SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
Samsung's Unhealthy Apple Obsession Runs Deep - One UI 7.0 Preview
What's the real deal with Samsung's minimal hardware upgrades? In our Product Reviews and Updates segment, Jeff discusses the buzz around the Samsung Z Fold 6 and its similarities to Apple's strategy of prioritizing user experience over substantial technological advancements. We compare Samsung's approach to innovation (or lack thereof) with Apple's and debate whether these changes are necessary for the brand's survival. Our conversation also touches on the critical issues of camera quality and the anticipated One UI 7.0 updates.
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Welcome everybody back. It's episode number five of the Sammy Guru podcast. My name is Jeff Springer, and with me is my co-host, tori. Yeah, how's it going? Well, everybody. It has been an interesting week for me. I've had a cold and Samsung has decided to torment me by delaying my Z Fold 6, so I've been working on various things. Tori, how has your week been so far?
Speaker 2:You know, so far it's just been kind of relaxing. You know, this is like my last week before I have to start doing work-related things, so I've just been trying to relax and go and see as many movies as possible. So that's been kind of my flow.
Speaker 1:You don't have to go back with the students though next week, right?
Speaker 2:No, just other faculty members, as we all just kind of reminisce on our last final hours.
Speaker 1:That's good. They do pay you guys right for the professional development week yes, that's good, all right. And are you adjuncting any courses at the university?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, I'll be adjunctinging college algebra in a college algebra prep class. Never taught that before, so we'll see how that goes.
Speaker 1:Okay, is that at the community college? Yeah, oh, that's fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no classes at the university, that's fun.
Speaker 1:No classes at the university for me as well for the first time in 13 or 14 years that I haven't taught a course at the university in the fall semester, so it's the first time that I haven't been at school since I was about six years old From the time I was six to the time I was 38,.
Speaker 1:I've always been headed back to school in the fall, and this is the first semester where I'm not headed back to school, so I'm somewhat excited about that. Did you do anything else this week besides movies? Just mainly seeing a lot of movies. But did you see twisters has?
Speaker 2:twisters come out yet. Uh, I think it just came out. Uh, I think today, uh, I I actually just watched, because I had never seen twisters one so I just finished it last night and I was like, oh, this is so good it is. It's a really good movie. Bill paxton helen hunn.
Speaker 1:I've really thought about going to see it. Um, it's, it's almost an. I saw it last night and I was like, oh, this is so good it is. It's a really good movie. Bill Paxton, helen Hunt. I've really thought about going to see it. It's almost an exact remake. It's not like they didn't change it, it's not like an expansion, it's not a sequel, it's just a modern remake where, instead of the guy being a weatherman, he's like a social media storm chaser or whatever, and so you know I mean that's it's a modern take, but it does seem really good and it seems like it's getting pretty positive reviews overall.
Speaker 1:So I may have to go and check that out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just saw Tom Cruise. I guess he just saw it yesterday and he gave it his two thumbs up stamp of approval, so it must be good.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'll just have to go and see it. It I mean, since I probably can't get a babysitter, I don't have to convince nicole to let me go sneak out and see it by myself while the kids are asleep. Someone has to be there with the kids, so I don't know that she really cares for it, but I I thought it was pretty interesting movie, so I might have to check that out. Um, what about your, uh, your galaxy watch ultra? Is it is it? Is it out for delivery today? Have you you checked?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've been checking all morning. It's been in Mesa just about all morning preparing for delivery, but I am highly looking forward to it and hopefully get a review out to you guys soon.
Speaker 1:All right, yeah, so I also have some Samsung stuff out. Today my Z Flip 6 is out for delivery. That shipped pretty much along with everybody else's stuff, and I have a pair of Buds 3 Pro in there and my wife's watch 7, 40 millimeter. So nothing super duper interesting in there, but I guess I'm going to start making some videos on some of that stuff. Technically, that pair of Buds 3 Pro is supposed to be my wife's, but she kind of knows how it goes Like if something comes early and I got to make content and it becomes mine and then she just gets the next pair. So she's okay with that.
Speaker 1:I have another pair of Buds 3 Pro that's coming with the Fold. None of my Fold order has shipped, apparently. I don't know what's delayed. I'm assuming it's my Z Fold 6, one terabyte white, because the white is supposed to be in short supply and also, of course, the one terabytes always in short supply as well. I probably should have been smart enough to not order that device, because I know this. But, as we talked about last week, launch morning was a little stressful for me and so I just went in there and ordered the device I wanted. Turned out to be a not great decision. I also have my galaxy ring in there. My watch ultra is also in that same shipment, so a lot of the stuff that I really wanted to start working on content for has not even shipped. Now I'm trying to see if I can acquire a Z Fold 6 locally here and pay cash for it.
Speaker 1:It's always a little sketchy, though you know, like Facebook marketplace Craigslist, and the one thing I worry about is some people trade in device for the Samsung trade-in program and they get the device that they purchased and they sell it like on Facebook Marketplace. But here's the thing you buy it and then they don't send in the trade-in and guess what Samsung does? They blacklist the device and so then I just spent a bunch of money and I have a brick that I can't resell Once my other one comes in in. I just lost like two grand, so I'm on the fence about it. I really want to get some content out to you guys, but I also don't want to get scammed yeah, uh because it's a lot of money.
Speaker 1:I mean two, two thousand bucks is a lot of money just to throw away if that were to happen, because you know there's there's reputable sellers out there. But usually if you see a deal where it's like super duper cheap, the person is going to do something like that they're they're going to not send in their trade-in and samsung's going to blacklist the imei and then you won't be able to use it at all. A couple of other quick hits right here at the beginning about unpacked pre-orders. While we're talking about that thing, remember last week, tori, I told you the galaxy Ring had sold out in all the sizes. It turns out the Galaxy Ring is back in stock as of, I believe, about 36 to 48 hours ago. I posted about it over on Twitter. So if you guys do want to go ahead and order your Galaxy Ring, of course you can still use our link and get the mystery box. Mystery box will be open until the 23rd, so a few more days. If you want to do that. They're in stock in most sizes. The 23rd, so a few more days if you want to do that. They're in stock in most sizes. Not all of them are for launch day delivery. So if you order some sizes, you may not get it until like August 7th or so, but a lot of them still have July 24th delivery listed.
Speaker 1:In addition, here's another very interesting tidbit which is disappointing for Buds 3 Pro buyers. I know you were really interested in them as well, tori. Apparently, as of last night, it has come to light Samsung has issued an official statement that the Buds 3 Pro have some build quality issues in the original pre-order units, and so they are delaying the full rollout of those. If yours didn't already ship, they're not going to sell anymore right now. They've halted sales and pushed back the delivery dates to check the various batches. So I guess people have complained of various build quality issues with the Buds 3 Pro those who receive them in their pre-order units, and some of them are missing the extra ear tips for the different sizes and stuff like that, and so if you didn't already order Buds 3 Pro, you're not going to be able to get those for a while, particularly in silver. I think it's backordered all the way until the beginning of September or something. Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:Something crazy.
Speaker 1:So we'll see what kind of build quality issues exist. Like I said, I will have a pair of Buds 3 Pro because my wife's which are going to become mine, temporarily at least are coming today with the Flip. So I'll probably go ahead and just fire that up, start doing some Buds 3 Pro content, because that's the actual device that I'm the most interested in terms of using for myself Maybe not for videos, because I know a lot of you guys out there are interested more in the phones and of course, I want to bring you the content that you care about tips and tricks on the phones and all that stuff I normally do but for my everyday use I'm more interested in the Buds 3 Pro because it seems like the device that I might end up using quite a bit. Yeah, so that's what's going on with a lot of the unpacked stuff. A lot of people are getting the orders today. We're recording this on the 19th, so by the time I publish this, which will be Monday, the 22nd.
Speaker 1:A lot of you should already have your fold. Hopefully I have a fold by then and I didn't get scammed out of fingers crossed.
