Pixelated - The VIP Pixel Drop

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Welcome to episode 58 of Pixelated, a podcast by 9to5Google. This week, we talk all about the Android 16 launch, June 2025 Pixel Feature Drop, 16 QPR1 Beta 2, and iOS 26 with Liquid Glass. Subscribe YouTube Podcasts Pocket Casts Spotify Apple Podcasts Overcast Hosts Abner Li Damien Wilde Read more Every single new feature in Android 16 [Video] June 2025 Feature Drop: Pixel VIPs widget, Gboard AI sticker creator, Camera help Everything new in Android 16 QPR1 Beta 2 [Gallery] iOS 26 vs. Android: Liquid Glass & Material 3 Expressive, Circle to Search competitor, more   Listen to more 9to5 Podcasts 9to5Mac Happy Hour Electrek The Buzz Podcast Space Explored Rapid Unscheduled Discussions Feedback? Drop us a line at [e-mail], leave a comment on the post, or to our producer.

So Abner, I think we've had a busy week. Let's just put it that way. Android 16, again, we've talked about it at length here on the podcast before. We had a little bit of a feature drop. In fact, let's get into some of the feature drop things because that's kind of nice and little interesting extras that we never really technically know ahead of time. So let's get into it.

Yeah, so I guess the feature drop is three big things. Pixel VIPs, which is a new widget that will. lets you, it's basically you can think of it as elevated favorites. You access it only from your home screen. It replaces the favorite contacts widget. And when you tap it, it slides a sheet over your home screen, a full screen interface that gives you important dates, like anniversaries or birthdays, if they're upcoming, a map of their location sharing, like the weather where a person is.

notes, I think it's the most interesting feature. You can make small text memos and stuff about people. So I think the way I can immediately see using this is, right now I have a Google Keep Note whenever there's something I have to talk to a person, a friend with in person the next time I see them. So instead of like this put notes, I can just put in one place. And I think the weirdest feature of VIPs is this. like suggestions about things to do,

like movies to watch, restaurants to go to, a bit weird. I like that idea. It's weird that you say that because I was going to say, I quite like that idea. I'm always the worst of like, I am probably one,

and you probably understood this at I. Oh, when we were together that I am not great at choosing a restaurant. And I think for me it's a case of like, I've been somewhere so many times, you know, like kind of, I've made so many mistakes.

I think it's nice. In principle, I like it. But it's my, I don't know how, committed Google is to this particular out this particular feature in this broader feature in this I don't know it does I don't know if it's like a priority for them I'm I I don't know I'd assume they're sourcing it from

Google TV the movie stuff and TV show stuff hopefully the location recommendations you can enter the cuisines you like are based in Google Maps so in one regard I'm sure the underlying data is fine. But I, this, this could be so much more. It, I don't know, it feels like an old Google Now feature. That would, I'd probably feel better about being done in Google Discover today because that would be a lot more eyeballs, a lot more attention to make sure it's right.

Instead, it's a subset of a subset feature for pixel owners only. That's my thing about it. I'm absolutely eager to give it a shot in terms of I'm putting in my preferences for a friend and seeing how it goes from there. I like, yeah, I think I'm a bit like you where you mentioned a subset of a subset. That probably, to me, stands out the most in terms of like it feels like, I don't want to say missed opportunity because there's all the opportunity in the world for them to turn it into something a bit greater.

But I don't know why they don't just have a friends and family application and just basically turn this into a friends and family application a little bit like the, it's the one on iOS, I think there's one on iOS, I guess, but you could kind of all integrate it better into the contacts application. Yeah, this is, how they're doing it is so weird. So, there is a pixel VIP service that does not have, it's not, it's not its own app icon or anything like that. There's the background service powering it that was released to the Play Store. The interface for setting it up is Google Contacts. You, you either, you're either, go to the Google Contacts app, the organized tab,

and tap Pixel VIPs, or you place the widget, a Google Contacts widget, called VIPs on your home screen. It's, it's, yeah, I'd also feel better if Google made, just made Google contacts this, but I don't think, I don't think, I don't know, the idea is promising, but I don't think there's enough bone, there's enough, maybe this is a,

testing ground and if it works on pixel, maybe they begin to Google contacts. But it starts, it's specifically small scale how they're starting it right now. The other big aspect of this is it can show your last WhatsApp message, your vast Google message and your last phone call. It acts as a direct shortcut to the conversation and you tap it. That's kind of interesting. I like that. I think it's good. Again, I think it's organization. You mentioned it. Sometimes you do forget things that you've spoken about with your friends and the last time you spoke to them. I think as someone who's a bit of a forgetful text messenger, I think this might be quite good,

