Pixelated - Gemin-eyes

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Welcome to episode 81 of Pixelated, a podcast by 9to5Google. This week, Abner shares his experience with trying out some early samples of glasses running on Google's Android XR platform with Will and Damien. After a surprisingly impressive demo, is it time to start getting excited for the return of Google Glass-esque technology? The trio also dips into some new changes coming to Wear OS and take a quick look at the first One UI 8.5 beta, if only to ask: what's up with the iOS-ification of Android? Subscribe YouTube Podcasts Pocket Casts Spotify Apple Podcasts Overcast Timecodes 00:00 - Intro 00:58 - Google's AI glasses demo 33:43 - Wear OS updates 38:12 - One UI 8.5 and Android's design language 46:09 - Wrap-up Hosts Abner Li Damien Wilde Will Sattelberg Read more Hands-on: Google Glass is now real with ‘monocular’ Android XR glasses coming in 2026 Samsung and Apple split best-selling phones in Q3 2025, iPhone leads premium market Pixel Watch December 2025 update rolling out with Wear OS 6.1 One UI 8.5 seems like a very nice, but small update [Video] 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.

Welcome to Pixelated Episode 81. I'm your host, Will Saddleberg. This week, Abner talks Damien and I threw his hands-on time with Android XR glasses ahead of Google's first monocular launch in 2026. It's a vision that sounds surprisingly similar to the promises of Google Glass, and Abner's experience certainly made me want to try it for myself.

Then we briefly dive into some improvements for WearOS before covering Samsung's 1UI 8.5 beta in the wider trend of making Android look a lot, more like iOS, the Material 3 expressive. So you've seen the vision, Abner, you've seen, I mean, pun intended there, Google Glass, follow-up, AR in real life on glasses, AI, we weren't expecting it for a long time, but you have, you are the chosen one, you were the guy who got to test this out in person. I'm very, very jealous. Please, please, let everybody know what it's like to use these things. Okay, so,

I used the prototype. This is Google made prototype. We highly assume. It is, again, this is not what we assume Samsung is going to ship. So it's a prototype with what Google calls a monocular display. This is, it is on the light side. You only see a screen on one half of the classes. So when I tried it out, it was a, I'm not sure if there's as intentional on their part, but it started out with a music notification, basically a rectangle, like a rectangle with like the YouTube music icon. There's some color there, like red and white, the music name, whatever. So that was my first demo, which I started with Gemini, prayed perfectly, like headphones, as you'd assume. The next thing I did was take a video call. And then I saw my screen go from like a tiny rectangle

to a rectangular feed of somebody's face, a full color on the street. I equated it to phone-like quality in terms of color, vibrancy, resolution. It was really that like blowing my mind GIF or emoji or whatever. The screen really expanded, the seas ritley parted. And this is when I knew that grass is here or coming very soon.

because I think everybody assumed that to get to real AR grasses, augmented reality grasses, we would need several hardware breakthroughs. And the thing is that Google had, in 22, Google bought a company called Laxium, micro-LED technology. And they bought it, they've been working on it for continuously ever since. They've been very quiet about it. They haven't publicized any advancements. or breakthroughs, but that's part of the M.O. these days as covered by glass. They're only going to announce things when it's imminent, when it's close, when it's ready. And these monocular display

grasses are coming in 26. There will be a gap with the audio-only versions coming first, but it's 26, and that is blowing my mind still a week later. My interpretation, I think guests near everybody out there listening as well and I'm sure we kind of agree is that we did not expect this so early like did Google go into any of the details of how they've managed to make a display breakthrough as it were because we were kind of expecting the 3D thing

and we'll get on to that in a little bit but does the single monocular display paradigm does it diminish the experience? I mean it doesn't sound like it from what you're saying but do you think this could just be enough for most people? Oh, it's absolutely enough. is, yeah, that's the, I mean, this is Google's M.O. in general, like with pixel stuff, they don't really talk about hardware innovation in the way we'd like them. Like, even compared

to Apple, Apple goes deep on the camera. They discuss the, they discuss in-depth technical details. They do so on the chip. In comparison, Google has never done that. And I think we sometimes think that's lacking and makes for a polar presentation. But they're just so focused on the end consumer experience that they will not discuss the technicals. And this is continuing today. That's to your question, monocular displays. The one where there is a display on both sides,

it's what Google calls binocular. And I also tried those. Those are coming later. So what you can do with the binocular display is you can watch a movie. You can watch video. Let me say video. They pulled a random clip from YouTube.

