July 11, 2022 • 39 mins
It's a two-part special on Android Bytes as we chat with two execs from OSOM Privacy, an Android startup founded from the remains of Andy Rubin's Essential. In this episode, we talk about the company's first product, the Solana Saga, and what it's like building an Android experience from scratch.
With us are OSOM CEO Jason Keats and CPO Gary Anderson. You can learn more about the Saga here.
- 02:22 - After Essential shut down, why start another smartphone company?
- 06:38 - Why do so many smartphones use the same build materials?
- 09:05 - What's the Solana Saga all about?
- 15:06 - Does the Solana Saga ship with GMS? What is the software experience like?
- 18:02 - How exactly does a company bring Android with GMS onto a new device? What are the steps involved?
- 21:26 - What is a MADA? Why do companies have to sign it?
- 22:17 - Why can't a company launch a GMS product with any version of Android and security patch level? Is this requirement burdensome?
- 27:12 - How does one validate that their Android build will pass Google certification? What is xTS and how long does it take to run it?
- 31:23 - What is a 3PL? What happens when a build passes certification?
- 33:21 - How did Essential manage to ship day 1 Android updates?
- 34:50 - How do carriers play a role in Android updates?
Android Bytes is hosted by Mishaal Rahman, Senior Technical Editor, and David Ruddock, Editor in Chief, of Esper.
Esper enables next-gen device management for company-owned and managed tablets, kiosks, smart phones, IoT edge devices, and more.
For more about Esper:
- Esper Blog
- Mobile Device Management (MDM) Guide
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- MDM Solutions
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New from the Esper blog:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
David (00:02):
Hello, and welcome to Android bites powered by Esper I'm David
Rudick and each week I'm joinedby my co-host Michelle ramen.
As we dive deep into the world of Android.
And this week, I won't beginwith any long preamble.
We have a very special guestseries of guests actually.
Um, we have two guests now, but, uh, yeah,Michelle, we have somebody very special.
(00:22):
So go ahead.
Let you make intros.
Mishaal (00:24):
Yeah.
Thanks David.
So I'm sure all of you.
At one point, I've had an opinionon what the ideal smartphone should
have, but there's no true onesize fits all device out there.
Every device lacks something that'simportant to someone out there.
And if there's enough, someone's outthere to demand that something, then
there's an opportunity for a new productto be made that meets that demand.
(00:45):
For those of you who follow tech newsa couple of weeks ago, the founder
of pebble actually made headlines.
When he started an online petition forpeople to sign onto, to say, Hey, we
want a iPhone minis size Android phone.
There were about 50,000people sign onto the petition.
And of course, you know, if you'refamiliar with online petitions, they
usually don't really do anything, butstill like he wanted to show the world.
(01:05):
He wanted to show that thereare enough people who actually
want a small Android phone.
Unlike most people out there, founderof pebble, he actually has the money,
connections and experience in theindustry to make his dream a reality.
But of course he's not the only one whohas all three of those things to do that.
Recently there's been not one,but two smartphone companies that
have launched or at least one willbe launching their product soon.
(01:28):
The other is awesome and we've invited twovery special people from the company to
join us on the Android bites podcast, totalk about their first smartphone product.
So we've invited Jason Keats.
Who's the founder andCEO and Gary Anderson.
Who's the chief productofficer onto the show.
So thank you for joiningus, Jason and Gary.
Jason (01:47):
Hey, thanks for having us excited to be here.
Letting chat with you guysabout building Android devices.
Yep.
Happy to be
Gary (01:53):
here too.
Uh, looking forward to telling you
Mishaal (01:55):
about saga.
Hey listeners, before we get toofar, I wanna let you know that our
interview went pretty long, so we'llbe splitting it up into two episode.
In this first episode, we are focusinga lot on building up the Android
experience that Austin wanted to have.
There's also plenty of insight,Gary and Jason share as to how a
lot of these aspects worked out whentheir team was part of essential.
And then in our next episode, we'llturn to how they plan to keep their
(02:15):
OS updated and then dive into some ofhow the salon mobile stack will work.
But let's first get started with part one.
So right off the bat, why don'twe just dive into the product
that you're launching and thecompany that you found at Jason?
So for those of you don't know, Jasonwas the head of R and D at essential,
another smartphone startup that producedthe now discontinued essential phone.
(02:35):
I don't really wanna, re-litigatewhat happened to essential because
that's kind of old history and youcan just pretty much just Google
it and look up what happened.
So why did you decide to foundawesome after leaving essential?
Like what did you feel was lacking inthe Steve smartphones release in 2020.
Led you to want to make your own?
Well,
Jason (02:52):
there are two parts to that.
Number one is there was a real need anddemand for a smartphone that was a quality
bill, premium materials, excellent device,but it needed to answer some question.
And I think that was the biggestthing missing from essential.
You could look up all the differentdetails about why essential one enter.
But ultimately my viewpoint was that therewasn't really a reason for it to exist.
(03:15):
It was like we're building a cool thingfor the sake of building a cool thing.
And when we started awesome, we kind ofsat down and said, what do we wanna build?
How do we wanna build it?
What are we trying to answer?
And the first thing we came to wasthere is an extreme lack of privacy
and people do care about it andare willing to put money behind it.
And so that was the ethosbehind starting the company.
The other side of it was when Andy toldme essential was shutting down, it was
(03:38):
like, okay, well I can go make big bucksat apple or Google again, if I want to.
And in no way, did that sound entertainingto me or fun to me and starting a
company it's very, very difficult.
There are so many challenges.
Probably the hardest thing is hiring.
And yet here I had the opportunity to hirea team of people that I've worked with.
And we've been through thetrenches together with that.
We know how each other works and how eachother behaves and they were all available.
(04:02):
So it was a fairly simple move togo, Hey guys, let's stick together.
I'll put my money where my mouthis and let's try to go and do this.
And it would be actually super interestto hear Gary's side of this convers.
Gary (04:13):
Yeah, I think after the shutdown of, of essential the engineers, right.
We're thinking where, where they couldgo lo and behold, Keith's, you know,
we get a call from Jason here and hereaches out and says, Hey, I have a
crazy idea and continues to pitch theidea to us and told us what was missing
from essential and kind of what thatwould change into here at awesome.
(04:36):
So privacy being our north star and thensome of the stuff that we'd be doing.
In terms of not only working in adifferent environment, which encouraged
collaboration and a lot of communicationwith the CEO, but also a lot of different
types of things that we truly believedin on a personal level and things that
was kind of kind of rapidly growing in,in the, you know, sense of the markets
(04:57):
in the EU and, uh, us and then thingsthat are interesting, getting a lot
more attention in different countries.
Mishaal (05:04):
I think it's quite interesting, or at least like incredible that the two
of you and like, you know, the rest ofthe, the higher ups of the, the founders
of awesome were able to convince somany former ex essential engineers to
immediately join on board with you guys.
Because after this company goes down tostart up making a smartphone company,
a lot of these ex engineers have a lotof built up experience in the industry.
(05:25):
They could have gone to apple,they could have gone to Google.
They could have gone to some ofthe more established brands, but.
They had enough trust in yourexpertise and your idea to want
to say, I wanna do this again.
I want a second shot at thisto go with another startup.
So I think that's pretty impressivethat you guys manage to scoop
up so many former employees andstart a new smartphone brand.
Jason (05:45):
I appreciate that.
There has been a lot of negativethings said about Andy in the press.
And I gotta say one of the thingsthat he did amazingly well was
attracting just the best people inthe industry to come and work for him.
And for whatever reason, I, I don't knowif there's like some, we all have the
same mental defect or whatever you wannacall it, a willingness to chew glass
(06:06):
and keep fighting and working together.
And we.
Like you said, it takes a matter ofcomradery or friendship to go through
one startup, have it fail and justimmediately sign up to do it again
with the expectation that things willbe different and making the changes
at a, at a institutional level to seethat those changes are implemented.
(06:28):
And I cannot stress enough howamazed I am and how proud I am of
this team that I have with me andwho are on this adventure with.
So
David (06:38):
I do wanna ask a hardware question, Jason, because I know we're
gonna talk a lot about software today.
The pH one really wasn't like anyother Android phone before, or since
I would say in terms of materials,design, even the aesthetic of
the phone was markedly different.
There was always something clearly veryspecial about the engineering talent
(06:58):
at essential on the hardware side.
What do you think made it possible for youall to build what everybody else looks at?
The big manufacturers, even, you know,the big conglomerates out of China,
like oppo BBK group, and they say, okay,you have the scale, you can do this.
You can make something really incredible.
They always shy away, go back tolike 7,000 series, aluminum standard
(07:20):
glass materials, the same kindof bill that everybody goes for.
Do you really think it is justmoney and that your freedom that
you've given your team that enablesyou to make those Boulder choices?
Or is there somethinglike more systemic there?
Jason (07:34):
You know, it, it's a really good question.
Why don't they do that?
Number one, I think big companies, all.
A million voices and a million opinions.
Google is probably theworst example of that.
I mean, looking at their hardware,you can clearly see it was designed
by like four people and not asingle mind was melding it together.
It's like, cool, you do the front andall to the back and we'll just glue
them together and we'll call it a day.
(07:55):
There's part of that.
And then partly, you know, what I've seenin my career from a hardware perspective
is when I'm sitting in China, I haveseen so many vendors just get abused
by engineers from different companiesand like, just get treated like.
My thing has always been to treateverybody respect and love and show
a measure of comradery for everybody.
