SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
Samsung Unpacked Recap - Five Greek Letters of Fine Print
Is Samsung going down a dangerous path to become more like the Apple of Android than ever before? In our latest episode, we recount the rollercoaster of emotions from the recent Samsung launch, where broken links and logistical nightmares took center stage for most of the morning. We also break down each new device one by one and tell you everything we think you should steer clear of buying this year.
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Check out our website: https://sammyguru.com
Welcome everybody back. It's episode number four of the Sammy Gugger podcast. My name is Jeff Springer and with me is my co-host, torrey. Torrey, say hi, hey, how's it going? And it was a week. I'll tell you that I bet it was. It was quite a week in terms of Samsung stuff and for me personally, everything went wrong that possibly could on Wednesday morning in terms of getting the links up and the launch and getting products ordered. But we'll definitely get into that, tori.
Speaker 2:How was your week Otherwise, aside from Samsung stuff, because we're going to talk about that for like an hour and a half. So anything else going on, yeah, no, I mean overall, let's see. Week was good. I've seen a few movies there's let's see. I saw Inside Out 2 the other night. I've been bowling at least twice this week. It's been a fun time, can't complain.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a lot of stuff. Tori's done like four activities when you're married with kids. You know that's like 10 months of activities, but actually you mentioned Inside Out 2.
Speaker 1:Mentioned Inside Out 2. We did see that this week because we were able to take my four-year-old son. So it's a little bit easier to get a babysitter, because my mother-in-law only had to watch the three-month-old. He doesn't do a lot right now, so it's easier to get someone to watch actually a baby than a baby and a four-year-old, because the four-year-old is everywhere and the baby sits there. You've got to stay with, but you also have to chase the four-year-old. So that combination is very tough and he has a lot of energy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you met my son Tori met my son.
Speaker 1:I had a Samsung TV that I was replacing and I gave it to Tori and his girlfriend. They came and picked it up so he finally got to meet my two sons. Yeah, John has a lot of energy. We took him to Inside Out 2. It was actually the first movie that he sat through fully, so we took him to a couple of other movies. We took him to the paw patrol movie earlier this year and we took him to whatever that movie was with the ducks.
Speaker 1:I think it was like a pixar movie okay, there's a some animated is an animated thing, so you probably wouldn't have seen it. But he didn't sit through either of those the whole time. He wanted to get up and go outside like 30 to 45 minutes in, and we did. We just went outside with him, then came back. As you know, he's just antsy at four. Um, but this movie he had originally seen the original inside out on disney plus and he was really into the inside out kind of story and so he sat through the entire inside out too and enjoyed it. So that was good because we were able to watch the whole movie and that was a movie me and nicole actually wanted to see, because of course it's been a while since they came out with the sequel, so and that's actually a good movie for adults too, and that it's got a lot of easter eggs and fun stuff. So, yeah, I did that as well.
Speaker 1:Uh, otherwise it's just been all work this week aside from yesterday, which is friday. We're recording this on saturday this week mainly because there's been a crisis here at the Sammy Guru office too the AC isn't fully working and they still haven't fully fixed that and then a water pipe busted yesterday the main water pipe. They had to shut it off, so there's no access to the bathrooms or anything. So I wasn't in the office yesterday until they fixed that yesterday evening. So now we're recording on Saturday to make sure we can get all this great unpacked recap out there to you guys. And we also have some thoughts. Tori sent me some thoughts from his girlfriend on the Z Fold 6 as well as an iOS user, so we'll get into that as well.
Speaker 2:We've got a lot of stuff to run down, so we're just going to go kind of point by point through the unpack launch.
Speaker 1:So let's go back to Wednesday, at at 5 50 am arizona time, 8, 50 eastern. I'm sitting in my office at home because I didn't drive to the office to do the launch stuff because I'd had to leave at like three in the morning and I'm like, yeah, I got everything set. The blog post is ready, the youtube is ready, all my social posts are scheduled, the links are all in there. It's going to be great. Everybody's going to be able to order their products, get their mystery boxes. They'll be confirmed. There's going to be no issues. It's looking good.
Speaker 1:And at six o'clock Arizona, nine o'clock Eastern, all my stuff publishes. And then I start getting messages from people and they're like the links don't work. The links don't work, jeff. Your links don't work, jeff. I can't order and get my mystery box because the links don't work. Can you fix your links? And so then I go and visit my links one by one, and the first one I visit is my Fold6 link, which of course is the most important one, and the link goes to a 504 error page on samsung's website can't be found. And so then I go through all of my links and the only ones that work, which for me is bad, as, as a business owner, the buds 3 pro is like the only link that work. That's the least valuable product. So, in terms of the mystery boxes, we don't recoup much money from selling buds 3 pros. So I was like this is a disaster because we're going to end up losing money because we cover all the shipping costs on the mystery boxes and we pay for that with the affiliate link sales and all the products that goes in there as well. So before we actually do the mystery boxes, I'm pulling out tens of thousands of my own money, assuming that I will get it back. I'm taking a risk when I agree to do these and I of course, want to make sure people get their boxes. So I email Samsung's affiliate people and like, yeah, we're going to fix it, it's going to be so fast. And then my link doesn't work until 814 am Arizona, which is two hours and 14 minutes after the products went live, and so of course, the problem is they're live on Samsung's page, so people could just go to the regular page and not use my link and order. And so I'm like are people going to do this? The good news is.
Speaker 1:A lot of people persisted in using my links. I know a lot of people love the mystery boxes and I appreciate the support. People who listen to the podcast are in that camp, which I'm sure some people who do listen probably participate as well. I really appreciate the people who did persist. We've had so far I think about almost 300 people confirm boxes already 274, actually right here and that number will go up because it'll be open for 10 more days. I would imagine we'll at least get 500 people total confirming mystery boxes for this launch. But I really was thinking it could have been close to a thousand if the links had worked. So it's kind of disappointing at the end of the day, but that's the risk you take with these kind of launches.
Speaker 1:But it was really bad as well because a lot of people, in addition to not being able to use my link, they weren't able to get their discounts because not only were the links not working properly for a lot of the various affiliates, once you actually clicked on a link and this was even if you went to Samsung's website directly, like not through an affiliate link, when you added to your cart, it wouldn't give you the extra bonus you were supposed to get for the reserve credit and in the case of my subscribers they were supposed to get an additional 50, so they get 100 total for the z-fold six and it wasn't giving them that. And then some people you have education or government discounts. They also weren't getting their government or education discounts, so then people are upset about that as well. So it's like a lot of vitriol. You you noticed as well, tori, because you were up ready to order your watch.
Speaker 1:And I didn't send you the link to order that for a while because you know I was buying the watch for you to review. I didn't send you that for a while to go ahead and do it, and Tori was wondering what was going on. What were you thinking?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm like, all right, I'm up at 4. I'm ready. It gets to about 6 o'clock. And it gets about 6 o'clock and I'm like I haven't heard from Jeff. I send him a message saying hey, how's everything going? Do you need any support? Don't hear anything from him. Then, around like 8, he sends me the link and I'm like, oh man, something must have been going down.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I sent Tori the link finally, when all the links were working so it was probably around that 8.15 am time because I figured there's no reason to give Tori the link if the links aren't going to work, since he wanted to order a watch Ultra and he did get that done. We'll talk more about the products one by one. I'm just getting some of my frustration out with Samsung's launch process here. In the beginning I think it's absolutely unacceptable. To be honest with you, they had the same kind of problems not to this scale. It was actually much worse this time, with the links not working at all. But they had some similar issues with the discounts in January where people would go through my affiliate link and they wouldn't get their full bonus credit. So if they're promising people extra bonus credit for using affiliate links and it's not just ours they give the bonus credit to anyone who's part of the Samsung partner program through their affiliate program. But if you're going to promise that to creators and to websites that their readers get an extra discount, then they should deliver on that, right? I mean, I feel like it would be like you know, if I promised these mystery boxes and then I don't deliver them just because you know I have some issues, which obviously I did, but I'm still going to deliver all the mystery boxes. People actually went through my link Because it's only fair to them, even though we might have missed out on the volume that we were hoping to get.
Speaker 1:Samsung can't remove discounts from people just because they can't handle the volume. And the thing is, at the end of the day, they're one of the largest, most valuable companies in the world. They have billions upon billions of dollars to dedicate to it and tech support and their servers. There's no excuse that this should be happening. And in addition, when I went to samsung's website the other night, I was tweeting about this if you look on some of their product pages and this is ridiculous some of their product pages where it like says like buy the watch ultra or buy the z-fold six, they have you know how like. They have those little symbols that tell you there's some fine print to read below yeah. And then it like indexes the fine print with the symbols. Some of them have five or six greek letters to index all the fine print. So it's like alpha, beta, theta, gamma, zeta. I was like man.
Speaker 2:I'm back to teaching calculus again reading, reading this preorder page.
Speaker 1:And you go down. It's like so much fine print. They have such a complicated discount process when it comes to the preorders that people are so confused as to whether or not they got their appropriate discounts. Like people email me as well. I've probably gotten 20 or 30 emails since Wednesday with people just saying you know, I don't even know if I got my discounts correctly because samsung doesn't really list them out and show you like line by line what the discounts were for yeah, so that really is frustrating for people, because you know they would really like to know, like, what discount is this?
Speaker 1:is this the 50 bonus I got from using sammy guru's link? Um, that way they would know also that they are using our link, so they would qualify for mystery box. So a lot of people are wondering, you know, did did my order go through your link or not? Because samsung doesn't show that bonus credit. That would help us as well. I think it would really make samsung kind of look better in the eyes of their consumers if they are going to keep doing discount programs. Because you know those greek letters. They basically all say like this is one discount, but it doesn't stack with this discount. Alpha doesn't stack with beta, but gamma stacks with, you know, theta and you can't stack theta and gamma, but you can stack alpha and beta with zeta. And I'm like what?
Speaker 1:the heck is going on should be more streamlined, yeah you shouldn't need to read like 10 lines of fine print to figure out, like, what discounts you can use. It should just say, like you know, here are the three discounts. You know. If they're going to just do only one discount, that can stack, that's fine. But they've made it so complicated. People have no idea, like, if they've appropriately gotten their discounts.
Speaker 1:So this is kind of my plea to samsung fix the pre-order process for the s25 launch, because I think you'll sell a lot more phones. Because some people got frustrated and some of them, honestly I feel like, maybe gave up and didn't order. There was a couple guys who were messaging me and I was trying to, you know, talk them through some different ideas that I had about what they could try, but then they're like I'm just gonna kind of give up and not not worry about placing this order and I'm like, well, don't, don't do that, man, but if you want the phone, just probably ordered a few days down the road because most likely the z-fold six isn't going to sell out um, although one of the galaxy products did sell out and we'll talk about that a little bit, but the z-fold six is not sold out, so you can still go order that if you still want a mystery box. By the way, the mystery boxes will be available and verification form will be open until July 23rd. That's the day that pre-orders end. We close the mystery box program and verification form on the day pre-orders end because we have to start shipping and so I don't like to have orders continuing to come in while we're shipping because then every time I generate labels there's more labels, so I always close them when the pre-orders is closed so that we can ship things efficiently Down the road. It's possible we may do them on a rolling basis.
