Pixelated - Goodbye Asus, Hello Clicks

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

Welcome to episode 85 of Pixelated, a podcast by 9to5Google. This week, Abner, Damien, and Will talk through the end of Asus as a smartphone brand, as the company takes an indefinite hiatus from Android to focus on AI. After trying to figure out what's next after the smartphone, we're diving into some thoughts on the Clicks Communicator, Google's Digital Wellbeing tools, and the whole thinking behind minimalist devices. Plus, we send Stadia off with one final goodbye. Subscribe YouTube Podcasts Pocket Casts Spotify Apple Podcasts Overcast Timecodes 00:00 – Intro and Asus leaving the market 07:35 - What comes after smartphones? 22:59 - Clicks Communicator and digital detoxing 45:34 - Stadia's last goodbye Hosts Abner Li Damien Wilde Will Sattelberg Read more Asus won’t make any new Android phones in 2026, but it might not be done yet The Clicks Communicator might not be for everyone, but it’s definitely for me Google just killed the last of Stadia 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 85. I'm your host, Will Saddleberg. This week's episode is a little out of left field as Damien Abner and I talk through our feelings surrounding the end of Asus' time as an Android brand. We talk all about some of our favorite X smartphone makers and wonder just what the future might hold for phones as a whole. That brings us perfectly to a larger conversation about the Clicks communicator, minimalist phones, digital well-being tools, and what exactly we're looking for in our person on devices today. All that, plus we pour one out for Stadia at the very end of the show. It's all coming up. It feels like more and more often, gang, that we are seeing, I guess, OEMs leave the space. We seem to have lost another. We have a man down, a brand down. Azus has effectively confirmed

the no longer make Android smartphones, the going down the AI route. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I feel like maybe Asus weren't all in, I guess, but I don't know. You guys tell me, this is a good thing, it's a bad thing. I've always wanted to buy a, this was his Zenphone mini, but I've never gotten around to it in terms of, yeah, I like the small form factor. It's compact. It's very much what I would have wanted, but I could never just leave the pixel software experience once I, like, gamed it out of how I would, where I would use it in my life, etc. Yeah, it's it's one of those So I don't even know where to start

With Asus because to me it's like It's missed The entire story is just missed potential Do you know what I mean? Like every step of the way I feel like They made the wrong call in a way that could have They could have found success If not in North America, then certainly

Abroad and Instead of kind of trusting their own instincts In making products that were That stood out among the crowd, they sort of ended their smartphone run by just chasing trends and trying to match competitors. And I mean, I just don't think that's ever going to be a winning solution. You know, One Plus isn't kind of a similar boat, I think, where, like, the 13 felt very much like a, like, modern One Plus flagship. Like, this is what people have come to expect from the brand.

And then you see the 15 and you're like, this is an Android phone. Like this is like a kind of gaming influence, but sort of not really gaming phone that is okay, but, you know, doesn't stand out amongst the crowd. And you can look at Asus and see like exactly how that happened, how they had interesting ideas, whether it was, whether it was their ROG line that I think brought a lot to the table in terms of old school Android enthusiast features or the Zen phone series that focus so much on being compact and portable and. decided to kind of throw that away at the end. I just want to zoom out for a second, just more broadly. The smartphone is not going away. It is the form factor that will honestly be the last form factor that we all have. As much as I'm into grasses or whatnot,

I think the smartphone will be at the center of your digital life for the foreseeable future. Glass, the Google's first Android X-R grass is we'll talk to your phone and use it as processing. And after that, I don't know, maybe five plus years, the display technology gets really, really good, where you can basically have like the minority report style stuff. I still think that at any of the day, the smartphone will always be the device, the form factor that you're going to have for the foreseeable future. Yeah. I think, I mean, you're definitely correct there. I think it's one of those things with Azus in general. Asus or Azus, I still don't know to this day. Please somebody contact me and tell me which is the right. Just alternate back and forth. Yeah, we'll cover all bases. I feel like with the Zen phone, I know that it was, it's the Zenphone 10. I remember looking at that device. I think it was about two years ago. That kind of ended the Zen phone line that we know, right, as this slightly smaller, compact.

option to the to the other top tier phones from other brands out there. And I think it stood alone as its own little thing and it had, it had flashy design. It had a really impressive internals. I guess it was the pixel, the 9 Pro and the 10 Pro, the medium phone of its time, I guess. And obviously, over the past couple of years, in a lot of respects, Pixel 9 Pro and pixel 10 pro have kind of fallen into that gap. Maybe they don't have the performance that we would hope, but that's by the buy. I wouldn't, I do, I do, I do. wonder how Asus kind of handled, we're going to shelve this kind of this line that we've had for a long period of time and go straight into, we're only doing gaming focus devices.

And I guess Asus and the ROG lineup is synonymous with PC gaming. I wonder if they're, and I always thought this to begin with anyways, maybe they really didn't care enough, if that makes sense. They just wanted a device that went with the rest of their in air quotes gaming ecosystem. And having a product that looked like their laptops but performed to the, I guess, to the top level of Android. wasn't enough to sway people away from their experiences elsewhere. I think I last used the ROG phone 8 pro.

