SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
Galaxy Rings and Subscription Things
Ever wondered if the trade-in values for Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 6 are as good as they seem? Spoiler: They often aren't! We guide you through our comprehensive launch day playbook to help you navigate the event and secure the best deals. Dive into a comparison of the Galaxy Watch and the forthcoming Galaxy Ring, discussing their overlapping and unique features in health tracking. While debating the value of purchasing both devices, we also touch on the potential introduction of a subscription model for the Galaxy Ring and whether it's worth the investment.
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Welcome everybody back. It's episode two of the Sammy Guru podcast. I'm Jeff Springer and with me is my host, tori. Tori say hi, hey, how's it going everybody? Yeah, last week our first episode. We had a lot of fun and we got some feedback from you guys. Seems like a lot of people are really enjoying the podcast, which is great, and we're back for another episode. So just here, kind of get started on the show today. I figured we'd talk a little bit about our week. It was certainly a big week in Samsung, but before we jump right into that, tori, I heard you had a big physics test this week.
Speaker 1:Can you tell people a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did. Yeah, so I'm taking a physics course. I was taking it through a community college and, just like I talked to you guys about on the last episode, I'm a teacher, so I'm looking forward to, at some point, teaching physics. So I'm just kind of going back and taking some classes, uh, to get more versed in that subject area. And yeah, so far passed a class pretty well, gotta be, and so I'm happy with that and I guess we'll just go on and take physics too yeah, so tori is always just like learning new stuff ever since I've known him I mean that's good because he's also here working with us.
Speaker 1:He's like teaching high school doing more education himself, working here at sammy guru doing the podcast, so we appreciate that, of course. Um, otherwise, I had a pretty uh busy week, of course, because the uh Reserves open for Unpacked this week, so I've been working on that. Of course we'll get into that. And my wife and I went to Nikki Glaser stand-up comedy show last night here in Phoenix Pretty hilarious overall. She was talking about how ridiculously hot it was. She was actually joking that she was glad that she could finally do a show here in the last year that Phoenix was inhabitable before. People can no longer live here, so she was glad she made it out to Phoenix before. She didn't have the opportunity anymore to do so because of that, but it was a really good show and so I had a pretty good week Other than that, just been working a ton getting ready for that, and next week is the 4th of July, of course, so that'll be a really good time.
Speaker 1:I'm not really sure yet what we're going to do next week. I don't know. Tori, are you going to be in town next week?
Speaker 2:for.
Speaker 1:Friday, because the 5th, okay, and we will still do the podcast. I hadn't actually had a chance to even ask Tori, because we both are busy guys and so we're just doing that live here. I was like, are we going to move it next week?
Speaker 1:And so now you guys know there will be a Sammy Guru podcast next week on Friday Of course, on some holidays, you know, we may have to move the podcast, but next week sounds like we will both be here, so that is very good. Anything else going on, tori? Anything else going on in your life? No, just getting ready for the Samsung event, unpack event. That's right. Oh, and there was another question. I know Q&A is usually at the end, but some people ask this question. People are always interested. I guess. Whenever you do anything online, people kind of already know from me. They always want to know about your personal life. So someone was asking me is Tori in fact married? Is Tori?
Speaker 2:single.
Speaker 1:I saw this question I don't remember if it was Twitter, instagram, so you can go ahead and tell them Tori, do you in fact? Are you in fact married? Do you have a girlfriend?
Speaker 2:I am not married, but I do have a girlfriend.
Speaker 1:There you go, so ladies, tori is in fact taken, and it's a very sad situation. As you guys all know I am married with two kids so I have absolutely no social life, but Tori still has somewhat of a social life.
Speaker 1:I was actually telling Tori before we started the recording that I had to plan going to the Nikki Glaser show with my wife six weeks in advance, because when you have a toddler and a newborn, a three-month-old baby, you really got to give people a chance to think about whether or not they want to babysit.
Speaker 1:It's a life-altering decision. Should I do it? That's a lot of time. I've got to be responsible for these small children, so it's kind of difficult, but we managed it. We pulled it off. So now we've got a plan to go and see the Deadpool Wolverine movie. That's in four weeks. So I'm already behind on reserving a babysitter.
Speaker 1:So we're going to have to work on that, but uh, that'll be, that'll be pretty fun, uh, anyway, okay. So let's uh get into the show a little bit and start talking about galaxy unpacked. Um, the unpacked event was officially announced. Of course, we've known when it was going to be. For a long time samsung fans have known that this was going to happen on July 10th, because the date was leaked months ago. But Samsung finally announced it. They put up their typical reserve page where you can go and put in your name, your email, and you can basically get a $50 bonus preorder credit. If you do that, when you go into preorder, they'll give you $50 extra. So if you guys want to do that, of course I'll have the link, our link, in the show notes. If you want to support the podcast and just go and reserve your phone through our link, that's great.
Speaker 1:Tori did it because, as we were talking about before the show, I'm going to go ahead and get Tori the Watch 7 Ultra which we talked about last week. He's going to do a hardware review. Maybe I'll have him not only talk about it on the podcast but write up his very first ever written review on the website. He's never done a written review of anything tech-related that I know of anyway, so that'll be his first one of those. And I'm curious, tori, we're going to talk a little bit about all the different devices, but do you know which color of the watch you're planning to get? There's going to be a black, slash gray, there's like an olive green and then, I believe, there's like a silver one.
Speaker 2:Ooh, you know, my favorite color is green, but I may just have to go with that black and gray. I mean, it's just a very solid choice Match all the outfits.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think black and gray is probably the one that I'll go with. It looks the best. Yeah, I think black and gray is probably the one that I'll go with. It looks the best. They also have an orange band that makes it look very much like an Apple watch, like we talked about last week it's actually a comparison in images later when we talk about the watch seven ultra a little bit more.
Speaker 1:We'll talk a little bit about this, cause I have it on the schedule to talk about some of the individual devices. So, yeah, the reservations are open. The timing for the event is very unfortunate for me because it's 9 am eastern standard time. Uh, because the event is in paris. So this is going to be at like I don't even know what time that is in paris, probably 6 pm or something like that in the evening in paris, and so of course, samsung caters it so that the east coast can still wake up at a decent time to watch it and pre-order their devices. But that's 6 am in the morning in Arizona. So that means I've got to be up at 4 am in the morning because I have to prepare all the newsletter stuff that we send out, all that various stuff that goes out for the mystery box links so that you guys can order your devices, and the links we send out, the early links for people to get pre-orders in. So I'm going to be up super early, probably be in the office at like four in the morning, not really looking forward to that, but the event itself has a lot of interesting stuff, so I figured we'd talk about that a little bit. Um, the first thing is the trade-in values, because some people were asking me a little bit about the trade-in values and so I thought I would talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 1:The Galaxy Z Fold 6, so if we actually go into the page, let me open it really quickly and we'll take a look at this particular page, the reserve page. It says reserve $50 instant Samsung credit and save up to $1,500 when you pre-order a new Galaxy device, plus enter into a sweepstakes for a chance to win $5,000 Samsung credit. So this is the reserve page. The thing that a lot of people have been asking me about is the $1,500 credit. That seems like a large amount of trading credit, and so I want to tell you guys, samsung usually is not very honest about the maximum savings amount on the reserve page. So just keep this in mind when you do preorder the device, you're probably not going to get $1,500 off the way they usually calculate. That is, if you have like the very top phone to trade in, like if you have last year's Galaxy Z Fold 5, that's probably going to be worth the most, and if you have additional things to trade in, like if you're also trading in a watch and you're also like, have an education discount or first responder discount, if you have all of that stuff combined then you could save $1,500.
Speaker 1:But how many people actually have that much stuff you know that they're going to be trading in and then also have an education discount? I mean me, I'm one of those people. So that's great for me because I have the most recent devices and I also have an education discount because I used to be a math professor and I could still use that. But most people are not going to have all three of those discounts and so when they go to checkout they're like confused. They're like why didn't I say fifteen hundred dollars? They're super upset about that. That's actually one of the emails I get the most on launch mornings. They're like the original reserve page said fifteen hundred dollars on my new fold six and I only saved nine hundred dollars. I well, yeah, samsung usually lies to people.
Speaker 1:What can I tell you? Tori is going to be trading in his watch. This was a Galaxy Watch 4, right, yep? So Tori is probably going to get a couple hundred in credit. I mean, they never released the trade-ins before the event itself, which I think is kind of unfortunate. They really should do that. They should release the trade-in values before the event. That would be nice, it would help people prepare. But I think, based historically, if you have a z-fold five, you're basically going to be able to get probably about a thousand dollars trade-in credit. That's like a baseline price, and then if you have like the newest watch, you might get like 250 towards the watch uh seven ultra, and then the education discount is usually like a couple hundred bucks as well. So that'll add up to around 1500.