Speaker 1:I've considered that. Some people have asked like well, what if I want to buy a Samsung phone in, you know, the middle of fall and there's no pre-order program, so we don't usually offer a mystery box in like November. What if you want to buy one? Well, that's true, we've considered it, but I have to have the shipping support to do that and I have to have the shipping figured out because logistics is really hard. Some of my family helps me with the logistics. My wife and her mom helped me like a lot of the packing and like fixing some of like the graphics we put in there. They do a lot of work, so I can't just force them and say, hey, we're going to just do this all the time.
Speaker 1:So, 365 days a year. You guys better be ready to pack out some boxes Right now. They just do it twice a year for a couple of weeks and that's it. So they're happy to do that. But so we'll try to figure that out down the road. But if you do want to buy something from our link and get the box, you need to buy it and fill out the verification form before the 23rd. 11 59 pm, arizona time. Um, it's sammygrucom slash verification. To find the verification form, I'll put the link below, if you bought it and you haven't verified yet, because I know there'll be some people who definitely bought but didn't verify, because they keep rolling in always until the last day and I don't want anyone to miss out. So I keep trying to remind people because people forget to go to the verification all right.
Speaker 2:So that's my frustration, my anger, tori, let me get it out here I, I thought I was going to take like half an hour on the anger it only took me 15 minutes, so that's not too bad.
Speaker 1:um so now we can actually get into talking about the devices which I still have some anger about, so I'm not going to promise no more vitriol in this podcast.
Speaker 1:But that's all. I'll talk about the issues with actually getting people placing orders. So let's start with the Z Fold 6, because that's the big one. That's obviously the most expensive product, it's the one that got the most hype. It's actually the one that most people have pre-ordered through our links, because the verification numbers show that I think about 60% of the people who submitted a mystery box were Z Fold 6 buyers. So let's talk about the various things that they did. So not any surprises, really from what we talked about last week.
Speaker 1:Right, it was very boring, as I said last week on the podcast. Like every time I watch an event now, it's typically boring because I already know everything, and the Z Fold 6 was no exception. In fact, it was probably even more boring than usual because, even though I knew the features, not many of the features were that exciting. So we have some small refinements to the actual design. It's slightly wider, only a millimeter.
Speaker 2:Nothing as we talked about before.
Speaker 1:It's got a different aspect ratio, so it's shorter, wider, which makes it feel more like a regular phone, even though the screen itself, the cover display itself, is not that much wider. I did get a chance to go by Best Buy and play with some of the units that they have there on display, because they do have them here in Phoenix. I went to the Peoria Best Buy and I took a look at them. Yesterday I posted something over on Twitter about this and I do like the refinements. The phone does feel better when it's opened up in terms of the large canvas Seems more like a tablet size that you would enjoy, like for reading and things like that, and the cover display does feel better.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to say it doesn't, but it's still not to where, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:I'm going to try to do it for a week, like I do every year Switch my SIM card from the S24 Ultra to the Z Fold 6 when I get it.
Speaker 1:I'll try to do it for a week and make it my main phone, but I just don't see me being able to use it as my daily phone because it's still not wide enough for me and I know there's a lot of people who have mentioned me on various social media saying not everybody wants a super wide fold. Stop trying to make it like a 2s24 ultra stack together. Well, I mean, maybe that's true, but I certainly hear more people saying they do want it than they don't. I mean, I publish a lot of samsung content, so all the comments I get a fairly large sample size and I don't hear that many people. In fact, the only time that I ever hear someone say that they don't want a large fold is when I say I do, and then people are just like boo your opinion, they don't want a large fold. Is when I say I do, and then people are just like boo your opinion, we don't like it, so we want it to stay nice and narrow.
Speaker 1:I don't hear anybody asking for that in the comments unsolicited. It's always like when I'm talking about how we'd prefer it to be wider. It's thinner and lighter. It does feel better in the hand At Best Buy. Obviously it's on the like little tether security tether thing, so you can't tell. You know exactly how light it is. But it is thinner and lighter and I do like that. But uh, the biggest pain point for me you watch the event tory. Yeah, it's two things. One, if you noticed they didn't really talk about the hardware on the fold at all during the fold six segment. What did they talk about most of the time when they were talking about the hardware on the fold at all? During the fold six segment, what did they talk about most of the time when they were talking about the fold six?
Speaker 2:I mean is literally just like all, like the outer stuff, um, and like all the like, or like the camera. Quote unquote yeah upgrade when it's not really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's a, there's a camera upgrade, and so it's not really a camera upgrade, it's a fake camera upgrade. So Samsung is saying on their website and the press event that they had the Pro Visual Engine. Turn Pro Pro Visual Engine on the Galaxy Z Fold 6. And if you click on it it says Meet Fold's most powerful camera system, yet topped with an upgraded NPU, mind-blowing specs and ProVisual engine. It'll transform your multimedia experience. And actually, what's the fine print here? What number is that Three? They got so much fine print on their website. They got to work on this. Like, look at all this fine print.
Speaker 2:This is absolutely insane.
Speaker 1:There's like a million pieces of fine print. I've never seen this much fine print on any other website. Never seen this much fine print on any other website. I can't even find three. I don't even know where it is. This is what I was talking about earlier. Like there is no, it probably tells you that there's no actual created hardware, that they're lying to you. I'm sure that's what it says. This is insane. Actually, I didn't even look at this before the podcast. I don't even see where it is. I'll look at it later, but anyway.
Speaker 2:No, I I think I think the issue and you see a lot looking at the unpack is that they're just so broad and just hitting these like really big things, that I that I think that they were hoping that consumers would just be like, oh yeah, all right, now I want to buy it. But then they got to go through all this fine print stuff like, yeah, yeah, so market it a little bit.
Speaker 1:So here's the thing that I was talking about. Some people over on, uh, twitter I'm sorry, I keep calling twitter. I know some people want to call it what it is now, which is x, but I'm just probably never getting on that bandwagon. I mean, I've been using that platform for like 15 years and so once it's been x for 15 years, maybe I'll switch, but for now I'm just gonna keep calling it twitter. Um, someone Someone was asking me about do you feel like Samsung is just now the Apple of Android? And I do feel like that, because that's what Apple does. They just put out buzzwords that don't necessarily have any technical specs behind them, and their consumer base sees them and they're like oh, that sounds really cool. Let me give them my money without asking any more questions.
Speaker 1:So, Samsung has moved from their old strategy of let's give people all the information about the different specs and let them make informed decisions and try to appeal to a more tech-informed audience. And now they're just like let's just put big headings on the spec sheet and just tell people what it does. In fact, if you look at this we're looking at the spec sheet now if you go to samsung's website, you'll see that they don't really cite specs anymore. You notice all these little big headings. None of them have technical specs. Yeah, it says galaxy ai design, durability, performance, battery, cameras nowhere do you see yeah.
Speaker 1:You don't see, like, what is the processor inside under performance? They don't tell you you've got to actually go into the fine print for that. They don't tell you, like, how big is the battery, how many milliamp hours? It's not there. They don't tell you what camera sensors are inside of the camera hardware. They just tell you it's great pro visual engine, boom, boom, boom, which, by the way, for those of you wondering or not aware, that just means they improved the processing unit inside of the processor that helps you do some computational photography. So it has nothing to do with the camera hardware whatsoever.
Speaker 1:So, like Tori said, it kind of feels like with the camera that they're completely deceiving people because they're telling you that it has completely new hardware or not new hardware, but saying it has a new camera that's much improved, when it doesn't. All it really has is new software. And so a lot of people might see this and be like, oh well, I have a Z Fold 5, and the camera is not very good, because the camera on the Z Fold 5 is not good compared to the Ultra, the S24, s23, s22. It's pretty bad. And then I say, oh well, that's a good reason. I upgraded the Z Fold 6 because obviously the camera is going to be better than my Z Fold 5.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's turned pro Spoiler alert.
Speaker 1:The answer is it's not really that much better. I've looked at tons of camera samples hundreds of them for people who have the device and again I don't, because Samsung doesn't like me. I guess for some reason. Maybe I just spit too much truth about Samsung, even though I cover only Samsung. I'm just not willing to cover up their shortcomings. I try to keep it pretty straight shooting with them and that's why I don't get review units. I don't know, but I've looked at a lot of camera samples. It's not really much better than the t-fold five. It's certainly not worth a thousand dollar, eight hundred dollar, even upgrade once you do the trade in. That's a lot of money and the camera is not worth it. They change the look of the camera rings. That's why it almost feels like they're trying to deceive the consumer. Right?
Speaker 2:because they change the camera rings. That's where the extra hundred dollars went.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, they, that's why it's went. Yeah, yeah, that's why it's $100 and more. They had to change the look of the camera rings, the actual hardware. They're like ah, should we upgrade the internal hardware that makes the phone better, or should we just change the appearance and try to trick people? It feels like that's what they're trying to do, because the average consumer they're going to see this and be like oh pro, camera pro visual engine, oh pro, camera pro visual engine. That sounds like that's next level. And then they look at the camera rings and, oh, that's different than my Z Fold 5.
Speaker 1:I better go and buy it because that is going to make it better, and so that's kind of facetious. I don't like that trying to mislead the average consumer, and that's a lot of. What we try to do on my channel is try to inform people so they don't make bad decisions, because of course, you know I like making money and you know I like selling mystery boxes or getting you guys to participate in that Helps us do well for the channel. But I also don't want you to buy stuff you don't need. So you know, if you participate in the mystery box program, do it when you actually have a good reason to upgrade. You know I can always give you a mystery box down the road and we'll still make money off the affiliate links down the road. I don't want you to upgrade every single cycle just to help make me money or make Samsung money. I'd rather you keep your money and upgrade when it's appropriate, and for a lot of people this is not an appropriate upgrade.
Speaker 1:The camera also. I looked at comparisons to the foldables from China. Just there it's bad. I mean the Vivo in fact let me see if I can go back and I tried to show Tori but the Vivo Fold, which is the one that just came out in the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro has one of the best cameras for foldable, and I'll show you a comparison. This guy posted on Twitter. He's another influencer. This is the Z Fold 6. And I'll drop the link below in the show notes. Remember, countdown to video. We're three weeks away.
Speaker 2:We're going to have video for you guys, you can actually see these.
Speaker 1:It's going to be great. I'm figuring it out as we speak. Every week. I'm putting time into researching it. This is the Z Fold 6, and that is the Vivo X3 Fold 3 Pro. Look at the difference in brightness quality between the two and the indoor lighting. No, that is. I mean, it's substantial. Even looking at it on the monitor from far away and not on like a up close with the phone, you can tell the difference, and if you zoom in you can tell there's a huge difference in the detail as well.