Again, I'm probably getting that name horrendously wrong. But it stood out for good reasons, I guess, but not reasons that I would enjoy. Like it had a cool LED backplate. It had two USBC ports, which I think is fantastic. mounted and bottom mounted, which I think's amazing. I really like that. But at the end of the day, it didn't feel like there was enough, I don't want to say ambition, because that's not right at all,

enough, I guess, execution everywhere. Because the software felt like it was a hybrid of AOSP and what was going on elsewhere, but at the same time, yeah, it's sad to see. I'm not saying for any second, for a moment that we should see players leave the space, but I don't think this one hurts as much as some others. I'm more upset by the Zen phone line disappearing, even though I only use one.

I use one Zen phone. I use Zen Phone 10 briefly. I think maybe it can't have been CES. It must have been MWC or something like that. And I was like, wow, this phone does stand out. I could potentially see myself using this. But with an RRG phone, it was like, I could potentially get a better display somewhere else.

The performance is, yeah, it's good, but like do I need wacky flashing lights? I can get that with a nothing phone. and they stand out for their own reasons. Yeah, it's a shame. It is a shame. Maybe they fell into this middle ground where it was like apathy.

And having a phone, if there's apathy around your product, then maybe it is time to let go and maybe they've made the right decision. I don't know. Do we like, we don't like seeing Android players leave the space? Can we think of any

that we've actually been excited to see disappear? I'm not sure. I can't say one off the top of my head. No, definitely not. And I mean, I mean, there are degrees of heartbreak. I think, I think, you know, LG in HTC or like, you know, former HTC kind of rank near the top, right? I don't know if I would put AIS or AIS as high up.

I actually have a big picture question for you guys because I think this is related because we saw AIS drop the Zenphone series or like, at the very least, kind of eliminate the thing that differentiated it from its competition in terms of being, you know, sub six inch displays up through the Zenphone 10. you know, still with with flagship specs. They pivoted hard into, into focusing just on gaming for the last couple years and then, and then obviously you're throwing in the towel. Is it, is it time to,

to call like the, the concept of like the dedicated gaming phone, like gaming specific phone, kind of a failure or a failed trend maybe? Because it's been about a decade. And I don't, like, I don't really see a reason to buy one. I've never really seen a reason to buy one outside of, you know, I mean,

and Asus did it the best in terms of the added features like those dual USB ports you were talking about, Damien. But like, why, I don't think any of them have ever done a good enough job differentiating themselves from just like a standard Samsung Galaxy S-20, whatever, Ultra, in terms of like performance and specs, you know, maybe larger batteries, maybe bigger screens, but typically it's it's you're getting 95, 98% of the same base experience from something like a Samsung or even a one plus device. And then and then counter that with the, with the rise of dedicated handhelds that are cheaper with built in controls that don't require you to like sacrifice your phone in order to be able to play a game. You know, like you can, you can still get

a text message and answer a text message while playing on a on any AYN device, right? Like I, I, I, I, just kind of can escape this feeling that, like, gaming phones in general have never been really successful and were kind of at the end of the rope on these. I mean, I agree with you 100% on the handheld thing. I think the handheld thing is etting to this market so much that it's almost like, it's almost impossible to recommend most people go and pick up a gaming phone over a dedicated handheld, because save what, maybe one or two games realistically on a phone of this type, you're going to be emulating older handheld games anyway or like old console games and for the most part they run on anything pre what snap

snaprogan 870 something like that um like almost flawlessly i do want i mean this probably gets a like you say is a wider question in that if razor couldn't make this work then why could a why did a zuz think that they could do it like a razor are like the highest of high end gaming and they only did what two or three phones after they bought an expert yeah i think it was only two I mean, I do wonder if this is a, that obviously they've said from this report that they're going to move into, well, focus shift towards AI. I do wonder if this means that they could do what Razor have done and have like the Kishi, the handheld controllers because I don't think that's a bad market to take up. If you're going to be, you want to be gaming and adjacent, you want to stay in the mobile space. The accessory market is huge.

Like people like them. I personally have about four or five. So I'm potentially the buyer for someone who can do this. but it's almost, yeah, it almost feels like, like you say, that gaming phones have been a, they've been a thing, but they've also not been a thing. It's just fundamentally smartphones. I don't think specialization did anything.

Like besides gaming, what other sub-variant of smartphone is there? I mean, we've tried, we tried cameras, we've tried gaming. I would say foldables are a subcategory. They're different enough. Yeah, maybe. But yeah, I just don't think that, to the point about the chip set, every smartphone chip is optimized for gaming. And I don't think there's anything special that you need hardware-wise.

Like on one end, it worked in laptops because there is still a raw specs benefit from it. But from every other's perspective, the smartphone is just too perfect of a utility, if it's a jack of all trades already and I don't think accessories are the better way to optimize it but yeah so we were talking about HCC going away LG going away and now

ASUS so all we it's going to be Samsung it's going to be Google Pixel what is the modern landscape right now and do we think between Samsung on Google and whoever else, are we missing something? It's tough, isn't it?