It was the Super Mario Brothers movie trailer for whatever reason. That's what they picked. And I watched that in stereoscopic 3D from those binocular grasses. And I guess the other demo is, so on the monocular ones that are coming next year, when you have navigation, you have the, like, on the center, if you're looking straight ahead, on the center of your screen, is. the next direction, just like on your phone or on your watch. When you tilt down, when you tilt your head down a little bit, you get a map that's basically like the corner map in any game, HUD. It's a circular thing. You can see where you are. You can see upcoming directions. On a binocular display, you get to see a richer map that you can like interact with. You can use hand gestures.

You can make it larger. Sorry, you can use your temp. You adjust the side. channel touchpad, and you can adjust it and it has points of interest, et cetera, et cetera. And binocular, Google is going to start testing it with developers. Next year, they're going to give them prototypes. But next year, 26, the shipping product is monocular, single lens glasses. And as of Monday, people or the developers already have prototypes in their hands. This is the prototypes that I used. is this is happening quickly.

So my understanding is that the vast majority of these devices will be connected to something. I'm guessing it's effectively, Android access, it's going to be powered to your phone. Is there going to be some issues with, I mean, there are not going to be many people listening to this who are iPhone users, but could potentially, I'm guessing there was no questions made about that. I find it fascinating that if this is not technically a standalone experience right now, surely there is a road to where you have.

have a device that connects to an application on any phone. But it seemed to me that when you went to your testing, you used Android phones, right? I think this is Android only because there's so much, so the vast majority of processing happens on the phone. For like on the developer experience, for the internal experience, there's this cool little UI that literally shows up what part of the phone chip is being read up, like CPU, GPU. Okay. So, So everything is being streamed from the phone. It's a projection paradigm where all the hard work. There is some compute on the grasses, but not very much.

The phone is the center. I think the best way to think about it is the grasses you're wearing another screen from your phone, an extension of your phone. It's a wireless model. I was going to say this reminds me a lot of like early, like the earliest Android wear products. like whatever the LG one was like that's the vibe I'm getting where it's very like oh like you know the hardware's kind of ready but the the processing and the power that we need to fit into this chassis into something that is small and wearable might not be quite there yet for

for a phone free experience so they kind of lean into the like well you've probably got your phone in your pocket so let's just pair those together right and you know now a decade on into watches you know we're very much in the in the the point where like I you can any of us as long as you have an LTE watch I suppose can go out and and do yeah basic tasks without a phone no problem on your on your watch even even some more complicated tasks now I guess with with Gemini and everything so yeah I do yeah I yeah the progress of technology dictate that yeah eventually get an LTE signal on your grasses or 5G rather yeah and that I'm sure that's going to be great for your head but yeah right now

it is an extension of the phone. And honestly, it might be like competitive advantage-wise. I kind of think they do want you to use an Android phone in large part because the apps that are, again, they're driven from your phone. And maybe you can replicate that on an iOS app or something. But I kind of see the competitive reasons why they would want to keep it on Android. Grasses are on Android first, especially if Apple's not going with it. soon.

I mean, just going to the phone thing, I think that makes the most sense, doesn't it? I think most people, these are auxiliary products. You don't, isn't the main, it's never going to be the main focus, I don't think. I think it could be in 20 years' time. We could be running around with glasses and never carrying a phone. But I think for now, I feel like we're still stuck in that. We're in the smartphone paradigm, aren't we? I think it makes the most sense.

And as long, I mean, if this helps keep the price low and then there was no indication of what the price was going to be right. Right. But I think if they can keep the price low by doing it this way, this is the best way to soak the market with this product. Like I think there are lots of alternatives out there right now, aren't there, that just do for entertainment purposes. But this is actually a fully interactive extension of your phone that gives you a new canvas for it. The philosophy, which I didn't get too much into in my written post, is that Google hopes that you'll be more present with these grass. that you take out your phone less because you're seeing the heads up display

and again, we'll see how much they read into that once this product launches. I am so curious how they are going to frame that unintended. But, yeah, it is these glasses philosophically. They're an extension of your phone. They are another way to triage notifications. There are obviously something so the best. better, like, if you can see it right away rather than taking out your phone. I think that

makes sense. But, yes, I'm curious about their final messaging and how they, I'm very curious about that final messaging, advertising, really. I'm also intrigued because you are both glasses wearers. I can't talk from a glasses wearing perspective. Could you see yourself going and getting, I mean, I know what Abnazance is going to be right away, but this is more targeted towards you, Will. I think you're a little bit more of a less two feet in, head-first diving. Would you go out and potentially get a pair of prescription Google glasses or whatever the equivalent is Samsung XR head glasses, whatever they want to call them? I don't know.

