Pixelated - A Smorgasbord of Google News

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Welcome to episode 103 of Pixelated, a podcast by 9to5Google. This week, Abner, Damien, and Will make a mad dash through all the Google news coming out in a post-I/O world, including a new Android Drop, some new tools for avoiding deepfake phone call scams, the growing world of Fitbit Air accessories, and what just might be the silliest Pixel leak of all time. Sponsored by Bitwarden: Pixelated listeners can get started with Bitwarden's free individual plan by clicking this link. Thanks to Bitwarden for sponsoring! Subscribe YouTube Podcasts Pocket Casts Spotify Amazon Music Apple Podcasts Overcast Timecodes 00:00 - Intro and June Android Drop 13:40 - Google's deepfake phone call protection 17:57 - Google Home Speaker release date leak 25:12 - Fitbit Air blueprints released 36:36 - Pixel Watch 5 leaked unit 41:15 - New Workspace icons 44:58 - Japan Google Store and wrap-up Hosts Abner Li Damien Wilde Will Sattelberg Listen to more 9to5 Podcasts The Sideload 9to5Mac Happy Hour Electrek Space Explored Feedback? Drop us a line at [e-mail], leave a comment on the post, or reach out to our producer. And for even more Android discussion, dive into the official 9to5Google forums!

Welcome to Pixelated Episode 103. I'm your host, Will Sattelberg. This week, it's a grab bag of topics as Damien, Abner, and I go all over the map. After a quick roundup of everything you need to know about Google's latest Android drop, we talk about Fitbit's decision to release blueprints for its latest tracker, Google's newly rolled-out icon redesigns, the first-ever Google store to open outside of the U.S., and what appears to be a pretty killer anti-deep-fake feature coming to your phone. calls. All that and so much more right after a word from this week's sponsor, Bitwarden.

This week's episode of Pixelated is sponsored by Bitwarden, the trusted open source solution for pass key, password, and secrets management. Bitwarden helps you create strong and unique credentials across all your accounts and devices, so you never have to reuse the same passwords everywhere. With end-to-end encryption and secure autofill, BitWarden helps defend against fishing attacks and data breaches, while making logins easier across every device. If you're using Android or Pixel device, Bitwarden really shines. It auto-fills pass keys and passwords across Chrome, other Android browsers, and native apps, so there's no more switching back and forth to copy and paste credentials.

The Android app also supports dynamic colors with Material You, so the app UI and icon automatically match your wallpaper palette for a fully cohesive Android experience. Bitwarden is also a powerful alternative to Google password manager because it is fully open-source, cross-platform and designed so your vault follows you everywhere, not just on Android. You can auto-fill pass keys, passwords, cards, and identities across all your accounts, and even generate strong new credentials directly from the sign-up form without leaving the page. Trusted by over 15 million users and 80,000 businesses across 180 countries and 50-plus languages, Bitwarden remains committed to transparency and making secure password management accessible

to everyone with a free plan for industry. You can get started with a free individual Bitwarden plan by hitting the link in the show notes or by visiting bitwarden.com slash 9 to 5 Mac. That's Bitwarden.com slash 9 to 5 Mac. Thank you to Bitwarden for sponsoring Pixelated. So the start of June, we've had a little bit of a, I think of them as pixel drops, but they're not. This is a June Android drop. We've had a few new features available to Android devices beyond the Pixel series, I think is always really, really good. quick share and that airdrop expansion,

a little bit of extra AI thrown in there for good measure. And I guess we're kind of hoping for Android 17 in the next few weeks, but this isn't it. I think this is still good news for if you don't have a pixel and you have a device that's not going to get Android 17 for a few months. At least you're getting some cool stuff here. Yeah, I guess the meta of this story is that Google, they've been doing this for a while,

but I think Android Drop is now a fishery a thing alongside Pixel Drop. yeah it's I mean okay if you really break it down it's these are Android app updates maybe Google Play services

it's I I guess you can kind of say like half a pixel drops are app updates too at this point but I don't know it it's from a broader standpoint like I don't know this

I'm ambivorous about this I guess how they frame it. I think there's still a better way to frame it, and this is not it. I feel like, I agree with you to an extent, but I also think that this one, while it on the surface doesn't seem that big

or that important, I think the fact that QuickShare and AirDrop functionality, that cross-compatibility, is a headline edition. It feels like a utility that people are going to utilize. And in the next few months, there's going to be people picking up, I don't know, iPhones,

brand new Android phones, and there's quite a lot, isn't there here, that tend to be from, it looks like Samsung makes a vast majority of these up from the S-25 back to the fold six, including the S-24 and that trifold, if anyone, if anyone's managed to pick one of those up, a few, a couple of Vivo, one-plus phones, there's an on-a-device thrown in that's just been set to just be released and a Zhaomi phone. That doesn't make up a huge component at the market, Samsung does. I think a lot of people are going to really benefit from this. It's like one of those sleeper things that's been added here.

Google probably isn't shouting about it enough. Like you're going to be able to send and receive files from iPhones a little bit easier. So while it does feel like, like you said, on app updates, at least we're getting one system level thing that's going to be beneficial in the long term. Like, I don't know how many times you guys send stuff via Airdrop, but I'm sending stuff to my Mac almost constantly every day. I've never used a lot of these like QuickShare. AirDrop style things to share files between devices weirdly.

