Google Pixel 5 Material Mystery... By Lew Later

It was Google Pixel day google event day. We did the stream the live stream, and actually you can go back and watch it on to unbox therapy channel. If you want a little companion to watch the uh. Well, all the happenings of the event, it showcases a few new devices, a few new features in the software that are going to roll out to other devices, something stood out to me, and it actually stood out to others as well, and it was around the Google Pixel 5. We were really curious about what the construction the build material was going to be on the pixel 5. We knew it was going to be plastic on the 4a 5g.

It had been plastic on the 4a and the budget models, but here with the pixel 5, we were looking at uh 700 bucks at 6.99, and so the assumption was that some other material was going to be in use. Then we saw the colors. Then we saw the speckling. Then google went on to tell us that the device is going to have both wireless charging and reverse wireless charging, at which point I had to scratch my chin. Yes, because normally you're not doing wireless charging through anything metallic you're not doing wireless charging through aluminum, but then they seem to imply it was some sort of aluminum.

It's also got the weather component yeah. We don't know for sure how they've done this. Is there, a section near, say, uh the charging region that is carved out from the metallic portion to allow for a pass-through? Is that possible it's possible, but then what's it filled in with, because it looks so seamless, yeah, yeah anyway, many people have questions either way. I think it's interesting that this year, if you want any color other than white or black, you have to go for the premium model, there's no fun at the other models. I do like the green that they went with.

Also, we were struggling to figure out which type of green it was. We got the official name afterwards, so just to put it all to rest and yeah. We got called out, so everyone can take a deep can take a breath. It's sage, sorta sage, which they love, putting the sorta piece in there all the time, but yeah we're going to have to wait and take a look at this thing. I'm sure there's going to be tear downs and people can find out, or I'm we're just going to touch it and figure out what it is and, of course, plop it on the wireless chargers that are around here, I'm a big wireless charging guy.

Is it worth the premium price, maybe not for everyone, but it is a curiosity going forward. Maybe they, oh, they did say specifically 100 recycled aluminum. So how did they do? It will? Is this uh some sort of material that we don't know some sort of modified aluminum yeah? I don't think I don't think google, both plastic and metal, okay, somehow all right, then you got to go in they go in there and they kind of like scratch. It and see. Look I don't know, but if it is, it would be the first aluminum phone, I'm aware of having had wireless charging.

We see it all the time with glass. We see it all time with plastic, but the pixel 5 in my book. It's the first one to bridge it's the first metallic. Is it the coating? Does the coating somehow change the behaviors? I don't know well we're going to find out, but they say it's aluminum recycled, aluminum uh, the next standout thing I know you're huge. This is a huge willy dew moment.

Uh go back one. Maybe you didn't get the other story. Did you skip two ahead? There we go uh. No! Actually it was the next one. That's a willy do feature, but this feature is interesting too also came from the event extreme battery saver, which is not going to be exclusive to only the new pixel phones, but will also roll out to the previous pixel phones via software update.

So people with old pixels could, I suppose, celebrate this fact now many manufacturers have some form of battery saving included inside their OS that they do all kinds of fancy things to sort of trim down the battery consumption. In Google's case, they are claiming 48 hours of operation will on a single charge, with the battery saving functionality. So that way that would mean well you go to bed you wake up, you use it the whole next day, because I don't know what you I. It may be an it's a camping trip or something like this, and you're not going to be near an outlet, and you're, not using your phone a lot, but for security purposes. You want to have it ready to go if you need it yep, and now you get the 48 hour with the, and so you just click on the extreme battery.

Well, this uh, this extreme battery, is going to drop your phone's screen time out to 30 seconds. It will turn off your work profile. It will allow you to select what are your essential apps and those will stay running. Then everything else will get paused and when paused, no notifications will come via the paused apps, so you can just select the less important apps that you don't are going to need to pump through or push through during your battery saving, and then only the handful that are important will refresh and essentially be using ram and various other resources. Uh.