It'll be some stupid name, right? It'll be glasses. AI glasses. It's AI glasses. Okay, right. Okay, so I've over complicated it. Samsung. Could you both, give me your obvious answer straight away, Abner, but I'm more intrigued to see

what Will says because I feel like he's on my side of the fence a little bit. I'll let, I'll let Abner, you go. Day one, day one, yes, day one, I will be wearing these as my main grasses. That's another thing about what Google has started to share about the philosophy. They want these to be your everyday grasses. And I think they want, to them, the reason it took them so long to get this point besides the technology is what they wanted to have enough value use cases. First and foremost, they want to make good grasses. That's where they partner with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, which I honestly never heard of until all this. They want to make good everyday grasses. Once those are there, they want to start layering functionality on it.

But I think the interesting there, before we get to Will's answer, is that they are so focused on grasses, on everyday seet-through grasses. In hindsight, it comes. kind of looks like meta, raybans, they over-indexed on the sunglasses part. And the sunglasses part makes it seem like a novelty. Yeah. Yeah, you wear sunglasses pretty often, but how many people are going to get prescription sunglasses or the ones that change and use them as your daily wear. So it's interesting that they want these to be regular grasses versus almost like the

novelty sunglasses that you only wear when you're outside or when you're having an adventure or whatever. I, I'm, yeah, so I wear glasses. I think the, the tricky part here for me is that I need them to probably shrink down a little bit more than where they are now. They're still a little boxy, they're still a little bulky, especially the arms. And, you know, because I have my glasses on for, they're wide, yeah, because I have my glasses on, you know, all day, I am, I am very blind without my glasses. I probably can't read text farther than 18 inches away from my face without my, glasses my vision's pretty bad um you know i they need to be something that that is fully comfortable

enough and and has a you know good enough battery that i'm not you know at 3 p.m thinking about how i need to you know take my glasses off because they're giving me a headache because they're a little heavy or or they need to be thrown on a charger right um which and that that will come that is to say that that the first gen of these is almost certainly a pass for me just because unlike a watch right and I was an early watch adopter. I bought, I scripted and saved in college and bought the first gen Moto 360

like right after it came out. And you and I made the mistake because we bought the G-watch. We did. But, but you know, it's one of those things where it's like at the time,

you know, I've been a watchware for a long time and I've appreciated the switch to smart watches, but it was like, okay, well, if this is bad or if it needs a charge, which it did,

I can take it off and throw it on the charger and all I'm doing is just not wearing a watch, but it's not really interrupting my day. And that's not true for these glasses, right? Like, even if I have to just keep a spare pair of non-smart glasses on me to switch back to, that is much more of an inconvenience than, ah, just take the watch off and throw it in my bag.

So the first gen probably, probably a pass on me. I mean, the other thing is that I do just need to, you know, working from home makes it complicated in terms of, like, well what what is the um the advantages of wearing this compared to to just a standard pair of glasses right like i need it needs to be a feature set that that fits into my life right like i'm not you know i don't know if i travel enough these days for the map feature to work too much right and buffalo it can be walkable but not not so much um you know it's it's it's i'm usually in a car if i'm going somewhere um yeah it's it's things like that right so

it's just a matter of finding the right feature set, the right price, and the right build for me. I don't think that makes, you know, the first gen a flop or anything, whatever this ends up being. But I think it just means that like it's really cool. We're here. And like, you know, especially the, the dual display model is even more appealing to me just because the idea of like wearing relatively standard glasses and then having a display on a plane or something is really cool. But yeah, I don't know. I think their time will come for me, but it's a matter of finding the right combination

of everything. And that may be 2028, 29, 30, but it's coming. So I think the first, the third, Samsung's first generation of audio-only glasses, I think those will be light enough, the ones that only have a camera, speaker, microphone. I think those will be pretty close to glasses. I don't think I can say that about the display versions with battery life considerations or whatever. But I think the first one is going to advance

with the hindsight of what meta have been doing, Ray bands have been doing for the past few years and what very early AR stuff have been doing. I think the audio-only versions will be relatively compromised free. but I do agree that the monocular ones will be taking a hot minute to get there. But again, I'm in for both.

Damien, you don't wear grasses. I've seen you wear sunglasses. What utility? And the thing to Will was asking about what's the utility? With the display grasses, I was so am used by seeing the time and the weather, just seeing the time and the weather. That's like the default screen.