Speaker 1:So I just wanted to let people know, like the 1500 usually is not very honest, and if you look at the bottom of the page, the reserve page, there's tons of fine print that basically explains everything that I just told you. But I figured I would tell you because no one reads the fine print. You know you guys probably didn't read any of that. So now you know and now you know why, when you actually do that that it says that I'm actually putting together a full launch day playbook in a PDF that I'm going to send out next week in the newsletter. That kind of lets people know some of these tips and tricks about launch day, so that way when people are ordering their phones, they don't freak out if something looks weird, because Samsung does do some very strange things when it comes to how they list the discounts and stuff on your final checkout page. So Tori said he's going to get up early and order the watch, so we'll see how that goes. If Tori's up, then I'll have someone to talk to while I'm doing all that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean probably count on me around 435. That's typically when I'm at 435.
Speaker 1:All right, there we go. So Tori's just going to join. We'll be live tweeting the amazing event. I mean, the event itself, honestly, is never really that exciting for me because I've already seen all the leaks and I cover it every day. We already know what all the leaks and I covered every day. We already know what all the devices are for the most part. The only thing is like sometimes there's a couple of surprises and Easter eggs, but it's never like you know it used to be like before I started doing this as a job or even, you know, seriously as a hobby, like six or seven years ago.
Speaker 1:The events are like really exciting. It's like Christmas Cause I love tech and like I would find out about these new devices. But if you're covering this all the time, you already know what's in all the devices and I talk about it and write about it and make videos about it every day. But let's talk a little bit about the one device that we didn't get a chance to talk about too much last week, or really two of them that we didn't spend too much time. We talked about the Z Fold 6 a lot last week in terms of the build and everything our thoughts on it. So I just wanted to cover the trade-in values up front about that.
Speaker 1:But the Galaxy Ring and the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro we didn't get too much of a chance to touch on these really in depth, particularly the Galaxy Ring because it's a brand new device and it's the first time Samsung has put out a ring wearable. Obviously, they've done watches for a really long time, so watches are not new. Everybody knows about watches, but the Galaxy Ring has some redundant functionality with a watch. So I'm curious to get your thoughts, tori, on. Would you wear a watch and a ring? Because some of the features are overlapping and I'll tell you more about what it does. Tori probably hasn't. Have you really looked at the ring much? Have you heard?
Speaker 2:much about it yet, but it looks really sleek.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm showing Tori a picture here and, by the way, I've set a deadline for myself, just so you guys know, of August 1st Whatever the first podcast is in August for me to set up the video. So we will have video version of the podcast starting in August. I just have to have some time to finish the launch stuff and get out the mystery boxes, and then I'll do it because I know people want video. So I'm showing Tori a picture of the Galaxy Ring here and this is the one that Samsung actually posted on their blog back in February because they announced this kind of teased it with the Galaxy S24 launch and they have this picture. So this is not like a leak. This is an official Samsung picture and Tori said it looks very sleek and I would agree. But here's the thing A lot of the functionality and if you scroll down, samsung kind of tells you a little bit about what it does and some of their related articles. But I'll just bring up a couple other pictures and show you a couple of the other kind of colors and stuff. You can kind of see what they all look like. Couple other pictures and show you a couple of the other kind of colors and stuff. You can kind of see what they all look like.
Speaker 1:Basically, the watch is going to have a couple of benefits over the ring, and vice versa, but they also have some overlap. They both will do a lot of health tracking, right, so like you can do steps and all that kind of stuff, but the watch is going to be more focused towards like workouts, whereas the ring is going to be more like some passive tracking, with more in-depth stats for like sleep tracking, uh, and for the ladies, for cycle tracking and stuff like that, which is a very important feature to ladies, you know, being able to do that. The watch doesn't do that as well. It's supposed to do a lot better with the ring in that aspect, um, but there's a lot of overlap. They can still, you know, both of them can count steps and heart rate and some of that kind of stuff and integrate with Samsung Health. So I feel like Samsung is really going to have to differentiate these two devices, because I know me personally, even though I cover Samsung.
Speaker 1:Obviously I will purchase the ring because it's a brand new product and I'll review it and all that. I don't know that I would want to wear both every day, though, unless it's a super compelling reason to do so. The only reason I can really think of is maybe because I don't like to wear a watch when I'm sleeping, because it's kind of a big device and typically it tends to bother me on my wrist. What do you think? Would you wear both, or would you prefer one over the other if they had similar functionality?
Speaker 2:as I said, uh, for me, honestly, like first impressions, uh, what I'm seeing is I would rather just wear the watch. It seems like I'll get more modality and usage out of it uh, versus the ring, especially depending on whatever the price is going to be for the ring, I mean, I think, for the average consumer. I think we I mean you're looking at prices in general and inflation I think we want whatever is going to get us the most bang for our buck, and if this is just going to do the same thing as the watch, I might as well just wear the watch, I would agree.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think the thing is also as you said with the price. The ring is supposed to be, I think, starting around like $400. And then the regular watch not the Watch 7 Ultra, because we already know that's $700. So even if you bought the regular Watch 7, that's going to be like $400. So you're going to be looking at somewhere between $800 and $1,000 if you want to buy both of them. And how many people are really going to pay that much money if they do almost the same thing? Probably not a lot of people.
Speaker 1:So I think the only compelling reason that you would want to get the ring and the watch is if you just don't like to wear the watch at night and you really want to track your sleep. If that matters to you a lot, which some people do, I would prefer to wear the ring in bed because the watch. I've tried to wear the ring in bed because the watch. I've tried to wear my watch in bed to track sleep. I can't do it. It just bothers me too much because of the way I sleep. I guess it always puts a big imprint on my hand, or my wrist, so I don't like that, but I mean the average consumer though I don't is.
Speaker 1:they're supposedly going to introduce, with the Galaxy Ring, a subscription model in addition to the upfront price. So I know you were talking about this last week when we were talking about apps, about how people don't like subscriptions typically. Do you think anybody's going to pay a subscription model to use a Galaxy Ring?
Speaker 2:I would be very hard-pressed. I think we're currently in this cycle of age of there's just subscriptions for everything, and again I just think it falls back to I'd rather just wear the watch if I'm going to get this X amount of free stuff out of it, versus the ring. Exactly my thought about the subscription is.
Speaker 1:We heard this subscription rumor. This is not confirmed, by the way. This was a rumor and not everybody who's in the leak space has actually weighed in on this. So it's definitely not confirmed, but we heard this rumor and if the watch doesn't have a subscription and the ring does, why would I buy the ring? I mean unless, like, sleep tracking is, like your number one priority.
Speaker 2:But even then I don't want to pay a monthly subscription for a wearable, necessarily, right?
Speaker 1:I specifically hate having to pay subscriptions for like a hardware product, right, having to pay subscriptions for like a hardware product, right. You know, you saw the other. Last month we got the new Rivian, the R1S, and when we bought it, spotify was free to use. But now Rivian has introduced, like almost right after we bought it, which is unfortunate for us. They now are saying that all the apps that are on the car are going to cost a monthly subscription.
Speaker 2:They had always planned to do this, I guess, but I didn't really realize this.
Speaker 1:So now they have this Connect Plus subscription where you're going to have to pay $14.99 a month. So I can't keep using Spotify on my Rivian SUV unless I pay $15 a month. No, I'm not kidding, yeah, so I have to either choose to pay them $15 a month. It gives you some additional functionality, which one of the functionalities is you can watch YouTube videos on your screen, which is pretty cool because there's a big screen in Rivian it's almost probably.
Speaker 1:I think it's like 17 inches or something. It's crazy, so that's cool. While I'm at a charging station, watching YouTube videos on my screen is pretty cool. But I don't pay $15 a month to use Spotify. I can use Android Auto. We have an Audi as well. I have an Audi SUV as well. I can use Android Auto in that and I don't have to pay anything to use Spotify.
Speaker 1:That's what I do not like about Rivian or Tesla is they don't have Android Auto and so they have their own proprietary systems. They can charge you whatever they want to use the apps. So I guess I'm gonna have to because I mean I'm not gonna not use spotify I guess I'm going to. I'm probably just gonna have to make a video on that feature so I can get some of the money back from having to pay them 15 a month.
Speaker 1:I think that's gonna be my plan, because rivian's extorting me after buying it. It it was like literally two weeks after we took delivery of our Rivian, we got a press release from them saying, hey, we introduced some new features releasing the new models of our vehicles, and they're like yeah, one of the new features is now we have this Connect Plus subscription that you can pay $15 a month for I'm like that's not a feature.