Speaker 1:Hopefully I didn't get scammed out of $2,000 by then and I have one and I didn't get scammed, and then I'll have some videos up, which would be great. If you get a fold, you know, tag me on Twitter, stuff like that. And hey, if you follow me and you're in Arizona and you want to sell it and I don't have one, hey, hit me up. I sent out a tweet yesterday. I can't believe no one has really taken me up on this yet. Yesterday I said if you have a fold and you're in Arizona or you can overnight it to me, I was like I'll pay $2 little extra money so I could get some content. So mystery boxes also have started packing. I posted a tweet with that showing the update of how our process Tori you can see here, because right to his right here in the office I can tell you he's got a lot of boxes there, a lot of boxes.
Speaker 2:A lot of boxes.
Speaker 1:We started putting the cleaning kits. Uh, my four-year-old son, jonathan, came over to the office earlier this week. He was helping my mother-in-law pack some of the boxes. His job was to put cleaning kits in each of the boxes that she was assembling, and so we paid him a little bit of money. I posted a tweet of him, uh, holding up the cleaning kits. He he told us after about 20 minutes that he needed some additional money because he was already a little tired of working. And uh, he said, the dinosaur that he wants costs a little more. We gave him 20 bucks. He's like it's a little more than 20 bucks. The dinosaur he wanted from target is 34 99. So we took care of him.
Speaker 2:We took care of him of course.
Speaker 1:So mystery boxes start shipping on seven 25. If you're in the first shipping wave, you should have got an email from me earlier this week. So check your spam folder if you didn't get it, and the tracking will come from our tracking provider, which is Pirate Ship. The tracking goes automatically out from Pirate Ship. Sometimes their emails also get stuck in people's spam folder. So just make sure you check that out and I will make sure we also get Tori a mystery box so he can maybe tell you guys a little bit about what he gets in his box. We'll just randomize it. We're not going to give Tori any preferential treatment. We're just going to put it into the randomizer. We'll see what he gets, since he does have a watch and we do have watch cases in the boxes as well as the cleaning kit. So we'll do that.
Speaker 1:Maybe Tori can talk about that next week, but shipping for those is coming up very soon. So the main things that I want to talk about this week are one and I guess we could just stay right here for the time being is Z Fold 6 camera samples and also this video that I made earlier this week which Tori watched because we were trying to convert it into a written form, and Tori sometimes helps with that for the blog. So eventually there'll be a blog post about it where I kind of talked about some things that I originally kind of got my frustration about last week on the podcast. And that is Samsung becoming more and more like Apple, and we talked about that last week on the podcast. And that is Samsung becoming more and more like Apple, and we talked about that last week. I think, tori, you agree right that Samsung seems to be headed down, that path.
Speaker 1:It seems like they're kind of going towards the Apple side of things and there's a lot of new leak-ins information this week that point toward that as well. But after I posted this video, in the video basically I talked about the fact that the Z Fold 6 was a very minimal upgrade. A lot of the things they focused on were not hardware related and instead of, you know, adding true upgrades, they used a bunch of buzzwords and focused on only the user experience, and that's pretty much what Apple does. That's their marketing playbook. It's not that I don't like Samsung to focus on the user experience, because I do. Obviously we like that. I think that's great, but they also didn't really do anything.
Speaker 1:Instead of upgrading it, they changed the design a little bit. They changed the camera ring design and then they did very minimal upgrades to the hardware For the camera. The only thing that's new is the new 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera and to go along with that, I saw some camera samples of the Z Fold 6 versus Z Fold 5 this week and they don't really look that much different outside of the ultra-wide and they don't really look that much different outside of the ultra wide. So I feel like in a lot of ways, samsung is trying to focus on the user experience, which is great, but they're also trying to appeal to iOS users more than their own loyal fan base, and I feel like that's going to end up alienating some of the people who really like Samsung. There are other options out there. There's still Google Pixel phones, oneplus and, if you're willing to import phones, there's all the Chinese brands Xiaomi, honor, et cetera, motorola, razr.
Speaker 1:Yeah, motorola, razr, motorola is still in the US right, if you want a flip phone, that's a good point. Motorola is still making phones and there's still options. So what a flip phone? That's a good point. Motorola is still making phones and there's there's still options. So so what do you think you? You watched my video. You saw the description. You you kind of read it over a little bit as you were trying to work on the blog post for it. What do you think about what I said in that video?
Speaker 2:no, I think everything was spot on. As I was kind of reading through and then I was kind of looking through the comments, it seemed like most people were kind of sharing our same frustrations with where Samsung is focusing more so on the user experience and not really, as I would say, enticing people to want to upgrade Because they're like, hey, I mean the phone I have basically, I mean there's nothing wrong with it. It basically does everything that you just shipped out. And, yeah, you're just using these fancy words to make it seem like there's something new, but there really hasn't. So why would I want to upgrade when I don't really need to?
Speaker 1:Yeah and I agree, and you know, tori doesn't have to agree with me, he can disagree. I think Torrey just sees the same thing. And if you go read the comments in that video, I don't really know why YouTube didn't push it out. It didn't get as many views as I thought it should have. I thought it was a pretty insightful video. I don't like to toot my own horn, but I guess I don't really do that many styles, so maybe YouTube didn't like it. But if you look at the comments, there's like 150 comments on the video with only 2,000 views, which shows you that there was a lot of interest in the video. So that's why I kind of thought it would have done better.
Speaker 1:And a lot of people did agree that Samsung is basically going in the direction of let's try to be more like Apple so that we can get some iOS users who might want to come over to Galaxy feeling a little more comfortable, namely, iterative upgrades, buzzwords that are about how you can use the phone to take selfies or how you can use it to share on social media, and not as much about how you can do customization or multitasking or productivity or all those things that Samsung is all about and, as we talked about last week, the commercials that Samsung put together look like they have a bunch of like. They look like Apple commercials for the new Folds. I was watching one last night while I was up late working on some One UI 7.0 stuff which we'll talk about later. In the video I saw the Flip and the Fold commercials. They also don't really even talk about any of the new hardware. If you look at the new commercials, it focuses on the Galaxy AI and it focuses on Google's Circle to Search feature, which isn't even Samsung's thing. That's a Google software feature that Samsung put on the Fold and the Flip and the S24 Ultra in partnership with Google, which is a great feature. I like Circle to Search, but that's not something that's new to the Fold 6.
Speaker 1:So, as Tori said, what are the reasons for people to upgrade? And a lot of people did kind of chime in when I posted this video over on Twitter as well, or X whatever. The owner of SamMobile actually SamMobile, the biggest Samsung news website out there a lot of respect for Sam mobile he had talked. We had a long kind of discussion slash, you know, impassioned discussion, as Samsung fans do and he was basically talking about the fact that it's the direction Samsung needs to go to survive, and this is what they have to do to get more users, et cetera. And I don't know, I mean they might get some iOS users, but they already have a very loyal user base. I feel like, as I said in the video, they risk alienating a lot of those people and some of the decisions they increasingly are making are going to go further and further towards doing that in my personal opinion anyway.
Speaker 2:Um, I actually have a. I have a thought on that, maybe trying to play it safe, and they're maybe trying to win the trust back after the Note 7 and the Fold 1 stumbling out the gates. What are your kind of thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:I certainly think it's true to some extent that Samsung burned themselves pretty hard with those. They were PR debacles. I mean burn, no, well, actually pun intended. Yes, so with the Note 7, they literally burned a lot of people and it was sad. That's not nice, but you know it's been a while. But I mean I feel bad for those people. Thankfully no one got seriously injured In the process. In any case, with the Fold, the first fold as well, they certainly burned themselves from a PR standpoint because they released it.
Speaker 1:And there are all these issues with, like the dust getting stuck in the hinge and then like the screen was bulging and tech reviewers were having their units break while they were doing reviews, especially with that big price tag. Yeah, yeah, it was massive. I mean it was huge, especially with that big price tag. Yeah, yeah, it was massive, I mean it was huge. But the thing is that's still in my opinion. I agree that this is certainly a possibility.
