SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
Three Hundred Dollars Per Millimeter Seems Expensive
In this innagural episode of the SammyGuru podcast, hosts Jeff Springer and Torrey Martin discuss their backgrounds and experiences with Samsung devices. They also cover topics such as the upcoming One UI 6.1.1 and 7.0 beta updates, the potential removal of Samsung Messages from Galaxy Phones, and the key differences between Samsung Messages and Google Messages.
They also touch on the leaked specs and design changes of the upcoming Galaxy Z Fold 6. The hosts give their opinion on the cost/benefit of upgrading to the new Samsung foldable phones this year.
Get your info off the dark web with Aura: https://aura.com/springer
S25 Ultra Mystery Box Sign up: https://laylo.com/springer/NTdpr
Video Podcast on Youtube: https://bit.ly/3yBw3Ro
Follow Jeff on X (Twitter): https://x.com/jspring86az
Follow Torrey on X: https://x.com/T_Martin_23
Check out our website: https://sammyguru.com
Welcome everybody to episode one of the Sammy Guru podcast. I'm your host Jeff Springer and with me is my co -host Tori. Hey, how's it going? Welcome everyone, this is our first episode. So we want to be your source for all things Samsung, hardware, apps, updates, tips, tricks, tutorials, et cetera. A lot of you guys probably know me from my YouTube channel, I cover Samsung as well. But if you don't know me, my name is Jeff Springer. I have a website, samigroup .com, where we cover written Samsung tutorials, tips, tricks and news. I also have been covering Samsung on YouTube for about 10 years now. So I've been on this beat for quite a while. Also have a weekly newsletter, lots of everything Samsung, so I pretty much do this all the time. And then Tory is bringing an alternate perspective to the podcast. He is actually one of my former students in my past life as a math professor. So those of you guys who do know me know that that's what I did before this. I actually stopped doing that full time two months ago. And so I'll let Tory talk a little bit about how we met and also kind of what he does now in his day to day. Yeah, so I met Jeff say about 2014 -2015 I think I was taking stats the first time and then the second time how to run in with him was calc and then I basically had him for the majority of my math classes but he always did the tech stuff on the side so and at the time I had a HTC so he was kind of giving me some pointers on it and then I eventually got Samsung and we just kind of progressed in our relationship and just been a really solid guy to know and currently I'm a high school math teacher but also do some adjuncting math teaching on the side. I love it, love math. I think that's why we also connected a lot there as well. So yeah, that's what I mostly do. That's right. So Tori was one of my first students in my first full -time teaching gig which I stated that at university actually for almost the entire time that I was a full -time math professor. Torrey's also originally from Alabama, which I'm from Alabama as well. So we both connected over our love of crimson tide football. We had on both had onto Alabama crimson tide gear. I think I had a hat on and he had a jacket or vice versa. So we connected there. There we go. Torrey has the exact apparel that we were wearing at that time. So yeah, Torrey and I met and my goal is that he's going to be able to help kind of bring some of the casual user perspective to this because obviously I am covering Samsung News every day. I have a lot of different perspective from the average user. And so I didn't want this podcast just be me talking tech specs and things, you know, like that, I want to open it up to a more casual audience as well. And hopefully Tory can provide that. But the great thing is, while he is a casual user, he's not out there researching specs every day or reading the blogs. He is a Samsung user for quite a while. And so he does have a great perspective there in terms of the content and phones and all that kind of stuff So Tori you want to talk a little bit about what your first Samsung phone was? Yeah, so right after the HTC one it was like the last model that they made I Went into AT &T and they're like hey we have this Samsung Note phone I think it was the Note 8 was the first one I got and I was like alright, I'll give it a go and and I really fell in love with it. I really loved the S -Pen. That was like what really drew to me just because I was a math teacher and I was like, man, this will be useful. And then from there I got the S -20, yeah. S20 and then I got the S22 Ultra. And they all have the notes and I just love that line. But I'm being told that they could be moving away from that flex shift. But that is okay. I'll move on to the next cool one. All right, so you basically you were with HTC and then HTC stopped making Android phones after the you said you had the one in nine, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. So HTC, they kind of can, you know, went out of business, they sold the rest of their employees and their IP to Google. And you moved over to Samsung. So you've had a lot of notes and now you have obviously the s 22 ultra. And you use the s pin a lot. Have you ever considered or thought about so far? We're going to talk about this a little later in the show, but moving to one of the foldable phones like the Galaxy Z Fold. For the Fold, I never really felt like that was a phone that spoke to me. I remember when they first introduced it, they said it was a luxury phone and they told me the price. And I was like, how could I afford that and keep it in a pristine condition of working for the type of work that I do? I just didn't feel like that phone was very useful for me to get. So did you also concerned a little bit about the durability I guess of the fold I think that's a lot of people's concern too is that it's just not so easy to protect because it's not a lot of case options and things like that for the fold Yeah, so like from what I saw like there a lot of news outlets were talking about how like dust and particles could get could get in and For it being so long. I'm like, well, I normally keep it in my pocket Like I don't have anywhere else to put it. So I was it was I was concerned of how many folds can I actually get out of it before it breaks or cracks? Yeah, and it's a really heavy phone and we'll talk about that a little bit when we get to the Z Fold 6 that it's quite a brick in your pocket still in my opinion when you have I use a Z Fold 5 on occasion, but I still use the S24 Ultra full -time and of course the price is also a big factor I mean we'll talk about it, but the price is gonna go up on this one getting close to two grand now for a phone which is just like that's not gonna appeal to the average user and and why you maybe could use it as a tablet and a phone is dual purpose. It's kinda too small as a tablet. And then when it's closed, it's also very difficult in my opinion. I know some people disagree, but I find it too difficult to text one -handed because the screen is so narrow. So hopefully they'll make some changes this year that will mitigate some of that, but we'll just have to kind of see how that goes. What about any other Samsung products, just so people can kind of know your full Samsung ecosystem? What other Samsung products? Are you using right now any buds any wearables any things like that? Yes, so I'm using The buds that I believe they came out last year is the galaxy threes or the Samsung Galaxy threes. I love those things I use them all the time very good durability the charge lasts very well Really good sound I also use the Samsung I forget which watch it was but it came out around the same time the s22 The watch for classic maybe yeah, and I think you mean the buds to right because the buds three are coming out next month. yes That's okay. So you really like using those right? They have a lot of great integration with Samsung stuff Is there anything else that you use Samsung like TV wise or anything like that? No, no, just those just those products. Okay, very cool So very integrated though into the Samsung ecosystem. We'll have to see if we can get Tory maybe some new buds and a watch from the upcoming launch. We're going to definitely do some hardware reviews in the podcast. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about the Galaxy Book 4 Edge, which I actually have sitting right here with us. We're using it for our show notes for the podcast today. So I'll talk a little bit about that. But hopefully, Tori can do a couple of hardware reviews from kind of a more general consumer perspective. Since I get kind of jaded from doing Samsung every day, maybe my perspective isn't quite what everybody wants. So we try to give you guys a little bit of both sides of the coin there. So before we move on into the rest of the show, is there anything else, Tori, that you kind of want to let people know about you personally? I know you're going to create you actually didn't have the Twitter slash X account. I know you're going to create one for the show. Yes. Do you know what your handle is going to be yet or should we just say we're going to put it in the show notes later on? We'll just put it in the show notes later on. I'm still learning it as we're transitioning from Twitter to what is it threads. That's right. Yeah. We're doing both. Yeah. Twitter. Twitter is going to X threads is the Instagram thing. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So X and then also threads on Instagram. We will have a page for the podcast on threads as well. So we'll be on all the socials. Of course those will be in the show notes. The last thing I I forgot to mention too, before we do get the rest of the show, Tori is also doing some writing for us here at Sammy Guru. So he very well could do some written content as well. So far, how are you enjoying doing some of the writing? You're trying to learn a little more about content creation, learning about blogging. How's that going so far? I will tell you, it has been eye -opener. Like you would never think there's so much that goes on behind the scenes when it comes to creating content. But yeah, like, it's really, been a cool experience just going in learning the search keywords algorithms how long to make a news title it has really been something that I never would have thought that I would be doing but there is a lot behind it but it is a really fun thing to learn. Tory thought we'd just type up some words and just put them on the internet people read it automatically. No I'm just kidding but yeah Tory's been helping me with some of the technical sides of the website. doing some of the SEO. And so he's a bigger part of Sammy Guru than kind of just my former student. So hopefully he'll be with us for a while, certainly on the podcast. And we hope you guys will join us every week kind of on that journey. You guys get to know us a little bit better as we go. Just want to kind of let you guys know overall how we met and general a little more about us before we get into the show. But let's go ahead and get into our first kind of Samsung topic for the week. We're going to be talking about one UI 6.1 .1 and the One UI 7 .0 beta. So I wanna bring up a couple of quick posts on Twitter slash X. I don't call it X anymore. I mean, I don't call it X because I think everyone still calls it Twitter. That's just, so I mean, who really calls it X besides Elon Musk? So I pretty much stick with Twitter. But there's a couple of really interesting things that have leaked out about One UI 6.1 .1 and I kinda wanna talk about them. give my thoughts and then let Tory kind of chime in about what he thinks. He probably has no idea about any of these particular features coming out. So you'll get a real user take on like, does he think that some of these things would be useful? So first I'll kind of run down some of the news here. So first thing we know is One UI 6 .1 .1, which will be the next version of Samsung's operating system. Every year they release a middle of the year point release with the new foldables. So next month on July 10th We're gonna see this software update come out with the fold 6 and the flip 6 But for the first time ever we're also gonna see it come out to the Galaxy S phones So my s24 ultra and eventually core Tori's s22 ultra will receive this update down the line and usually they don't get that middle of the year point release usually they just receive an update, you know that comes out at the beginning of the year, whenever the S line releases, they don't get the middle of the year one, but this year, that's not the case. So we're going to be seeing some big upgrades to the S series as well. And there's a couple of interesting features that have been leaked by some popular leakers. Ice universe over on Twitter slash X said the one UI 6 .1 .1 graffiti generation image function is the most fun AI function I've ever seen. Very good use of the S pin and imagination. you can expect it. So I've talked to a couple of people who also leakers who kind of know a little more about this particular feature. It appears that what the feature will be is you'll have the ability using your S Pen on One UI 6 .1 .1 to create graffiti images. So like you can use your S Pen to draw and then it will use AI to put that into more like a artistic graffiti look. So even if you're not an artist, you can like write down, scribble down some images with some different colors and then it'll be able to generate. some graffiti for you either on an existing image or on a blank canvas I definitely think that it's a pretty cool idea But I don't know exactly what I would use for maybe on socials and people might use it for like meme building and things like that Tori What do you what do you think about this this feature? Is this something that you would use? I mean honestly or do you see a use for this for other people or is this just gonna be like kind of a fun kind of one-off kind of feature for me is probably just gonna be like a fun one -off kind of feature. I don't really see so much of a use that I would use it for but I do have a few other friends who do also have a Samsung with the S -Pen who are more artistic than I am so I can see them maybe leaning towards this and I just think it's a fun little tool that most people will probably find you useful or fun to use but I don't really see it as being like something. and my circle of using it all the time. I feel like, you know, a lot of people, one of the criticisms I see a lot when I make Samsung videos where I compare them to the iPhone. And obviously we're going to get into Samsung versus the iPhone a lot on this podcast because of course, right? I mean, we have to, we're Samsung users. But one of the things I always get into is that iOS users always want to say that the S Pen is a gimmick feature. I don't think that's true in general, although I, I do think that this particular feature might be a little gimmicky, but I use it a lot in my job as a professor. And I imagine you do as a teacher, you can do a lot with the S Pen when you're doing like mathematics, right? I mean, you can answer student emails and things like that, use it for note taking. So I really don't feel like it really is a gimmicky feature as a whole, the S Pen, right? As being built in. Do you use the S Pen in a lot of ways? I'm curious. Yeah, actually. And it's kind of funny that you do say gimmicky. I like to think of it more as a enhancement because you can actually do a lot. Like for me, I use it a lot when I'm out grocery shopping or if I need to kind of keep note of something, I can have it accessible to write it down. You can even write just right off the screen. You don't even have to go into the actual S Pen mode. So it makes it very useful for me when I'm just kind of out and about. The other thing is really good for, editing is really good for helping me with if I need to edit a picture I use it in more ways than just having to write so I think depending on who you go with I really feel like you're gonna get a varying answer, but I don't think anyone would say that is gimmicky. Yeah, it's definitely enhancement Yeah, I think you know I use it a lot for when I'm on social media like Instagram or Twitter and I see an interesting Picture or post and I want to share it with someone like I want to share it with my wife I want to share with a friend I just use that to use the smart select select the post and then just automatically can share it Yeah, you know instead of taking a full screenshot because sometimes I don't want to like share whatever else is in my feed I just want to share that once specific thing. It's great for cropping images like that, like you said. And I don't really know where iOS users get this idea that it's a gimmick. I think a lot of them are just frustrated that Apple has yet to bring a miniature version of the Apple Pencil to the iPhone and they wish they had that feature. And so, you know, they're really upset that we have this opportunity and they don't. But there's another one that's supposed to come as well. I mean, we won't spend too much time on this, but Ice Universe also said you'll have an AI to paint portrait photos in various styles, this is kind of probably gonna be in the same package as the graffiti that we talked about, they're gonna package it. I think it looks like they're gonna package a lot of these as creativity AI features, which is something that more and more kind of manufacturers are, you know, bundling or promoting in their software. So that sounds like a cool feature, but again, not something I feel like is a game changer for the S Pen, right? The S Pen is kind of matured to the point where I don't know that there's really gonna be like a life changing feature. because they already have all the features you can need like, you know, cropping, you can use the S Pen as a remote for your camera. Did you know that? Did you? Yeah, that's, that's a cool feature. You can actually click the button, you know, take a photo with your S Pen as a remote. There's a lot of really cool stuff you can do with it. But these seem like some nice fun add ons for the AI side. Now talking about another thing that Ice Universe talked about, which is a very, very popular thing in Samsung enthusiast circle. So this is probably your first exposure to this. This is the kind of the fun part of this podcast is that you know as a user who's not reading the blogs every day you don't know about a lot of these things and so we get your opinions on how silly some of this stuff seems from the outside, but a lot of people inside Galaxy user circles, they are really very interesting and kind of obsessed over the animations on your Galaxy phone. So what I mean by that is when you open and close apps, like how smooth the frame rate transition is as this app recesses. You see what I mean? We're not doing a video version of the podcast yet. We're planning on it, but I'm showing Tory really quickly how those animations look. You see how it goes back into the app icon? People are really concerned. about that and I don't know why because for me, One UI 6 .1 I just showed you looks great. But according to Ice Universe, the animations in One UI 6 .1 .1 are even more delicate and smooth. And you can see differences in the details he's showing here in his post about this he is showing how the icon kind of minimizes how quickly and smoothly comparing the previous version, which I'm running on my S24 Ultra to the new version that will be out next month. Have you ever noticed any And with your S22 Ultra, stuttering of the animations on your phone? No, not at all. Actually, what made me want to buy the S22 Ultra was at the time when they were kind of showing it, they were showing like this moving front wallpaper. And I was like, that's kind of cool. And then like when I would go in, like everything just seemed smooth, like the transition going from the wall. You're talking about the motion wallpapers. Yeah. Yeah. Those transitions were smooth even on the S22 Ultra. I agree. Yeah, so like that's what really kind of brought me in. I never seen anything like that on a flagship phone And I mean even looking going at like my girlfriend. She has an iPhone so Just the way it transitions on her phone is I would say slower in my opinion to what I see on my phone I just really like the transition when I'm going from the what do you call that part where you have like all the and you're going from the apps to the main screen. When you're going to your app drawer back to the home screen? Yep. Yeah, the app drawer to the home screen. Smooth transition. Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest with you. I mean, obviously, even though I do consider myself a part of the enthusiast community, this is one thing where, at least in the last three years, maybe, I have not felt like one UI really needs a crazy amount of optimization for the animations. Of course, they can always be better. They can always be smoother and you can always make them smoother while also improving the speed. But I haven't felt like that's something I need. I'm curious what our what our listeners think. I've asked my viewers on YouTube and people who follow me over on Twitter about this before too. It seems like this is a thing, you know, that is confined to maybe users in certain parts of the world. I believe Ice Universe. I'm not sure where he's from. I don't want to say India because I'm not 100 % sure. I don't think that's right. I think maybe Malaysia, but he is not from the US or Europe, it seems like a lot of people do care about this, the Indian users, and I have a lot of people follow me from India, love my Indian watchers and followers, but it seems like a lot of them really do care, which of course if there's something they care about, Samsung should pay attention because those are huge markets, and of course those improvements can only benefit us, but I really have never had or heard anyone who's a Samsung user that I know here in the US that's ever said to me, at least recently, hey my phone just has too much lag, it stutters too much with the animation. Now, back maybe the Galaxy S5, you know, 10 years ago, there was some lag in TouchWiz, which was Samsung's old operating system, and no one could dispute that. So I definitely heard that back in the day, but Samsung has come a long way, at least in my opinion. So I'm curious what some of our listeners think about that, because it is a discussion that you hear a lot in Galaxy circles. And one that I wonder, depending on where you live, is this something that people care about more or less? Because there certainly are features, different parts of the world that some people care about more or less. That's why they have, sometimes they optimize the software for different regions, right? There are different versions for each different region. Anyway. The last thing I want to mention was One UI 7 .0 beta. I wrote about this a little bit over on my website and the One UI 7 .0 beta is going to be delayed now because of the work that is being done with the One UI 6 .1 .1 rollout to all the Galaxy S phones. So Ice Universe, again, very prolific leaker. So a lot of our stuff comes from him because he does have a lot of inside sources inside Samsung, which... Must be nice. I wish I had some of those too that would help me with my job. But in the meantime, we get a lot of great info from him and it seems like when you I 7 .0 beta might not come till September. Maybe it could be late August early September. Have you ever run a beta version of Samsung software on your phone? I probably know the answer, but I figured I would ask anyway for the viewers. No, I have not. Yeah, so we want the beta is always a big deal every year when it comes out. So Samsung, let's. Enthusiasts and developers test their newest version of One UI. And in this case, it usually comes out in maybe early August. So it looks like it's gonna be about a month late. It's the next major version of their operating system. And so people get really excited because they wanna see if Samsung added some improvements that they wanted. Usually people are just disappointed because Samsung didn't add whatever they want. But that actually is a great segue into our next topic, which is the vertical app drawer. because Samsung is rumored with One UI 7.0 to finally bring back the vertical app drawer. And I know you had a little bit of a chance to watch my videos that I've made about this. This actually is a feature that I'm very passionate about inside of the Samsung enthusiast community because I hate the horizontal app drawer. I made a video pleading with Samsung to bring it back, which a lot of people have shared actually and posted various places on Reddit and the Samsung community forums. The vertical app drawer was a feature inside of Good Lock that allowed you to scroll through your app list vertically instead of side to side, which I personally think makes it a lot easier because if you have a lot of apps, scrolling horizontally does take some additional time. And if you're doing that many times a day, like I do for my job, covering Samsung stuff. it's nice to be able to scroll through it vertically. So have you ever used the vertical app list when it was there before or would you consider using it now that you know about it if you didn't know about it before? Actually, I would like to, if they were to bring it back, I kind of share the same thing as you. I've never used the vertical app drawer on any of my Samsung phones, but. yeah, scrolling through horizontally. I mean, I just get so many pages of apps and it's just really hard to find exactly like what I need. if I'm trying to look for something quickly and I feel like if I had the vertical app drawer, I'll be able to just, it'll be a easier motion just to scroll down versus like side to side, the side, the side, and then eventually just going to the search bar to find the exact app that I'm looking for. Yeah, I agree. And I think it's such. It's ridiculous. They took it out a long time ago. This video I made was six months ago. They took it out like a month and a half, two months before this, and they didn't really give an explanation. It's not like it's a really complicated feature. So I don't understand why it's not there. That's what I'm concerned about because it seems like they need to optimize it. They're like, we need to optimize it for the next version of One UI. But then that came out with the S24 Ultra and it wasn't there. And now they're like, well, we need to optimize for the next version. Well, 6 .1 .1 is coming out next month and supposedly it's not there. either. So we're gonna have to wait all the way till next year in January for a feature that seems like you know, you should just be able to press a button and be like, vertical app drawers back on. Why not? It doesn't seem like a really difficult thing. So I'm curious, like if anyone has any inside scoop, I've talked to a lot of people about this, it just seems like maybe they don't want to optimize the app drawer to work this way, because it may be just for like frame rate reasons or animation reasons we were talking about before. But But it is very annoying that it's not back. I would really like to see it back. I think a lot of my listeners would as well. Let me know if you guys have used this as well over on social, if it's something that you care about. And going back to the beta, I don't recommend you install the beta on your primary device. So we won't have Tori do that. I don't think there's a good reason to install the beta if it's your primary device. I usually install it on a secondary phone because I have two. Usually I have one for testing and one is my main phone. and so that is a nice way to go about it. But the beta is never very stable on the first one, so there's lots of bugs. Sometimes your banking apps don't work. Sometimes lots of things that require security because some of those things aren't completely finalized yet in the testing software. And so that can end up being a problem with running the beta. All right, so that is the One UI 6 .1 .1 and 7 .0 beta news and the vertical app drawer. My plea to bring it back and just some thoughts from Tori. Tori's cheering for us to bring it back. So maybe we can get Tori to tell his friends who are casual users and then Samsung will get on it because they don't care what the enthusiast crowd thinks. All I gotta do is tell Tori to get it out to everybody he knows who uses Samsung who's not bombarding them with requests on the Samsung community forums. they'll bring back the vertical app drawer and home up. So. And with the wallets. There we go. That's right. We're never buying phones again. They know for me that's a lie. But yeah, we'll get Tory to tell them that and see if that works. Anyway, before we get into our next topic, I did want to remind you guys that if you are going to be pre ordering the Galaxy Z Fold 6, Z Flip 6, Galaxy Ring and Galaxy Watch 7 Ultra, all of those phones are going to run one UI 6 .1 .1 of course, out of the box. And we will. early pre -order links available on launch day. They'll be launching July 10th, 2024, a couple of weeks out. The event will be live from Paris, France. And if you want to order one, you really want to get in on those early links because Samsung's website crashes every single launch right at launch time. So if you don't get in there right away, there's a chance that your preferred color, your preferred storage configuration of the Fold 6 or Flip 6 that you want, could be sold out completely. So what I do is I have a page, it's a platform called Lalo, they let you send out information via text message at a given time, it's called a drop. People sign up with their phone number or their email, and then I send it out right at launch time. And I have the early links, because I have PR contacts with Samsung, so I do have those links ahead of time, so I'm able to send them right as soon as the embargo lifts. So you guys are not waiting and going to the Samsung page and refreshing, you're going right to the product. page, you put the color you want in your cart, you check out, and usually you get in there and get it before anybody else has even known they're live. And then you'd have to deal with the worry of, you know, not getting to check out with the color you want. So that's a great option. It'll be in the show notes and also it's on my Twitter, it's YouTube, it's everywhere that I am. So you guys can try that. Tori, have you ever tried to order a Samsung phone on launch day? No, I have not, just only because I've heard of how crazy it is and that the website often crashes. Absolutely every time there's no there's no doubt about it. That's why I do it also Just as a reminder as well if you do order through my affiliate link Which we do send out with that early launch notification you do get a free mystery box from us at Sammy guru and We're gonna go through one of those mystery boxes in a couple weeks here on the podcast because we're currently putting them together Tori's had a chance to preview one of the products leave one and I gave him one of those We've got a new cleaning product for the cleaning kit But you'll get a free case cleaning kit desktop phone stand randomly and sorted accessories We give away sometimes we have Amazon gift cards Those are inserted one in every 10 boxes Google play credit credit gift cards everyone in every 10 boxes And this time we have some extra bonus goodies as well So not only we get the early links you'll get a bunch of free accessories We cover shipping and everything so all of the money that we get from the affiliate link We put that back in cover all the product costs we cover all the shipping so you guys pay absolutely nothing so