00:00 – Mishaal Rahman: Are Google’s proposed Android changes an epic victory for users or only for Tim Sweeney?
00:04 – C. Scott Brown: And is it finally time to say goodbye to Google Assistant?
00:08 – 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: So, Scott, we may finally be nearing the end of the Epic v. Google lawsuit. That lawsuit that began way back in 2020 during the height of the pandemic. Google and Epic have been embroiled in this controversy for many years, but they have finally agreed to settle their lawsuit after Google committed to making several sweeping changes to the Android operating system as well as the Google Play Store. These changes will not only make the Android app ecosystem more competitive, but they will also improve the availability of applications for users, potentially also reducing prices for users. But whether or not they will really benefit anyone other than Epic remains to be seen.
00:57 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, and while Google’s big changes come as a surprise, what’s not surprising is the demise of Google Assistant. We’ve recently spotted the first clues that Google is killing off Assistant on Android. We’ve known it would happen for a long time now, pretty much ever since Bard came along, if anyone listening to this can remember Bard. But are we really ready to say goodbye to Google Assistant?
And should you say goodbye to your current device and upgrade to one with the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5? That’s the question we set out to answer in our in-depth benchmarking of the new chip in one of the most powerful gaming phones out there.
01:36 – Mishaal Rahman: But before we dive into those benchmarks, let’s first dive deep into the biggest story of the week by far. And it’s the fact that Google and Epic have finally reached an agreement to settle their lawsuit. So, this agreement, to be clear, hasn’t been finalized. The judge still has to sign off on it, but this agreement that they have reached has a lot of big changes coming to Android and the Play Store. So for a bit of context, on Tuesday evening, Sameer Samat and Tim Sweeney, they jointly announced on their X accounts that they have reached an agreement and they published the legal document and we poured through this document to actually find out what are the terms that they have agreed to. So, for a little bit of context, this is the near finalization of the lawsuit that began in 2020 when Google kicked Fortnite off the Play Store because Epic had tried to implement an alternative payment option within Fortnite alongside Google Play Billing. And for those of you who don’t know, that is not allowed. Right now, at least before these changes that Google is proposing to make, you are only allowed to have Google Play Billing as an option, as a payment option within applications if you’re buying something digital I don’t know, a loot box or something in a game or a skin or cosmetic or a lot of different things that are purely digital.
But Epic has basically argued for a very long time that this is, you know, this is monopolistic. that Google should allow developers to show alternative payment methods alongside Google Play Billing, that they shouldn’t be allowed to pay OEMs to bundle the Google Play Store and all these other applications, that they shouldn’t be able to basically pay off companies and prevent them from launching their apps on alternative app stores that all these sorts of things that Google’s been doing for years to kind of solidify its dominance. Epic has argued that Google should not be allowed to do this. And they won their lawsuit. Epic actually won their lawsuit and Google was in the midst, they were about to be forced to make a lot of changes that they would not want to have made. But before that we reached the point before they were forced to make changes they didn’t want to make, they reached an agreement with Epic earlier this week and these agreements were jointly agreed upon by both companies. So a lot of things that probably Google doesn’t want to implement, but you know, this is the best that they can work with considering the alternative.
So some of the things that Epic, or sorry, Epic and Google have agreed to is that basically, Google will finally put third-party app stores on equal footing with its own Play Store. So a future Android release will add support for something called Registered App Stores. These are basically certified stores that can be installed with a single click and once you do, they are automatically granted the permission to install other apps. Another thing is that Google can no longer stop OEMs from pre-installing third-party app stores or placing them on the home screen. Google will no longer pay off companies that want to build their own Play Store competitors. Google won’t impose any fees on running a third-party app store or charge for any downloads originating from those third-party app stores. And they are also giving developers more freedom in terms of what app store they want to launch their application on. For example, apps can now show an alternative payment option side by side with Google Play Billing. And as you can see in the screenshot, this is the thing that Epic tried to implement in Fortnite, which got them kicked off. This is now going to be allowed going forward. Google, however, can still take a service fee on transactions that are completed using alternative payment options, but they are no longer allowed to block devs from communicating to users about those alternative options. So if a developer wants to send you an email or a notice inside the application, they’re free to do so. And finally, Google can no longer pay developers to favor the Play Store for new application launches, but they can basically strike deals with developers to say, hey, if you want to launch on Android first, we can give you some kind of incentive to do that. But developers will still have the opportunity to choose which Android app store they want to launch on. So, there’s a lot of things are changing with Android and Google Play Store. So if you want the full details, a full breakdown of everything that’s changing, I highly recommend you go check out this 2,000 word article that I wrote on Android Authority because that has all the intricate details.
