00:00 – Mishaal Rahman: Samsung might be going back to the drawing board for its next set of Galaxy Buds.
00:04 – C. Scott Brown: And Google may have torn down Apple’s walled garden.
00:07 – Mishaal Rahman: I’m Mishaal Rahman.
00:10 – C. Scott Brown: And I’m C. Scott Brown, and this is the Authority Insights Podcast where we break down the latest news and leaks surrounding the Android operating system.
00:18 – Mishaal Rahman: It feels like every year Samsung just keeps switching up the design of its Galaxy Buds. With last year’s Galaxy Buds Pro 3, we had this kind of triangular blade design, but now it looks like for next year’s Galaxy Buds Pro 4, we might be getting a flatter stem as well as some new head tracking features.
00:36 – C. Scott Brown: And in a surprise twist, it looks like Google has secretly added AirDrop capabilities to Quick Share, which is crazy. This makes it really easy to wirelessly share files between Android smartphones and Apple iPhones. There are some limitations that we’re going to get into and there is a strong possibility that this is not going to last long, but we’ll talk about that later.
And in another story, is Samsung making a smart move by copying the Pixel 10’s Magic Cue feature for its next version of One UI? We certainly hope they know what they’re doing because Magic Cue is not exactly the most impressive feature ever, but, you know, got to give it to Samsung for trying to do new things.
01:21 – Mishaal Rahman: Yeah. Before we get into the obviously the biggest story that you all want to hear about, and trust me, you’ll want to stay tuned for that because we have some kind of exclusive behind-the-scenes tidbits about Quick Share’s compatibility with AirDrop that we want to share. But before we get into that and before we start talking about our first story of the week, I did want to mention that next week’s episode won’t happen because it’ll be Thanksgiving week in the US, so both Scott and myself will be out on vacation. So no podcast next week. We’ll return the following week after that.
So, circling back to the first story, the Galaxy Buds Pro 4, or at least what we think is going to end up shaping up to be the Galaxy Buds Pro 4. We did some digging into leaked One UI 8.5 builds, our Authority Insights team, and we discovered evidence that Samsung might be ditching the sharp triangular blade design of the Buds Pro 3 in favor of a new flatter stem design. And they are also removing some distinctive features that made the Buds Pro 3 more unique. They are removing the light blades and getting rid of that light feature entirely. And some photorealistic looking images that we found within the firmware suggest that they are going to be adding a large metal grille on the side of the earbuds and that we think that these will be covering the microphones for ANC transparency mode, but likely just an aesthetic choice to make it look nicer. And we also learned through this animation that if I can find the video right here that you’ll actually be placing the buds inside the case kind of horizontally instead of dropping them vertically into the case like you do right now with the design. And also we also discovered there’s a speaker grille on this case, which we believe will be powering a Find Your Phone feature kind of similar to what the AirPods Pro currently does.
And speaking of features, we have discovered that head tracking might be one of the unique capabilities, the new capabilities of the Galaxy Buds Pro 4. So these earbuds will be able to detect your head movement. You’ll be able to nod or shake your head to answer or reject calls or notifications, dismiss alarms, timers, and calendar alerts, interact with voice assistants without speaking. And yeah, as we mentioned, the other new feature would be on the case itself, there’ll be a button that you can tap to initiate a find my earbuds feature. So Scott, Samsung just introduced that triangular blade shape design on the Buds Pro 3 last year, and it seems like they’re already pivoting and completely switching things up. Why do you think they’re abandoning that design and switching to this new flatter, more rounded design in the Buds Pro 4?
04:03 – C. Scott Brown: I think it’s because there was so much backlash against the design for the Buds 3 and the Pro Buds 3. I remember, so I went to the launch event because they launched in July of 2024. And I remember going to the launch event and seeing the lights on the earbuds and thinking to myself, that’s really cool. But also saying to myself, man, these look a lot like AirPods now. And I knew that Samsung fans, you know, I have a ton of respect for Samsung fans because they love Samsung. And they love that Samsung is Samsung. So anytime Samsung does something like this where it abandons what made it distinctly a Samsung product and tries to make it something that’s more like an Apple product, they are just up in arms. So as soon as I saw them, I said to myself, Samsung fans are not going to like this. And sure enough, that’s what happened. Samsung fans were not happy that Samsung abandoned the distinct look of the earbuds that they had had. If you go back, all their earbuds were very distinct. They looked very different from AirPods. You could see someone walking down the street and look in their ear and be like, those are Galaxy Buds because they just looked a lot different from AirPods.
