hello Automators thanks for tuning in again the big question is is Android the
best mobile operating system for you in your smart home let's get to it earlier
in the week we talked about iOS potentially being the best operating
system or the best mobile operating system for your smart home we talked
about some of the positives and negatives and some of the hardware
associated with that and that's what we're going to do here today now if you
don't know what Android is or you know you probably do know what Android is you
just might not have an idea of when you're using Android well it's the
mobile operating system that isn't on iPhones or iPads so basically if you're
using anything else in the world you're using Android so it's just I phones and
iPads that have the iOS operating system and really there's nothing else left on
the market Microsoft is gone blackberry is gone
lots of these other operating system makers they're gone in the early days of
Android they had some catching up to do especially as it related to the
applications or the apps that were on their Play Store nowadays Google has
fully caught up and all of the home automation applications that you could
want if this and that stringify openhab home assistant all of these things you
know me and Yeti and all of the manufacturer applications from Samsung
and Amazon and all of the big home automation makers have applications on
the Android Play Store so nowadays there's really no difference in terms of
applications one thing that is unique to Android and does not show up on iOS is
called tasker and Tasker is a really powerful essentially a scripting
automation tool but there's a lot of plugins and things that you can add to
Tasker that make this scripting really simple you don't have to do any
scripting basically and so it begins to sound a lot like shortcuts for iOS and
that's one thing that the Android system is missing
you're missing home kit you're missing Siri and you're missing shortcuts but
you have Tasker one of the biggest benefits of Google's Android here is the
integration with Google Assistant and we're seeing this get better and better
every day and especially on Google's need of devices so the pixel 3 or the
pixel to the direct integration of the Google Assistant really makes it become
a whole nother Google Home Hub because it has a visual interface or it's
capable of giving you visual clues or things and you're able to wake it just
similar using the wake word that Google has for their products so in terms of
Android devices getting automation capability this is extremely powerful
with the most powerful and the the strongest voice assistant on the planet
one of the other things that really impresses me about Android is their
widgets capability and this is very different than Apple's widgets where you
just have one screen that you can go to this gives you the ability to actually
create a dashboard for yourself so you're not having to go in and out of
applications and when we think about the smart home this is something that I
think we know Google has been driving towards within their Google assistant to
create that dashboard that you want to go to every day that utilizes all of
Google's services but also allows you to control your smart home now you can
already do that with some of the widgets that are available on your Android
devices and it's much harder and it's a few extra swipes or taps to get to them
on iOS and that's a big difference actually when you think about utilizing
something every day for years one other thing about the integration with the
Google Assistant and really Google Home and on all of Google's products well you
tend to on an Android device get access to features earlier than people who have
an iOS device and let's go through a little list here routines showed up on
Android a lot earlier so to continued conversation actually and on top of that
Google Duplex is only available on a few Android cell phones right now and that
is one of the biggest features out there does duplex ever get to an iPhone I
don't know if that's possible in terms of a platform the interesting thing
about Android is that it is basically as old as iOS is or a few years younger but
it is being replaced so this is really key when we talk about going out and
maybe purchasing an Android device today we need to think about the fact that
Android is being replaced now what I'll tell you is some devices that Google is
building today are capable of being upgraded to their new operating system
so the new operating system that they're building they're calling it fuchsia
right now and the pixel 3 is capable of running fuchsia so we know that from
some testing reports and some testing that people are doing and this means
that a pixel 3 is essentially future-proof to that upgrade from
Android to fuchsia and what's very important to note about that is some of
the current Android devices that are being sold and this is really something
that Google is always done they've allowed people or companies to build on
top and layer something on top of Android to be able to go and produce
their own version of Android so Samsung is is probably the example of that or
the best example of that they have layered on what is kind of their
operating system on top of Android and personally I wish they stopped doing it
but they have done that and it allows them to kind of customize things and
give you access to a specific App Store for their applications and Google has
always allowed this and it makes things powerful in some cases and gives you a
customized experience in some cases but it can also be a drawback and when we
think about one to two years from now fuschia going out will all of those
they're makers of smart home or smartphones rather be able to upgrade to
fuchsia in my ios video here about it being potentially the best mobile OS for
your smart home i talked about the hardware and it's a little bit or it's a
lot harder actually to talk about the hardware as it relates to android but in
general what I'll say is if you're looking at Google's Pixel 3 it is
not based on being the best hardware out there today the iOS devices tend to
be some of the best Hardware physically on the planet or at least available
today they're always improving and so is is Google and LG and Samsung and all
these makers that go and create Android products but ultimately what I find is
some of the flagship Android devices aren't necessarily up to the same level
of sophistication and/or the same level of finish and I think actually finish is
the right word to use the finish on the Android devices is maybe not there now
personally when I'm talking about a smart home and the ability to control
and have the best access to the best smart home things I don't really care
about the finish of my phone the other thing about Hardware on an Android
device is because you have so many makers they can do so many different
things with it and this means that you have tablets on the very very low end of
the spectrum and I even remember my little 7-inch Google Nexus 7 actually
and I loved that tablet still to this day if it could run the operating system
it it was a fantastic tablet it was the right size just to kind of walk with or
take anywhere you went and it was a really different experience from the
Galaxy Tab A or B or the these 10 inch behemoths that you can go and carry
around and can cost upwards of $700 so there's a real range of tab
and phones that you can get access to with Android because bass Android can be
used but a lot of things can be layered on top so as we think about that with a
maker like smart Samsung smartthings we can think we can foresee the opportunity
for Samsung to go out use Android or fuchsia in the future and layer
something on top that is really powerful for your smart home finally their voice
assistant is the best in the world right now and I foresee that being the case
for a very long time the only voice assistant that they're missing is
Apple's voice assistant because Apple hasn't deployed it on there now
ultimately that's not a big deal to me but what they are missing is that
shortcuts capability from iOS so what we're going to talk about in our very
next video in this series is iOS vs. Android directly so get ready for that
guys we're gonna give you the best device for your smart home