So, we’re not going to dive into those details, but I kind of want to talk about the implications of these changes because they are massive. And I think one of the biggest things that kind of struck people is that, you know, you have this sense that Google’s being forced to open up Android. You know, they’re opening up Android and making it more viable for third-party app stores to compete with the Google Play Store. But at the same time, at the same time that these changes are going to effect next year, next year we’re also getting those new Android developer verification requirements that a lot of people are saying will basically kill sideloading. So Scott, what do you think of this kind of dichotomy with Google kind of opening up Android more to app store developers versus kind of closing it down for indie developers? What do you think is going on here? Is this an example of Google giving with one hand and taking from the other? Does this basically create a corporate oligopoly where you know, the big name players like Epic can thrive with their own alternative marketplaces, whereas small indie communities like F-Droid will suffer? So, what do you think of this dynamic?
07:09 – C. Scott Brown: I think we need to take a step back and look at the macro picture for this whole situation and understand two things. Epic won. Epic won this fight big time, you know, the reason that Google is settling is because you said, it knows that if it lets the courts decide on what is a realistic compromise for this situation, the courts are going to do things that Google definitely does not want to do. And all the things that you listed on that list are things that Google doesn’t want to do, but they’re better than the things that the court would would impose on them. But there is no question, Google lost. Meanwhile, Apple faced a similar situation and Apple got away in much better fashion. So what I think is happening here is I don’t really think it’s necessarily Google you said giving with one hand and taking away with the other. I think it’s Google just sort of understanding that if it wants to be less vulnerable to these types of situations, it needs to go with the way that is less vulnerable. And it’s being proved in the courts that Apple’s way makes it less vulnerable. Why? That is the big question. Why is it that Apple’s got away with this or didn’t get away with it. But why did Apple, you know, not have to deal with nearly as much scrutiny as Google? And I think it comes down to the idea that the perception of the Play Store and Android as an operating system is that it’s completely open. It’s this open source playground where anything goes. And the perception is that iOS and the App Store is not. It is locked down very much controlled by Apple. Yeah. And a lot of arguments could be made that that there’s lots of things about Android that are locked down and that maybe iOS isn’t as locked down as maybe people think it is. But yeah, but I think what Google is doing is looking and saying, okay, we lost big time. But Apple didn’t. Maybe we should try to be more Apple to protect our brand. Now, I’m sure Android fans are not happy about that, but in the end, Google has to do what makes the most, you know, the most business sense and legal sense for them to do. And that just might be locking down the Play Store in some ways to accommodate these situations. I don’t like it. I’m sure you don’t like it and I’m sure a lot of people listening don’t like it, but I don’t know, what else is Google going to do? Is Google going to give control to the courts? Because then the courts are going to do things that don’t make any sense for anyone. You know, remember when Mark Zuckerberg had to explain to Congress how Facebook makes money. That’s the level of incompetence of how tech works that Google would have to deal with in this situation and that’s just not good. So, yeah, Google’s trapped and you could argue that they’re in a trap of their own making, sure. But in the same sense, Google’s trapped and it’s got to do what it’s got to do to get through this and that’s just going to mean a lot of compromises, a lot of things that Google doesn’t want to do and a lot of things that we’re not going to, but that’s where it is.
10:34 – Mishaal Rahman: And keep in mind, some of the alternative consequences that the judge tried to impose on Google was basically, they were going to require the Google Play Store to carry rival app stores. So you could open the Google Play Store, search for Epic Games and download the Epic Games store through the Google Play Store for one. A second thing is they wanted to basically force Google to provide its entire app catalog. So I guess a database of all the apps available on it. I guess all the reviews and things like that, make that available through an API that third-party app stores could then tack on to. So basically if you want to launch a rival App Store, you have access to, by default, almost everything that’s listed on the Google Play Store. And then you can just add your own apps on top of that. those two things were, I think, crazy overreaches, but they would certainly be effective in bootstrapping a rival alternative to the Google Play Store, but I think that those two things went too far. So I think that’s probably why Google agreed to these less harsh settlements that I think favor Epic heavily. These are the things that Epic really wants. Epic is basically wanted a more level playing field, but you know, it does a lot of these things do benefit users and developers, but exactly how much they benefit them is debatable because as I mentioned, there’s still a service fee, for example. Google can charge up to 20% service fee for transactions that are, you know, that affect gameplay for example. If you sell a loot box in a game and use an alternative payment option, Google can take an up to 20% service fee. Now remember, that doesn’t count the service fee that whatever additional provider you’re using will actually take. So if you’re using a credit card provider, that might be an additional 3 to 5% service fee. So 23% service fee potentially for using an alternative versus the 15% for the first $1 million and 30%. So are you really saving that much money by switching to an alternative? So you know, the benefits are not really as great for developers who still distribute apps through the Google Play Store but want to take advantage of alternative payment options. But a lot of the benefits, a lot of the changes that Google’s proposing do benefit people like Epic Games because, you know, a lot of the things that Google is committing to make third-party app stores more viable to survive because Google can no longer basically discriminate against them. They can’t disincentivize developers from launching their own games on the third-party app stores. They can’t force OEMs to basically shunt them into some third dark corner of their home screen. They can’t block OEMs from signing deals to preload these third-party app stores. They can’t hide the installation and the usage of these third-party apps behind a 10-step install flow with multiple warning screens about installing them. It’s going to be a lot easier from now on to install and use third-party app stores and who knows, maybe within a few years within, you know, the six years basically that Google’s committing to maintaining these features, we’ll eventually see third-party app stores with enough applications that people will actually want to keep them around on their devices and not just you know, install for a single application. We might actually have a bunch of games that are exclusive to the Epic Games Store that people actually continuously keep installed on their device just so they can get the latest and greatest games and I mean, we’re already kind of seeing that. That’s Epic’s MO on the PC side. Launching a bunch of exclusive games, getting people to install their application. They’re still not close to Valve and their Steam in terms of popularity, but they’ve made a pretty significant alternative on the PC side of things.