Speaker 1:But uh, it's pretty, pretty painful for a 1900 phone to be this far behind the competition right um, so I I really I actually commented on this guy's photo because he's a guy who does a lot of you know, influencing stuff. I said it looks like a potato in comparison. That's what I said. Some guy responded to me laughing about it yeah, it looked really bad. It looks really bad. So you can definitely check that on the link and see what you think. But the camera is definitely not a reason to upgrade to the Z Fold 6 if you have a Z Fold 5. If you have a Z Fold 4, maybe I don't know, I mean still not really that much better, honestly, honestly, I mean I shouldn't say this again but it's not a good reason to upgrade unless you have like a Z Fold 3 or earlier for the camera, because nothing has changed almost in three years with the camera hardware in terms of the front camera, the inner cameras or the rear camera.
Speaker 1:So I don't know, samsung has really got to do something about that and maybe which we'll talk about here at the end maybe there might be another Fold coming this year.
Speaker 1:We've heard some rumors that Samsung might be feeling the pressure from companies like Vivo and Honor and they might do something they've never done before, which is release another variant of a foldable phone later in the year. They did this in the past for other phones, but not for the foldables, so we'll see. The last thing I want to touch on the other way, you know that the Fold was not a really big upgrade in terms of hardware. It's like 85%. After they talked about all the kind of superficial elements of the Fold 6 redesign, they're like, oh, it's a little bit wider, it's kind of boxier and it's a little thinner and lighter, and that's like all they had. And they're like, oh, look, the camera rings are different, and that was it. So then the rest of the time with the Fold 6 introduction. So then, the rest of the time of the Fold 6 introduction, they talked about software features, not even about the hardware.
Speaker 1:And the hard print. Yeah, they talked about all the Galaxy AI features. So just to run those down really quickly, because I did kind of want to talk about the different Galaxy AI features. We kind of talked about them Because, remember our good friend Ice Universe, he had already leaked these features and we discussed them on the last few podcasts and they were both, in fact, correct. I mean, ice universe is almost never wrong, so you know, if he says something about Samsung, you could take it to the bank and cash the check. They'll cash it for you. They don't even check, yeah.
Speaker 2:If there's a target, they don't even check.
Speaker 1:If he has the money. Oh, that's right. Yeah, but yeah, they'll cash the check for you if Ice Universe says it, and they were both there. So one of them is the portrait remix feature, where you can basically like turn someone into different kinds of styles with that AI, take a portrait photo and like make it have different stylistic, artistic interpretations. And then the other one, which was the big one, that was the AI draw feature. And the AI draw feature, which is the sketch to image, what it lets you do is we predicted it last week you sketch something with the S Pen and it turns it into whatever that thing is. That's what Ice Universe was kind of hinting at and that's what it was.
Speaker 1:It does look pretty cool, I have to say.
Speaker 1:I mean, you think you have to have a specific job or niche in mind to make this work, to help you with your job.
Speaker 1:So for most people, it's probably just like a fun feature. Yeah, but I do think it's a fun feature that you would probably use a lot, like you could generate any like little image which you could then like turn into like an emoji, because samsung has a thing that lets you turn your image to an emoji. I think that's like the use case I could see, like if there's an emoji that I want that doesn't exist, I could draw it, use the thing to convert it from, use ai to convert it to an image and then use samsung's converter to make that into an emoji and save it to my samsung keyboard. Of course, I'm a terrible artist, so the ai would probably think, like you know, if I wanted to draw a picture of like a root beer float, you would probably think that it looks like you know maple syrup or something I'll get completely wrong picture, so then my emoji will be entirely not what I intended.
Speaker 1:But if you're a decent drawer, then you could probably use this for that. I think that'd be pretty cool. But otherwise there wasn't a ton of features for One UI 6.1.1. There was a couple of foldable specific features, namely the Galaxy Z Flip 6 now has new flex window widgets for Samsung Health, smartthings, reminders, samsung News, and then Facebook, gmail, google Messages and Maps have all been optimized to use on the cover of the Flip. And then the Fold 6 has a side-by-side language converter view, so if you're having a conversation with someone, you can have their text on this side and then the translated text on the other side when you open up your fold.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really cool feature. For people who do business internationally with people who speak other languages, that could really be a feature that could help you with your work. So that's a productivity feature. I think that's pretty impressive. But otherwise they really didn't do too much. They changed the settings so that now there's a Galaxy AI menu instead of before you had to go deep into the settings to turn on Galaxy AI. You had to go to advanced features, advanced intelligence, and then enable the AI. So now it just says Galaxy AI, so you can tell they're trying to bring the AI to the forefront. Now, on the foldables, the S24 was kind of the launch of the Galaxy Eye and now it's kind of in the forefront of that, so they've added some stuff for sure. The one thing that I think is really kind of a big deal is a lot of people are wondering would the AI sketch to image work without the S Pen and it does work without the S Pen.
Speaker 1:So you don't need an S Pen to use that feature. But that also kind of negates what Ice Universe said, which is he said the S Pen would be an essential tool. That part he was kind of wrong on that, because you know you don't need it. But I guess if you want precise drawings to make your generated, your AI-generated images look better, you probably don't want to draw with your finger, because then definitely I'm a terrible drawer If I don't have the S Pen it'll be even worse, like no one will have any idea what my image is, and AI will be generating all kinds of weird amorphous shapes instead of like anything that resembles a real object.
Speaker 2:I don't want that.
Speaker 1:I don't want to scare my children, so. But yeah, so it doesn't require the S Pen, which is pretty cool, and it can definitely help, obviously, with the initial sketching, so I think people will like that. Oneui 6.1.1 is not coming officially to the Galaxy S series. We already talked about this on the previous podcast. But all the features are coming. It just won't be called when you I 6.1.1 later this month or early next month. The S 24, s 23, s 22 ultra, they will all get an update for one guy, 6.1. But it all has all the same code base as this version. For the foldables Typically Samsung uses the extra dot to denote foldable software.
Speaker 2:So it's like one.
Speaker 1:UI 6.1.1 is the next foldable release, which is kind of convoluted naming scheme for the UI. But I mean, hey, that's their code, I guess they do what they want.
Speaker 1:I don't think a lot of people understand why it has the extra dot, if you're not in the know in terms of samsung stuff. But that is kind of what what they're doing there. So, yeah, most of the features that they sold for the z-fold six were like look at all this cool stuff you can do with ai, like the translation and like how it can be a better tool for ai. But for people who already have an s24 ultra particularly, it's going to to get pretty much all the same features, except for the side-by-side translation, because it's not foldable, so it doesn't have a tablet form factor. But what's your thought story on the One UI 6.1.1 features? Do you think you'll use this stuff when it comes to your S22 Ultra?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, because I remember like an unpacked, like the very first few little like commercials I'll call them was all showcasing that I don't think I have like a niche for it.
Speaker 2:Besides, like if I had a like a fold in for like the translating, because I have that a lot happened that, like the high school or like you know, we have students who are coming from different you know countries and stuff that speak different languages, so sometimes it's helpful in translating. But I do think which I like that they did do like an upgrade with the flip with like Facebook. I see like a bunch of AI happening on Facebook, you know where, like they're drawing and like having like taking a picture and then you know, having an AI portrait of themselves, like I feel like if they focus on that, they'll win over a lot of people. And I just felt like, overall, the flip, what it had to offer, just felt more towards like the general consumer versus like before when I felt like it was only really going towards like a younger female audience. So, yeah, I think with all these upgrades, it's making the foldable seem like hey, like this would kind, or at least like there's something for everyone.
Speaker 1:I agree, and actually that reminds me we're going to talk about the Z Flip 6 next in full, but it reminds me of a feature they added for One UI 6.1.1 on the Flip.
Speaker 1:Now that Tori mentions it, there's another specific feature where now AI will look at your last if you allow it to, will scan your last seven text messages with someone and it will suggest like 20 different replies, quick replies that you can send from the cover screen so you don't have to unflip it, and so that could be very helpful, because the thing about the flip is most people who are buying the flip, there are people who are on the go, like you know they're, you know, young, like professionals, and maybe I'm not saying disproportionately women, but potentially, you know, they want to pull it out of their purse and then just to hit a quick reply and I have to unflip it every time. People who use the Fold are the exact opposite. I find most of the time, you know you rarely find someone. I've never found anyone who's like yeah, actually there was one guy.
Speaker 1:I forgot who it was. It might have been this guy, tim. Is it Tim who follows me? He was saying he was trying to decide between the fold six and the flip six and I was like man, that's a weird choice it's like they're completely different phones.
Speaker 1:He acknowledged that as well and on when he was talking to me about it on twitter and I was like it's like it's kind of a weird choice because they're so different. Like the fold, most people who have that are going to use it unfolded most of the time. Yeah, and that's how they want it. They want big and people have the flip. They're usually minimalist. They're on the. They don't want to have to necessarily unflip their phone. They want to be able to use the cover screen a lot of the time to take pictures, to send text messages, to even check some of their apps occasionally. So I think adding that feature to the flip in One UI 6.1.1 is a pretty big deal. So Samsung continues to make the cover screen more useful on the flip, adding more widgets allowing you to do more with text messages, and I think that's great. It's also a perfect segue into talking about the Z Flip 6, now that we've kind of waxed poetic on the Fold for about 20 minutes and of course, we're not completely done with it, because once I get the Fold in hand, I'll have a review on the podcast.
Speaker 1:I will make a review video as well. People have been clamoring for me to make review videos again and I'll be very honest honest for those of you who care out there. The reason I don't make some of my long review videos I used to make several years ago. They just don't get a lot of views and the time spent is just not worth the return. Like I don't. I don't get enough views to make enough money to make it worth the time.
Speaker 1:I used to make like 35 minute phone reviews and that takes like 30 hours of work. To make a 35 minute phone review I have to research it, take notes, take camera samples, audio samples for the speakers, and then I have to write a script because it's very hard to do that long of a video. Most of my videos I do without a full. You know I don't write a script ahead of time because I just don't like being scripted. I like to just kind of go.
Speaker 1:Flossy Carter is always one of my favorite YouTubers before I started doing it and he doesn't really use a script and I always like that style. It seems more authentic. But you have to write down some notes at least if you're going to do a 35-minute review. So it's a lot of work. So I will do a review on the podcast for sure. So if you want that full review and you want the long one you want to subscribe to the podcast, that's to get you subscribed to the podcast, because I will talk about it in depth and we'll we'll have some video by then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's going to be the big selling point. Tune into the first video podcast, because that's likely to be when I do the review of the fold six. It works out perfectly because I'll have it on the 23rd and then we'll get the review up that following podcast, which will be the first first one with video. So that'll be a massive reason to have video. So, talking about the Z Flip 6, though definitely, as Tori just alluded to, this is the bigger upgrade of the two phones, even though Samsung didn't give it as much fanfare. And I don't know that I'm really supposed to be saying this, probably not supposed to be saying it, but hey, do we really think that they're going to listen this deep into the podcast? The Samsung PR people told me that they're purposely this year, trying to push the fold over the flip.