Like there's no, I don't have a reason. It's just like, genuinely it's just when I do need to share stuff between devices, oftentimes like the fastest way for me to do it is to drop it in something like Google Drive or Dropbox, which I have. Because I'm usually sharing, if I'm sharing something, it's usually going either like to or from a mobile device to or from a computer, right? I'm not typically sharing between two smartphones, to be honest. And so because I have those, you know, the Google Drive or the Dropbox, like, built-in shortcuts and Explorer on Windows or whatever, it's like a lot faster for me to just drop it in there and then I have it in a file manager.

But like, if I was more, if I think if I was less grounded to my desktop computer and I was a little bit more of like a mobile, uh, mainstream person, right? like if I wasn't so locked to this desk, I probably would use it more. And this would be, and like even beyond, beyond work, like I do think this is going to make a difference in how I share files with friends in the future.

I think I will be more. Yeah, most of my friends have iPhones. Not all, but most. And I do think I would probably just like, at this point, instead of sending them a link to a Google Drive upload,

I would probably just use QuickShare slash AirDrop. But personally, like, between my own devices, I'm still just kind of uplift. The other thing is, I have gigabit upload speed. So it's like that. Like there's no,

there's no waiting for me to upload a file unless it's massive and even then. So. I mean, I can just, I can just see this being really nice for like the, like you mentioned like friendship groups and stuff when you're out and about.

Everyone has that compatibility. Like the complaints that you get when you go on, especially as we're coming into that summer months. I know, is it technically spring now? That doesn't, I looked this up. I looked this up because we may or may not talk about this Google home

speaker thing, but like I looked it up. up because I noticed that in the Best Buy leak it mentions spring 2026 or whatever. And assuming that date is correct, yeah, they're like four days late. The first day of summer is June 21st. So. Right. Okay.

So June 21st to me screams summer solstice. Yeah. So if you're saying summer solstice, that's the first day of summer. Technically the lightest day. To me, though, that's the longest day. So that doesn't feel like the first day of summer. I know. That's another discussion for another day.

But if we, if you think about it, there's going to be a lot of people going on summer vacations this year with friends, meeting people over those like long bank holiday slash US holiday weekends. This is going to make it. I genuinely, I'm thinking out loud now that this is a huge thing. This is huge for people, potentially. Samsung makes up the lion's share of devices in the US on the Android side of things. Like, what's not to love?

I know that it's been available in the S-26 series for a little while. And I think there's been some devices here and there. And obviously, pixels had it since whenever. But I think that's awesome. I really do like the fact that QuickShare's getting this expansion. And this felt like the only way to do it for Android, like if we're preempting an Android 17 release, which we still don't know when that's happening,

I'd imagine it's this month, I mean, based on previous timelines, but they've done this, they've gone out ahead of time and done this. I think this makes sense, rather than saving it until Android 17 launch, and there's going to be a load of devices that won't get it on day one. It's literally probably just going to be pixel.

Yeah, the rest of the stuff is pretty by the number, numbers, right? I know you mentioned that app updates. I've known on touching that again. Google Play Updits, Google Play Books, sorry, getting some book insights feature. I can't ever see myself using this. Do you guys use Google Books? Yeah, Google Play Books is very good for uploading stuff. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. For PDFs, that kind of stuff. EPUBs, that kind of thing. So what's interesting about this feature is, so it's basically a chat bought an AI, presumably ground in the book. But I think I haven't been able to use it yet, but it's only, the example Google provided was that it's only available in like old,

old books around like Shakespeare or something like that. I think there's a copyright's issue in terms of, like people don't publishes, especially authors, don't want their stuff. indexed, I guess, crawled, which is, I think Kindle has a similar feature, and since it's Amazon and Kindle, since they have that ecosystem unlocked, they're probably having a better run at implementing this feature in terms of book availability.

That being said, I do, I have sometimes wish that I could, like, get an EPUB and put it into something like Gemini to ask questions or, find information. But this, I feel like this feature is probably limited to open domain books. That's the what I was looking for over here.

Yeah. Is this a kind of thing that Notebook LM does anyway? Can you do, can you upload ePubs and you can upload PDF? But can you upload EPUBs to? It's more of an issue of finding, like if you buy something off Amazon, which is what I guess most people do. Like you, it's, there's still DRM on it, which. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Yeah, if you have like an ePUB file on hand of, I don't know, like, pick a book. I don't know. I don't have enough. Fair night 451. Sorry, I was looking at the bookshelf next to me for like a well-known or Dune. Dune. There we go.

There's two books that are five feet from my desk. If you upload an EPUB of Dune or if you have an EPUB of Dune, you probably stole it. If we're being honest, like you probably didn't buy it legally, especially if it's a file, you can just like take out of whatever, wherever you bought it because it has no DRM and upload it to Notebook L.M. Which, you know, like, I'm not trying to... I'm not judging anybody. I'm just saying, like, if you have a EPUB you can do that with,

it's probably from a Torrent website or something. Yeah. Like, even if you went stuff from the library, there's obviously DRM, which is shame. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm intrigued to see how many people end up using this,

because obviously, in the examples, they've used Romeo and Juliet, which is, I guess it's technically not... You mentioned it's a book. To me, it's a play. It's a play. So it's weird. It's weird that it's class as a book. But that's another, again, I'm getting way off.