14:19 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, I don’t know, at what cost, you know, okay, so, three years from now I’m going to buy, you know, a Samsung Galaxy phone and it’s going to have the Play Store, the Galaxy Store, the Epic Games Store, the Amazon App Store, the, you know, the whatever it’s going to be 20 store and I’m going to say to myself, okay, I want to buy the latest mobile game, where do I go? Okay, let me open up the Play Store through a search. Oh, it’s not here. Let me go to Epic Games. Oh, no, oh, it’s exclusive to the Galaxy Store now. Who wins, you know? I know Tim Sweeney wins and, you know, I one of the things that irritates me about this whole thing is that Tim Sweeney sees himself as the guy standing up for the little guy. He sees himself in this fight as being, “I’m trying to help everyone by taking down the monopolistic tendencies of the Play Store and Google in general.” But really, he’s just out for Tim Sweeney. He just wants Epic Games to be bigger and he wants to make more money and do his thing and so that kind of rubs me wrong. At least Google is, oh yeah, we’re a giant tech company that’s trying to make as much money as possible. We’re ready to do whatever it takes to protect that. Tim Sweeney is pretending that he’s doing this for the little guy and that kind of ticks me off. But anyway, that’s besides the point. But really, I don’t know, I feel who Google loses, Epic wins and users are just fodder. We’re cannon fodder in the middle of the fight and that kind of sucks, you know, I don’t feel this is going to help anything. you’re still going to have to pay, you know, a lot of money for your loot boxes and your mobile things and this isn’t going to drop prices for you at all. You know, what’s going to happen is that, you know, a developer is going to say, okay, well I can charge, you know, whatever, $5 for this through the Play Store, or I could charge $4 through this other provider and save a little money for the user, or I could just charge $5 and and get extra money and push people to use the third, you know, the third-party provider instead. So it’s, yeah, I mean everyone is going to win at the top and nobody’s going to win at the bottom and that includes the people who are actually making the purchase. So yeah, I feel it’s a lose-lose situation and the only thing that I can see is being, oh, you win is Tim Sweeney and Epic Games. And you know, that’s I guess good for you, but hardly, this is hardly the win that he wants it to be. This is more, you know, you won your vendetta against Google. Great, great job. Congratulations.
17:01 – Mishaal Rahman: I mean, on the bright side, I don’t think we’re going to get quite the bad situation that you described where we have 10 different app stores that get different applications because, you know, I think the fact that we started out with a big centralized app store that everyone agrees is the place to go, the Google Play Store, the fact that that’s already existed, I think will kind of reduce the possibility of other rival general all-purpose app stores kind of kicking off. Because I think if you look at the Chinese market for example, there was no centralized Google Play Store to kind of be the go-to place where all developers and all users go for all their applications. So every single Chinese OEM made their own app store and all their big Chinese tech companies made their own App stores. So over there you have 10 different app stores and of each of varying popularity. So there’s a lot of different places for people to get applications. But here in you know, outside in the rest of the world, you have the Google Play Store. You have a couple of other app stores that have tried to become general purpose app stores like the Amazon App Store. Of course they’ve really failed to catch on. But that was before these changes have come into effect to be fair. But even so, I still think the vast majority of developers will continue to contribute their apps to the Play Store and even those that do launch their apps on say the Epic Game Store, they’re probably not going to do it in perpetuity, exclusively on those app stores. They’ll probably eventually bring them to the Google Play Store you know, so long as a couple of months after maybe signing an exclusive deal with Epic Games. I don’t think it’s going to be such a bad situation like, you know, some people are worried about.
18:34 – C. Scott Brown: I totally agree that that’s not going to happen. But at the same it could, you know, this opens the door for that kind of thing. And yeah, as a PC gamer, I hate it, you know, I hate when I want to play Red Dead Redemption that I have to install a third-party, you know, platform just to play it just so they can collect my data or do whatever they want to do. I hate it. And so it’s now all Epic Games is doing is making it so that that’s the reality on Android as well. And yeah, there’s nothing stopping the floodgates are now open. These multiple app stores that all have to integrate with one another and confuse the user. It’s there. I mean, I don’t know, yeah, I guess it is nice that, you know, that Google’s going to have more competition. Maybe this is going to make the Play Store be better. Maybe this is going to make Google be better about enticing app developers to do things on Android first and to, you know, just make the Android experience better because Google’s now going to have to say, how can we make it so that app developers don’t go to Epic Games and don’t go to these other places and we can’t just pay them off anymore. We actually have to work hard to entice them to come over. That sounds great, but is it going to be worth it? I don’t know. I guess I’m just pessimistic about it because of the PC gaming experience, because, you know, of what I have to deal with when I want to play, you know, whatever X game that I’m just, I don’t want to install this stuff. I just want to play the game, you know.