(08:16):
And what that means is when I havesomething that's stupid or crazy,
like machining ceramic on the back ofthe essential pH one, the 0.02, five
millimeter tolerance to get the SIbeam chip to work means that they were
willing to work with me and go like,cool, Jason's a crazy bastard, but let's
work with him cuz he's a lot of fun.
I've maintained that relationship withall the vendors and all the suppliers,
(08:36):
which has allowed us to play at a levelthat no startup should be able to play at.
I mean, we called Foxcon.
We called all the big tier onedevelopers and manufacturing houses.
We're like, we're gonna do this.
And I'm like, cool, whateveryou need, we got you.
I don't think anybody could do that today.
I, I know for a fact that, uh, one ofthe other brand new phone companies
needed my help to get intros at that.
(08:58):
And
Mishaal (08:59):
he shouldn't have, um, said phone company will
remain unnamed just to be clear.
Yes . So, um, exactly the topicof this discussion is mostly
about building Android andshipping, Android onto a device.
And I promise we're gonna get tothat, but I wanted to first give
you an opportunity to talk about theend result, the actual product that
you guys are releasing next year.
(09:19):
So can you tell us a bit, Jasonand Gary, about the Solana saga?
What sets it apart from otherflagship Android phones?
Jason (09:27):
Right now what we're doing is from a hardware perspective, it
is a top flight, absolute flagshipAndroid device of which there
aren't that many left anymore.
You have Samsung, and I don't know what'sin the pixel seven, to be honest, but
certainly the last couple pixels weren'tflagship in terms of mechanical hardware
spec, their software has been tremend.
So what we are doing is a trueflagship device that can compete on
(09:50):
specs alone with Google or Samsung.
What's different about it iswe are trying to give users.
Everything we do is all about providingconsumer choice and choice and control
over how their data is handled, whichgoes to the awesome privacy ethos, but
also now how they control, interact withtheir digital assets, which is where
the salon mobile stack comes in on saga.
(10:10):
And we can spend quite a bit oftalking about the relationship
between awesome and saga right now.
What it really comes downto is both a Toley who's the
CEO and co-founder of Solana.
And I have in common is that we did seethis incredible opportunity where they
wanted to build some hardware for thefuture of web three to be developed with.
And we've seen for years thatmobile is the leader, not desktop.
(10:31):
And yet in the crypto space,desktop was ex or like they
were developing exclusively fordesktop, which made no sense.
What we're doing is building a homefor web three developers to build
onto mobile hardware, which reallyis what most people use day to day.
And from a software perspective,I'll hand it back over.
Yeah,
Gary (10:49):
I think what we're gonna end up seeing is there's gonna be a difference
from our device and how it evolvesversus some of the other ones that
are made by these mega corporations.
Right?
So there's gonna be stuff that'sleaning heavily into what web three and
decentralization at its core is meant toprovide as well as taking a lot of and
leaning into the open source community.
(11:10):
Right?
So I think having amending those twotogether on a flagship device, I'm
more excited about the evolution.
And this being a flagship phone andhardware to how that evolving software,
I think that's what we're most excited to
Mishaal (11:24):
see.
Thank you both for that.
It's really important for any newphone on the market to stand out.
And this partnership with Solana, I'm suremany people have differing opinions on
cryptocurrency, web three NFTs, et cetera.
Yeah, to say the least, there'scertainly many heated opinions on them.
And I don't really wanna Wade intothose differences of opinions, but
(11:45):
it is well, let, let very uniqueaspect, wait in our answer to
Jason (11:47):
that really quickly.
Is that again, I keep reiteratingit's all about choice.
If a user doesn't want to usethe crypto features, there
is no obligation to use them.
There is no forcing function.
There is nothing there that requires it.
If you just want a premium Androidexperience on a premium flagship device.
The Sal salon of saga is a perfect device.
It just gives you more options and
Mishaal (12:08):
more control.
And that's exactly what I'd like to see.
A lot of times I see a company releasea product that focuses exclusively
on the gimmick, but they don't reallybother with all the other aspects.
There might be some deficient aspects.
I notice this a lot with gamingphones and for example, like they're
highly optimized for gaming, but.
They might sacrifice intentionallyone or two aspects, which just didn't
(12:29):
get around to actually botheringwith the other aspects of making
a smartphone, a usable smartphone.
And, uh, yeah, the one that
Jason (12:35):
always good to hear cracks me up to your point is both on gaming phones
and some of the like security mindedphones that people have tried to release.
They kind of suck as an actual phone,their connectivity is terrible.
They've sacrificed antennaquality for various reasons.
And we went into this with, weneed to build a flagship phone.
(12:56):
This needs to be a greatphone first and foremost.
And then we're gonna add to that.
Yeah.
David (13:02):
And I think that one example you might be citing there is Blackberry,
which I think we can say, because Imean, it's functionally dead anyways.
As far the smartphone company.
Yeah, TCL owns the rights, butthey get phones made for the India
market that are rebranded there.
So yeah, they're doing some reallyinteresting stuff, but yeah, I
always felt that they tried to sellthat security image and I think it
(13:24):
came down to, they had a passwordprotected folder function, basically.
yeah.
And they did some hand wavingabout how secure their boot was.
Like, it, it, it just did not doanything to sell the product and it
didn't help that the phones were.
Jason (13:38):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
I mean, there are two far more nichedevices that people have mentioned in
conjunction with us as a privacy companythat I know for a fact, so less than
a thousand devices totaled becausewe all use the same vendors, right.
Everybody uses the same vendors forlike speakers and stuff like that.
Apple included, well,vendors are under NDAs.
They tend to share a lot.
So, uh, I know for a fact thatlike one of the speaker vendors is
(13:59):
like, we only shipped a thousandspeakers total to that company.
And so it goes to your point, right?
They.
Some cool stuff, but they forgotthe key point is it needs to
be a great phone to start.
And it's one of the lessons we learneda lot when we left essential was okay.
We better make surethe camera's fantastic.
So literally one of the first callsI made was to some of the tuning
houses where I just said, just giveme a number and we'll make sure
(14:21):
this camera experience is fantastic.
Gary (14:24):
And on top of that, I think giving people the choice and control people will
still have all of the stuff that they'reused to using on their Android device.
I just wanna make thatcrystal clear, right?
We're adding stuff.
In addition to complimenting alot of stuff that Google's doing
already in the privacy space,we're not stepping on their toes.
We're kind of building alongside.
Of things that only an OEM can build.
(14:44):
And that has been our main focus is, isdoing that a community should definitely
know that, that they're not givingup anything, Google service related.
They may have more control overcontrolling what their device can do
at that point, but out of the box,taking what people loved about the
essential pH one and making surethat that kind of reflected into the
awesome device and experience as well,
Mishaal (15:04):
was really important to.
Part of what separates an Androidphone from the realm of obscurity
to mainstream is whether or not itchips with Google mobile services.
And that's just, unfortunately, theway things are because Google play
store is the ubiquitous Androidapp repository for Android devices.
Google play services is used bytens of thousands of apps for
push notifications and other APIs.
(15:26):
And so that's why when I wasreading the soak announce.
I was wondering, will this shipwith Google mobile services?
And the answer seems to be yes, accordingto the webpage, and I'm sure you both
can confirm that now for us, if you can.
Yep.
Yeah, absolutely.
Right.
And I also wanted to ask a bit aboutthe software experience on the device.
Like, can you tell us anything about it?
Would you describe it as stock?
(15:47):
Like, or will it be like a lotof heavy customizations on top?
Gary (15:51):
Yeah.
So this is something we contemplatedearly on in the development.
We strictly talk about somethingprivacy or security related.
I think it goes really hand in handwith a stock, like feel with what
people expect out of that experience.
And again, I think that's somethingthat our essential fan base really
loved about our phone is having thatstock feel, not string too far away,
(16:12):
you know, not adding too many gimmickson top of when inevitably will lead to
like a longer lead time into mergingsecurity patches potentially, or
migrating from one OHS to another.
So right now, out of the box,we are leaning heavily to
provide a stock like feel.
So you manage the UBI, the outof box,experience, the launcher, the font, all
things that you would feel Android 12 and.
(16:33):
Eventually 13 will offerwe're leaning pretty heavily.
As Solana has a prettystrong brand presence.
There are opportunities tocreate those branded moments.
So you can think of things like boot,animation, charging animation sounds.
We may even contemplate puttingin some icon packs and potentially
some Easter eggs in there as well.
But generally, I don't think we'll straytoo far away from, from stock Android
(16:57):
and especially an initial V1 release.
Yeah.
And just
Jason (17:00):
to add on to that, one of the things that I tasked
the team with was making sure.
Even the menus felt familiar sothat if you use an Android device,
this should feel everything.
We add.
All the privacy features we addshould feel like they're almost stock.
I am genuinely concerned that at somepoint, somebody go like, wait a second.
This isn't just stock vanilla, Android.
This is something somebody else built.
(17:21):
And then we have to explain tothem so, uh, it'll be interesting
to see how that plays out.
Mishaal (17:27):
Yeah.
It's always hard to tellpeople because the term stock
Android is kind of meaningless.
Because people kind of assume itmeans AOS P but nobody actually
runs peer a S P on their device.
They're actually running, always somethingon top of it, including GMs, usually when
they include, when they say stock Android.
Jason (17:45):
Yeah.
They're, they're really referringto GMs, Android, not AOSP.
Right.
Gary (17:48):
Right.
I think a S P is not usablein its natural state.
There's no way, anyway, it's gonna runthat without running a custom rom or
some sort of launcher on top of it.
So I think we could agree
Mishaal (17:59):
here that that's the.