Well, I think we both have that same pained expression where it's like we don't, this is the worst kind of scenario to be in in terms of like consumer choice because, I mean, I know you guys live in the US where it's a bit of a duopoly anyway. Yeah. It's kind of sad. It's sad being in the rest of the world because what tends to happen is I feel like here in Europe,

it's like we get a little bit of what's kind of often popping in China and get these cool, wacky devices. And I do want to see these wacky devices. At the same time, like, consumer confidence in them is clearly low because if AIS says we're not going to do it, I'd argue there's probably a bottom line that's been seen and they're like, okay, this doesn't, financially doesn't make sense anymore. But as for the brands, who would we consider the big players now? So would we, I probably wouldn't, as disrespectful as this sounds, I don't necessarily think

I would put Googling that in a global scale, even though we've seen big, big gains. I think what, Opo, uh, Xiaomi, their definites, Samsung of the Apple. Yeah. Beyond,

beyond those, it's everyone is a smaller player. Like nothing in, nothing in Google seem like there's young upstarts that maybe could potentially, and are starting to, to really be an alternative, but I don't know.

I will give, um, I want to give Google this. I guess is that they, they have the mind share. I think like pick, like not just Google, like pixel.

People know pixel. Like like if you if you stopped random people on the street you would you would get it would be not zero people who know pixel and I I don't feel as confident saying that about nothing like I think if you stopped ten people on the street at least one would know pixel and I don't I don't know if they would know nothing in at least in the US You know from a US perspective. It really is just Apple and Samsung and then maybe Motorola and then and then Motorola in Google depending on the customer right like Motorola is really only budget here. Like, they have some razor success, but they've stopped doing other flagships here. And anytime I'm reviewing a Motorola phone, the thing that is said to me the most often is I didn't know Motorola still made phones. So not great. Genuinely, I've had

like five or six people over the last couple of years say that to be. And then, and then I would say Google is like, people are like pixel curious, but not enough to like maybe switch. But I do get the idea that like a lot of iPhone people are you know to Google's credit are kind of like if I were to switch I would probably check out that pixel over there I like those ads that I see during insert sport here so it's all over every sport yeah but I mean that's it's kind of dire in the US at the same time you know have we've kind of hit bottom on this like I I don't expect Motorola to fully pull out of the U.S. just because they have a niche here. They are. They do sell a lot of budget devices. Samsung obviously is like rock solid. You know, Apple is is is here. But like you can

definitely feel a little bit of the luster off Apple. I think people are kind of bored with them. And I don't know. Like I'm curious to see the next like 10 years of the iPhone where that goes because it doesn't it feels very similar to the the Android perspective in terms of. of just kind of like, here is a, we changed a few things this year, here you go, instead of like trying to wow people. And even this year, their big thing is going to be a foldable that they're seven years late to.

And unlike in previous product launches, I don't expect the Apple foldable to like completely trounce the competitors. I assume it's going to be similar to a fold seven. So, yeah. It's, it is a sad state of affairs to lose a player in the space. I'm pouring one out for, I'm pouring one out for Azus right now. Even if just for, for competition's sake, right? Or for, for new ideas, right?

Like, like, you know, after you're talking about, like, the smartphone being the core of, of your tech experience for the foreseeable future. And it's not even just, it's like specifically like a tall rectangle is the core of your like tech experience for the foreseeable future. Like it's, they're all the same. It's not even so much the phone itself. but like it doesn't even really matter if you buy a pixel or a galaxy S-26 because it's it's 95% the same when you really look at it, you know? Yeah. So RIP to AISU. After Damien does his funeral lines.

So yeah, just to, yeah, so smart glasses, which Asus suggested they're going into. I don't know. Just to like see the timeline out, we see smart glasses this year with displays and them from Google. Year after that, maybe we see glasses with two display with one display on each side. I think within the fifth generation of these devices, they start getting good. And maybe at around that point, we can see them starting to replace. a smartphone in terms of, I still think you keep it in your pocket because at the end of the day, I don't think you want like a 5G radio next to your brain or whatever.

I don't think we're going down this. I don't know, maybe you pair it with a smart watch or maybe that becomes a thing. But I just think that the form factor of activity of holding a smartphone, I think that's going to stay around for a while. Yeah. But in terms of what comes after, it's going to be a chip in your brain. I was about to joke, you're right, Abner. The 5G chip is not going to be right next to my brain.

It's going to be in it. It's going to be in it. I'll let you guys queue up for that one and get it. No, no, I'm not. No, I have no. Absolutely not. Brain compute interface. It's like the thing, like anything that's announced after your 20 is the futuristic.

and anything announced before your 20 is like the norm, you're like you accept it or whatever. I'm 30, damn it, I'm there. No, but I don't, yeah, I do not see myself getting a chip in my brain ever. Famous last words, maybe. It's, I know this sounds so simple, but like, it's just, the smartphone is not going to go away until something comes along that is as easy and intuitive to control as the smartphone.

