Pixelated - Android 17, Now With Even More Bubbles

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

Welcome to episode 91 of Pixelated, a podcast by 9to5Google. This week, with Abner and Damien out at MWC, Will invites Andrew Romero to join him on a whirlwind tour of two new OS upgrades from Google: Android 16 QPR3, and Android 17 Beta 2. The two discuss AI-generated wallpapers, that new Now Playing app, and Android's new bubbles — not to be confused with its own bubbles — while Andrew introduces his SPI: Sandwich Price Index. Subscribe YouTube Podcasts Pocket Casts Spotify Apple Podcasts Overcast Sponsored by Proton Unlimited: Pixelated listeners can save 30% on an annual subscription by signing up for Proton Unlimited using this link. Thanks to Proton Unlimited for sponsoring this week's episode. Timecodes 00:00 - Intro and Android 16 QPR3 03:53 - AI-generated icons 13:15 - Now Playing app and flashlight toggle 22:05 - Pixel Desktop experience, At a Glance, and Gemini Automation 34:18 - Pixel Watch Drop, briefly 36:09 - Android 17 Beta 2 and Bubbles 43:32 - Beta 2 grab bag 50:52 - Wrap-up Hosts Will Sattelberg Andrew Romero Read more Android 16 QPR3 rolling out with March 2026 security update March 2026 Feature Drop: Pixel 10 ‘Comfort’ view, custom AI icons, At a Glance ‘My commute,’ & more  Pixel Watch Feature Drop: Express Pay, phone reminders, and more  Pixel homescreens are getting custom icons, but Google’s keeping them locked to AI 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!

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That's Proton.com.me slash 9 to5 Google. Welcome to Pixelated Episode 91. I'm your host, Will Saddleberg. This week with Abner and Damien exploring the halls of Mobile World. Congress, Andrew Romero joins me to talk through Google's two big OS updates, a finalized build of Android 16 QPR3 and its paired pixel drop, alongside Android 17 Beta 2. From AI generated app icons and a dedicated now playing app to whatever the hell bubbles are, we're covering it all.

It's a slightly different flavor of pixelated than usual, and it all starts right now. We are here. It's just me this week of the normal crew. and Damien are lost to the winds traveling for Mobile World Congress. So joining me is 9 to 5 Google's own Andrew Romero. Andrew, how are you doing? I'm doing well. We didn't want to miss an episode this week because we got two big software drops from Google

over the last seven days or so. Kind of back to back, we saw the release of Android 17 beta. 2, which is starting to actually have features worth talking about. And then we saw the release of the official release of Android 16 QPR3 as well as its associated pixel drop. So there's like a lot of software things to break down. And I want to start with Android 16 QPR3 and the pixel drop because I think that's that's the more interesting of the two just because it is it's finally finished. Is there a specific feature you want to start at? Or should we just start going down the list.

We can go down the list, I think. It's, I wouldn't say it's all absolutely substantial, but they're little building blocks. And it's, yeah, there's some, there's some interesting stuff here. Yeah. Let's start with the biggest visual change, which is these new custom icons, right? So these leaked a while ago, and they're now finally official, and I've played with them a little bit on my, on my pixel 10A, which I can, I can talk about now, although I think we're going to, we're going to hold off talking about the 10A and.

next week because I know Abner and Damien will have thoughts on that. But the, you know, one of the big complaints about the pixel launcher over the last, I guess forever, is that it doesn't support custom icons. It's kind of the only like remaining main, like big OEM launcher that doesn't, you know, you can, you can do it on Samsung. You can do it on Oneplus. And I think Motorola, you know, so on and so on. Google has never. really allowed you to do custom icons. You have to turn to a third party launcher for it, unless you want to, unless you want to count material U colors as, as, as third part, as, you know, as an icon pack, which I don't. So with this pixel drop, uh, you can now finally sort of

get custom icons for your, for your apps. The catch being, uh, you get five AI generated themes. That's it. There's still no actual third. party support you just have these five AI generated themes which include like cookie uh it's um it's scribbles cookies easel treasure and star dust um i couldn't tell you what any of those look like just knowing the names of them they're they're um the rainbow you know the cookie one is rainbowy the treasure one is is all like shiny and gold and you know tacky for like of a better word. There's sketch looks like a drawing you can see an example of that in my in my pixel 10a review. Um, I've played around with these. I'm pretty thoroughly unimpressed. Uh, not only because I don't think these styles look very. I mean, they look fine with material three expressive, I guess, but I, they also look a little bit like, uh, like the worst. of like the 2010s icon packs, like back when those were a little bit more popular, they look

very like, you know, a five-year-old Samsung device running, like in 2015 running, running these gold icons, for example. What's your, what's your impression on how these look? Well, specifically the cookies, I guess, and treasure to me, it's the kind of thing that I feel like I would find, scrolling through like Samsung or honors theme packs. Yeah. Third party stuff and just ignoring completely. But I'm not I'm not really a theme guy. This doesn't appeal to me that much.