05:30 – Mishaal Rahman: Well, to be fair, they looked distinct from AirPods, but they also looked distinct from each other. Like I don’t think there was a clear Galaxy earbud design that I could point to and say, oh, that’s clearly a Galaxy Bud.
05:45 – C. Scott Brown: That is true. But I do think that Samsung went in the wrong direction with the third generation Pro and the regular. I think that they just were like, oh, because you have to remember that it also came out with the Galaxy Watch Ultra, which also looked just like the Apple Watch Ultra. It even had the distinct orange band and everything. So it was like those two products coming out right next to one another definitely sent Samsung fans into a tizzy. So I think Samsung, all it did was just looked at that and said, we made a mistake, we’ve got to change things up, and let’s abandon that and adopt this one instead. And it’s right though, it’s like, when is Samsung going to settle on what a Galaxy Bud actually looks like? Because as you can see, I have the Google Pixel Buds in my ear and these are distinct. Like if you buy the Pixel Buds 2a, you buy the original Pixel Buds, they all look pretty similar. I mean, the wing tips are gone, but really it’s like they don’t look anything like AirPods. That’s I guess what I’m saying. And so yeah, Samsung is just changing things up and trying to figure out what’s going to work.
06:54 – Mishaal Rahman: I mean, this is a little bit of a tangent, but I feel like in its quest to make earbuds that are very distinctive visually from the AirPods, like are they just abandoning something that has been proven to just work? Like the AirPods is like the distinctive earbud design. And I don’t think a lot of people are copying it, I mean, there’s certainly a lot of companies that are copying it because they want to look like the AirPod, but also that is just a good earbud design. And is Samsung kind of robbing themselves of having a good earbud design by intentionally straying as far as they can from that design? Because I personally like the Buds 3 Pro design. I love the triangle shape of it because it really made it easy to do gestures like swiping up and swiping down because you had a clear place you could grip, like a clear edge you could put two fingers around to actually properly hold it. So I liked the design they went with, and I feel like just changing things for the sake of changing things is not really a good way to design products.
07:50 – C. Scott Brown: That’s true, and it could be possible that Samsung’s dug itself into a hole at this point and can’t get out, you know, because now, I mean, you know, this will be the fourth significant generation, but there were so many. I mean, there was the Buds Plus, there was the Beans, whatever they were called, the Galaxy Buds Live.
08:10 – Mishaal Rahman: Say what you will about those things. Those things, they had their fans. The Beans. I loved those things.
08:16 – C. Scott Brown: No, no, I love them. I thought they were awesome. I am definitely not criticizing them. They were awesome. I loved the ergonomics of them. Like they just fit in your ear, you know? Like they were really cool. Not to mention distinct. They were something that really set apart. You could see somebody walking by be like, those are the Beans, you know? So yeah, I think that maybe it is too late. Maybe Samsung has taken too long and now they don’t have a distinctive identity for their earbuds and maybe that’ll just never happen. But I don’t know. I mean, maybe this will be the one. We’ll have to just wait and see. But it is interesting that we’re seeing this leak now considering that the last generation came out in July. But obviously, we’re way past July for the next generation. So that means these are probably going to come out next year, I would say.
09:10 – Mishaal Rahman: Yeah. Either with the S26 in like early, late January, early February, or maybe with the next foldable series in July. Like who knows?
09:18 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, so if it comes out in July, that would be two years separating between the previous generation and this generation, which isn’t unheard of. Google’s done that, Apple’s obviously done that, so that’s not out of the question. If they do come out with the Galaxy S26 series though, that’ll be the first time that we’ve seen earbuds launch with a Galaxy S phone in many years. I think the S21 was the last time that we had that happen. So it’s been a while. So yeah, so that’ll be interesting to see if that’s what Samsung ends up going with.