And like, we have not seen. that yet, right? Like, smart glasses are not as easy to control as just like tapping a thing on a on a smartphone. Like that is, there's a reason that the iPhone blew up the way it was, you know, it, and everything was shaped after that, like, up to and including the first, like, touch. Android devices. Touch is such, yeah. It's so tactile. It's so obvious. Exactly. A three-year-old immediately understands when they pick up an iPad or any tablet to the point where, you know, there's all those

videos of the, not so much these days, but certainly throughout the 2010s of children tapping at magazines or whatever, right? Yeah. It's just immediately understood. And with the smart grasses, I think that's what's going to be so interesting. What is a control method for them? Is it going to be a touchpad on the side that you do gestures? It's going to be voice commands.

And now that made part what the voice commands made possible by AI, by LRMs, understanding exactly what you want. Maybe it's that. meta is doing some like they have a EKG something wristband where you

where you think about what you want to touch or something like that these are the question the future interaction questions of the future and I don't know maybe it's like a touchpad on your watch I don't think it's going to be that but that is going to be an interesting

question but to your point Will about what's more obvious than touch. It's going to be thinking it with your brain. It's the only, I was listening to you like narrowed and I was like, none of the, I don't think any of these are actually easier, though. I think they could, but it's either going to be,

genuinely my thought was it's either going to be, it just reads your mind, right? Like, which is a technology that obviously either doesn't exist or like maybe barely exists. Like, I haven't done, I haven't looked into it. But like, so I'm not going to say it doesn't exist. But, or it's, it's going to be. you know,

something that hasn't been invented yet entire or hasn't even been thought of yet that comes out of nowhere, right? In the same way that like no one had done an iPhone like device really with a capacitive touchscreen and and I mean like I was young but even I remember all of the like well how are you going to type on it without a keyboard

like conversations around that first iPhone and I think whatever replaces the smartphone inevitably or eventually will have similar conversations of like well how are you to do this and then people will try it and just be like, oh, actually it's like, it just works. Like that's what it needs. It needs the whatever will replace the smartphone will need a it just works moment. The other thing I'm wondering is whether like floating touch gestures in the air, whether it's

because you're wearing a ring or it's tracked from your smart watch or the camera, it's a track, hand tracking. But I don't think like that's equivalent to touch in any way. No, I agree. Unless it was one to one. And again, it's just technology that doesn't, that isn't there yet, right? It has to be, I'm, I'm cold on voice commands. I think I just can't imagine a world where people were placed.

It's too much. I, I know it's handy sometimes, but the idea of like, I have fully sacrificed a touchscreen in order to only talk to my devices. I just can't, I can't imagine that world. Like, I don't, I certainly wouldn't be happy to do. that because I always feel awkward doing voice commands, even alone. Yeah. So until I would not be surprised if AIS has come back into the market and we do have that

final form factor, if they're in the AI game, then there's definitely going to be some vested interest there. But yeah, as one brand leaves the space, we have a potential new player coming later this year. It was a few weeks ago. the clicks the team behind the add-on keyboard for your phone, for your iPhone, even for Pixel, a few other devices. It appears that we're going to be getting our own throwback, as it were. We've been talking about the future,

but throwback design, BlackBree-inspired Android phone. We know that BlackBree came into the space briefly. But this feels like, I guess it's, I mean, the team behind this does include Michael Fisher. So we see this is kind of a love letter to that middle era of smartphones, I guess. the true steps into the space we have now, the glass and metal sandwich, the slab. I feel like there's a very big group of people who are interested in this. I don't know how much of that is based on nostalgia. I don't know how much is that is based up on the fact that we want something new.

But then again, old is new again. Will you have been lucky enough to see? Yeah. Who's a non-working prototype, right? Just tell me about this because I'm endlessly fascinated. I never had a Blackberry. I barely used one. I can't say I was hugely into the key thing, but I'm, I still endlessly fascinated by new form factors or old form factors, as it were.

Yeah, I'm actually in the same boat as you, Damien, just because of my age when I, by the time I came of smartphone. Well, I think we're all kind of right there a little bit to a certain extent, but like by the time I came of age. Yeah, yeah, Palm Pri. But like my first smartphone was the HDC Thunderbolt, which was like the spinoff. of the Evo 4G but for Verizon. So like I just I just bypassed the Blackberry era altogether aside from like the fact that my mom had some for work. Am I seriously the only one that used the pre three for like a year? Yeah, I never used a pre.

I never used a pre. I never had a pre. I loved the pre. I remember like I would read I remember reading like pre release coverage of the pre as a as a kid. But I never I mean it never it it, it, man, did it come to Verizon? I don't even remember if it came to Verizon. It did. Okay. Because obviously it was a sprint. It launched infamously on sprint. I legitimately use the VIR and the pre-tree. Oh my God. I forgot about the VIR. Wow. That is a name I haven't heard in a minute, Abner. That's crazy. That was such an interesting. It was such a nice phone to run with the VIR, even though you had to use that stupid audio jack, magnetic audio jack. But I did that. And the keyboard, I do remember writing a.

some long form on the keyboard. Yeah, it's, I used it. I don't feel any affinity to go back to it. Well, do you, Abner, do you remember the size of the touchscreen on the, on the VIR? Two. Two point six inches. Can you imagine using that today? No, absolutely not.