you know, even just speaking to your parents, like for me, it's a case of like being a bit more existential. It's more a case of like, you don't know how long your parents are going to be there. So I think sometimes it's nice to, to potentially have something on your home screen,

which reminds you, oh, I should check that. I can kind of see, do you know what I mean? Like, I think it's like, I think as we grow older,

we kind of don't really actually realize that we have pets. I'm like this anyway, I'm definitely outing myself here. God, this is existential. I didn't think you're going all the way there, but yes, it's like it's not. I think it's a nice thing to think about, like, if we think of it like that, in a positive sense, if that makes sense. The underlying premise is people. It's, I don't know, I'm just seeing this through the lens of all of Google's previous

social efforts. It, I'm not, I won't go as far back as Google Plus, but Google has tried to be social, Android, that's the. there is that conversations widget that you can press on your home screen. I think it was what Android 12 era. There was this big focus on people and not conversations. There was this big focus

on that widget that you could at your home screen Android was elevating people conversations above regular notifications. I'm not, I've honestly forgotten whether they're still doing that

but it's this big focus. There was a big focus and it required developer buy-in. And they kind of got that because they forced messaging apps to do it. The home screen has been untouched. That home screen widget, this effort to do people,

to be socially, has been untouched as far as I recall since Android 12 or maybe it was 11th year, I'm not sure. Big focus didn't go anywhere. Pixel VIPs. It is, again,

a pixel-specific feature. but it feels like the rate the stab at that. And again, to what you were saying, the friends and family keeping them top of mind, I think that people really, that's something that people want technology to help them with. I'm wondering whether this is the best use case of it or whether this becomes a big focus in the Gemini assistant

when that truly comes to fruition. The use case is absolutely there. I'm just curious about the best way to surface it. is what that is. No, 100%. So that's the first just kind of moving on for that because we're kind of really

like we've torn that one to shreds a little bit. I think visually looks great. I think visually looks really, really good. So second in line for the feature drop. And this is one that weirdly, I don't know if anyone was listening to this. I think I called this about almost a year ago that Pixel Studio should come to Gboard

and this is it. It's happening. So we'll punch one on my punch card for me. I have, I made it happen. I kind of made it happen, I think. I manifested it and it's where it needs to be. I think Pixel Studio in G-Bord is the perfect place for it. Yeah.

This is rolling out right now, right? I don't have this on any of my devices right yet, but I'm looking forward to this arriving. Very very soon. So G-board, the underlying web, it gets the expressive media pickers, emoji stickers, whatever. They've been redesigned

with a new KLSL interface. One of those new tabs in the bottom is Pixel Studio. It shows you all your past stickers, the old way of doing it, the old integration from last year, was it?

That's gone. It's now this new dedicated tab that's quite prominently after emojis. So yeah, you can create a sticker and it gives you a prompt field and you can theme it like emojis like set a mood

or you can browse your photo gallery and then for a sticker that removes the background. It is, like you said, it's a good idea. It's one of the more, if you don't pixel,

use Pixel Studio naturally, like this putting it in Gboard is what to encourage people to do so. So yeah, promising. I think it also doesn't take you away from application you're in and that's one of my reasons why I always thought it would be best

in a keyboard effectively just type from where you need to type I'm excited to try that one out like I say because Pixus Studios pretty solid in the grand scheme of things okay so that's

two of the biggest components a few of the components are kind of a little bit smaller right but I guess let's get into the accessibility one first because I'm all for Google adding accessibility features

I think this is great I think it just shows there is at least a level of care and duty of care anyway to the people who use phones who are not necessarily as able-bodied or maybe have hearing impairments, vision impairments. I really, really like that Google does highlight this. Yeah, which everybody will lose it. You'll get there. So yeah, magnifier. This is, so the magnifier is a pixel app that, as you zoom in. I think everybody has some equivalent feature, iOS, Samsung, I assume.

But yeah, this is, honestly it has become like a standard thing for OS to have at this point. But yeah, pixel magnifier. You can easily zoom in. Last year, the feature it got was, after you take a picture, you can search for any

text in it. The new one is it's live search. You can enter a text, a phrase, a word, and then you can pan your phone on a real-life scene. And when it finds something, you get a haptic vibration, a buzz, and it highlights it on screen so you can see where to go or you can read from afar. This is rolling out as an app update.