Which kind of brings me to the nexttopic that I wanted to dive into.
How exactly does a company like awesome.
Actually bring Android ontoa prototype piece of hardware
that you're developing on.
So even if a phone ships with whatlooks like to be basically stock
Android, which is how people would feel,the experience will be on the saga.
(18:21):
A lot of effort actuallygoes into making that happen.
So it's not just like companiesgo and download a SP from
Google's get repositories.
Then they customize a sourcecode a bit, and then they compile
and ship that bill onto devices.
Because even though that wouldboot, that's basically just a
GSI, a generic system image.
If there's any individual hardwareidiosyncrasies to deal with and
(18:42):
you wanna ship GMs, then that'snot going to work because you
have to pass certification tests.
You need to deal with extra drivers orany framework changes to enable extra
hardware features so on and so forth.
So there's like a lot of littlethings that have to happen, and it's
not as simple as just, I'll takea O S P and I'll ship that onto a
device with a few customizations.
That's not how the vast majorityof products are actually sold.
(19:04):
Just to take a step back.
I wanted to talk about thedevelopments life cycle of an
Android phone launch in, in general.
So first thing that happens, companiescome up with concepts of their
phone design, what specs componentsthey should source, what target,
what price they're gonna target.
And during this process, if you know,you're going to ship a consumer Android
smartphone that you want people toactually buy, you know, you're going
(19:26):
to want to license GMs at some point.
And because of that, you haveto be prepared well in advance
for actually getting an approvalfor the license and actually
passing the compatibility require.
Surprisingly, there are very fewhardware requirements in the Android
compatibility definition document,but there are some, there's a
Jason (19:45):
that's now, and there were four years
Mishaal (19:46):
ago.
Yeah.
Just cause Android is aconstantly evolving ecosystem.
So Google's recognized devices can bebigger, smaller, they can be foldable.
Right.
So we gotta account forthese changing times.
But if you know, you're gonnabring a phone to market with GMs,
then you have to talk to Google.
At some point, talking to Googlemeans literally filling out a form.
Like they have a form on their website.
(20:06):
That says, like, what's theproduct you're gonna launch?
What Android version doyou wanna launch it with?
About how many products do you wanna sell?
It's literally just a form.
And then someone fromGoogle will get back to you.
And then along the process, you'llget lawyers involved, you sign a
mobile application distributionagreement, and that motto of
course is super confidential.
So I'm sure I, I can't even bother.
(20:27):
I'm not even gonna bother asking you to.
What goes into that,because it's just, yeah.
You can't talk about that.
You
Jason (20:32):
know, honestly, it's a bit easier than that these days.
I know for a fact that five, six years agoit was more difficult than it is today.
Like you said, you startwith just submitting a form.
You get a call.
Certainly we're a little bit differentbecause we already had long established
relationships with everybody over there.
So it started with, Hey, uh,where do I sign up for this again?
Like send an email before we sentthe form and the motto is a lot
(20:57):
less stringent than it used to be.
Mostly because like yousaid, devices are changing.
I remember when we did the essentialphone, we added the notch, it was the
first phone with the notch and it wasa violation of Mo they're like, oh, you
can't change the menu from the top too.
And we're like, well, there's ahole in the top of our screen.
Now it's changed a lot toaccommodate for different form
factors, different implementations.
(21:17):
I think the gem phone, when we tried tobuild it at essential would not have been.
There's no way they were gonna let itslide, but now it might be feasible.
Mishaal (21:26):
To return back to my point, though, that the motto is what actually is
a legal agreement that allows an Androidpartner company like awesome to actually
license and ship GMs on the products.
And more importantly are equallyas important to use the Android
trademark in branding because, uh,for those of you don't know, Android.
It's actually atrademarked term by Google.
So like there's a O S P,which is an operating system.
(21:49):
And then there's Android.
And you can't say your productruns Android, unless it
has a O S P with GMs on it.
So it's a, it's a very stickypoint, very minor thing.
But that's how Google controls theterms of what companies can say.
They're using Android.
Of course, once you verify yourhardware informed factor meets
the compatibility requirements.
And once you're sure you have a viableproduct, then you start securing
(22:10):
components, designing prototypes,and developing software, all stuff
that requires a lot of money anda lot of prep work to do, but
here's one stickler in the process.
So the software that you are developingfor the device, it can't just be any
arbitrary version of Android thatyou want and any arbitrary security
patch level, because Google actuallyhas requirements around this.
If you were to launch a productwithout GMs, then you can do
(22:31):
whatever you want with ASB.
You could launch Android seven.
If you wanted to on a new product,they wouldn't be able to control that.
But if you wanna ship GMs, you haveto abide by Google's requirements.
And that means you have to actuallyabide by their launch approval
windows for each version of Android.
So what happens that if you try to submita build for approval after the approval
window for that version of Android isexpired, then it won't be certified.
(22:54):
So for example, In like two years fromnow, we try to send Google an Android
10 base bill for certification, they'llsay, nuh, that approval windows expired.
You can't launch that.
The expiration for an approvalwindow date kind of varies.
And it's all like confidential.
It's in like a timeline, but in general,the new software bills are updates are
certified until two letter releases later.
So for example, all Android,12 based software releases.
(23:17):
If an OEM wants to ship an Androidtele based update, they can continue to
do so until the launch of Android 14.
So, this is kind of a way to ensurethat OEMs are launching products
with newer versions of Android andwith newer security batch levels,
which I'll get into in a little bit.
So this sounds like a short timeframefor partners to actually develop
their operating systems based onthe platform release, which is why
(23:38):
Google provides at least some of itspartners with early access to the
next platform release through theplatform development kit or PDK for.
And as I mentioned before, on topof the Android version requirement,
Google also requires that if you'resubmitting a bill for approval, it
has to have a security patch level.
That's at most two months oldat the time of submission.
So because partners get security patches30 days ahead of the public bulletin.
(24:00):
So your, your security patch levelhas to be at most 90 days old
from the latest partner patch.
That was a lot to take in.
I'm sure for some of our listeners,I kind want to ask you a bit here.
This is, uh, not a questionI had on the outline, but.
I wanted to ask you your thoughts onlike this approval window and like
Google trying to keep manufacturerson an up to date version of Android
(24:21):
and on an up to date, security patchlevel, like, is this a burdensome to
manufacturers or do you think thisis actually a good thing that most
manufacturers are able to keep up with?
Jason (24:30):
So it's a yes and no question.
Yes.
I think it's a good idea and Ireally appreciate that they do it.
And I think they're right to makesure that manufacturers are building
with the latest and greatest.
The thing that I don't agree with,and I'm sure every manufacturer of an
Android device on the planet will agree.
Being forced to use third partylabs to do this certification
rather than be able to do it.
(24:51):
Direct thing of Google.
And we are very, very fortunate whenwe were at essential because of Andy
Rubin's obvious connection to Android.
For those who don't know, he's the,basically the creator of Android.
Who sold it to Google?
Uh, so we did get some relatively specialtreatment which allowed us to do our
security patches super, super quickly,because we were doing our own testing and
(25:12):
submitting the results to Google directly.
Unfortunately, we're not able to dothat anymore and nobody is, and it,
it is quite frustrating to use athird party, particularly when third
priories don't move as fast as we do.
So when we could do normallysomething in a couple of days,
now it'll take a week or.
I think
Gary (25:29):
everything's net positive in this regard.
I think it is a burdensome a bit in termsof regulation and what they kind of put
as requirements as any requirement wouldcause, uh, extension in, in the timeline
that you're trying to launch a device,but I think overall getting it more
cohesive, maintaining a certain level offunctionality and future sets at minimum.
(25:52):
Because Android, as we know, itis so fragmented and has been over
a decade now for different OEMs.
I think it does bring a netpositive feel on having the latest
and greatest security patches.
Right.
We could see that with other OEMswho used to take up to a year and
rolling out a security patches nowwithin a couple months timeframe.
And I, I think that that'svery, very invaluable, right.
For anyone owning a device and it's.
(26:14):
Almost a moral requirementto do so as well.
Right.
And for us, that was really importantto us at essentials was rolling out
those as soon as we had it goingthrough and setting up a whole
CTS setup within our office space.
So that way our pre CTS setupwas now our production CTS setup.
And then we were able toget it out, have it ready?
(26:34):
A lot of the times, as soonas Google devices had them.
Yeah, there's a, a trade offbetween what Google has as part
of their whole XTS suite of tests.
That includes CTS VTS, GT.
Its right.
All those things kind of likemeld into this whole test suite
of millions of tests, but it'sfor the greater good, right.
(26:55):
They want a certain bar met forAndroid devices that exist that
people get their hands into.
Right.
We've seen it too often in movies whereAndroid is a butt of a joke because of the
less superior experiences that can happen,unfortunately, with, with other OEMs.
So yeah, overall, it's, it's oneof those things that we welcome.
So
Mishaal (27:13):
both of you kind of touched upon topics.
I wanted to explain a bitto our listeners room.
If we may not be familiar, three PLthe third party labs and CTS going
on in the development life cycle thatI've been talking about after the
software has been developed to a statethat's been near production ready,
and then you've integrated the GMsusing Google's provided packages and
you verified the build is certifiable.
(27:34):
Then it's time to actually validatethat the build passes the various
certification tests that youagree to run in order to ship GMs.
These automated tests are installedon a PC and are run through a phone or
multiple phones connected through ADB.
And then after the tests run a report,that's generated with the results.
So as Gary mentioned, there are acouple of tests starting with the
(27:55):
broad compatibility test suite or CTS.