It kind of looks like the at-the-grant's widget on pixel. There is so much amusement from seeing it overweight over the real world. That will be something to have fun with. That sounds to me like there is potentially cannibalization of wear OS here. There is a potential here that this could take over where, like, we're going to get into some cool stuff that Ware-O-S has added recently, but does this feel like that go-between? This feels like a go-between that I didn't anticipate.

If you're going to get that utter glance information all the time, then why would you wear a watch? So there is wireless integration with Android XR, especially in the case of audio-only grasses. After you take a picture, you'll see a preview on your wireless watch immediately. And you'll be able to use gestures to control your grasses instead of the side touchpad or voice with Gemini. So there is some integration there. And honestly, it's like the first time that Android's better to get. stuff has made as like starting to show signs of fruition but so they you google's thing was you don't have to wear a well a watch get the most of these grasses but if you do there's some

value ads that um but in terms of the replacement discussion i think the heart rate sensor the fitness aspect of these watches will always keep them on our list going forward even more so but yeah in terms of the maybe that allows for a dumber watch design going forward, like just a fit bit of old, so we'll see. Or an A-series pixel watch, which I think a lot of people would love. But then again, I guess you're not going to get an A-series watch if the glasses cost $2,000, but yeah, that's a bridge we'll have to cross them when we come to it.

So you said there was a couple of things, I kind of want to quiz you on. You had the initial demo of the original prototype. A year ago, yes. How do you feel it's progressed in that time? That's just under 10 months? So this raxium display. Yeah, the perfect 12 months. So this raxium display, this micro LED.

When I tried it last year, I was looking at like, it was strapped to a table. I was looking, I was like a magnifying grass. It was like a magnifying grass set up. In the past year, they've miniaturized it, they've integrated it into the headset, into the glasses. that the prototypes that people already have today and, again, going out tomorrow, going out launching next year. So that to me is what's the surprise, I guess, the surprising thing on how far these display technology, the breakthroughs have happened.

And on that, when we have these first-gen options, it's going to be very much like heads up or very brief information. I mean, I'm skeptical about, personally, about the VR. AR is a little bit more out there in the world, and I think that's what I personally am more interested in. Do you think the way that we've had, because it just feels really shunted from where we've had Galaxy XR releasing and now we have what is potentially the bigger leap.

How did you, like, how, because I know you're a Galaxy XR owner, your GalaxyXR user, what was that like going, did it feel like a step down? Did it feel like anything different when you were used? using this lighter version? Yeah, it's... Honestly, it's all called Android X-R, but honestly, they're two-step operating systems. They're clearly two-set operating systems.

One is running a full Snapdragon chip, the headset, the other is paired down. So the demos I tried, the glasses, headset, headset, I'd say, well, Google's thinking was that I think they did try to get ahead of that. But they're on a full spectrum approach. They see it as you have a phone, but you always still have a laptop. And that's what they're kind of seeing it right now. Like eventually, at the end of the day,

especially as you get these binocular glasses, everything will converge into one. But I think that, honestly, I would say that's still a few years, but I do have to recalibrate how long I think, binocular grasses that can be used of productivity, entertainment, or come. So, TBD on that.

But right now, they still think headsets have a space. I think personally the jury's out on that. I mean, I don't know how you feel about it, Will. I think this, to me, even though your glasses wear, I think this is the one that we are effectively

waiting for. This is that big shift. Yeah. I think it's got to be like some kind of combination between the two platforms, right? Like, I think there is a world where maybe we stop conflating, like, VR with AR and XR. Like, I think they need to just kind of exist on two different planes because there is, of course, like a world for something like the Steam Frame, Steam Frame, right? Steam Frame, yeah.

Yeah, right, where it's like... Yeah, fully immersive. Yeah, exactly. It's gaming focused. It's about immersive entertainment, whether that's playing Half-Life Alex or it's playing, or it's watching a movie, yeah, or frankly. Half-Life-3, well, you know, maybe exists by the time this episode comes out, depending on the game awards.