20:12 – Mishaal Rahman: I mean, on the flip side, on PC at least, when it comes to game options, you have a ton of options. When it comes to Android, there’s a lot of games that are missing. Maybe this will lead to Epic throwing its billions of Fortnite dollars into, you know, propping up Android gaming. Maybe they’ll pay a lot of developers that previously wouldn’t even consider porting their games to Android, to bring their games over to Android. You know, it’ll probably be an Epic Games exclusive or at least a timed exclusive, but you’ll actually have those games on Android now, hopefully.
20:42 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, I mean we’re going to talk about it later in this episode, but yeah, I mean the processors on Android flagship phones are more than capable. They are very, very powerful and they could totally play a lot of those games. So, yeah, that could be a silver lining for this for sure.
20:56 – Mishaal Rahman: Yeah. But before we move on to the Snapdragon story, we wanted to briefly, you know, play the world’s smallest violin and say goodbye to an old friend, Google Assistant because it, you know, it’s been a long time coming. We knew it would eventually happen. Google is going to be killing off Assistant. Exactly the exact date this is going to happen, we still don’t know that. We know that it’s going to happen later this year, but we have finally spotted our first concrete clues that Google is preparing to kill it off within the Google App on Android phones. So, we basically – our Authority Insights team has found – evidence that Google is doing away with the digital assistant from Google option within the Gemini app that allows you to switch between Gemini and the Google Assistant. So once that’s gone, you will no longer be able to switch back to the Google Assistant, and effectively locking you into Gemini. Now, I know we both use Gemini, we’ve both have probably been using it for a very long time, but there are definitely still some listeners who have not switched over and I know there’s still people who are skeptical of Gemini. But I kind of wanted to gauge your thoughts. How do you feel about Gemini now that it’s been almost two years since it launched.
22:11 – C. Scott Brown: I love it. I use Gemini every day. I use it for every day for all sorts of things. You know, I use it as a brainstorming partner for video ideas. I use it for thumbnail mockups. I’ll come up with a thumbnail idea in my head, but I can’t draw, so I’ll just explain what I think the thumbnail should look to Gemini and it will create something that looks, you know, my vision and then I can replicate that easier when I’m actually taking the photo or doing whatever. Yeah, I use it to change emails. You know, I’ll write an email back and sometimes I can be a little curt in my writing, so I’ll feed it to Gemini and I’ll be, you know, can you soften this for me? And it’ll, you know, all the time. I use it. And it’s in my smart home now. So, you know, I’ll ask questions, I’ll be in the middle of cooking and I’ll say, oh, I need to, you know, to change this recipe in some way. Can you help me with this and have a nice conversation with it? it all works well. And the thing that I find really ironic about Google Assistant is that for the past maybe five years, I feel all anyone’s ever done is complain about Assistant. And now Gemini’s come in and is I would say objectively better than Assistant. And now everyone’s, oh no, don’t take Assistant away. I’m just, which one is it? You wanted this for so long and now so so yeah, I will miss Google Assistant for certain aesthetic reasons. The the Google Assistant voice, you know, I’ve become accustomed to the voice and I’ve become too accustomed to its strange inflection about things and how it says certain words and it’s become very familiar, especially in my home, you know, it’s when I ask something about turning the lights on or off or playing music or doing whatever, I’ve become accustomed to this friendly voice that has a very specific type of tone. And that’s going away with Gemini and so I’ll miss that. But in the end, Gemini is better than Assistant and it’s only going to get better from here. So I’m all for it. I’m very happy. But yeah, I can understand how people would be upset about Assistant’s eventual demise, but.
