdragon 800 the galaxy tab 10.1 has an Intel processor none of these are Samsung processors and they make processors so there's a lot of indications that things are not looking good for the echoes platforms they're facing supply problems they're facing yield problems as well they've been struggling to make 28-nanometer chips at least to make them as efficiently as they're like 32 nanometer chips and there's also a lot of indications that they get some hardware problems with the Exynos 5 octa with the a core chip in the International s4 in about thirty percent of the s4's sold around the world so it's not very popular chip even from Samsung but this is really not good for samsung in terms of their processor developments these last year's chip the sexiness for quad was not particularly impressive in terms of innovation I'm going to expect well and perform very well the Exynos 5 octa still performs very well I'm certainly not trying to default some Samsung their their performance Jews they definitely do perform well the acta is not nearly as power efficient as arm's big.little architecture is supposed to be and I mean that's this is a hardware problem in the chip it's not something that they can solve with just a new kernel this is something where the hardware is physically not working the only way to fix it is to manufacture the chips which obviously they can't do four units they're already producing and selling but they don't have enough time to retool their entire production line in order to meet the deadlines for the note 3 or the galaxy tab 10.1 or any of their other upcoming devices so this is a big problem and if it's mean Samsung licenses their architecture from arm and so there's a lot of indication that some of these problems might be in the underlying architecture and not just with Samsung so this pose is a pretty big ongoing problem for samsung where Qualcomm is just eating up the marketplace right now and they've got nothing to compete with them right now meanwhile Qualcomm does not license their architecture from arm they design their own and so they continue to iterate on the crate architecture make it better refine it improve it and they can do so more or less at will whereas Samsung is very hamstrung by what harm does and on the timetable that arm doesn't so one thing that Apple boughs to exist levels own profit yep Apple has with the a6 processor moved in the same space Qualcomm this and they're designing their own and not relying on samsung to build them samsung still building them they just start designing them anymore so yeah it definitely gives the designers a lot more flexibility in terms of moving more rapidly than arms architectural designs but even still Samsung could do a lot to innovate within the architectural constraints and video with their 4+1 setup is you know it legitimately trying new things not just taking arms designs printing them and then selling so there's nothing room for them to get better it's just question whether or not they can get it together and do it hmm all right we have a question here from find it here we have a question from Jabari Whitfield he says why do you think or what do you guys think about glass being banned in public places personally he thinks it's silly and how will these bands you know be effect in the future only move forward well I think it's silly to because you know let's use let's use casinos as an example because it's a public place per se glass is banned in casinos or will be banned casinos well you know what cameras are also banned in casinos not allow that you're not allowed to take pictures in casinos go to a casino and whip out your camera phone and start taking pictures you're going to get in trouble you're not allowed to do that the same you know same goes for not see what strip clubs made headlines you know what you can't go to a strip club I've heard in take pictures you know I these are things you can't do with regular camera phones and regular cameras and in last comment I'll make is you know ten years ago 12 years ago whenever camera phones were starting to pop up everywhere many places around the world banned them public places banned them municipalities tried to ban them courts banned them they were abandoned you know everywhere even the city of Chicago tried to ban them yeah an entire city many Chicago wasn't alone many places tried to ban camera phones and to this day some places still do have camera phones band some places some places of work where you show up and they have a bin or a little Locker and say hand it over so it's going to happen with glass because not because it's glass not because it's a head-mounted camera because some places do not allow cameras and I mean it's just how it is yeah yeah another one is um right now that's a big usage case of glass because the category realize that hasn't been defined yet you know it's good for navigation it's good for but the biggest cases people using glass to take pictures and videos of their kids and stuff like that so until the third party ecosystem kind of catches up with glass and they did find what the category is going to do that's gonna be the big focus of glass right now is that you know the camera is probably the most obviously used or about it so what in case you didn't know at it and it'd be Google was it the shareholder meeting is that what it was that happened glass was banned and that made headlines Google bands glass from their own chair holder meeting well camera phones are fucking camera phones cameras they were banned to you know media stop you're you're trying to you know your bait and switch you're trying to link bait you're trying to draw clicks you're trying to say things that aren't really what they are you know glass was bamb you know cameras were also banned to it was anything that had a camera attached to it was banned they didn't just say nope no glass we don't trust her own product no they said anything that has a camera it can't be here so it's not