But yeah, I don’t know, you know, and it sucks too because Samsung has such audio pedigree. A lot of people don’t know but like Samsung owns Harman Kardon, right? I think yeah, that’s a Samsung brand. So it’s like that’s like a well-respected audio brand and Samsung owns it. So you’d think that they would be able to, you know, bring that pedigree to their earbuds and make them like a no-brainer sale, but I don’t know, maybe aesthetics matter. You know, this is a conversation about, you know, that I’ve had in numerous times is that a lot of people think like, oh, designs aren’t really that important. It’s like, no, designs are really really important. Like how your product looks is a major thing. Like just, you know, a Ferrari drives by, you know it’s a Ferrari because Ferraris look a certain way. And if they didn’t, then would they be Ferraris? Probably not. So it’s like, it’s really important and I think that Samsung needs to settle on whatever it is their design is going to be and stick with it.
10:52 – Mishaal Rahman: Exactly. And you’re the Pixel guy. If you see that visor in the background from like 50 feet away, you know that person’s got a Pixel. Like I’ve seen that immediately recognizable. So like, yeah, branding is very, very important.
11:06 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah. Quick tangent. I have a huge, one of my biggest celebrity crushes is Ashly Burch, the voice actress. She did Aloy on Horizon Zero Dawn, and she does Tiny Tina on Borderlands. She has a YouTube channel that’s her and puppets going over mental health issues. It’s an amazing channel. It’s called I’m So Happy You’re Here, and it’s really, really cool. But anyway, in her latest video, she has a little segment where she uses her phone. Immediately, Pixel. Like you just see the, she takes it out of her pocket and you see the visor and I was just like [gasp] I was really excited about that. But anyway, so but yeah, no, design matters and Samsung needs to figure out what its design is for its earbuds. And maybe this is it. I think they look cool. Like I’m excited about these. I had the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro and I love them. I used those things for a year and a half, I think before I eventually upgraded to the Pixel Buds Pro 2. Pixel Buds Pro 2. Cause it’s not Buds 2 Pro. It’s not what you think it is. It’s not Buds 2 Pro, it’s Buds Pro 2. Anyway, yes, so I have these now, but the ones I used before this were the Galaxy Buds and they were great. So yeah, I’m excited to try these out.
12:23 – Mishaal Rahman: You know what I’m excited for? Finally, finally, Google is bringing AirDrop support to Android. So Google announced on Thursday that they are rolling out an update to Quick Share, which is, as you know, Android’s native file sharing solution, and they’re making it compatible with Apple’s AirDrop, starting with the Pixel 10 series. So by the time you’re listening to this podcast, this update will have already rolled out to your Pixel 10 device, so you may have already had the opportunity to try it out.
But basically, this feature allows you to seamlessly send and receive files between your Pixel 10 and your iPhone or your iPad or even your MacBook. This basically bridges the biggest remaining gap in functionality between the two platforms. You know, we had the SMS and RCS thing that kind of helped bridge the gap between texting on Android and texting on iPhones. But there was no real easy solution to share files between Android and iOS unless you had people on both platforms install the same application like WhatsApp or something or I don’t know some other file sharing service that allowed you to share files.
But now you don’t have to install anything additional on your Android phone or your iPhone to make this work. It’ll just just work because Google basically implemented full support for AirDrop into Quick Share. And I mean what it’s an incredible achievement considering they literally did it all on their own. Google told us in a statement that “we accomplished this through our own implementation. Our implementation was thoroughly vetted by our own privacy and security teams, and we also engaged a third-party security firm to pen test the solution.”
So unlike the previous initiatives that Google and Apple worked together on like RCS as I just mentioned, unknown tracker alerts, Google did this entirely on their own, which kind of begs the question, like, is Apple going to stand for this? Because we saw what happened when Beeper tried to implement iMessage support in their Beeper Mini application. It worked for like a single weekend, and then Apple just broke it. They silently pushed out an update to iMessage that completely broke the application. And it became a cat and mouse game from there, but Beeper Mini lost because eventually, you know, there was nothing they could do to make Android devices use iMessage again. So like, who knows what’s going to happen now, like who knows if Apple is going to stand for this because Apple at least at the time of this recording, which is Thursday afternoon right after this announcement was made, Apple hadn’t done anything in response to this news. But hopefully they don’t do anything because this is such a cool feature to have between Android phones and iPhones.