Speaker 2:No, jeff, I think they meant you will pay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's not a feature though that's a penalty for me for purchasing a new vehicle from you. I don't appreciate that, because the vehicle is already expensive. Okay, let's talk a little bit about the Buds 3 Pro. So this is probably, in my personal opinion, the most interesting product that Samsung will be releasing with the. Yeah, I see Tori already doing his hands here because I know what he's going to say, but to me, this is one of the more interesting products. What are you going to say about this, tori? I'm showing him an image of the Buds Leaks.
Speaker 2:Okay, are we trying to be Apple or can we be our own thing? Yes, okay, are we trying to be Apple or can we be our own thing? Yes, so the?
Speaker 1:Buds 3 and the Buds 3 Pro cases. They look exactly like AirPods cases. It's like Samsung said hey, what we should do, go get the Apple AirPods case. We'll just put some anodized aluminum on it so it looks like it's a different color, different material, and then we'll just put a Samsung logo on it, slap it on the back, push it out, because they look exactly like that. If you just look at them in the case, and guess what?
Speaker 2:If you look at the actual design of the buds.
Speaker 1:There's the actual buds out of the case. They have a stem design with a little thing that has touch controls down the side. It'll look exactly like the AirPods. So the AirPods Pro. So a lot of people are disappointed.
Speaker 2:I have a question Would the sliding bar control volume?
Speaker 1:Yes, okay.
Speaker 2:So I do appreciate that, because a lot of times when I am wearing my buds, I would like to be able to control the volume. Yeah, their touch controls are terrible.
Speaker 1:That's actually what I said, too when I originally saw the leaks and I posted about them on Twitter. These originally came out a few weeks ago. These are brand new ones from EVLeaks, who's one of the best in the business. These are probably the final renders that'll be at the Samsung press event, because he has contacts within Samsung.
Speaker 1:But yeah, supposedly those are going to control volume, which I've always found the Samsung Buds to be terrible for touch controls. Oh for sure, because every time you want to control the volume, you skip track. Yeah, or every time I want to go ahead and adjust my buds, I pause the track, because the touchpad in the buds is so sensitive that if I try to go ahead and adjust my bud at all in my ear like if it's going to fall out while I'm working out or something instantly going to pause my track, and that just really frustrates me. It's one of the reasons I don't even use my Samsung buds as my main buds. I actually use my Sennheiser or Bang Olufsen ones because I don't like the touch control.
Speaker 1:So I do like that, but otherwise it just looks so Apple, the only thing that's new about them, and I want to get Tori's thoughts on this because I know a lot of people are excited about this feature. I do think this looks really cool. I've got to go into my bookmarks here on Twitter so I can show him. Are the new blade light feature. So this is what they're going to look like. They're going to have LED lights on the buds, so that's why that little strip is also going to be an LED light strip. So that's going to kind of distinguish it from the AirPods, which, of course, don't have this.
Speaker 2:Hmm, you know, in my opinion, I feel like the design that we currently have of, like the previous generation, that was a very like, nice classic. I don't want to say classic, but it was just a nice sleek design that really, in my opinion, separated it from like a regular bud. Um, I think the lights are cool and I think that I feel like the target audience, too, is going to be like that, like the 20 year olds in the 30s, like like, that's what, that's what I get from this yeah, because obviously people in their 40s plus don't care about LED lights in their head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean when you go to the PTA meeting, no one's like, hey, bro, those are some cool LED lights on your headphones. They'd be like man, did you get those from the dollar store? Yeah, People are not going to be impressed if you got some LED lights in your headphones. They're going to think that you got them from Dollar General or something.
Speaker 2:Maybe Family Dollar, maybe Family Dollar, yeah you can take it up a notch.
Speaker 1:I mean, family Dollar is a classy place, but the inspiration behind this is actually because and this is an interesting thing, because I know you may not have seen this is Samsung recently hired the ex-designer head designer of Mercedes-Benz and he actually designed these earbuds and the design of the lights is supposed to resemble the design of the Mercedes-Benz taillight, and Nice Universe tweeted right there saying if you look at the actual buds, the end of the buds, the shape looks like the Mercedes-Benz taillight, which you can see here in this photo. Again, I'll drop all these links in the show notes again until we get video. I apologize, I know it's absolutely abysmal radio, so we apologize, but you can see the tweet and he shows off the headlight for the Mercedes. It looks very similar to the Buds and it's a very interesting point.
Speaker 1:But, like we said, I don't know that these are going to market to most people that are older. I don't even know about people in their 30s, people in their 20s. This is going to be like the hip, you know, like college age or like mid-20s something, and I I don't know like this is not something that I feel like is going to get people to switch to the galaxy ecosystem over apple, because that's samsung's goal with a lot of this stuff is to get people to switch from apple to the galaxy ecosystem. Uh, I know this because you know, they've told me their pr have told me that's one of their main goals. They want to do that. Of course they do. That's one of their main things, with everything of course.
Speaker 1:So I don't know. I mean, these buds are interesting. I definitely think that if the audio quality is great, I'll forgive it and I won't really care. Now, I don't know if I'm walking around with, like LED lights on my buds all the time. I might not be using that feature too much, I mean for fun, like, but I'm not going to be walking around with like neon-colored lights. My four-year-old might like it, so I'll let him play with it for a little bit.
Speaker 2:It's kind of interesting. Well, I have three notes, but one is obviously a lot of my students. They have Apple products.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:They have Apple products, Right. Very few have Samsung. But if they were to wear this, it would be very hard to hide these under, like their hair or something.
Speaker 1:Right, that's a good point. Actually, I didn't even think about that. The younger crowd might not even like these, because if they're trying to cheat on their exam I was a math teacher too before. Some people like have the earbuds in their ear because they have their notes recorded as an audio or something. People try that sometimes. I honestly don't care if people do that, because when I was a teacher I was like if you literally took all the time to record all of your notes onto an audio file and you can actually search through them efficiently with your earbuds on, you deserve an A.
Speaker 2:I don't care.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of work, man you must have learned something about the subject material in the process of doing that. So I'll go ahead and just give you an A. You don't have to worry about, I'm not going to give you a zero for cheating. It's okay. That's a lot of effort.
Speaker 1:If you just write a few notes down on a piece of paper I'm going to have to rip up your test and give you a zero for manipulate earbuds to search to the right spot to find the stuff you need for the test. I mean, I'm going to give you some points for that.
Speaker 2:That's impressive that's truly impressive um, so actually another question.
Speaker 1:We're going off on all kinds of tangents. You guys can call this the uh tangent guru podcast at some point, because that's what we like to do here, so hopefully you guys enjoy it. Uh, someone else was asking me too, and I think it was Instagram. It might have been the same person who asked if you had a girlfriend. They also asked if my wife and, or if you did have a girlfriend, your girlfriend, if they used Samsung or Apple. So a lot of people know my wife uses Samsung, mainly because when I married her, I told her if you don't, you're going to have to get divorced.
Speaker 1:So you know, you either use the Samsung products or you know we can't be together. It's just the way it is. I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. My wife actually always used an Android. Tori has met my wife, she knows her. She used an LG. Actually, when I first met her she had an LG G2 when I first started dating her.
Speaker 1:I did transition her over to Samsung eventually, kind of like how Tori transitioned from HTC to Samsung to Samsung eventually. Kind of like how Tori transitioned from HTC to Samsung. She transitioned from LG to Samsung when they stopped making phones, so she went all the way up to the LG G5 or 6, and then she moved over to Samsung, probably somewhere around the Galaxy S7. What about your girlfriend? I don't actually know. Does she use an iPhone or a Samsung?
Speaker 2:iPhone all the way. I try every day to persuade her to come over to the Samsung side, but I mostly get. Well, can you do FaceTime? That's basically always.
Speaker 1:So she doesn't get angry at you for not having iMessage, for being a green bubble.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, she was fine with that. It is mostly, and it seems like everybody else in her family is fine with it as well. I think I am the only Samsung person.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, you won't go to the dark side and leave a story.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, never.
Speaker 1:We'll talk about this maybe next week. I was going to put this in the show as well, but there's just so much stuff with the launch coming up. Apple finally put RCS into iOS 18, the beta that came out this week. I have it on my iPhone. Finally, you can do RCS. We talked about it last week, but it's finally there. So when it comes out in stable in September, you can finally do all those reactions and stuff with your girlfriend. Now It'll be awesome. She'll be like wow, it's like you don't even have an Android phone anymore.
Speaker 2:You'll be one of the people. You still have a green bubble. Yeah, because apple's not gonna let you have a blue bubble.
Speaker 1:You gotta pay for that blue bubble. If you want a blue bubble, you better be giving them some money, but you'll be able to do reactions and typing, you know, notifications and all that good stuff that we talked about last week. So, um, that's something. I was probably gonna make a video at some point because I was able to text myself. Of course, not anybody, because no one else is running the developer beta, because you have to pay to get the developer beta and most regular people aren't going to pay $99.