Speaker 1:I think TM Rowe, the current head of Samsung Mobile, really believes that they should play it safe to avoid future debacles like that, and the reason debacles like that come about is definitely because you are trying to push the envelope right. That's how you end up in those debacles for sure, because if you push the envelope, you're trying to make the best devices you can and sometimes you're going to make some mistakes and unfortunately a couple of those mistakes were critical mistakes. But I would say it's not necessarily a great idea to stifle innovation at the the uh cost of you know going out there and just you know doing the minimal upgrade every time. I think we could still do innovation, just maybe not do it as fast as they did before yeah because I mean, if you look at the full line, right, it's been stagnant now for like three years.
Speaker 1:That's a long time. Like I don't necessarily. I mean, I was patient, to be honest. Like people go back and look at last year, like last year with the fold five, I said, if you go back, if I go back and read my tweets from last year, I said, hey, you got to give them another year. We can't have upgrades, big upgrades, every year, or even every two years, maybe even anymore, but next year I bet they'll bring something really great, and what they do this year they did nothing. So I I didn't criticize them last year. I gave them plenty of time to go and show us something and I do think that three years is a long time to wait for.
Speaker 1:You know, a super cycle upgrade. You get a lot of people that's what they usually call them super cycle upgrades where lots of people upgrade because it's like just such amazing change that everyone feels like they need to dump their old phone because their old phone isn't really up to par anymore, and that's definitely not happened. Now I feel like the fold three was like the last one, where you know it's like that's great. You know they add the s pen support for the fold. That was like the last one where you know it's like that's great.
Speaker 1:You know they added the S Pen support for the Fold. That was like the last really big thing they did. Everybody wanted that but that was the last big thing they did. That was really the only thing you know at the end of the day. And now we really haven't seen since then. Everyone's like maybe they'll build the S Pen into the device like the S line, maybe they'll get rid of the crease. Haven't done that. Maybe they'll make the discover display, you know, wide enough that you can use it like a regular phone maybe they'll make it extremely thin.
Speaker 1:They haven't done any of that. There is a rumor now that tm row has told the designers at samsung that next year for the s, the fold 7 or maybe a fold 7 ultra, that the fold needs to be as thin as the S24 Ultra If that happened.
Speaker 2:I'll give Samsung all the credit in the world If they bring a Fold that's as thin as this phone and fold it, and it's almost as wide as the S24 Ultra.
Speaker 1:I'll be using that as my main phone.
Speaker 1:I won't be using the S24 Ultra anymore, assuming I should say assuming they put a decent camera on it, because the camera on the Fold has always been bad. Assuming I should say assuming they put a decent camera on it, because the camera on the Fold has always been bad. And that's the other discussion I was having with the guys over on Twitter, the guys from Sam Mobile. Actually, one of the Sam Mobile writers also chimed in Sam Mobile was just going in on me. They're like this new guy starting a Samsung website Sammy Guru.
Speaker 2:We're not just going to let him just get away with that.
Speaker 1:We're going to have to go ahead and grill this guy, see if he really knows anything about samsung. So this is the other thing this guy was talking about too. Uh, daniel, scootery, uh tech with benefits. He has a youtube channel as well.
Speaker 1:He chimed in on my post about the camera, where I said, all jokes aside, how can anyone tell me with a straight face, z full six camera is acceptable for a 1900 phone? Yes, they improved the 12 megapixel ultra wide sensor a bit, something I guess most people don't use much. Otherwise, it's a complete rehash of the Fold 5. And Daniel chimed in and said he has a lot of things to say, things he said in his own reviews in Sam Mobile. The Fold is more than its camera horror. It's what the form packer enables the cameras to be. So what he's talking about there is he's talking about the fact that the Z Fold and the Flip allow you to do a lot of versatile, creative things with your camera, because you can open it and prop it up to take selfies. You can use it as its own tripod because it can be propped up like a tripod and hey, I'm all about that and I'm not against his point there.
Speaker 1:He makes a valid point. But then the next thing he says is a little silly, and I told him this in reply. He said, by the same token, the Tab S9 Ultra and iPad Pro should have better cameras, but people don't complain because they serve a different purpose. The Fold series is the same. It serves a different purpose. But here's the thing I don't put the Tab S9 Ultra or my iPad Pro in my pocket and carry it everywhere with me. I don't care if my Tab S9 Ultra and my iPad Pro have a good camera.
Speaker 1:I don't even care if they have a camera, honestly, because my tablet sits on my desk or it sits in my bag. I use it to take notes. I use it to watch videos when I travel. I use it for video calls like FaceTime when I'm traveling, to FaceTime my wife and kids. I use it for consuming media, reading books. I don't need a camera on a tablet because it's not with me all the time, but I think you would agree, tori, that the Fold is much different than either of those tablets.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, no, agreed. I mean, like the whole reason, like you're getting this buzz is because, like when you're out and about, like, people care about the camera quality because they want to be able to capture the moment. People aren't having tablets on them all the time and so what you want is to have good picture quality on these cell phone devices and if it's going to be at that price point and you want people to be buying these phones, like that is an area that they need to focus on.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly. So the thing is at the end of the day, as Tori said, the Fold is supposed to be portable. So comparing the Tab S9 Ultra and the iPad Pro to the Fold is a non-starter to me, because they're not the same. You can't just say, oh well, because Samsung and Apple don't put cameras on their premium tablets that are good, that are very good they're not flagship quality and compare it to the iphone pro and the tab. You know, the galaxy s24 ultra. That's okay, because people are not taking that everywhere with them, so they don't need it to take photos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but if you're using a fold as your primary phone and the majority of people who buy a fold are going to use it as their main device they're not like me, where they have the luxury of like, oh well, my S24 Ultra, that's going to be my main device and then I'll just pull out my phone when I'm at home sitting on the couch. Yeah, that would be great if everybody had that luxury, and I'm glad I do. It's great because I do this for a living. But most people don't have a $2,000 phone they can just use on the couch for fun and then have another phone that they use for when they go out and take pictures.
Speaker 1:People need that phone to have a great camera because it's in their pocket. It's what they're using for photos every day, so in my opinion, that's not a valid comparison. I'm perfectly okay with not having the best camera on a tablet. In fact, like I said, I don't even have to have a camera on my tablet If there was no camera on my tablet. No, I'm sorry, no rear camera. Yeah, if there's a front, I need a front camera for video calls.
Speaker 1:But if there was no rear camera on my tablet, I wouldn't care. Like, if apple or samsung released their flagship tablets and there's like there's no rear camera, I'd be like that. I wouldn't come. I would not criticize them for that. I'd be like, okay. I'd be like did you cut the price a little bit? Did you do something else to increase it? I would definitely scrutinize them there, because getting rid of that should allow them to do something else. Did you make some improvements? But I wouldn't be frustrated by it. In fact, it might be better, because your tablet would then sit flush on the desk. There's a lot of benefits of that.
Speaker 1:I've actually thought about Apple and Samsung. Should they delete the rear camera on tablets? Because who the heck is taking pictures of the rear camera on their tablet? Not very many people, and if you are, people think you're weird, so you shouldn't be doing that. But at the end of the day, no shade to Daniel here. He covers Samsung on YouTube as well and also writes over at SamMobile. Had a great conversation with these guys. It's always great to see different points of view over at Sam Mobile had a great conversation with these guys. It's always great to see different points of view.