if If you're interested, check that out. All my social is also in the show notes below. The next thing we wanna talk about today a little bit is Samsung messages versus Google messages here. Samsung versus, this has come up this week on social. One of my colleagues on YouTube, Apex, he made this video, which I respect Apex and he's a really good guy and obviously we make almost the same kind of content so you could call us competitors in some sense. I'm not trying to slander him at all by the way, I just wanna get that out there in the beginning. He made a video titled, this Samsung, Samsung app is going away. Here's what we need from Samsung. And so this video was basically him saying that, you know, Samsung has installed Google messages as the default on all the Galaxy phones since 2021. It looks like Samsung is going to get rid of. Samsung message and replace it with Google messages and basically means Samsung messages would no longer be supported So a lot of people actually freaked out about this. I get a lot of emails Sometimes I get emails from people thinking that I am Samsung They email me and sometimes people are like you need to fix your phone. Sometimes they're cursing at me You know, they get really angry But I got like five emails from people after I've exposed this video asking me if I know if Samsung messages is being removed and and they were worried about it. So I wrote a post over on my blog. I also posted over on Twitter, because that's where I usually hang out. This is not happening. There's no credible evidence of this. I think that Solian, who that's the guy's name at Apex, who's very nice, he was postulating this could happen, but his title, as we sometimes do as YouTubers, make it a little more. sensational as perhaps the reality is, which I understand I've done that before, so I'm not criticizing him, but you know, it made it seem like they definitely were gonna get rid of Samsung Messages and stop supporting it. There's really no evidence to support this. Like I said, this was a rumor that started back in 2021 because Google Messages was replaced by Samsung. They replaced Samsung Messages, their app, with Google Messages. And there was a good reason for this. It was because RCS, which I don't know if you know much about RCS story, but it's basically what allows you to do like the reactions on your messages, you know, like how they have an iMessage where you can like do a little ha ha or a little thumbs up, right? You've seen that probably. That's only fully supported by US carriers in Google Messages. So since Samsung Messages wasn't able to get full support, Samsung made Google Messages the default in the US and some other countries. So that started a rumor that then was proliferated in 2023 because some features stopped working in Samsung messages entirely on certain carriers, but it was actually an issue with Verizon is why those features stopped working in Samsung messages. So it's really an issue with the carriers in the US. Samsung messages doesn't work with all the RCS features, which is really important because Apple's finally adding RCS to the iPhone. So you finally won't have to feel bad for not having iMessage. You'll still be able to do all those reactions, which is great. We'll probably get into that in a whole episode down the line because it's a big topic. But... This rumor got started because of those two events and now everyone's like, Samsung messages is going away. It's the end of Samsung messages. There's really no evidence of this. And I was looking through APK mirror Samsung recently updated their messages app like in the last month, like they're still updating it. It's getting regular updates. It's getting regular support. I don't think there's any chance that Samsung is going to completely deprecate messages. So I don't think you have to worry about that. But since people have been talking about this this week, I thought it'd be a great opportunity for us to have a little conversation about messages because it is a little confusing. Some Samsung phones actually have Google as the default, but still have the Samsung messages app pre -installed. Have you noticed that? Do you have to message clients on your Samsung S22 Ultra? Yes, actually I do. I have both the Google messages and the Samsung. I didn't even know really. the Samsung was on there because the default when I got the phone on the front home page was the Google messages. So this whole entire time, I thought it was Samsung messages, but really is Google messages. I just had to look up just to hear and see the Google logo there. But yeah, I actually really like the Google messages because it does make me not feel like a comparison between iPhone and Samsung, but to be able to do those reactions and to still be able to text and get those like the three dots like seeing like, okay, like they're texting me back or that the red receipts with the three dots is a big thing, right? The three receipts and the three dots. That's what I'm really excited about. You know, that's what I like about RCS a lot. So you use Google messages have you ever used the Google messages with web view because a lot of people tell me that One of the things that Google messages has that Samsung messages doesn't and I've used both obviously because of the channel I've compared them in videos before so, you know, I try to use both just to get a feel but I do tend to gravitate more to Google messages because if you have a Windows machine You can sync it with your phone and it's also easier to view your web messages. You know, you can view them on the web, your messages, where Samsung doesn't have that. Have you ever used the web message view for Google? No, actually, I just found out about that. Isn't it where like on your open up like Google Chrome and then you can go in and scan a QR code and it pulls up the messages there, right? That's right. Yeah. So a lot of people tell me that that's one of the distinguishing features. I don't know that that would be like my number one distinguishing feature. One of the features I really like, on Samsung messages that doesn't in fact we're looking at a screenshot here we have it pulled up that I have on my article that I wrote about this Samsung messages has the ability to create categories for your messages so they can be filtered into different categories see the little plus sign here that we have again this is not great radio eventually we will have a video version yeah I'm just trying to figure out the video part because it's our first time doing a podcast so anyway if you look at Samsung messages on your phone if you want to follow along with us there's a plus sign at the top where it says you can add different categories there. I like that because then I can filter a lot of the things that I don't want that are spammy that are not interesting to me. And Google Messages doesn't have that. Have you ever used though, Google Messages does have. the ability to automatically get rid of your two factor codes. Have you ever used that particular feature? No, I didn't even know about that. That's a feature you should try. It's in settings. So see, this is why I'm hoping to. Maybe I can give Tori some cool things he didn't know in the course of the podcast. And maybe some of you guys maybe will find some stuff too. So in Google messages, if you use it in the settings, you can turn on the ability to remove all of your two factor OTP codes. And Samsung doesn't have that one, but they do have one where you can filter things into different tabs. So it could still. kind of accomplish a thing, but it would delete all of them in the Google Messages app. So I think that's a really defining feature. I think if there's one feature I would want in Samsung Messages that Google Messages has, it's the ability to delete all those OTP codes. Because I can tell you right now, I get so many two -factor codes every day, it's like my text messages is 90 % OTP codes. It's like I have one text message from my wife, one text message from someone I know, and 50 OTP codes when I get home every day from work. I have to log into all these apps to do the job. Like I said, you've seen how much work goes into creating content. We've got all these different kind of platforms and stuff that we use for the website, et cetera. So I would love that particular feature. Anyway, that is to say, Samsung Messages is not going anywhere. So if you use it, don't worry too much about that. If you guys wanna see a little bit deeper dive on that, I definitely could consider making a video on it. Let me know which one you guys use, Samsung versus Google. I actually sent out a poll about that in the newsletter. This week as well. So if you read the newsletter vote and maybe we can talk about the results a little bit next week on the podcast Alright, so the next topic we want to get into is a little bit of hardware So first we're going to talk about hardware leaks We're going to talk about the default six Z flip six all that stuff coming up unpacked I would imagine we're probably going to continue talking about that for the next few weeks. It's gonna be the big topic But today I'd kind of want just to show off some of the specs Maybe some of the images to Tori get some of his thoughts about some of the hardware and Maybe we can see you know what Tory is interested in from the event like I said We're gonna find some device that Tory can dig into from a review perspective to give you guys some thoughts So let's go ahead and open up the spec list here So let's talk about the zfold 6 first Basically, you said that you've never used zfold 6 or any zfold phone rather we know a lot about this phone and let me just run down kind of the important key things. It looks like it's gonna be announced on July 10th in Paris. That's pretty much confirmed. Looks like it's going to cost $100 more than the Z Fold 5. Actually, the article we're looking at here from TechRadar says $17 .99, but I believe that's incorrect. Since then, we've heard from several sources that I trust that it should be around $18 .99 for the starting price. So very expensive. And the changes are minimal. So the main changes that we have are, The cover display is a little bit wider And in addition to the cover display being a little bit wider the camera rings on the back have changed like their contours have changed a little bit and I can kind of show some of these leaked renders You can kind of see what it looks like right there Tori That is what the z -fold 6 looks like now one thing you notice is it's a little bit boxier kind of like the s24 ultra It's got like