These kind of look tacky in a way, in a lot of ways. I've sent you a screenshot of all five styles. Yeah, I'm looking at them on my phone. And honestly, you know, Star Dust doesn't look bad. Yeah. You know, in our article, we have pictures of both cookies and treasure. And I think those look the worst of all five of them. It's weird Google chose those to show off.

Like, that was the image they sent to members of the press. And it's like, guys, I don't think they look good at all. Yeah. I mean, scribbles looks fine. Like, honestly, now that I look deeper into it, honestly, I think. like Stardust, I might just use and see. Yeah. But like I said, I'm just not, I'm not really an icons guy.

I'm not even the themed icons when that was in, I mean, it's still in beta, I guess. Yeah. Or the material. We'll see if it ever leaves, if it ever properly leaves beta or if it'll be like digital well-being and be in beta a decade after its launch. But, you know, it's, it's part of my problem with these actually isn't even so much the look. although I agree with you, especially cookies and treasure look don't look great. It's the setup process.

So it's very weird. You select one from the menu and it shows you nine of your home screen icons, like kind of randomly selected. It's like a mix of first and third party options. And you can regenerate and thumbs up or I actually don't know what the thumbs up and thumbs down does, but by pressing and holding on it, you can give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. and then also you can regenerate separately from that. Like giving a thumbs down does not auto-regenerate it. That's a different option.

But you can only do it at start for those nine icons that it has selected for you to preview. To change any of the other ones or to even see them, you have to save and apply the theme and then go to your home screen, look at the icons, see what looks good and what looks bad, go back into wallpaper and style, back into that menu. you edit the theme and now you can view all of your icons in groups of nine on pages. But the starting process does not include app pages for some reason. You have to go through this entire like setup process to do it. So you don't even like, you know, I was playing around with this earlier this week and it was like,

I think I was doing scribbles and I applied a theme. I applied a, you know, the only thing you can really change is like the color. So I applied a color. I applied scribbles. I hit set and go back to my home screen. I thought, you know, the nine apps it had showed me looked okay, but then I had letterboxed on my, on my home screen, and it looked awful, right?

It just looked terrible. The letterbox logo is three dots kind of intersecting. Three dots, then diagrams. Three colors. And if you get those colors wrong, then it's no longer that app. It completely, had like completely faded into the background.

So it was just basically one kind of visible circle. if it didn't have the app label below it, I would never have known what it was. And so you have to go back into the settings and regenerate it and just like do it until you think the app looks okay. And like to be honest, that app and pocketcast I could just not get like a good, a good look out of. They all looked kind of rough, at least on the scribble setting. And so I don't, I just like, this is something people have wanted forever. And I'm not even saying I'm fully against this AI option. It's the same as like the AI wallpapers that it's actually very similar to the AI

wallpapers that Google launched a couple years ago in terms of like how you're adjusting it. It's that same like big text menu with like one word you can change onto a bunch of presets. I just don't really understand why they don't also add third party app icon support at this point. If you're going to do this, you should give people the option to do whatever they want in the way that they didn't take away the option to set your wallpaper to whatever you want when they launched AI wallpapers. Right. I mean, yeah, that is a good point. I don't know. It feels, it's funny because it's a granular feature, I guess, because you can go in, like you said,

and change specific icons. But granular in the way that to get to it, you have to crawl on the rest of the sand face down, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's friction. That's all it is. Um, I, I don't, I don't know. It, it's a weird kind of, um, it's a way to, to, to bring the future. How and I don't, like I said, I don't disagree with you. I, I think having that option, even though it's AI is fine. Um, I don't know. It just, it just feels like another, like, distracting little feature that is roundabout way to kind of appeal to people who wanted something similar but aren't going to get what they they actually want. Yeah.

I well, and it's it's it's frustrating because I actually like you know, you were talking about liking the Stardust style. I actually like it too. And the, um, if you haven't taken a look at third party icon packs in the play store lately, like it's not really like you can find new packs, but you know, it's not. the proliferation of them that existed in the 2010s, especially, you know, so you'll find older packs, but they're going to be missing a lot of your app icons. And then you'll find, you know, a slimmer selection of newer packs, many of which are like, you know, depending on your

personal taste, obviously, but not, not to my taste. So I'm, I'm not against something like this where I look at Stardust and I go like, oh, I do like that. But I don't know. I just, I wish it was a little bit more open. I wish it was a little bit more. I think it just needs to be, have a different customization method. Yeah, they need to streamline how you set this up too. You need to be able to customize all of your app icons from the jump. I don't know why they don't, because it's the same layout except once it's set, then it adds the ability to view all of your apps.