Speaker 1:I was able to text myself from my Samsung to my iPhone using RCS and I was like whoa, this is cool, jeff, you're RCSing yourself. Anyway, enough of that tangent. So that's most of the stuff. With the launch coming up, that we've kind of covered everything now. Lastly, we talked about the Fold and the Flip. We talked about the Ring and the Buds and the Watch. I'm kind of most interested in the Watch and the Buds 3 Pro. Also excited for the Fold 6, even though minimal changes, they leaked some of the new colors. There's a navy blue one that looks kind of hot, kind of hot Spicy I like it.
Speaker 1:Last year there was a light blue Fold 6. I wasn't a huge fan of the light blue. That's the one I got, but the darker navy blue is kind of my jam. I'm actually wearing navy blue today. My car is a dark blue color, so I'm a big fan of dark blue. That's kind of fun, we so that's kind of fun.
Speaker 1:But we'll have reviews of everything. Me and Tori will kind of divide them up. He's definitely going to do a watch review, I'll do a ring review and we'll figure it out. It's going to be a good time once the devices come out.
Speaker 1:We do have one other leak that came out. We're just going to briefly talk about this for like two minutes because it's super boring, but someone had asked about it a little bit. The Tab S10 Ultra has leaked for the first time. It's not coming at July 10th launch event. This one's probably going to arrive at the January unpacked event. So when we see the Galaxy S25, you can expect to see the Tab S10 Ultra, which is great, but it looks exactly the same as the Tab S9 Ultra.
Speaker 1:I have a Tab S9 Ultra over there here inside of the Sammy Guru office and I pulled it out and I looked at this render and I looked at it and I was like I already have a Tab S10 Ultra. It looks exactly the same. All they're going to do is put the new processor in it. It doesn't look like there's any changes or anything like that. The problem, though, for the Samsung tablets has never really been the hardware. It's always been really good hardware, but they have a hard time competing with the iPad, because Android's not really made for tablets and Samsung's done. You know, you can do some multitasking, which is great, but the software, like the apps, don't adapt to the tablet screen. So, like most apps are just like stretched versions of the phone app, which doesn't look good, looks blurry, doesn't look optimized, and also, I feel like the Tab S10 Ultra and the S9 Ultra because I have it are just too big. Have you ever used a Samsung tablet at all, tori? No, I have not.
Speaker 1:Do you use a tablet at all? Do you use an iPad?
Speaker 2:No, I mostly just use my Surface Pro. It's kind of like a tablet. Oh yeah, if you have a Surface Pro, you don't need a tablet.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people are not really in the tablet ecosystem. I mean, since I review tech, obviously I use mine, but I mainly I don't say I get a lot of use out of it. If I wasn't reviewing tech I probably wouldn't have one, because I just use it when I sit on the couch at night like I'm reading news and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:I I'm not using it like all the time, that's for sure. I'm only using it like very, very occasionally when I'm like reading stuff and things like that. That's pretty much it. But the S10 Ultra also is massively huge, just like the S9 Ultra. So I have an iPad as well and I also have a smaller Samsung tablet.
Speaker 1:The reason I don't use the Tab S9 Ultra for anything other than watching media is because it's massive. It's 14.6 inches so you can't hold, you're not going to hold that to read or do anything on the couch, because it's really quite large and heavy. Now, of course, for watching videos, like watching Netflix and stuff like that, it's great. If I have it on my desktop. It's like a second screen and I've used it that way. Actually, when I was teaching at the university, when I was over at GCU, I had it on the side of my desk so I could watch YouTube videos while I was working on other stuff. But now here in the same office, I've got two monitors, so I don't really necessarily need it anymore because I can watch YouTube videos on one of my monitors and do YouTube video research while I'm doing other stuff for the website. So I don't know. I mean, I like the Tab S10 Ultra. I'm sure I'll get one to review it when it comes out with the S25, but it looks not that interesting so far. It looks exactly the same as the S9 Ultra.
Speaker 1:I figured we'd talk about it for a minute so that people would know that we're paying attention, because someone had asked a little bit about that. Let's transition a little bit into some software stuff. We talked last week about Ice Universe, our buddy, the Samsung leaking genius over there, and he talked about the new feature that's going to be arriving with One UI 6.1.1. That's going to be a lot of S Pen integration with AI. And so he came back this week with another tweet two tweets actually, one of them saying that the most interesting and fascinating AI function will appear on the OneUI 6.1.1 device. Believe me, you will be addicted.
Speaker 1:And then he tweeted out another photo of a robot that said s pen plus imagination equals possibilities, or something like that. I'll just scroll back up to see exactly what he said. He said s imagination plus s pen equals everything, and so trying to guess kind of what this could be. He already talked about the graffiti and the portrait mode painting which we talked about last week. I don't think this is that. I think this is something different or additional. So I was postulating in a video I made this week that this could be a feature where you kind of draw something and it generates it for you. So, instead of like speaking or typing it, you'd be able to draw what you want the AI to generate. What do you think? What do you think this picture could be? Is that something you would use or do you have any other ideas what he could be talking about?
Speaker 2:No, I think you're kind of on it. I'm thinking that there's some AI integration where you like draw it and it kind of like comes up with it, you know, for you, because I'm seeing this trend of AI, ai, ai, ai, you know, advertisement kind of coming from Samsung. So I'm assuming the majority of the software features that are probably going to be rolling out is probably going to include some type of AI functionality.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think probably we're going to see AI going to be the big function that's promoted at this event. It's kind of for every company. Microsoft had their big PC event it was all about AI. Samsung's event in January with the S24 Ultra that was all about AI. Every event now is kind of all about AI.
Speaker 1:I think this is a feature I could see myself using for doing creative images and stuff for social media. I mean, as anything that I tend to do with AI. I don't just take the output and then post it. I usually take the output and then edit it myself, because you know, I mean I'm not afraid to mention this. We use ChatGPT and AI a lot for when we write outlines for the articles on the website. But I don't just have ChatGPT write an article for me. Like, if it's a news post, I might have it outline some of the facts and then I'll go back and edit it to add some of my own opinions and ideas and use it as an outline for what the section should be. Chatgpt is really good at that, but I mean there's a lot of people who are just taking the output of AI, not just for writing but also for, like art, and they're just putting it online and calling it their own and trying to monetize it. I'm not a big fan of that because I think it takes the creativity out of not only written work but also drawing, music etc. People are using it to kind of create these various things and I'm not a huge, a huge fan about that.
Speaker 1:I saw a story on the Daily Show last night I was watching that some of the record labels are suing an AI music company that you can tell it what kind of song you want and it makes a song. The record labels were saying that a lot of them sounded like pre-existing songs. Of course they do, because they're trained on past data. A lot of them sounded like pre-existing songs. Of course they do, because they're trained on past data. And so, because the AI companies wanted to try to get out of it, they said, oh no, these are all original songs that our AI creates.
Speaker 1:And so one of the record labels asked them to create a song from a British-sounding rock band from the 60s, and it basically created a Beatles song, an exact Beatles song, with almost none of the words changed. So you know, unfortunately that's happening more and more often. I mean, I'm definitely into AI for helping you with productivity. But I'm hoping eventually they tone this down a little bit. I mean, there's a lot of trends right that have happened in tech where it's really popular for a while and then it kind of gets toned down a little bit. If you remember, virtual reality was a really big trend for a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1:Really pushed really hard and then it's still out there and people use the MetaQuest headset and stuff like that but it's definitely went back a little bit behind the mainstream, so a lot of things happened that way. Did you ever have a VR headset?
Speaker 2:No, but I've always. Whenever I'm at someone who does have the Meta or the PlayStation VR, I'm down. But I almost picked up the PlayStation VR the other day. They're releasing a new Batman Arkham game that's only VR, so I'm going to have to actually buy one.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm not against VR, but the thing is like I'm saying, I think maybe AI is headed down the same trajectory, where it's like it's mainstream originally and like everyone's pushing it. Every tech company is like we got to do VR, vr, VR. Or they're like we got to do VR, vr, vr, or they're like we've got to do AI, ai, ai. And then eventually what happens is they realize that that product, that tech software product is only for, or hardware is only for, one specific niche. And then it finds its niche and then it's there.
Speaker 1:So VR. They're like yeah, you could do everything in VR. Maybe you could have a vacation, a family vacation in VR and you could do everything in VR. Maybe you could have a vacation, a family vacation in VR and you could go to the Maldives with your family and you could all have on headsets and that'd be really cool. And I'm like no, I don't think I do want to do that, sorry. And so they tried to push all these really silly use cases that I think everyone realized were really stupid. And then eventually they realized, hey, vr is for gaming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why don't we just sell it to gamers?
Speaker 1:And then we'll just do that. We could still make a ton of money.
Speaker 2:Yes, we just don't have to sell it to everyone.