24:21 – Mishaal Rahman: I have a theory on why that is, on why people have been so negative towards Gemini. And I think it’s because, you know, for a long time, as you mentioned, the quality of Google Assistant has just been degrading and degrading and degrading to the point where a lot of people just basically use their Google speakers as glorified timers or alarm clocks or just to play some songs on Spotify. That’s all they use it for. They don’t actually use it as an intelligent assistant. They don’t really ask many questions of it. Maybe they ask the weather and that’s something that it can do well, but a lot of other general purpose questions, kind of fails at which is oh I don’t know the answer to that or let me look that up or here’s a link to to look it up on your phone. But the issue is that when Google initially transitioned or asked people to make the move over to Gemini, they kind of botched the initial launch. A lot of the basic things that people had grown used to with the Google Assistant, the timers, the alarm clocks, the weather and stuff like that. A lot of those just didn’t work very well at the beginning. I know people were complaining a lot about timers especially just not working at all. They eventually did add those stuff and I think I haven’t had any issues with them since they launched. But I think that initial impression that people got, you know, the people who were really reliant on their Google smart devices for those basic features were disappointed when they gave Gemini a shot when that transition initially opened up and then they never looked back. They never tried it again after all those months. But if you do give it a shot and you assume you’ll be forced to give it a shot because Google is closing down Google Assistant, you’ll find that it handles all those basic tasks pretty well and it can do so much more, especially conversationally. The ability to basically just free flow, ask it, spew whatever is on your mind without really thinking about how to structure your query. It’s just so much better with Gemini than it is with Assistant.
26:10 – C. Scott Brown: What this reminds me of a little bit is physical keyboards on phones. You know, when physical keyboards were the thing, you know, and then the iPhone came out and the iPhone obviously did not have a physical keyboard. And people hated it. They were, this is awful. I can’t feel the tactile presence of the keys. Getting to the comma is super difficult. you know, the key presses aren’t registered, too small, all these complaints. And people were, why can’t we just have a physical keyboard, physical keyboards are better. But then digital keyboards got better and better and better. And now I feel if you were to try to go back to a physical keyboard, 99% of people would be, this is terrible. I so miss my digital keyboard. Granted, there are a select few people who still would rather have a physical tactile keyboard and for them, there are all sorts of options and things like that Clicks from Mr. Mobile and all that stuff. So that niche does exist, but it’s a niche now. It’s completely become the other way. It used to be that physical keyboards were everything everybody wanted and they hated onscreen keyboards and now it’s completely flipped. And I think the same thing’s going to happen with Gemini and Google Assistant. People are going to look back on Google Assistant, you know, five years from now, somebody’s going to dig out a phone that only still has Google Assistant on it. They’re going to fire it up and they’re going to ask a question and they’re going to be, oh my god, this thing’s terrible. you know, and people are going to be, you know, they’re going to totally switch back to the way it is. Similar thing with physical keyboards. So I think that’s where we’re going to be. But this little in between section where the transition is happening, I think you’re right. I think it’s just going to be tough for some people to go through that change. But eventually they will and just with physical keyboards, they’ll never look back.
28:01 – Mishaal Rahman: Do we think that Google is going to actually stick to its end of 2025 timeline for killing Google Assistant? Because that was the timeline they gave us back in March when they confirmed that Gemini will fully replace Assistant. They said by the end of 2025, we will have Gemini on all devices that are capable of running Assistant. But we’re pretty close to the end of the year and they still haven’t pulled the plug yet. And we are still seeing Gemini be integrated into more and more Google services Maps for example or Android Auto which has just started to roll out. So it seems Google might hit its milestone pretty late in the year. Do we think they might just delay it until early next year to give people more time to transition. What do you think?
28:41 – C. Scott Brown: No, I don’t think they’ll delay it. I think they’ll just continuously do what you just described. They’ll just be continuously putting Gemini into more things and then slowly taking Assistant away. I think that they could arbitrarily just be, we hit our commitment by turning off the option to have Assistant in a certain major thing, whether that be Android phones or smartwatches or whatever. Yep, we did it, we made the transition in this one area and the rest of the time, you know, we’ll slowly get it all out for the rest. Yeah, I had no, there was no way that they were going to be Assistant will be gone across all platforms, you know, by the end of 2025. That’s just way too fast. They never were going to be able to do that. But yeah, but I feel for most situations, you know, it’ll be pretty easy to make it so that you’re just talking to Gemini all the time. You know, it’s already in the smart home, you know, you have to opt in I think for now, but they could easily flip that switch and just be, okay, everybody’s now using Gemini. They can easily do that in December and beat that goal. So, we’ll see, but yeah, I mean I don’t mind. To me, I’m just, I’m not in any rush. You know, I’m using Gemini, I’m happy. It’s available on all the things that I use it for, you know, every day. And yeah, I have less and less reliant on Assistant, but so, yeah, I’m fine with the pace that we’re going.
30:12 – Mishaal Rahman: Although I’m kind of curious what’s going to happen with Android TV and Android Automotive because there are a lot of cars and TVs that are barely receiving updates anymore or you know, they rarely receive updates or their updates are just not controlled by Google. So how is Google going to push out Gemini to those devices if they’re doing so at all. And if not, are they going to keep Assistant running on those devices for years to come? Or are they going to eventually kill it off and say you can’t access your voice assistant anymore on these devices because it’s too old. So what are they going to do with TVs and cars?