Just have that from the jump. That cuts out half of the workflow. It's similar. And I mean, even still, when you download a new app, at least you don't, like say a new app comes out that gets popular, right? and there's not an icon for it on traditional icon packs with this. It's generated for you. And I guess the only thing for you to do is go in and say,

hey, I like this or I don't like this. But it's just still another step. So it really depends on where you sit with it. Yeah. Again, I don't know why they went with the two, the two worst-looking ones. It's just, it's fine. I keep looking at that.

And it really turns me away. The gold one is like actually awful. I'm sorry if you like it. But like, if the listener likes it, but I just don't. It could have been done way better. Yeah, they're like kind of hard to see, and then they all end up looking like very,

you know, that calendar logo in the example especially is just, it's like fading into nothing. Same with the Gmail one a little bit. Yeah. A couple other things. The launch, sort of, of a true now-playing application this week. Do you want to talk a little bit about this? Andrew?

Yeah, it's nice to see because I feel like now playing when it came out was one of the last, like not one of the last, but a defining feature for pixel devices. And it really always has been. And then the next thing I think that was as influential or as exciting was call screening. And I think those are the two things that really. emphasize like, hey, this is what makes pixel pixels, these smart, cool features. And that was before, you know, AI, quote unquote, got rolling. But with the new app, it's nice to see that there's an individual experience for those that are constantly looking through that, their history,

adding favorites, trying to source where they can find these songs. You know, for me, I've, I think it's just as I get older, I feel like recently I've, I've been leaning towards I hate music. And I know that's not the case. It's, I love music. I just don't, I don't, I'm not drawn to these, to different styles that are becoming more popular. And I hear a lot of songs out and about, you know, and I'm like, oh, I like, I really like that song. That's where now playing comes into play. But I always forget to go back into my history because it's buried in the setting.

Because you're not giving any specific examples, Andrew, I'm just going to assume that you're walking through Target and you hear like Uptown Funk and you're like, I've never heard this before and that's that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, this isn't the wiggles. No, you know, it just happens. You know, ever you hear music. Oh, no, no, I, I totally know what you're saying. I completely it's now playing is like, and we're coming. up on like almost a decade of it because it's launched on the pixel two and i it is like a weirdly like really handy way to discover like new music if you if you dig through your history because you will

have heard a song in like a restaurant or something that you are like oh i like this or like oh i've heard this before but i don't remember you know what the song is like i want to save it to my spotify library or whatever service you're using um and like i i think it's handy i I will say, like I've noticed over the last couple years, I feel like it's picking up fewer songs than it used to. And it, it, it's songs that I think it should be picking up, which I don't know if that's just, you know, it clearly Google's paying attention to this feature. So I don't think it's like a lack of attention. I don't know what the, because it's supposed to be, it's recognizing a library of songs that are like all on device. It doesn't, it's not.

if you use the search song search feature that calls out to the internet but i believe when it just auto recognizes on your lock screen it's on device i don't know if that library's just gotten smaller as google has prioritized storage or AI features or what but um i would love to see google kind of put a little bit more kind of revitalize it to make it more accurate or faster um i mean but that that that has to be what this is right yeah i hope so you know at least the precursor i would think I hope so. Because it's truly, and nobody has ever copied it. I've been saying for a decade somebody should copy this.

And Apple owns Shazam, and they never copied it. Like I've always been stumped. Yeah. Yeah. That's why, but that's the thing is, is for me, at least, you know, whenever I, there are certain features that you draw you to phones, right? And you're like, oh, I want this phone because it has this one specific feature. It happens all the time.

And we switch phones quite often. And I think one of the things, the main things, really, that brought me back to Pixel was now playing. And like I said, 100%. I missed this on every non-Pixel phone. Yeah. And because it's handy when you need it. And you don't know when you're going to need it. Yeah.

You know. Yeah. And I don't know what this is particularly. It's a nice app. It's a nice. And the other thing, too, I don't know if you mentioned yet. is it's just, it's currently not fully available on the Play Store. It's, it's supposed to be at some point.

The one device that it is that, I'm being allowed to install it on, apparently, is my Android 17 running Pixel 8. So maybe that's something to do with it. But who knows? So that should arrive soon. But yeah, this is clearly a thing that they are rolling out as part of this, of, of, this pixel drop and I think it I think it won't take long for that to to be fixed. It's a good looking app.

It feels like a weird um, veer. Yeah. Like it's just like a standalone feature that doesn't really contribute to the overall, you know, uh, Android 16 and 17 experience. Um,

yeah. So it's, it's in a weird place, I think. It's nice. But it's nice. It's just a, it's an interesting ad.

A couple of, couple other updates to QPR 3 or or the pixel drop. A flashlight strength toggle is finally here. I think that makes so much sense. You know, I Google feels late to this, right? Like iOS has had this, I true forever. I actually don't know when they added it to iOS, but it's been there. You know, it was in it.