Speaker 1:And so for AI, I think eventually it's going to be like well, we should try to sell it to the general public first and see if they'll buy it and then eventually, when they're like, well, most people aren't using these features, they'll find like a niche, like where businesses want to use it for productivity. Like ChatGPT, I think, will mainly sell to businesses in the long, long run and obviously they're going to sell personal subscriptions to students who want to cheat. But I mean, the average person probably doesn't use it as much as they did when it first came out. Because you know, like usually with ChatGPT, like you have to have a very specific use case in mind for it to be like useful for you as a general consumer. Usually you're going to have a very specific business application and I think eventually a lot of the paid subscriptions for ChatGPT will be like businesses that pay for them and then they license it to their employees. At least that's what I see for ChatGPT. Obviously, ai has a lot of positive usage. I'm not saying it's going to be as small of a niche as VR, but I think it will find its thing and then hopefully they'll stop shoving that down our throats quite as much as they do now. That's my opinion anyway, but I'm looking forward to the feature, always curious to see what Ice Universe says, and he's usually almost always correct with his leaked information. So we can almost guarantee there will be something in there with the S Pen and AI, and we'll see what happens. Before we move on to the next topic which we're going to talk a little bit about AppLock.
Speaker 1:Finally, coming to Galaxy smartphones, people are really excited about that. I figured I'd do a quick reminder. If you are going to be buying something from the Unpacked event, we do send out early pre-order links for you guys to get the links before anyone else has access to them. On launch day, samsung's website always crashes, which means if you don't get in there in time, you may not get your preferred color storage configuration. Sometimes things can sell it all together, like new products like the Galaxy Ring. Sometimes things can sell it all together, like new products like the Galaxy Ring. Samsung might have a small yield of those, so they might sell out, even though, like we talked about earlier, maybe not everyone's going to buy one. But they also have a small yield. So we send out the links, you can get those and then you can go ahead and get through very quickly with no issues. If you're on the west coast, it's at 6am, so I'm sorry about that, but I will be up early to bring you the links. I apologize that you need to wake up early if you want to get your preferred color, but I can't do anything about that. Samsung is the one who brought that on all of us not just you, but me as well, because I have to be up too.
Speaker 1:And then, if you do order through our links, not only do you get access to the links early to get your order in, we also have a mystery box you get get a free case cleaning kit. This time the cleaning kit's been upgraded I just purchased these and they're going to be 20-in-1 cleaning kits. So you're going to get microfiber cloth, all these little brushes and things to clean the crevices in your phone, these little plugs to put inside your charging port so you can keep the dust out of your charging port, and little screen stickers you can put over your speaker too to keep dust out of your charging port, and little screen the stickers you can put over your speaker too, to keep dust out of those, and that kind of makes it so you don't get any issues with your charging port, your speakers, et cetera, some tools to clean around your camera, rings, et cetera, in addition to all the other cool goodies that we usually put in the mystery box. And we will have a mystery box kind of unveiling, so to speak, sometime, probably maybe next week's podcast I'm going to put together like a sample mystery box and then me and Tori will kind of go through it a little bit and talk about the items that are in there, some of the odds. So if you guys want to check that out, the links to sign up for that is in the show notes as well.
Speaker 1:Transitioning, let's talk a bit about app lock. So app lock does not really exist on galaxy smartphones in the form that most people want it. By app lock, I mean the ability to lock one specific app and only that app on your device before you hand it over to someone else, right, because you might not want them to get into your gallery. Maybe you've got sensitive photos you don't want to get into your Instagram. Maybe you're following a lot of people that you don't want them to know about on Instagram.
Speaker 1:No one does that, of course, but maybe you're following some people that are just personal accounts for you to follow. Maybe they're for your business. You don't want anyone to know your trade secrets, right? Could be that Never know. So if you do want to do that, then you would like to be able to lock it and then you have to put in your PIN, password, your biometrics, your fingerprint, whatever to get in, and that doesn't really exist right now.
Speaker 1:There's two options on Galaxy smartphones. I'm wondering if you ever use either one of them. There's secure folder, which lets you basically put a separate copy of the app in the secure folder and then you can treat it like an entirely separate version. But basically you have two different sets of data the one that's not in secure folder and the one that is, and then the other one is app pinning, which basically, if you hand your phone to someone, you can make it so that they have to only look at that one specific app and they can't go to any other app. They have to put in your PIN, your password, your fingerprint.
Speaker 1:But notice, neither of those things are really the same as a true app lock. Because secure folder, you have to duplicate your app, which is a pain in the butt. Obviously you don't have to do that, because that's a lot more work than just locking one app. And with app pinning that's also not a true solution for app lock, because if you want to just lock one app and give them access to everything else, that's the opposite of pinning. With pinning, you can only give them access to one app and everything else is off limits. So have you ever used secure folder or the pinning option?
Speaker 2:No, I didn't even know that those things existed for Samsung. Well, there you go, tori.
Speaker 1:See, this is again another, tori is learning some features of the phone, but a lot of people wanted AppLock for so long and now we've seen that leaks for One UI 7.0 show that AppLock is finally coming to Galaxy phones. So with One UI 7.0, we're finally going to get true app lock. It's going to be in the settings. You'll be able to turn it on or off, depending on if you want to use the feature. You'll just tap a little thing on the icon before you hand the phone to someone and that specific app would be locked. There's no word on whether or not You'll be able to lock multiple apps at once, but I would think probably not, although I would like to see that feature because sometimes you might have a lot of business accounts you're following on Instagram and Twitter and OnlyFans.
Speaker 2:No, I'm just kidding, not OnlyFans.
Speaker 1:Sorry. I mean that app stays in my secure folder.
Speaker 2:That's the secure folder app right there. That's a business account. You keep that in the secure folder app right there and you just don't have this.
Speaker 1:You don't. That's a business account. You keep that in secure folder, though, right, you don't have an extra copy. You don't want the regular copy of that. You don't want anyone to know that one exists at all. Um, but anyway. Uh, I thought people were excited about this. Would you use app lock? Do you think you have any utility for using it?
Speaker 2:um, yeah, especially, like you know, sometimes, like I leave my phone on my my desk and then, like students will always like come by and be like, oh hey, like they want to mess with my phone or something. So it's just kind of nice to, like you know, keep, keep some stuff locked in yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think, unfortunately, a lot of people's purpose of using this. It seems like they're like, well, I don't want my significant other going through my phone, like Like I don't care about that yeah me either, like my wife already knows what's going on with me all the time.
Speaker 1:So it's like I don't need to lock down my Instagram or my Twitter or anything like that. Probably you know any of the ladies that I'm already following on Instagram. You know my wife already knows about them, so you know I don't have to worry about that. But you know some I don't have to worry about that, but some people might have that kind of concern. I guess I don't know that I would use it a lot. But I guess if I hand my phone to someone and they want to just see something specific and I don't want them to go into one specific app, I would probably use it more for financial apps, particularly. Um, like if I was looking at some stuff for my business and I didn't want people like going and prying through my financial information, because sometimes I have a lot of stuff open for the channel, like youtube studio even. Like whenever I hand people my phone who know what I do not that I do it a lot sometimes they want to go in and see like, oh, how much money does he make on his youtube channel? That's a question people want to know all the time, like how much money do money do you make. So if they open my YouTube studio app, they can just go in there and find out. I don't really necessarily want people looking through that. I mean not that it's a huge deal, but I'd be more inclined to protect that. I don't want people asking me for a loan. You know what I mean. It's like hey, jeff, can I hold $100? I'm like no man. He's like well, I saw your YouTube AdSense. I can hold a hundred bucks. You could let me hold a hundred bucks. No, that wasn't my AdSense. I was signed into someone else's account. It's not mine, I promise, but anyway, I mean that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people are excited about this feature. This might be one of the most anticipated features in a while. To come to Samsung, it's a very simple feature. I have no idea why they didn't bring it before because it's not like it's hard to implement. But this is another instance where, just like we said earlier with the watch and the buds, they look like Apple stuff. Apple put this feature in iOS 18 just last month and guess what? Now Samsung is going to put it in One UI 7.0.
Speaker 1:It's like Apple does it and then Samsung does it and a lot of people say, oh well, samsung's always copying Apple, but Apple also copies Samsung. Like they each copy each other. It's basically like these two companies, they're just the Android and iOS versions of one another. Like they copy each other back and forth Because Apple's copied so much stuff from Samsung. To be honest, I mean, you know Apple had tiny little phones and they're like Steve Jobs is like we're never going to make a big phablet-style phone. The Galaxy Note is a joke. And now their phone is massive. It's huge. Yeah, it is Like the iPhone 15 Pro Max. I have one. It's just as big as the S24 Ultra and it's heavy. It's not like it's easy to fit in your pocket. So you know they stole a lot of stuff. They see what works. One of the companies sees that this is working and they're like oh, let me just borrow that Whoop.