squared off sides, which does make it a little more interesting But what's really disappointing is the camera hardware looks like it's gonna be almost the same The front screen is not that much wider and one thing that really I feel like should have been improved by now You can't really tell it from the renders because Samsung always tries to hide this But if you look the crease in the middle of the screen is still there It's kind of hard to see it from this particular one, but if I can pull up another one here I'll try to show you another shot here if you can get it. Let me Now like I I remember like when it was first announced and I think I even seen You had one right when there's one right there. Take a look at that. Yeah, it looks awful still I mean, I'm not exaggerating if you've seen them It looks really bad and and it's not it's not like other foldable Manufacturers haven't improved this Samsung could improve it. There are Chinese companies like Vivo And others honor that are made foldables that don't have as much of a crease. What do you think about the crease? Because we didn't talk about that earlier. Is that something that kind of would dissuade you from buying a phone, especially at $1 ,900 because of that crease in the middle? yeah, no. How long has the Z Fold been out in general? This is the sixth generation. So you're talking about six years, basically. So I feel by now they should because I do remember when they first showed it off at whatever showcase I saw. on YouTube, that was like a concern that a lot of people's like talked about. And I feel like if you had six iterations by now and you've also now done the flip as well, like I feel like that should be something that should have been like more find out by now. Yeah, I feel like they're really antagonizing their consumer base here because like, I mean, people wanted to design things really maybe three, they wanted it to be lighter. They wanted the crease to be less apparent and they want. the cover screen to be wider. And if you look at it, I don't have my Z Fold 5 over here, it's over there somewhere, but this cover screen is not a lot wider than last year. It's still very thin, right? Like it's not, it's not as wide as the S24 Ultra or your S22 Ultra, which makes it very hard to type when it's closed. At least in my opinion, it's more difficult than using a phone like the Galaxy S24, S23, S22 Ultra, because you don't have as much real estate in the width. Samsung is really kind of I feel like slapping people in the face with this particular upgrade in that You know, it's just a little bit wider like a couple millimeters I think someone said three millimeters and they reduced the bezels a little bit But I mean the renders don't look great. They change the camera rings design on the back, but that's cosmetic I think you know in some sense, you know, I don't know what you think about this, but I feel like sometimes Yeah, I'm not to insult you obviously ask the average user Tori here the average user expert, so to speak, on the podcast. Sometimes Samsung just changes stuff, but doesn't change the internals, hoping to trick people who don't really read those kind of things or care or look into it. Not that you would be in that particular group, because I'm sure if you were gonna spend $1 ,900, you would probably look into what kind of camera it had. But the camera rings look different, but the cameras are gonna be almost the same. And the camera quality on the Fold 5 is not great. It's not nearly as good as some of its Chinese foldable rivals. And I think it's kind of unacceptable at this point. The main reason that Samsung can still sell the Fold and outsell the Chinese companies is One UI is so good at taking advantage of all the stuff that Foldables can do. Basically when you open and close it, the apps are continuous, like they go from one screen to another, all the multitasking features work. Some of those things are buggy on the Chinese phones. They're getting better. But Samsung's able to charge a premium. But they really need to start innovating the hardware. I mean, I'm gonna buy it, because of course, that's what I do for a living. For me, it's a business expense and I just love I love Samsung. I love mobile tech in general I've spent some of my own money on some of the Chinese ones. I have the Xiaomi Mi Mix Fold Because I just enjoy it. But I mean people who are gonna be buying this is their main phone Throw in the price, the durability concerns, not making it much wider on the cover display, not really improving the camera. And the other thing is people wanted an S-Pen slot. That doesn't look like that's happening either. So they're just kind of letting people down. Obviously, I'm talking people out of buying this, so I'm losing myself money. I'm losing myself money. People are going to be like, I don't want a mystery box anymore. Sorry. They're going to be like, no, I'm not buying this. Jeff talked me out of it. So I'm just losing myself, customers left and right. But honestly, I mean, Unless you're coming from a Z fold for earlier There's no reason to upgrade from last year in my opinion unless you just want the extra width and you know They're probably gonna give you a thousand dollars in the trade -in So if you're like, well, you know, I got an extra thousand dollars that I don't care about, you know There's not probably a lot of people who will say that but if you don't care about the extra thousand and you want three millimeters extra width then you could definitely do it. I mean, I'm going to get one. I'll certainly enjoy the extra width, but I'm not sure if I were not doing this job that I would pay $1 ,000 for three millimeters. That's a lot of money per millimeter, right? That's $333 .33, dot, dot, dot, per millimeter. Me and Tori putting our math skills to work here. That's quite a bit of rate per millimeter. So anyway, that's the Fold 6. We'll talk more about it next week. Maybe some revolutionary stuff will come to light, but it doesn't look like it. It could be a great phone. I mean, we're gonna have a new processor. Probably be some other stuff that haven't fully come out in the leaks. So when I review it, of course, we'll have more to say about that. What about the flip? I won't spend as much time on this because maybe next week we'll dedicate more time to the flip. But the flip six looks like it might have some camera improvements. It looks like it's gonna be a little thinner and lighter just like the fold as well. Have you considered the flip? What are your thoughts about the flip version of the foldables? Yeah, actually over the fold. When I see the commercials for the flip, that speaks to me more than the full, like the way they kind of market and sell it and the commercials is like for everyday person use. And it kind of brings out the nostalgia of like, I'll say like the mid early 2000s when we had like all the flip phones, it kind of brings that out. And and I feel like we just really market that more as something affordable. Like for me, I would definitely get the flip. The only thing is I would miss the S -Pen. That's right. And so the flip, and this is a great point, if you're a power user and you really like the S -Pen. you're not gonna get that with the Flip. And that's really disappointing. And another thing for me is the screen on the Flip is also narrower than what you get on your S Ultra flagship. So even though it's not as narrow as the cover display on the Fold, when I use it and I have a Flip 5, I couldn't use it very long, because it's kind of small for my particular use case. But I do agree with you. And one thing I found interesting that you said, that is that they market it to everyday consumers, right? The commercials make it look like, you can take selfies with this and it'll make your selfies easier. You can store it in a more compact way and that'll make your everyday life. easier, more enjoyable, you know, if you wear skinny jeans, if that's your jam, you know, you could tuck them right in there. And I also feel like I'm curious about your thoughts, because I've always kind of felt this way. Maybe some people don't say it, but I've always felt like they kind of market the flip a little more to women, like a more of a feminine deal than men. Have you have you noticed that with their marketing materials? Yeah, actually, with the commercials, that's all I was going to say. It is very like the vibes they're giving me is like a woman that's and probably like in their 20s, very pop colors, like for the on the go, very casual person. Like I don't even think I've seen really a male in any of those commercials. It seems like that's what they're going for. And I think that's probably why not to say I'm a woman or anything, but I think that's why it calls me more since being someone. Well, now I might just be turning 30, but. Big 30. I know. But like it that speaks to me more than hey, this is a luxury phone and now we're going to ask $100 more from you. I feel like they should market the flip more to men because I feel like just like you a lot of men might like it if they did and maybe they could offer like a flip plus or a flip Ultra. I know that's kind of not the point. in some sense because they want it to be thin but if it was a little larger maybe because like my complaint with the width They market a little more to men like men care about like space -saving compact designs I mean just because we don't carry a purse doesn't mean we don't want to fold something up and just throw it in our pocket, right? Yeah I mean that's almost more important because you know like my wife like she just takes the s24 ultra She puts it in her purse like I have to put this in my pocket. So like this thing has a huge Footprint so if I'm wearing shorts that are not super loose. I got to feel that what I'm carrying it around I don't have a bag. I could just toss it in so I feel like they should market it more to to men and you know that the end of the day that might get them a lot more sales in the flip because I will tell you Obviously my viewership on YouTube is a lot more male dominated When I see the sales like through my link for the mystery boxes for the early links when I send them out It's usually a lot more folds than flips. It's like 80 to 20 And that doesn't mean there aren't men buying it, but it certainly means there's a lot more men buying the fold Yeah, then the flip because I certainly have less female viewership We would love the ladies to watch the show and listen to the podcast though. So if you are a lady and you're still listening at like minute 50 here, we certainly