Then there's a vendor test suite,which test vendor components.
There's a mainline test suite.
There's a CTS on GSI, whichis the compatibility test
suite on generic system image.
Then underneath the broad CTS, there'salso the compatibility test suite Verifi
fire, which is a supplement to CTS withmanual tests, such as those in another
(28:15):
subset of tests called the image testsuite, which test camera related stuff.
So these tests that I mentioned arepublicly available, but then there's
also other stuff that Android partnershave to run, including the bill test
suite security test suite, whichvalidates security patch, mergers.
And then there's the Google testsuite or GMs test suite, which test
compliance with GMs requirements.
(28:36):
You'll commonly see OEMs and Googlersrefer to this whole entire series of tests
as XTS, or like the X, like a lowercase X.
And that's just like saying it'sall the tests to keep things simple.
So one thing I don't think manypeople are aware of or appreciate
is just how big and comprehensivethese automated test suites are.
So in a recent blog post, when Googlewas announcing a new set of optional
(28:59):
tests called CTS, D Google said thatCTS today includes over 2 million tests.
And that's just one ofthe test suites under XTS.
I have heard that it takes a while toget through a full batch of tests, but I
wanted to know, like, in your experience,just how long does it take to go through
this process, actually doing a test.
Gary (29:19):
So we do have the ability to set up a pre test and that even
that the CTS D is made to enableOEMs to have that power internally.
A lot of it it's back and forth.
We go ahead and run thaton a slew of devices.
So we'll have like an array of 10 to15 devices that essentially are, are
constantly running this pre CTS in house.
(29:39):
And it's a lot of back and forthwill end up catching failures.
At the end of the day, a bugtracking ticket within our system.
And then it goes to our system engineersand they go and fix those issues.
And before it even gets to thethree PL services, we have a
certain confidence level on usbeing able to pass those tests.
And because CTS is always evolvingin every Android release, there's
(30:01):
only so much you can catch in yourpre CTS tests before it goes in.
At that point, it's probablylike one or two more, three PL.
Tests for us to go backand then fix those issues.
But overall, we've seen a lot ofimprovement on turnaround, you know,
using those three PL vendors and that'simproved quite a bit, uh, just cuz things
are a lot more streamlined these days.
(30:22):
So those things can vary, uh, and takeas long as it's an approved house by
Google and, uh, recommended you canpretty much fit that into your schedule
and, and determine, you know, howlong that, uh, back and forth should.
It's a necessary evil the way I see it.
But overall, I think it's useful to makesure that our product out of the door,
uh, the factory meets a certain quality
Mishaal (30:42):
level.
So are we talking hours days?
What's the time scale here?
Back and forth.
Probably be
Gary (30:48):
weeks.
Yeah.
Okay.
Wow.
And then, yeah, I mean, initially, right?
So there'll be ones that you runto a lot, but the incremental
ones fall into days, I would say.
But initially when you're tryingto release a V one product, the
brand new processor brand new.
Uh, things that, you know, do complimentthe whole, uh, GKI initiative.
Like those type of thingshelp a bit in streamlining it,
(31:10):
project trouble also, right?
Like that whole introduction ofthings that we've seen over the
past five years has made it.
So it's more streamlined and we havea bit more granularly control in, into
updating each one of these modules.
Mishaal (31:23):
All right.
Thank you for that.
So for those of you who didn'tget Gary's explanation of three
S or still unsure of what they.
It stands for third party labs.
And they're basically firms thatGoogle contracts certification testing
out to instead of OEMs all sendingtheir bills and devices to Google
for certification testing, Googleoutsources, that two, three PLS.
Jason mentioned that they usedto have a direct line to submit
(31:45):
their certification role to Google.
But most companies aren't able to do that.
And as sta said, awesome,isn't doing that.
Now, what happens is you submit yourdevice and build to three PL testing.
And they verify that the billpasses and with compatibility
tests and it passes XTS.
And then once that is approved andthat build is validated as passing
(32:07):
all the requirements, then that buildinformation and that build fingerprint
are submitted to Google to add totheir database of CTS certified bills.
This database is what is used byGMs to verify that it's installed
in a valid certified build.
So if you try to just take a fresh AOSPbuild and integrate GMs into it, and you
try to run the Google play store, it'sa no, we're not running on this device.
(32:30):
It's not validated.
That's why a lot of these custom ROMs,they kind of spoof the build fingerprint
to use a, uh, previously validated one.
And that's why a lot of these spoofshave a repository of fingerprints to use.
The CTS verified build fingerprintis also, what's used by the safety
and at station API, which isactually being deprecated in a few
years by the play integrity API.
(32:53):
Basically this certified build is whatGoogle approves the ship GMs on a product.
And any other build, like if, if youhave to do an update to a build, it's
gonna have a new build fingerprint.
And then that has to be certified.
As Gary mentioned, it's the processis going be a bit shorter, but
you still have to run throughthis process of doing the test.
Again, validating again, sending yourbill to third party labs for results.
(33:16):
Yeah.
It's a long and arduous process thatrepeats every time you need to do an
update, if you kind of brought this upalready, Jason, but essential was rather
famous for shipping day one updates.
And you haven't told Andrew policean interview that you literally
got yelled at by Google forrolling out updates too quickly.
You mentioned that briefly a bit abouthow that's possible, that you were able
(33:37):
to bypass three PLS for testing, butwas there anything else that enabled
essential to roll it up it so quickly?
No,
Jason (33:44):
I mean, it was really the team and the connection looked at, you know, Andy
could make a call that nobody else could.
Um, and so we're left now with beinglike everybody else and we, we will do
our best to be as quick as possible.
It's obviously a priority forus more so than a lot of other
companies, because we're, our entireethos has built around privacy.
So, uh, that's where we stand.
Gary (34:06):
Yeah.
And as a remote company, youknow, we are a little bit tied
to these three PL labs initially.
I mean, we still have that dreamof having that streamlined process.
I think we're one hire in anoffice space away from doing
that with Google's approval.
That's something that I hope weeventually get to back, like as
well, old machine sometime in 2023,
Mishaal (34:26):
right.
Unfortunately, from what you'vetold me, Your software build
actually pretty lean and it's notheavily customized from AOS P.
So that should help withactually bringing up new software
releases and integrating patches.
And also with all the initiatives thatGoogle's been introducing over the
years, like product tr will generickernel image GF, which I'll talk
about a bit later, like, you know,all this has become significantly
(34:47):
less resource intensive to, I.
But there is one thing I kind of glossedover in the development life cycle.
And it's a point that many peoplelove to bring up when they argue,
why updates are so slow to roll out.
And it's what happens whencarriers get involved.
So for those of you don't know,carriers can involve themselves
in many different ways.
Each of them have their own needs.
Some of them will ask for full frameworkchanges to accommodate their asks.
(35:10):
They might ask for specificbranding changes, they might
ask for custom boot animation.
They might ask for customicons, they might ask.
The logo to be on the statusbar or others will ask to insert
specific apps, which Google
Jason (35:22):
refers.
Yeah.
And when you don't, they're gonnago, Hey, we're also gonna, we're
not gonna put as much marketing.
We're not gonna meetour end of the contract.
I'm trying to think of thenon four letter version word.
Of my response to anythinginvolving the carriers.
Uh, so there is a reasonwhy we're open market.
We will be certified to use on all usand Canadian and EU and UK carriers.
(35:43):
However, we have zero ties toany specific carrier directly.
This is such a complicated topic froma sense of language that it, I, I want
to be careful of the words I use here.
Uh, so I'll just say our deviceswill work on all networks.
However, we are not sellingthrough any carrier.
Gary (36:00):
I think one interesting thing to note is maybe five years
plus ago, the majority of salescame through carriers, right?
Cause there's a heavy dependencyon OEMs to have that quick pro
type of relationship with carriers.
I think now with the world climate, theway things are evolving, I think it's
direct to consumer having this B Y O D.
(36:20):
That opportunity is now a bit open forus to move as many devices as we need
to as a, a lean company in general.
So that type of relationship.
Yeah.
A lot of the stuff with carriers, theyput a lot of blot wear on your device.
That was completely against all ofour ethos and our beliefs in a device
is you shouldn't have this thingthat you can't uninstall, essentially
(36:42):
like too many things on there.
Right?
There's those necessary ones where that'sjust the nature of how Android behaves.
But if now these large telecom companiesare forcing some stuff to exist on there.
There is some good, right?
They do like visual voicemail stuff ordifferent apps, um, things like that.
But you know that there are thingsthat people generally complain about.
And if it's been long enoughfor us to stray away from being
Mishaal (37:05):
carrier dependent, well, you both kind of already answered the
question I was gonna ask, which is whatare your thoughts on carriers being
blamed for delaying software rollouts?
And I think you both played that kindof clear with your, uh, opinions.
So, uh, before we move on on, you're
completely
Jason (37:18):
responsible for it.
It are so responsible
for delays off the record.
(37:41):
Uh, pick I'll go back on the recordfor this great example of a carrier.
Just being completely asinine.
There was a carrier in Japan.
I don't remember whichJapanese carrier it was.
But to pass their mechanical requirement,you had to drop the phone on its
edge from six feet onto the sharpedge of an IV without any damage.
I could literally take a block oftitanium, just solid titanium, and it
(38:04):
will show a mark if I do that drop test.
And then when you fail that test,they go, ah, well you need a waiver.
Well, we're gonna wannatake like 3% off all your.
Uh, whoa.
I was like, like, there'snothing that passed that test.
It's not possible.
And they were like, no, no, we'regonna that that's our requirement.