It's been there long enough that it had a, major redesign the two generations ago and is still, you know, kicking. What do you think about the design of, uh, it's fine? It's, it, it's, it's, it looks a little, it's it's bare bones enough that I'm confused why it took so long for us to get this on pixel phones, but it's fine. Yeah, I think I see that as, as one of the major complaints is, because, you know, if it's a feature that's out, uh, Apple, has had forever, you're going to compare between the two. And it's just funny. It's like one of the best parts of Apple's design is their current

flashlight toggle, because it, especially on pro phones where you can, you're not just sliding up and down, but you can slide left and right to adjust, like, throw, the throw of the beam. You know, that, it works really well, especially, like, you know, not to compliment current A. iOS, but like, you know, with the dynamic island. and everything. Like it works very well on modern iPhones. And this one just sort of feels like a slider that has a flashlight icon under it. Yeah. This feels like it was just, it's nice to have again, but it feels like it was just kind of slapped in there versus apples, which feels like an integral part of the experience. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure that'll change over future updates.

Hopefully, I feel like it's one of the things that needs to, because it needs to be integral. People use it all the time. It's like a main. I mean, it's if you, when you're editing your quick settings, at least for me, I always have it like on the first page, just because I need it when I need it, you know. There's an app called FlashDam that lets you assign that you use Android's like built-in accessibility tools to make it so that when you tap the volume up and down buttons at the same time, both sides of the volume rocker, it turns the flashlight on at max brightness because before this slider, the pixel only uses, only uses

half brightness for its flashlight by default. And so it allows you to like set it to whatever you want. And then like if you are in the dark, you don't have to turn your phone on and use the lock screen shortcut or the quick setting shortcut. You can just like tap the buttons like a shortcut key. Just smash the side of the phone. It's great.

I love it. For whatever reason on my pixel 10, after some update a couple months ago, it now only works when the screen is off. If the screen's on, it doesn't do. anything. Not a problem on my 10a, so I don't know what happened there. But if you are somebody who uses the flashlight a lot, highly, highly recommend FlashNM. Great little utility for Pixel. A couple other things. Oh, we didn't even talk about this in the pre-show, Andrew, because I keep

forgetting it, but the Pixel desktop experience is like live now on Android 16 QPR3. Do you care much? Do you see yourself plugging in a keyboard and a mouse and a monitor into your into your pixel when you're traveling or something? You know, maybe, maybe on the fold. Yeah. If I've already got my keyboard out, I'm more inclined just to pull out my laptop. Yeah.

You know, like it's, I'm, I'm in that, I guess, generation of people that, you know, for certain things, I need a laptop and I can't use my phone even if it's a foldable. You know, people like younger, because, because we're about the same age, you and I and people younger than us because we're we're both would you consider yourself a young millennial or do you consider yourself very old gen C? I've always drifted towards young millennial I think yeah that's fame with me um I feel like if you experience I don't know if you did but I experienced dial up internet until I was in middle school and I feel like if you had a dial up internet experience you are you are a millennial that qualifies you absolutely um if you can recite the dial up tone by memory if you if you had to tell your mom that you wanted to go play room scape with your friends.

And so therefore she had to get off the phone as a kid. Yeah. You are a millennial. If you only made phone calls on weekends because it was free. This is starting to delve into like a Jeff Foxworthy-esque. You might be a redneck bit. You might be a millennial. You might be a millennial.

People younger than us, I would say, frequently, you know, throw shade. to use a dead term at people about R.H for being like, oh, I would never like buy a plane ticket on my phone because that's a big, that's a big screen purchase. It's like, oh, why do you need a big screen? It's about efficiency. Yes. And I will stand by that. I am not going to make a purchase that needs to be made within a certain period of time on my phone when ads are going to get in my face. Yes. It's an awful experience. Web versions or, uh, mobile versions of websites are going to make a button and UI elements match together in a way that, you know, is impossible to navigate.

I don't want that. How many times has it's the keyboard? How many times is the keyboard just like covered up like the next button you need to hit? And you're trying to like minimize it and then you accidentally hit back. It's awful. It's an awful experience. You lose all of your your form, everything that you filled out, you know. And I guess apps like one password or whatever make that easy with auto fill.

But I'd much rather just have my keyboard in front of me, nothing that I have to interact with on the screen. So I get the full real estate. And I know exactly what's happening and how fast it's happening. And I will stand by that. And that's fine because I generally have my laptop on me. And I don't need to use a phone for those kinds of things. Yeah. I think there are reasons for this to exist.

But like, I've never, I've never, you know, I like decks on tablets, but I've never plugged a phone, a Samsung phone into a monitor and a keyboard and a mouse to use decks. Like I don't see that changing. Now that my pixel has it, I don't, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know if you're any different. Yeah, I don't know.