Speaker 2:Take that and put that over here.
Speaker 1:Slap a Samsung logo on it.
Speaker 1:And then Apple's like oh, you guys got that big phone. You're selling a bunch of those. Let me just whoop, take that over here, put some Apple logo on it, maybe put some aluminum edges twice the price. Everybody will be buying it. They'll be like, hey, give me, you guys my card, I'll buy it. I don't even know how much it is. Why not Just preorder it? Send it to me, apple, let's go. Anyway, that's what's coming up with One UI 7.0.
Speaker 1:Speaking of which Samsung officially announced this week, the Samsung Developer Conference is going to be taking place October 3, 2024, where we will be seeing the latest version of the operating system. So that's when we expect One UI 7.0 to come out. They'll probably talk about AppLock. They'll be like, wow, this is a really new feature. We totally didn't steal this from iOS 18. You guys have never seen this before. It's not like any other manufacturers have AppLock. It's just Samsung innovation. That's the key. But anyway, this is what we expect to see when UI 7.0.
Speaker 1:They always announce and go over all the official features. This probably means that the official version will be out sometime in, like mid-October. So we know the beta is probably delayed now until August. It's probably going to be about two and a half months of beta testing and then we will see the official version.
Speaker 1:I may try, since I have an extra phone, if Tori was interested, because he's going to be back teaching, I might just give Tori an extra phone to try the beta for a while and see what he thinks about running the beta software and he and I can do a little comparison. I won't make him put it on his main phone because that's a disaster, but I have extra Galaxy phones around the office and I can't even use all of them. So maybe we'll put the beta on two phones and Tori can kind of go through and test that. Another thing that I'm kind of hoping to do as we get closer to the developer conferences I want to have a few Samsung and Android developers come on the show and talk a little bit about the technical side. We're going to have some guests. People are actually asking are we going to have some guests?
Speaker 2:And the answer of course is yes, this is a podcast. What do you do on a podcast? You have to have some guests.
Speaker 1:I mean you guys will eventually. I mean, this is the second episode, so hopefully you guys aren't quite tired of me and Tori yet, but eventually you'll be tired of me and Tori. You'll be like I can't listen to you guys talk about this stuff anymore. So we will. And actually it's a perfect segue into the app of the week because I'm hoping if I can get him to come on my friend Vuk Ondryk, who is the developer of the app of the week, which is Thematica.
Speaker 1:He is a wallpaper developer and iconed developer for Android and a really interesting story which I was telling Tori right before we started the show is about six weeks ago. Vuk had about 10,000 followers on Twitter. I have about 21,000. So I was like Vuk, come on, man, you've got to step your game up. I'm super popular, I'm twice as popular as you, and because Elon Musk or someone at Twitter's algorithm team decided to change the way the Twitter algorithm works, now, anytime you post a phone, it doesn't matter if it's a Galaxy, an iPhone, any phone with a nice looking wallpaper gets a million impressions on Twitter.
Speaker 1:And so Vuk was kind of the first person to get the benefits of this, because he always posts his wallpapers and now, every time he posts a new one of his wallpapers it gets like hundreds of thousands or a million views. So he went from 10,000 followers to like 500,000 in six weeks, which I'm really happy for my friend, because he's a very, very good artist developer for these various apps for customization. I've been working with him for a long time, so I'm really happy to see that. But it's just very interesting to me like why who decided that that was the thing that we should have in the algorithm. I mean, I guess it's better than some of the other stuff that Twitter pushes on their algorithm. Elon Musk has basically officially introduced the ability to post sexually explicit images now on Twitter, so I'd rather have wallpapers in my feed than that, because Twitter's not where I go there. I don't go to that particular website for that.
Speaker 2:Not that I go to any other websites for that either.
Speaker 1:But I don't go to Twitter for sexually explicit images.
Speaker 2:I'd rather have wallpapers in my feed, but I don't know who decided that was the thing that they should push.
Speaker 1:But it's great for Vuke and if you guys do get on the Mystery Box program, we also include codes for his apps, Because he gives me like 300 codes every launch and I randomly insert them in the Mystery Box so you can get free apps. So let's talk a little bit about the Amatica. I know, Tori, you wrote a quick little review because I had you install it and I'll talk a little bit about what I like about it too. But go ahead and do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for Thematica. What does it do? Well, you can personalize your lock and home screen background to fit your daily mood. You have categories, new in-depth effects, editor's choice, dual feature, portraits and colors. The application is smooth and seamless Just select the one you like and apply. It only takes a few seconds. Once you select one, you can apply it to your lock screen, your home or there's even an option to apply both at the same time, and when I did it, it was literally just already there. There are some wallpapers that you do need to sign in for your Google account because they require coins and you can purchase some coins, but they are some pretty cool wallpapers for the paid ones and you can search by category, such as fashion, comic waves and textures, just to name a few. But he really has thought of it all and those are all really really nice wallpapers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I know Tori really liked this particular app. I also really love this app. He had another really popular wallpaper app, which he still owns as well, which is One for Wall, and Thematica is actually still in beta. So you have to be a beta tester, basically, if you want to download Thematica. But it's really really cool because he lets you basically customize everything with the wallpaper, like you said. Like you can change the look and feel. Like if you see a wallpaper that you like and it's black wallpaper, you don't necessarily have to stick with that wallpaper. Like you can make it blue, you can change the colors, just like in One for a Wall, you can change pretty much any of those features that you want with it. And that's the nice thing is that these different you know different effects that you can apply to them. Those will be coming in the later versions of the application, I believe, because One for a Wall has the ability to change all the colors.
Speaker 1:Thematica I don't know that it has all those features yet, but I imagine he'll probably introduce them eventually and his UI is just really so smooth and nice and fits kind of you know the design language of Android and I think it's a really smooth learning app and he also has a lot of choices for different styles, like no matter what kind of wallpaper you like, if you like. You know dark wallpapers for dark mode amoled. If you got a particular icon pack you want to match you know the color. He's got them sorted by different colors and stuff like that so you can find the color that you're looking for to match your icons, your themes and things like that and overall I just, I just love his apps. He also has a ton of icon packs. People sometimes ask about the widget that I have on my home screen in my videos which I'm showing Tori right now, the one that has the date and the time on it.
Speaker 1:That's also created by Vuk as well. He has widget packs as well, and so all of his stuff kind of goes together. I mean, I've got a wallpaper, my dark icons, which were made by him these are the Ares black icons icons which were made by him. These are the Aries black icons and this KWGT widget, which is 1 for KWGT Pro. It's a pack that he made.
Speaker 1:Maybe one week we'll talk about KWGT a little bit and Tori can give us a little bit of a review of that. But I know you really liked this particular app. Like Tori said, you do need to buy some coins to get some of the wallpapers, but if you do participate in the mystery box, you can get some wallpapers, premium wallpapers and codes to get stuff for free from VOOC if you check out Thematica and you like it and again, we'll have the link in the show notes. I'd love to hear you guys' feedback. I'll drop the link to One For A Wall as well. A lot of you guys who follow me may see I've got a bunch of coins up there because Vuk and I are buddies.
Speaker 1:I basically have unlimited coins. So you know I can't get anybody that deal, that's a special deal just for me. But I can get people some codes to get some free stuff inside the applications themselves. So this is definitely one that I really love. All of his different suites of customization Check out all the links below if you guys want to give those a try. Anything else about that, tori?
Speaker 2:No, I mean, it's a good app. I like it. Tori has a wallpaper now from Thematic on his screen as well.
Speaker 1:So we both are supporting Vuk. I told him we were going to talk about it on the podcast. So if he's listening to the podcast which I think he probably will, we appreciate the great apps that you make. And then, before we get into the Q&A, just a two-second reminder If you're not subscribed to the newsletter yet subscribe, we send that every Friday, kind of Friday morning, before I record the podcast. It always has some quick news hits of the week.
Speaker 1:So if you want to brush up on what we're probably going to add some color commentary to on the podcast, if you just want to get the quick overview of what we're going to be talking about, what me and Tori will be laughing and joking about on the podcast every week, you can check out the newsletter in the morning and just kind of see what those big quick hit news stories are. And of course we'll always talk about other stuff on the podcast. But just to get the daily overview and other information you need to know about Samsung. So let's go ahead and get into the Q&A. It's obvious that I learned how to run the format a little better this week because we're not at an hour and 20 minutes, we're at 59 minutes.
Speaker 1:We're right at an hour. So this week I did a little better and that's good. So I'm improving with my managerial role of managing this. So we do have quite a few questions this week A couple of personal questions and a couple of tech questions. The first one is what other hobbies do we have outside of technology and Samsung? So I'll let Tori go first and then I'll go second here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's see. I mean, is going to the movies a hobby? I go there quite often.