just glass sup you know people I really think sometimes people just fish for things you know just because why not they like controversy and you know it draws attention to your site once moving on to things that don't make me upset um okay so let's talk about the state of the union let's talk about state of androids in excess program so the past couple weeks have been have been interesting we've had Nexus user experience devices officially announced and then speculated to be announced first we had the samsung galaxy s4 which will be available play store here in a few weeks on the twenty-sixth for 600 bucks and it'll be stock Android similarly the HTC One will be available in the Play Store for a little bit cheaper five hundred fifty dollars it'll come with with stocks yeah it's 556 and 650 what if I say 600 yeah yeah so I i had the fifty dollars right below yeah okay so yeah so Derek was wrong it was it's 650 for the sgs4 and the one is just 600 my back so now there's reports it son confirmed at this time but now there's reports coming out that there will be a sony xperia z nexus experience edition which is great because that will be a third Nexus edition and the XP is the only one of those three that has a company supported AOSP project so yeah Sony's very developer friendly they actually have a whole entire program you know they've uploaded source code to github where you can actually download in run AOSP on your current xperia z and you know they have it they've had it for other so many devices in the past so it makes sense for sony to do this for all intensive purposes the fact that they do that makes the current Xperia Z a nexus experience device this is just a matter of slapping some branding on it doing exactly what they're already doing and letting Google sell some more well that's probably just turned around and did it really quick exactly like I had the resources reduce experience thing where you just have to build AOSP for your device and release it oh wait you mean this thing we're already doing swimming but also but also Danny it's for people that don't know how to do it or don't want to do it I'll exactly I get the why the consumers want that but for sony it's a no-brainer they're already doing because Sony's able is able to do this and chant and it sounds like it can actually you know it's something that we said you know they're already doing so chances are this this rumor is most likely going to happen and so that makes three your Nexus experience devices and then we have a fourth Nexus experience device because it's the real Nexus device the Nexus force that makes four now we have a fifth device that has been officially announced in recent times the Moto X well it hasn't been called a nexus experience device yet it hasn't you know received that branding or that you know marketing term but we do know for a fact that it's that Motorola had said that they are going to only put out phones running stock Android so for all intensive purposes motorola said they were going to do it it's a nexus experience device whether they're going to officially brand that way or not we don't know yet we also don't know if it's going to be available on the Play Store I highly doubt every carrier version will be available in the Play Store but that doesn't mean they're going to put a version on the Play Store that will work on AT&T and t-mobile such as the other devices that are going to get slapped up there so there is a definite possibility that we're going to have five Nexus devices Nexus experience devices stock Android devices on the Play Store and if this sounds familiar remember remember last summer when there's all sorts of rumors about five devices being launched with you know five phones we're gonna have an X period exes galaxy s Nexus and you know a razor Nexus and all this other stuff and and then the rumors were eventually debunked but it's kind of funny that you fast-forward less than a year later and this is actually happening you know we're actually going to have five Nexus devices or five Nexus experience devices it's and from there all from the major manufacturers and they're all going to be built except for LG but they're all going to be built using devices art exists building that manufacturers style you know each device is styled to their own manufacturer and that's really what a lot of android fans Chancellor if you're watching her listen to this that's what you've wanted you know for years you've wanted a vice of your choice that you like and you've wanted stock Android you know they mean that people wanted that forever android and futures have one that forever so android is is really changing and and and what I want to know before we move on is so out of these five devices you know we have the nexus for the official nexus by LG then we have the galaxy s4 nexus which I don't want to call it that but for argument's sake we will and the HTC One Nexus and the Sony Xperia Z in a nexus and then the Moto X which is basically a nexus so out of all these Nexus experience devices which ones would you guys choose let me know in the comments which ones if they were all available right now on your carrier you know which one would you choose and why you guys will let me know Dan and John same question dan go first which if you had a choice of those five which one would you choose and why assuming somebody else is paying for them I would definitely choose the HTC one I think it's an extremely well-made device it's definitely top of the line and I mean at this point we're we're not even worried about the software on devices it's just about device how it does it feel in your hand how does it look how much do you like the physical aspects of advice and I've looked at all three of these devices in held in my hand and I definitely am most impressed for the HTC I have a nexus 4 it's not that I don't like it it's just that HTC is nicer okay John how about you which witch device would you rock if you your money wasn't an