I feel like it's a
David (38:22):
test written by their underwriters.
Jason (38:25):
Oh, I'm sure it was written by a lawyer.
Somewhere was like, Hey, come up withsome tests that are impossible to pass.
. Mishaal: Wow.
And on that colorful note, we've justwrapped part one of our interview
with Jason KES and Gary Andersonfrom awesome part two should be the
next episode in this podcast feed.
So make sure you give thata listen when you can.
And if you're interested in buildingyour own Android device for your
(38:45):
business, come talk to us at ESER.
We can help you work through how to choosethe right hardware for your kiosk point
of sale terminal or other fleet device,as well as how to remotely manage and keep
them updated with our DevOps approach.
Go to eser.io and schedulea chat with us today.
We'd love to hear from you.
And thanks for listening tothis episode of Android bites.
Hello, and welcome to Android bites powered by Esper I'm David
Rudick and each week I'm joinedby my co-host Michelle ramen.
As we dive deep into the world of Android.
And this week, I won't beginwith any long preamble.
We have a very special guestseries of guests actually.
Um, we have two guests now, but, uh, yeah,Michelle, we have somebody very special.
(00:22):
So go ahead.
Let you make intros.
Mishaal (00:24):
Yeah.
Thanks David.
So I'm sure all of you.
At one point, I've had an opinionon what the ideal smartphone should
have, but there's no true onesize fits all device out there.
Every device lacks something that'simportant to someone out there.
And if there's enough, someone's outthere to demand that something, then
there's an opportunity for a new productto be made that meets that demand.
(00:45):
For those of you who follow tech newsa couple of weeks ago, the founder
of pebble actually made headlines.
When he started an online petition forpeople to sign onto, to say, Hey, we
want a iPhone minis size Android phone.
There were about 50,000people sign onto the petition.
And of course, you know, if you'refamiliar with online petitions, they
usually don't really do anything, butstill like he wanted to show the world.
(01:05):
He wanted to show that thereare enough people who actually
want a small Android phone.
Unlike most people out there, founderof pebble, he actually has the money,
connections and experience in theindustry to make his dream a reality.
But of course he's not the only one whohas all three of those things to do that.
Recently there's been not one,but two smartphone companies that
have launched or at least one willbe launching their product soon.
(01:28):
The other is awesome and we've invited twovery special people from the company to
join us on the Android bites podcast, totalk about their first smartphone product.
So we've invited Jason Keats.
Who's the founder andCEO and Gary Anderson.
Who's the chief productofficer onto the show.
So thank you for joiningus, Jason and Gary.
Jason (01:47):
Hey, thanks for having us excited to be here.
Letting chat with you guysabout building Android devices.
Yep.
Happy to be
Gary (01:53):
here too.
Uh, looking forward to telling you
Mishaal (01:55):
about saga.
Hey listeners, before we get toofar, I wanna let you know that our
interview went pretty long, so we'llbe splitting it up into two episode.
In this first episode, we are focusinga lot on building up the Android
experience that Austin wanted to have.
There's also plenty of insight,Gary and Jason share as to how a
lot of these aspects worked out whentheir team was part of essential.
And then in our next episode, we'llturn to how they plan to keep their
(02:15):
OS updated and then dive into some ofhow the salon mobile stack will work.
But let's first get started with part one.
So right off the bat, why don'twe just dive into the product
that you're launching and thecompany that you found at Jason?
So for those of you don't know, Jasonwas the head of R and D at essential,
another smartphone startup that producedthe now discontinued essential phone.
(02:35):
I don't really wanna, re-litigatewhat happened to essential because
that's kind of old history and youcan just pretty much just Google
it and look up what happened.
So why did you decide to foundawesome after leaving essential?
Like what did you feel was lacking inthe Steve smartphones release in 2020.
Led you to want to make your own?
Well,
Jason (02:52):
there are two parts to that.
Number one is there was a real need anddemand for a smartphone that was a quality
bill, premium materials, excellent device,but it needed to answer some question.
And I think that was the biggestthing missing from essential.
You could look up all the differentdetails about why essential one enter.
But ultimately my viewpoint was that therewasn't really a reason for it to exist.
(03:15):
It was like we're building a cool thingfor the sake of building a cool thing.
And when we started awesome, we kind ofsat down and said, what do we wanna build?
How do we wanna build it?
What are we trying to answer?
And the first thing we came to wasthere is an extreme lack of privacy
and people do care about it andare willing to put money behind it.
And so that was the ethosbehind starting the company.
The other side of it was when Andy toldme essential was shutting down, it was
(03:38):
like, okay, well I can go make big bucksat apple or Google again, if I want to.
And in no way, did that sound entertainingto me or fun to me and starting a
company it's very, very difficult.
There are so many challenges.
Probably the hardest thing is hiring.
And yet here I had the opportunity to hirea team of people that I've worked with.
And we've been through thetrenches together with that.
We know how each other works and how eachother behaves and they were all available.
(04:02):
So it was a fairly simple move togo, Hey guys, let's stick together.
I'll put my money where my mouthis and let's try to go and do this.
And it would be actually super interestto hear Gary's side of this convers.
Gary (04:13):
Yeah, I think after the shutdown of, of essential the engineers, right.
We're thinking where, where they couldgo lo and behold, Keith's, you know,
we get a call from Jason here and hereaches out and says, Hey, I have a
crazy idea and continues to pitch theidea to us and told us what was missing
from essential and kind of what thatwould change into here at awesome.
(04:36):
So privacy being our north star and thensome of the stuff that we'd be doing.
In terms of not only working in adifferent environment, which encouraged
collaboration and a lot of communicationwith the CEO, but also a lot of different
types of things that we truly believedin on a personal level and things that
was kind of kind of rapidly growing in,in the, you know, sense of the markets
(04:57):
in the EU and, uh, us and then thingsthat are interesting, getting a lot
more attention in different countries.
Mishaal (05:04):
I think it's quite interesting, or at least like incredible that the two
of you and like, you know, the rest ofthe, the higher ups of the, the founders
of awesome were able to convince somany former ex essential engineers to
immediately join on board with you guys.
Because after this company goes down tostart up making a smartphone company,
a lot of these ex engineers have a lotof built up experience in the industry.
(05:25):
They could have gone to apple,they could have gone to Google.
They could have gone to some ofthe more established brands, but.
They had enough trust in yourexpertise and your idea to want
to say, I wanna do this again.
I want a second shot at thisto go with another startup.
So I think that's pretty impressivethat you guys manage to scoop
up so many former employees andstart a new smartphone brand.
Jason (05:45):
I appreciate that.
There has been a lot of negativethings said about Andy in the press.
And I gotta say one of the thingsthat he did amazingly well was
attracting just the best people inthe industry to come and work for him.
And for whatever reason, I, I don't knowif there's like some, we all have the
same mental defect or whatever you wannacall it, a willingness to chew glass
(06:06):
and keep fighting and working together.
And we.
Like you said, it takes a matter ofcomradery or friendship to go through
one startup, have it fail and justimmediately sign up to do it again
with the expectation that things willbe different and making the changes
at a, at a institutional level to seethat those changes are implemented.
(06:28):
And I cannot stress enough howamazed I am and how proud I am of
this team that I have with me andwho are on this adventure with.
So
David (06:38):
I do wanna ask a hardware question, Jason, because I know we're
gonna talk a lot about software today.
The pH one really wasn't like anyother Android phone before, or since
I would say in terms of materials,design, even the aesthetic of
the phone was markedly different.
There was always something clearly veryspecial about the engineering talent
(06:58):
at essential on the hardware side.
What do you think made it possible for youall to build what everybody else looks at?
The big manufacturers, even, you know,the big conglomerates out of China,
like oppo BBK group, and they say, okay,you have the scale, you can do this.
You can make something really incredible.
They always shy away, go back tolike 7,000 series, aluminum standard
(07:20):
glass materials, the same kindof bill that everybody goes for.
Do you really think it is justmoney and that your freedom that
you've given your team that enablesyou to make those Boulder choices?
Or is there somethinglike more systemic there?
Jason (07:34):
You know, it, it's a really good question.
Why don't they do that?
Number one, I think big companies, all.
A million voices and a million opinions.
Google is probably theworst example of that.
I mean, looking at their hardware,you can clearly see it was designed
by like four people and not asingle mind was melding it together.
It's like, cool, you do the front andall to the back and we'll just glue
them together and we'll call it a day.
(07:55):
There's part of that.
And then partly, you know, what I've seenin my career from a hardware perspective
is when I'm sitting in China, I haveseen so many vendors just get abused
by engineers from different companiesand like, just get treated like.
My thing has always been to treateverybody respect and love and show
a measure of comradery for everybody.
(08:16):
And what that means is when I havesomething that's stupid or crazy,
like machining ceramic on the back ofthe essential pH one, the 0.02, five
millimeter tolerance to get the SIbeam chip to work means that they were
willing to work with me and go like,cool, Jason's a crazy bastard, but let's
work with him cuz he's a lot of fun.
I've maintained that relationship withall the vendors and all the suppliers,
(08:36):
which has allowed us to play at a levelthat no startup should be able to play at.
I mean, we called Foxcon.
We called all the big tier onedevelopers and manufacturing houses.
We're like, we're gonna do this.
And I'm like, cool, whateveryou need, we got you.
I don't think anybody could do that today.
I, I know for a fact that, uh, one ofthe other brand new phone companies
needed my help to get intros at that.
(08:58):
And
Mishaal (08:59):
he shouldn't have, um, said phone company will
remain unnamed just to be clear.