Speaker 1:But in my opinion, this whole thing is kind of a part of a larger picture. With the Z Fold 6, all these iterative upgrades, the camera and everything, and the larger picture that this is really a part of is the fact that Samsung is trying to move more towards Apple in everything. They do right, and we're going to talk more about that in just a second. Before we do, let's take a quick break to hear from the sponsor of today's video. Today's episode of the Sammy Guru podcast is brought to you by our partners at Mint Mobile. Mint Mobile has premium wireless starting at just $15 a month, and right now, for a limited time, they have one of their best deals of all time where all of their plans are just $15 a month. That means that you can get their amazing unlimited premium wireless plan for 50% off the usual cost. All of Mint Mobile's plans come with unlimited talk and text, nationwide coverage and mobile hotspot included as well. The great thing about Mint is they are completely online. You don't have to worry about any in-store sort of overhead. They basically give you all the savings that they can by avoiding those costs. You can also get either an eSIM if you have a phone that supports that, like the Galaxy S24 Ultra or other modern Samsung phones. Or if you prefer a physical SIM or need one, they will mail one to you as well. The great thing about Mint is you save a ton of money over the big wireless carriers and they simplify your billing and also try to make sure that you have the correct plan for you. I've loved using Mint here in the Phoenix Arizona area for almost the last two years. My family and I have switched over fully. We love their service. If you guys are interested in checking them out, go to tribemobilecom slash Springer. The link will also be in the show notes if you'd like to click on it that way and sign up. This is a limited time offer for the 50% off the unlimited plan, where all of their plans are $15 a month, so take advantage today.
Speaker 1:All right, so now let's talk a little bit about One UI 7.0. So the conversation we just had about Samsung being more like Apple on the hardware side with this unpacked launch a lot of things that were Apple style, a lot of advertising that was Apple style. Well, now we have even more evidence of exactly what I said about them trying to be more like Apple, and it comes from official leaks of One UI 7.0. Now, this guy is someone who has leaked One UI stuff many times before. I definitely trust his expertise when it comes to leaking. I don't think he would leak anything that wasn't in fact the case, and he said his source briefly tried using One UI 7 multiple times. So he has an inside source, chun Bai, over on Twitter, and so I'm just going to go through these one at a time.
Speaker 1:It may take us a while to get through them all, and then we can kind of talk about each one. You can get your thoughts, tori, on what you think about these, if they are things that you would like or not. So the first one is the icon pack, for the stock icons on One UI is changing and it's going to be a more rounded icon pack with 3D-looking icons, kind of like Mac OS, and they have a cartoonish kind of look, like a more vibrant look, kind of like the Chinese skins, like ColorOS and HyperOS on the Xiaomi phones and Oppo phones. So I don't know what do you think about changing the stock icons? I don't use the stock icons as my main because I use a custom icon pack. We've talked about this before a few times, and so what do you think, though, about that, about changing the? What do you think about changing the stock icon back?
Speaker 2:You know, I think whenever I get a new phone, as just like a general consumer or like going from iteration to iteration, seeing like something different with the icons always just kind of makes me feel like ooh, like I have like a premium like phone. Like you know, it's just like the whole picture of it, of just having like just newly redesigned or or like more poppy icons, just kind of makes me feel like I have like a more premium product than what I'm coming from. Or even seeing that, oh, okay, Like um, you know, it just makes me want to use the phone more. It just makes me feel good about the technology that I have, Just because, again, like I don't have the luxury of updating every single time I get a phone, so for them to have updates like this kind of makes your current phone kind of feel new, at least to me as a consumer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a lot of people can agree with that. That's actually one of the reasons why I think a lot of people like custom icon packs too is because you can change them whenever you want. So, like Tori said, if you don't upgrade your phone every year, it's not something.
Speaker 1:Obviously if I wasn't in this business, I wouldn't upgrade my phone every year either, because, as we've talked about already many times either, the upgrades are not that big every year, every year. So, like for most people, I don't recommend that you do that like. If you're an enthusiast, then you can do it, and maybe if I had the money, I shouldn't say I, I am an enthusiast. I do love phones. That's why I started doing this. If I had the money, I would do it. But if I was just back teaching as a professor, I probably wouldn't have the the money, so I wouldn't be upgrading every time. Luckily, since I've been doing YouTube, I've been able to. But if I was just teaching as a professor, I probably wouldn't be able to upgrade my phone every single cycle. I definitely wouldn't be able to have multiple of them.
Speaker 1:But I think a lot of people like to change their icon packs because it lets you get a fresh feel to your phone and you don't have to spend any money, or maybe just spend two dollars if it's a premium icon pack, like the ones that one for studio creates, that I use the aries, series and vera they're like a couple bucks, but you can, you know, throw that on your phone it looks brand new, gives you a different theme. That's why people like customization in general, like changing your theme thing, changing your keyboard, changing your icons can make things feel brand new. So i'm'm willing to give this a shot. But I really don't like the fact that it seems like and here's the other tidbit the new gallery app icon this is the one that really caught my attention has a white background with a rainbow type flower. And guess which phone and operating system also has a white icon with a rainbow-type looking design on top of the white icon for their gallery slash photos app? That would be the iPhone iOS has exactly that.
Speaker 1:So another example of where Samsung's design team. It seems like this new guy who came we talked about this before. I forgot his name, so I apologize because I don't have all this right in front of me while we're recording. The guy came over from Mercedes-Benz Remember I told you he designed the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro and he made it look like the Mercedes-Benz headlights those new LED blade lights. Yep, that guy seems to be in love with iOS and Apple for some reason, because it seems like because he's supposed to now be part of the product team that's designing One UI 7 and the S25.
Speaker 1:And we'll take a look at the S25 leaks in a little bit and, as I gave Tori a little preview before the show, the story is not going to change today.
Speaker 1:So if you guys have been waiting for like, oh, there's some good news and Samsung is going the opposite way, they're going away from Apple and back to the old Samsung Well, I don't want to disappoint you, but there's more bad news coming later in the show, but this guy seems obsessed with iOS. So I'm not sure how much I like this guy. The blade lights seem really cool and they're a nice distinguishing feature, but that seems like it was more inspired by what he did at Mercedes versus Apple, but he seems like otherwise, he really wants to make all Samsung products closer to their iOS counterparts. Whether that's just to recruit iOS users which is my belief, because that's what Samsung is always so obsessed with doing they're really obsessed with like we've got to get more iOS people to convert to Galaxy. I feel like they would do that naturally if they just focused on being their own thing. Yeah, customization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, like the customization innovation, I think that's what, like people look at People who've had iPhones for a very long time, they're like man, like I want something different, exactly, and I feel like you turn to Samsung, exactly. That's what I'm saying. That's the same thing.
Speaker 1:Now, that's what I've been telling that's what I've been telling people on twitter as well, telling these guys that I was talking with, that we're having a discussion. People move from iphone to samsung, not because they're the same, but because they get sick of what apple's doing the same iterative garbage every year it's like oh look at the iPhone 16.
Speaker 1:Here's my iPhone 13. I can't even tell the difference. They look exactly the same. That's four models later or three models later, and I can't even tell the difference. People don't want that. I've heard from a lot of people. In fact, the place where Nicole goes, and I should say me too, I like to go get a nice pedicure every now and then I get one once a month.
Speaker 2:I love pedicures. It's good for your feet.
Speaker 1:You guys out there should take care of your feet, get a pedicure.
Speaker 1:Yes, I go once a month and Nicole, my wife, gets her manicure, gets her nails done there as well. And the lady who does my pedicure and the guy who does her nails. They both use iOS and they know that I do Samsung stuff for a living and cover it. The lady who does my pedicure she is buying my Z Flip 5, switching from iPhone to Samsung because she was tired of their lack of innovation. Samsung has added something different. They had the flip phone. She wanted a foldable. They had something different to offer, so she's moving over. And the guy, randy, who does my wife's nails, he's also thinking about once now she's got the Flip 5 for me. He's thinking about moving from IOPhone over to Samsung because they offer more customization, more interesting features.
Speaker 2:So in my personal opinion.
Speaker 1:I've never heard someone say and and again. This is all anecdotal evidence, but you know, through all my comments and stuff I get to see a lot thousands of people's opinion on this, this topic topic. When I cover comparisons between the two os's, I've never seen someone say oh wow, samsung is so much like ios. Now I think I'll just switch over there because, right, it's so familiar. Because why would you do that If you liked iOS?