Also, your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will continue to work, but scanning will be turned off, so your device is not going to be looking for other Wi-Fi networks and also hotspot tethering will stop, but it will be a simple toggle. It's almost like a game mode, a simple toggle which in one click, can adjust various attributes which you can customize on your phone. In order to extend the battery life yeah, that's very useful. The fact that you don't have to think about turning off things, you just tap it, and then it's just battery saver mode and- and you couldn't do just one single default, because everybody's usages are different. They may need notifications to come through an app which is a third-party app.

They installed not a stock app, let's say so. It's you can't just guess like in our battery saving mode this. This and this happens. The person needs to be able to go in there and tweak it as well, which is uh. They have them, and also the manufacturers have to make it easy enough and intuitive enough that anyone would want to use it, because I have seen this in the past, where you could have a battery saver mode, but it's doing things like dimming the screen too much or black and white, and if it's, if it doesn't feel if it feels like it's inhibiting my experience too much, then I don't want to use it, and I'm just burning through the battery.

So the idea of just pausing all these apps that don't uh need access or need refreshes. At that moment, that seems like the right idea, but it's important to note they're, not the first to do this they're, just it's just rolling out to their devices, and maybe the implementation might be a little more slick as it has been in the past, with Google compared to potentially other android makers. So, quick question, though, do you think it will replace the battery saver in the settings because it already has it on android right yeah? This is going to be called extreme batteries there's another level to it. So it would be another like feature or maybe a double, maybe two a separate toggle like if you click through it, there's now a new option which is extreme battery saver versus the standard I'm guessing, but apparently it's going to roll out to older pixels as well as, of course, it'll ship on these newer pixels. The other feature, other standout feature from the phone portion of today's event.

Uh something called hold for me, which I guess this is the first time they show this off they're, always doing intuitive things with the assistant. Yes, and this is kind of in. In line with you, remember they demoed a while ago assistant making appointments for you and things like that uh. This is, if you call a 1-800 number, let's say you call, because you have a problem with uh. Oh, I don't know your internet at home, and you call- and they immediately put you on hold, and it's very annoying, and they immediately hit you with the music, and it's very annoying, and you're you're sitting there thinking, okay, I'll just put the volume up, and I'll hopefully walk around and get something done, but even that's annoying yeah.

The music is the big one yeah, and it's scratchy, and it's coming its low quality because of the way it's coming through and anyway. So this uh hold for me means that assistant will, in those circumstances it'll be on it. It will do the job of being on hold like a person, so you don't have to sit there and listen to the music and keep it on speakerphone and then what it will do is it will notify you the way that it will notify. You are with a sound vibration and a notification on the screen. As soon as a representative has started, a human being has started talking on the other end now, since you're not going to get there right away, assistant will then tell that person to hold because you're on your way put elevator music for them.

How about you hold now yeah you have to, love it man, you get to flip the switch. I just waited for uh. Then you take your time. You take a minute to get over there. They'll definitely hang up, so don't do that.

You're going to have to get there pretty quick, but it's kind of cool and- and certainly this is these- are the type of areas where I love. When you start thinking about a digital assistant, you know they made all kinds of promises, but this is a real way. I don't want to sit there at that moment and if I have something smart enough, that can do it. For me, perfect, I can go. Do something I need to get done.

You go, go clean up, or you know just carry on with my day. So it's kind of like call screening, they're, always uh, introducing features like this, and this one is going to become widely available as well. So great, I would expect to see it on devices outside the pixel 5 and 4a, but it's currently available as a preview feature in the US for those devices, but hopefully like the last feature with the extreme battery saving, it will come to older pixels as well and oh, and you can see as well. It will give you the captions. You will see the captions of what's being said.

If you prefer again to not have the volume you can read. If there's an update, see that music playing your call is important to us, you don't even need to just turn the assistant on as soon as you hit the 1 800 and don't even worry about it, you love it will yeah it's its great will loves these type of features screen. Call we kind of knew this already, but the iPhone 12 Pro max is gonna, be I guess, for the first time, it's going to have some features that are exclusive to it. Within the model. Lineup now it's always kind of been the top tier, the high profile model, the aspirational model, the most expensive model, but the only difference up until well.

Up until now, with the iPhone 12 based on these rumors, it's always just been scale. So a bigger screen, bigger battery. That's what max brought you, but this could. If these rumors are true, this could point at uh a move from apple to make max mean more and by make max mean more that's a lot of m's. You have to max it out you max it out, and I don't mind the idea.