Yes . So, um, exactly the topicof this discussion is mostly
about building Android andshipping, Android onto a device.
And I promise we're gonna get tothat, but I wanted to first give
you an opportunity to talk about theend result, the actual product that
you guys are releasing next year.
(09:19):
So can you tell us a bit, Jasonand Gary, about the Solana saga?
What sets it apart from otherflagship Android phones?
Jason (09:27):
Right now what we're doing is from a hardware perspective, it
is a top flight, absolute flagshipAndroid device of which there
aren't that many left anymore.
You have Samsung, and I don't know what'sin the pixel seven, to be honest, but
certainly the last couple pixels weren'tflagship in terms of mechanical hardware
spec, their software has been tremend.
So what we are doing is a trueflagship device that can compete on
(09:50):
specs alone with Google or Samsung.
What's different about it iswe are trying to give users.
Everything we do is all about providingconsumer choice and choice and control
over how their data is handled, whichgoes to the awesome privacy ethos, but
also now how they control, interact withtheir digital assets, which is where
the salon mobile stack comes in on saga.
(10:10):
And we can spend quite a bit oftalking about the relationship
between awesome and saga right now.
What it really comes downto is both a Toley who's the
CEO and co-founder of Solana.
And I have in common is that we did seethis incredible opportunity where they
wanted to build some hardware for thefuture of web three to be developed with.
And we've seen for years thatmobile is the leader, not desktop.
(10:31):
And yet in the crypto space,desktop was ex or like they
were developing exclusively fordesktop, which made no sense.
What we're doing is building a homefor web three developers to build
onto mobile hardware, which reallyis what most people use day to day.
And from a software perspective,I'll hand it back over.
Yeah,
Gary (10:49):
I think what we're gonna end up seeing is there's gonna be a difference
from our device and how it evolvesversus some of the other ones that
are made by these mega corporations.
Right?
So there's gonna be stuff that'sleaning heavily into what web three and
decentralization at its core is meant toprovide as well as taking a lot of and
leaning into the open source community.
(11:10):
Right?
So I think having amending those twotogether on a flagship device, I'm
more excited about the evolution.
And this being a flagship phone andhardware to how that evolving software,
I think that's what we're most excited to
Mishaal (11:24):
see.
Thank you both for that.
It's really important for any newphone on the market to stand out.
And this partnership with Solana, I'm suremany people have differing opinions on
cryptocurrency, web three NFTs, et cetera.
Yeah, to say the least, there'scertainly many heated opinions on them.
And I don't really wanna Wade intothose differences of opinions, but
(11:45):
it is well, let, let very uniqueaspect, wait in our answer to
Jason (11:47):
that really quickly.
Is that again, I keep reiteratingit's all about choice.
If a user doesn't want to usethe crypto features, there
is no obligation to use them.
There is no forcing function.
There is nothing there that requires it.
If you just want a premium Androidexperience on a premium flagship device.
The Sal salon of saga is a perfect device.
It just gives you more options and
Mishaal (12:08):
more control.
And that's exactly what I'd like to see.
A lot of times I see a company releasea product that focuses exclusively
on the gimmick, but they don't reallybother with all the other aspects.
There might be some deficient aspects.
I notice this a lot with gamingphones and for example, like they're
highly optimized for gaming, but.
They might sacrifice intentionallyone or two aspects, which just didn't
(12:29):
get around to actually botheringwith the other aspects of making
a smartphone, a usable smartphone.
And, uh, yeah, the one that
Jason (12:35):
always good to hear cracks me up to your point is both on gaming phones
and some of the like security mindedphones that people have tried to release.
They kind of suck as an actual phone,their connectivity is terrible.
They've sacrificed antennaquality for various reasons.
And we went into this with, weneed to build a flagship phone.
(12:56):
This needs to be a greatphone first and foremost.
And then we're gonna add to that.
Yeah.
David (13:02):
And I think that one example you might be citing there is Blackberry,
which I think we can say, because Imean, it's functionally dead anyways.
As far the smartphone company.
Yeah, TCL owns the rights, butthey get phones made for the India
market that are rebranded there.
So yeah, they're doing some reallyinteresting stuff, but yeah, I
always felt that they tried to sellthat security image and I think it
(13:24):
came down to, they had a passwordprotected folder function, basically.
yeah.
And they did some hand wavingabout how secure their boot was.
Like, it, it, it just did not doanything to sell the product and it
didn't help that the phones were.
Jason (13:38):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
I mean, there are two far more nichedevices that people have mentioned in
conjunction with us as a privacy companythat I know for a fact, so less than
a thousand devices totaled becausewe all use the same vendors, right.
Everybody uses the same vendors forlike speakers and stuff like that.
Apple included, well,vendors are under NDAs.
They tend to share a lot.
So, uh, I know for a fact thatlike one of the speaker vendors is
(13:59):
like, we only shipped a thousandspeakers total to that company.
And so it goes to your point, right?
They.
Some cool stuff, but they forgotthe key point is it needs to
be a great phone to start.
And it's one of the lessons we learneda lot when we left essential was okay.
We better make surethe camera's fantastic.
So literally one of the first callsI made was to some of the tuning
houses where I just said, just giveme a number and we'll make sure
(14:21):
this camera experience is fantastic.
Gary (14:24):
And on top of that, I think giving people the choice and control people will
still have all of the stuff that they'reused to using on their Android device.
I just wanna make thatcrystal clear, right?
We're adding stuff.
In addition to complimenting alot of stuff that Google's doing
already in the privacy space,we're not stepping on their toes.
We're kind of building alongside.
Of things that only an OEM can build.
(14:44):
And that has been our main focus is, isdoing that a community should definitely
know that, that they're not givingup anything, Google service related.
They may have more control overcontrolling what their device can do
at that point, but out of the box,taking what people loved about the
essential pH one and making surethat that kind of reflected into the
awesome device and experience as well,
Mishaal (15:04):
was really important to.
Part of what separates an Androidphone from the realm of obscurity
to mainstream is whether or not itchips with Google mobile services.
And that's just, unfortunately, theway things are because Google play
store is the ubiquitous Androidapp repository for Android devices.
Google play services is used bytens of thousands of apps for
push notifications and other APIs.
(15:26):
And so that's why when I wasreading the soak announce.
I was wondering, will this shipwith Google mobile services?
And the answer seems to be yes, accordingto the webpage, and I'm sure you both
can confirm that now for us, if you can.
Yep.
Yeah, absolutely.
Right.
And I also wanted to ask a bit aboutthe software experience on the device.
Like, can you tell us anything about it?
Would you describe it as stock?
(15:47):
Like, or will it be like a lotof heavy customizations on top?
Gary (15:51):
Yeah.
So this is something we contemplatedearly on in the development.
We strictly talk about somethingprivacy or security related.
I think it goes really hand in handwith a stock, like feel with what
people expect out of that experience.
And again, I think that's somethingthat our essential fan base really
loved about our phone is having thatstock feel, not string too far away,
(16:12):
you know, not adding too many gimmickson top of when inevitably will lead to
like a longer lead time into mergingsecurity patches potentially, or
migrating from one OHS to another.
So right now, out of the box,we are leaning heavily to
provide a stock like feel.
So you manage the UBI, the outof box,experience, the launcher, the font, all
things that you would feel Android 12 and.
(16:33):
Eventually 13 will offerwe're leaning pretty heavily.
As Solana has a prettystrong brand presence.
There are opportunities tocreate those branded moments.
So you can think of things like boot,animation, charging animation sounds.
We may even contemplate puttingin some icon packs and potentially
some Easter eggs in there as well.
But generally, I don't think we'll straytoo far away from, from stock Android
(16:57):
and especially an initial V1 release.
Yeah.
And just
Jason (17:00):
to add on to that, one of the things that I tasked
the team with was making sure.
Even the menus felt familiar sothat if you use an Android device,
this should feel everything.
We add.
All the privacy features we addshould feel like they're almost stock.
I am genuinely concerned that at somepoint, somebody go like, wait a second.
This isn't just stock vanilla, Android.
This is something somebody else built.
(17:21):
And then we have to explain tothem so, uh, it'll be interesting
to see how that plays out.
Mishaal (17:27):
Yeah.
It's always hard to tellpeople because the term stock
Android is kind of meaningless.
Because people kind of assume itmeans AOS P but nobody actually
runs peer a S P on their device.
They're actually running, always somethingon top of it, including GMs, usually when
they include, when they say stock Android.
Jason (17:45):
Yeah.
They're, they're really referringto GMs, Android, not AOSP.
Right.
Gary (17:48):
Right.
I think a S P is not usablein its natural state.
There's no way, anyway, it's gonna runthat without running a custom rom or
some sort of launcher on top of it.
So I think we could agree
Mishaal (17:59):
here that that's the.
Which kind of brings me to the nexttopic that I wanted to dive into.
How exactly does a company like awesome.
Actually bring Android ontoa prototype piece of hardware
that you're developing on.
So even if a phone ships with whatlooks like to be basically stock
Android, which is how people would feel,the experience will be on the saga.
(18:21):
A lot of effort actuallygoes into making that happen.
So it's not just like companiesgo and download a SP from
Google's get repositories.
Then they customize a sourcecode a bit, and then they compile
and ship that bill onto devices.
Because even though that wouldboot, that's basically just a
GSI, a generic system image.
If there's any individual hardwareidiosyncrasies to deal with and
(18:42):
you wanna ship GMs, then that'snot going to work because you
have to pass certification tests.
You need to deal with extra drivers orany framework changes to enable extra
hardware features so on and so forth.
