Google Pixel 9a Puts Signature on Hold - DTNSB 4995  ## Metadata - Author: [[Daily Tech News Show]] - Full Title: Google Pixel 9a Puts Signature on Hold - DTNSB 4995 - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/4edff6b1-9ba0-405b-adc9-150e415e3ce5 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Pixel 9a Field Test** - Jason Howell tested the Google Pixel 9a in Colorado, including at Meow Wolf. - The most controversial change is the removal of the signature Pixel camera bar. Transcript: Jason Howell Lifted for the Google Pixel 9a today. I have had the phone. I actually have it in my hands right now. Can you hear it when I tap it? That's it. That's it. I've had the phone for more than one week and I actually took it to Colorado last weekend for a hang with my friend and DTNS regular Shannon Morse. We had a great time putting it through its paces in the mountains ([Time 0:02:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/971e71c9-2f24-4706-940c-795216b77f06)) - **Pixel 9a Camera Changes** - Google Pixel 9a replaces the camera bar with an inset pill-shaped array, improving low-light performance. - However, it reuses the same ultrawide camera from the past three years. Transcript: Jason Howell Of Colorado. Also took it to Meow Wolf is what it's called. Really cool place. Most controversial change, of course, is the rear facing camera design. The signature pixel camera bar is removed and it's replaced with this inset pill shaped camera array. It's like inset into the device. So there is no protrusion. The main camera gets an upgrade that brings its aperture to F 1.7, making it, I found a solid low light performer. So again, you know, pixels and cameras doing good stuff. However, the ultra wide camera on the, on the device is the same one that's been used for the past three years. And it still does a good job, but you're starting to kind of see the need for an update, maybe a larger megapixel count so that you can have larger images or some sort of update there. And then eight gigs of RAM, which essentially means it doesn't support the full suite of Google's AI feature set, things like pixel screenshots, call detection for scams. So the AI detecting when there's a on the call that you're on, that is not included as a feature on this device. And then finally, Vapor Chamber, discovered in a pre-release teardown. They didn't mention it, but it's there. And a very, very large battery, the largest Pixel has ever seen in their A-series. So, I mean, this is kind of DTNS meets ([Time 0:02:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/228aab2f-523c-4fe0-91d0-d78021a22af5)) - **Pixel 9a Specs and Features** - The Pixel 9a boasts 8GB of RAM but lacks features like Pixel screenshots and call scam detection. - It includes a vapor chamber and the largest battery in the Pixel A-series. Transcript: Jason Howell Android faithful as sometimes happens when you and I are on the same DTNS episode, but the embargoes did lift and, you know, this had a little bit of controversy in it, how it was, how it Was announced and then immediately kind of postponed for the pre-orders and everything. And we don't really have a clear indication yet as far as like ([Time 0:03:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b9295105-bfff-404b-808b-835a1f58f5b2)) - **Pixel 9a Design** - If the Pixel 9a wasn't a Pixel, its design would be considered pretty. - The removal of the camera bar is a departure from Google's signature design. Transcript: Jason Howell Why that is. Huyen Tue Dao Well, I mean, I guess my question is, Jason, do you miss the camera bar at all? Do you think that, I mean, it is kind of like in isolation, what do you think of design? But then in as a as a member of the pixel wider family, what do you think? If that's different? Jason Howell Yeah, well, so I do have a full review up on my YouTube channel to search for Jason Howell and you can see. And in that, I actually make the claim that if I didn't know this was a Pixel and it was just the device, like here's a new device by a random company and it looks like this, it doesn't have The camera bar because there's no attachment to the Pixel camera bar. I'd be like, oh, that's a pretty phone. And I do think that it's a pretty phone. But knowing that it's a Pixel, I can't help but shed at least a little bit of a tear over the fact that like this is Google's signature that they've built up over the last three, four years. And yes, things change. It's not like the Pixel 10 doesn't have the camera bar. The leaks that we've seen show that the camera bar is going to be there. They just did it for the 9A maybe as a differentiation. Because it sits alone in that kind of design it feels like a total departure. And so, I don't know. I kind of wish that there was a camera bar. At the same time, if you're just throwing a camera bar into place just to have a camera bar and it doesn't actually need it. I mean, I could understand that too. Like, why do that? But, you know, other than this is a signature of the pixel line and people who really like that design approach are going to miss it. Let myself include it. It does. Huyen Tue Dao I will say that the, the inset ([Time 0:04:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5b29b165-022b-4eab-8501-6b4b6a84a547)) - **Pixel 9a Battery Life and Value** - The Pixel 9a has a large 5100 mAh battery, addressing