appreciate it. We appreciate all of you who are still listening at minute 50. But if you're a lady and you're still watching, we certainly appreciate that because we don't have too many of them watching the channel. The other thing I want to talk about, we might save the Galaxy Ring till next week because that is probably a device that maybe deserves its own entire discussion. And we're already running pretty long, which is okay for the first episode. Hey, why not? Just go in with a bang, you know? Don't go out with a bang. We come in with a bang, but let's talk about the Galaxy Watch 7 Ultra because that is the other expensive device that will be coming with the launch next month in addition to the Fold 6 and the Flip 6. So Samsung has taken a rather interesting approach. If you guys haven't seen the leaks, I'll put them in the show notes for you so you can see these images that we're looking at. I also made a video about this, but it looks like a squared off rounded. It's got like a square on the outside, but then the bezel is circuited. Over top of the square so I would call that as a mathematician a circle inscribed in a square. Is that what you would call it? Looks like a circle. That's exactly what it is. See that's what you get on this podcast You get mathematical insights that you can't get anywhere else Anyway, what's interesting about this is two things one the galaxy watch 7 ultra which obviously has the word ultra on it So they're trying to compete directly with the Apple watch ultra Which by the way, and I'm not afraid to say this on my podcast called Sammy is my favorite smartwatch because lots of reasons. We'll talk about that maybe in another episode, but Apple does a lot of things on smartwatches that Samsung could learn from. I hope the Watch 7 Ultra is a big success. The other thing that's interesting about it is it has an orange button. Which the Apple Watch Ultra also has. I found that really funny. So, you know, people always want to talk about Apple and Samsung copying one another. Why did they give it an orange? I mean, I guess maybe they just do it on purpose. They give it an orange button. It looks, you know, you know, like they're just trying to, and the band also looks very similar to the Apple watch band that you can put on the ultra. It's obviously supposed to compete, but going with that is something that I don't know if Samsung can maintain, and that's a$700 price tag. That is expensive. Apple users tend to just buy whatever Apple tells them and they don't care what the price is. They usually just hand Apple their credit card and they ask the price later. They don't even ask. They just hand them their American Express card, their Visa card, and then they charge them and later when they get home, they look and see how much it costs. They're too embarrassed to ask. But Samsung users are not like that. Samsung users tend to be a little more, you know, cost conscious when it comes to their devices. So I don't know exactly how this will slot in. Now I might get you one to review, but taking that out of the way, I'm thinking this could be the device I get you to review since you have an older watch and this one might be fun. What do you think about this? Would you buy one for $700 if I wasn't gonna get you one for review? It'll probably be a no. Like when I got the Samsung watch that I have now, I mean, that was like $400. I really liked the bezel, but like when you first showed me this picture, it looked like, Apple watch like the wrist the only thing that like kind of Breaks away from now the reason you said reason it supposedly does have that on the top is because it's still gonna have the rotating bezel So that's good news for you. Yeah. No, that's what I would really like about it But I mean I would say as an average like Samsung user like most Samsung people that I know like they do not switch up very often and so like For them to go in and to buy a $700 watch like you have to think about they're probably gonna keep this watch for a while So they're probably not gonna buy the next new thing kind of like how you said with the Apple fans like they get rolled out a new one tomorrow Exactly, it's like where do I sign up for it? Give me the new they're like Apple released the new and they're like, I'll take it I'll take it but you didn't tell me what it was. Yeah, the specs or anything. I don't even know if it's a phone or a computer or a top But they're like, yes. Yes. Take my car now. But yeah, I agree with you. Like Samsung users are a little more conscious. I mean, Samsung should probably figure out how to solve that problem in that. Like you said, I feel like a lot of average Samsung users, not the enthusiasts that, you know, usually watch my channel. They do also buy all the new stuff. But people who are average users, they don't upgrade as often as the Apple users. Yeah. Like the average Apple user who's like, you know, a girl in her 20s. She's probably getting a new iPhone every year. Yeah. But if you've got, you know, a guy or a I'm not just saying out the ladies but guy or a girl in their 20s who's a Samsung user They probably are not gonna upgrade to the newest galaxy s or fold or whatever every year So Samsung probably should figure out why that is we can maybe postulate later on but droid life posts an article where they're asking people what they thought about this not read a couple of the comments because some of them are kind of funny Some guy said $700 crazy. Also, the design is awful. I will happily stick with my watch 6 I'm not giving up the physical rotating bezel. Well, I don't know if he knows But it looks like the the ultra could still have the physical rotating vessels looks like we don't we don't really know that it's not going to I think maybe he was just postulating that they might not maybe he was just looking at the images and didn't really Notice but it's possible someone says I wonder what if anything justifies a huge price tag so far We've not heard of anything like amazing like it's going to somehow Do your laundry for you or something that would make you want to pay $700 if you did my laundry for me I'd pay 700 for it no problem, but you know and then someone else Saying you know that they really like their galaxy watch 6 classic like Tori said someone saying I'm already happy with what I have so for 700 there's no way I'm gonna upgrade So I've really heard a lot of mixed reactions about the design and to be honest with you I actually like the design because it's unique It kind of reminds me of a tag Heuer watch and it doesn't look bad It's supposed to have a titanium build So it might be really nice as long as they make it light enough to wear on your wrist comfortably But at the end of the day, it's also a little bit of a just because it's a very expensive watch. I'm not sure how well it will do. Now, obviously they're gonna launch the regular Galaxy Watch 7, maybe a 7 Classic with this. So those might still continue to do very well. And this one might sell to the enthusiast, but I don't know if it's gonna be as popular as the Apple Watch, because the Apple Watch Ultra, because like you said, Apple users are just like, I gotta have the top thing. Even though they don't need it. Apple marketed the Apple Watch Ultra. And this is me as an Apple Watch Ultra user. I use it. Some people talk about how can you use it when you use a Samsung phone. Well, I have an iPhone that sits on WiFi and it just pings it for notifications. I know that's sad to say, but that's what I do. I use my Galaxy Watch sometimes, but the notifications are just not as reliable. And one day we can dive into why that is, because that's, Also very interesting, I think. But if Samsung really makes the watchOS great, they could compete with Apple. They really gotta optimize watchOS and they're gonna have to bring the price down a little bit on this. So maybe Tori and I will both get one of these. I'll order two of them at unpacked on the 10th. We can compare them and we can tell you if there's anything in this that's worth$700. My thought is maybe not, but if it looks good and the software is good, then maybe it'll replace my Apple Watch Ultra. I want to because you know, I have a website called Sammy guru and I'm wearing Apple watch ultra just because It's it's a superior watch experience. The one place I feel like Apple is a little bit ahead of Samsung Okay, so next I want to move on to some actual hardware impressions of something I have in the studio today, which is the galaxy book for edge So the galaxy book for edge is the new Snapdragon elite laptop that Samsung just released, all these Snapdragon Elite laptops based on the ARM architecture just released this week. I just got it a couple days ago. So I'm giving you guys first first impressions. And also I figured I'd ask Tori while over here, what laptop do you use? You use a PC, right? What kind of PC do you use? Yeah, so it's a Microsoft Surface Pro. yes, you do use Microsoft Surface Pro. OK, that's awesome. So they actually released the new ARM versions of the Surface laptops as well this week. And so have you heard anything about the ARM architecture on the laptops? I have not, not at all. So basically for Tori and also for our listeners, if you don't know, Microsoft had a big event where they introduced these new pilot PCs, which would basically be optimized for AI. And in addition to that, they're also going to come with the Snapdragon processors, the new Snapdragon X elite, which means they're not gonna have Intel processors or AMD, so completely different architecture, the ARM architecture, which brings some benefits. improve battery life, right? Because we have Snapdragon processors in our phone, right? You've probably heard Snapdragon before. Yeah, that's what's in our phone typically here in the US. But Now they're putting the Snapdragon Elite processor in the laptop. It's supposed to get improved battery life, improved thermals, improved performance overall with those sorts of tasks, and also still offering a lot of great performance. So if you want to do things like video editing, things like that that I would do, even gaming, you can still do it. So, so far, I unboxed it, I put all my information and I've been using it. We're using it for the podcast today. I've been using it to edit some of my content. My regular computer is a MacBook Pro. That's what I use. That's my nine to five computer. I've mentioned it many times. Again, people are like, how can you use a Mac? There's some guy. Well, I mean, the Mac is not locked down like the iPhone. The thing I hate about the iPhone is Apple locks