30:44 – C. Scott Brown: I think that, I mean, I think that they could keep it going for quite a long time, but eventually if they do shut it off and they’re, okay, you can’t access the Assistant anymore on this television or this car. I don’t think that will necessarily make it so that that TV or that car all of a sudden is not usable. Obviously, all the functions of those TVs and cars will still be there. It’s just that you won’t be able to use your voice to activate them. And yeah, but I agree that it will suck for those people who own those things and are keeping them for a long period of time. It always sucks when a feature that was launched with a product is then taken away from you later on. But I think that Google could run those are both very, very small things in the grand scheme of things. Right. There are very few cars on the road that have Android Automotive, at least comparatively to the wider automotive market. And there are probably more televisions that have Google TV, older versions of Google TV built-in and old Google TV boxes and stuff like that. That’s probably more of a hurdle for Google. But even then, I feel if they’re only focused on those two niches, they could have Assistant run for quite a while before they’ll eventually be, okay, we have enough data now to show that only a fraction of a fraction of the people left are actually using Google Assistant, we’ll shut it off for them. And you know, there’ll be an article on Android Authority about this and people will get really upset about it. You know, five years down the road and that’ll be it and then we’ll move on.
32:15 – Mishaal Rahman: And then we can finally officially add Google Assistant to the Google graveyard.
32:20 – C. Scott Brown: That Google graveyard just grows bigger and bigger every year.
32:25 – Mishaal Rahman: All right, so as we prepare to say our goodbyes to Google Assistant, another question we had on our mind is whether or not you should say goodbye to your existing phone and upgrade to a new phone powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 because this chip is incredibly powerful. So we wanted to find out whether it lives up to the hype. So our Rob Triggs benchmarked it, put it through the works. He tested its performance in the CPU department, in the GPU department, in real world gaming. He’s run a bunch of different articles on it. And since we finally got our hands on retail hardware with this chipset, the super powerful Nubia REDMAGIC 11 Pro, which I believe actually literally has liquid cooling in it. It’s the first for an Android device to have actual liquid cooling in it. We decided to run some benchmarks. So, in our testing, we found that as expected, it is a very fast and powerful chip. It outperforms its predecessor, but also competitors like Google’s Tensor G5 because of course it did as well as MediaTek Dimensity 9500. The chip showed a 15% increase in single core performance and a 14% increase in multi-core CPU performance over the Snapdragon 8 Elite. This is a pretty solid gain, but it does fall a bit short of Qualcomm’s promised 20% increase in CPU performance that they marketed. And the GPU on the other hand, showed a 15% increase in single core performance and a 14% increase sorry, that was the CPU. The GPU shows a 13.5% increase in the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme test and a 17% increase in the ray-tracing Solar Bay test compared to last year’s chipset. However, this also doesn’t meet Qualcomm’s 23% promised marketing claim for the GPU in performance. But in terms of raw performance and comparison with other other mobile chipsets, starting with the A19 Pro from Apple, the Snapdragon chip is slightly behind in single core CPU tasks, but it holds a pretty significant 16% lead in multi-core performance. In graphics, the Snapdragon chip is substantially faster with performance ranging from 19 to 38% higher than the chip in the iPhone 17 Pro. Compared to the MediaTek Dimensity 9500, the Snapdragon leads it in CPU benchmarks, but is closer in the graphics department with the 9500 even pulling ahead by about 1% in ray-tracing performance. However, even with the fact that the REDMAGIC 11 Pro has insane liquid cooling, you know, probably the most advanced cooling you can get on a smartphone right now, the chip still runs very hot. It peaks at 56 degrees Celsius. So, while the overall stability and performance has improved with this thanks to the liquid cooling system around 80% sustainability. This suggests the chip can still struggle in phones with less robust cooling systems than the REDMAGIC 11 Pro. So, you know, the main benefit for gaming appears to be more consistent performance over long sessions rather than actually higher peak performance times, but you know, that will depend on the kind of phone that you have and whether or not it actually has a powerful cooling system. So Scott, you know, as the Pixel guy, I’m sure you’re well acquainted with all the controversies and the debates about the Tensor’s raw CPU and GPU performance and how it’s never really been a top contender for performance. But on the other side of things, you have Qualcomm who is leading the pack in CPU and GPU performance, especially on the Android side of things. So what do you think of these raw performance claims? Do you think people still really care about these claims that Qualcomm is putting out?