I guess uh you get more people asking for the max model and then spending more money, and so I don't know what those key features are going to be beyond scale. Scale is still there. It's still going to be the biggest, but scale gives you other opportunities from a development standpoint. If we have a bigger phone, maybe we can fit more in there, and then we can start to really take advantage of that max designation. So the features that are said to potentially be exclusive to the iPhone 12 Pro max model are screen size.

We already mentioned a LIDAR scanner, similar to what you've seen in the recent iPads. Now the LIDAR scanner. Could, I know a lot of people are saying the augmented reality. Stuff is not here. Yet.

What do I care about? Lidar? They may be able to implement it in such a fashion that it can actually help with camera functionality. Autofocus things like this, it's possible, so that could be a differentiating factor that they could showcase. In a keynote. They say what the max model we're actually using LIDAR to do x, y z into photo mode. So do you want max photos everyone's like yeah and then probably the biggest one and the most likely to occur faster 5g? So we've been talking about the millimeter wave stuff, supported on certain networks, which increases the cost of a model significantly and also takes up space inside a model, and so we, I think we reported on this rumor previously, but it's we're further down the road now getting closer to the launch, and it uh appears that it's being corroborated even more so that the true fast 5g model will also be the max model.

Now, the last piece which I think is maybe the most interesting and has been debated, the most hotly, is around screen refresh so originally uh. There was talk way back before we had details that 120 hertz was the thing 120 hertz apple was going to target it just I mean they had it on the iPad. Call it promotion all these. Other manufacturers had moved in that direction. Have uh developed at Samsung? Has it even if you don't have 120 many on android side have 90.

yeah, or beyond 144 144. If you go into the gaming stuff, so there was a conversation around how important it would be for apple to adopt this feature. Now it's important to note. On the iOS side, the only exposure that apple customers would have had to a higher refresh would have been on the iPad, presumably because they're not playing around with all these android phones, but I can speak from my personal experience when I'm playing with the 120 I'm enjoying the 120. That's just personal experience and when I go back is when I, if I go use something that isn't 120, you can't go back.

I notice it even more yeah than when I first shifted in the first place. So anyway, I don't need to pitch 120 to you. Everybody knows what I think about 120. I do not believe, however, that 120 is necessary for apple to sell. iPhones apple will sell, I phone it'd be nice to have, but it may or may not happen now.

The latest piece here is that maybe they could eke out some 120 just on the pro max model right and maybe because one of the possibly one of the things holding them back from launching 120 across the lineup was having the demand met right. If Apple goes in, there's a customer to buy a display, they got to buy a boatload and with all the slowdowns and everything else going on in the world that might have been difficult, so they could have said. Okay, fine. We want you to take all your manpower and just make one 120 display for us yeah, it's a nice sample size again. This is completely by the way rumors its still quite possible, even possibly likely that what we're really going to see is 60 hertz across the board.

But that's the last piece that if they do it, they could do it in the max only mode, the pro max only mode. So you guys, let me know what you think about that. Obviously the max designation offers you some space. Doesn't it yep? It doesn't just apply to scale? Well, neither does plus, I guess, but Samsung went ultra. Maybe apple wants to make more of max make more macs, I'm just trying to pile m's in there.

Now speaking about apple uh, we've been following pretty closely some problems around game streaming: services on iOS for both ipad, OS and iOS. How Facebook had an issue with them. Microsoft had an issue with them. Obviously the famous epic issue, which is kind of separate, but how apple is really not interested in hosting game streaming. Apps in the fashion that they're currently constructed they're they're sitting there saying yeah.

Okay, you can come on our platform. Just all you got to do is split up all the games and make them individually available on the app store and then the company's like. Well, that's kind of not what game streaming is yeah, it's kind of not how that would be like telling Netflix to split up all the offerings within the app and sell them individually on the app store like hey, that's super annoying. That would be insane, it would be insane, and it would kill the entire concept of the thing. So, who knows if apple's gonna change, I hope they change.