Speaker 1:I think being a fan of, you know, film is a hobby, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean. But honestly, outside of that um, I still do like a lot of studying of mathematics and reading um in my spare time. This is probably one of my favorite things to do on a saturday or sunday morning. Uh, after I make some espresso, um are you a coffee guy? I didn't know, oh yeah coffee coffee guy.
Speaker 1:What kind of coffee machine do you have?
Speaker 2:I have an espresso. I have like the Virtuo, and then I have like the miniature one. At my classroom, see, I'm learning stuff about Tori. I didn't know this either.
Speaker 1:I didn't know. Tori was like a coffee aficionado. Oh yeah, so you must have really gotten our chair at gcu. Did you ever talk to me about coffee?
Speaker 2:no, well, once or twice, I think, but I know he does drink, drink a lot, yeah, he likes to like, make his own, like coffee and grind his own beans and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:I remember because I have, uh, some of my family, like an aunt. I was trying to get a christmas present for him and I know he made like roast his own beans, so I bought some to give her. I just thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker 2:So someone who's really into coffee. People want to coffee.
Speaker 1:You know they like that kind of stuff I actually saw. I've got something to show you then later I saw a link to a new tech startup that has a coffee machine that's got like all these smart capabilities. It's got like all these things built into one machine, like the grinder, all this different stuff, and you can link it to an app that'll like do the individual pieces like on the time schedule you want um, I didn't look at the price so it's probably.
Speaker 1:I don't want to show it to you. And then it's like, if it's ten thousand dollars, I'm sorry because I know coffee machines can be anything.
Speaker 2:Coffee can get very expensive, oh, you can take it like any level that you want.
Speaker 1:You can do that with any hobby, but you know if we're being fair. But I know coffee can be very expensive, but we I'll show you after the podcast, I'll also drop it in the show notes as well, if you guys want to check it out. My hobbies I have quite a few, and actually I know, Tori, you didn't mention one of the other ones that we have in common Pokemon.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Because you play.
Speaker 1:Pokemon and also collect Yep, and I collect Pokemon mainly. I wish I had more time to play. One day I might have to go and watch Tori play, because I played when I was younger because obviously I'm older than Tori, of course, obviously I was his professor in college. I'm not that much older than Tori, but I'm about 10 years older than him. When Pokemon first came out I was around 11 or 12. In 1998, when I first came to the US, I played. I played a bunch of tournaments like when I was in middle school and early in high school, like toys r us used to hold tournaments yeah, and I used to go there and play and a lot of fun playing in the early days of, like base set, fossil jungle, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:But now that I'm older I really collect quite a lot of pokemon. I got very lucky because I got back into Pokemon collecting around 2015. And that's like right before. Everything went like crazy up in price during COVID like in COVID, pokemon cards like 50 X in value, a lot of them.
Speaker 1:And I got lucky because I made a quite a decent amount of money from cards that I had bought, cause I was really a fan of like the classic and like older vintage stuff, cause that's when I was a kid that's what I collected. So I was like a fan of like the classic and like older vintage stuff because that's when I was a kid that's what I collected. So I was like on eBay in 2015, 2016, 2017, buying like a bunch of vintage stuff. Like mainly, I bought a lot of the cards I liked when I was a kid and because I figured, you know, I thought in my mind I didn't think anything about like, oh well, of course, I didn't know there was going to be a global pandemic, right, I have no idea. Oh well, of course, I didn't know there was going to be a global pandemic, right, I have no idea.
Speaker 1:Like I'm not like a fortune teller or clairvoyant or anything, but I was thinking like, okay, 2023, that's the 25th anniversary of Pokemon or whatever it was. Maybe it's 2022. I was like that's going to be a really big opportunity for Pokemon to get, like, some more visibility and the card prices might go up. So I was accumulating a lot of the popular cards I liked when I was a kid. I bought a lot of B-set Charizards, for instance, and I started grading them. And so when COVID came around, I had I had like 20 PSA 9 Charizards and they went from being worth like $200, $300 to being worth like $3,000 to $5,000 a piece. I didn't sell all of them, but I sold about 75% of them, not at the very top of the market, but I sold them near the top of the market.
Speaker 2:I still have some.
Speaker 1:PSA 9 Base Set Charizards. Of course I have like five of them, but just for my own collection, but I sold a lot of them, so I got lucky to get back into it at the right time.
Speaker 1:But I also did a really a lot of stupid things Like, for instance, you know, because I told you guys, you know that I made some good money. People are like, well, no one wants to hear about someone else succeeding. No one likes that. I want to hear about this guy's failures. So here is a great story about failures.
Speaker 1:With that same sort of situation, I was also buying other things from, like my childhood, I wanted to open some packs, so I bought some vintage booster boxes and 2015, 2016 and 2017. I bought, for instance, a base set booster box sealed for 550. I bought a fossil Set booster box sealed for $550. I bought a Fossil Unlimited booster box sealed for $300. I bought a Jungle booster box sealed for around $400. And the best one of all I bought, get this. Are you ready for it? A first edition Neo Genesis booster box sealed for $1,700. And guess what I did with all those booster boxes? I opened every single pack from them. Yeah, and you know how much all those booster boxes are worth right now? About $75,000.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like lots of money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I just lost $75,000 in future value by opening all those boxes. I did get a couple cards that are worth a decent amount of money. Yeah, so I just lost 75 000 in future value by opening all those box. I did get a couple cards that are worth decent amount of money. Cory has seen here in the office I have my first edition, lugia um, psa 9, a greater than nine. It's worth about three grand. So I pulled that from the neogenesis box but the box itself is worth like 35 000 40 000 now.
Speaker 1:So you know genesis, I would say I'd say three thousand, not quite forty thousand, but you know it's better than nothing. Um, oh, I did get the typhlosion too, so I probably got like seven thousand out of value. So you know, I only miss out on 33 grand with the value from that box by opening it. What you're gonna do, you know. But it was a lot of fun. But I definitely did some stupid things, like I kept some cards and graded them, which was great, but I also bought a sealed product and opened it. I should have saved that sealed product. I would have been way ahead. I could have used that money invested in Sammy Guru. We could have sipped out a lot more cool stuff in the mystery boxes. Anyway, my other big hobby is fountain pens. I collect fountain pens as well. That's the other thing I do. My two hobbies are both very expensive Pokemon and fountain pens. You can spend any amount of money you want on those things.
Speaker 1:Fountain pens. They can go up into the tens of thousands of dollars if you want. I don't have a $10,000 pen, the most expensive pen I have, which I still have an inked, because it's just a very expensive pen and one day I probably will. But I have a Pelican M800, which is a rod and pen rod and it's actually a lacquering technique in Japan where they hand like lacquer the pen. It's a. It's a limited edition one. It's a. It's about $2,500. I've never. I didn't pay 2,500 for it. When it came out I think I paid $800. But I've never inked that pen, because if you ink it, just like if you drive a car off the lot, the value is no longer $2,500. Now it's half of that. So one day I probably will. But that's my other main hobby.
Speaker 1:Next question we have is why does Samsung take so long to push out software updates versus Apple with iPhones? Because Apple always pushes the software right away to the iPhone. Every iPhone gets the software at the same time. You don't have to wait. But when it comes to Samsung, when the new software comes out next month the One UI 6.1.1, my S24 Ultra and Z Fold 5, they're going to get that update right after the new ones that come out next month, but then, like, the S23 Ultra will take a month later and then your S22 Ultra will take a month after that, like Samsung does it like in stages, and so there's a good reason for this. I know it's very frustrating and it's not something I like. I wish it was better, but the fact of the matter is Samsung does not own Android. They lease Android from Google right. So Apple. They completely own and develop iOS and everything all the software on the iPhone in-house, so basically they can push that update to everything the same day. Samsung has to wait for the final code base from the new version of Android to come from Google, or security updates and things. That delays a lot of things. And then they also have to optimize them for all the different processors that are in all their devices. And so you have to think about two things. One, they have to work with Google on a lot of that before they can add customizations that they add to One UI. But they also have so many different phones.
Speaker 1:I forgot I was going to look at the number for the show. I'm being a bad statistician because I was going to try to give a really cool stat. But uh, apple only has, like you know, they only have a couple models every year. Right, they got like two or three phone models like the pro, the pro max, the plus and a regular iphone. There's four models. Samsung has like 100 and something different models that they sell across the world. So just think about it. If you have four of something, it's a lot easier to push out software for four devices versus 100 plus devices.