It's like a postage stamp compared to the pixel that's in your, in your pocket right now. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, I'm very much interested in the communicator. It's not even really coming from a nostalgia perspective as much as it is coming from a perspective of like this is a fresh but throwback device. And I think there's a lot of we are in an era of 2000s nostalgia. And I am certainly not immune to that as once again has established earlier, a 30 year old. you know there's something fun about the device when you hold it that that i wouldn't say applies to to a ton of smartphones today right like it's got this like wedge shape that feels pretty good in your hand and and isn't familiar to like other products today it's it's got these removable like magnetic backs so you can just like if you if you have a red clicks communicator and you want it to be blue you can swap on the blue plate right like that's fun um and then

And it's got these like little elements that I think were just well thought out. Like they're using Niagara Launcher as, or they're working with Niagara Launcher on a specific version of Niagara for this device. And I think that's like perfect for this form factor. Like I think Niagara will actually fit really well and feel right at home on this, on this, like with this keyboard. You know, so like, and I, I just love the idea of this, not so much as my primary device, which it can be, but more as a like secondary smartphone that I can use.

you know, in the evening when I don't maybe necessarily want to keep using the thing I've been using for work all day. And I don't want to feel pressured to go on Twitter or Instagram or any amount of like time wasting applications that are just basically built to frustrate you at this point. Okay. Essentially, I'd keep the phone clean. Yeah. Do secondary device, okay, what are people's relationships with secondary devices? Okay, some people have a personal phone and have a work phone so they know how to use. I think people can conceptualize how to use two devices, but I would say most people don't.

They don't. They just have one phone. And I think the idea of managing a second phone is a non-starter for most people. Yes, it is. There is some novelty when you get it. But at end of the day, you'll be like, I don't want to think about what's on what. I just want to use the one for that I know everything's there.

And you just naturally gravitate for it's that. Yeah. Look, I'm not trying to pretend I'm a normal person for being interested in this. It is a device kind of built for sickos. You know, what? Yeah, I know. One of these days, they're going to come back to haunt me. But no, I don't, like, to me, like, what I'm looking for is a way to disconnect a little bit more.

and the idea of having this thing that is really just built for communication is enticing. Obviously, you can use smart watch. There are so many ways on Android to build a minimalist mode, right? Like I've literally written these guides before that you can like pretty easily set up things like this. Which we has one and I don't think anybody uses it. Yeah, exactly. This is an unnecessary purchase. But I think it's one that like, number one, I do think that when you put money down on something,

it like pushes you a little bit more to use it. Like not always, but like, you know, if, if compared to using like software, free software methods on your current phone, there is something to being like, well, I'm putting down the whatever it is, $5, $500 for this product. I'm going to get used out of. I'm going to use it the way I want to use it. And then, and then number two, I just, I don't, like, I really think it's just like a fun, like, there is nothing else like this, right? Like on the market right now, really? like if you're interested in even just kind of like fun gadgets, I think it, I think it can be like, I think it's a well thought out product, even if it's a niche audience. Do we remember,

do we all remember that like social media device that was just for Twitter, Facebook, Peak, I think it was called Peak and it had that jog reel. It was, it looked like a blackberry. It was just for like tweeting basically. That's just like throwing things at my brain to be like, you haven't thought about this in 15 years, but do you remember now? The veer, like, oh man, this is, this is a nostalgia trip. I completely forgot about this. How, how, so obviously you mentioned secondary device.

I know that the, in the market in spiel for this, it was a, it was a case if you can use it as your tertiary device, sorry, your primary device, not as a tertiary or secondary device, because it will potentially have 5G support, 4 and 5G support. Do you think there's enough of an interest of people wanting it as a secondary device? Because I kind of look at this and I think there are other devices out there. And I don't doubt that this probably will be of better quality, I guess, than some of the ones like the Uniherts Titan lineup, I think, tries to do the same thing. But they don't necessarily do the support very well. They don't necessarily do the purchase channels. Great.

They tend to launch through Kickstarter. This is more of a, I guess they have a potentially product that will come to market later in the year. like I'm intrigued to think why a secondary device why do you think this is going to work as a secondary device for people is it for if it's it for our generation who just want that nostalgia trip or is it for people who like I say want something different because I'm looking at it from wanting something different perspective and like I say it's old as new again we've we've kind of come full circle on the smartphone ecosystem that people want like lesser but capable handsets if that makes sense I don't I don't I don't mean for this to sound like a non-answer, but I wonder if this is a case of, and I'm not trying to like read into the minds of like Michael Fisher or anybody else on the clicks team, but like, is this a case of something more like what we've seen from like the new pebble team in terms of they have built a product that they would want to use and they hope there's a market for it and they hope that it's a success, but that they have started in this place of like, well, we want this. hopefully other people want it and we'll see where it goes. I think that's the approach they've taken. That was the approach that I felt like they took when I was getting the briefing at CES. Because it's, it is well thought out for what it is, but I agree with you.