Speaker 2:Of course, because it has higher margins, not like anyone didn't know this, but they've told me this.
Speaker 1:They didn't spend as much time on the flip, but it definitely is the bigger upgrade. So if you have a Z Flip 5, I would absolutely tell you to go out and pre-order a Z Flip 6. Because, for one thing, they're offering you $650 trading credit on the Z Flip 5. So you could get a Z Flip 6 for like $300. And that's a good deal Because it has a new camera. Unlike the Fold 6, who had no upgraded camera, it now has the same camera engine as the Galaxy S24. Not the Ultra, but the S24, the base model, which is really good.
Speaker 1:Bigger battery, an actual bigger battery, not just AI optimizations. They actually put a physically larger cell in there and less visible crease. Thinner when closed, slightly thinner when opened. Definitely a more durable hinge. I mean everything about this phone is improved.
Speaker 1:In addition to really subtle detail that maybe some casual people didn't notice, but I know a lot of the tech enthusiast crowd did the camera rings on the outside of the flip. When it's folded they match the color of the body of the phone. So if you look at the little rings around it, those colors match the rest. You know the back part of your phone, which I thought was a nice detail. So I got to be honest with you. I told you last week or maybe a couple weeks ago I'm not really a flip guy. I'm excited about getting the Z Flip 6 this time and actually using it.
Speaker 1:The last couple of years I haven't really done a flip review of any sort, but I may put my SIM in there for some time. I know I'll put it in the fold for the first week, but I may put my SIM in the flip and try to use it for five days to a week and see. I still feel like it's probably too narrow for my tastes in terms of when it's unfolded, because it's not very wide. But I feel like I could probably get away with using it because my main gripe with the flip before was camera was really bad. It's even worse than the fold in some instances previously. Now that it's upgraded it's not um and I've seen some camera samples of the flip. They look good and the battery life was awful on the old flip. So with the new processor and a bigger battery I'm optimistic. What did you think about the flip tory?
Speaker 2:uh, I actually, I really, I mean I kind of like in the same boat as you. Um, if I had to choose between the Fold 6 or the Flip 6, I would definitely go with the Flip 6. Just the whole presentation, like in the very beginning, like just how they just kind of showed that the Flip was just like an everyday kind of like, you know, casual user phone and how it can just, um, you know, apply to so many different things that you may encounter throughout your day, I was like I may want to flip six, even though it doesn't have a s pen sorry.
Speaker 1:What do you think about this? Do you want to review the flip six while I do the fold, because I can't do both the first week?
Speaker 2:no, I'll be down, okay, because I mean I can't.
Speaker 1:I mean, the thing is know I get all these products. People think it's great to be like a YouTuber or have a website covering tech because you get all the new products but like you can only review like one phone at a time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so like you still got to make the notes and observations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a bunch of garbage yeah, so I don't want to do that I mean, I'll eventually try the flip as well and give some thoughts, maybe on youtube, but we get tori's thoughts because I mean I can't really give full thoughts on both and since you're interested, we could have you take a look at the flip. I'll put my sim in the fold when it comes in, because I ordered a flip, of course, and they'll come in. I don't know what color, oh, I got. Yeah, someone asked about the colors I got. I ordered white in the fold. I don't know why, maybe just because samsung hasn't made a true white phone in a long time and I was kind of yearning for a true white phone.
Speaker 1:It's been a while um and so, and then the flip six. I got the craft black, which is like the carbon fiber looking black. So those are both samsung exclusive colors. You can't get those at best buy or anything. They're only on the samsung website. I also like to always go with the samsung exclusive. I like to be exclusive. You know what can?
Speaker 1:I say I'm an exclusive guy, although I have to be honest, I saw the navy blue fold in best buy and I kind of had some regrets on the white because the navy blue looks nice. I would say, if you're thinking about a fold and you don't necessarily want an exclusive color, if you're going to buy from your carrier or if you're going to buy from Best Buy which isn't a great idea right now because Samsung has the best deals until pre-order is over go with the blue. The navy blue looks nice. The pink also looks very nice. If pink is your color, it doesn't look bad. I think the pink looks very good as well. Before we conclude the fold versus flip kind of extravaganza and get into the other products which we are, Tori gave me some very interesting information tidbit. Actually, he told me this while I was scrambling, trying to shove my fist into the face of Samsung's affiliate program because I was so angry on Wednesday morning at them.
Speaker 1:He was sending me a message about his girlfriend, her thoughts on the full versus flip, and she's an iOS user, so I thought this was very interesting. So I'm going to let Tori tell you guys what he told me that she mentioned to him.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. So I was watching the unpack and she just kind of came downstairs and I was like, hey, you know, I was watching the unpack, and she just kind of came downstairs and I was like, hey, you know, I've been wanting to ask you this Would you rather prefer the fold or the flip? And she said, oh, I would rather get the flip, just because small is in. And I and I started to think, I was like, yeah, you know, like I feel like everyone, at least the average consumer, probably has these huge phones. But yeah, like you know, we're starting to see that pendulum swing back to small, as in. Yeah, that's what they want.
Speaker 1:It's kind of weird, right, because, like you know, like Tori said, it's a pendulum, like people are like. In the beginning, we got smartphones from our flip phones and our flip phones were had such small little screens like you could only play, snake on it couldn't do anything else so we were like I need a bigger screen.
Speaker 1:And then, you know, you got the iphone came out and then you got the motorola droid phones for android. They had like three inch screens and people are like, wow, this is great. But then, like a few years later it's like what if the screen was bigger? I could watch movies, I could play games better. And so then we got like four-inch screens and then people were like, but what if it was bigger? And so then Samsung took it all the way up with the Notes and now all the way up to where we have like 6.8-inch screen on our slab phones and some people are getting fatigued of it.
Speaker 1:There aren't very many small options out there. So I definitely feel her on this point. I think a lot of consumers, particularly, you know, who use Android phones almost all of them are massive. Now, you know, apple at least has the smaller Pro iPhone. So if you want to get an iPhone and you want the best phone, you can at least get the Pro or the Pro Max, and there aren't really any massive differences between them. There's sometimes some small camera differences, but mostly they're the same same processor, same materials, mostly same camera features, but an android.
Speaker 1:Like if you want the best phone, you got to get the biggest phone. Yeah, it's like samsung on the s line if you get the basic s24, you're missing out on a ton of features that the s24 ultra has. It's got no. S pen it's got no. You know a lot of the extra camera features, that the higher zoom and all that stuff. So people want, you know that, those features, those premium features, so they just get the bigger phone. But the question is do they really want a bigger phone or are they just being forced to have a bigger phone because you know all the best features are on the ultra model and that's what samsung just decided has to be almost seven inches.
Speaker 2:So they're like well yep, you just put that seven inch phone in your pocket. Yeah, no, I think that'd be the. She told me that'd be the only phone she would consider is the flip is uh, she had to do it would be well then.
Speaker 1:So that's perfect. Since you're going to take a look at the flip when I get it, you can get her thoughts, you can actually look at it and she can tell us some girlfriend thoughts on that. I'll also equivalently get Nicole to give me some thoughts on the fold. She's actually never used the fold or played with it much at all. She's seen it when I review them, but I've never really had her actually play with it. Maybe I'll force her to use it a little bit for some of her daily activity just to see what she thinks about it. Okay, so that kind of closes the book on the phone. So before we move on, I do want to remind you guys that if you haven't yet, make sure you sign up for our newsletter it's also going to be linked below in the show notes and the newsletter.
Speaker 1:We send it out every Friday. Typically we cover trips, tricks, tutorials, random Samsung facts, which is always fun. We have free wallpapers high definition wallpapers from my friend Vuk Andrik. He lets me include some high def wallpapers from his paid apps, so you'd have to pay for them If you join our newsletter. We send out some free ones every week. Sometimes he gives away free icon packs from his various icon packs as well. Lots of opportunities to get some cool stuff, some cool apps for your phone. And then also, like I said, samsung news as well, of course, that we post every week on the website, all curated kind of. If you don't want to log onto our website every day because you're busy, we send it out all in one newsletter on Friday.
Speaker 1:Now, this one this week was mostly about unpacked. That's just the way it is. Everything's about it this week, but in a general week there's a lot of tips and tricks and a lot of other news like software news, update news, all that kind of stuff that you want from samsung. Okay, so let's then get into the other products, non-phone products, and there were some big ones. This unpacked was long, one of samsung's longest unpacked events in quite some time, if I am correct. When I timed it actually went back and watched the replay. Um, the watch ultra let's talk about that next. And the watch seven, I guess as well, but it's less compelling because there's not as much new. But, uh, the watch ultra. It's not the seven ultra as we thought. It would be just watch ultra, which makes sense, because this is not the seventh ultra it's the first ultra they've ever made.
Speaker 1:They've never made an ultra before, so that makes sense because this is not the seventh ultra. It's the first ultra they've ever made. They've never made an ultra before, so that makes sense. We both ordered one of these so we'll both have some thoughts on the watch seven. I'm sorry, the watch ultra, but initial hands on that.
Speaker 1:I've watched from other creators and influencers and media people. It really seems like in general there's some software issues early. Namely, the software looks a little laggy, like some people scrolling through the UI, and it looks like it's very difficult to navigate around certain parts to get to the quick settings and I'm disappointed about that because that's something I've noticed on some of my past Galaxy watches on occasion when they get older. So having that out of the gate, I hope it's just pre-production software. Sometimes when they send you review units the software isn't like the final one that will go out with the retail unit.
Speaker 1:I get review units from other companies. Why Samsung doesn't send me them, I don't know, because everything I do is about Samsung. It's funny like Google sends me the new Pixel stuff every year, like next month the new Pixel devices come out. They just send me like a box of all the new phones and products. So they'll probably send me like the pixel 9 pro, the pixel full 2, the new pixel buds. It's like jeff, here you go, enjoy. But I don't even cover pixel that much. I do comparisons to samsung, but it's like where is samsung with a review and it's since? Google just sends me all their stuff. But uh, in terms of the watch ultra the other thing that's really disappointing and I know you were disappointed by this story go ahead and tell them what is the very disappointing fact about the watch ultra no rotating bezel, so no rotating bezel.
Speaker 1:We had talked about this in the podcast previously about how much we both love the rotating bezel and it looked like in the renders the original images of the watch ultra that it was going to have the rotating bezel yeah, because it looked like it looked, like we talked about this, how it was.
Speaker 1:Uh, an inscribed circle right in a square. That was the design and we're like, well, that must be because that bezel just rotates around that square piece and that is that is false. So you can still use, use your finger to go around the outside with some haptic rotating, but it's not a physical rotating bezel.
Speaker 2:I'll even add, at least from what I saw. That's where I saw a lot of the lagginess in is whenever I would see someone trying to use the rotating, it just seemed very laggy.