I'm going off course again. I can't stay on a single track. But a book like Moby Dick, I feel like you would make, the kind of people who would utilize this would be students potentially to reference it. And I guess that might be useful. But at the end of the day,

are they going to be using Google Books? Like I probably have never, I don't think I've opened the application apart from trying to look at it for reference material as in looking at the app. It's sad, but 15 years old. And just,

zooming out, Google can never kill this because it's the optics are just too bad of killing books and that kind of stuff. They can never. It's, it's, I'm sure a small team maintains it. But I don't think

it's ever, even the branding feels dated. Like Google Play Books feels like a legacy branding thing. Like Google Play movies. You can't play books. I can't get over the fact. You cannot play books. And it took, like,

It took them like five years after it launched, even had audio books, so it never made sense of the start. Well, let's move on to some of the cool features that have been out of there. There's another personal safety update, personal safety app update. That's, I think it's going to be available to even younger children soon. So they'll have, is it like a streamlined version of the full personal safety application? Does that include things like there? They'll have car crash detection, which I think is really useful, especially kids traveling on the bus or on public transport. And is there going to have safety check-in, is it real-time tracking for your parents?

I think these feel like sensible decisions that probably should have been there from day one. Like understandably, if you have a young child, you would want them to have access to these features day-to-day. It seems a bit weird that it was an adult-only thing. But I guess there were some legalities around it and probably some like kind of localisation queries and things that had to be resolved. but like I mean personal safety is one of those applications I feel like maybe we do take it for granted it's one of those things that like kind of gets updated and we don't really you don't want to if that makes sense

use these features but it's good that Google's even thinking about it from that kind of perspective but I know that that availability says coming soon so that that should be in the next I guess a couple of months devices we'll get that so the final feature of note is a Google phone app feature where it can, it's so Google onto fight impersonation, they collect, recall out that the ability to impersonate somebody's voice that is a

mainstream technology at this point. So this feature averages RCS in the background. So when somebody calls you, a contact that you know calls you, your device or send a ping message to confirm that they're calling you. Again, this is happening over RCS, so it's enter and encrypted and all that. So if your phone does not get that confirmation ping, that digital handshake, it will throw up this fake call detection warning because it is so easy for people to clone your voice or to fake your phone number. So this is just another good piece of mind feature. Do you know what?

That is probably one of the most genius ways to do that check, isn't it? Like to have that, like you say, digital handshakes, probably the best way to describe it. is such, I mean, it's not scammer proof, but like that is one of the best ways I think I've heard of anything like this being implemented. Because there's only so much you can do, isn't there? Someone can steal the, I know, is it contact spoofing that they do through the carrier is really, really common. Like, I could definitely see this being expanded just beyond just contacts to being like

trusted domains, i.e. a bank, all that kind of stuff. I can definitely see it's expanding out even further because this is something that I imagine during this AI era where people are accessing certain tools like you said, I've noticed people can synthesize voices and things like that. We're going to need some sort of like failsafe.

This seems like a really fantastic thing. And this was first teased a couple of years ago, at Iowa, wasn't it, spam detect? This scam detection, was it last year? I don't remember. Yeah, I think it was on stage. I'm pretty sure they showed a demo of it on stage. and this feels like it's probably been taken a little while to implement correctly.

And I think, yeah, I think it's a really, really, really novel way to do it. And the hope is that since it's RCS, Apple also gets in on it. So that would be a nice, a cross-party way to implement this. Do we, and maybe Abner, maybe you know this, because I obviously haven't used this feature. Does it, when the pop-up appears, like let's say it is a scam, and the device check happens and it's it prompts you to say this may not be in the example it says mom this may not be mom does it give you like a is it just a pop-up or is there like an audio alert because i genuinely think you can like google should make this alert as obnoxious as they want like it should just be constantly beeping in your earpiece to like get your attention to look at the phone screen like truly go over like distort the audio i don't care like because even a false positive that's a good idea which i don't expect this sounds pretty rock solid from my understanding, but like, like, even a false positive, you could like laugh off after

the fact if you hung up and then you were like, oh, no, that is my mom. But, but, but like, otherwise, like, I, I don't think you can do too much in terms of being like, you know, especially if you're talking about people who are not like quite as tech, you know, if, if my grandmother was called or something, right? And she, she doesn't know about AI, uh, deep fakes or whatever. And, and to just constantly be like, hey, no, stop, stop, stop. Like, I think would be. smart. So I would love to see Google take this even further. Again, it might do that. I don't, it's not, they don't seem to like be clear if there's an audio alert or it's just on screen, but go crazy, Google, as you, as you continue to build this out. I, I, you know, I have no respect

for scammers, obviously. Just disrupt them as, as much as you can. Yeah, I, yeah, I think this is very, very good. I think I'm glad that Google's thinking about it. Let's, let's hope that Apple are on board as well. Let's get into something that we've kind of been waiting for a little. I think I mentioned it in the podcast this week. I was hinting that we were supposed to see the Google Home speaker in spring. Yes. And we're very vastly, sorry, rapidly approached in summer. Well, it was spotted recently that Best Buy in Canada had the Google Home, they've called it the Google Home Audio Smart speaker with Google Assistant, which is patently incorrect because it's a Gemini speaker, but hey, that's by the buy.