Speaker 1:You're just going to keep your iPhone. Yes, you're not going to switch to Samsung and go to One UI. If I like iOS 18, I'll just be like okay, well, I've been using it for a long time, I like it. Why change it? People are only going to change when they get tired of the same stuff and they want something new. Same stuff and they want something new. So if samsung wants to build long-term galaxy fans, try to appeal to what those people want that they don't like about apple, that's my personal opinion. Um, more copycat stuff. The quick action on the lock screen, which is the little icon where you can open up like an app. Just tap it. You see them on the lock screen here, right, like you've got the down there at the bottom where you can tap your camera your flashlight.
Speaker 1:They've now made it a copycat for iOS. The icon shape is more rounded and fat and less transparent. Like in iOS, it can be remapped to any action, though, unlike on iOS. So at least they're not taking away the actual functional customization. And well, let's do the other ones. Then I'll get to the really big one.
Speaker 2:That has me super angry because I'm going to talk about that for a minute, More rounded lock screen widgets, which is again more in line with iOS.
Speaker 1:They've rounded and fattened up all the widgets, just like the icons. Revamped camera UI All the previous quick camera settings on the top are moved to the bottom, so they're talking about inside the camera. I'm going to open up my phone really quick here so me and tori can take a look where you have all these quick settings at the top there. See them. They're all coming down to the bottom which guess?
Speaker 2:who also does that apple yeah you know that they kind of because, like I love my girlfriend, uh, you know she, she uses my phone sometimes and she's an avid iphone, but she's always like, man, your phone is just so hard to type on and to click things and the placement, and on iPhone things are just bigger, and so I'm like, okay, I can see that maybe this new, current guy is just trying to appeal to them.
Speaker 1:Maybe yeah, so Tori is definitely making a valid point here. I'm kind of just railing on Samsungsung, so we should give them some credit. A lot of these things that they're doing are in line with the original vision for one ui. Uh, a lot of you who are avid fans may know but if you're not a long-term samsung fan you might not know one ui is called one ui because it's supposed to be easy to use one handed. They call it one UI, so they're moving some things to the bottom instead of the top because of reachability.
Speaker 1:And I understand that, personally, I may not like it, because I just the aesthetics is going to bother me and also I'm so familiar with it.
Speaker 1:I would imagine, though, samsung is this is we've talked about this before it's a good thing and a bad thing they will probably take all these changes they make. They'll probably make it so that if you go to some GoodLock module, you'll be able to change it back to the old way, because that's what they normally do, like if they change something, they know they're going to make people angry. So they're like oh, you could go to this GoodLock module and turn it back the way it was before. But go to this GoodLock module and turn it back the way it was before. But since not everybody knows about GoodLock, they're not confusing the average user, and actually I was thinking about this earlier this week. This is a counterpoint to my suggestion that they build GoodLock into the operating system, because this is probably why they don't want to do it, because they're like we don't want to confuse the average user, but for the hardcore Samsung fanatic who wants it back the old way, they know where they'll find it because they know about.
Speaker 1:GoodLock. But the average user will be like, okay, we'll just use whatever you put here in stock.
Speaker 1:It looks like iOS. Great, we love it, it's fantastic. But the average Samsung hardcore diehard is going to go to GoodLock and change it back and I might, but we'll see. I will give the camera stuff a shot, we'll see how it goes. We have a one single shortcut that will expand to multiple quick camera settings. And guess what? Also does that the iPhone. I guess I'm okay with that. I mean, it's just again.
Speaker 1:The theme of everything now is basically like the iOS UI, which is what I don't love. Now let's get into some of the things I really hate. Here's the thing I really hate and this wasn't really copied specifically from the iPhone. I think this was more copied from the Chinese Android skins HyperOS, coloros. The notification panel has now changed to a two page panel. No longer will you have notifications and quick settings in the same panel. You'll only have notifications and you'll have to swipe over to the next page to see your quick settings. What this is what you have to do on all the Chinese Android skins and also what Apple does they basically have. They don't even have a page. You actually have to swipe down on the right side to get quick settings on the iPhone, swipe down the left to get notifications.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't like this. It's basically a mashup of iOS and Xiaomi's HyperOS approach. You can swipe left or right to quickly change. Thankfully, because in iOS, where you can't swipe, I hate that. If they had done that, I would have been really angry.
Speaker 1:But I'm already pretty angry about this. I don't like this. It seems like this is just a direct lift from HyperOS, samsung's taking inspiration not only from Apple, but also from these Chinese Android skins, which makes sense because and here's the thing For years, samsung fans, including Sam Mobile, so here's the thing I respect those guys, but for years we've all said that we don't like the fact that the chinese android manufacturers copy and paste everything from ios and basically try to be an ios version of android yeah and now that's what samsung is doing too.
Speaker 1:Hyper os is basically as close to ios as you can get on android, and now one ui is also going to be very close to iOS on.
Speaker 1:Android and I'm not a huge fan of that. That's not all the changes he mentioned. Just as I had asked for and this one I'm actually pretty happy about, as long as they don't mess it up You'll be able to change the placement of each quick setting and then, hopefully, the size. It's not in the first beta build, he claims, but you'll be able to change it, and this was also built into iOS 18. So I guess there should be no surprise. I had mentioned this before Because it was in iOS 18, they probably put it in One UI, and they are, I guess. One UI now has the battery percentage inside of the battery icon. Not sure how I feel about that.
Speaker 1:That's also something that's done on the iphone, yeah, but uh, it's not something I hate so I might live with that. I almost guarantee you this particular option. Samsung will give you the ability to remove that and go back to the old in good luck, because they have a module called quick star where you can change everything in your quick settings and stuff like that. So, I don't think you have to worry about that.
Speaker 2:If you don't like it.
Speaker 1:they'll give you the option to put it back the other way. The search bar inside the app drawer has been moved to the bottom, which again is very similar to what Google does with the Pixel and some of the other OEMs do, so the search bar is now down here.
Speaker 2:It does make it easier for one-handed. You're right, Tori.
Speaker 1:And I said on Twitter last night that I hated this and mainly it's because of just the aesthetic reasons. I just like the way it looks better this way. But people were commenting back to me exactly what Tori said. They said, but, jeff, think of the one-handedness.
Speaker 2:It's called One UI.
Speaker 1:That's why we need it For a reason.
Speaker 1:But I'm like, okay, that's fine, as long as you give me the option, either in the One UI home settings or in GoodLock, for me to swap it back. I guess I don't care too much, I'll try it for a little bit. And then the last thing good news for One UI 6 music player fans. One UI 7 keeps it All right. One UI 7 keeps it. So what that means is go back to my bookmark. The really cool. Have you seen the new music player? You've used it right, the One UI 6? The one that kind of makes your music look like a little waveform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker 1:People love that, and so they're keeping that and they're going to expand upon that and improve it, and so that's great. Yeah, I'm glad they didn't decide to be like oh well, hey, we're going to make everything else like iOS 18. Let's just go with their boring music player they have on the iPhone too, because that would really make me pretty angry. I mean, everything else is already copied. Let's keep that. I don't see why we need to get rid of that.
Speaker 2:I do have a devil's advocate, I guess, as I'm kind of mulling over, as you're saying things Since iPhone or Apple has not really, you know, been innovative in terms of the design of the phone. They've had a long time to work on the user experience and things that I think about. Like, when I talk to you know, average iPhone users they love the experience that they have on the iPhones. Could this be something where, like Samsung is seeing that, hey, we need to work on the user experience? That's how we're going to get these Apple people over here and just kind of emulate some things that they've already kind of perfected.
Speaker 1:It's a great point, tori. I think I agree with you and I think a lot of the guys that I was discussing with on Twitter. Part of this is the core of their argument that Samsung needs to focus more on the ecosystem and their software and not as much on hardware big hardware upgrades. But, as we said before, I still don't know that the correct approach is to just copy-paste everything from Apple and the Chinese OEMs. I do think that they should focus on software, maybe over hardware. If they came out and said that, I would not have a huge problem. The thing is, my problem is not that they chose to focus on software, Galaxy AI and stuff for the Fold launch. It's that they tried to sell the Fold 6 stills. I know they have to because they're a billion dollar company. They've got to be money.