Speaker 1:Yep, I agree, that's true, and so maybe it's because and it's a good thing to point out maybe it's because they're trying to optimize One UI 6 watch, which is the software that runs on it, to work with a non-rotating bezel, because, of course, they've never had a digital rotating bezel before. So that could be part of the issue is that they need to optimize and work out some of the bugs, but I think it's incredibly. I think we both agree it's very disappointing that there's no physical rotating bezel. That's a feature that a lot of people liked from the even from the early Samsung watches like the Gear Sport had the rotating bezel. They introduced it.
Speaker 1:People always liked it. It's always distinguished Samsung from other smart watches, and so I thought that was great. You know, I don't. I'd be honest, I don't have a lot of favorable impressions of the watch early on. I hope I'm wrong when I get it, but I mean we talked about how it looked like an Apple watch ultra on the podcast before, but when they actually saw the event, I mean it's, it's much worse than we even thought.
Speaker 1:Like, like they copied the night mode from the Apple watch, the one that has, like, the infrared, looking on the black face when it's when it's dark outside. It uses the ambient light sensor. It's got the orange button. It's got the action button that allows you to press it and do an action. It's got a similar looking watch face with all like the multi-colors for the active watch face.
Speaker 2:Uh, the bands are copied from the apple watch like the.
Speaker 1:The two stock band options are basically just copied, copy and pasted directly from the Apple website and they just changed the name. I mean, it's blatantly bad. And the thing is, I don't have a problem with borrowing Apple's designs if you improve something about it. In fact, we'll talk about that with a product in a minute, which is the Buds 3 Pro, where they did something similar, but the product actually is improved.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure this watch ultra is going to be improved in anything, except one area. I'm pretty sure the battery life will be better than the regular watch seven because it's just bigger. The watch is massive. It's 49 millimeters. So how could it not be? You know, 47 millimeters? Sorry, the Apple watch is 49. So they did make it smaller than the Apple Watch Ultra Small slightly, but it's still massive compared to the 40mm and 44mm Galaxy Watch 7. I think the battery life will be much better, which is probably what a lot of people buying the watch want. They want really high battery life because they're enthusiasts.
Speaker 1:But I'm not sure they really copied the best parts of the Apple Watch. The best parts of the Apple Watch, the best parts of the Apple Watch, are how fluid and smooth the UI is. It doesn't look like they copied that the app support the way it's kind of built in. I don't think they copied that either because it's still running the same Wear OS that the previous One. Ui 6 hasn't changed a lot. So I mean I don't know, I'm a little skeptical lot. So I mean I don't know, I'm a little skeptical this product, perhaps more than any of the other products about its utility and its place in in the lineup. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 2:story because you ordered one, we both ordered one you know, overall, like looking at the watch ultra, I feel like just laziness, like yeah, like they copied. But I just feel some of these things are just kind of laziness. Um, I saw in the unpack they were really um kind of putting everything into like the health wellness app, um, which you know, I know that's gonna go seamlessly and with the galaxy ring, uh Ring when we get to that. But I mean, overall I don't think I was that impressed with what I was seeing and I think the big nail for me was the lack of the rotating bezel. But I mean, like you said, they are trying something new without the rotating bezel, so maybe this could be their first time, you know, out the gate just trying something new and they have bezel. So maybe this could be their first time out the gate just trying something new and they have to work out the kinks. But overall I don't think I was very impressed by the Watch 7 or Watch Ultra, and we'll give it a fair shot.
Speaker 1:Me and Tori are not writing it off. We're both going to have one so we'll both give some thoughts once we've used it for a week or so. So that podcast the first one in August where we also do the video is going to be like a massive one because we're going to have all the products and we'll finally have some review thoughts on them. The previous one we'll have just probably gotten the products, because that last podcast in July the products were supposed to come by July 24th. So I won't have, I'll have some initial thoughts, but I don't have a lot of thoughts yet about the devices. But that first one in August we have a ton of thoughts and we also have videos so we can show you the products and show you what we're talking about. So you guys will be able to see that. But the watch ultra is definitely the one I'm probably the most down on of everything, just because I mean I had some expectations, since they were taking inspiration from the Apple watch design that it would also mirror in terms of fluidity. Hopefully they would improve some of that stuff. But we'll see. We'll see when we get the production unit and we get the production software in and see how nice the Watch Ultra really is.
Speaker 1:The Galaxy Ring is the next thing. It's a little boring to me but I do see and we talked about this substantially before we started recording but I do see the appeal for a lot of people because I thought about it and I like to wear a regular watch non-smart watch on the weekends or whenever I'm not working, because I don't want. Also, I just like nice watches, um, and they look better than smart watches in general. Like you know, if you have a nice watch, it's going to look better on your wrist If you're going out, in my opinion, then anything an Apple watch, galaxy watch doesn't matter the platform. The main thing for the smartwatch is the utility right, like the exercise tracking If I'm in the gym or the notifications.
Speaker 1:Some people might not want to wear a smartwatch. They might want to wear their you regular, daily nice watch all the time. Some people are watch enthusiasts and so in that case the galaxy ring does make sense, but it doesn't do as much as the watch in terms of activity tracking. It does basic steps and like activity levels and some of your health scores, but it does do some other stuff that you don't necessarily get with the watch, like full sleep monitoring. Uh, it's going to allow you to basically check your skin temperature, some of the cycle tracking and stuff for women, but, uh, the one thing that uh killed it for me in terms of the thing I wanted the most, that they didn't put in and I'll leave with this is they did not put nfc in the watch, because that would have let you make payments with your watch, and I would have liked that you don't just with your watch, and I would have liked that you don't just tap my finger and then I have to move my watch.
Speaker 1:It's weird, it's kind of weird to move your wrist to certain payment terminals. Yeah, well, my finger, I just go boop and I pay for it. So I just plus. It would just been like a fun tech demo, because you know, people are always freaked out when you have something new, uh like when you're paying with something new. When I first first started paying with my watch so many years ago, I don't even know how many people would always freak out At Target. Samsung used to have MST, which would allow you to pay with your watch or phone even if you didn't have NFC, because most terminals require NFC. Mst actually worked with a magnetic stripe reader. So I would love going to like Target because they didn't have NFC terminals yet and they'd be like oh no, we don't take Apple Pay and I would just be like boop.
Speaker 1:And it would work and they'd be like oh my God, you're a warlock or a witch, or a witch warlock, I don't know which one.
Speaker 1:But I would always love that. But Samsung got rid of MST. I don't really know why, I think for security reasons. But the NFC payments not being in the watch really takes away the one big advantage I thought it had over the competition which is the Aura Ring, because they also don't have NFC. I thought Samsung could have killed it if they had the NFC payments in the watch. What do you think about NFC in the watch? Do you?
Speaker 2:think you would maybe use that. I mean, I always of like keep the phone you know like near me for for that and like kind of like what you said. I don't wear the watch like all the time, especially like on the weekends, but uh, I think you know, with more and more places are um allowing you to use like samsung pay, like that would be a lot easier to use.
Speaker 1:It's a little easier than the wrist.
Speaker 2:I feel like yeah, it's easier to tap my finger and move my wrist.
Speaker 1:It's like a weird motion to use. It's a little easier than the wrist. I feel like it's easier to tap my finger and move my wrist. It's like a weird motion to do that with the watch. That's the reason I tend to pay with my phone more than my watch when I have my Galaxy Watch on, because I think it's easier. It's just less awkward to take out my phone and tap it and even though the watch is right there, I just kind of do a weird motion.
Speaker 2:It. It's not natural. I think with the Galaxy Ring, what they're really just trying to home in on is the health stuff on it, but maybe, since this is the first time Samsung is doing this, I think down the line I can see them eventually adding this I was told by someone at SamMobile and yes, I talk to the people at Sam mobile, you know sometimes on Twitter, uh, and we're not complete enemies.
Speaker 1:You know we we sometimes are frenemies no, I'm just kidding. But uh, I talked to someone at Sam mobile and they have some more press contacts than me because Samsung likes them and they don't like me and someone told them, I guess, that the reason that they could not put in a C this year is because of security reasons and they couldn't get FTC certification. So that is potentially the reason is basically because with the watch you have to have like a pen on the watch when you have payments, right, you have to have a pen set up passcode and on the ring there's no way to put in a passcode. So technically anyone could just take your ring and just be like paying with your stuff everywhere. It's like boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop and they just there's no way to secure it. So they have to rethink like how that's going to work to make it seamless.
Speaker 1:They have some ideas, I guess, and so maybe, as you said, it might come. Yeah, that seems to be the reason. I kind of wish that they had not teased the nfc, because they teased that it could happen. Maybe, like back in february when they introduced the ring, they originally like hyped it up. They should have never said anything if they didn't think they were going to be able to do it, because people got on the idea that it was going to have nfc. You know, people always the media, we always me.
Speaker 1:I'm part of the media we've run with the idea of like all the hype, and so everyone published all these articles like, yeah, galaxy Ring is going to have NFC, it's going to destroy. You know, it's a differentiating feature over the Aura Ring. And then it doesn't happen and people are disappointed. So it's always better to like err on the side of caution, like, if you're not going to have the feature, don't even mention that it could potentially be included, because I think you'll disappoint people. But otherwise, in terms of the Galaxy Ring, another big piece of breaking news.
Speaker 1:Well, not immediately breaking news right now, but as of last night, the Galaxy Ring is completely sold out on Samsung's website, every color and every size gold, titanium, silver, titanium, black in every single size that they offer, which I think was like 10 sizes. It's a lot. So there are two ways to think about this, and so I talked about this yesterday a little bit on Twitter. There's two ways to think about it. Either it's super popular and that's why it sold out, or and this is the camp I'm in they didn't make very many of them, so it sold out because it just weren't very many of them for people to buy.
Speaker 2:That's what.
Speaker 1:I think Right. People always like see the sold out page, and sometimes companies use this to build hype on new products, like Apple does. They're notorious for this. Samsung doesn't do it as often Like if Apple has a new product and they really want to get it hyped, they'll just make a low yield of them at the beginning, so that then, of course, if I only make 5,000 units Samsung's a massive company, so is Apple At least 5,000 of them will sell in the first couple days, and so then I could build some hype. I can be like send out a press release to all the various websites and blogs and say, oh look, the Galaxy Ring is sold out, everyone loves it. But and say, oh look, the Galaxy Ring is sold out.
Speaker 1:Everyone loves it, but they don't know how many I sold, because I could have sold 100. I could have sold 100,000. And so a lot of people are thinking over on social media. They're like this means the Galaxy Ring is like this massively popular device. It doesn't mean that. And just as a little bit of inside data and insights I'm a data guy because I used to be a mathematician We've now got 275 people who filled out the verification form. Let me show you the product breakdown.
Speaker 2:Look how many people ordered Galaxy Rings out of the 275. 3% 3.6%.