It's different use case methods. It's nice that it exists, right? Yeah. You know, certain people, I guess their whole experience has been plugging all in, one devices into monitors, right? And that's kind of just an extension of that wherever you, you know, if you need to go somewhere or if you're, I guess, at work and have a monitor or you're expected to plug a laptop and, hey, I can, I can, you know, plug my device in or whatever.

But it's one of those things that I guess it's just nice to have. And I do think it deserves some attention for those that use it? because the experience does should it deserves to be refined you know enough to be usable otherwise it shouldn't exist at all yeah and this is this is a step towards that so a couple other things uh hilariously uh if you are a pixel user who maybe came from a Samsung phone and you love your your virtual buttons instead of gestures but you hate the pixel layout which is the normal Android layout, Samsung is the one that changes it, but whatever.

You can finally do that. You can have it, recents on the left, back on the right. It's this, 2026 is such a weird time for Google to add this, but sure, man. If they see it as a way to get, you know, Samsung people to switch to pixel, I can see the vision. It's just a funny time to finally,

to finally add support for this. Um, I mean, that's pretty much, Oh, at a glance has some new options. You can view sports scores, you know, speaking of football. You can check fine. It's got finance support. It's got commute support. Anything to say about out of glance?

Yeah, if it, and I think I've always fallen in this camp. If it works consistently, that's great. Although, I don't know if you feel this way. I feel like every time I know there's a game on or, if I have to miss a game where this would be helpful, I don't generally want the live score. Like I want to be able to watch it afterwards without spoilers. I guess it's helpful if you need to know or whatever.

But I saw this for a few teams I was following. Nice. On the championship side in the UK. And that appeared for me a few couple weeks back. And it was nice because it felt, out of the way, it didn't feel like a, it was stuffed in there, or shoehorned in there, like, um, like the Google apps notification, the persistent notification.

Yeah. And not a fan of that notification, to be honest with you. Yeah. And this two, you can just swipe away. Like, it still exists. You can always get access back to it. But if you don't want to the score, you can just swipe away. Yeah.

It's a good, it's a good middle ground. Yeah. It's weird to launch this and march more features like this. Yeah. It's just, I, I, I, I am excited to use it in September. I have not seen, I care about the samers, especially these days. They just kicked Jack Eichols, but back to Vegas, our former, one of our former players.

But I have not seen it pop up on my pixel yet. So hopefully, hopefully that rolls out. And then finally, the Gemini automation stuff that I talked about with Damon and Abder next week, do you have anything to add about some of that? automation stuff ordering DoorDash, Uber, things like that. I think it was mostly covered. Okay. But I think the one thing is, I will say, like, I appreciate the way that Google stops

it before payment, because that's always the thing that kind of made me uneasy about these sort of AI order for you. And that's the smartest thing to do, I think. And I don't know. That's all I feel about it. It'll be interesting. I probably won't use it all too often, just because I feel like orders need to be a little more tactile, but that's just me, I guess. Well, you place all your DoorDash orders on a monitor.

You need a big screen for that. That's a big purchase. On an ultra-wide so I can see the driver go all the way across my screen. Exactly. You're doing price comparisons across shops. Yeah, you need all that. You need the stock information open for the companies you're buying from. You need to, you know, you need all that information so you can make a knowledgeable choice, you know. You know, I actually, I do make a lot of my financial decisions in comparison to sandwiches. And I've done this forever because it made the most sense to me years ago, right? It was, oh, how much does this thing cost? Oh, that's like three sandwiches. You know, comparing food to the purchase. And recently, that's gotten so depressing. Because now it's like, how much does this thing cost? Well, that's one sandwich.

You're talking about, you know, I don't know. Back then it was like a PlayStation 2 game. It was like, I don't know, five sandwiches. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was. And that's sad.

That's sad to think. What you're saying is the government should stop. the government should stop using any other sorts of like economy tracking measures and just track you know inflation throw all of that out the window and just track by like on average how much does a how much does a thing cost in sandwiches like that's how we should track the health of the economy only only if sandwiches remained steady at or their valuation remained steady but unfortunately sandwiches are not unaffected by inflation So, but that's, that's a whole other thing.

If you're the type of person to order said sandwiches through Alexa when that came out, or not sandwiches, but Amazon packages, you know, the type of person that says, hey, order this thing for me without any sort of like visual confirmation, then Gemini automation would be, it would be good. It'll be interesting to try out. I just don't have full confidence in that sort of thing. I need to read you this, this interview. There's a, there's a, like, indie cooperative climbing game called Peak. Have you heard of this? Oh, yeah. It's like a big hit.