So Scott, what was your immediate reaction when you saw this news? Because my immediate reaction, I’m not going to say it here because I don’t want to get demonetized, but you can read my immediate reaction to it on X and like Mastodon etc. I expletive. I was like, holy.
15:17 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, no, that’s exactly what I was like, I can’t. I can’t believe this. And in fact, I didn’t believe it. Obviously, it came directly from Google. Like we got this announcement from Google itself. This was not, for people who are just tuning in and maybe missed this over the past few days, this was not something that someone discovered and then we started writing about it and trying it out. Google actually just like sent out a press release out of nowhere. Nobody knew this was coming and was just like, guess what guys, this is what we did. And I didn’t believe it. I was like, I will not believe this until I actually see it happen on my phones because I have the Pixel 10 Pro and then I have the iPhone 17 Pro. So I was like, I want to make this work. And it took us about an hour I think between all of us on the team to really like figure out what we needed to do to get everything working. But once we did, we all did it and we were like [mind blown noise] like, oh my god, we’re doing this. We’re actually AirDropping from a Pixel to an iPhone. So yeah, I didn’t believe it either. It was very, very shocking. But very exciting. Very exciting to finally have this feature that not just Android phone users want, but iPhone users want. And that’s something that I find astonishing about Apple is its belief that it knows what its users want more than they do, you know? Like iPhone users want to be able to easily share things with Android users. So why wouldn’t they want this? But we all know how Apple works, so who knows how long this is going to last.
16:54 – Mishaal Rahman: I mean that that lock-in has been a key part of Apple’s strategy even if they haven’t been officially telling people that they wanted to lock people in through AirDrop. But like that social pressure that’s put on Android users to get an iPhone because they want to be able to AirDrop their friends has been a key part of why Apple is so dominant among, you know, Gen Z and a lot of young people across the world. But now with this forced compatibility that Google is basically forcing on Apple, could they start tearing down that wall? Like could this be the start of people no longer caring if you have an iPhone or an Android phone because you can just share files no matter what platform you have? I don’t know. And I doubt that Apple wants to see that happen. So I’m really curious to see what they’re going to do in response to this. Like are they going to keep quiet? Are they going to intentionally push out an update to AirDrop on Apple devices and break compatibility in some way? Can they even do that? Like so many possibilities, so many things, so many questions left to be answered. We’ll have to wait and see how Apple responds.
18:00 – C. Scott Brown: So the way I see it is that Apple has two choices. They can just let it go and just be like, cool, good for you, Google. You figured this out. Um, you know, and Google can expand. Like the way it works is it’s not a Pixel exclusive feature. Like right now it only works on the Pixel 10, but it’s built into Quick Share. Quick Share became a new app and that app can just be updated to it can just be pushed out to Android users. So literally any Android user could do this. It’s just that Google has to like actually widely roll it out, which I’m sure Google doesn’t want to do until it like navigates the murky waters of all this happening. So Apple’s choice could just be like, we’re not going to do anything, and Google can just expand it and then who knows? Maybe by the beginning of 2026 every Android user will be able to AirDrop something to an iPhone. Or Apple could do what you said, which is just shut it down. Like it could do the same thing it did with Beeper and just flip a switch, a metaphorical switch, and this could just not work.
The problem that Apple would face there is twofold. Number one, like I just mentioned, iPhone users want this too. So it’s going to piss off the people that use its products. You know, because iPhone users are going to be watching all this happen as well. And they’re going to be like, finally, you know, I can just imagine like a husband and wife, you know, where the husband has an iPhone and the wife has an Android phone. They’re going to be like, finally, we can finally share files. I can finally take a photo of our kid or our pet or whatever and I can just AirDrop it to you. Finally. This is great. And then Apple’s going to come through and be like, no, you can’t. And that’s going to make them upset. So Apple’s going to have a PR problem there.