Speaker 1:3.6%. Very small number of people who did the mystery boxes ordered the Galaxy Ring and so, given this is not like the biggest sample size in the world, but almost 300 people and these are Samsung enthusiasts, so you've got to keep that in mind. These people who get the mystery boxes from me, they're usually people who are tuned in to Samsung, so they're much more likely to buy a Galaxy Ring than the average consumer. So, even though it's not a huge sample size and of course, I'll probably try to share this aggregated data when we finally get all the verifications it could be 500 people by July 23rd what the final number is but it's the least ordered product of any of the ones that we offered accessories for by far. We're looking at the data right now. I tend to lean I have a little more information from this than other people might uh, I tend to lean towards the camp that they didn't make very many of these yeah and that's why it's completely sold out.
Speaker 1:Because you know, if they were selling a hundred thousand of these, a lot of the people who are enthusiasts to go through my mystery boxes they would have bought a lot more. I mean because the people who are enthusiasts are going to be the ones who buy a lot. I would expect that if they had sold 100,000 of these, at least half the people who requested a mystery box, who verified, would have probably bought a ring, but 10 people, which is out of 275, 2.6%. I don't know. I don't think they sold 100,000 rings and also I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't think they sold 100,000 rings and also if you want one, it's still available at Best Buy.
Speaker 1:So if you want to go to Ori and check it out, you can, and they have the sizing kit on the counter. So if you want to buy a Galaxy Ring, best Buy has it in stock so you could still order it and get it on release day, july 24th. Since Samsung is quote unquote sold out, you know of how many ever they made you can still get all the sizes and different. You know colors from Best Buy and you can go into a Best Buy if you live in a relatively large city. Now, if you live in like rural Montana or something I don't know, if the Best Buy will have the new devices they might not, so I don't want to speak for everybody but will have the new devices.
Speaker 1:they might not, so I don't want to speak for everybody, but if you live in a large city, every best buy in phoenix has all the new phones plus the galaxy ring with a sizing kit, so you could go in there, try it on and make sure that the sizing kit you know fits. I ordered the wrong size on launch day so I had to go back and order one from best buy in my correct size, because I ordered one that was definitely not going to work for me. And so if you want a Galaxy Ring some people are trying to sell them on eBay for like $600 now resell them. If you want one in the size that I bought, which is a size 12, it's not the size I need. I need a size 11. I didn't cancel my order from Samsung because it's part of my fold order and I don't want them to cancel that because that would really make me angry.
Speaker 2:So I'll just wait for it.
Speaker 1:And then, if anybody wants it, I'll sell it to you what I paid. If not, I'll return it later. But I'm not going to cancel the order because Samsung is really bad at logistics and I'll just like cancel my fold and then I won't get my fold on time and then that wouldn't be good for me able to make you know tutorials and coverage that'd be a disaster and so I'm not going to invite samsung to screw me over.
Speaker 1:Uh, I'll just wait until I get in and I can return it or I can sell it to one of you guys if you want it. Um, if they really are sold out, at best buy and stuff. By that time they might be selling for resale. So if you want one, um, did you get any thoughts from your girlfriend about the ring? Did she say anything about the ring?
Speaker 2:uh no, she said she'll probably never wear something like that. But I think it's just more so, like it's so new. And you know, when I think about like some of my friends who are like really big into their health, I can see them wanting to to wear this. I could go on their you know weekly runs and go to the gym often, but I think for like the average people who are probably not going to the gym and stuff every day, like I don't see them wanting probably to get the range just because their main selling point for this has been the health, um, but you know, I do think sleep tracking too.
Speaker 1:So if you want to track, in fact, nicole wife mentioned to me that she might want to try it for sleep tracking purposes, because she's always worried about, she feels like she doesn't get enough sleep because, of course, well, she's up with a three-month-old right now.
Speaker 2:So am I. So of course we don't get much sleep.
Speaker 1:So I told her like don't worry about it too much right now. I mean it's going to tell you your sleep is terrible. So you know, you're just asking for confirmation of what you already know. That's called confirmation bias there. You already know that you're going to find out that it's bad and so you just want to see how bad it is. But she said she would consider wearing it. I told her I was like well, they already sold out at Samsung, so if you want one then we have to go to Best Buy.
Speaker 1:You've oh yeah, that's a big deal too Closing, and you know, at the end of the day, that was their big pitch. So you know it's interesting that a few months ago it leaked that it was going to have a subscription, just like the Oura Ring. And so one of two things I think happened Samsung either leaked that themselves so they could then cash in on the positive press when they didn't have one, or the other option is they were going to have a subscription, but then, when Ice Universe leaked it, they were like, oh man, people don't like this.
Speaker 2:We better get rid of the subscription.
Speaker 1:So they decided to change the pricing model once the leak came out and they saw the backlash and I made a video roasting them for that too and telling them. We made a podcast where the title was about that too a few weeks ago, about how much we did not want to see subscription models. So maybe they're like, hey, maybe we should just dump that. Um, they do charge a little bit more than the base model, aura ring up front, but you don't have to pay the subscription. So aura charges six dollars a month to use all the features. So I'd rather pay up front, know what I'm paying, and I don't have to pay again to use it for the hardware product personally. So so, anyway, you guys, definitely let us know what you think about the Galaxy Ring.
Speaker 1:I'm very curious, like, if you ordered a Galaxy Ring, what was your main motivating factor? It seems like a lot of people it's either persistent health tracking or sleep tracking seems to be like the main motivating factor. And also curious if people think that NFC is something they would like to see. I don't know how Samsung will solve the security issue, because there's no way to type a pin on your watch. What I was thinking is maybe they could set up like a tap pattern where you use another finger to tap it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because they could use the vibration motor. So like you tapped it to the terminal and use your other finger to tap on the ring three times or something, but then of course there's a problem with like consistency of the timing. So, but then of course there's a problem with like consistency of the timing, so like you've got to do like three taps in the same cadence. You do it too fast and it won't work. Yeah, so they really have to experiment with that to make it secure. But I'm hopeful maybe nfc will come to the galaxy ring 2 next year. Um, if there is one, we'll find out because, like I said, we don't know if they sold 5 000 or 100 000 of these. We just know that they're sold out for now on samsung's website. Yeah, um, okay, so now let's get to our favorite product of the show.
Speaker 1:I think both of us think of the most positive sort of press around, this particular product is actually the cheapest product that was on offer at the Galaxy Unpacked event, and that's Buds 3 and Buds 3 Pro. Now, they're both basically kind of like the Galaxy Watch Ultra. They're kind of an Apple clone in the sense that they look exactly like the AirPods Pro, but Samsung did do a few things to refine the AirPods design. In this case, I think they did some things that actually changed the aesthetic and made it look a little better. Um, the stem is actually a little longer than the airpods pro by a little bit. Uh, they put the blade lights on there, which we've talked about at length. Um, so you know, I don't know if that's really a reason to upgrade, but some people think that's cool, something the airpods pro don't have.
Speaker 1:Um, and it's got a brand new case that also resembles the AirPods and a new color. So it's a nice silver titanium color, which is the one that I ordered, and in addition to all of that, which is the most important thing, they improve the audio a ton on these headphones. The one thing that you can say about Apple versus Samsung you can debate the phones, because obviously they make different types of phones for different audiences. Apple makes phones for the user who wants to think not at all when using their phone. Samsung makes it for enthusiasts who like to customize, and that's fine. But when it comes to Buds, samsung has always been ahead on audio quality.
Speaker 1:I have a pair of AirPods Pro. They don't sound nearly as good as the Buds 2 Pro and now the buds 3 pro sound way better. I've listened to a bunch of people's opinion. I know you watch flossy carter's video. I watched some of it as well and I watched a couple of other people's hands on. Uh, I feel very good in saying that these are a must upgrade from the buds 2 pro because not only do they have this new sound improvement, they also have the usability improvement of the stem design so you're not going to accidentally trigger. You know the touch controls when you're like adjusting the fit.
Speaker 1:Every time I'm running with those earbuds or at the gym and they start like inching out a little, I try to adjust them as always, like skipping the track or pausing it. I'm glad not to deal with that anymore because that means I can use them as one of my main pair of buds. I listen to kind of all the time, and so what are your thoughts? I know you're excited about the Buds 3 Pro. What are some of the things that you were excited about from the event on this product?
Speaker 2:I mean literally everything. I think at first the stem kind of like steered me away in just how much it looked like the AirPods, because I really do love the buds too. I think those are probably like the best buds I've ever had. But I mean it didn't seem like they didn't sacrifice on anything. Most people are still saying that the comfortability is still good, because one of the things I really liked about the Buzz 2 was just how comfortable they felt in your ear and just how well they kind of stayed.
Speaker 1:But I mean I am very impressed with the Buzz 3 Pro and definitely leaning towards getting those. Yeah, so I'm looking at the product page right now on Samsung's website and some more breaking news right now. If you want the Buds 3 Pro, samsung is currently sold out of the silver color until the end of August or middle August, so they're backordered for a whole month. I ordered the silver color myself. Back ordered for a whole month. I ordered the silver color myself. You can still get the white color, um, which look even more like airpods because they're also white, uh, by july 24th if you want them.
Speaker 1:so if you don't care about the color, um, but talking about some of the features, some of the big things they talked about, um, they've got now audio that adapts to your surroundings. So, like using ai to help with that audio, tailor fit to best fit you, so your ears, like optimizes for your shape. You've got the touch controls are redesigned. With the stem you can do live translation in real time, which is something that pixel buds from Google used to have had for a while, and Samsung kind of worked with Google, I think, a little bit to kind of refine this a little bit. Basically, if, if someone's talking to you in another language, then you know they'll say like hola and you'll hear hello in English, so it automatically translates it as it comes through your headphones.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really cool feature as well. Redesigned case, which is supposed to be more durable. It does look like the AirPods case, but it does look like it's more durable and if you own a Samsung TV, I'm actually pretty excited about this. If you have a Samsung TV, you can now use surround sound with the Buds 3 Pro simulated surround sound. So this is very useful, for this is probably something that Tori is like.
Speaker 1:You know why would I want to listen, to watch TV with headphones on? But if you have little kids and they're trying to sleep at night, you can't be blasting your really nice sound bar. I mean, I have a Sonos sound bar for my 85-inch Samsung TV in the living room, but at night I can't enjoy it because the kids are asleep, so I can't crank that up, so I use my headphones, and so it's nice. If you just have your Buds, you don't want to get over your headphones. You can just pop those out and now you can get simulated surround sound if you have a Samsung TV. So it's a pretty cool feature.
Speaker 1:I mean, they upgraded everything about the Buds 3 Pro. I'm pretty confident, like I said, in saying that this isn't the one upgrade. Like if I had Buds 2 Pro and I had the money, then I would definitely upgrade. Like I wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger on this particular upgrade, whereas all the other devices it's kind of up to like. Oh well, the Z Fold 6, you really need to be an enthusiast, or you shouldn't, because it's minimal upgrades and if you're really not an enthusiast, keep your Z Fold 5.
Speaker 2:And it's $100 more. Yeah, yeah, and it's $100 more.