option it was on your carrier I would I would definitely be curious to see what Motorola has to bring to the table this year but I've always liked motorola i can i have a soft spot form but it just really depends on the hardware they can get into the device but if it was down to the you know the z or the one or the s florida i'd have to lean to the 12 because the z is a really nice phone the display is kind of not quite as good as the other two nigh feel like they're a little bit behind on hardware and i just prefer the one over this board personally okay well i would say motorola or HTC in a even tie i will say that it's tough to pick the Moto X because we don't know the specs and we don't know anything about it really but i'm very hopeful on a few you know a few tidbits of information we do know and just because in motorola we know they make quality devices and I don't know I think Google's first you know major initiative to Motorola is gonna I would assume it wouldn't be junk so I'm going to say the motorola axe the Moto X however since that device is not available right now and we don't really know much about it I would say the Xperia Z Nexus experience because I got to play the device at CES and it's a gorgeous device no it's thin it's well built it feels really solid shorts a little older hardware at this point but it's still in beautiful device um and you know I can get dusty you know I can hold it underwater for up to 30 minutes take a shower with it and talked about earlier um I think it's a gorgeous device i would i would pick the xperia z if the Moto X didn't excite me so I have a more bad choice at home and you can't go wrong with any of them no Tesco so here's an interesting thought I had the other day so now we have these five you know Nexus devices and you know we know that you know Google a lot of times is criticized for various things with Android you know how they can't keep you know a device up-to-date fragmentation yadda yadda yadda a lot of people thought you know motorola was going to be the savior google is going to be in control all this crazy stuff right so let's say that some of these people were right and that's part of the reason why motorola was acquired we know that that's not entirely the whole reason but anyways do you guys think that the whole reason we're seeing multiple devices running a nexus experience and neck nina this new nexus experience program do you think google started it just so they could sell their own motorola x their own motorola phones through the play store because that would be favoritism right if they only sold their own device so do you think that they they're doing this just so they can sell their own or you think is something that's been planned for a while or no I don't think that's kind of computer selling devices through the Play Store I don't think that's a big enough sales channel for them to be that concerned about it motorola knows how to sell devices they sell them through verizon they saw them through carriers they do very well at it well not very well at it but they do well enough at it right they know a lot more of us telling advises that Google does obviously as you know anybody's watched any other Google Play Store release of late it's been a disaster so I really don't think that their concern is that much about we need to get it into Google Play I think if you look back at last fall when we were hearing all these rumors about all of these Nexus devices from multiple manufacturers I think that this move from google has been in the works for a while and it's been a matter getting the right devices getting manufacturers on or getting the ducks in a row and called you know heís dotted and t's crossed etc and the licensing blah blah blah blah blah working with all the companies so I think this is something that I pushing for for a while where the Nexus program can more or less become a licensing program you meet these terms you build an AOSP your own version of Android for your device you release the source code publicly you put it out we're happy to sell it for you through the Play Store or you know you can sell it yourself or don't even bother selling device just put out the AOSP software and we'll call it a nexus experience eligible to blaze so I think if carrier earth OEMs are willing to meet those terms then we're gonna start seeing a lot more of these I think it's a play to get podiums back into the kind of get the community back because of community in the last couple years is kind of stagnated on development because they've had to work around so many things the HTC and Samsung and Doug have really tied into their own software's that and something that should be done on a kernel level or you know more of a you know less tied into their own independent on their software stack so if you really kind of get the community back excited about Android again then as far as their in on Google's and it can get people contributing the stuff that actually matters not stuff like trying to get GPS and Bluetooth going on a device because you have nothing to go off of you know for months in fighting stuff like that when they can be contributing to something useful and you know it's kind of slowed down the AOSP side of Android because you know aside from the Nexus devices which really aren't big sellers it gives some kind of incentive for the OEMs to give you a reference point so I think that's gonna be it it's not so much what how many sales they can get but if the homes do decide even if it's just to sell a small handful of devices it's going to absolutely supercharge the communities because they can start customizing and doing things that matter and really everything that has been merged in Android over the last couple years you know in the ice cream sandwich and stuff for stuff that kind of was in custom roms before that Google merged into Android later and made it better yeah okay all right so we actually had a question from actually the same guys before