Also, and maybe even more importantly, Apple’s going to have a problem with the EU. The EU does not like the fact that the Android ecosystem and the iOS ecosystem do not play nicely together. So now that Google has literally forced the situation and proved that Android phones and iPhones can do this and then Apple shuts it down, the EU is going to be like, why did you shut this down? Let the market decide. Let the people have what they want and, you know, compete. You’ll have to do other things to compete besides just lock people into your ecosystem. And if Apple shuts it down, the EU is going to take that as a chance to attack. So really Apple’s in a lose-lose situation here. And I love it. I love it. I love when Google does stuff like this. It makes me so happy. I love when Google just does this like passive aggressive like, you know, just shake up. When the RCS thing happened, oh my god, that was so amazing. I loved it.
20:40 – Mishaal Rahman: Yeah. I mean, there’s still some questions about how exactly did Google actually do this because they were very light on technical details in their blog post. In even the security blog post which talked about how they designed this to be secure. They mentioned that they went through a third-party security firm and audited their implementation that it’s secure, but they didn’t actually talk about how they implemented this feature. Because if they didn’t have Apple’s help at all, clearly Apple didn’t change anything on the iOS or macOS or iPadOS side of things to make this work. So Google had to do something to make Quick Share compatible. And from what I can tell, there’s a lot of theories that are kind of floating around. Like the most popular theory that I’ve seen is that the EU forced Apple’s hand. Because a couple of months back, when the EU designated Apple as a gatekeeper, one of the things that the EU wanted Apple to do is to basically provide the same capabilities that Apple provides to their own devices to third-party hardware vendors.
So for example right now, Apple devices, if you want to communicate quickly, initiate a pairing and send transfer files and do all sorts of other things that AirDrop enables, Apple devices have a proprietary protocol called AWDL which stands for Apple Wireless Direct Link. Now AWDL is not an open protocol. It’s only available on Apple devices. So if you want to have some kind of similar connection between Apple devices and other devices like Android devices for example, you can’t because AWDL is the only solution.
So the EU basically told Apple that, okay, you have two choices. You can either implement support for an open standard called Wi-Fi Aware, which is being, which has been developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance, and to Apple’s credit, they actually played a big role in the development of that standard. One of the underlying key technologies behind Wi-Fi Aware was developed by Apple. But Apple itself did not implement support for Wi-Fi Aware. So they helped develop the technology that led to Wi-Fi Aware, but they themselves did not implement Wi-Fi Aware in their own operating systems.
So the EU basically told them you can either implement Wi-Fi Aware on your platforms or you can make AWDL compatible with Wi-Fi Aware or open up some kind of API for developers to use AWDL. I don’t know what ended up happening. I think from what I mean we do know that Apple did end up eventually adding support for Wi-Fi Aware in iOS, like there are APIs now that developers can use in the latest versions of their operating system to use Wi-Fi Aware. But I heard through the grapevine, I can’t mention sources, that AirDrop does not use Wi-Fi Aware. And in fact that AWDL is not compatible with Wi-Fi Aware. It was not compatible at the time that the EU was looking into Apple’s practices and I heard that it’s still not compatible.
Which would basically undercut the argument that the EU was basically responsible for this change. And that leads me to believe that Google actually did the very risky thing that I never thought they would do. They may have actually done a clean room reverse engineering of the AWDL protocol. And we always knew that would be possible because some developers in the past have done or have attempted to do the very same thing. Reverse engineer AWDL and force it to work on alternative platforms because at a very basic level, it’s still based on open standards like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. So theoretically any device that supports Bluetooth or Wi-Fi should be able to support AWDL as long as it, you know, has like a lot of the same features that Bluetooth and Wi-Fi features that AWDL depends on. But no one’s ever done it because it’s proprietary and reverse engineering something proprietary opens you up to a lot of potential legal issues because, you know, you may involve yourself with code that you are not authorized to be distributing in like a reverse engineered form. So like a clean room implementation, you know, go look that up if you want to know what that is. If that is something what Google did, I would be very surprised and very impressed that they actually had the balls to do this. A company as big as Google to do something like that to implement support for AWDL on Android. Which if what I’m hearing is true is indeed what they did, but not confirmed at the moment.