It's not going to appeal to everybody, not 100% of smartphone users or even a majority of smartphone users are going to find an ease of use or utility out of a second device like this. So I don't mean to not answer your question, Damien, but like I wonder if this is almost like a proof. Like let's just see if there is a demand for this. And if there's not, then there won't be a clicks communicator too. Again, I just think that people just,

there's novelty initially, but eventually you just go back to your one device because people, do you have a lot of stuff to manage? That's true. Yeah. I think that's my only worry of this product is that how does it land long term?

Do people want a second, phone, do they want a second, they want a follow up to it? I mean, it kind of helps that, that I do think the team at Clicks have been in this, there's a lot of people who've been in and around this space, and I'm sure that Michael Fisher himself has been involved with the process and he's involved with the company, is he knows better than anyone how these things play out. And so I do wonder that they have the add-on MagSafe keyboard. I think that probably softens the blow a little bit. And that is a product that I am genuinely interested in. and I'm contemplating putting pre-order for to test that out for myself.

Just from an intrigued perspective, I think that that kind of makes a lot more sense. And I think for most people, that probably hits that middle ground. They get the keyboard. They get the experience. And they don't have to give up their features on their phone rather than switching for a feature phone, as it were. But yeah, it's just nice to see another player hit the space, regardless of whether, and I wish them all the best. If you guys allow me to get heady for just like 60 seconds, is it? Is it possible that the race that we've seen throughout this, basically this entire decade, right?

Like whenever, I guess like the light phone, the first light phone was announced. Yeah. This race towards, and of course all the digital well-being tools, this race towards minimalist phones or secondary phones or like basic devices that don't have all, you know, only have the essentials on it, right? Is it possible that everybody or like there is just this, this mass feeling of like discontent and and dissatisfactory. with not so much like current Android or current iOS, but more like the apps on your phone all feel like they are like clawing your attention at all times, right? Like they are just like throwing a million notifications at you and and, you know, if you thought the algorithms on social media were bad at the 2010s, like wait till you see it now and all

of this noise, right, is that like nobody's happy. So everybody's just like, I think I want something different than this, but nobody can commit to it because it is incredibly difficult to function in modern society without a fully equipped smartphone, right? Like, I mean, how many of these, how many of these, like, lightphone-esque products have we seen launch? And it's like, yeah, it's okay. But, like, you have to, you have to, like, use a laptop to call an Uber. You know what I mean? Like, it's just frustrating. Yeah. The second you said, light phone, you just unlock something in me. Okay, so let's get started. It's Abner and I trading back and forth. I wasn't thinking of the communication.

of the clicks communicator as a light phone thing until we just mentioned it. But now that you do, kind of annoys me. Fundamentary, people like their phones. And this, okay, this is to re-rigate. They hate their apps, though. I think that's what it is. They like their phones. They don't like the apps.

Yeah. To re-rategate, the digital well-being thing was such a big thing, like 2016, 2017, whatever. and then there's nothing about it now. It's over. All the features are still there, obviously, but they have not, after that initial wave from both Google and Apple, they haven't been updated in ages.

They've not been improved. The case of digital al-being is richly that has not changed since that initial push. And I remember... You're still in beta. No, yeah, that beta batch was annoying, but that's not neither here nor there. But, okay, what you're saying about apps, people don't like the apps, they like their phone.

I think people dislike some apps, but I don't think people have hard feelings about, let's say, their messaging app or I message or the phone app or the camera app. It's the idea of a light phone, it's, it's naive. We're not going back. his technology does not go back and I guess that's my overarching premise that we do not go back in the next to the progress and advancement

so yeah somebody else says something. I think it is like and I feel like I'm perfectly placed to give you an insight into this because I turned 38 not that long ago so I am an old elder statesman and I feel like in the last four to five years, I have clung to nostalgia like a time I never would have done previously.

Abner knows of my recent, and it's not recent, it's been a lifelong obsession with Pokemon, but I started getting into the cards not that long ago to kind of clamour for an era that I, that I've, there's long, long been lost in a lot of ways. Now I have the financial muscle to purchase the things I couldn't afford as a kid. I do feel like this, this hit, this will hit a certain generation of people more so than any other. And I feel like it, it, it, probably falls into a little, I think a tiny bit before my time. I think my generation, there were quite a few people who use BlackBerry and then there were a few people younger. I think I went straight to smartphones. I went from a slider Samsung phone. I can't remember what it was,

like a T-something, T-200, something along those lines, straight to a, I think it might be the original iPhone and then went to smartphone. That was it. My transition was, there was no middle ground, there was no BlackBerry in between, whereas I know a lot of people did that. They made that half step and especially people slightly, like I say, slightly younger who maybe didn't have a dumb phone, went straight to a Blackberry, and the BBM era, I feel like a lot is riding on that. And that's fine. I think if you can make yourself the king of that niche, there is probably a lot of money to be made in that space. And like you said, Abner, it does, it does feel like a bit like a light phone, but I guess it's in its own little category where you're not giving up

too much. Effectively, you're not giving up anything because it's Android. Or you're gaining a smaller screen, you're gaining potentially. I mean, I personally think that the lack of a more lenses, one camera lens is probably a good thing, inhibiting you, the illusion of choice means sometimes you make the wrong decision. And so I think maybe by stripping back to its rorest elements, it benefits this product. Yeah, but wouldn't you be so pissed if that was the only thing you had with you and you need to take a picture and the moment and end up being shit? Yeah. Ever's just airing out his grievances from his iPhone air.