past criticisms of Pixel battery life. - It offers great value for its $500 price, especially for the A-series. Transcript: Huyen Tue Dao It's just funny they went the opposite. Before it was protruding, now it's insets. Yeah, right. Jason Howell Exactly. And I will just also punctuate excellent battery life. 5,100 billion amp hours is the largest that a Pixel device has ever seen. And that has been one big kind of criticism that Pixels have gotten in the past is why can't you give us devices with bigger batteries? Turns out they threw that into an A-series phone. So you're getting a lot for $500. And continually speaking, that's always been the case in the last handful of years for their A-series phones. I feel like it's consistently a ([Time 0:07:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/39c00700-244d-4f12-9bf3-44f4aafb5d34)) - **Tech Market Volatility** - Big tech markets, including NASDAQ, experienced extreme volatility due to tariff situations. - This instability may impact consumer-facing strategies. Transcript: Jason Howell There's more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs. Huyen Tue Dao Well, after yesterday's late breaking news of the 90-day pause on tariffs in the U.S., markets rallied with the tech-filled Nasdaq seeing its second best day in history, climbing More than 12% in response. Apple also saw its best day since 1998 with a 15% increase, a reprieve from one of the company's worst 40 performances since 2000. Tesla, Nvidia, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet all saw big gains as well. But at the time of this recording, markets have gone south once again, with NASDAQ dropping 5.9%. All of this just ([Time 0:11:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/714d3a9c-2eba-416f-993d-208b43b7747e)) - **Tariff Impact on Framework** - Framework, a laptop company, raised prices due to tariffs then reverted after a 90-day tariff pause. - This demonstrates the direct impact of tariffs on consumer pricing. Transcript: Jason Howell So 100 percent. And this ties right into what you just said. If you feel like you are suffering from a case of tariff whiplash, laptop company Framework knows firsthand how you feel. 10% price hikes yesterday on all of their computers, only to then revert to their normal pricing one hour later after immediately catching wind of the 90-day pause on tariffs in the U.S. Almost immediately after they posted that update. Some prices will still reflect the tariff increases ([Time 0:13:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9d695cf5-89fb-48fa-80cd-870987a43468)) - **Dire Wolves: Not Back** - Colossal Biosciences created puppies they call "dire wolves" by editing gray wolf genes. - Real dire wolves, extinct for 11,000 years, were a distinct genus (Aenocyon) not closely related to gray wolves (Canis). Transcript: Jason Howell Up. You likely have not been able to avoid the headlines that say that dire wolves are back. Well, are they? Tom asked Dr. Nikki. Dr. Niki So Tom, have you watched Jurassic Park? I have. Yes. Multiple times. What was your ethical takeaway from that movie? Just because we can doesn't mean we should. Speaker 5 Isn't that the ethical takeaway of Jurassic Park? Dr. Niki So I think you would not have a chance of working at Colossal Biosciences because they had a different takeaway. Oh, again, Colossal Biosciences. Oh, yes. I feel like Colossal these days, every time they come out with a story, they're waiting for me to go on DTNS and talk about it. So here we are. Speaker 5 Yes. Thank you, Colossal, for giving Dr. Nikki topics for DTNS. Dr. Niki I love it. And we're going to debunk it. So this came out on March 7th. Colossal Biances spread the word of their latest PR stunt, which came in the form of two very cute little puppies that they have been calling, and I use hand quotes here, dire wolves. They named them Romulus and Remus. Of course they did after the founders of Rome. They also have a younger sister named Khaleesi because of course they did. Speaker 5 Of course, Game of Thrones. Got it. Okay. Dr. Niki All right. From Game of Thrones. But of course, as is usually the case with the last few stories about Colossal, these puppies are not quite what they claim to be. Speaker 5 Yeah. I think most people know direwolves from Game of Thrones, whether it's the book or the TV show, but there was a real thing that was a direwolf. What was the actual direwolf? Dr. Niki Yeah. And Tom, you're near LA, right? Yeah. So have you been to the La Brea Tar Pits? I have multiple times. Have you seen the giant wall of direwolf skulls that they have there? Speaker 5 Now that you mentioned it, yes, yes. Dr. Niki One of the coolest places in the country. I haven't been, but I can't wait to go. So, okay. They are in the La Brea Tar Pits because dire wolves are animals from the Pleistocene, also known as the Ice Age. This is an epoch that ended about 11,000 years ago. In LA, they got trapped in tar and then the fossils got pulled out and put in the museum, which is how you got to see them. So what we are calling dire wolves are large canids, not necessarily wolves. They look very similar to a wolf, but a little bit bigger and stockier. And they're in fact, genetically completely distinct from wolves. And we figured this out in 2021 when they were able to pull out ancient DNA fragments from a