Again, foldables are still not supported for whatever reason, annoyingly, just phones. But yeah, it's a good accessibility feature. And paired with the camera app is getting an education hub, which is basically just tips and examples on how to use each mode. that's probably a good idea we haven't seen the UI we haven't seen the update yet so hopefully it's not too intensive a UI

yeah but I'm excited to see that I tried out the magnifier feature works great really really nice obviously it's OCR isn't it in real time it does seem to pick up text very very very quickly and the haptic feedback is considering how good the haptics are on the Pixel 9 series it's like another bonus but

the other one that I think is really, really cool is for people with hearing aids. So, like, with hearing aids, there's that extra support. This is obviously partially and mostly powered by Android 16. So this is for low-energy devices, like specifically hearing aids in this instance, and it works effectively like fully integrated. I think this is fantastic. Like headphone controls.

Yeah. I kind of want this for headphone controls, too. it's basically it's native controls that give you native controls you can switch microphones if you're on phone calls that kind of stuff yeah it's a good these are audio devices that people use and as you've seen at Apple

turning airports into assistive hearing devices we'll see whether Google follows it's honestly the rest of the industry should also follow this approach. So yeah. Yeah, that's, they're the big things, all right. They're the big things in this QParoid. There's a couple of other things like that. The other thing, yeah, with the Android 16 update on a pixel phone specifically, battery health,

battery health capacity, which represents how much remaining life your battery has made official. It's only on the pixel 8A and above. I know some pixel 8 and 8 pro owners a bit. That's unfortunate for them. But I'd probably assume that that's when they decided to implement something different in terms of manufacturing or when they made the necessary steps to allow this. I don't know, maybe if it was a hardware change or something like that or firmware or whatever. That's probably why it's only 8A and above. But yeah, when your capacity is at 100%, we have a green chat mark.

If it goes down to 80, Google says it's reduced, and they recommend that you think about getting a new battery to improve your day-to-day with your pixel battery. Yeah, again, I don't know anyone out there who's actually seen what that looks like because most people have that green checkmark, and luckily a lot of my pixel devices seem to have 100% by the looks of it. So that's a good sign. Yeah, they're just kind of rounding out what's happening in that feature job.

Satellite SOS coming to Australia, recorder app has a few more AI summaries in French and German now, which is nice. Clear voice, which I think this one's kind of under the radar. Clear voice is not something I've used all that drastically, but when I have used it, it has worked really well. This is now available on the Pixel 8 series. So if you use recorder app, you can clear up some of your recordings, listen to people a bit more clearly, which is always nice. And the only other one on top of that that rounds this entire thing out for feature drop, expressive captions, Canada, UK and Australia. So a few more English dialects, which makes sense,

no other international ones at this point in time. But yeah, I'm not the kind of person who uses expressive captions, but all this to me is very, I'd say accessibility focus, the second latter half of the feature dropper is accessibility focus. And again, I think Google does this really well. I kind of have a feeling that the pixel VIPs, that's the, and the stickers, that's what they're advertising the most. It kind of seems to me that if I remember correctly,

the Play Store listing had a date, like the pixel launch the date of August. To me, this seems like something that was brought forward from possibly the Pixel 10. That being said, this has been in development since July of 24. This has been a long time coming. But I wonder if this was brought up, either because maybe the Pixel 10 had, it would have gotten missed in the fray or they needed something major for the feature drop,

but it kind of seems like it was moved, elevated ahead of time. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this all coincides with the Android 16 release, but that's, I mean, like I say, we've talked to death about that. It's not a massively huge update. It's only about 30 or 40 changes in terms of the overall UI.

But at the same time, Google decided, hey, we're in the shadow of WWDC, Apple's just unveiled their next iteration of iOS, which is iOS 26, which I think your name is terrible, considering it's released late this year, and it's 2025, go figure.

But yeah, QPR, which is, QPR one, which we're expecting in September time, potentially, or potentially launch with the Pixel 10. We finally got to see beta two of that release.

Like, is it just short of a month from I? I actually, it's way much shorter. It's, it was a, three weeks. weeks, three and a bit weeks?