It's a bit unfortunate at the moment that iOS users aren't going to be able to really experience some of these fun game streaming. Services which are emerging and picking up steam now Stadia had a bit of a rocky start to things, but Google's a big company will, and they're doubling down. They talked about Stadia. In today's event, you recall it was a topic of conversation. They had dash in there.

He was playing on an on the bench, yeah dash, getting all fired up. Well, other streaming services are coming online too right, yeah. Of course, no no Amazon and Amazon isn't is in there. Yes, yes, it's the hot new thing, and- and so I know a lot of iOS users are wondering. Am I completely left behind, or is there a way? Well, there is a way- and this is its kind of something that well I'm glad it's there if it's going to be the only thing, but it's also concerning to me that this may be the way people have to experience these streaming services, which is through a browser, and it's a weird workaround and obviously performance has the potential to suffer.

There's a new app. It's a browser, app called stadium, which allows you to run Stadia through a full screen, mostly single page, serving browser. It kind of is a browser that you'll have essentially for a single functionality, just to pretend that you're that Stadia works on your iPhone has some 4.9 stars 29 ratings, so I don't know: does this? Would this stay up forever? This is, is apple supportive of this I don't know, but for in the meantime it works. So here's a report from life hacker we were able to download the stadium and play a couple of games. Our results were mixed.

Stadium's interface didn't scale properly to our iPhone's display and the dual shock 4 controllers. We used disconnected in the middle of the game. However, from the Reddit comments, it seems like the iPad screen aspect. Ratio offers a much better experience with multiple users reporting that a workaround, this workaround works perfectly for them. So it's a workaround.

Let's not get carried away, it's just a workaround, but it's better than nothing, and maybe apple will see that, so many are interested in using this various game. Streaming services, and they're, not necessarily satisfied with apple's arcade product, and they want to do these other things right, we'll see what develops over there. Instagram is becoming more Facebook and Facebook is becoming more Instagram. Are you surprised one bit? No, it's the merging of what is like a parent company sister companies. It's all becoming a nice little family, yeah Zuckerberg knew what was going on right.

He's like oh young people, they're, not using Facebook, we buy instagram becomes Facebook, guess what they're using Facebook yeah so anyway, this latest merges it takes dms from Instagram which were obviously independent up until now and then just makes them Facebook Messenger. So now, if you write a message to somebody on Instagram dms, that's gonna pop up under Facebook Messenger. In fact the button changed to a messenger icon on Instagram. I believe I haven't seen this in my app. Should I check has this: when is this? Is this update fully rolled out? Should I check will is this a live? Should we do a live check on the air? No, I still have again.

I haven't updated this in a while, but I have the old uh message icon, but apparently it's going to change to uh to the messenger the Facebook Messenger there look watch, Bing, see the difference, lightning bolt in a speech bubble and- and the other thing that happens here is Facebook Messenger. Apparently I don't use Facebook Messenger, but apparently had a ton of features that Instagram dms did not and those will now roll out into Instagram, including new stuff. Like look at the emoji reactions and the watch party, you can watch something together with a friend and you're messaging and there are bubbles and there are colors. It's a party look at this promo video. It's such a party weird, because uh messenger uh it has the ability to use SMS as well.

Okay, receive it and send it okay, I wonder if you can receive SMS on instagram. Is that how it works? Hey man, if it goes to your messenger, I would say it pops up in the dms as well, because it's a complete it's a full-out merge. I don't know how people feel about this. I remember in the early days when Facebook started to exert itself on Instagram people used to get offended, but now we're so deep. Furthermore, I don't even know if people care any more yeah we'll see how it goes down, but I suppose for an individual who uses Instagram doesn't bother with Facebook Messenger.

They won't even care because they just got new features inside their in inside their messaging app of choice, and they don't have to go use messenger and for those that are cross-platform, maybe it makes their life easier. But it goes to show you this, the scope and the scale and the ability of a company like Facebook to combine these things right like when, as far as imagining a universal chat app, let's say that, no matter where the message was typed, it moved across all the various platforms in an impossibility. Blackberry was trying to do something on their own on device like merge it all together, yeah they were third parties too. Third parties attempted it, but it never really worked out, and here we have a rare situation where one company is in charge of two enormous, separate social media platforms, and they can do it. They just merge it together completely, and you can pick up a conversation.