ajab Rory Whitfield he asked about Google Wallet NFC you know we've covered that before and it's a it's a downhill argument so we're gonna ignore that right now what we are going to do is we're going to talk about also yeah he asked what do you think about google moving core android apps the Play Store newest be the keyboard will this allow Google to take some control back from and then like a cut off i'm suing control back from carriers control back from from OEMs and and and so forth so that actually is the next part of the state of the union talk so leading into that thank you for that question so hopefully this answers your question for you so a keyboard was recently released the google keyboard and it's a keyboard not too exciting right i mean not of us already have it anyways either a Nexus device or on you know custom rom or it's a keyboard so why is the p board so significant well it shows that another core android app another app that only was available you know on a Nexus device device or through AOSP is now available to anybody and everybody through the Play Store and this has been happening for a while now that's been happening for you know years you know initially gmail only was available on Android and you couldn't go i mean that's really not the right way to say that i guess it was only available on the on a google license device and you know you couldn't go out there and download it on the Play Store unless you've added installed it's still only available on a Google licensed device because it's only available on the Google Play Store which is only on a Google licensed device the point is that you can now download it and get updates from for it through the Play Store it used to be that you could only get your update to gmail when the new version of Android world out to your device in you know 6 8 12 18 25 runs yeah exactly so you had to wait for a new brand new version so maps used to be the same way maps used to be bundled you know with android voicesearch google talk now known as hangouts YouTube sound the search in in calendar so all of these apps used to be bundled with Android where you would have to wait as Dan was saying until your carrier or your OEM put out a new version for you to get the new version and you know Google let's say they're putting out new operating systems you know once a year twice a year so that's only once or twice a year for that app to get updated and you know as well as I do these apps now get updated more than then once or twice a year so that's really really awesome that they're breaking these core apps out of Android allowing them to get updated more often but more importantly updated without carriers and without oems say there you know and we saw evidence of this at the plyo as well how Google demonstrated that you know they can take control of Android without you you know without carriers and muddying the waters or OEMs you know that that it's still there are OS and that's what I demonstrated will get that in a second so there's still a handful of apps that aren't available on the Play Store that come you know baked into Android that you have to wait for an update or some of them actually aren't even available on all devices there you know Google you know proprietary such as face on lock or at the mail client where you can do activesync to connect an exchange server that's Google license it's google proprietary that's whether that's why every different OEM has their own implementation of it so i don't know if due to licensing i don't know if that those will ever get added most like not but people you know the contacts app people could get added to me right now every seems like every om has their own version of contacts you know it's not just simple people I hate HTC's all the web so absolute is worse yes am so is worse so and also the stock camera stock gallery app the stock messaging act app the stock dialer there's a lot of stock clock there's a lot of apps that still could get the Play Store treatment to where they can get updated as often as need be without having to wait a year for a new version of Android or never getting a new version of Android even worse so how good you want to say something John didn't have a comment on man okay yeah I mean Google's really doing one of the things that I've been saying cyanogenmod should be doing where cyanogenmod hasn't been able to release versions of their operating system very quickly or at least not as quickly as they used to be able to because they're bringing so much time and effort and all of the customized apps doing what Google is doing is abstract in the app development away from the platform development the two ought not depend on each other and so they're separating them from each other in development and in delivery and in every way really that there is and that's really the way that it ought to be managed each of these applications should be an independent project at silo it doesn't necessarily depend on all of these other pieces just in order to get an update I mean this is why Santa John much but least candidate for 10.1 came what eight months after or point2 yeah so so google is taking more control of Android by breaking out the apps that we know and love and updating them separately and that's a good thing so that's that's a very different version of Android inning what existed you know two years ago even a year ago in the past year we've had you know talked with that calendar we've had keyboard sound search you know those have all been added just from the past year for that you know a while ago was music and gmail and maps in YouTube anyway so moving on one thing worth noting because a lot of people ask why are my updates so slow why you know why did the carriers have to have so much of a involvement and why does Apple do so good just clarifying what Apple does is they get their software ready and get the carrier approval invisibly to the user as in they get this stuff done at a time but if it's