I love my iPhone. I think, yes. I think when I was away in Japan recently, I think I was very annoyed at the fact that in some ways, if I'd have just taken my normal camera, I quite like the fact that with my pixel, I could zoom in, and yes, it doesn't look quite as good,

let's be completely honest as a full-frame camera, but at the same time, I had the benefit of all of my lenses in one pocket. If I'd have just used a dual lens ultra-wide and wide, I'd have been pissed off. But yeah, having all three, it feels like, an essential.

Now, you know, you know me for a long time, Abner. You know that I have been, since pixel added the telephoto, I have fervently defended the telephoto lens. And to not have that on a phone is a killer for me. I can't do it. I can never own a phone that doesn't have a telephoto lens. So that, yes, side device, I kind of don't see it. I think personally I'd rather go to the light phone.

I'd rather just get rid of everything. I don't want a halfway house. I need to go cold turkey. and this isn't the cold turkey phone. Let's hope it isn't a turkey when it launches. I'm very excited to see when that will be. We don't have a time frame. But there's a lot of good design decisions.

I like seeing good design, and this is good design from what I can see. The nostalgia point that you brought up, that I will give you that people do like nostalgia, but I don't think that's powerful enough to overpower the convenience. Yeah. Not for most people.

Most people don't want to carry two to fight. I mean, this is why everything got consolidated into the smartphone. I mean, look, Damien, I'm, I'm right there with you in the nostalgia plays. Like, I have, this is not a joke in my bookmarks bar. For like the last like eight months, there's been a modded iPod classic store just sitting there. You're waiting for me to like pull the trigger on like a $400 iPod classic that I do not need. Don't need. Like, like, but like that play is smart.

And God, you guys can't. I have not. able to stop thinking about how you're right the digital well-being tools haven't been touched in a decade and to a certain extent now it now that has been pointed out to me and they've always been so not only easy to bypass but also like annoying to set up they're they're annoying to set up yeah they are really easy to bypass basically no matter what you do with the setup process anyway and it it almost feels like both apple and google we're like look we've done the bare minimum to give people tools to like curb their own like experience but also like we get

we make money when they don't do that. So actually we don't care if you use them or not. They're there if you want them, but they suck and they're old. Like the idea that Google has not brought any amount of like Gemini, like, like even just the ability to like prompt it rather than having to like set, use those like awful menu navigations to use on digital well-being.

It's, it's so obvious to be now that it's been pointed out of like, of like there's, they don't want you to do that because it's better for you to sit on, you know, Instagram or whatever all night and like see ads, right? Like it's better for all of these companies.

No, the answer is not digital, okay, twas a fad, let's get that over with, with everybody cramming for a other time or the P powers it be cramming for that at the time. But I don't think, like, if you want to use the rest of your phone,

I know this seems harsh, but it's you have to be the one that wants to do that. Yeah. Like the digital tools are so easily bypassed that they're not a real obstacle. You have to make the effort to not use it

if you don't want to use it. But to just, I don't know, the consolidation devices and the stuff about the light phone, it's just, I'm not that I'm, I did like the E in concept, but I think they went away from that or whatever. It's like,

okay, you can make calls with a flip phone. Like that won't drive you crazy. But T9 typing is insane. nobody will do T9 typing. So maybe having a physical quality is like something that you'll be happy with. But I would say that most people are touch typists now. Yeah.

Yeah. How did the keyboard feel, Will, just one before we run a rapist? Totally fine. It's difficult to tell when you can't see what you're typing. Do you know what I mean? Like I don't know if I made typos by trying to type like a quick sentence. You know, like, hello, my name is Will or whatever. I usually type as a test.

you know so it's one of those things that I'll have to wait until I can get my hands on like a real test unit at some point but that said I should caveat by saying that I'm the sicko at once like an all touchscreen keyboard on my laptop okay see this is this is just a podcast for sickos the three of us we're all in the same boat you guys it's I don't think we can accept that that's horrendous but no it's yeah it's like it will break less it'll be an infinite canvas maybe you could long. It's plus haptic feedback. It could be good. This sounds bad to me, Abner, but I, as a mechanical keyboard fan, but I will, I will say, I will admit that I have been giving you shit for months on your, I don't like physical mice. I prefer a touchpad take. And then I went to see yes, and was my

first time using a MacBook air on a work trip. And I basically stopped using my mouse after day two, because I did not, I usually, I mostly use Windows and I did not realize how bad mouse support is on solid state. So, yeah. You know, I'll hold off. I'm just curious to see where it lands. I'm sure there has been a lot of positive response to this, which is always good. I think it helps that the face of this product is someone who's very well liked in the industry

and very well liked by Android fans as well. So we wish the Clicks team all the best. We'll hopefully see some more in the future. Genuine the Swins. Yes. And I believe it's sometime later this year. but so from one hardware loss to a hardware gain, there is one last thing I want to talk about to you guys.