25:12 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, whatever they did, I think it’s great. Like I think it’s awesome. Just push Apple to do what they have to do, you know? Like Apple can’t build its legacy and build its customer base on the idea that you are trapped in the walled garden. Like that is not good. That’s not a good way to do business, you know? I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had people compliment how great the photos that my Pixel takes, you know. Or not even my Pixel, any phone, you know, any Android phone that I take out when I’m with people. Like if I’m testing, you know, the Galaxy phone or whatever. I’ll take a photo and they’re like, oh my god, that looks great. And I’m like, yeah, Android phones take really good photos, you know. Some are better than others, but they all take photos that are just as good as the iPhone that you use. And they’ll say things like, oh man, I really wish I could leave iPhone, but I can’t because, and then they’ll say iMessage or AirDrop or whatever. They’ll say these things and I’ll point out, I’ll be like, you’re trapped. Like they have you trapped. And it’s like, that sucks. Like that sucks. Like you shouldn’t feel trapped. You should feel like your smartphone, your laptop, whatever, you feel you should feel like these products, you own them. They don’t own you.
And that’s what Apple’s bread and butter is, is making your products, make you feel like your products own you. And that sucks. So anything, for in my opinion, anything that busts that down is good. And so, yeah, Google doing this, I don’t care how they did it. Like I mean I’m interested in how they did it. Like I’m sure you’re going to find out how they actually did it at some point and it’s going to be really cool to know and I’m going to love reading about it and it’s going to be exciting, but at the same time like it doesn’t really matter to me in the end because I’m just glad that it’s happening because like this is great. This is great for everyone, you know. iPhone users too.
27:04 – Mishaal Rahman: Yeah. I mean, I do have one potential additional piece of information to share about this feature. And it’s pertaining to why this feature may initially be limited to the Pixel 10. So Google didn’t mention why this is only rolling out to the Pixel 10 series today, but I also heard through the grapevine that a Wi-Fi firmware update may be responsible. That, you know, they were able to make this compatible on the Pixel 10 first because they had a compatible Wi-Fi firmware update ready to roll out for the Pixel 10 series.
And this may be, like I haven’t fully looked into it at the time of recording, but when we covered this, we found out that there’s a pending Google Play System Update that you have to install in order to get the Quick Share extension application that enables you to actually add AirDrop compatibility to Quick Share. And if you are well acquainted with Android modularization, the Project Treble and the Project Mainline initiatives, one of the Mainline modules on Android is actually Wi-Fi.
The Wi-Fi stack is an updatable module. So I’m thinking that Google actually pushed out a Wi-Fi module update and to the Wi-Fi stack they added support for AWDL in the backend. And that this new Quick Share extension application takes advantage of some new capabilities they added to the Wi-Fi stack, which is why it’s a system application, you can’t just sideload it on other applications and it just won’t work, you know, if you just sideload it. Like it has to be specifically something you install as a system application.
So that may be why it’s only available on the Pixel 10 series right now. And hopefully this doesn’t mean that it’s going to be very limited to only a handful of devices. Hopefully, it’s something that a lot of other Android devices can take advantage of. Google has not really been forthright with what other devices will be getting this feature, but hopefully it’s, you know, broadly available in the near future. Because if it’s just a Pixel 10 series, I mean, I’m sure that will do great numbers for Google. People want a phone that works with AirDrop, but it’s not going to do a lot for the Android ecosystem as a whole, which I’m sure is one of Google’s goals with making Quick Share compatible with AirDrop.
29:12 – C. Scott Brown: I guess now would be a good time to plug that Black Friday sale has started for the Pixel 10 series. So if you want to save some money, now’s the time.
29:23 – Mishaal Rahman: If you want to save money by not buying a Pixel and keeping your Samsung Galaxy phone, but you’re envious of a lot of the cool new AI features on Pixel phones, then you may be pleased to hear that Samsung is working on a variety of new AI-powered features in One UI 8.5, including a new feature called Now Nudges. So from what we can tell, this seems to be basically Samsung’s version of Magic Cue.