Speaker 1:But they tried to sell a massive upgrade and they raised the price $100. I think they kept the price the same and they really hadn't tried to like buzzword the heck out of these things. That weren't really hardware changes, I wouldn't care as much, but it seems like they're really trying to be a little deceiving, kind of like Apple does. We need to get people to buy a new unit every year even though they don't really need one. I know that they have to move units, but I mean it seems a little bit more aggressive than I would like. I do think it would be okay if they said hey, well, we took some years off from really big hardware upgrades because we need to fine tune the software, make sure One UI really lives up to its promise, and I'm not really upset.
Speaker 1:I was joking on Twitter when I said that I was super furious about the search bar being moved to the bottom of the camera settings. I don't like it because I don't like the way it looks aesthetically in ios, but I do understand that it's part of the design ethos of one ui. Everything needs to be one-handed and certainly people have small hands. My hands are fairly big. They're not massive, but they're fairly big. I don't have a problem reaching stuff on my phone, your hands hands are pretty good too, yeah same, so no problems reaching the S24 Ultra or even on my phone.
Speaker 1:I don't have a problem when handing it, but I understand, especially for ladies, if they want to get the big phone, the top model which has the best camera. It might be a little difficult to reach some things if they're at the top. So I certainly understand that and of course we're going to give it the good old college try when One UI 7 comes out. I'm just giving some initial thoughts on leaks. I would never condemn something before using it, and if Samsung has a bunch of distinguishing customization, they add it on top of some of these things, then I'll go back and say, hey, well, maybe it's not a direct copy and paste from iOS and from HyperOS, but at least right now it seems like they're blowing up a lot of the stuff we love in One UI and replacing it with a lot of stuff from these other OSs, and I don't like that initially.
Speaker 1:So the question is when will we get to see One UI 7 beta? Well, supposedly, according to some of the leaks, the One UI 7 beta should be coming sometime in mid to late August, which is later than usual, and of course I'll be running it on one of my S24 Ultras and I'll have a full review of the initial beta. So definitely don't recommend any of you download it yourselves, because it is not for the faint of heart. The first beta usually has a lot of bugs. It's not something you want to do. You won't be able to run your banking apps. Google Pay, samsung Pay, is not going to work. Most of the stuff you use every day is not going to work. So I always run it on a separate S24 Ultra, not my daily driver.
Speaker 1:Because, sometimes I've tried and it's just painful because I can't use banking apps and all the stuff I need to do my daily activities because I'm still a person, even though I review phones, people are like why?
Speaker 1:don't you use it on your daily driver? Well, because I still have to do banking transactions, I still have life, so I can't always run super buggy software on my daily driver. Once it gets stable, I'll run it on my daily driver and tell you what I think, but we'll definitely have that soon. The other Is there another thing that bothers me too. I just thought of this before we move on to the second half of the show. Another thing that really bothers me is Samsung is rumored to still release this Galaxy Z Fold 6 Ultra that we talked about. That's almost been confirmed now. 9to5google got some more evidence earlier this week that that's going to happen. But guess what? They're only going to release it in two markets Korea and China.
Speaker 2:Why? And guess why.
Speaker 1:Why? Because they don't have competition in the US, so they don't have any reason to release a better phone here, so there's really no one that can outsell them in foldables. Google isn't even close. So in China and Korea, though, Vivo, Oppo, all these different companies, Xiaomi they all sell phones there, so they're losing market share. So they're like we need to have a phone that's going to wow people and compete with these other foldables. They're losing market share.
Speaker 1:So that's another thing I don't like, going along with what I said is Samsung's attitude towards the consumer. They're like oh well, if you live in the US, you're just going to use these crappy ones we already released in July.
Speaker 1:If you live in the US, you're just going to use these crappy ones we already released in July. Yeah, anyway, you're going to like it, because you don't have a choice. The only other choice you have is the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, which is coming out next month, and I will have a comparison of that to the Z Fold 6 when it comes out. But it's very interesting that they're only going to sell it in those two markets. It seems like only if we have competition are we willing to push the envelope. If we don't have competition, we'll play it safe, like we said earlier, and try to see if we can maximize profits while minimizing the risks that we take. All right, so before we move into the latter half of the show, we've got some Q&A, we've got the app of the week and then we're going to talk about the S25 leaks.
Speaker 1:For a second, I want to remind you guys to sign up for the Sammy Guru newsletter. The newsletter will be sent out every week. I send it out on Fridays, usually this week, because I've been sick and I've been trying to get everything going with mystery boxes. It's going to go out one day late. It's probably going to go out tomorrow morning, which is Saturday, if you subscribe.
Speaker 1:We send out a lot of cool stuff that's not covered in the podcast or the website. We also round up a lot of the information that is on the website and my videos, so if you miss something, you can get that information. We have exclusive giveaways of app codes, wallpapers, from my good friend Vuk Andrik over at One Force Studio, so if you're in the newsletter you'll be able to get free premium wallpapers, app icon codes and stuff like that. If you want to subscribe to the newsletter, the link is in the show notes always, and of course, we do appreciate that as well. So as we move on, let's take a quick look at these S25 Ultra renders. Tori saw these before the show and, just continuing the theme of today's podcast, these renders look like the iPhone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they do Especially the bottom.
Speaker 1:A couple of people post these over on Twitter. The original link was by Nagumak5. And RJ Tech, who's another tech influencer. He retweeted it and that's when I saw it. And RJ Tech, who's another tech influencer. He retweeted it and that's when I saw it, and it says that you've got basically rounded corners like the iPhone. The button design on the right looks exactly the same as the iPhone. The only thing that's still Samsung design from this is you've got the punch hole front, so you don't have the dynamic island like they have on the iPhone. They've got that big cutout at the top and the camera module looks the same. The S-Pen slot is still there, but otherwise this looks like a titanium gray iPhone 15 Pro. No, it really does. I mean just with the Samsung logo, different cameras. I mean just with the Samsung logo, different cameras, the design language on the outside, the button size everything looks identical to the iPhone.
Speaker 1:So if this is really true and this is very early, so we don't know. These are renders based off of what people have said. If this is true, I would be pretty disappointed. Although, if you look at the poll, rj said would you leave your iphone behind for this, 32 of people who responded said yes, 55 said never and 12 said maybe. So I don't know. I mean, I don't know what to think of that. I thought it was interesting poll because we were talking about can apple get iphone users? I mean, can sam, can Samsung get iPhone users to switch to Galaxy by making products that are like Apple?
Speaker 2:You know, I think, because I've had a few more conversations now with different people who are iPhone users the big thing that, like they don't really care about the design of the Samsung, like the most like I think, most people probably have families and a lot of connected people is one what was it? Facetime. They really want that. And two, which I think Apple is already under trouble about this, if I'm not mistaken, or being sued about it is the green text messages, you know, because that's all Apple's doing but they just make it seem like Samsung is picky because they give off the green messages. But those seem to be the top two things that people are concerned about. It's all about ecosystem.
Speaker 1:Really, I mean, that's what you always hear from Apple users. They're entrenched in the ecosystem. And you're right about iMessage. The green bubbles aren't going away. But Apple got in trouble for not having RCS. Rcs is now coming to the iPhones with iOS 18. So in September, when they roll out iOS 18, you'll finally be able to get all those rich text reactions and stuff between iPhone and Android. But they're not making the bubbles blue because they can still control that. They were forced to put RCS in the phone, but they weren't forced to change the color. So that's still going to have a stigma, especially for younger teens and young adults, that it already carries, even though all the rich features will be there because it has RCS. They'll still try to find a way to make more and more exclusive iMessage features, of course, so they can try to keep people inside the iOS ecosystem. But you know it is what it is.