So there's like a lot of littlethings that have to happen, and it's
not as simple as just, I'll takea O S P and I'll ship that onto a
device with a few customizations.
That's not how the vast majorityof products are actually sold.
(19:04):
Just to take a step back.
I wanted to talk about thedevelopments life cycle of an
Android phone launch in, in general.
So first thing that happens, companiescome up with concepts of their
phone design, what specs componentsthey should source, what target,
what price they're gonna target.
And during this process, if you know,you're going to ship a consumer Android
smartphone that you want people toactually buy, you know, you're going
(19:26):
to want to license GMs at some point.
And because of that, you haveto be prepared well in advance
for actually getting an approvalfor the license and actually
passing the compatibility require.
Surprisingly, there are very fewhardware requirements in the Android
compatibility definition document,but there are some, there's a
Jason (19:45):
that's now, and there were four years
Mishaal (19:46):
ago.
Yeah.
Just cause Android is aconstantly evolving ecosystem.
So Google's recognized devices can bebigger, smaller, they can be foldable.
Right.
So we gotta account forthese changing times.
But if you know, you're gonnabring a phone to market with GMs,
then you have to talk to Google.
At some point, talking to Googlemeans literally filling out a form.
Like they have a form on their website.
(20:06):
That says, like, what's theproduct you're gonna launch?
What Android version doyou wanna launch it with?
About how many products do you wanna sell?
It's literally just a form.
And then someone fromGoogle will get back to you.
And then along the process, you'llget lawyers involved, you sign a
mobile application distributionagreement, and that motto of
course is super confidential.
So I'm sure I, I can't even bother.
(20:27):
I'm not even gonna bother asking you to.
What goes into that,because it's just, yeah.
You can't talk about that.
You
Jason (20:32):
know, honestly, it's a bit easier than that these days.
I know for a fact that five, six years agoit was more difficult than it is today.
Like you said, you startwith just submitting a form.
You get a call.
Certainly we're a little bit differentbecause we already had long established
relationships with everybody over there.
So it started with, Hey, uh,where do I sign up for this again?
Like send an email before we sentthe form and the motto is a lot
(20:57):
less stringent than it used to be.
Mostly because like yousaid, devices are changing.
I remember when we did the essentialphone, we added the notch, it was the
first phone with the notch and it wasa violation of Mo they're like, oh, you
can't change the menu from the top too.
And we're like, well, there's ahole in the top of our screen.
Now it's changed a lot toaccommodate for different form
factors, different implementations.
(21:17):
I think the gem phone, when we tried tobuild it at essential would not have been.
There's no way they were gonna let itslide, but now it might be feasible.
Mishaal (21:26):
To return back to my point, though, that the motto is what actually is
a legal agreement that allows an Androidpartner company like awesome to actually
license and ship GMs on the products.
And more importantly are equallyas important to use the Android
trademark in branding because, uh,for those of you don't know, Android.
It's actually atrademarked term by Google.
So like there's a O S P,which is an operating system.
(21:49):
And then there's Android.
And you can't say your productruns Android, unless it
has a O S P with GMs on it.
So it's a, it's a very stickypoint, very minor thing.
But that's how Google controls theterms of what companies can say.
They're using Android.
Of course, once you verify yourhardware informed factor meets
the compatibility requirements.
And once you're sure you have a viableproduct, then you start securing
(22:10):
components, designing prototypes,and developing software, all stuff
that requires a lot of money anda lot of prep work to do, but
here's one stickler in the process.
So the software that you are developingfor the device, it can't just be any
arbitrary version of Android thatyou want and any arbitrary security
patch level, because Google actuallyhas requirements around this.
If you were to launch a productwithout GMs, then you can do
(22:31):
whatever you want with ASB.
You could launch Android seven.
If you wanted to on a new product,they wouldn't be able to control that.
But if you wanna ship GMs, you haveto abide by Google's requirements.
And that means you have to actuallyabide by their launch approval
windows for each version of Android.
So what happens that if you try to submita build for approval after the approval
window for that version of Android isexpired, then it won't be certified.
(22:54):
So for example, In like two years fromnow, we try to send Google an Android
10 base bill for certification, they'llsay, nuh, that approval windows expired.
You can't launch that.
The expiration for an approvalwindow date kind of varies.
And it's all like confidential.
It's in like a timeline, but in general,the new software bills are updates are
certified until two letter releases later.
So for example, all Android,12 based software releases.
(23:17):
If an OEM wants to ship an Androidtele based update, they can continue to
do so until the launch of Android 14.
So, this is kind of a way to ensurethat OEMs are launching products
with newer versions of Android andwith newer security batch levels,
which I'll get into in a little bit.
So this sounds like a short timeframefor partners to actually develop
their operating systems based onthe platform release, which is why
(23:38):
Google provides at least some of itspartners with early access to the
next platform release through theplatform development kit or PDK for.
And as I mentioned before, on topof the Android version requirement,
Google also requires that if you'resubmitting a bill for approval, it
has to have a security patch level.
That's at most two months oldat the time of submission.
So because partners get security patches30 days ahead of the public bulletin.
(24:00):
So your, your security patch levelhas to be at most 90 days old
from the latest partner patch.
That was a lot to take in.
I'm sure for some of our listeners,I kind want to ask you a bit here.
This is, uh, not a questionI had on the outline, but.
I wanted to ask you your thoughts onlike this approval window and like
Google trying to keep manufacturerson an up to date version of Android
(24:21):
and on an up to date, security patchlevel, like, is this a burdensome to
manufacturers or do you think thisis actually a good thing that most
manufacturers are able to keep up with?
Jason (24:30):
So it's a yes and no question.
Yes.
I think it's a good idea and Ireally appreciate that they do it.
And I think they're right to makesure that manufacturers are building
with the latest and greatest.
The thing that I don't agree with,and I'm sure every manufacturer of an
Android device on the planet will agree.
Being forced to use third partylabs to do this certification
rather than be able to do it.
(24:51):
Direct thing of Google.
And we are very, very fortunate whenwe were at essential because of Andy
Rubin's obvious connection to Android.
For those who don't know, he's the,basically the creator of Android.
Who sold it to Google?
Uh, so we did get some relatively specialtreatment which allowed us to do our
security patches super, super quickly,because we were doing our own testing and
(25:12):
submitting the results to Google directly.
Unfortunately, we're not able to dothat anymore and nobody is, and it,
it is quite frustrating to use athird party, particularly when third
priories don't move as fast as we do.
So when we could do normallysomething in a couple of days,
now it'll take a week or.
I think
Gary (25:29):
everything's net positive in this regard.
I think it is a burdensome a bit in termsof regulation and what they kind of put
as requirements as any requirement wouldcause, uh, extension in, in the timeline
that you're trying to launch a device,but I think overall getting it more
cohesive, maintaining a certain level offunctionality and future sets at minimum.
(25:52):
Because Android, as we know, itis so fragmented and has been over
a decade now for different OEMs.
I think it does bring a netpositive feel on having the latest
and greatest security patches.
Right.
We could see that with other OEMswho used to take up to a year and
rolling out a security patches nowwithin a couple months timeframe.
And I, I think that that'svery, very invaluable, right.
For anyone owning a device and it's.
(26:14):
Almost a moral requirementto do so as well.
Right.
And for us, that was really importantto us at essentials was rolling out
those as soon as we had it goingthrough and setting up a whole
CTS setup within our office space.
So that way our pre CTS setupwas now our production CTS setup.
And then we were able toget it out, have it ready?
(26:34):
A lot of the times, as soonas Google devices had them.
Yeah, there's a, a trade offbetween what Google has as part
of their whole XTS suite of tests.
That includes CTS VTS, GT.
Its right.
All those things kind of likemeld into this whole test suite
of millions of tests, but it'sfor the greater good, right.
(26:55):
They want a certain bar met forAndroid devices that exist that
people get their hands into.
Right.
We've seen it too often in movies whereAndroid is a butt of a joke because of the
less superior experiences that can happen,unfortunately, with, with other OEMs.
So yeah, overall, it's, it's oneof those things that we welcome.
So
Mishaal (27:13):
both of you kind of touched upon topics.
I wanted to explain a bitto our listeners room.
If we may not be familiar, three PLthe third party labs and CTS going
on in the development life cycle thatI've been talking about after the
software has been developed to a statethat's been near production ready,
and then you've integrated the GMsusing Google's provided packages and
you verified the build is certifiable.
(27:34):
Then it's time to actually validatethat the build passes the various
certification tests that youagree to run in order to ship GMs.
These automated tests are installedon a PC and are run through a phone or
multiple phones connected through ADB.
And then after the tests run a report,that's generated with the results.
So as Gary mentioned, there are acouple of tests starting with the
(27:55):
broad compatibility test suite or CTS.
Then there's a vendor test suite,which test vendor components.
There's a mainline test suite.
There's a CTS on GSI, whichis the compatibility test
suite on generic system image.
Then underneath the broad CTS, there'salso the compatibility test suite Verifi
fire, which is a supplement to CTS withmanual tests, such as those in another
(28:15):
subset of tests called the image testsuite, which test camera related stuff.
So these tests that I mentioned arepublicly available, but then there's
also other stuff that Android partnershave to run, including the bill test
suite security test suite, whichvalidates security patch, mergers.
And then there's the Google testsuite or GMs test suite, which test
compliance with GMs requirements.
(28:36):
You'll commonly see OEMs and Googlersrefer to this whole entire series of tests
as XTS, or like the X, like a lowercase X.
And that's just like saying it'sall the tests to keep things simple.