They have one listed on their, they had one briefly listed on their website. Tell us a little bit more about this, Abner, because you were well over this story over the past few days. Yeah, so June 24th is the date, and as we were talking about earlier, that is three days, four days after spring,

which, this speaker, okay, teas that made by Google in August, we got the proper introduction and specs in October, and that's when we got the spring date. Yeah, it's a long time coming. And at this point, this absolutely because of the, I'm sure they're just fine-tuning Gemini for home. So that's probably the last way.

But I feel like there is more demand than I expected from this in terms of it's not different from an existing speaker if you really think about it. if you have an existing nest audio. Well, I guess, well, do people have nest audios? I don't have a nest audio. I still think it's Nest minis. I think like this is an upgrade for Nest minis.

I agree. For me, I'm very, very desperate to get rid of the Nest mini in my kitchen because I feel like the Wi-Fi chip in it is not as strong as it could and should be. So it sometimes will just stop playing and then I have to ask a request again. I'm liking the Gemini update. I think the Gemini update has kind of made me excited for what this potentially could be because if it's better sounding, which is great, that's all I wanted to be, better sounding and better at connecting to my home Wi-Fi.

And it's not like my Nest Mini is a million miles away from the router. But yeah, I take umbrage with Google saying this was going to be spring if it is very, very on the cusp of summer or official, in air quote, summer. it looks to me like just reading between the lines a little bit that this Best Buy listing only seemed to have the hazel and porcel and listed in Canada so that doesn't bode well for those fantastic colour options is it like a red berry colour and that really nice kind of pastel green yeah that that seems a little bit disappointed because I imagine that well

this is just me spitballing here if Canada doesn't get these other colours third-party retailers, let's just hope that the Google store has those as exclusives. Those of us in the UK are probably wondering as well, we're going to get different colours because I definitely would have picked up that green one. And yeah, it doesn't bode well if we're going to get two plain colours outside of the US. Yeah, that's all we kind of have to add. It's going to be 19 countries. This is going to be available.

And so you'll get regional release dates probably in the coming weeks. I'm excited for this and it doesn't sound like you are, Abner you just seem like it's a speaker speaker and you don't really care. I just use my phone. I know most people have better layouts but I'm just a screen person. I just want to see the text. You're talking for Gemini.

Like when you're interacting with Gemini. I'm even worse in that like to be honest with you you know, I, I, from a, from an audio perspective, like, that's my issue here is I'm just like, man, I've, I've gotten so used. So like, you know, I'm, two apart, two living spaces ago. My Google home minis ended up in a box that never got unpacked, right? Like, there's definitely five of them in the basement. And so because Google has taken so long to roll out new, new smart speakers. I've kind of just gotten used to the speakers that are in my house at the moment.

Like I have a fairly large amount of like for a normal person, fairly large amount of Bluetooth speakers. And then also like my living room soundbar is very good and has, you know, Bluetooth airplay and cast support. You can you can get audio to it. And it sounds better than any of these speakers will. And so on and so on and so on. And and then when I'm casually listening to something like let's say I'm just like waking up in the morning and going to get coffee or something like in my kitchen, I might just use my phone speakers or earbuds or whatever. Yeah. No, that's my issue.

I just use my phone, even though I have a perfectly good pixel tablet hub next to my head. I just, I don't know. It's, I don't know if this is like casting could be simpler, but I really doubt it. It just feels like I've been trained to not rely on like this sort of speaker anymore in a way because Google stopped making them. And so I like, you know, $100 seems fair assuming the audio was good and so on and so forth. But I just, I look at this and I'm just like,

I don't even know where I would put this in my house. Like I could find a space, but is it just going, am I going to use it for two weeks and then kind of just forget it's there? Probably. Speakers used to be free. Like if you paid for Ness Mini, you did something long. Because they're just keeping them out. like candy, the whole mini especially.

Well, like, let's put it this way. Like, I, I obviously, again, like I mentioned I have like, there's like five downstairs. I think three or four of them are mine. But like, at least one of them is my fiance's. And I know she didn't pay for that one. And so, like, it's not even just like a like, oh, if you're like super into tech and you pay attention and you pay for all these various Google services or whatever, you'll get a free, you've got a free nest mini in 2018 or whatever.

It's like, no, like everybody was getting these for free. Like if you had a, if you had a Spotify account. you got one for free. Like it was, so to your point, yeah, and it's, you know,

Damien, you, you complain about the Wi-Fi chip, and that's totally fair, but I would, I wouldn't be surprised if people were rolling on to, to eight-year-old,

uh, free net, like a speaker they didn't pay for, you know, at that point, it's like, if it's buggy or whatever, like,

ah, well, I didn't pay for it. They're not going to run out and, like, upgrade. And I think when we, when we first talked about this last year,

I might have been a little bit more on the side of like, no, it's time for an upgrade. Like they, it is time to like, but it's been so, it's taken so long to come to market. I,

it has given me the time to be like, wait, but like, no, I don't think this fits my life anymore. Like, it might fit somebody's life, but like,

truly like, you know, as we're talking about this, it's like, I, I like my Nest Hub Max in the kitchen, but that,

that is kind of the one place I need a smart speaker and I already have one with a display. And so like, where's this going? Like, the answer's not really anywhere. No, probably.

I mean, I'm still excited for it. I listen to a lot of my own podcasts and radio shows that way, because I don't have a radio at home, so it's the best way to get live streams and stuff. That's fair. Of the trio, I'm the most excited. And let's just hope Google does release all of the colors in all the regions. So if you're listening to Google, please make that happen.