This is dear to my heart. I'm sorry for bringing this up for stadia fans out there. But as of this week, that is it. Google has just eradicated their very last remnant of stadia. If you have a stadia control pad of any format, of any form factor, but I think there's only one form factor. That's a stupid thing to say. Probably one of the best controllers in terms of ergonomics.

maybe not repairability. Yeah, that's it. The tool that can convert your controller into a Bluetooth game pad is now no longer available through Google Direct. I have like two stadia boxes that are still shrink-laped

for whatever reason. Mine is not shrink-wrapped, but I have it. It's like a shelf like five feet away from me. It's still fully in the box. Just I have opened it. The colors are...

I don't think these are going to be collectors items, right? They're not collecting. No, nobody's going to ever want to buy me. Yeah, get these open and get those set up guide. Luckily, luckily for you, anyone who missed out the page that was, I think it was Stadier, Google.Stadier.com or maybe stadia.com, slash controller support or control or something like that.

Sorry, Will if I've ruined that for you. We'll put it in the show notes. It was supposed to finish in December just gone, December 31st, 2025. It had a little bit of an accessibility period just after the new year, but that's it now. as of January the 20th, this page 404s. So yeah, if you have a steady controller and you haven't done the Bluetooth update, that's it. But luckily there is a third-party tool out there

to support this with. So yeah, you can kind of still do it through GitHub for any unconverted controllers out there, so that's a good thing. But yeah, it's a sad state of affairs when I think one of Google's probably, it's weird, it was one of their best products So they didn't back correctly.

They didn't launch it correctly. They didn't back it correctly. I'm sad now. As of nostalgia, it's crazy to think how good stadia and ahead of it's time it was. And they just kind of flunked the landing, I guess. They should have kept this tool alive. That's my only take on this.

I don't know. Maybe they should have YouTube to it. The people who actually know media that they did stadia. I don't know. There's definitely an opportunity to miss one day about Stadia and where it went wrong. But yeah.

Yeah. Now you'll make me sad. I'm sorry for, I'm sorry to somber episode. Yeah, it's a little bit too early two years after the service. No,

I just, I more mean Stadia than anything because imagine, imagine if Stadia was still kicking and then all of a sudden it was like, looking down the barrel of like $800

consoles and, and impossible to build PC components. And it's like, I'm not saying it would be a success, but it was, Would it at least be an option? Bring it back.

Could they ever bring it back? I want to say, yeah. In my heart, in my heart, I want to say, yeah, in my head, I'm saying they can't. It will be a disaster. I think the biggest problem with Stadia for me was the fact that they had this opportunity over COVID and kind of everyone was locked at home. And they fumbled that opportunity. And that was the way to get people involved.

But at the same time, as you say, Will, I think they were so ahead of the time in terms of the product they had available to them, that people's internet connection still technically haven't caught up. I'm lucky. I've always had a gigabit where I lived here in the UK in North of England. But if you have a gigabit internet connection and a server nearby, you were flying. It was second to none. It was almost like having a PC in the same room as you. But yeah. Okay, not to just drag this out. It's because, but all the thing that's happening with the, Google has something called genie, where instead of VEO, where you make a video, you generate.

a video, you can generate a video and then you can play inside it. It becomes a game. A basic thing you can explore. That was one of the original ideas of like programmatic gaming in Gemini where you, like, the early, I forgot what their first party studio was, but they were really working into that kind of stuff and now it's happening and it requires so much less work to do so. So I don't think. Okay, I don't know.

YouTube, they are doing, what are the YouTube games called the Playables? Yeah, playables. I was going to come play stacks for some reason, but that's games stacked or something on. They are doing like simple, like, candy crushed rebel, well, it's more than simple. It's a candy crush dynamic level games.

And they're having YouTube, creators make them, which I find really interesting. The idea that that's the audience, the early access audience are giving it to YouTube creators and then using their brand awareness to push it out. So the thing with these playables, on an infinite time scale, like the technology will get good enough where you can just make a full game from a prompt. So I wonder if YouTube knows media, they know content. I wonder if there is such a natural line of progression

where making everybody a game studio and having the cloud infrastructure to support it and the AI smarts to make it possible, where the stadia comes back in one form or another and we end up back where we started. Yeah, I truly hope that I truly hope that will be the case. I think, yeah, it was a product that was just a little bit ahead of its time. It flew a bit too close to some in some ways.

Maybe not enough. I don't know. Also needed better branding. I hope if it comes back, it's got better branding. Stadia is not a very good name. It doesn't mean anything. No, not really, unfortunately. A group of stadium, I believe, is the...

But what does that have to do with gaming? Who knows? Who knows? I think that kind of who knows kind of echoes our sentiments towards what's going to happen for the rest of a year. Maybe we'll lose some more players, maybe gain a few more, hopefully.

But yeah, it's so endlessly fascinating in this industry that we live and breathe in. And I just want to say thanks guys for joining me again. It's been a fun one this time talking all things new and old and a bit of nostalgia bait in there for the elder statesmen among us, me included.

And yeah, stay tuned for more riveting nostalgia bait that we've got throw in your ears every single week. But yeah, thanks for joining me, guys, and we'll speak to you in the next one. 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.