Yeah. Okay. Did you, did you see, this is back. This is at the start of the year. Did you see the interview that the peak developers did with game file, with Stephen Totillo's game file? Okay. So, Tettillo asks the developers, why? did you, why did you select $8 as the price? And I'm just, I'm just going to read you this interview

because I've been thinking about it for two months now. We had this, we had this joke of like, how much is a game really? And a player's mind, what does it mean to spend five bucks? Well, that's five bucks. But six bucks, that's still five bucks. Four bucks is also kind of five bucks. Three bucks is two bucks. Two bucks is basically free. So we've got these tiers. 12 bucks is 10 bucks, but 13 bucks is 15 bucks. And we found that eight bucks is still five bucks. It doesn't become 10 bucks. 799, that's five bucks, right? So eight bucks going to five bucks is the biggest differential we could find in pricing. So we found it very optimal. I just, I have been thinking about this for two months. You know, and I, I, I agree with it. I know what they mean. I, I own peak.

and I don't remember specifically buying it, but I know that what went through my mind when I hit purchase and steam was, that's one sandwich. I guarantee you. That's what I thought. Eight bucks. That's five bucks. I just, I think, $7.99. That's five bucks. They're right.

I know what they mean. Five bucks, but not really. Not really. I mean, two bucks is basically free. It's $2. That's like that's like a That's like not even a quarter of a sandwich These days that's that's nothing

Yeah It makes sense if you really if you don't think Well even if you think about it It doesn't matter it's it's it's more of a vibe valuation Oh I can't wait to edit this episode Okay Pixel pixel watch drop There was a pixel watch drop not a lot out of this

I want to just cover it really quickly Express pay You can now either do transit only Or tap to pay and transit it, you know, without having to open wallet on your phone, you just tap your watch when it's unlocked. I think that's a great addition. Something that, you know, we've seen, this is not new to smart watches, but it's good to

see it on the pixel watch. You know, identity checks, some gestures coming to the pixel watch three. And then phone reminders, if you walk away from your phone, your pixel watch will send you an alert, which is, we were talking about this in the pre-show. a thing that I kind of thought the pixel watch could already do. I didn't realize this was an addition. Anything to say about pixel watch changes. No, I like the, you know, if I lived in an area where transit was more accessible, that'd be great.

And I appreciate the differentiation between how you can use this to do just transit or you can use it for pay and transit because that's the thing that would, I would have it set to transit. And I probably will for when I. you know, travel. Yeah, it's a smart change. I appreciate that, like, and not every, like, watchmaker does a split like this, I believe. So it's, it's a, it's a smart change on, on Google's part. Happy to see it.

I, it's, it's tough to walk. It's tough to talk about the Pixel Watch because it's just kind of like marching along, like doing great. Like, I'm always like, oh, it's good to see that feature arrive, but I've never, like, hyped. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

But it's great. They're doing, it's good to see Google having finally really nailed smart watches after a decade of trying. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that brings us to Android 17 beta too. The first Android 17 beta was like really, and that was only a couple weeks ago, was really lacking in new, like, anything really worth talking about. And I would say we're sort of starting to get there with beta too.

The big thing for, in my opinion, is bubbles, which is confusingly named because these are not the chat bubbles that are linked to the Bubbles API that is already existing on Android. This is a completely unrelated feature. Google is also calling bubbles that has really nothing to do with messaging. it is Google's, you know, multitasking picture and picture mode, specifically on larger displays. You can have these floating windows on like a foldable or a tablet that sit, you know, these apps can sit above whatever you have on screen. Very similar to Samsung, One Plus.

I mean, really, you know, I feel like I'm repeating myself from the icon conversation earlier, but very similar to that where kind of every other major Android OEM has something like this. And this is Google really taking it and building it not just for their phones, but at a, you know, at an AOSP level. And so it's, it's good to see. And the pixel fold lineup, I would say, has really been missing something like this. I just hope they don't stick with the name bubbles. Because it's very confusing. Do you think they plan on sundowning,

bubbles for messages or at least maybe limiting that to foldables because I don't know about you right we talked about it earlier but yeah I don't use bubbles for messages that's that's actually the first thing if I'm setting up a new phone like a new pixel fresh without bringing settings over from an old one that is bubbles is the first thing that I turn off every single time I'm not a fan of messaging bubbles because I find them to be, they're just way more finicky than they, than any solution they provide to multitasking, in my opinion. Like they're, I feel like I'm always kind of juggling them around the screen and a way. Yeah, they're taking up real estate when they don't need to. Yeah. It's more cumbersome than just jumping to the app and then jumping back. You know,

if I have a video playing, it's not really. The notification is the shortcut to the app. Yeah. The notifications the shortcut, you know, and then the video can be the picture and picture thing as I, as I respond to this message if I have to jump into the actual app and then I can go back to the video. I think it makes more sense than having the bubble appear above, above the video. So, no, I'm, I don't know if, I don't know what they'll do in terms of like these two features having sort of, you know, this is kind of like a more powerful version of mess, those chat bubbles. But again, this is unrelated, like Google says this is unrelated to that API. It's completely different thing.