I'd be very happy if I could get one in the color that I like. So in terms of other hardware news, there's some Fitbit Air follow up. Yes. Google earlier this week, so they saw the demand, the community demand, of people making their own bands and doing a lot of their own accessories. So Google just went ahead and released the design blueprints, CAD blueprints of the Fitbit Air, of the pebble, of the sensor itself. And the, they call it the sleeve, but it's a strap mechanism. the thing you push the pebble into and out of. So they just, this stuff, these blueprints are usually just for accessory makers,

fishery-rise accessory makers, but Google's going ahead and releasing them to everybody. So I feel like we're in for a vibrant, I don't know, Etsy community of these bands or whatever, of 3D printing especially. I wonder who's going to be the first. I wonder who's going to be the first company who would. ordinarily dive on this to dive on this. Like it feels very much, like you said, people are going to have, you're going to have this like third-party stores on Etsy, like really custom stuff.

I'm licensed. I mean, Amazon, like that's probably the way people are doing it. Easy win. But I think it's fantastic. I think we complained about it a little bit. I'm not complained about it, but we spoke about it a little bit last week when we're talking about Fitbit Air and stuff. Like having these third-party accessories, I think I alluded to it briefly,

is that this is the biggest thing for a product, isn't it? Like, look at, you need these like cottage industries at the side of a product that you have to really make it like a popular option. And I mean, I think that's the biggest problem we've had with pixel devices, isn't it? In general, that we don't get enough really high-end accessories. Or if we do, they're maybe too expensive.

We don't get in the middle ground. And then you get these really crappy third party ones where they don't necessarily have access to the best blueprints. These are official. This means we potentially are going to get some really, really high quality

and affordable options for the Fitbit Air, which is already an affordable product, which I just don't see any negatives here whatsoever. I think it's fantastic. This does feel organic

in terms of like they saw this demand from the community and they released this. It doesn't seem to me like they were planning on doing this. So I know this reminds me

of, does anybody remember Google's On Hub routers? before the Google Wi-Fi, before made by Google, they had a line of routers called On Hub, and they did this thing where you could make cases for it. You could make different home objects if you wanted to make it. It was like cylindrical, but you could like put stuff on top

if anybody's Googling this. So that's what this reminds me of, like, very OG Google experiment. have fun with it. Do you think this could be as well, though, like, and I'm going to ask Will this, because he was the person who writ the review and spent the most time with the Fitbit Air so far. If the Fitbit Air could potentially be one of Google's most well-received products in recent, especially in recent times. And if this is like an extra icing atop the cake, then like it feels like they can't really

lose with the Fitbit Air. I think they're really genuinely knocked out of the park. And by doing this, it just means. more people are potentially going to look at this and be like, oh, well, I can get the Disney, I can get the third party not quite affiliated with Disney, Disney band that I wanted that isn't available on the Google store. Yeah, it's not even, well, okay, so first of all, this was like the best news I saw this week, because if you go back and listen to my thoughts on the air last week,

I would say probably the most negative thing I, the most negative I felt about it was talking about the alternative bands you can buy that Google sells, the official first party bands. In fact, when I learned, I think you can hear my live reaction on that so learning the $50 price tag for the, where I go from like, don't buy it to like extremely do not buy

like on the elevated option. But so just on its face alone, like just in general, I'm glad to know. I'm glad we know for sure that Google was already going to let people make third party Fitbit Air bands. Like not surprising,

but good to know those are coming if they're not. looked if like speaking already has one or whatever. But and then, and then even better that everybody can partake and, and anybody can. So like, I went to, um, to your point,

Damien, is this going to be a huge hit? I went to Etsy while you guys were talking and like, there's already like, and I don't know, like maybe people made these just by like, without the schematics. I don't know when these were uploaded.

But it's like, people are already made. There's, there's a, there's a charging dock stand somebody made that like, let's you, let you mount the like charger inside of it so that it has like a, and it's obviously 3D printed.

Like it's not, it's not, the most refined thing I've ever seen, but it's, it's an accessory you can pick up for $14 that Google doesn't sell. And then also these, um, these little adapters that hook on to like any watch band, like, including just like non, like a standard watch, like a, uh, a, like a, a, like a, casio into, uh, into a smart tracker effectively by, by having it on the underside of the, of the, of the watch. I don't know how, I don't know if that messes with the biometrics or not. So like, let's put that aside for a second. But on its face,

that's a really smart idea to be like, hey, this $100 tracker, if you buy this $10 watch band adapter, you can hide it under your standard watch and essentially turn your standard watch into a fitness tracker. It's great. That's awesome. So to answer your question, David, yeah, I think this thing is going to be a huge hit as enthusiasts, like kind of latch onto it, basically. But like, a specific type of enthusiasm. Not like hardcore garment wearers or anything like that, but people like the, like the,