Speaker 1:So I find this very interesting because 32% said they would switch. That's over 1,200 people, because there's 4,000 votes in this poll, but 55% of people said no, so that's 2,200 people who said they would never switch. Based on this, 200 people who said they would never switch based on this. So the question is, how many loyal Samsung users are you going to really upset by putting this out that you will lose? Yeah. Will you replace all of those people with the 32% who said in this poll they would switch? I don't know. I feel like you might lose at least a third of your Samsung users. You might end up breaking even, yeah. So I don't know that the game theory of this is really beneficial or profitable, because you're probably going to lose almost the same. In fact, maybe I'll do a poll. I might do a similar poll. Let's do a little scientific experiment. He's got some results. I know people said they would leave their iPhone. A little scientific experiment. He's got some results. I don't have very many iPhone users but.
Speaker 1:I'll post the same image and I'll say on Twitter how many Samsung users would switch to a different Android brand if this is the S25 Ultra, I bet you'll see a decent number of people, because a lot of people don't want iPhone copies. They want something that's unique, something that's uniquely samsung.
Speaker 1:So we'll see we'll do a little experiment, we'll see. Maybe I'm wrong. If I'm wrong, I'll admit it. I'm unlike some people on the internet. They're not willing to admit when they're wrong. There's a lot of people out there like that. If I say something because I like to run my mouth a lot about samsung stuff, if I'm wrong then I'll come. Well, you know that was a miscalculation. I have an opinion, everybody has an opinion, and my opinion's been pretty accurate many times, but occasionally it is wrong. So we'll revisit that after I do the poll next week. In fact, I'll also send out the same poll in the newsletter, since the newsletter is going out next week and tomorrow we'll have the results and we can talk about the results. The newsletter has about 6,000, 7,000 active readers, and so we should get a huge amount between Twitter and the newsletter responses. All right, so that's S25 Ultra.
Speaker 1:Also, as an aside, the iPhone 16 Pro leaked as well. Let me see if I can find this really quick. This is super funny. Not that we talk about iPhone a lot on here, but we're talking about iteration. Let me see if I can find the iPhone 16 Pro leak. Look at the difference between the iPhone 16 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro. Let me see if I can find it. You literally can't even tell that the phones are different.
Speaker 2:Oh, I feel like that's like every year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean the camera model. Here's it right, here, right here.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, no, it's the same thing.
Speaker 1:Look what is different about the phones.
Speaker 2:Nothing.
Speaker 1:There's literally nothing. I just don't understand I mean.
Speaker 1:I'm sure there's some stuff on the internals. Supposedly they're going to make the larger 6.9-inch display on the iPhone 16 Pro Max this year. That might be good for me, because I use my iPhone a lot for B-roll when I'm shooting video. That's all I use it for, for the most part because the OS infuriates me, which is why I'm railing so hard against Samsung going towards an iOS. I don't like a lot of the iOS stuff, especially notification management and stuff like that. That's why I don't use an iPhone. But if they have a bigger screen.
Speaker 2:I guess that'd be good because I use it as a bureau camera a lot and that'll be beneficial for monitoring my video. That's mostly what I use it for. I feel like that, like most of the time between the two versions is really just one has a bigger screen, but they like they.
Speaker 1:They look identical yeah, yeah, the pro max and the pro. I mean that is a good thing that they. I do think that's a good thing. The Pro and the Pro Max, or iPhones, have a lot more in common than the S24 and the S24 Ultra, namely, samsung takes features out of the base model and then forces you to get the bigger one. I do like that. Apple doesn't do that. That's one thing. See, samsung is stealing all the wrong stuff.
Speaker 2:They should steal that idea from Apple.
Speaker 1:Why don't we put the actual flagship camera on the smaller phone? Because some people want a smaller phone, not me. I like the S24 Ultra size because I have pretty big hands, but some people want smaller phones, like my wife, nicole. She would jump at the opportunity to get a 6.1-inch Galaxy S24 Ultra, mini or whatever you want to call. It has the same hardware, everything, not the s pen because you might not be able to fit it. Yeah, but I don't think she minds too much. She doesn't use it. A lot of people would buy that. People don't buy the base model s24 because the camera is not nearly as good.
Speaker 1:it's way, way behind the camera that is on the uh, the s24 ultra so maybe samsung should consider stealing some of the good ideas Apple has, and not all the ideas that are going to infuriate their loyal user base. All right, so let's move on to the app of the week. It's time for the app of the week, and today we have a good one. This is one I wanted to bring to people's attention because a lot of people probably don't know that it exists. I did not know. Everyone's gotten used to that.
Speaker 2:I did know I needed to go to the store to get it. There you go.
Speaker 1:He knew to go to the Galaxy store. Tori is learning so much about Samsung software. But this is always the point in the show where I'm like today we're going to talk about the app of the week, and Tori's like I had no idea this app exists.
Speaker 2:No idea, that's everyone's favorite part of the show.
Speaker 1:So Samsung Find is the new app from Samsung to find your Samsung devices. Use your Galaxy Smart Tags. If you have tags, you can find your items that have the tags on them, and people. You can find people in your family, your friends, if they share a location with you. So the reason I want to talk about it a little bit is because it got an update about three or four days ago.
Speaker 1:I just made a video about it which is probably going to launch later today when Tori and I get back from lunch talking a little bit about the new features, and so basically it's got three tabs people, devices and items. And on the people tab there's a new feature that now allows you to go in and when you have a person that's allowed you to view their location, you can also get notifications when they leave or arrive at a certain place. So now, like if you have kids, this would mainly be useful for kids. I mean I'm not going to be doing this with my wife because I don't need to know where she is all the time. She doesn't care where I am all the time. I feel like, if you trust your significant other, probably this is not a feature you need. I mean not when you're leaving every location, Maybe, so they know when you leave work or something, but for kids this can be an essential feature, because if you have kids that are old enough, you could have it on their device when they leave school.
Speaker 2:You get a notification that way if they're not home in a certain amount of time you can say, hey, where's little timmy?
Speaker 1:like what kind of trouble is timmy getting into? Because he left school 45 minutes ago and he's supposed to be home in like 15 minutes. It's not looking good for timmy. Timmy's about to be in a lot of trouble, so this could be a great feature for that. But you can also do it with with friends and family, like if you don't do it with your significant other. I requested my wife to be able to view my location a long time ago and she never even accepted it. That's how little she cares about where I am.
Speaker 2:I was like you can view my location.
Speaker 1:See, Nicole Joyner hasn't accepted, she's so busy. She's like I don't care where you are. She's like just keep doing that work, making some money, Make that money.
Speaker 2:She's like I don't really care too much what you're doing.
Speaker 1:She's not too worried about it. And then check this out, Tori. In the device tab, look at all the company Samsung devices. Oh geez, it keeps scrolling down. She's got three, I got about 25, 30 active Samsung devices in my device tab and then I have a couple of my items tab, because I have two Galaxy Smart tags for my duffel and my backpack, just so I know where those are my travel duffel and my backpack. What do you think of Samsung Find Tori? Did you try it out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean because actually I use through the wearable app, because sometimes I have my buds in and I know I'll put them in the case, but then I forget where I laid the case, like the next day, so I'm having to use it, you know, just to be sure, like OK, did I leave it at work or did I leave it at home? Where did I leave my buds? So I didn't know that there was like a separate app that I could get from the store and I actually really like this because it actually gives me like the exact, like location address of where it's at, along with like a picture and like I can just click on it and it just swipes me over or like swipes me to wherever that particular item is. So I actually really like this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so let's give Samsung some credit where it's due. This is an app where they stole it from Apple, but they improved it and it was actually a good decision. So not everything you borrow from Apple is bad. Apple had a Find my app, and this also has the same thing that Apple's has, which is a web portal. So if you lose your phone obviously if you lose your phone you can't go to the Find my app on your phone, because your phone's gone.