It's completely different, yeah. And so, but visually similar. So I don't, I don't know. They'll have to do something. I think this is probably something we learn a lot more about at, at I.O. I think this is something that they're going to delve into in detail at I.O. I'm happy to see it here, though. I mean, you said you're on your pixel 10 pro fold now, right?

Yeah, yeah. I switch back to it from the 10xel, 10 Pro XL. Is this something you're excited to see come to the phone later this year? Yeah, it's like you said, it's one of those features that for some reason has always kind of been missing. I mean, Google only recently brought with the 10 Pro Fold, the 9 to 1 split screen. Yeah. And that's been huge just because it adds to the multitasking suite, right? Yeah.

Which is you kind of almost immediately feel it if something's missing when you're using the device. And I think this is one of those things that's always been like, okay, why aren't their windows? Why can't I? It's, I don't always need them. But when I need them, it's just nice to have that option to, okay, I can move this over, you know, into corner. and I can do the rest of what I need to do. I'm interested. I haven't tested this or used it on the fold yet because it's on stable.

But I wonder if it'll let you still do split screen and then have the bubble over that as like a third window. That's how I imagine it has to work. I guess that's the advantage of it. is having that third window, but I don't, I'm not convinced by the, what Google's provided as far as, um, yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't really say. And we should say that these are not, these are not fully enabled in beta too. So I think even if you put this on your, on your fold, you would have to, you know, do some, some behind the scenes flag enabling to get this to, to show up properly. And that's why it's, if at all. That's why it's here, not in the feature drop,

you know, it's right. It's not fully, you know, it's not fully cooked. Um, yeah, it, it's, it's, it's, you know, Google says use the guidelines from multi-window mode to, for this experience. And so multi-window feels like it's sort of baked into it. I think it's just tricky to say because like Google's, Google's visual demo of this is just one app opening above another, above Gmail. It's calendar opening above Gmail. So it's tricky for me to say one way or the other. But I have to imagine that this is, irregardless of whether you have split screen. active, you're going to be able to pop these out.

I would think. I just like, because otherwise, what's the benefit? You know, at that point, just use, I guess, I guess so that you can minimize the app and your, and your task bar if you're on a foldable. But yeah, it all depends on how they, how they implement it. And, you know, I'm sure there'll be more changes to it. It's not, like you said, it's not done. So we'll see.

But it's, it's a feature that the pixel fold series has needed. It's needed. And I, I think it really. this year more than ever because I wouldn't be surprised if the foldable iPhone supports something like this because I wouldn't be surprised

if the foldable iPhone kind of takes from how iPad OS does multitasking or at least maybe more so how it did multitasking before this most recent update that made it a little bit more like a Mac with proper Windows but this is very reminiscent of like older iPad multitasking. I could see

Apple. bringing something like that to their foldable. And so Google needs to be able to be like, no, no, no, we have full multitasking like other phones. You know, they've sort of run out of runway to be able to get away with this anymore. So it's good to see it here. Besides the, you know, the hardware improvements that need to be made in the future, obviously. But we'll see. A few other things, some redesign privacy indicators.

There's nothing huge to say about those unless you have something to add. No. I don't know. They're kind of weird to me. I'm on the fence whether I like them or not. I think they look a little little chunky. There's a satellite quick setting toggle that neither of us can figure out why it exists. Unless I'm completely wrong on how it works.

Right. But as far as I know, it can't be turned off in general, at least on stable. And when you run out of cell signal and you're in a place where there's no signal and you need to make an emergency call, emergency text, you'll connect to satellite. And that's just an automatic process. You'll get the pop up for, you know, aligning, making sure your phone is in view of a satellite. you'll go through that whole whole process. I don't know what the quick setting toggle does. I don't know if it turns it off.

If it makes that not possible, why you said you want that really? Yeah. Yeah, it might be, you said it might be a, you know, to cater to paid users. And that would imply that it's not a,

it's like a data driven plan instead of a, um, a monthly subscription right or whatever. Yeah. I mean, I mean, all of these companies keep saying, you know, satellite is free for two years and that they just keep extending that with new phone launches. But theoretically, these companies are eventually going to want to charge people for satellite SOS access because I, because they keep saying they're going to. I think they just don't see. I think the demand is not there.

And so there's no reason. They're not going to charge for it until there's demand, which is, you know, I mean, you could call it shady, but it's also. So just sort of the obvious business thing to do. I could see adding that so that later on when this is no longer free, you can just toggle it off completely. But I still don't know why you would need to do that from the quick settings menu. You know, like if you're if you're not going to pay for it, you're going to want to turn it off.