Who knows? You know. But I think there's a world for that. And then simultaneously, I think the future of something like the Galaxy XR or the Apple Vision Pro, where it's a little bit more, it can do those VR things, but it is also obviously trying to do this mixed reality world, where it's kind of a jack of all trades, I think those are going to, more than anything, go by the wayside. I think those are a stepping stone to, to the world of glasses like this, because, you know, there's no, it's silly to

walk around with a big headset strep to your head, even if you can see the world around you, it's less silly. Even if the glasses are kind of big and chunky like this, at the very least, they look a little bit like normal glasses. You're going to approach somebody a lot easier wearing something like this than you will approach somebody wearing a VR headset. And I think that's, That means something, right? And so I think this split, you know, and it's funny, Abner, you mentioned that Android XR is kind of two different things right now in terms of like how it's presented, whether you're using a Galaxy XR or what you saw in these glasses demos. And I think that's just like the natural path forward of like VR and and XR slash AR are kind of two different worlds with two different products. And that's not, that might be good if only because, you know, the advancements you see from these glasses.

and how light and small they are in comparison to VR headsets, I think will slowly trickle over to VR headsets and while they'll still maybe be enclosed for more immersion, they'll be lighter and more comfortable and maybe have a better battery. So they're starting to do that.

So the part two of the Agriul's announcements was some Android XR headset updates where they introduce this wired grasses form factor from Xreal. It's called Project Ola. It looks like grasses. is, no, it looks like grass. This is pretty thick. But it's basically, this is optical pass-through

where you're not viewing the world to a camera. You are viewing the actual world. And it is AIR stuff, it is augmented stuff being overweight over your vision. This has a thick battery pack, compute pack that you clip on. There's a ritual clip, but one fun part is at the surface of the battery pack is a touchpad.

So there's something there. So optical pass-through is so interesting. I mean, the grass is still the show for me, but I bought Galaxy X-R, the N-Division Pro, to get an approximation of what AR experiences will be. But camera pass-through, it's just pixelated. It is unideal. But the first optical pass-through device I used

as these X-Reels, and they are pretty good. You're seeing the full world, and you're seeing a display overlaid. There's this cool feature where you can tint the lenses. You can make it blacker from almost translucent to black, so if you want a more immersive experience. But I played, you control with the new PC Connect app. I controlled an image-adthing app. I played the game stray with a PS5 controller.

I don't think, I think these are the better headsets if I had to choose between the Galaxy XR and this project Ola thing, I'd have done the ORA because of the optical past through, it's lighter, it's less disruptive. It is not more immersive, but I think the optical pass through speaks volumes. But they are still making a push because I do think Google, by the time the grasses are actually ready, I think they want full productivity. the use cases, complete and optimized. So they're absolutely doing it on two parallel tracks.

But again, I agree with both of the classes of the future. Do we think as well, though, I know I'm going off on a tangent here, but I think it'll make sense in a moment. Do you think there is going to be some element of we're aware that potentially we're going to get Android laptops, Android PC operating system? Do you think there's going to be some crossover here? Because it feels to me like, especially, glasses with optical pass-through

could be the perfect way for this. And I don't like the term ecosystem, but it's the only way of best way to describe it. We now have this ecosystem of products that has never existed on Android before. And Google's never really done this previously. And we get this kind of closure of an area

and it's all geminized at the heart of it, but it's all effectively tied back to the good work that they've done with Android as a mobile platform. But it then bleeds out into every single area. You mentioned productivity applications, I could definitely imagine, much like people say with Vision Pro and I'm not sure with XR, that Galaxy XR that often yet, you could potentially use this as a second

screen like when you do an actual work. Yeah. Yeah. Do you, well, I mean, if you kind of remove the Android XR part of it, the hardware you have at Galaxy R is fantastic, it's 4K displays light up your, right in front of your eyes. You can do a lot of it. And again, the Vision Pro has demonstrated with the Mac virtual display. So I do think the productivity use case is there. But it's more like an add-on bonus. Like if you have this headset right now, you might still be able to use it as another screen for the laptop where you do your actual work. I mean, the Gemini being out there in the real world, though, is what I think is the biggest draw for me. I mean, obviously Gemini

And it's mainly 7.9.3.0 is a big step up over its previous iterations. And I'm sure we'll see that develop and the pace at which it's developing is insane. This just feels like the unleashed, the real emphasis is just unleashing everything that we potentially have had previously. Like you go beyond these closed experiences because your phone is in a lot of ways a closed experience. It's solitary. I mean, by very definition these are going to be solitary because it's only you can see it. But it definitely feels like that right. the step in the direction, I think technology has probably wanted for 20, 30, 40 years.

Like, we've all seen Star Trek. We've all seen sci-fi movies. This just feels like the first step in my lifetime beyond a portable screen that has the entire internet on it. This just feels like the most obvious iteration that we wanted for so long. And to get it, to get a display version in such a short space of time, I'm excited to see what happens with it. Yeah, I guess just to end this section of the pod.