never going to be solved by an oem adopting stock Android ever because the verizon galaxy nexus an original droid can prove that to you as well as the Sprint Galaxy Nexus but if don't the real answer to that question is if you want that from an OEM is the topic of support is what Apple you know when it when you call a carrier for service for your iPhone or whatever then they're going to direct you to Apple because that was part of the agreement Apple has to provide the support for the device so that's the reason they can send software updates through itunes is because they're the ones that bear the responsibility of handling issues that come from it so if you want a device from samsung or HTC google motorola whomever they'll have to actually create some kind of channel to offer support and guarantee their software to you and offload that burden off of the carrier that's the only way you're actually going to get carriers out of the way is they're gonna have to make those negotiations so this is why Google has to do this because nobody has done this no absolutely absolutely I mean that the support is not a small issue but people don't realize the reason that verizon is able to justify locking everything down is because they need to guarantee that they can provide a high quality blah blah blah blah blah blah blah you don't care because you just want to root your device the problem is verizon is responsible for writing all of that blah blah blah not HTC not Samsung not LG not whoever major advice right if you have a laptop that has a verizon LTE chip embedded in it and something goes wrong with it you called dell or HP or lenovo or whoever made your laptop you don't call verizon yeah but if something happens to your samsung galaxy s4 on verizon you call verizon not samsung all right so anyway so so back on topic here play store has core android apps and that's awesome so how else is android evolving and how else is android changing oh actually talked about it a few weeks ago on our show recapping Google i/o we talked about Google Play services where Google demonstrated that they could update Android basically without you knowing and without actually putting on a new version number it's a real quick recap you know the Google Play services then the new version brought games which you know achievements leaderboards multiplayer location-based API updates in new API uses such as the fused location provider geofencing and an activity recognition which right now I don't know if there's a whole lot of apps that actually take advantage of these I did see one that was taking advantage of fencing recently but I don't remember the name and in last location I'm sorry um after location api's you know Google Cloud messaging was also demonstrated and cross-platform single sign-on so these are things that come to Android without you having to get you know Android 4.3 which would always know when it's coming out yet who knows what's coming out it doesn't really matter your Android's updated with new apps and with new api's we have to do anything you have to stall new app your care didn't have to do anything and your manufacturer didn't have to do anything and that and that's cool you know that shows a lot it shows how the platform is evolving not just evolving but maturing right like when you look at a desktop operating systems particularly the mainstream ones that people really know about Windows and OS X you can version of Windows once every what three to five years Apple releases a little bit quicker but not that much quicker and so people are used to having a stable platform for the long term not this every six months there's a new hole version of the operating system so I think this is definitely a good direction for Android last and not least for the evening we're going to cover some pata news there's actually been some pretty exciting news and patents this week samsung won an import ban from the ITC against apple products well that sounds very exciting it's only for the Apple iPhone 4 and blow and the ipad 2 I don't think the one ever had cellular connectivity or only appointed is also been then so these are devices that I think with the exception of the iphone 4 aren't even sold in the United States anymore but if they were Apple would no longer be allowed to import them you know in a win is still when you know because apples had some very you know lowly wins as well so it's it's nice to say you're winning something right la the four people who are wondering the thing that those devices have in common and why not the newer devices the iphone 4s and newer and the ipad 3 and they were all are using qualcomm radio technology strangely i thought that the four and below were using intel tech and not samsung but i don't know how they pulled that one off but go Spence um the other big big news in patents this week was the the White House putting out a whole bunch proposals and executive orders regarding patent litigation and the whole patent troll issue probably one of the biggest aspects of this is the president coming right out and calling patent trolls patent trolls no mincing words no beating around the bush no patent asserting entities or any other fancy colorful bullshit to say patent trolls they're despicable they're horrible they're trolls they're bad for the economy they're bad for innovation they're bad for everything and so definitely good for the president and not mincing words on that one after that he followed that up with a lot of proposed legislation which if anybody really follows politics I'm sure you'll agree there's little hope any legislation will get through Congress no matter how good it might be but those suggestions are really pushing for a lot more Pat reviews by a program called the CDM as well as increasing end user protections and when I say and use your protections I mean for example a restaurant buys a Wi-Fi router and provides Wi-Fi to its customers and the some obscure patent troll sousou's them because