Yeah, pretty fast turnaround, but made the two, the clear focus is on, well, there are two queer focuses, I think. The one that most people care about is refining T03 expressive. More sliders have been updated to new style. I think the biggest change is the new search part, the bottom of pixel launcher. It's been redesigned. It'll take some adjustment. Yeah

Any other tweaks that you've noticed Or did you? Yeah, I think I think one of the weirdest ones straight away was seeing the Wi-Fi and cellular status barren icons flipped back to the way that we were used to. Yeah, that was strange. Like, I think, sorry,

they've gone the other way around. I find that really, really odd. Like, why have they moved the Wi-Fi to that right position as opposed to the traditional side of things. I mean, Google's going to Google, aren't they? They're going to do things the way they want to do it, but kind of instantly stands out

when you're used to something being in a certain way for a certain length of time. I think, I mean, obviously, features aside, there isn't a huge, great deal of extras here. It's just like, say, like you've just said, have no refinement. Well, except the connected displays, which you'll get to in a bit.

Yeah, yeah, I was about to say, connected displays is probably about the biggest addition to this entire, entire update. And I think it kind of speaks more broadly to what are we going to be doing with our phones in the next four to five years in terms of like, is a connected display thing, does it work? Is it something that I don't mean does it works? Yeah. Yeah. We've, so this was previewed at I.O. a bit. But the idea is you connect your phone to an external monitor and you get a desktop version of Android. It builds off a,

desktop windowing, which official said was coming later, launching on Android 16 tablets later this year. That has all been finalized. I'm curious what Tabit gets it first. I can only assume it's Samsung because there are no rumors of a new pixel tablet or anything like that.

I mean, the press images have shown the pixel tablet. it is for intents of purposes. I know it's a placeholder probably, but it's a bit of a shame that the pixel tablet appears not to be capable of doing this because it could have been capable

of the connected displays since that pixel 7 G2, tensor G2 generation of hardware doesn't have what, HDMI out or the spray port out. So yeah, the desktop windowing, I'm curious how big a moment

that will be when it launches. I'm much, I'm not sure if it's a new device or they're referring to an existing update when QPR 1 or QPR 2 hits we'll have to see where that's going but the connected displays part this is still in developer preview

it's far in the future I don't we've talked about next I don't think people want to connect their phones via wires to displays I don't think I mean work from home means that people have more external displays

isn't ever, but I just don't think the phone as the center of your desktop computing life makes that much sense. It's the next thing, a discussion we've had at nauseam, but I don't know, I just, I think people are familiar with the idea of they have laptops. I think you'd use a laptop over a connected phone. Yeah, the only thing I can potentially see from this is is potentially the kind of people who would use mouse and keyboard for certain games.

Then again, I think it's more for like emulation personally. They have not talked about games whatsoever. Like, it's productivity. They're reining so hard into just like work and productivity here. Does it speak volumes more to potentially what's going to happen with Android in terms of ChromeOS? Like that's the only way I'm trying to frame this is that Or like I can see that Google would frame this

Is that this is the first steps to kind of showcase What potentially an Android based Chrome OS replacement is going to be like Okay, the UI, yes, agree that this is the UI for it This is if they do a full Android replacement of Chrome OS We're seeing the beginnings of the UI Again, the desktop windowing thing on Tabits is finalized The connected displays just takes it a step further but they're still going to sell Android laptops.

They're not going to say you bring your phone. Okay, if Google were really bold, sure, they'll do this next thing. They'd say, just use your Android phone as an extension. Maybe they sell a custom dock or whatever, or they get Samsung to or partners to make a dumb laptop that's just a screen, a keyboard that has no processing. If that happens, I'll radically change my mind in terms of if they're going to put a commitment in,

sure, as the future of computing this they think in the fullness of the center. If they do that, if they present a strong vision for it that makes sense, I stand corrected. But I don't think they do that because the concept, I just think people will buy

dedicated laptops at the end of the day. Yeah. I just, I think it's almost like we're so far down the laptop route that this is something that probably would have been really valuable during that era of COVID when people were locked at home and people were buying Chromebooks because a lot of the Chromebooks that were selling were underpowered compared to a lot of the phones at the time. I think that's the era of Snapdragon Triple Eight, maybe, maybe 8 Gen 1. I can't remember actually such a long time ago. We're kind of at a point where that paradigm has been left behind a little bit. I think if it if I don't think