it down. You can't do anything with it. So I can do whatever I want on my Mac. I think it's a great machine. I will tell you, there's a lot of great things about this laptop, the Galaxy Book 4 Edge. that I could see someone who's on a MacBook Air, even on the new Apple architecture, moving to this laptop and being happy. The reason I think that's the case is because this thing does get incredible battery life. I had it off the charger when I first unboxed it and I had it off the charger for, I don't know, it was like over 10 hours and it was still going strong. I was doing web browsing, editing the blog on my website and stuff, some light photo editing, but this thing runs incredibly cool and has great battery life. The problem right now though is that it has a lot of compatibility issues. This is not something that is specific to the Snapdragon Elite. architecture because when Apple released their silicon, the Apple series chips that they moved away from Intel and their laptops, they also had this issue. Basically some apps don't even work because they aren't built for the architecture. So I went to install Google Drive for desktop, which is how I sync all my files. and says, sorry, you can't install Google Drive. What? Because that's what I said. It says, sorry, Jeff, you won't be able to do much work on here because you can't get your files on here. So now I'm having to use Google Drive in the browser instead of having them actually synced to my SSD on the laptop. That's a fairly huge problem. There's some other apps like PUBG, some games, some big games and stuff. that don't run just because of the architecture. Now, Microsoft promised that there would be a compatibility layer that would allow it to work still, but some apps it doesn't. So far, it's not the case. And Google Drive is a pretty important one, but some of those games are big ones too that are gonna, if someone spent money on this, this laptop I think was 1 ,600. If you spent 1 ,600 on this laptop and you can't get your files on it. They're pretty upset. Samsung put a disclaimer on their website in Korea telling people that it might not work with Google Drive, but they didn't put it here in the US. So I think some people who bought this in the US might be a little upset. By little, I mean a lot upset because they're not going to be happy they can't get their files on it. But otherwise, the thing works great. Now they will eventually solve that problem. Google will. make sure that this works with the Snapdragon architecture on these laptops or windows. And also Microsoft will make sure that that translation layer eventually works with a more robust set of apps. But at launch, it's not a great look. Otherwise, you know, this laptop is thin and light. I think it's way nicer than the Galaxy Book 4 Pro 360, which is one of the other laptops that I tested earlier this year from Samsung. This one's thinner. It runs a heck of a lot cooler. and the performance is really just mind-blowingly good considering how cool it runs and how long the battery life lasts. This is the first laptop I can honestly say that if this laptop fixes some of the compatibility issues and I'm able to do my video editing on it, because my Samsung phone works so well integrated with Windows versus Mac, I could see myself moving to maybe a second or third generation of the Book 4 Edge, maybe Book 5 or Book 6 Edge, if some of those compatibilities the issues are removed. I'll certainly do a full review of this on my channel as well as on the website, but those are kind of my initial thoughts. What do you think about the idea of not being able to use Google Drive out of the box story? Like you need Google Drive. I mean, as like a casual person who obviously, you know, I have work, I have like a work laptop, but utilizing Samsung, I mean, everything is Google. So I have a lot of Google Drive stuff so if I just was restricted to the browser like and if I didn't know that before I bought the laptop I'll be like okay I can go through the browser but I can see a lot of people who do want the quickness or the efficiency to be able to go just not through the browser just directly to the laptop. Yeah, having all your files locally is a big deal. Yeah, that'd be a big deal. It's not a Chromebook, it's kind of like having a Chromebook in the sense that everything has to go through the cloud right now for my files. management or I'll have to switch to a different file manager like Dropbox but I don't want to do that because I've been using Google Drive for years. All my work is on there so until they fix that there's no chance this will become my main machine but I do love it so far it's definitely my favorite Samsung laptop that I've used and I like it more than the book for pro 360 and the book ultra as well because that one's just a little too bulky for me personally as a Windows machine. All right, so before we move on to the next segment, our last two segments, we're gonna do the app of the week. Tori and I both have a little app we wanna talk about, and then we're gonna do a quick Q &A. I just wanna remind you guys that if you are interested, you can subscribe to the Sammy Guru newsletter. We send out a newsletter once a week. It's actually on Fridays with curated tips, links, interesting Samsung stuff that you will find from around the web. We put it all in one place for you. And then you can also stay up to date with what we're doing on the podcast as well. as you are kind of reading the newsletter, we'll usually have that linked in there. There might be some crossover, but we'll try to keep the newsletter and podcast topics somewhat separated so that you can find both of them interesting. And we'll have the link in the show notes if you guys are interested for that. So let's talk about the app of the week just quickly here, because we're already one hour and six minutes in. We're having a great time though. I'm having fun. So you talked about this week, you wanted to talk about not 3D, which is an application on the Play Store that basically lets you learn different kinds of knots. So I'll let you talk a little bit about it. I know I got this one when it was on a free sale, actually Droid Life promoted this and I downloaded it, but you played around with it a little bit and you wanted to talk about it. So go ahead and talk a little bit about it. Yeah. So here I have knots 3D and they really do mean knots 3D. Yeah, it's a premium app for right now. is going for $5 .99 in the Google Play Store. But looking through and playing around with it for a while, it literally does have every single knot that you probably have either heard of, have heard of, or never thought that that could exist. It kind of brought me back to there's an area in mathematics called knot theory, a branch of topology. But I even use it a few, I have a few necktie ones. I even went to Walmart this morning and bought some paracord to even practice some of these knots and what's actually kind of cool is in the app, it's kind of like a challenge. You can go in and you can do some of these knots and then you can move it to the completed list. Or they also have a recently added section, so they are continually adding new knots. And you can also list some favorites. It's a pretty solid app and I view it as something either a fun pastime to do, you know, if you're looking for something to do as kind of like... You know, like on long trips and stuff, you can kind of use this app to work on some ties is also good for fishing, working on different knots there as well. Overall, I really, I really like this app is something that I never thought I would actually use, but I can really see myself using this. If I never came across this app. Yeah, I installed this because I got it for free on that sale. Like I said, that droid life mode when it was free for a limited time, because sometimes apps run that kind of promo, forgot about it, didn't think I would use it. Then I went to a wedding with my wife and I used it to learn to tie a knot for my tie with my suit because I've always been terrible at that. And it worked great. It's great for learning different kinds of knots. I thought this would be a great app after looking at the Play Store kind of description again, because we have it right here for people who like to climb, like do rock climbing and stuff. It'd be a great app for outdoor enthusiasts as well. Probably wouldn't want to buy it if you're just going to learn it to tie a knot for your suit one time. Because you could do that a YouTube video, but if you're an outdoor enthusiast, there's Like over a hundred and something different knots that are in there. It's crazy So I think it's worth the money if you are one of those kind of people and also there's no subscriptions and no ads So yeah, you pay for it once and you get it forever A lot of people like that if people don't like, you know Pay every month pay every week kind of stuff that we're subjected to everything's a subscription exactly people are tired of that Macro droid is the app that I want to talk about for a second. I'll be very quick because I'm probably going to make a video on this one eventually. It allows you to automate macros on any Android phone. And it's very similar to something Samsung offers inside their routines app, routines plus app on Samsung phones by default, but it's a little more powerful. So you can basically automate like a touch sequence. So like, you can record a sequence of touches and interactions with your device. And then you can store that on your home screen, you can touch a little button and run it. So let's say that that every day when you leave work, you need to text your wife something, you need to turn on your alarm at your office, you need to turn do not disturb off on your phone, you need to turn location on so you can use your GPS. You can press one button, it'll go in and do all those things for you all at one time. And the power of this is really impressive. Like you can optimize it with your car, use it to reduce battery jane, switching on and off your data, custom sound and notification profiles. You can do a lot of stuff. inside macro droid that is actually maybe a little bit more in depth than what you can do with routines on your Samsung phone. But the other thing is it can be used for all Android and not just Samsung. Now they do have some premium versions of various upgrades in the app, but a lot of this stuff that's built in you can do for free, some of the more basic stuff. So I will probably do a quick video on this at some point, but it's an app I've been using that I've been enjoying. And