So when you're looking at the spray, grasses, when you're looking at the display in grasses, you are staring at a point. What I badly wanted to do when I tried these demo glasses was to see what I looked like when I was staring at this particular point in the glasses. I'm very, it's like, I assume you're like razor focus on one point.

And I'm so curious what that works to other people. It's funny you say this because I was sitting here and I was like, oh, you know, maybe this kind of, even at its most basic, it can sort of replace the, the, and I feel like it's kind of gone away in the last 10 years, but the stigma of like glancing at your smartwatch for notifications, right? I feel like that was a much larger thing 10 years ago than it is now. I feel like people don't consider it as rude. But it would be great to be like, oh, like I can see the time or, you know, an incoming notification or whatever, like without looking away from the person I'm talking to. And then I was like, I was like, oh, but if I, or are people just going to become so like, like, pinpoint noticing, like, when my eye shift to the corner or something or when like focus changes suddenly and they're like, yeah, you're looking at your screen, aren't you? You know, so yeah, it's at the center of the screen. Yeah. So I just think you're like looking straight ahead and not move. I don't know. I'm so curious what that looks like in person.

I know Glass was absolutely in the corner. Yeah. But I am, another thing, like, these audio-only versions, they will be your headphones. Right. I don't think most people want to double up on headphones once this becomes good enough. That wins me over maybe more than the display-based classes at the moment, just because the idea of, if you could get glasses down to, essentially, if they can just be like, these are, these have a microphone and a speaker, and the speaker is like just for you. bone conduction or whatever technology you want to use, right? And so even when I, you know, if I'm like, oh, I'm just like walking to the mailbox or

something, I don't need to put headphones on, but I can switch my audio source from the speaker that, you know, I have a podcast playing on right now to walking out to, to, you know, get the garbage cans back off the street or something. I don't know, right? Like these little things where it's like, well, I'm not going to put headphones on, but I have these just always on me. That is great. Like even the display list feature, and then someday down the road, maybe that's when I upgrade.

Yeah, I think it has a very good opportunity to disrupt multiple markets. And whether or not Google are intending on doing that is neither here nor there. But, yeah, I mean, what it sounds like, Aetner, is what the solution is that Google needs to sell googly eyes with each pair. You just stick them straight in the middle and nobody's none the wiser that we're staring off into the distance. But that's Google Glass, Google Glasses, Google AI Glasses. I'm going to keep getting the name wrong multiple times. Two seconds are actually. AI grasses, it's fine, I guess.

It's a shame they burned the glass branding a decade ago because it's much better branding. It is. If Google's not making grasses, first party grasses, which I don't think they're doing eminently, it should be called Google Lens. I've always thought that. Okay, okay, yeah. If they, if they ever make... Gemini lens, maybe.

Gemini-Lens, maybe. Gemini-Eyes. Oh, we've got it, Gemini-Eyes. Gemini-Eyes. And that's the podcast episode title. They're done. Brightly it down. Gemini-Eyes.

Moving away from these Gemini-Eys, we're going to talk a little bit about Pixel-Watch 4. We've had some... I mean, cool features added. I'm not sure if I'm going to use them, but tell me a little bit about this, Avna, because this came in late, but to my inbox over the past 24, 40 hours.

So this is basically the feature drop we had last month, which I kind of thought we were going to have one this month. It was phones only, nothing about any other form factor. So on Tuesday this week, we basically got a bit of feature drop for Pixel Watch. So the headlining feature, Pixel Watch 4 is gestures. one-handed gestures. You can double pinch where you bring your thumb and forefinger, index finger. Yes? Yeah. And double pinch to take actions. And there's the quick wrist turn, which you, if you're working on your watch, you tilt it outwards and then you bring it back. That quick wrist turn dismisses

notifications, incoming calls. And the other one lets you press buttons basically. It bakes you scroll alerting notifications that are coming in. It pause timers, pause music, play music, take a photo when you're on the camera app. I guess the one nice UI thing that Google did was they're overlaying hints throughout the UI directly over buttons to signal that this is where you can take a double pinch. Yeah, it is one-handed usage, which on the pixel, on the Apple watch that has happened for a few years. I don't really use it. Yeah, it's not, I haven't used an Apple Watch. I don't think it's very good on the Apple Watch. I think it's kind of unreliable and is not used for anything beyond like scrolling. It's a little silly. Yeah. I, my biggest

concern is that the gesture to kind of go away and then come back to dismiss notifications. I know for a fact and I'm sure you guys get it where you like your cuff of your sleeve cuff will get over the watch and you kind of do that I'm I know that I'm going to dismiss all of my notifications accidentally it's going to be really irritating but I think that's a concern I think I'll probably disable it if there's an option to do so it doesn't look I'm not sure from the information there's okay well you can disable one or the other well brilliant I will be doing that straight away because otherwise I will have no notifications and I'm wondering why there's nobody speaking to me I talk with my hands, so I'm screwed.