And like if you're not going to pay for it, I assume it would just be off anyway. Maybe I've talked myself out of this. It's such a confusing feature that, you know, and I bet you the answer is very obvious. but I'm just not seeing it. We're missing it. Yeah.

If you know it, who knows. Send me an email. Leave a comment. And then the last thing, and I'll let you explain this a little bit, is this weird pixel launcher search bar drama, you know,

reverting sort of thing. So what happened with that? Yeah, I would, so when this came out, I wrote a piece on it, just, you know, covering the news. It's weird because the,

the Google app, had a different design for the search bar for the widget. And then that design was adopted by Android 17 in beta 1 for the concrete, immovable Google search bar at the bottom. And I kind of like that design. It was, to me, it felt a little more simple. This feels a little bolder. And what this new design is is essentially just the one.

at the end of it was in QPR 3 right Android 16 yeah it's been around for a minute I yeah it's been for for all I think even since 15 maybe yeah it's got this like colored background that matches your you know material right et cetera et cetera yeah so I don't know what what this is about why the switch was made why it was taken back and that just means that it's just as likely to flip-plop again in a future beta but when it does, you know, there's no telling what it'll end up being visually, though. I don't know. I guess it just depends on your preference.

This feels a little like the, I wish you could change how thick the shadow was behind the material you like backdrop over the search bar or under it. But it's just, it's another design choice that, you know, weird is incredibly familiar because we just had it. So and if you're on obviously if you're unstable Nothing's changed. Yeah, you'll never know it disappeared. It's the same It's the same thing. So yeah, very odd. I mean it's a beta odd this is always going to happen every year, I suppose, but yeah, I don't know. It's a very odd. Yeah, you got to dig into it. You got to understand. You have to get into their minds. I just wish I could sit down with the pixel software team at Google and be like guys just

just let people customize it how they want. Like, even the search bar, like, like, just let people. I don't think, I don't know. I would never turn it off, but I can fully understand my people would want to. I love the pixel search bar and think it is one of the most useful things on a pixel because that is, oh, my God, I feel like half of the time, if I'm opening my phone, it's to search something. And so to have it right there is obviously handy, but I also know people hate this thing

or they want to change how it looks or make it smaller. I don't think I've ever seen anybody say they want to make it bigger. But sure, why not? Make it fully customizable in the same way that they should add icon support. I don't know. Make the pixel a little more personable, in my opinion, take down some of those walls, is what I would say. That's it, right?

I mean, that's kind of, that's both of these updates for the most part. There's a couple other smaller things we didn't get to. But, you know, Google is rolling out software. They got new stuff. They got old stuff. Um, yeah, I just, I, I, go ahead. No, this is, I mean, this is beta too, right? Yeah.

So we've got, we got time for, for more to come out. And it's funny, though, I think that in this beta, um, I feel like I'm already seeing quite a bit that, you know, it's nothing massive, but it feels like it's, it's, it's pretty early for the stuff to be this substantial. I guess in past years, it's felt like it's, it's really taken a while to ramp up. if it has. So we'll see what happens in future beta is, you know, there's, it's not like Android 17 is completely overhauled, you know, it's design and UI and everything.

But it's, it's making some refinements. So we'll see, we'll see where it goes. Yeah. Yeah. It's a long runway to even just to I.O. We still have, you know, two and a half months to go. So, because it's later in May this year. It's like, I don't think it's in the 20.

It's not like May 20th. Um, 20th. Um, 21st or 22nd. Yeah. It's, it's so late this year. Um, very close to like Memorial Day. I don't know. Very odd.

Very odd. That's how, that's how we're kicking the summer off this year. It's not, not Memorial Day anymore. It's Google I. Um, that's it. Uh, Andrew. Thank you so much for, for stepping in, uh, this week and, and, uh, filling the shoes of both Damien and Abner.

That's a, that's a, that's a, lot of shoes for you to wear. I appreciate you doing this entire thing with shoes on your hands and feet. So it's a great job. Thank you. I need hands on anything you want to want to plug or shout out. No, I mean, just as we have more coming out, keep an eye on on everything. We, I'm sure you've mentioned it. We have in the new form feature, which is nice on 95. We rule. There's a lot happening behind this. scenes and we'd love to interact with with the people listening, viewing the channel and and reading, you know, so, but people can follow me on the same, same channels, email me, you know, my name, if you have any tips sources or anything. But yeah. There we go. Awesome. Well,

Abner and Damien should be back next week. I think they're back next week. And, I don't know. We'll talk a little bit about my 10A review that is live on the site now. Spoiler alert, I like that phone. Otherwise, who knows? I mean, I didn't think we were going to get Android 17 beta 2 last week after we recorded this podcast, and we did. So who knows what it'll be next week.

But until then, we will catch you guys in the next one. 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.