36:18 – C. Scott Brown: I don’t well, first, let me say, I don’t think people are going to care that Qualcomm’s numbers that it claimed at the beginning and the real world numbers are lower. I think that most people who visit sites like Android Authority and watch our YouTube channel and things like that, they understand that the numbers that the company claims at the beginning are always going to be higher than what you’re going to see in real world results. And I made a video for Android Authority going over the initial benchmarks that I took at Snapdragon Summit this year on a Qualcomm designed phone that was specifically created just to run benchmarks on. And I say in the video numerous times that, you know, these numbers will be lower when these phones actually become real retail models. And there were multiple comments in there of people being, you know, you know, this is great, this is really interesting information. Nobody was, oh my god, Qualcomm’s lying to us. And it’s, I think people are smart enough to get that a benchmark from the company is always going to be higher. So I don’t think people are going to be upset that, oh, it only hit whatever, 14% gains instead of 20%. That’s fine. I think people are going to be really upset about the heat. I think the heat is going to be a big deal. I don’t know, I don’t know what we’re going to see as far as things here in the United States, you know, with phones that are coming here to the US and I don’t know what we’re going to see from phones that do not, you said, do not have that robust cooling system that we see in the phone from Nubia. So it’s really going to be interesting to see because yeah, okay, let’s say you’re a mobile gamer and you want to have better sustained peak performance on your games so that you can play longer and see better performance as you go. But if you can’t hold on to the phone because it gets to 56 degrees Celsius, which is really, really hot, then what is the gain, you know, what have you gained really if you can play longer but you can’t hold on to the phone to play. That to me is that’s a terrible tradeoff. So, I’m really interested to see, you said, I’m interested to see what happens with phones that do not have liquid, literal liquid cooling in them. So I’m speaking specifically about the OnePlus 15 and the upcoming Galaxy S26 series. What are those phones going to do with this chip? I don’t know. I feel either the performance is going to have to come down even more. So instead of 14% gains, maybe we’re at 10% gains to keep those thermals from going excessively high or they’re going to keep the same gains and the thermals are going to go way up. And I don’t know, for me, I full disclosure, I am not a big mobile gamer, but at the same time, I understand the concept of holding a phone and playing a game and if you can’t hold the phone because it’s literally burning your fingers, how how much of it you know, how much of an advantage is that? So, I mean, because 56 degrees Fahrenheit, I don’t even know what I mean, sorry, I don’t know what 56 degrees Celsius is in Fahrenheit, but it’s a lot. It’s over 100 over 100 something degrees, right? I can’t do the math, but. It’s very hot. It’s hot enough that you would not want to hold it in your hand. So that’s bad.
39:41 – Mishaal Rahman: 132 degrees. So yeah, that is very hot.
39:45 – C. Scott Brown: That’s crazy. That’s nuts.
39:49 – Mishaal Rahman: Although I don’t think that’s the skin temperature of the phone, the actual temperature you feel when touching it. But still that’s crazy hot.
39:58 – C. Scott Brown: That’s hot. Yeah. And that’s, you know, and once again and I know how Rob tests these phones. We have a very strict testing guideline here at Android Authority and I won’t go through all the protocols or anything, but it’s very strict. You have to make sure the phone, you know, you turn off the phone and you let it sit for 10, 20 minutes or whatever until it returns to a normal temperature and then you rerun the test and you always make sure that it’s flat on a table and it has to be in an environment that’s not too hot, not too cold. We regulate these things very strictly. And so, yeah, imagine if you’re not under those very strict regimented situations and you’re playing, you know, your game outside in Phoenix, Arizona or in India or wherever where it gets really hot, now your phone is literally a toaster. That’s bad. This is all bad. So, yeah, it really is going to start coming down to, you know, what do gamers really want? Do they really want year over year gains with the acceptance that they’re going to have to not literally not be able to hold their phone to do it. I don’t know, I just don’t think that’s going to fly. But I don’t know, I said, I 100% admit I am not a mobile gamer, so I can’t really have much authority on this, but at the same time, I just don’t think they’re going to go for it. But we’ll see.
41:14 – Mishaal Rahman: Yeah. I mean, I think the performance of Qualcomm’s chips for many, many years has far exceeded the capabilities that Android is able to take advantage of. So you know, you’ve been able to do far more than these chips are really, really, really capable. And we didn’t really see exactly how capable they are until I think the recent trend of people running Windows games on their phones. I myself didn’t realize exactly how powerful these chips are until I think someone a Chinese YouTuber ran Black Myth: Wukong, which is one of the highest end AAA games on his REDMAGIC 11 Pro with a separate cooler and stuff like that. He was able to run that game through emulation and of course it’s not running at 4K resolution, it was running at 720p and medium settings, but still the fact that it’s able to run this AAA PC game through emulation at reasonable frame rates and it looks really good. You know, the fact that that’s even possible just shows how powerful these chipsets really are. They’re just kind of held back by what you’re able to do with Android and just the lack of AAA games on the system. So I think maybe that’s one reason why Qualcomm has been really excited why Cristiano Amon at Snapdragon Summit said he was really excited about the Android on PC project because Qualcomm will finally have a platform it can actually properly use those chipsets in. You know, you do have the Windows on Arm, but it doesn’t really feel Microsoft has been taking its Arm side of things as seriously as Google does because of course Android is primarily supporting Arm devices whereas Microsoft has been trying for years to build up and convince developers to port their applications to Arm. The other side of things, Android is already almost every application supports Arm devices because that is by far the majority architecture among Android devices. So I’m really excited to see Android on PCs because then we’ll finally have applications and devices that can actually take advantage of these super powerful Qualcomm chips.