You start it on another social media, and I guess WhatsApp is next right. What's happens next? Well done. Will he do? We got a quick update on the New York real estate situation, which you know I find very interesting, and I love to track to a certain extent, the idea of- and I know it's obviously sad, but the idea of an abandoned city. You know I like to watch those abandoned mall videos. I just would like to picture a lower capacity, city and kind of the eeriness of it call me crazy.

I don't know what it is urban uh I used to go explore in Detroit every so often to kind of what it used to be urban. What do they call that urban decay? I'm into that? I'm not saying that New York is decaying by the way world-class city, great time, love New York, no problems there, but you know New York has been hit very, has been hit so specifically so hard, because it's such a unique city right, uh super tight, packed in huge reliance on public transport, a lot of restrictions because of uh pandemic shutdown, stuff and tons of offices and the offices and the people who work in those offices they sort of make the city what it is. Even though you might be sitting there thinking well the dude in the suit who cares well the dude in the suit he goes to the local restaurant. He buys the espresso, he gets. The haircut he's all the little shops.

Yeah, he's stimulating the economy, all the little shops that you like around them are associated with the workforce. That's around them in some cases, I'm reading through this article, some rely up to 90 on the office workers that are nearby in order to operate and exist, and here's the thing well. This report here states that about 10 of Manhattan's 2 million office workers have returned to work 10 of the 2 million now for those office workers in many cases, if they're in finance- let's say you know the companies associated with them. They said. Okay, you can work from home no problem, but what about the dude in the dry cleaning at the bottom of the office? Building? What about the guy with the convenience store in the corner? Who sells you the beverage? What about the coffee shop and the guy who sells the bagels and the guy who's got the street hot dogs? You can't survive for very long if you've got 10 of the usual 2 million office workers, never mind tourism, which is also gone.

So the whole city is getting transformed right now and obviously uh. There's reason for shut down, but it is it's its to a point where the situation is kind of catastrophic for those that have had to close completely and figure out a new way of life, and you start to wonder how long you're looking at for a recovery now the reason New York is interesting, as I mentioned public transport being such a big component, an inability to really distance yourself. The same way you might in other cities. Percentage of workers who have returned to the office Manhattan is 10. The United States as a whole is 25.

The suburbs of New York, 32 Dallas, is at 40 percent and even Los Angeles is up to 32 percent. You know the car culture that exists in some other cities creates a little more distance, bigger spaces, bigger real estate, it's their different scenarios and circumstances. Now. Obviously, this is a really polarizing topic. Some people say: hey man.

Where do you cut your losses at? What point is the virus low enough that we can start to take measures safely? Take measures to get people back in order to uplift some of these companies that are right on the fringe, and some of these some people work their lives on these restaurants. They invested their lives in these restaurants. Well, there's a report in this particular article about a restaurant owner who once employed 55 people, and he's down to six, that's how busy his restaurant used to be from 55 to 6. So it's a tough topic, it's an interesting topic, and I'm going to be following it as far as the infection rate in New York, it's now 1.38 percent. It is lower than it has been for months, and they say the current surge is driven by a handful of neighborhoods in Brooklyn and queens, not necessarily Manhattan, so people are making a case to try to open up Manhattan a little more.

I don't know how residents of Manhattan feel you can. Let me know down in the comments, because I'm curious. Yes, the numbers go up a little as you begin to open things back up, but how do you find that balance without losing everything? That's good about your city and all the people that worked hard for many. It could be their live life's work to put together the businesses that they did, and they may not even have a chance to come back regardless. I mean, if we're being, if, if we're, if we're fully uh examining the thing here it, it might be too far gone, because how do you, even if at 10 of the workforce right now, it is 20 enough 50 enough to hang in their yeah with the rent like just demanding rent in general? It's uh! It's a tough choice.

I mean it could take a decade to get back to 100, so a lot are going to be considering cutting their losses, but anyways shout out to New York. I think New York's gonna bounce back, it's just a matter of time, very cool place, cool people. That's that good luck, New York.

Source : Lew Later