Well, I mean, as the resident videographer here, the amount of times I'm on camera and I'm waving my hand around, and I've actually started taking my pixel watch off because I'll instinctively look at it and get a notification during recording. So that will be the first thing that I disable. I think one of the quiet little things in this update that caught my eyes straight away when I read about it,

they finally updated the status bar pain to get rid of the half moon and put the bedtime mode logo in consistency i love consistency i am that person i want to have the right icon that is used on my phone icon is ugly this bad photo risk the pictionary icon whatever it's fine i don't want it to be a half moon was good yeah but it doesn't make sense to me i have i have the bedtime mode icon on my phone i'm used to the bedtime mode icon make it work across both of them it's the same we do not They're not going to suddenly change that. I'm glad they've gone for some consistency here, if I can even say it. Too complex an icon.

Yeah, well, Google can keep doing this. I love these little consistencies to have between it, and it's one of the reasons why I think we've had one UI 8.5 this week. I'm going to go off on a tangent now. I'm sorry, guys. Samsung decides we're not going to put too much material three expressive in. Google just keep doubling down, keep making material three expressive, the best that it is.

I think it's fantastic. it's a really breath of fresh air when every single other OEM out there is trying to do, or at least steal some things from liquid glass. I don't think it's full on one UI8 by any stretch of the imagination. There is elements of material expressive

in terms of like those floating toolbars. But there's definitely, definitely a lot of people looking at what Apple are doing and thinking that's a right way to do things and they fumbled it. So material is expressive. Keep making it consistent Google. I love it. Fantastic.

Sorry, rant over. I don't know how much you want to talk about one ui 8.5 but i guess the increasingly the reason i've accepted though grudgingly is that they're doing this because they think that most of the world is familiar with ios and all this is they're doing all this to make the switching easier and i kind of think that you should be proud of your own platform design paradigms but then when we look at have your own language exactly i mean will you can talk at depth about this because no, you covered it.

We saw recently that the sales figures globally do not favor any premium galaxy phone. So, I mean, nobody's going to, if anyone's going to switch from a phone right now, was it the Galaxy A14 is still the most popular? 16, whatever the most recent A1X lineup is, yeah. But it was, so I believe it was Counterpoint had figures for Q3 globally,

and it was split 50-50, the top 10 between Apple and saying, Samsung and all or four of Apple's five iPhones in there, which were primarily the 16 series because the 17 launched in the mid in the tail end of Q3, the pro the 17 pro max snuck in. But I believe it was number 10. But the top four were like the iPhone 16, 16 pro 16 pro max, I think. And then like the iPhone 16E, which is technically not a premium smartphone by by counterpoint's measures by literally a penny, but whatever, it doesn't matter. And then, and then below that were

five Samsung phones, but they're all, you know, like the A, I think the A56 was like the most premium device there, and that's still a four or $500 smartphone. You know, I, it's, the, the switching thing really gets me because it's like, I can see the logic. I can see how, you know, designers that are working on something like OneUI-5 or Oxygen OS or whatever, like come to the conclusion of, oh, we should make this familiar, like, iOS so that people switch away from iOS to our platform and they feel right at home. Why would you, like, if you're switching, don't you want something new? Like, aren't you, like, I just don't understand who the market is for that is like, I, I love iOS, but I want, I love the feel of iOS, but I don't want an iPhone

anymore. Like I, yeah, that's where the logic falls apart. Yeah, I think the logic falls to pieces, because when we look at the data as well for the switching in North America, particularly, doesn't it? It seems that Pixel and Google are taking market share away from Samsung, because I think that Google is going their own way and doing the things that maybe if you're an iOS die hard, you've been using it for, I mean, how long is it? Nearly 11, 12 years, I think, something like that. Is that track? Is it longer than that? Okay, well, I'm definitely, time is passing fast. That's all I'm going to say. So you've been using potentially iOS from high school or middle school or whatever you guys call it in the States.