Apple will ever do it because I think that's that will be the turning point if you have an M-series chip in an Apple phone which is potentially as powerful as some laptop chips like they only do desktop mirroring with an iPhone I don't think they'll kill Mac they're not going to kill Mac yeah this is it I don't think they'll kill their iPad line as well because the iPad line is a large screen and you can do display out now I don't think Apple takes the risk of almost dumbing down their product line up to potentially have your phone plugged into a screen whereas on Android we can kind you can kind of do it

because there is enough there is a very small subset of users will do this sorry the Chromebook like they could can't buy they probably they probably are canvising the Chromebook

yeah like cannibalizing Chromebooks is probably not a big deal because I feel like the Chromebook market share has completely dropped off since what? 20201, 2021 we had that huge level of growth yeah it's again

I just don't again, like if Google has that vision of like phone at the center of everything, you connect it to, you power your primary work, desktop experience based on your phone, they have a full vision of that. I will give them, I will give them that a deep thought. But I still think as seen with Android tablets, with keyboard extensions, I still think they want to sell you a dedicated device. I think if they're pushing a Chromebook replacement, it would be a, it looks like an iPad Pro. It's a tabbit with a keyboard that you include in the box or whatever,

a keyboard dock case, whatever. I think that is still more inherently familiar than the idea of having your phone be that extension. Plus, another thing, Google's a crowd company. They just want you. You can access all their services perfectly photos, drive, docks, calendar, email, whatever

with any browser. It's, I think, building out or making a big push, making a big commitment to the phone as the center, that requires so much capital that they can't have an asset.

They need to be fully invested in this future. And I don't think they're there with the context of Android Tabits, Chromebooks, where Apple is going to stay, where Microsoft's going to stay. I just, the concept feels so unfamiliar to people. I think there will be a lot of people out there, and some of you out there listening will probably really enjoy the opportunity to potentially use your phone as the mainstay and plug it into an external screen.

There is a novelty factor in it. Again, Dex is popular with a certain subset of Samsung users. is it popular with the broader kind of people who buy Samsung phones? Probably not. So I think in some respects, just catering for the true power user is nice. I think that I'm, we both sound like it would be negative here, but I think we're going to dispel some of that straight away. Doing this is a good thing.

Having this opportunity or option within Android 16 QPR update, QPR one update is a good thing. Again, I don't know who it's, I don't personally see anyone I know who's going to use this, but in a pinch, if I really had to, hey, I'll do it, I'll use it. And I think maybe that's probably the use case that is going to be the most prominent, people who are going to use the phone in a pinch to potentially view an email, full screen, not on a tiny little display. So in that aspect, it's quite nice.

I know a lot of USBC displays are available nowadays. That's, they're getting more and more common. So, yeah, I can maybe see it as a second screen thing. You want it for power using WhatsApp, power using Google messages, power using some other applications that are only on your phone maybe but like you say it can't be half-assed it has to be they have to go a whole hog and if they're working with samsung to kind of refine the experience and make sure it's a lot more decks like i will save full judgment until i see the stable release and if it's still in beta even though it's during a stable

release then no i'm sure i'm i think it's still another year at least i don't think like the desktop windowing was like a q p or one of the 15 q prs I think this is a good year. I don't think it launches by the end of this year. And yeah, we'll see where this goes. They do have an opportunity to do something different with computing. If we what we think is happening, the Chrome OS is happening. They have room to do something.

But I almost hope they go the safe route with Android laptops. truly conventional Android laptops rather than go all the way and try to introduce a new paradigm of computing. Yeah. And I think that kind of like is a good way to finish that. But let's talk a little bit about Android 16 QPR 1 in the context of what Apple has just done with iOS 26. Because I think it kind of puts into perspective.

We were really excited ahead of time of when we saw, when we were able to test it while or I.O. using QPR one. I think there's a lot of things to love about what Google has done. And I think when you go and look at the other side of the fence, it puts, again, like I say, it puts it into perspective what Google is doing with material three expressive versus what Apple wants to do with their liquid, is it liquid glass? Liquid glass design methodology, design language. It's Liquid iOS 26, as you said, naming change. People get used to it. But liquid glass is the. idea that content to Apple is the most important thing, people's content, and they want to make

UI exist on top of it. So we could, they, okay, let's take the bottom bar, for example. Right now, bottom bar is an edge-to-edge thing. Apple is replacing it with a pill-shaped layer above, let's say a web page or photos or whatever. So this pill, it's a pill shaped. You've seen what Google does are pills. It looks like a blurring effect. I think that's the immediate thing that people think, oh, they're just putting a UI and then blurring it over.