43:14 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, I mean and you mentioned the limitations of the chip and how, you know, Android itself doesn’t take advantage of all the power that these chips present. But it’s also the form factor, you know, I was explaining with the holding the phone to game, if you didn’t have to hold the phone because it was in a standalone laptop shape thing, then you would have the advantage of having not to hold it, not to touch it, and also the bigger form factor, more cooling, more fans, more things going on. So then all these limitations that Qualcomm is facing with continuously upping the ante every year when it comes to performance would not be there anymore. And so yeah, you could make a Snapdragon processor that really pushes the limits because the thermal presence would not be that big of a deal anymore. But yeah, but as it is, holding your little smartphone and playing, you know, Black Myth: Wukong, it’s just not possible. It’s just not going to happen because of the limitations of physics. And so, yeah, I don’t know. Qualcomm is going to have to sort of figure it out. And the thing that Qualcomm is going to be stuck on is it can’t stop, you know, it developed this entire reputation on always making it better every single year, more performance, more performance, more frames, more frames. That’s what it does every single year. So it can’t stop. If it stops, then everyone’s going to be, oh my god, Qualcomm’s, you know, it’s over, you know. So, yeah, you, I don’t know, you mentioned Tensor Google’s not really trapped in this situation with Tensor. Google could launch Tensor G6 and have it be, you know, minorly little bit better than last year and, you know, a lot of people will be upset about it, but the Pixel buyers won’t be. They’ll be, yeah, cool, this is great. I like this, you know. whereas Qualcomm’s kind of dug itself into a hole where it’s, okay, if we don’t make our processor 20% better than last year, then we’re dead in the water. So, yeah, I don’t know.
45:20 – Mishaal Rahman: No, I mean, that’s the excellent point. It’s actually an issue with Qualcomm’s business model in general because they have to sell their chips to people. They have to sell their chips to smartphone manufacturers, tablet manufacturers and other companies that want to make mobile devices. And they’re not going to buy those chips if they’re 1) not good and 2) if they can’t really market the fact that they’re using those chips to consumers. Unlike with Google. Google is not selling the Tensor chip to anyone. They’re not trying to find a buyer. They already have one. They’re the only ones who are using their own chips. So they don’t have to care about, oh, we have 30% year on year performance. We have the fastest CPU in the world. That doesn’t really matter for them. As long as it’s good enough for their needs and fulfills their purpose of selling more Pixel phones, I think that’s all they care about. Whereas with Qualcomm, they have to have these benchmark topping claims every year because otherwise they’re not going to be able to market their chips as well and people will lose interest in the Snapdragon brand. I still see, even to this day, there are people who associate MediaTek as lower end, even though that hasn’t been really true for a long time. MediaTek makes some really powerful chips, but people still associate Qualcomm with ultra premium, the highest, fastest performance gaming devices you can get on the Android side of things. So, you know, if they lose that edge, fewer OEMs will start buying their chips because fewer people will be interested in buying devices with those chips in them. So that will harm Qualcomm’s business. So yeah, they are kind of stuck in this endless cycle of improving things just so they can make new marketing claims even if it’s not really that necessary because what the heck on Android is even using all this power right now, really nothing.
47:00 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah. And I don’t know, this would be an interesting thing to put in the comments on this video. If you’re listening to this video or this podcast or watching this video and you would buy a smartphone knowing that in order to play the games you want to play, you would have to have a cooling system attached to it. Obviously cooling systems, you know, cooling system attachments for smartphones is not new. We’ve seen these for years and years and years now. But they’ve always been optional things. They’ve always been something that you can optionally add if you want to play longer or play at a higher frame rate or do whatever. But if you had to have a cooling system attached to your phone to use it in the way that you want to use it, would that be an acceptable thing for you? Or would you rather slightly lower performance and be able to hold the phone in your hand just as normal? I don’t know, let’s see what people say. I’m interested. For all I know, people would just be, oh yeah, totally. Hi, I have no problem carrying around a cooling system with me wherever I go or spending, you know, a ton of money on a phone that has a cooling system built into it that is, you know, super capable and that’s the department or whatever. But yeah, I don’t know. I just can’t imagine mobile gamers being, yep, totally, no problem. I feel they would rather have a couple of percentage points lower performance if they knew that they could just game as they normally game.
48:22 – Mishaal Rahman: Right. And I’m also curious to know, if you currently have a “gaming phone”, I want to know, do you actually use the cooling attachment that a lot of them optionally come with or you have to buy, do you actually use that when you game or do you just like the aesthetics of your gaming phone? This I really do want to hear from you because, you know, I have used gaming phones in the past. I have almost never used those cooling attachments because there aren’t many games that actually require them as I feel it’s kind of overkill to slap the little cooler on and have that fan work while I’m playing, I don’t know, Fortnite or something. So yeah, do let us know in the comments below.
And 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.
49:09 – 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 @AndroidAuthority and you can follow me personally on Instagram, Bluesky and my own YouTube channel @CScottBrown.
49:26 – 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 in Android, follow me on X, Threads, Mastodon or Telegram @MishaalRahman. Thanks for listening.