Speaker 1:So after trade-in you're going to pay almost $ thousand dollars. If if you're a z-flip 5 user, I would say I would lean towards upgrading, like if you care about camera and battery life and most people probably do so, that's probably the other one where I would say most I'd most likely recommend people upgrade from the previous year. Um, the watch and the ring. It's just like the watch. I'm like we said, I'm on the fence about it. I don't know how good it will be. We'll have to get it in for review and find out. The Ring is basically like your guess is as good as mine because it's a new product that no one knows that one's like an adventure.
Speaker 1:If you're a gambler, if you're an adventurous person, you could go ahead and pay $400 and maybe it'll be good, Maybe it'll be absolutely awful. I couldn't tell you because this is the first one. But then the Buds they redesigned the controls. They made the audio better. It now does AI stuff, it does live translate. It's got a more durable case and the actual they made a case for the case, like a little case that goes around your charging case that looks like it's better than the old one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that. I ordered one of those too.
Speaker 1:I mean, everything that they did with the Buds 3 Pro seems like it's a win and they did with the buds 3 pro seems like it's a win and if you go listen to some early impressions. Like I said, flossy carter, I've been a huge fan of him for years. I mean I started watching him about two years before I started my own channel and that's already been 10 years since I started doing this, so he's been doing it longer than me and I've been doing it for a whole decade. I started watching him before I started and I just always love his reviews because he always gives kind of like I try to do it like real insight where he doesn't care, even though the brands you know Samsung sent him the review and it's easy. He doesn't hold back what he thinks and I really like that. Some people try to skew their you know, their opinion, their reviews towards, you know, trying to get review units.
Speaker 2:Obviously, I don't do that because they don't send me any, so I might as well just set it right there, and so I might as well just said it right there.
Speaker 1:I've certainly said plenty of negative things today, so that's just the way it is. I'm not going to tell you some stuff. That's not true, even if it helps me make affiliate money. I'd rather you keep your money and then support us when it's time to jump for the right upgrade, because there will always be a good upgrade down the line. A couple of just kind of aside, like funny things that I wanted to mention. There's a couple couple funny moments in the impact. The first one was the nose subscription model. They said that like 10 times when they talked about the galaxy ring. I just found it really funny because they're like teasing the media. They're like, yeah, we know, you guys said it and you were wrong and they just kept saying it over and over again and then even like in the press materials it says like no subscription.
Speaker 1:Next to the galaxy ring uh. And then the lady who was like one of the product designers for the fold team. She came up and one of the first things she said is like, let's talk about the fold six. It's leading the foldable space and innovation. It seemed like she was like not believing it.
Speaker 1:She's like a little chuckle to herself, which I thought was very funny because, like, obviously, as we talked about, they're not leading the innovation in design or camera software experience. I would say they are, but definitely not in designer camera. And that's what she was talking about was the hardware. And then, of course, we talked about earlier the fake pro visual camera upgrade for the Z fold six. Just like they've decided to be Apple, they're like shameless about it. Now they're just like we're going to use buzzwords. You guys are going to buy it and no one even knows what kind of hardware is inside of it. You know, unless you actually read their really fine print, but otherwise you'll never know what's inside the phone. And they really went that way. Kind of a bummer to me. I wish they would go back to caring a little more about their tech conscience audience, because they have a more tech conscience, you know audience, than Apple. Apple's just like, yes, they don't care, they don't want to know what's in there. Like we don't want to know what processors in the phone. Just tell us if it does anything new that might be useful for us in daily life. And Samsung's really going that way now. They're just like, well, let me tell you what it might be able to do to help you, but let's not tell you any of the technical specifications, and I'm not a big fan of that because that's not appealing to their audience. There's plenty of people who like what Samsung has always been about, like innovation, customization, and they're just kind of going away from that.
Speaker 1:The last thing before we wrap up the unpack recap and get into the app of the week in the Q&A is some people were asking this is actually a question that someone was asking me as well, so it's actually kind of part of the Q&A, but early because I put it in the notes early. I just it's been a long week and I probably didn't organize these. So it says should we expect the Z Fold 6 Ultra slash Slim later this year, as Samsung faces competition from Chinese foldable companies like Honor? And so there's been a rumor for a few weeks that Samsung is going to release another Fold 6, maybe in October or November which would be called the Ultra or the Slim, and so what it would potentially have is better cameras, lighter, wider cover screen, less noticeable crease on the inside and potentially even though I don't think this is going to happen a built-in S Pen.
Speaker 1:The reason that people think they're going to do this is they have a product like this in the pipeline. People have seen hints of it, that it's in development, but they're not sure if they want to release it this year or they want to wait until next year. And some people think they might pull the trigger on this because they have a lot of competition from Honor, from Vivo, which we talked about earlier. These they have a lot of competition from Honor, from Vivo, which we talked about earlier. These companies are putting out foldables that have amazing cameras that blow away the Fold 6. They have much thinner foldables with much wider cover, displays and creases that look much less noticeable than the Fold 6. And so more and more the media is saying well, the Fold 6 is good, but it's not the best hardware.
Speaker 2:You can get.
Speaker 1:And Samsung obviously doesn't like that because they don't want a but in there when anyone's talking about their products, and so I would say I'm 50-50 on this. The reason I don't think they'll do it is because their current head of the mobile division, tm Rowe, is a guy who, since he took over, he's not huge on innovation. He's the one who's kind of steered Samsung towards the. Let's be more like Apple and just have big buzzwords and less on specs and appeal more to the average consumer and not so much to the tech fan. I can't really see him doing this unless he's forced. I feel like he would rather wait and release this product next year as the Z Fold 7, because then obviously they have more time to refine it.
Speaker 1:One of the things he's taken from Apple is let's not release a new innovative product every year, because that means they have more bugs. That's what Samsung used to do just release new stuff and then there would be a lot of bugs. People didn't care because they were like I can get the newest stuff now and Apple won't have those stuff for four years. Samsung had the Note and it was like I can get the newest stuff now and apple won't have those stuff for like four years, like samsung had the note and it was a massive screen, and apple didn't come up with a big screen phone for four years later. But he's really taking the approach of you know, let's not do that, let's wait till it's mature and then release it, and then doesn't have bugs and the software is good, but then no innovation. So I'm 50, 50, uh, what do you think? To where you think we'll see a z fold 6 ultra later this year?
Speaker 2:uh, I'm kind of like 50 50 on it as well. Um, with them already having like with the s line, like the ultra and stuff like that. Like I feel like at some point the foldables will get like an ultra and a slim version to appeal more to like the casual users for, like the slim or, you know, having something that's even more luxurious, like with the ultra. I don't think it's going to happen this year. I can see it, you know, maybe happening next year around the same time, but I think those would be, or at least those would put Samsung, if not at the competition, in front of the competition.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the other thing too we got to talk about, which Tori kind of mentioned, is if they release one in October, november, it's going to do two things that Samsung is not going to like One. They just released this Fold 6. If they release a better one in November, October, no one's buying this one ever again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, who's an enthusiast? I don't touch that.
Speaker 1:And so this phone is going to get cannibalized in terms of the sales and the people who bought this phone right now are going to be super, super angry Because they just bought an inferior phone for $1,900. Yep, and you released a better phone of the same form factor three or four months later. And you released a better phone of the same form factor three or four months later. Oneplus used to do this and people used to be super angry because they just bought a phone very expensive. You release a better one in the same lineup three or five months later. That's going to make people mad.
Speaker 1:Also, if you do that now, you put people who are actually Galaxy S fans in a predicament and you probably cannibalize Galaxy S25 Ultra sales because that's going to launch in January. But if you make a wider fold, some of those S people might switch to the fold, because that's what a lot of the people like me are saying, like if the fold is wider and it's still thin, I might try it over my Ultra if it had Ultra cameras. So if you make a Z Fold 6 Ultra, you might take like half of your S25 Ultra sales, and so it seems like you're really cannibalizing by doing that your different lines and you're kind of muddying up the product lineup.
Speaker 1:Just from like a business perspective. It doesn't seem like a good idea. Even though I know they're facing pressure from these other companies, samsung still doesn't really have any pressure in the US Because those Chinese companies don't sell phones here. Uh, and the us is a huge market. They're pretty much the unquestioned leader. Google has the pixel fold but it's like minuscule compared to the galaxy fold. Like they sell one pixel fold for like every 10 000 galaxy folds that samsung sells. So like that's not a competition. That's you know google has product but they just don't put enough marketing behind their hardware. Google makes $100 billion of dollars from search and ads. Hardware is just like a project for them. This is like a project we can afford to blow $20 billion on because we make a trillion dollars from search, ads and stuff. This is like a $20 billion project, no big deal. They don't care. They don't care if they make money from hardware. I mean they want to show like what they think Android should look like on a phone. It's kind of a demo for them. But I mean they do make some money. You know they make some revenue, but I don't think they care as much about making a profit because they never really lean as as they probably could. In my opinion, we'll talk more about that too, because we will talk a little about Pixel versus Samsung when it comes out next month Because, like I said, I will have the Pixel devices. Google sends me all of them, so I mean that's nice. I like getting review units and we'll compare it to the Samsung phones. For sure there's people always interested in that.
Speaker 1:Let's move on to the app of the week, a little bit of a different app app of the week this week. I dug in my archives. I went back through all the apps I've ever downloaded and I was looking at like apps I used to use, but I don't use that much. And the reason I actually dug this one out is because, as we were talking about earlier, I went to see a movie this week with my son, my wife. I saw inside out too, and I was like I know what's going to happen in this movie.
Speaker 1:He's four, he's going to need to go pee at some point, and and so I need to know like where is the time in the movie where I could encourage him. Hey, do you want to take a bathroom break? And then I don't miss much of the plot. And so, as with a lot of things, there's an app for that and it's called RunPee, and it does exactly what the title of the app says it tells you what time in a specific movie that you should optimize to go run pee, and so if you need to take a potty break in a movie, you can download run pee and it will tell you, basically without revealing spoilers.
Speaker 1:It doesn't really give you too many spoilers, but it just tells you like, here's some places in the movie where it's basically filler, it's not key to the plot, and you can go and pee and then, while you're using the bathroom, on your walk to the bathroom or back, pull out your phone, quickly read the summary of what happened and then, when you get back to your chair in the theater, you won't have missed a major plot point. But you also won't have missed anything because they tell you the small plot elements that you did miss depending on how long you were gone to the bathroom, did miss depending on how long you were gone to the bathroom, and it's really cool. You checked it out, tori, you downloaded it.