tooth, I believe. Speaker 5 So Canid is the family. Is that right? Dr. Niki Yeah, it's a larger family. So like dogs are in there. Wolves are in there. And I'm trying, I think foxes may also be in there, but I might be wrong. But well, dog looking things, but not necessarily the same genus. And we'll get to that. The reason that direwolves and wolves look similar is due to something called convergent evolution. Have you heard of this term before? Speaker 5 Yes. That's when two things evolve separately, but they're very similar for, because of the pressures of the environment, et cetera. Dr. Niki Yeah. Perfect. And it's one of my favorite things about evolution. I think it's really cool, But exactly. So these animals underwent, they lived in with areas with similar environmental pressures. They're both carnivores hunting maybe similar prey. And it leads to them evolving similar adaptations and appearances. Similarly, how the Tasmanian tiger looks really a lot like a coyote, despite it living in Tasmania at the time and being a marsupial. Speaker 5 Oh, I didn't know that. That's cool. Dr. Niki Yeah. Even their teeth are very closely resembling. So it's pretty cool. So in this case, gray wolves are Canis lupus. So they're from the Canis genus, like dogs. And dire wolves are from a completely different genus, Anocion, if I hopefully pronounce that right, Anocion diaris. And as our friend of the show, Riley Black, mentioned on Blue Sky, the last time they shared a common ancestor was five million years ago. So pretty far apart. A little ways back. Speaker 5 Yeah. Dr. Niki A little bit. Before ([Time 0:20:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7038eeb8-88f7-4b56-ab35-7cecfff65dcb)) - **Dire Wolf Genetics** - Colossal's "dire wolves" are gray wolves with 20 gene edits out of 19,000 total genes. - Environmental factors, not fully captured by gene editing, also influence development. Transcript: Speaker 5 Sounds like you can make an argument that there is dire wolf in these pups, but would you define them as being a dire wolf? Dr. Niki A few edited genes does not a dire wolf make, Tom, as far as I'm concerned. A wolf has 19,000 genes. We've got about 30,000. And colossal scientists made 20 edits within 14 genes of the gray wolf. So this is more like a clone of a gray wolf with 20 gene edits. Some people have called this a vaporware wolf. To me, it's like putting genetic makeup on a pig. It basically disregards the reality of what this species actually was and how it lived, and instead just pulls out selected aesthetic traits that are going to make for a good news stunt And it sticks them in another species. So, and that's not even counting for if you really want to get deeply into genetics, maybe you've heard that environment can affect your genes, like how, you know, don't eat microplastics Because it can have some detrimental effects. Speaker 5 Yeah, go ahead. So why do this? Dr. Niki Like, I understand that- Hold on, hold on. I'm building up to that. I will continue on environmental effect just to be clear. Like, imagine if this was a real dire wolf. Things like variations in hormone levels, temperature, it was cold during the ice age, parental investment even. Here they're raised by, I think, hounds, dogs, domestic dogs. These things can all change the genetic pathways of how the offsprings grow during the embryonic phase and later. And of course, none of that is captured in this minimal gene at it's just looking for a cool phenotype. So to your point, why? Yeah, ([Time 0:25:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6569c799-80e6-4fb9-93f6-64b7c4a239d3)) - **Handling Spam Group Texts** - Don't reply to spam group texts, even to warn others. - Flag the spam and move on to minimize risk. Transcript: Jason Howell Jim Video has a question. Huyen Tue Dao So Jim Video asked in Discord, I was wondering, when I get text spammed in a group text, should I reply that this is a spam message to help the other recipients or go directly for the spam Button, not letting the spammer ever know I read the message? Jason Howell Oh boy. Okay. I'm sure like, both answer this. I already know my answer. My answer is flag it immediately move on. Um, like I, and I totally understand wanting to save other people, but you put yourself in more risk when you do that. And I think, I think in that scenario, you just, you have to do what's, what's safest for you. Huyen Tue Dao I, I 100 agree. And I really get it. Like you really like, I totally get it. But I also agree. Like, you actually give them more information when you respond, even if you're trying to be helpful. So that'll, yeah, I agree. Hopefully we just get the message to everyone that they should just ignore spam and move on. Jason Howell I suppose if it's a group text, and somebody in the group text actually does respond and like buys into it or whatever, then we would see that. Maybe then we send that person a direct text and say, hey, don't do that. That's a bad idea or something like that. But so maybe you go that, you know, that extra step. But yeah, like you said, the more signals you give them, the more they get what they came for, really, at the end of the day. Huyen Tue Dao What are you thinking about? Got some insight into a story? ([Time 0:33:37](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c71c5c82-a368-4562-b7d0-419c8db1a8e9))