Speaker 1:So you have to go to findmysamsungcom and you can log in and locate where your device is so if it's lost or stolen. So just like Apple's Find my network. They just rolled this out fairly recently. In the last year it used to be it's SmartThings Find, which was inside the SmartThings platform, but then people who don't use SmartThings, which is mainly their smart home platform if you don't use a lot of smart home stuff, you would never know that you could also use it to find your phone or your watch and stuff. So they separated it out into a different app.
Speaker 1:What do you think of smart? Because not everybody is using different smart home devices, but they might want to be able to check if their phone is stolen where it is. So that seems like a very useful thing. So I encourage you, if you haven't used Samsung Find yet, go to the Galaxy store, download it, especially if you use a bunch of Samsung devices. You can locate all of them your buds, your watch Like Tori said, your buds and your watch you might misplace more than your phone.
Speaker 1:You can locate those. You can also locate anything that you put a Galaxy Smart Tag on, and the Galaxy Smart Tags are actually pretty good. They're just as good as AirTags. I really like them, I keep them. I have a bunch of different tags. I have redundant ones, so that way if I lose something, I've got like a tag for everything. I've got the AirTag, galaxy Smart Tag and now I have the new Google Find my Tags. A lot of those I got sent as review unit so I didn't buy all of them myself, but that way if my stuff gets lost, one of those networks is going to help me find it.
Speaker 1:I'll be good to go because I've got a bunch of redundant tags there. Okay, so that's Samsung Find. Definitely encourage you guys to check it out. The last thing here is just a Q&A, and, tori, did you have any questions that you saw in the comments that people wanted us to address? I thought you had one that you, you said that someone wanted us to address. I think I can find one on twitter too.
Speaker 2:I just didn't write any down oh yeah, um, it was a like what does he mean? To miss the old and bold samsung? Oh, the old and bold samsung. So someone's talking about that I was.
Speaker 1:I was talking about the old and bold Samsung. So someone was talking about that. I was talking about the old Samsung that took risks, that had customization, you know all that good kind of stuff, and I was just using that as a way to refer to the Samsung that cared a lot more about the techie demographic, the users who really into customizing their phone, modding their phone, etc. So that's what I meant by that. Someone else was also asking about the vertical app drawer, so I'll address that really quickly. Is the vertical app drawer coming back in 1UI 7.0? So that guy we were talking about earlier, who was talking about the leaks, he did say that there's no indication that the vertical app drawer exists in stock 1UI 7. But that doesn't mean it's not coming back, because the vertical app drawer used to live in the GoodLock app called HomeUp and that's separate from 1UI. You know the stable build. So I think it will come back, but it's not going to come out right when 1UI 7 comes out. It's going to come out when they update the HomeUp module.
Speaker 1:That could be I'm going to be honest with you that could be like December of this year. There's a lot of people waiting on the vertical app list. Me too. People actually message me about this a lot, because one of my videos that gets a lot of views and just keeps getting a lot of views because obviously people care about this a lot on YouTube is the one I made about the vertical app list. So, like every day I get like two or three either comments on YouTube or tweets where people are like is that vertical app list coming back?
Speaker 1:And yeah so it should be, but I just don't know exactly when. Some other people were asking me again why I don't have reviews of the Z Fold 6. I already talked about this. Because Samsung doesn't send me review units. A lot of people are like how come you don't get review units? I don't have reviews of the Z Fold 6. I already talked about this. Because Samsung doesn't send me review units. A lot of people are like how come you don't get review units? I don't know. You have to email Samsung PR.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can give you an email to their PR company if you want. I've talked to them many times. The fact that I have to do a bunch of crazy work to get review units is ridiculous. Someone said maybe you're too honest to get review units. Maybe Maybe they just don't like that I criticize some of their stuff. I mean, if that's the case, then this podcast isn't going to help me get any review units. I just talked about how they need to stop being like Apple for like an hour, so they're probably not going to listen to this and be like, oh, we should send Jeff a review unit. So other than that, there's not a lot of other crazy stuff.
Speaker 1:We talked about a lot of interesting stuff. There's a lot of stuff going on with Samsung right now. Tab S10 series is still supposed to come out later this year. Someone's asking about that again.
Speaker 1:Some bad news actually about that that I didn't put in the full show notes, but they're going to switch to MediaTek processors for the base model, the Tab S10. I don't think that's a good idea. Maybe we can get into that a little more deeply next week on the show, but the benchmark for that processor doesn't look good. So it looks like samsung is once again trying to cut corners and make their lower model of the flagship less powerful, just like we talked about with the s24. Yeah, doesn't have as much power as the s24 ultra, and now the s10 is probably going to have some really cheap media tech chip versus the Tab. S10 Ultra will have, like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, because that'll come out probably later this year or have something even better. So I don't know. I don't know what Samsung is doing there. We got to, we got to get them to change some of these crazy strategies.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I was thinking of this the other day. I want to ask you do you have a favorite nostalgia phone, regardless of Samsung, any phone. That's a great question, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I have two Android phones that I would say are nostalgic for me for different reasons. That's a good question to talk about. I never really thought about it. The Moto Droid X that was my first Android phone. A lot of people don't know I was actually an iPhone user until the iPhone 4. When I was up at Tori might not even know this when I was at NAU I switched. So back in 2010, I switched from an iPhone 4 to the Moto Droid X and I never looked back. I hated iPhone after that because of all the great things I could do with my Android phone. That was always my daily driver, and so that's really nostalgic because, of course, that was my first time switching and also I thought it was just a really cool phone At the time. It was just the ads were really cool. It was like Droid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I miss those, yeah, those classic Droid ads are some of the best ads even though it was a Verizon exclusive, which I didn't like, but it was still a great phone. And then the other one has got to be the Galaxy S6. That's because that was the first phone that I ever reviewed on my YouTube channel. I started my YouTube channel 10 years ago and the very first Samsung phone that came out that I was able to get and make a bunch of content on was the Galaxy S6. Still some of my most viewed content. I don't know how I got lucky and ended up getting hundreds of thousands of views right out of the gate, but I made a bunch of case videos on the Galaxy S6, and I have a couple different case videos of the Galaxy S6 that have over a million views. So I have one on the Samsung official clear case and one on their bumper, and both of them have over a million views. That's actually what got me hooked on YouTube.
Speaker 1:If I hadn't have done so well at the gate, who knows if I would have continued. A lot of people quit this business before they get started because they don't have much success and they're just frustrated. I got very lucky in that the algorithm somehow pushed all my stuff quickly and then I was like, wow, this is fun, I'll keep doing it. And then I was like, well, this is fun, I'll keep doing it. Uh, and so I was motivated to do it. I like to think that I would have kept doing it anyway, but if not for all my success with the S six, who knows if we would even be doing, uh, this podcast today, maybe.
Speaker 2:But I don't know, I didn't know that about you. Good question.
Speaker 1:So that's pretty much it for this week. Next week Tori will hopefully have his watch Ultra. It's supposed to be out for delivery today, but if not, maybe Monday it'll come. He should have had the week to play with it, hopefully, and have some initial thoughts. So we'll definitely have initial thoughts. I'll have initial thoughts on the Z Flip 6. And I guarantee you, sometime between now and Monday I'm going to get a Z Fold 6.
Speaker 1:I don't know how yet we're going to figure that out after we launch. I'm going to try to figure that out today. And then I'll also have thoughts on the Buds 3 Pro. So we should have a lot of product like initial impressions next week. I don't know if we are going to have a full review. That'll probably be the following week, because that'll be our first week with video is two weeks from now. We'll probably do our full reviews of the different devices. We'll at least give you some initial thoughts next week on what we think about these different things, what we really need on this show. We've got to figure it out before next week. We've got to come up with an outro. Yeah, we do?
Speaker 2:I want something great, because at the end we just say bye.
Speaker 1:It's kind of awkward. I want something like stay classy, Samsung fans, you know, like Steel from Ron Burgundy or something. Yeah, no, something that's unique, that people really love anyway, uh, we'll see you guys next week for episode six. Stay classy, samsung fans.