Speaker 2:Do you think this is a useful app? Oh yeah, no for sure. I'm someone who, like I try to go to the bathroom before I go to the movies. Like I kind of mentioned before, I'm a very huge avid moviegoer. So I was kind of checking it out, for I just saw Inside Out 2, and I was kind of checking it out, for I just saw inside out too, and I was trying to compare and, um, it even tells you like when to start the timer.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, it tells you whether, how many P breaks there are. Then they also tell you, um, hey, like either you should really take this time if you really need to, or, hey, if it's a emergency, you know. Um, or only if it is an emergency, you know, take this time if you really need to. Or, hey, if it's an emergency, you know, or only if it is an emergency, you know, take this time. But the spoilers are, it's not even really spoilers, but they give you like a nice little brief synopsis of what happened and, comparing it to what I saw for Inside Out 2., I was like, yeah, no, I think that lines up pretty well and I'm going to go see Maxine later on today after recording this, and you know I already have it fired up ready to roll, just in case if I need to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I kind of chose this one for two reasons. One, because I needed it and I hadn't used it in a while. I dug into the archives. I wanted something different than just like customization apps so I could give you guys something cool Maybe you hadn't heard of before customization app, so I can give you guys something cool maybe you hadn't heard of before.
Speaker 1:I used to use this all the time because before I had kids I went to the movies also like twice a week. I was always going to movies. I loved them. I still do and I'm sure once my kids get a little older, me and Nicole probably go back to seeing a movie at least every Friday in the theaters because we really enjoy doing it. But I use this app a lot. I knew Tori goes to movies a lot as well and I figured this would be an app like he would download and actually use after we talked about it, because this is something he could probably get a lot of utility out of. And they've improved it a lot over time. I mean this has been around for almost 10 years now, I think, this app They've been doing it for a while. So definitely recommend RunP checking it out If you do see a lot of movies. I think you guys will enjoy it. Simple app, but hey, sometimes simple apps are the best apps because they do something you need. They don't do anything more. They don't do anything less. Don't take up as much space on your phone because they're not as large in terms of storage space, because they do exactly what they need to do and that's it. Run P. It'll be in the show notes if you guys want to check it out. I think it's a great application.
Speaker 1:Alright, so it's time now for the Q&A, and I'll start, actually, because I have another question that I didn't put here and it's actually a good segue because it's about segues. Someone said when are you guys going to get some jingles, slash, segue, graphics or music? It's a good question. With the launch, I haven't had a lot of time to focus on some of the more cosmetic aspects of running the website, podcast, et cetera. But we will do that and we will get some bumpers for, like, the Q and a news, and so we have that kind of broken up like with some little intros and stuff like that. Uh, I'm going to work with someone got a couple of people in mind to try to get those going. So that's a great question and we will have those. So I try to delineate the segments as best I can with my voice right now, but it's really nice to have those things and we certainly will, and we'll have some nice graphics in three weeks when we start the video.
Speaker 1:Another good question that someone asked, which is a good question to start with why doesn't Samsung send you me, jeff, review units for Sammy Guru or for your YouTube channel? That's a good question. I don't know. I have a hint of why, because they told me a long time ago that their main goal with sending out review units their PR, is to switch people from iPhone to Samsung, and because I only review Samsung stuff, all my viewers are already Samsung users, so I have no chance to convert anyone from iOS to Samsung really, and so in that case they have no interest in sending me units. But now that I'm doing the website Sammy Guru more often, I would hope that maybe eventually they'll consider sending me some units.
Speaker 1:I don't take it too personally because, at the end of the day, my revenue strategy on my channel and the website doesn't depend on getting early access and stuff. You guys support me through the mystery boxes, the Mint Mobile affiliate program, which a lot of you guys have purchased Mint Mobile through my affiliate link and a lot of my revenue strategy doesn't depend on having early access. It would certainly be nice, from a respect point of view, to get early access to the devices, but I'm not going to go bankrupt without it, so I'm just waiting for eventually, when it does happen I'm sure it will as we build up the website. So huge news in terms of the website we are going to have another full-time writer coming on board. I'll be announcing him when I get a little closer. He's going to start later in July, towards the end of the month. He's currently working for another publication, so I want to give him time to give his notice to that publication before I reveal his name, but we'll have an introduction to him eventually.
Speaker 1:Maybe we can. Even I was thinking he could potentially be the first guest on the podcast if he's able to kind of Skype in video in and chat with us. So we might be able to do that in a few weeks as well. Let's get into our other questions that are on Twitter. I had those open here in the Q&A thread I made. I think there's four maybe questions here.
Speaker 1:I'll let Tori answer a couple of the ones on Twitter as well. So someone said we already answered this one, but we'll shake our fist again. What's your take on Galaxy Watch Ultra? Lacking rotating bezel? We both absolutely hate it, you hate it, Tori.
Speaker 1:I do hate it. It's terrible. It was a mistake. They should not have done that, particularly since they copied everything else about the Apple Watch. They should not have taken away one of the distinct Samsung features.
Speaker 1:What did my ideal Fold 7, flip 7, and S25 line look like? Well, for the Flip 7, I can't say. There's a lot of things I'd really like to see aside from. It'd be great to put the ultra cameras in the flip as well, but I highly doubt that's going to happen because the flip is too small to accommodate these massive camera sensors that are on the ultra phones. You're not going to get those in the flip. It's not going to happen because of the way that it has to flip. We're going to keep it compact. So I would like to see less visible crease in the flip, some more optimizations to the cover screen. I mean the flip is very well done already. I think Samsung you know I kind of tease them for not being at the forefront of innovation with the foldables. You know, like the fold the book style fold but they are at the forefront of innovation with the flip foldables. In my opinion, the flip is the best one by far on the market.
Speaker 1:They could make the cover screen bigger. That's a possibility. Some other flip companies have made the cover screen even larger. The whole entire cover is screened. There's no bezel. You could do that. I don't think that's a must. I think also it's going to make people angry. Once they actually get it, they're going to like it because it looks cool.
Speaker 1:Where do you hold it? If you want to use the front screen, you're going to be touching the screen everywhere, and that causes touch issues. People always want like it was, like I want no bezel on my device. Then where are you going to hold it? People always like I want a tablet or a phone with no bezel. Do you, though I mean like, especially with a tablet like you don't want a tablet with no bezel, cause you hold the tablet like this? You're going to be doing false touches on the screen all the time. Um, the s25 line I mean I really want to see quite a few things. The s25 line I really like to see a big leap forward with a camera, especially the zoom, because the zoom is not good on the s24 ultra. They need to improve it. Um, the rounded design that they leaked is growing on me a little bit.
Speaker 1:Um, I'd like to see more s-pin features, because we haven't had newer new s-pin features in a little while. Uh, and of course I'd like to see a S-Pen features, because we haven't had new S-Pen features in a little while. And of course I'd like to see a bigger battery. I highly doubt that's going to happen because Samsung wants to keep the phone slim, but I'd love to see a physically bigger battery cell in the S25 Ultra. That'd make a huge difference for me personally. The next question is kind of a technical one. Are the Fold 6 and Flip 6 going back to the classic, always on display? So I guess he's talking about not having the ambient where you can show your wallpaper all the time, because this was introduced with the s24 and so the answer is a little complicated. Uh, the answer is for the flip six, you can use the photo ambient always on display, but only on the tap to show mode, so it will show your wallpaper if you have the tap to show always on display, but not if you have it set to show the always on display all the time. It doesn't work. On the fold, you can use the photo ambient always on display, but only on the cover screen, not on the inner screen, the big one. So on the cover screen when it's closed, you can use the photo ambient always on a wallpaper, always on display, but you cannot, as I said, use it on the inner screen. So that's the answer. I think this is because of the display technology is different, used on the fold versus the flip, and also the display technology is different on the outside of the flip of the fold cover screen versus the inside, and so they have to kind of change how. This requires a lot of like moving pixels to prevent burn in Cause if you're showing the wallpaper all the time, you could get burn-in on the screen, and people don't like burn-in. It's not a not a good thing. So samsung trying to avoid the burn-in.
Speaker 1:On the last one, I'll let you kind of answer this one, tori, because you had some thoughts about this before. Do you think the ring is a good idea? Because and so they're asking specifically because of this people lose weight and gain weight through over time, which makes the product useless. Meaning, can the ring get any kind of getting any kind of gap take away from the reading? So basically saying, what if I buy a ring right now and, as I said last week, I'm working on losing some weight. Or I lost 20 pounds. What if I lose another 30 pounds, which is my goal, trying to get down to around 200.? And then what if the ring I bought is too big? So what do you think, dory? Is this potentially a concern that people?
Speaker 2:should have maybe. Yeah, yeah, you know, uh, even when you're kind of talking uh about it earlier, with your experience of buying the ring from uh, samsung and then versus like going into best buy, um, you know, I, I see kind of like a few issues of okay, like I'm getting the size now, but you know weight fluctuates, how could Samsung make it? You know, I would say like seamlessly or maybe help the user being like okay, like you know, I see you fluctuating the size, could there be a way for you to get another ring, you know, with a different size? You know kind of like a trade-in thing, because sizes are going to fluctuate and then you know that could at some point maybe, you know, deter people from getting the ring if they do have a weight loss challenge that they're trying to make. You know, since they are marketing the ring as a, you're encouraging people to go out and be healthy, so if they lose weight, and now their ring doesn't work anymore.
Speaker 1:They've wasted $400. It's like, yeah, I lost 30 pounds but I just wasted $400 because now this thing is useless. I think it is somewhat of a concern because you can't just adjust it like you can on the watch Just change the watch band, switch it out, get a different band. Even you can change the watch band to any band you want, You're not stuck with the one that's on there.
Speaker 2:I think eventually this could be a concern they might have to make it so that the ring does have an adjustable band.
Speaker 1:There's a way to do that, because this is not made out of platinum or something like white gold. Like my wedding band, it's made out of titanium. But it's also got like tech. You know, it's like plastic on the inside with the sensors. They could make that part of it like adjust a little bit, just micro adjustments even, like they have on some watches, like my Tudor Black Bay watch, which is what I have today, has micro adjustments which allows you to basically, like, if you don't have to take out a link to adjust the clasp, you can like use a tool and just slide the adjustments a little bit if your wrist is in pain or whatever, and people's wrists change with the seasons as well. So I have to adjust my watches, my nice watches. I have to adjust them during winter and summer because it expands, contracts, fingers same deal. That can easily happen. Just fluctuations throughout the day, not even if you gain or lose weight. It might be tight in the morning and loose in the evening, or vice versa. Or the different seasons it might be looser in the summer and tighter in the winter, et cetera. So I do think it's a concern. I think Samsung may have to deal with this. We'll see how big of a concern it is once people get them out in the wild. Of course, we don't know how many people are actually going to have them, because we have no idea how many they sold, but when we find out we'll see what people think. I think that's mostly it for the week.
Speaker 1:This was a big podcast. It's almost an hour and 40 minutes. This is one of our longest ones so far, which is fine. I'm really happy to bring you guys a nice big recap of Unpacked. Get out some of my frustration about the terrible affiliate links and the order process. Make sure to confirm your mystery box by July 23rd. We'll still be back next week for a reminder, which will be before the 23rd, so I'll still be able to remind you guys one more time. We'll have full reviews of all the different products here on the podcast. Make sure to check out the newsletter, the website, my YouTube channel off continuing coverage no-transcript.