Yeah, but I feel like they don't, they don't care about this stuff anyway, do they? Like, it's the same with Woof isn't it. I think it's going to look at this and go like, oh, this is what I used to love about Fitbit is that it was. Yeah. It was this like basic addition to my life that did not feel like a piece of tech and did not get in the way of what I'm trying to do with my life. And, you know, again, if you are already used to wearing like, you know, an $80 Casio watch or something and you're like, I want to throw, I want to make this thing a little smarter. Like, you can do it here and you're, you're not adding all of the stuff that a smart

watch would add to your, to your wrist, right? You don't, it's, you're not going to get buzzed for notifications. And a lot of, that's what a lot of people don't want to worry about. I definitely, I definitely feel the Casio thing. Because I'm kind of like, as much as I really like the design and it's really, really minimal and comfortable to wear to bed, which is probably the biggest reason why I haven't really taken it off all that regularly, apart from charging, is this integrations with like the kind of things I want to wear? Does that make sense? I'm not going to lie. I think a Cassio looks a lot better than nearly any smart watch. The Pixel Watch 4 is probably on the cusp of being good enough to wear every single time and everywhere, but to me, I'd still

think I'd prefer a cassio. I'm classically old school millennial like that. But I just think that this is this is a huge thing that Google should lean into more as we have a situation with technology in general that is not repairable. It's not accessible to people. People want to be able to put their own spin on things. And obviously, Fitbit is, I mean, is Fitbit bigger than probably all of the other Fitbit brands combined? Maybe not, but it makes up a big component, doesn't it? It's a casual audience that wants something that is doing enough. I definitely feel like there's some method to this madness. I think. Yeah, that method is like the design. They made it so discreet. It is their smallest tracker and as such they can do a lot. They can accommodate a lot of designs for this.

Like I personally, like I'm waiting for a bicep ban because the whoop I'm wearing right now is on the bicep band purely because that's the only way I can wear all of these at the same time. But I think I'm so down for bicep bands of an official accessory or if somebody makes it because it just puts it out of the way. I know, like, with old Fitbits, there are people who wear it on their ankle. There are a lot of ankle bracelets on Etsy that I ran into

looking this stuff up, and I want to say, like, they don't specifically call out the air yet. Like, they're mostly calling out, like, the Inspire, the Alto, and so on and so on. They will. These are going to get updated to support, like, people, 100%. Like, those are going to end up. Also, two very quick things, just before I forget,

Damien, to your point, the one of the listing specifically calls out a Cassio G-shock as as being supported by this adapter. So that's that's like exactly the type of watcher talking about. And then secondly, I want to say I haven't shopped for a Cassio watch in a long time. Please double to triple my $80 price tag that I said. It's like what? Oh God. It's not a minute.

Well, that kind of, yeah, that kind of definitely puts a dampener on things. But what I also found really fascinating, this might be me being naive and being stupid, is that they call it in the schematics, they call the actual node itself pebble, which I found really interesting. Abner pointed that out to me a couple, while we were working on the review together, when he was having notes.

I think I called it a puck. And Abner was like, technically they officially call it a pebble, but lowercase P, nothing to do with pebble, upper case. Nothing to do with. Yeah.

It's amusing. Yeah, it's amusing. It's like they were using that name before they part the company. so that's why they bought the company. Very odd. Very odd. Yeah, so if anyone out there who has their own ideas,

go ahead, grab those schematics, download them, start 3D printing whatever the heck you want. I can imagine there's going to be some insane stuff out there. We may even see some new brands rise from this, come from nowhere and start making accessories for lots of other things.

It can be the kickstart for a lot of entrepreneurs and businesses out there. That's why the $99. price point and I'm so curious what it's going to be like and during the holidays. Actually, we're doing $25 off maybe. I could see this going as low as 50 in the next six months. I mean, the UK, it's 85 pounds. I reckon it could be 50 pounds here in the UK and probably given away with pixels as part

of a law in a promotion for definite. I would prefer this to a pair of earbuds. And it's the same price. Like Google loves to give away their A-series buds, which are 100-ish. And it's even cheaper, actually. Exactly, because the new ones are 130, right? And so it's like, because the first gen, uh, pixel A series buds were, were, yeah, 100.

But, but, like, yeah, I absolutely, you could already see the email, the, the email blast from Google with the pixel 11 of like pre-order today and get a free Fitbit air on us. Like, you can see it. You can see it. So it's, it's all, it's happening. I'll call it. It's happening. Yeah.

Well, another thing, side note on the timepiece kind of thing. be a little thing we saw over the past couple weeks, past week or so sorry, is there was, and I think this is one of the most fascinating leaks I've ever heard of, a Pixel Watch 5 was found in the ocean of all places. It's fascinating before you even get to who leaked it, and then it's triple fascinating. Yeah, yeah.

So for anyone who's out of the loop on this, which is apologies for yet another watch-based joke there, allegedly a Pixar Watch 5 it looks like a 45mm version because of the sheer size of it was found while someone was scuba diving on the island of Sir Martin

that in and of itself is insane that someone would find a watch at the bottom of the ocean there is the fact that somebody lost it there I'm sure that whoever happened to lose it was thinking to themselves well that's gone forever no worries it's probably not an issue

scuba divers found it and then this scuba diver had time is with the gearbox studio finder. The guy, basically, gearbox studios have made so many games. The guy who made borderlands. Like, the borderlands guy.

Randy, Randy Pitchford takes to social media and shares his image. And he calls it a pixel. Does he call it a pixel five? He calls it a pixel five, which, you know,

look, I think all of us on this, on this podcast have gotten just used to being like, yeah, man, when people talk about Android devices, they don't know what to call them. And so it's fine.