And before we dive into Now Nudges, just a brief explanation on what Magic Cue is. So this is a Pixel 10 exclusive feature that is powered by Gemini and it basically watches what’s happening on your screen to offer helpful proactive suggestions based on context from your various Google services and applications. So for example, if you are in a phone call with a business and you had previously made a reservation with them, then Magic Cue can intelligently pull up that reservation information from your Gmail for example and display it in a card in the middle of your phone call with that business. So you don’t have to bother to switch applications to pull up that information then switch back and tell the business your reservation details. It’s just right there in the phone call for you.
And, you know, that feature debuted with the Pixel 10. It’s still exclusive to the Pixel 10. But it looks like Samsung might be working on their own version of the feature called Now Nudges. Our Authority Insights team did some analysis into a leaked One UI 8.5 build and we discovered that Samsung is working on a very similar feature that will have contextual nudges that will surface past information like screenshots or chats exactly when you need it. It’ll also have autofill nudges that will use your personal data to automatically fill in complex forms. And you’ll also have action nudges that will automatically switch applications to, for example, jumping from a text message mentioning a location directly to a map view of that spot. So based on our understanding, this appears to be basically a near identical implementation of Magic Cue and this may be Samsung’s attempt at keeping people from switching from Galaxy to Pixel phones. So Scott, I don’t have a Pixel 10. I know you have one and you’ve reviewed one or you may still be using one right now. How do you feel about Magic Cue now that it’s been over three months since the Pixel 10 launched?
31:41 – C. Scott Brown: Magic Cue is a really, really cool idea that has not been implemented well. That’s the basic summary that I can give. For a video and for the review, I set it up so that my partner sent me a text and in the text she would say, do you know when we’re going to dinner next week or whatever. And that question triggered Magic Cue to go through my calendar and go through my Gmail and find the information about our dinner reservation and it immediately pulled it up and all I had to do was hit a little button that appeared magically right there and it would paste the information that I needed to send and send it to her. So it worked. It was great. Like in that particular situation, it saved me the hassle of opening my email, finding that reservation, copying and pasting. It cut out a whole bunch of time that it would have taken to answer that question.
The problem is that that question doesn’t come very often. You know, like I’m not often asked by my partner when our dinner reservations are because it’s in our shared calendar so she would just look in the calendar and find that information for herself. She wouldn’t feel the need to text me about it. So I will admit that after we did these testing, I don’t think Magic Cue has pulled up anything since in just my natural day-to-day life of like this is what has, you know, is happening in my life and here’s Magic Cue. So honestly, with the Samsung, you know, this replication that Samsung has, I don’t think that it’s going to have the same problem. I think that it’s going to be something where, you know, it’s going to struggle to find an audience because it just doesn’t happen naturally. The one asterisk I’ll put there is that filling out the forms is something that Magic Cue does not do. That is something that as far as I can tell anyway from where I’m sitting now and what we’ve read and what we know about this feature, that is something that Magic Cue doesn’t do that Samsung’s would do. And that would be helpful. The ability to just have a form open up on my phone and it just say, hey, we notice you’re filling out a form, do you want to fill it in with the info that you traditionally fill it in with? And you hit a button and it just fills in your name and your address and your phone number and all that. That’s great. I use 1Password and 1Password already has that feature, so I don’t need that feature to be done by an AI system like Magic Cue. Which might be why Google didn’t implement it with the Magic Cue feature when it came out for Pixels.
So personally, this wouldn’t change anything for me, but a lot of people don’t use password managers. If you’re listening to this, you should be using a password manager. Please pick one. It doesn’t have to be 1Password. It can be anything, but pick one. So a lot of people don’t have these features and so this might be a thing that would be really useful. Yeah, so I’m excited about this. I’m always excited about new features coming to smartphones, especially if they’re ones that could be really useful for people and save them time, save them money, save them whatever. But yeah, so far anyway, Magic Cue isn’t let me just put it this way, Magic Cue isn’t the feature that I would be trying to replicate on my smartphone if I was making one right now. There are a whole lot of things that Pixels do that Samsung phones don’t do that I would want before I’d want Magic Cue just because it hasn’t been that useful.