So one thing I don't think manypeople are aware of or appreciate
is just how big and comprehensivethese automated test suites are.
So in a recent blog post, when Googlewas announcing a new set of optional
(28:59):
tests called CTS, D Google said thatCTS today includes over 2 million tests.
And that's just one ofthe test suites under XTS.
I have heard that it takes a while toget through a full batch of tests, but I
wanted to know, like, in your experience,just how long does it take to go through
this process, actually doing a test.
Gary (29:19):
So we do have the ability to set up a pre test and that even
that the CTS D is made to enableOEMs to have that power internally.
A lot of it it's back and forth.
We go ahead and run thaton a slew of devices.
So we'll have like an array of 10 to15 devices that essentially are, are
constantly running this pre CTS in house.
(29:39):
And it's a lot of back and forthwill end up catching failures.
At the end of the day, a bugtracking ticket within our system.
And then it goes to our system engineersand they go and fix those issues.
And before it even gets to thethree PL services, we have a
certain confidence level on usbeing able to pass those tests.
And because CTS is always evolvingin every Android release, there's
(30:01):
only so much you can catch in yourpre CTS tests before it goes in.
At that point, it's probablylike one or two more, three PL.
Tests for us to go backand then fix those issues.
But overall, we've seen a lot ofimprovement on turnaround, you know,
using those three PL vendors and that'simproved quite a bit, uh, just cuz things
are a lot more streamlined these days.
(30:22):
So those things can vary, uh, and takeas long as it's an approved house by
Google and, uh, recommended you canpretty much fit that into your schedule
and, and determine, you know, howlong that, uh, back and forth should.
It's a necessary evil the way I see it.
But overall, I think it's useful to makesure that our product out of the door,
uh, the factory meets a certain quality
Mishaal (30:42):
level.
So are we talking hours days?
What's the time scale here?
Back and forth.
Probably be
Gary (30:48):
weeks.
Yeah.
Okay.
Wow.
And then, yeah, I mean, initially, right?
So there'll be ones that you runto a lot, but the incremental
ones fall into days, I would say.
But initially when you're tryingto release a V one product, the
brand new processor brand new.
Uh, things that, you know, do complimentthe whole, uh, GKI initiative.
Like those type of thingshelp a bit in streamlining it,
(31:10):
project trouble also, right?
Like that whole introduction ofthings that we've seen over the
past five years has made it.
So it's more streamlined and we havea bit more granularly control in, into
updating each one of these modules.
Mishaal (31:23):
All right.
Thank you for that.
So for those of you who didn'tget Gary's explanation of three
S or still unsure of what they.
It stands for third party labs.
And they're basically firms thatGoogle contracts certification testing
out to instead of OEMs all sendingtheir bills and devices to Google
for certification testing, Googleoutsources, that two, three PLS.
Jason mentioned that they usedto have a direct line to submit
(31:45):
their certification role to Google.
But most companies aren't able to do that.
And as sta said, awesome,isn't doing that.
Now, what happens is you submit yourdevice and build to three PL testing.
And they verify that the billpasses and with compatibility
tests and it passes XTS.
And then once that is approved andthat build is validated as passing
(32:07):
all the requirements, then that buildinformation and that build fingerprint
are submitted to Google to add totheir database of CTS certified bills.
This database is what is used byGMs to verify that it's installed
in a valid certified build.
So if you try to just take a fresh AOSPbuild and integrate GMs into it, and you
try to run the Google play store, it'sa no, we're not running on this device.
(32:30):
It's not validated.
That's why a lot of these custom ROMs,they kind of spoof the build fingerprint
to use a, uh, previously validated one.
And that's why a lot of these spoofshave a repository of fingerprints to use.
The CTS verified build fingerprintis also, what's used by the safety
and at station API, which isactually being deprecated in a few
years by the play integrity API.
(32:53):
Basically this certified build is whatGoogle approves the ship GMs on a product.
And any other build, like if, if youhave to do an update to a build, it's
gonna have a new build fingerprint.
And then that has to be certified.
As Gary mentioned, it's the processis going be a bit shorter, but
you still have to run throughthis process of doing the test.
Again, validating again, sending yourbill to third party labs for results.
(33:16):
Yeah.
It's a long and arduous process thatrepeats every time you need to do an
update, if you kind of brought this upalready, Jason, but essential was rather
famous for shipping day one updates.
And you haven't told Andrew policean interview that you literally
got yelled at by Google forrolling out updates too quickly.
You mentioned that briefly a bit abouthow that's possible, that you were able
(33:37):
to bypass three PLS for testing, butwas there anything else that enabled
essential to roll it up it so quickly?
No,
Jason (33:44):
I mean, it was really the team and the connection looked at, you know, Andy
could make a call that nobody else could.
Um, and so we're left now with beinglike everybody else and we, we will do
our best to be as quick as possible.
It's obviously a priority forus more so than a lot of other
companies, because we're, our entireethos has built around privacy.
So, uh, that's where we stand.
Gary (34:06):
Yeah.
And as a remote company, youknow, we are a little bit tied
to these three PL labs initially.
I mean, we still have that dreamof having that streamlined process.
I think we're one hire in anoffice space away from doing
that with Google's approval.
That's something that I hope weeventually get to back, like as
well, old machine sometime in 2023,
Mishaal (34:26):
right.
Unfortunately, from what you'vetold me, Your software build
actually pretty lean and it's notheavily customized from AOS P.
So that should help withactually bringing up new software
releases and integrating patches.
And also with all the initiatives thatGoogle's been introducing over the
years, like product tr will generickernel image GF, which I'll talk
about a bit later, like, you know,all this has become significantly
(34:47):
less resource intensive to, I.
But there is one thing I kind of glossedover in the development life cycle.
And it's a point that many peoplelove to bring up when they argue,
why updates are so slow to roll out.
And it's what happens whencarriers get involved.
So for those of you don't know,carriers can involve themselves
in many different ways.
Each of them have their own needs.
Some of them will ask for full frameworkchanges to accommodate their asks.
(35:10):
They might ask for specificbranding changes, they might
ask for custom boot animation.
They might ask for customicons, they might ask.
The logo to be on the statusbar or others will ask to insert
specific apps, which Google
Jason (35:22):
refers.
Yeah.
And when you don't, they're gonnago, Hey, we're also gonna, we're
not gonna put as much marketing.
We're not gonna meetour end of the contract.
I'm trying to think of thenon four letter version word.
Of my response to anythinginvolving the carriers.
Uh, so there is a reasonwhy we're open market.
We will be certified to use on all usand Canadian and EU and UK carriers.
(35:43):
However, we have zero ties toany specific carrier directly.
This is such a complicated topic froma sense of language that it, I, I want
to be careful of the words I use here.
Uh, so I'll just say our deviceswill work on all networks.
However, we are not sellingthrough any carrier.
Gary (36:00):
I think one interesting thing to note is maybe five years
plus ago, the majority of salescame through carriers, right?
Cause there's a heavy dependencyon OEMs to have that quick pro
type of relationship with carriers.
I think now with the world climate, theway things are evolving, I think it's
direct to consumer having this B Y O D.
(36:20):
That opportunity is now a bit open forus to move as many devices as we need
to as a, a lean company in general.
So that type of relationship.
Yeah.
A lot of the stuff with carriers, theyput a lot of blot wear on your device.
That was completely against all ofour ethos and our beliefs in a device
is you shouldn't have this thingthat you can't uninstall, essentially
(36:42):
like too many things on there.
Right?
There's those necessary ones where that'sjust the nature of how Android behaves.
But if now these large telecom companiesare forcing some stuff to exist on there.
There is some good, right?
They do like visual voicemail stuff ordifferent apps, um, things like that.
But you know that there are thingsthat people generally complain about.
And if it's been long enoughfor us to stray away from being
Mishaal (37:05):
carrier dependent, well, you both kind of already answered the
question I was gonna ask, which is whatare your thoughts on carriers being
blamed for delaying software rollouts?
And I think you both played that kindof clear with your, uh, opinions.
So, uh, before we move on on, you're
completely
Jason (37:18):
responsible for it.
It are so responsible
for delays off the record.
(37:41):
Uh, pick I'll go back on the recordfor this great example of a carrier.
Just being completely asinine.
There was a carrier in Japan.
I don't remember whichJapanese carrier it was.
But to pass their mechanical requirement,you had to drop the phone on its
edge from six feet onto the sharpedge of an IV without any damage.
I could literally take a block oftitanium, just solid titanium, and it
(38:04):
will show a mark if I do that drop test.
And then when you fail that test,they go, ah, well you need a waiver.
Well, we're gonna wannatake like 3% off all your.
Uh, whoa.
I was like, like, there'snothing that passed that test.
It's not possible.
And they were like, no, no, we'regonna that that's our requirement.
I feel like it's a
David (38:22):
test written by their underwriters.
Jason (38:25):
Oh, I'm sure it was written by a lawyer.
Somewhere was like, Hey, come up withsome tests that are impossible to pass.
. Mishaal: Wow.
And on that colorful note, we've justwrapped part one of our interview
with Jason KES and Gary Andersonfrom awesome part two should be the
next episode in this podcast feed.
So make sure you give thata listen when you can.
And if you're interested in buildingyour own Android device for your
(38:45):
business, come talk to us at ESER.
We can help you work through how to choosethe right hardware for your kiosk point
of sale terminal or other fleet device,as well as how to remotely manage and keep
them updated with our DevOps approach.
Go to eser.io and schedulea chat with us today.
We'd love to hear from you.
And thanks for listening tothis episode of Android bites.
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