Speaker 1:And Apple's processor all run their own silicon, which they develop the processors themselves. Right, all those phones they run those same processors, but Samsung's they run a bunch of different processors. Some of them are their own Exynos processors, some of them are Qualcomm Snapdragon here in the US for the flagships, various different processors. So that's the reason. But I would say they do a pretty good job, like these days. We don't have to wait that long. Do you remember, tori, how long did it take you for get the One UI 6.0 update? Because that came out in January when the S24 Ultra came out. When did you get it and install it on your S22 Ultra?
Speaker 2:Probably around February or March. It wasn't really that long.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I mean that's a couple months. I don't think that's unacceptable. I mean, just like five years ago, samsung would sometimes take six months from the time a new version would launch to push it out to old devices and then they would take three to five months after the new Android came out to push the new One UI. But that's almost instantaneous now. Like One UI 7.0 is going to launch in October. Google is going to launch in October. Google is going to launch Android 15, which is what OneUI 7.0 is going to be based on. That's going to come out in the end of August. So it's only like a month and a half or a month later that they push out OneUI. So they're not really as delayed and Samsung really is catching up. I think you have to give Samsung some credit. I criticize them where they deserve it, because they deserve it. A lot like copying the exact watch design, and I think they deserve some criticism for that. But I also think you've got to give them credit where they're maintaining 100 plus devices and they also have to work with Google as a partner because they don't own Android code base. It's not really the same, not to use the same pun that everyone uses when they talk about Android versus iOS, but it's apples versus oranges, not really.
Speaker 1:Third question can you automate different brightness levels on your phone? The answer to this is yes. We talked about last week how you can do automation. One way is you can do it with Routines and Routines Plus location-based, which is built into your Samsung phone. You can choose to turn auto brightness on or off and also choose to turn different brightness levels for a specific location. If you want, you can also do this in MacroDroid, which is the app I talked about last week. So that's kind of a technical one. These last three are all kind of technical questions, but that's the answer. The answer is yes. Have you ever, corey, used a custom font on your Galaxy phone?
Speaker 2:No, I have not.
Speaker 1:So someone said how can you get custom fonts on your Galaxy phone? Perhaps someone who's new to my channel, which is great. If you are new to the channel and you asked this question, we appreciate you tuning in and also watching the videos. I made a tutorial on this last year for the S23 Ultra and in January for the S24 Ultra. The fonts you cannot get them with a stock Samsung Settings app. You have to do it with a third-party app. It's called ZFont3. You can get it on the Play Store and the process of doing it is not simple. You've got to do a lot of kind of workarounds.
Speaker 1:Samsung does not make it easy to get custom fonts on your phone. You can get them from the Galaxy Store but you have to pay for them. So people are talking about how can you get them without paying? You can get premium ones from Samsung, but you usually have to pay money for those. They're talking about getting, like, whatever font you want and not having to pay a ton of money. If you want to do that, zfont 3 is the way to go and I have a tutorial video on my YouTube channel which will be in the show notes. You can go through and do it. But just know I warned you because it's a little bit of work. I'm not telling you like this pay for a bunch of new fonts. I sometimes like to use a new font because it makes things a little more readable. The Samsung font that's stock, though, doesn't bother me, and there are a couple of free options that you can. Also. Samsung has by default that are not paid you can change between. Have you even changed your font at all?
Speaker 2:Nope, I'm a very vanilla guy.
Speaker 1:That's not a thing that I think most users do, but people who are really into customization. It's certainly something fun you can do. And then Tori saw this question on one of my recent videos. I've answered this question a few times in various videos. It's probably why I didn't get to it in this video, because sometimes when people ask me the same question so many times, it's hard for me to get to every instance of it. This question comes up a lot, but it's a good one to answer on the podcast. Maybe people will see it here as well as the other places that I've talked about it.
Speaker 1:And that is how do you get the custom keyboard effects on your galaxy keyboard? So I use samsung keyboard and when I type in my videos, people usually notice that the keys light up and they have a cool like paint splatter effect. And the way you get that is by using the Keys Cafe app, which is made by Samsung. It's inside of GoodLock. So GoodLock is their customization suite, which I talk a lot about on the channel, on the YouTube channel, because a lot of the customization for Samsung is done in there. So if you go in there you can edit and edit all the keycaps and stuff, and I do have a full video tutorial on this as well, of course, which I can put in the show notes. So if you did ask this question, you want to customize your keys then you can check out the link and it'll be there for you to go through and do it.
Speaker 2:This one is a lot quicker.
Speaker 1:So if you want to do the fonts, you know, don't make any plans for the next 30 minutes but if you want to do keyboard effects, it's like a two-minute. Just install Keys Cafe. There's some pre-made options, there's some really cool ones. You just pick the one you want, hit a button and then it's there, so you don't have to do anything crazy for that. I think that's pretty much it for the Q&A. What are you going to be up to for the next week, Tori? What do you got on tap? Anything.
Speaker 2:Ooh, probably just spending time with my girlfriend relaxing, and I think I have a conference I'm going to on Monday for teaching. What conference are you going to? It's called Building Thinking Classroom, so it's just learning how to make the classroom environment more collaborative. So they're going to be like a big guest speaker Peter Little et al and yeah, they'll be at the Biltmore.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's cool. Is this sponsored by the district? The school district?
Speaker 2:No, it's through the Arizona Mathematics Teacher Association.
Speaker 1:Oh, arismatic Mm-hmm. Oh, okay, yeah, I think I've been with one of those before when I was at the university, because sometimes we would present stuff to the high school teachers, because I think Ben and I went, maybe with Jonah even a couple times, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I went to that.
Speaker 1:That's cool. It's at the Biltmore. I don't know if it was ever there. I can go over there. I know it's a neat. Actually, the Rivian, the only Rivian charging station in all of Phoenix is at the Biltmore. Oh, really, so I spend a lot of time at the Biltmore now, because it's not too far from the office here.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, Of course.
Speaker 1:I can go to third-party charging stations, but it's cheaper and faster. So if I do drive the Rivian, I usually go a third-party.
Speaker 2:Electrify america, oh yeah, I didn't know that one, yeah, but yeah, no doing that. And then I think we're gonna catch the light rail. All right, we're gonna park at the metro center light rail, uh, because it's like, you know, all brand new and whatnot and we're gonna go down to to downtown Phoenix and we really want to try the Taco Bell Cantina.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I've seen it down there when I went to the Diamondbacks games before, so it looks pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm planning to just be working on launch stuff for the next week and then, of course, July 4th next week I'll probably watch some fireworks.
Speaker 2:It's too hot outside really, though really to watch fireworks is the problem.
Speaker 1:It's like even if I don't get burned by fireworks, I'll get burned by just the arizona heat. It's like so unbearably hot. So usually we end up just watching fireworks on tv because like I don't want to go, even at night, like when they shoot the fireworks it's already, it's still like 105 degrees outside.
Speaker 1:Yeah, people don't understand, like if you don't live live in Arizona for you guys who don't live here in the summer it's almost never below 100 degrees. It goes below 100 degrees for maybe three hours overnight, from 2 to 5 in the morning, and then it's back to 100. You rarely get any break from the heat. So you're like I can go outside when it's not hot. Well, that's never, so you'll never go outside. If you live in Arizona and you want to go outside when it's not hot, at least from like the end of May until the middle of October, you won't go outside. So in October I can finally go back outside. That's why I don't celebrate any of the holidays in the middle.
Speaker 1:Also, the other thing, tori, I'm not celebrating. Well, I love America, but I'm not fully celebrating the Fourth of July. I'm somewhat boycotting because Joey Chestnut is no longer being allowed to compete in the hot dog eating contest. Wait what? That's very un-American. Did you hear about that? No, I have not. Yeah, so basically the Nathan's Hot Dogs. People have banned Joey Chestnut because he took a sponsorship from a vegan hot dog company.
Speaker 1:And they are not happy about it. So they're like now you can't participate. And hot dog company, and they are not happy about it. So they're like now you can't participate. And so like now who's going to watch the hot dog competition on ESPN? Like nobody.
Speaker 2:That's the only way.
Speaker 1:I'm going to write these people a letter, cause you know, last year my son was three and he loved watching the hot dog eating competition. He thought it was great. And this year he asked me he's like daddy, when we we going to get to see Joey Chestnut eat hot dogs again? And I had to tell him, like maybe never. And he started crying and I was like me too. That's un-American. How could you ban Joey Chestnut Like that?
Speaker 1:basically is the 4th of July yeah it is Anyway I mean, I'll basically just be sitting inside watching fireworks for a few minutes maybe eating a hot dog myself, crying because I can't watch Joey Chestnut perform like the elite athlete that we all know he is.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed joining us this week again episode two in the books. We pretty much got to the same place as last week, so it looks like an hour and 20 minutes is what you should plan on if you want to join us for the full show every week. We'll be back. Next week We'll recap our 4th of July, we'll see how many hot dogs we eat, et cetera, and I hope you guys will join us then. See you then.