35:05 – Mishaal Rahman: I mean, just because it’s not useful right now or at launch doesn’t mean it won’t become more useful later on. Because especially if they continue to add more and more integrations. This seems like one of those features that on the surface could be incredibly useful because, you know, if it integrates with all your applications and services. If there’s maybe some API in the future for third-party app developers to provide their own nudges, for them to provide their own information that then you could then surface as chips within other applications. It could be incredibly useful. Again, it’s like one of those things where, you know, like with Gemini and ChatGPT and stuff like that. How many third-party services actually want to integrate fully with a feature like this? They want your eyeballs on their applications. They want you to open their applications, and the more that you kind of have this information surfacing in a centralized location, then the last time you’re spending and opening these applications. Obviously Google is able to quickly implement it in many of their own first-party services, but support from third-party services is very limited right now with Magic Cue.
Samsung, they have a lot more services to offer, that are only available on their Galaxy devices, so maybe they’ll do a better job with integrating it across their ecosystem. Maybe, who knows, some SmartThings integration, you could have some sort of smart home integration built in with their version of Magic Cue or Now Nudges what they’re calling it. But we’ll have to wait and see exactly how Samsung implements it and how it differs from Magic Cue.
36:38 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, I could see smart home stuff being a boon for this. I can imagine the house getting cold, maybe you’re away from home you’re at work and it’s a cold day and the house temperature – the interior temperature drops below a certain threshold. You pick up your phone and it’s a little pop-up. Just so you know, the temperature of your home is low, do you want to turn the heat on. And you hit a button and it turns the heat on. You come home and your house is nice and toasty. That’s awesome. That’s a terrific feature that people would genuinely really like. But the way Magic Cue is set up, I don’t think that would really be possible, right now at least. Google would have to integrate all these things with Google Home and your work day and where you are and all these different things would have to happen. But maybe Samsung could make it work because of its different integrations. Yeah, I agree I think that Magic Cue and this nudge system have great potential. It’s just that that potential hasn’t been exploited enough by Google as of yet. So it’s kind of hard to see where it’s going because it’s been, what have we got, August, September, October, November, yeah it’s been you know four months and I’ve been using the Pixel 10 Pro every single day since it came out and it just hasn’t made that much of a difference. There are a lot of cool things the Pixel 10 does that most other smartphones don’t do and they are very useful and I could go and list them, but instead you should go on my YouTube page and check that out @CScottBrown and I have a lot to say about all that stuff. But yeah there’s so many cool stuff that it does, I would say Magic Cue and Camera Coach are the two things that I just have barely used since I got the phone.
38:23 – Mishaal Rahman: Yeah. I mean, very useful features. The features that I think have the most potential to win over users just because of how not in your face they are and how helpful they can be when they’re used well, but right now they’re not used very well. Maybe that’ll change in the future.
38:38 – C. Scott Brown: I hope so. And maybe Samsung will push, you know, maybe this will light a fire under Google’s feet. You know, maybe Samsung will do it better than Google and then Google will be like, oh yeah, we should do, you know, they’re just gonna they’re gonna feed off each other. You know, Google’s gonna do it first and then Samsung’s gonna copy it, make it a little better, then Google’s gonna make it a little better, and then it’s gonna go back and forth and it’s going to be the best thing ever. I’m all for it. Let’s go.
39:03 – Mishaal Rahman: All right. I mean, we still have quite a bit of ways until we actually get the full unveiling of this feature. I’m assuming it’s going to debut with the S26 series in about two and a half months from now in like early February. So stay tuned for that. We’ll definitely be trying it out ourselves once this feature debuts on next year’s devices. But for now, that’s everything we’ve got for you this week. You can find links to all the stories mentioned in this episode down in the show notes. And you can find more amazing stories to read over on AndroidAuthority.com.
39:30 – C. Scott Brown: Thanks for listening to the Authority Insights podcast. We publish every week on YouTube, Spotify, and other podcast platforms. You can follow us everywhere on social media at Android Authority and you can follow me personally on Instagram, BlueSky, and my own YouTube channel @CScottBrown.
39:47 – Mishaal Rahman: As for me, I’m on most social media platforms posting day in and day out about Android. If you want to keep up with the latest on Android news, follow me on X, Threads, Mastodon, or Telegram @MishaalRahman. Thanks for listening.