I don't know how your schooling system works. But you could be using that same phone for almost 20 years, potentially, and you suddenly want to change your scenery. There is only one phone out there right now, that on the market, well, a series from the Pixel 6 and newer, which gives you a genuine breath of fresh air, something that is, and I think it is eminently familiar. There are so many similarities between how pixel works and iPhone works, but I do think that Google, and this is why I use Android in general, is because I think that Google's organization is better, notifications are better, and we probably should do a full podcast on the why we use Android. But Samsung then trying to call iOS users when their sales figures are proving that they're only doing it on the low end of the market. surely, I'm sure that the switch is from a cheap Samsung phone that feels like a poor replica and a poor performing replica of an iPhone, they're going to go to an iPhone. You are literally, the ball, you are putting the ball back in Apple's court.

You're not playing in your, you're not playing your own sport. You're not in the same league as it were, as it were. Versus something like a pixel 9A that feels like it's, oh, it has its own identity both design-wise and software-wise, like you boot it up and you're not mistaking this for an iPhone in any way. And Damien, to your point, like I was, I was 13, going on 14 in 2009 when I got a second gen iPod touch, right?

And so I, two years later, I had a smart, in 2011, I got my first smartphone that was an Android device. But I can see, you know, there were the iPod touch very popular in my, in my school, right? Like, I think a lot of people, my age, you know, I'm 30 now, around 13, 1415 got an iPod touch and then and then got their first smartphone next. Some of them I know went to like cheap Android phones then and then were annoyed with the experience and eventually got an iPhone and many of them just went to an iPhone and I agree with you. I think they've been there since and we're coming up on 20 years and I think it's I think leading into like this is

the same thing you've been used to for 20 years but it's like it's a little slightly different and you can sideline an app I guess or whatever like you know anecdotally like all of the Samsung people I know in my life like buy that phone, but they bought into Samsung primarily because it was the power user brand. And they had all these features that you couldn't get on iOS like micro SD cards and things like that. And while momentum has kept them in the Samsung ecosystem, while all of those features have gone away, you have to imagine if they continue to lead into designs like this. Is it going to eventually just be like, well, you know, let me go look at pixel. Like, is that, is that what's happening? I don't know. I get the impression that

that's what's happening in North America specifically. I mean, I guess one UI 8.5, I mean, using it for the past 24, 48 hours since the beta opened for my S-25 Ultra and comparing it directly to the Z-fold, Z-Fold 7. It's, there are so many, there are a nice thing, they've done nice things, but at the same time, it's like, they're cutting their nose off to spite the face a little bit. I do worry what Samsung's eventual end goal is with OneUI. They've done so much good work from Seven to really make it one of the better Android builds, Android skins. Let the Chinese manufacturers do what they're going to do and replicate and kind of copy what iOS is doing. But I don't get, I don't really get the way that Samsung is working so closely

with Google, yet they kind of align themselves with what Apple are doing design-wise sometimes. It's not everywhere. I'm probably diving into it too deep. There's nothing too egregious, really. There's just a few UI elements that are like definitely look like the lifted straight out of iOS. But, yeah, one UI 8.5, it's a nice little update. I'll have a video soon. So go check that out when you get the opportunity to do so if it isn't already alive.

I like it. I just wish they lent more into Material 3 expressive because it just feels like an own goal a little bit. It's almost like you're not supporting Android, like support your own platform. It looks so good. I honestly would love to see Samsung's take on it because Samsung would differentiate it a little bit and I don't know.

I think it's a real missed opportunity. Yeah, definitely. I mean, maybe Google hasn't communicated it probably, I mean, I'm definitely, this is off the cuff but this is definitely my own opinion here that I think maybe they've not communicated that well enough with their OEM partners, probably what they're going to do with materially expressive.

Maybe there is no, maybe they were a little bit too coy. I don't think they talk, I don't think Google really talks broadly enough about how good their design can be. And materialary expressive is a, is a very good indicator of that. But yeah, that's another discussion for another day. I think we've talked around it, we talked through it, we've talked over it. But I'm excited to see what these glasses bring to the table in the New Year, Abner. So, yeah, I think judging by what you've said, it looks like it could be a fantastic

step forward that we weren't expecting. I want to say thanks for joining me, guys. Again, it's always good fun talking to you every week. And yeah, yeah, if you haven't already, go check out. Go check out Abner's hands-on with the Google Glass follow-up, as it were, Google AI glasses. Also check your devices for that Pixel Watch update. I think it should be rolling out right now.

And 1U.U.I.8.5. If you have any thoughts about that, ping me directly, because I'm delving into it myself. But yeah, thanks go for joining me and I'll speak to you 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.