SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
One UI 7.0 Cluster F + Galaxy Watch Ultra Deep Dive
We dive into the nitty-gritty of the Galaxy Watch Ultra's comfort and fit, especially the new Marine Band, and compare it to previous models. Despite some initial concerns, the watch impresses us with its bright, clear display, crucial for sunny environments. We also discuss the challenges of navigating the digital interface, the absence of the rotating bezel, and the potential improvements like a rotating crown with haptic feedback. Our conversation touches on the practical removal of reverse wireless charging, the functionality of pinch gestures, and the impressive ambient light sensor. We also share a funny story about a fingerprinting requirement at Best Buy, all while providing a balanced review of the watch's features and performance.
After the Watch Ultra review, we also tackle first impressions of the Z Fold 6, Z Flip 6, Buds 3 Pro, and more! Plus, One UI 7.0 is really taking shape and we have more leaks to share!
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Hello everybody, welcome back to the Sammy Guru podcast. This is episode number six. My name is Jeff Springer and with me is my co-host, torrey. Torrey say hi, hey, how's it going? And we are back this week ready to talk about a lot of device stuff. So today's episode is going to be full of basically two things. We're going to be talking about our impressions of the devices from Unpacked.
Speaker 1:Torrey and I both have been using the Galaxy Watch Ultra now for a little bit. Tori's had it a little bit longer than me, so he has a little bit more feel for battery life and stuff, so we'll get some detailed thoughts there. I'm going to talk about the other devices that I've been using the Fold, the Flip, the Buds 3 Pro. I'm almost done with the Flip 6 and making my review, so then it on to Tory and let him use it. I have a secondary SIM because I told him I would do that and he can give us some thoughts on the Flip 6, because he's never used a foldable, so I'd be curious to see what he has to say about that. And then we're going to talk about One UI 7.0. There's been a lot of stuff. If you guys follow me, you know I've been making videos that out the door, so they're making me work overtime for this week anyway. But before we get into the Samsung stuff as always, tori, how was your week?
Speaker 2:Week has been busy, you know, kind of like back to work doing some optional trainings paid. You know teachers don't really make all that much, trainings paid Teachers don't really make all that much. But yeah, other than that, I saw Wolverine and Deadpool last night. No spoilers. I'm going to see it tonight.
Speaker 1:No spoilers 10.30 pm with my wife. We got lucky enough to get last-minute babysitting services because this is such an exciting movie it is. I just snagged some seats. Pretty much all the showings were sold out until 10.30. When I tried to snag seats around lunchtime today, nicole really wanted to go. Obviously she really wants to go because she does not like to stay up super late. She's an early sleeper these days but she's like 10.30, she's like I'll go see this one at 10.30. So that must mean that she's really excited about this particular movie, because I don't think I've gotten her to see a movie after nine o'clock in in several years. So I'm super excited about that.
Speaker 1:this is also the first time tori and I saw a movie last weekend together yeah so it's the first time that I've seen two movies like back-to-back weekends, probably in like seven or eight years, tori, and I saw twisters and it was really good. Did you enjoy it, tori? Yeah, I did. We got twisted, we did, we got twisted.
Speaker 1:It was a great movie and actually I was incredibly surprised by the plot. I thought it was going to be like a copy paste, you know, just with new actors and like an updated roles for the different actors. But it's actually quite a different movie. I mean, even though it has some callbacks to the original, the plot is substantially different. So if you like the original Twister and you haven't seen it, I would recommend it. It was a really good movie. We saw it late last night, late on Friday last week, after talking about it on the podcast we were talking about.
Speaker 1:I was talking about how much I wanted to see it. We went and saw the movie, so I'm actually getting out there to do some stuff In other podcast news too personal and podcast. We got a new table here which you guys will get to see. Next week. I ordered a what they call a professional podcast table from this website called podcasttablesshop a very aptly named website because they sell podcast tables. What a great name.
Speaker 2:That's definitely what you can find there.
Speaker 1:And it's really nice. It's got like multiple different panels for each person, it's got outlets for you to plug in your laptop and all that good stuff. So we're really excited to have this, and next week we'll finally bring you guys some video, and I'm going to do my best attempt, but I promise that as we go over the next few months the quality of the video is going to just get better and better. I got some great ideas. I was telling Tori about some of that earlier, so we'll have some really good stuff coming on the video front as things move along. When do the students come back, tori, for you to start teaching the students? Oh, my goodness, august 5th.
Speaker 1:August 5th, so you're looking at oh, you've got a little more than a week. So they let you guys come back and do some PD pretty early, right? So you've got about 10 days. Yeah, so you've got a whole other week of PD. That's good. You keep your sanity for another week until the kids come back, and also, they come back on a Monday, is that?