It's whatever. It is funny that the word you're missing is watch. You're holding it. You're holding a watch, Randy, but whatever. Yeah. It's fine. It's also,

it is very clearly Randy Pitchford's reflection in the watch. I know what he looks like. The pictures are so funny. It's so funny because he just knows his shoes. It's just, oh, I love it. It is probably one of the funniest leaks. I don't think anybody can be mad about this

in any way, shape, off of all. So, like, I saw people being like, Google, Google did this on purpose. That's why they used Randy. And it's like one. They didn't do this on purpose. That doesn't make any sense. Two, if they wanted to do this on purpose,

Randy Pitchford's not who you would use. He's not an uncontroversial figure. People love to hate Randy Pitchford. You can, for various reasons, you can go read as Wikipedia page four. But I'm just saying that, like, no, this was not planned. Don't be ridiculous. Yeah.

I mean, what do we? There's no real great, interesting components of this. It looks identical. It just literally looks exact same. It looks exactly. It looks like not a new charger this year. Right? Yes.

Yes, very good. It is a silver side mounting charger. I mean, I'm looking at my Pixel Watch 4 now. I mean, to be honest, this is probably why, I mean, this is just a kind of a hunch from me is that we haven't seen as many leaks from pixel devices in the lead up to to this potential August, which we assume is August launch period based upon previous timelines. these devices look so similar to the predecessors that people are just not like able to spot them in the wild

and for someone to even see to find this at the bottom of basic we don't I don't know how deep it was but someone scuba diving finds a watch they're probably thinking oh just it's just a watch and then yeah I have to imagine you find this and you're like oh I'm um yeah that's weird I should try to figure out like who's watch this would be and then you start like the only information on the back

is pixel watch five so you type that in to Google just to get some information about it and you realize this is not a released product. And that's that probably how this starts. Yeah. I mean, we didn't expect any changes here. I think I think Google's kind of settled on their design. If anything to me, I do think the front of it looks maybe a little bit more curved. Yeah, it's tough to tell.

From one of the really, really crappy iPhone air images has been shared. Another reason Google didn't do this on purpose. He's using an iPhone area to take the photo of it. Yeah. I definitely think... Pixel was used to take that picture. That would be... Well, yeah, at that point, I'd be like...

I'd be like, look, I don't think this is on purpose, but I do understand why people think it is. But no. The iPhone Air, I think, so that's the whole thing. Yeah, I think... So we're not expecting any shocks this time around. But, yeah, the first leak of... The first proper hardware leak of...

made by Google 2020... I was going to say 2027, but I'm adding years to my life. the 26th season, was courtesy of Keybox founder and Borderlands creator. So, yeah,

who had that in their bingo card? You have won the jackpot. It's my favorite in years. I genuinely maybe since the iPhone four. Like, truly, it's so funny. It is funny.

It is funny. But, yeah, in other news, let's round up a few more little things before we kind of get into icons. Because this has been a nice one. It's a nice one.

Icons from Google finally started rolling out. I have had a few of them appear on my devices. I know it's supplementary to this, but I really like the pixel buzz one. I really like the pixel buzz one. So what's on your home screen? Mine is keep and task,

and I've gotten used to it, I guess. It's, I don't know, after a day or so, it faded in terms of the newness, but the pop of color. I mean, keep and task with all the regular icons that weren't. the multi-coded like before, but I have drive. I think people have strong feelings about drive.

I don't mind the drive icon. What is kind of, I think these new icons appeared on my device. I use Keep every day. I recently moved Google Health to my home screen. Like, I mean, I love the Pixel Buds update.

I think that's fantastic. I think it's finally about time. Which does suggest that they're keeping that design for the foreseeable future. the case design. Very, very true. The rest is just a real mis-mish match. Nobody has...

Gmail is not widely rolled out yet. That's the one people waiting for. But again, that looks like they really didn't change it because I guess the last update was big enough to account for it. Yeah, I think meat has been the one that's been the most jarring initially.

I understand the change. I think it makes a lot of a bit difference, but I don't have it on my home screen currently. I have had it on the past. It definitely feels, I mean, moving away from Duo, which was one of my favorite applications from Google to me has been a bit frustrating. Yeah. But at the same time, I do think making these changes has made sense. What has been obvious to me is that applications like files, when I'm looking at my app drawl, that looks so outdated now.

Some of these applications look so outdated. And it was nice to see, I think, docs and sheets and slides, they were the most important for me. me because I do use sheets. So yeah, Google Docs, sorry, and sheets every single day. And when I'm looking at them on my phone, they felt old. They felt like they hadn't changed for a long time, which they hadn't. And having those new icons is kind of nice because it fits with the rest of my device teaming and kind of the look and feel that I expect of a modern pixel. Yeah, it's, I think, I'm curious what Chrome is, but I feel like it's just going to be the Swalls merge. I think we've talked about this before. But I feel like I feel like,

like that's due for an update at this point. But yeah, the gradients of one. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't mind it. I think it's a good look. I think it's just, if Google are going to lean into it, especially with the Gemini and stuff like that, it definitely doesn't make sense to try and start from scratch again.

I think we called in a world agreement when we first saw these that they are way better than their predecessors where everything looked like the same icon. So, yeah, it'll take a little while to get used to, but I think once everybody's used to, they'll be pretty happy. But yeah, I think that kind of sums up where we sat with new icons. Hopefully we'll see those, the wider ecosystem updated to fit with it.