they have some patent on something that's thrown up so vaguely that it covers anything that uses Wi-Fi so end users are people that aren't in any way involved in technology and are still being forced to defend themselves in these litigations the other big proposal was fees shifting fee shifting is basically forcing patent trolls to pay the legal fees of the other party when the other party wins ironically the leading judge the chief for the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit which by the way created software patents in the first place penned an op-ed where he was basically talking about fee shifting and how important it is and how really this doesn't need new legislation because there's provision under current law that could be enforced that ought to be enforced that would allow phase shifting to a car already so I guess we have to ignore the irony of the fact that this man sits on the main court for patents in this country and has never tried to apply this be shifting in practice before work but if if Congress moves or if this judge I guess puts his money where his mouth is and starts doing the same court we could see some improvement on that end and then to top that all if the president put out several executive orders so instant action these things are going to happen without any congressional will one of those things is more experts at patent and trade office to study the problem of patent trolls so your tax dollars wasted to answer a question we already know the answer but some more actually beneficial executive orders are going to cause the patent trade office to start lending a lot more support to end users in filing a request for information regarding patents when they get sued by random patent trolls also one of the other big changes is going to be true ownership disclosure one of the things that patent trolls do is sue on behalf of other companies where other companies are sort of halfway licensing their patents away to the troll so that they can sue for them Microsoft does this a lot there's a lot of other companies that do this a lot so that way it's not Microsoft versus it's some obscure nobody cares about it versus going after all this money but really it's all Microsoft so this is going to force the actual patent owners to file their name on the applications and you file them every year on their maintenance requests so people are gonna be able to find out who actually owns the material that I'm getting sued over one of the other really really important executive orders is restricting functional claims in patents and what this consists of is better training for the patent and trade officers who issue the patents and certify them restricting the functional claims is going to draw down a lot on the ridiculous crap that's getting patented functional claims are things like they're not the actual invention they're the way to do whatever it is so looking at the continent first patented invention of the country the cotton gin is a device that was actually patented and is an actual thing the patent isn't on a method to convert you know the organic plant cotton into the refined good of cotton it wasn't the abstract extracting one substance from another organic substance but that's the way patents they are written so it's not just on the cotton gin it's on the idea of refining cut so nobody else whoever invents any other device for refining cotton and yes there are more sophisticated and advanced devices nowadays than the cotton gin but all of those would then be infringing that original path this really doesn't happen as badly outside of software it's really just a problem in software patents so this is going to play a big role in technology patents the kind of outstanding question is patents that have already been issued with ridiculous functional things in them and in terms of what's going to happen to those is it's probably going to come down to reviews of those patents which means still other parties when they get sued over those ridiculous patents are going to have to push the patent and trade office to review them before then hopefully they'll start applying stricter standards and actually you know not granting patents on things that never ought to have been patentable in the first place the reason why functional claims don't happen so much outside of software is because they're not allowed outside of software but people take a functional play of and attach on a computer and then are magically allowed to get a patent on it so this is really going to put an end to that practice and hopefully clean up a lot of things and maybe Congress will come through and push through shifting and user protections and really bring things up even more but this is definitely a huge and good first step you know what Dan it's good that the government notices these things because you know for a while we thought well we were just Blanc are you people listening to us hey now they might be you know we'll talk about that next week one lat one last question here so youtube user a NT t l 462 says what about android 5.0 key lime pie no all right so you can find us on android authority calm youtube.com / android authority facebook twitter if you're into podcasts which hey you might be listening to us right now in a podcast you can check us out on me row on currents on itunes shutter i know and you can also check us out on soundcloud with a big falling on soundcloud if you're not following us circling us liking us I don't know Fanning us whatever on any of these places feel free to social all the things and click that follow like circle button we'd we'd love to have it thanks again for watching dan thanks for your insights and John you know what your bed is made we need to get you on here with a made bed more often without Scott if you didn't notice Scott wasn't here tonight Scott is he's at a cabin right now he's on another retreat learning how to make a bed alright guys have a good night have a good weekend