Speaker 2:right. Yeah, that's good. Some of the districts come back the next week.
Speaker 1:I'd rather have a full week, just rip the Band-Aid off.
Speaker 2:Rip the Band-Aid off. That's what I like to do. So let's do that. Let's actually get into the show.
Speaker 1:So let's talk Galaxy Watch Ultra initial impressions. So you've had it now for a whole week because you got it you got it last week right before we went to the movies. You went home and picked it up after the podcast what do? You think about. Let me just ask you about some various things, and then you can chime in, and then I'll kind of give my thoughts as well.
Speaker 2:Battery life is the first thing uh, so far the battery life has been uh pretty solid. I think like when I first got it I don't even think I actually fully charged it for about at least three or four days, and even then it was probably on 30 or 20 percent. Then it it holds up pretty well in terms of the battery life. I haven't felt like I needed to charge it very much in that front.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, yeah, so I mean I've also been very impressed with the battery life, of course, being that I review devices kind of professionally. After I had the third day, I like turned on everything to see how much I could kill it, and you can kill it if you turn on everything. I turned on like continuous what? Uh? Heart rate monitoring, so it's like all the time I turned on like made sure the cellular was on like all the time I did some various workouts and like tracks several workouts. You can kill it.
Speaker 1:Not in a full day, though. Even if you turn everything on, you're going to get more than a day. I would say if you turn everything on, you can probably get a good day and a half out of this watch. If you're just using it for notifications and like the passive heart rate monitoring where it's like every 10 minutes and not continuously stuff like that heart rate monitoring where it's like every 10 minutes and not continuously stuff like that and you're not using the gps continuously, because that trains the battery a lot. I used it for maps a little bit to try to do a little bit of a battery drain test you could probably get four days out of this yeah, yeah, would you agree?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, yeah, because I think they advertise what 100 hours, yeah, and that's usually. They over estimate total, but I think it's pretty close, because four days is like 40 hours.
Speaker 1:Four days is 96 hours. That's pretty close, I think, if you're just using it, as I think most people do like. Most people aren't going on like 10 mile runs and using the LTE all day, every day, and most people don't turn on the continuous like every second heart rate monitoring that kind of stuff. Most people aren't using the GPS all the time, so probably you could get three or four days out of this. I'm pretty impressed with it. It's definitely on par with my Apple Watch Ultra. So, in the sense of battery life, which is things that a lot of people are concerned about, because, since it's a much bigger watch, people are expecting big things from the battery life- obviously.
Speaker 1:If you're going to wear a big watch like this on your wrist, you want it to last, you want to get something out of it being bigger, and I think you do. I think that's the main benefit over going with the regular galaxy watch 7 is because this is such a huge watch, they're able to pack a big battery inside there. Yeah, now, I did read from a bunch of people and I've only had full disclosure. Like I said, samsung put me through a very difficult time in this launch. I just got the galaxy watch Watch Ultra a little over 48 hours ago. I had to drive to a Best Buy in Tempe to get it, which is a long way from my house, and it's not too far from the office.
Speaker 1:I drove down there the other day and got it, but I've only had it for about 48 hours. But I've heard from some people who have the Watch 5 Pro, which is Samsung's previous largest watch in terms of battery. That's about on par with what they get out of that. I used a watch 5 pro for a while, but I haven't compared them side by side yet, um, because I just haven't had enough time to do it. I probably will dig out my watch 5 pro and play with it, but overall I've been very happy with the battery life as well. Would you agree with that, torii?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, for sure, because I'm coming from the Galaxy Watch 4, and it was just a very big difference in terms of battery life and I think I just had like everything turned on on that watch. So I think, like when I got this one, I was like, ooh, I better not turn everything on Because, like, I want to kind of enjoy wearing it, especially like while I sleep.
Speaker 1:Did you wear it while you sleep? Yeah, yeah, every single night so far we'll talk about that a little bit more later too, because I've tried to do it too. I don't find it to be. I mean, if I loosen it it's a little comfortable, but it's really big on your wrist have you found it uncomfortable at all? Yeah, yeah, honestly. Um, I did it for the review, but I don't know that I would want to sleep with it full time on my wrist.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what I do, like I first put it on, I was like, oh man, like it's kind of big and tight and so I just kind of like loosened it up a little bit more. Like the way I wear it. So it kind of goes up and down my wrist Like it's still in continuous contact because I have the heart rate thing set for like every like 10 minutes or so, yeah, thing set for like every like 10 minutes or so. Yeah, I think that's the default, yeah, yeah, yeah, the default of it Um, but yeah, like wearing it um while I sleep, I don't really notice it if I just kind of loosen it up a little bit and it still gets pretty good um tracking, um, and it gives me like really good feedback on my sleep and some other suggestions of what I can do to get a better sleep score.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yeah, so I've also found the sleep thing to be pretty good. I used it for the sleep apnea. Thankfully it didn't say I have that. Did you try the sleep apnea detection?
