This evening I've been streaming music from You Tube to my old analog stereo via Chromecast using my Android phone to control it. I started with the You Tube app, then got lazy and started using Google Assistant and verbal commands.

I do not remember what was playing when I picked up the phone and said "OK Google play Steely Dan" On the screen of the phone appeared a request to specify the app to use. I touched You Tube casting to Chromecast ####. Magically Steely Dan Aja was playing.

I requested a couple of other musicians and the questions I got back on how to deliver the requests got fewer and fewer.

Then I pulled out the phone and said, "OK Google"... Play Rickie Lee Jones. That smart a device said back to me, "BINGO" and the album I was thinking about started to play. Try that with your simple old fashion flip phone.

I'll be back.

Seem's like "kwselk E's in love".

My wife "Likes" he flip phone. But she complains about it all the time! Of course she complained about the blue tooth when I got that for her. So maybe I should just change her phone out and get the 2 months of gripping over with! (What I really want to do is give her my old one and get a better one for me! But we won't mention that!)

Ivan

Comparing these smart devices to a flip phone is like comparing a computer to a typewriter. If you are not already invested in the Apple universe, there are some great mid priced Android phones out there. At lunchtime I asked Google Assistant to tell me a joke and it came back with a real groaner. I said OK Google, tell me another joke. It said OK and brought up a You Tube video that was hilarious. It was not family friendly so I will not post it here.

I have a collection of fairly obscure blues recordings from before 1930. I once tested Google's music-ID capabilities by playing them on my computer and asking my Android phone what each tune was. It got every one of them. This wasn't Louis Armstrong, mind you-- it was Betty Roche, Blind Blake, Blind Willie Dunn, Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson (I'm detecting a pattern here), offbeat stuff like that. I was quite impressed and maybe a little frightened.