It's a bit more than that. There's a bit more nuance to it. And then of Apple wants that to act like a physical piece of glass over, let's say, a piece of paper. To me, it reminds me of a crystal or bubble. When you're viewing something through a bubble or crystal, it's bulbous, like the edges, have some play. You have to use it.

Go to an Apple store when this comes out. I think everybody should fear it. It's more than just blurring, is my immediate impressions of it. And I've been using it on an iPad. had. I, okay, so I understand some of the reasoning for it. I absolutely detest the design changes that Apple has made.

I think from an accessibility standpoint for a company that claims to be so high on accessibility, there's some things that I just do not understand. I know it's technically a beta phase and I've tried to, I run in it on the 16 pro max, which I'm going to take a look at right now. There are some little things that just do not make design sense for me. It feels like change for the sake of change a little bit. So for instance, quick sentence panel, I think I'm still not necessarily sold on the slightly frosted glass look even in material for expressive, but it works. It's something that nearly every Android OEM has gone for at this point in time.

Utility-wise, they're both pretty much the same now. Quick settings is pretty much the same across both platforms. But getting rid of the true frosted glass background blur means that if you have a really bright white back. background, obviously the on-screen text on iOS is white in this section. It makes it really difficult to see what's going on. So that was the first thing that struck me straight away. Everything else feels, and I know you mentioned they wanted to do glass so that it's like, oh, the content is king, if that makes sense. I should disagree with that. I think what they've done is they've effectively, they're saying we want to get so far out of the way, and I think this is

probably derived from the way Vision Pro has been as effective, the design process. They want it to blend into the background, but by doing that, it makes it infuriating to use. There's certain little elements that should do just are not nice. Like, it looks like something straight out of a dodgy or really cheap Android icon pack from the mid-2010s. It's just, to me, I'm not sole. I don't understand it. I think you need to have contrast on a phone.

And I get it. We're not at the point where you can bleed it into the background and not have certain aspects of your phone effectively. hidden from view because everybody knows how to use it. You still have to obey smartphone usage paradigms and it feels like they've kind of said, no, we're going to throw them out the window and you're going to like it, whether you like it or not, if that makes sense. The only saving grace is there is a toggle in the settings application called reduced transparency. I've turned that on. It makes it a lot more palatable.

even then some of the clear areas, it just looks, how would I describe it? Uninviting. Just pull it. I'm going to say it, pull it thought out. I think when you compare to what Google have done, they've made things,

the interactivity is a core component in material three expressive. It's a company, to me it feels a complete opposite with iOS 26. They've almost said, we don't want you to interact with things. We want the content, like you say, to be front and center, but the problem is you still need to interact with things. I don't know.

Maybe I'm in the minority day. Maybe I'm in the minority there. Interfaces and control should be regible. They are, you interact with them. There's no zero state. You need to touch a bottom bar. You need to go to settings. You need to touch a fab.

they can't be ignored. And again, I do think that over the course of the summer, a lot of this will be toned down, and I'm sure subsequent versions will refine the OS. This is Apple's UI for the next 10 years. So I think they need to make it work, obviously. But yeah, to that point, I do think material-tree expressive is, I don't know, a bit more conventional, I'd say.

Yeah, evolutionary, I would call it. Yeah, in that's a... I can see what the name. Yeah, an evolution is the way to describe it, whereas I think Apple has reached this point where they can't... I mean, I do think they could. I think this is just a case of, let's just throw everything out, let's just start from scratch.

And if they think that, to me, to me, I know this is a wild theory. to me they've it almost feels like AR as AR kind of the concept of AR and XR has affected the way they've designed this this UI I do that my theory my theory is because like you say it's almost like things are clear you're looking through your phone it's a big piece of glass it's a piece of glass anyway doesn't need to be any more glassy I think that makes it uninviting colds and not sterile because that's not the way to describe it in fact it probably is to be honest with you.