Speaker 2:No, I have not.
Speaker 1:You should try that sleep apnea detection kind of see how that works. Supposedly, if you have the Galaxy Ring, which I was going to mention this later in the show. I don't have one yet because, as with all my products, as I said, they all got delayed. My Galaxy Ring is being delivered today, so it's probably on my porch while we're recording this here at the office, so I'll probably get it tonight. Supposedly, if you have the ring and the watch, which, again, we talked about this on one of the previous episodes, I don't really know why too many people would buy the ring and the watch. I mean, obviously I'm buying it because I review these things for a living, but if you're a regular person I don't know why you would, because they're kind of redundant. But apparently they work together to give you more accurate sleep tracking and also more accurate heart rate, and they improve the battery life of both devices. So basically, instead of making the watch do all the work for certain biosensors, it offloads some to the ring and vice versa.
Speaker 1:So it's able to extend the battery life of your watch ultra and your galaxy ring. Not that people would be too worried about the ring because it's supposed to get like weeks of battery life, but that might be a big deal for your watch ultra. And I heard this. I went back and watched some of the press releases Samsung made and this is something they talked about significantly, and so that seems like interesting thing. I'll talk about the ring next week after I've had a chance to wear it for a week, but that seems very interesting to me, going along with this, because we just kind of touched on it.
Speaker 1:What do you think about the overall comfort of the band and like the fit of the watch on your hand, not when you're sleeping, just in general, like we have the Marine band, that's what this is called. I haven't tried the other ones yet. I ordered them because I'm going to kind of maybe give some thoughts on the other ones too. Maybe I'll give you one you can try and we can give some thoughts on a later episode. But what do you think about the Marine Band overall?
Speaker 2:So overall I would say it's a little bit more comfortable than what I was used to with the Galaxy Watch 4. But at times I find, like my wrist either, like being irritated by the band, just from like the shifting.
Speaker 1:You get like these little things divots in your wrist. You can see mine right there, Right here. Yeah, all the way through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you will have divots, just like based off the design of the band. And I do have the active band, I think and I want to try that this week is kind of like because you got the free band with the pre-order.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wouldn't have that been nice, if Samsung had actually shipped my pre-order, I could have got my free band, but instead I had to go to Best Buy and I had to pay $650 outright for the entire full price of the watch. Interesting story isn't aside, I want to get this in. You guys can see my twitter for more info. But apparently now, if you try to trade in a device at best buy in store, they want to fingerprint you. And I was like yeah, no, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 1:I was going to trade in my galaxy watch, uh, six classic or one, I don't know one. I have so many other watches I was going to trade one in, so I'd have to pay full price because they had pretty decent trade-in credit since samsung didn't ship my order and I went to trade it in. When I went to pick up the watch ultra, they're like yeah, you realize that we're gonna have to fingerprint you, right, and I'm like no, well, you're not, I know that, and they're like well, then I can't sell it to you, I can't do the trade.
Speaker 1:I'm like yeah, you can just sell it to me for full price, because they're not taking my fingerprints. I don't know where they're, one thing, but they didn't even have an answer. They're like we don't know what we do with them. I was like I'm not giving someone my fingerprints. That's almost worse than giving someone your social security number. Your fingerprints are 100% unique to you and like there's a lot of things they share them with. So I was like I'll just pay full price.
Speaker 2:So I ended up paying full price.
Speaker 1:I paid full price for every single one of my devices. I didn't end up getting to trade anything in because Samsung didn't ship any of my stuff on time. Overall, I agree with Tori on the band fit and the comfort it's. It's pretty nice. I definitely have those little divots that he was talking about, but I don't find it uncomfortable. Also, I'm surprised, like how small the watch kind of wears. I thought it would be like super annoying to have such a massive watch on my wrist, particularly since I usually wear either my Tudor Black Bay, which is a 39 millimeter regular watch, or my old Galaxy watch. Was the watch six classic 43 millimeter? I think those are a lot smaller and of course I wore the Galaxy I mean sorry, the Apple Watch Ultra as well, but it's actually even a little smaller than this in terms of it's 47 versus 49. I was a little worried about how big it would seem on the wrist, but it doesn't wear that big, honestly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, actually, I actually really appreciate the size of it.