But nothing else really, really bothers me too drastically, apart from a few here and there. I don't know if you guys have any apps that you want to see change. Chrome was the one that you said, Abner, is that about it? Yeah, that's about it. I'm curious, YouTube, I don't think they ever going to really change YouTube. Like maybe they add a gradient to the red, but the icon. shapes are going to stay the same for the future, I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know if you've got to tell any final thoughts before we dip off. I think the biggest news that maybe we hadn't talked about is that we're getting our first Google store outside of the US, which Japan of all places, I think is quite fascinating. I know that it's one of the Google's biggest markets outside of the US, so it kind of makes sense. But to get a Google store outside of the US is kind of big confidence from Google, I think, to go ahead and do that, have a physical presence.

I'm honestly surprised, especially in this economic climate. The store expansions, they're now 10 in the U.S. I know it's not a lot in the grand scheme, but they've kept to it. And I think they will keep maintaining them, especially having, I think there is something to, like, people, if you live in one of these cities, knowing that there's a Google store there, I think it does help familiarize the brand and help emphasize, oh, right, they sell hardware. ever stole. Right.

Yeah. I mean, anecdotally, when I was there in November last year, there was an insane amount of people in Japan who run around

with a pixel phone. Like, it is insane. Like, I am surprised and, like I say, and I say this, every damn time on this podcast is that I feel like

I live in a bit of an enclave of pixel users here in the north of England. So for me to go to Japan and see so many pixels, devices that I talk about every day, it doesn't feel as real.

It doesn't feel as special. So, like, when you go to I.O., that's like the biggest thing that you feel. Like, that's like, well, you can speak to it, Damien, you just saw it. It's like, oh, everybody here has a pixel. The vast majority of attendees have a pixel.

Yeah. Yeah, it's, that's a nice thing. And I kind of want to see it experience it in Japan now to see what it's like. Yeah, you definitely should. I mean, hopefully if I head back again, which looks like it's going to happen in the few months, I'll definitely go and check out the Google store and see what it looks like. Because I know it's in a really high-end district, like a shopping district of Tokyo, which I've been to.

And so I imagine that if they're going to keep it in keeping with the rest of the stores there, this could be one of the highest, highest end stores that Google has. I know that they have a few in New, do you have one in New York? Yeah, they have two in New York. Yeah,

one in Chelsea and one in Williamsburg, I think. Yes. Bookwin, yes. Been to one of them. Do you guys remember the Microsoft store? There was one in London. There was one in Barlow. That's how it widespread those were.

There was one in the mall in Buffalo. Those are basically Xbox stores, we agree, right? They were just Xbox stores. They had a lot of laptops. Because it was right across, it was in the Walden Gatheria in Buffalo, which the only reason anybody outside of Buffalo would know is because Drake talks about it on a song at some point. Because he grew up in Toronto. It was right across from the Apple store until COVID killed them all. But yeah, they had a ton of laptops, and then you would wander into the back, and they had, like, it placed to play Xbox games and a big TV.

And, like, it was all... I think mine, my local store, well, not local, but it was in Santa Monica. They just hosted so many Xbox tournaments. Yeah. And they gave out, like, Xbox Live things to winners. That's why people went there. See, Google could have done with Sustadia. Well, it's just like...

I don't want to compare the Google store to the Microsoft store, because, like, man, I always thought... Like, you'd walk by. It'd be so, again, we're talking like truly diagonally across from the Apple store. And so you could kind of see both at the same time. And you'd see like this clear cube of the Apple store filled with people playing with Apple devices. And you'd look at the Microsoft store. And there's like 18 employees and three shoppers. It feels like going in a Razor store.

But yeah, let's let. I'm excited to see what this one looks like. I'm sure, I'm sure it will have its own regional, um, kind of, differences and it does seem to be like the mock-up storefront of it. It's kind of cool. I kind of like the joke, kind of like the, oh, hey, Tokyo, a little coming soon signage that's there. And they have their own version of the Shinjuku kind of 3D cat billboard on the corner.

I don't know if that's going to come to fruition, but that would be phenomenal if they could kind of put the Android bot into, to do their own version of that. That would be amazing. But yeah, if you are heading to Tokyo and Japan in general, general in the next, I say, I think it's like three to four months time. It looks to be opening by the end of summer it's going to be in Omokadu Toku Plaza, which is in... Each store needs to have more unique merch besides a tote bag.

Yeah, that's something that I think that Google should lean into more, especially with these kind of, especially if this is the first of many expansions. Yeah, they should have some badges or whatever. Pins! Yeah. They love PINs. They do love pins. They do love pins. They do love pins. And I think that's, yeah, that's the state of Google and Android and Fitbit and Pixel all at the same time. I'm excited to see what happens and I want to see some more Google stores outside of the US. If this is the first of many expansions, let's just see what happens with Europe.

I think there's a lot of growth opportunity there. But as always, guys, thanks for joining me. It's been a fantastic episode. As always been taught, we've been all over the place today. We've been all over the map, which is, I think is good. And ending on a little expansion there is always a nice, nice to talk about. But yeah, thanks for joining us, guys, and we'll speak to you very, very soon. Bye.

Bye. Thanks for listening to Pixelated, a 9 to 5 Google podcast. If you enjoyed the show, we ask that you rate and review it on the podcast platform of your choice and help spread the word by sharing the show with friends or on social media.