There are little things which I think, and I feel like I like to give Apple credit where it's due. Their previous design languages have always been pretty consistent. They've always said, we're going to go down this route, we're going to do it. And if they credit where... It's been the past 10 since, what, iOS 7. It's been a pretty bland. It's a different way to put focus on the content is by making the UI so consistent.

and honestly I do think that iOS apps are a bit bowling visually, especially once you've got in dynamic color, I just expect color everywhere compared to what iOS has been doing for, again, since iOS 7. So I think what the interesting thing that Apple is doing, they've put on every single OS of this. they have macOS tvOS watchOS ipadOS vision pro they've put this on everything and i think that's i don't think that's something google can necessarily say because they don't i mean i mean chrome

books have never ended up looking like material free expressive on phones it's not the case maybe that will change once android is powering everything in full um i don't know i don't know what material tree expressive look like on the headset. We'll see. But I think that's something interesting that Apple is doing. And I think to me, the UI thing, I appreciate more from iOS 26, we could grasp instead of the glass itself. It's how they've redesigned controls so that they emanate from your finger.

Once you tap, that's where the control, that's where the dialogue box appears instead of like at the bottom as a full-screen sheet. I think that's something that Android should probably pick up less full-sheet, full-screen sheets and more put it next to your finger. That was interesting. But, yeah, this is, it's another interesting thing is how this is happening in the same year. How did Apple and Google arrive at the same point that they're redesigning, they're introducing design languages for the far future in the future,

in the same year. That's kind of amusing. It is weird, isn't it? I feel like maybe Apple has finally caved into a little bit of chrism that things haven't changed drastically. And it kind of is weird that Google can do the design. I mean, it isn't, let's be completely honest, material for expressive is more of a, like I said, refinement. It's more polishing.

I mean, they haven't polished it so much that everything's gone see through, like liquid glass, but they've polished it to a point in which they're learning from what they've done with Material U, which I think was very well received. Even from people on the Apple side of the fence, they really think it looks a bit more modern. I think they've taken that. They've made the right refinements. There's some things that still need to be done.

I don't want Android to become mediocre because I think from 13, sorry, 14 to around about 15, it did feel a little bit like maybe they were gearing up for this long term, but it definitely it felt like things were becoming a bit stale. I think what Apple has done is, they've heard criticisms. They've made this, they've said, we're going to go, well, let's try something completely different. If they've been wanting to do this for a long time, it's strange. I think it's weird that Aero in the Windows Vista area is now old is new again.

What, 2007 era, so what, 16 years, probably, yeah, the original iPhone release, maybe they wanted to do this initially. I'm not really sure. I maybe didn't have the competency to do it at the time. But yeah, it is interesting as well that they've gone down this design route as opposed to leaning more into AI like they did last year. That's faltered a little bit, whereas Google can do both. So it was my original point.

They've done a little bit of redesign quite drastic in some areas. And then also they can have a really, really big component of AI as well, and Gem and I and I'm going to do to the smartphone paradigm. I think that's going to do more than, as we were talking about, desktop version, desktop integration or desktop replacement, whether you want to call it. I think it's a fascinating time. It almost feels like Apple, they dominate the US market, right? They dominate the premium space. Pixel is probably never going to catch up. Like, let's be completely honest, it probably is never going to ever reach the same level of market share.

But if they can chip away slowly, they can build a pretty substantial user base who likes the products for what they offer. I think this is probably one of those times where we could potentially see in come upgrade time, a lot of people looking over. If Apple is steadfast in what they're doing and they don't want to make changes,

they don't turn it down, I think there could genuinely be some people looking over at this side of the fence and thinking, do you know what? I kind of like the idea of my phone not dictating to me how it looks so drastically. I want something a little bit more custom to me.

I think that could be something that happens. probably sooner rather than later, to be honest. And yeah, I think that probably sums up where we're at with iOS 26, Android 616 QPR1. If you haven't already downloaded the latest beta, it runs pretty nicely. I think it runs pretty nicely.

Yeah, 16 is nice as well. I mean, it's not a huge update. Yeah, penultimate beta as well for that next release. And we're excited. We'll do a deep dive into that. I think, yeah, it's been a busy week. There's been a lot of things happening, particularly software heavy as well this time around. But yeah, next time we might be talking about some other things, hopefully.

I mean, we always love talking Android here anyway. So I'll say thanks for joining me, Abner. It's always fun to talk to you about this kind of stuff because I think we get into the weeds a little bit more so than some people out there. And it's always interesting to, I mean, hey, I use Apple products. I have more to say about Pix. I have more to say about that. Awesome.

Well, we'll talk about it again in future when it starts rolling out. and we can use it properly. I'm excited to see what it looks like because I have birthdays coming up this month and it will be really, really handy. But yeah, thanks for listening, guys. This has been pixelated and we'll speak to you very, very soon.

Bye.