maybe I'll do a comparison to routines at some point, because I know a lot of people probably use routines to accomplish some of these things. And maybe you'd like to try MacroJoy just as a kind of an option to do that. Have you ever used routines or automations? at all on your Galaxy phone, Tori? No, I have not, but I feel like it will probably make my life a little easier in some areas. Maybe next week we can delve into that a little bit more. Maybe we'll do something fun. Maybe we'll think of something Tori needs to do on his phone, and maybe we'll come up with a routine in routines or macro droid and maybe compare them a little bit. That could be a fun thing to do. So. Okay, so that is pretty much everything except the Q &A. We will have a weekly Q &A section. Eventually when we do this live, we might do this live and do it on video. I was thinking we might also do some trivia where people can win some prizes at some point, which would be a ton of fun. But for today, we have four kind of questions here, which again, we're going to try to go through a little quickly since we went a little longer than I had planned on. But hey, it's our first episode. We're learning a little bit about planning the timing and all that sort of stuff. First question says, Hey, Jeff, what's your view on AI? Will it be dangerous to humans in the future? So this is a question that I think a lot of people are asking just a general tech question, not specifically just about galaxy AI. But I will say that I think AI will be dangerous to humans, but not from the perspective that some people think where it's like, AI is going to take over and you know, the robots are going to unionize and destroy humanity. Yeah, I'm a little more worried about the fact that generative AI is going to make people so incapable of doing anything on their own that their minds are going to crumble and that from that sense, we're all going to be fairly useless. I'm hopeful that before that happens, maybe we'll have some more regulation on AI, maybe from the government or from somewhere tech companies will come together and realize this. But, you know, I think generative AI is great if you use it for the right purpose. But as I saw teaching and you've probably seen as well, Tori, a lot of students use it just to replace thinking. Yeah, they don't want to. use it as a tool to assist them with doing something. They want to use it for them to do something for them. And I think that is dangerous in that sense because it's going to degrade our ability to reason, our ability to work, our ability to do creative things. What are your thoughts, Tori? Maybe you can talk about what you've seen in the classroom at the high school, how this is affecting students at that age. Yeah. I mean, you know, in the math community, obviously we have been dealing with things like what is it, Mathway and stuff like that. So really it has like chat GBT and some of this generative AI has really been mostly affecting the English community and hitting all the points that you just talked about. Students are using it to write their papers and don't even look at it and they just kind of turn it in, right? So they're not really learning or utilizing those. areas of the brain of critiquing, planning, thinking. Like they're just not doing it anymore. They're just looking for something that's quick, fast, easy, get it out there. And so yeah, like I don't think it will be anything like Terminator Skynet where like you'll eventually learn and evolve and to something that we can't control. But I do think it is going to. in some ways hinder us as a society of thinkers. Definitely. So that's kind of our thoughts. I think Tori and I are in agreement that yes, dangerous to humans in the future if we don't regulate it in its current form, but not from the sense that we're going to get destroyed by robots that are running some sort of sentient AI. The next question says, Jeff, when do you think foldable phones will suppress the S series in sales and users? We talked a lot about kind of different between these two things today? It's a great question. Tori actually and I discussed this off camera the other day. I don't think this can happen for at least another three years. And I think Samsung has to do four things in order for this to happen. One, they have to make the Galaxy Fold and the Flip both substantially more usable in the sense that the Flip needs to probably be come in different sizes, like I said earlier, so that it appeals to wider demographics, because it's already a little narrow, it's compact offering. The Fold needs to have a wider cover screen and they've got to figure that out. This year they're not really delivering what people want. They need to have better cameras because right now their cameras are way behind the S line and that's a huge deal. A lot of people don't want to buy the Foldables because the camera is not on par with the flagship S line. And then they also need to figure out a way to bring down the price a lot because the Foldable is very expensive, the Fold line. The flip could still come down a little bit in price too, I think, but it's at a pretty good place right around a thousand. But the Fold, the Fold Z Fold series really needs to come down in price quite a bit. And then the last thing is, in order for this to happen, Samsung's gotta convince people that they need to have a tablet and a phone or a small compact phone that flips in a little better way. I don't think they've made a perfect use case because obviously the S series is still outselling the the foldable is like, I don't even know what it is. It's 10 to one or more. What would make you, Tori, switch to a Z-fold or Z -flip over your S -series? kind of like what I said earlier, the, the pen is a hard sell. I know that probably won't be able to, you know, get the, maybe in some distant future. but for me, I think, like, I think the flip will be an easier reach for me, but I look at things like the camera and, just. Like the actual use of using it like I think it will be too small for my hands But I do see myself like wanting to get the flip but looking at the s line. I mean it is a solid unit Would you like an s pin in the flip would you enjoy that I would it's kind of hard to do obviously. Yeah Yeah, I know but that would be interesting right? I mean obviously they could make it compatible as long as it didn't have a If it was just because with the fold right now the fold is compatible with the s-pin, but doesn't have a slot Yeah, a lot of people want that the flip I think it's never getting a slot because yeah, you can't do it with the way it folds But if they could make it compatible even without a slot that would be interesting I think I think people would be interested in that so maybe Samson will think about that The third question is I'd like to hear your discussion if you believe the galaxy books in the future will adopt the ARM architecture for its processor We talked about that today the book for edge. I think the answer is absolutely As long as they can address a lot of these compatibility issues that are there I know there's a lot of them for those who are interested in gaming and stuff that need to be addressed and Specialized software like they're gonna have to optimize for this new architecture Apple went through these growing pains as well Like I said with their own silicon because I bought the first Apple silicon MacBook Pro And it also had lots of problems like I couldn't run MATLAB on it. Just use the software we run at the university There's lots of pieces of software like MATLAB Mathematica. None of that worked on my first Apple silicon in MacBook Pro, so it's like, well, gotta deal with it. But that was better than Google Drive not working, because I can't get my, that's a little bit bigger of a problem, because Matlab I could deal with a little more. Google Drive, like I need all my files to work. So hopefully the Google Drive and Microsoft, Google will get Microsoft fix that, because that seems like a huge problem. Anybody who bought one of these new Snapdragon XL EPCs this week is probably pretty upset if you're a Google Drive user. So. Last question for me, which is a general question, a couple people wrote this, like four or five people on Twitter and on my YouTube community page, wanting to know how my career is going so far as a full-time YouTuber in the first two months. It's going great. I absolutely love doing this. It was a tough decision to walk away from teaching. Obviously, I got an opportunity to have a lot of great students, and obviously Tori was one of those students, so being able to teach people who actually want to learn like Tori was a great experience and something I enjoyed, and I do love math. I may still continue to teach an occasional course as an adjunct professor But doing YouTube every day being able to come here and write about tech make videos about tech and kind of have my own schedule and Build this has been a lot of fun. I certainly wouldn't change it and you know, I can always do more math later on Whenever I want to and I still get to enjoy Hanging out with former students that I met even though Tori's, you know a student from a long time ago now But you still get to hang out with him, you know and have some of that connection since he's doing math we can still talk a little shop when it comes to mathematics but I'm absolutely loving the YouTube career so far and really happy to be doing it. Any closing thoughts Tori on the first podcast? What did you think about this about the first episode? Shoot it's a good ride. I think is it's just gonna keep getting better more to come, you know, obviously we're Learning about the podcast world, but no, I think you guys are gonna enjoy it. We had a good time sitting down thinking about it making it and actually doing it so if you're hanging out with us for However long has been now an hour I know You know, I think you guys gonna enjoy what we're gonna have for you every week Yeah, I really had a lot of fun I think the main thing is for the podcast that you sit down with someone that you enjoy talking with and just have fun for an hour or however long it is I think it's a testament to the fact that we have fun that we went so long on the first episode So I hope you guys will subscribe join every week if you like Samsung if you're a Samsung user Are you thinking about becoming one if you're an Apple user and you're thinking about going to the dark side? go ahead and subscribe you can get all of your Samsung stuff from us and We will be very happy to see you guys in the next episode Yep.