Speaker 1:I think I'm able to see like a really good picture or display of information without having to display is really nice. I have to say that's one of the best features of this watch as well is display. The brightness on this they 3x the brightness over the previous yeah, the watch line so great it just pops.
Speaker 1:I just really for us in arizona it's important too, because in the summer, like it's so bright outside, like you need your phone and your watch, etc, et cetera, to be really bright, because if they're not, you're not going to see anything. When you're outside here in Arizona, the direct sunlight will blind you, so you need a really bright display, otherwise it's going to look dim in the Arizona sun. So that's a really great feature. Overall, I've been pretty happy with the wearability.
Speaker 1:Of course, tori and I do have relatively large wrists, so full disclosure my wrist is like 7.25 or 7.5, and Tori's is probably a little bigger than mine, so his is probably like 7.75, maybe right around mine. Those are pretty large wrists so we can probably pull this watch off and not feel like it's too large. Now, if you have like a 6.25 wrist, I would not recommend getting this watch because it's going to look kind of strange. That's just my personal opinion. There's kind of a guideline of you know what size watch case you should wear versus your wrist size, just so that it looks you know, you know looks nice on your wrist.
Speaker 2:And I think this one looks nice. For my, my wrist size it does and, like the titanium outlook, just looks really, really nice. We got the same model in the end.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I model in the end. Yeah, I actually ordered the white one from samsung originally, but since they didn't ship it, I decided to go this one because I actually like the look of it. Last week, when we went to the movie, tori showed me his and I took some pictures on the wrist and I rethought my choice, since I had a chance to kind of cancel my samsung order since it wasn't shipped, I said like I'll just change my mind, let me go ahead and get the one that's the titanium gray, and so that's the one that I ended up getting. I think this one's actually wearable in more scenarios. The white one. It looks nice and the reason I originally ordered it is because I ordered a white Z Fold 6, but I ended up getting a black one from eBay because they didn't ship that either.
Speaker 1:So now I have a black Fold and I have the titanium gray watch and I think they look nice together. What about performance? Have you noticed I? What about performance, have you noticed? I mean, I haven't have you noticed any lag navigating the interface on this watch? I think it's been super snappy.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, no, I have not had any issues at all with the performance. I'm really actually blown away with the watch. I really like this product. I like everything in terms of the activity. Just how quick notifications come to the watch Heck, I think notifications comes quicker to the watch than it does my phone in some instances.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it does, and I want to talk about that for a second though. Here's one thing that bothers me and you may not notice it. Sometimes, though, it doesn't bother most people. I've talked about this many times, so you can see Tori is actually in this case. See, Tori is making a point that's opposite of mine, because I talked about this in the video today.
Speaker 1:I find the notification mirroring this is mainly because the phone doesn't send them. Sometimes I get a Gmail and then it'll show up not just on the watch but on the phone like three minutes after. If you look at the timestamp in Gmail, it'll say like 3.28. After you know, if you look at the timestamp in Gmail, it'll say like 3.28. And I won't get it on the phone until 3.31, and then I won't get it on the watch. The watch one usually does come in faster than the phone. So I think this is more to do with Android's, like Android has battery-saving kind of safeguards in place, so that if you get a lot of notifications and I get a lot because of all my social media, I get so many I get like five YouTube studio notifications like every two minutes. So you know, my phone is like Jeff, you got to stop getting notifications, so that's probably possibly why as well, but sometimes then those don't get fully mirrored to my watch because they're not mirrored on the phone instantly, the only reason I notice it.
Speaker 1:and again, I'm as far away from being an Apple fanboy as you can be. Whenever I make this point, people are like this guy's being an Apple fanboy as you can be. Whenever I make this point, people are like this guy's really an Apple fanboy I am not. I don't want to use any Apple products. I'd rather use Samsung everything for my daily driver, if it fits, what I need. But my iPhone. If you sit it next to the Galaxy phone and you send a Gmail, the Gmail will come in instantly on the iPhone and then mirror to the watch instantly, and then maybe three minutes later it'll show up on the Galaxy phone. Now, this is not necessarily Samsung's fault. I think this is a thing that's done at the Android level. So this is Google's fault, actually, and it's been this way for a while. But at the end of the day, in terms of reliability, once it comes to the phone, it definitely comes to the watch instantly.
Speaker 1:So you know the watch mirroring works. It's just, I think, that there is something there with Android trying to save battery. Samsung did add a new feature in the Galaxy Watch Manager. I don't know if you noticed this as well, tori. If you go into the Galaxy Wearable app, I'll pull it up really quick. Next week we'll have video so you guys will be able to see all this. There's a Help with Notifications page and it actually shows you notifications that you didn't get, so people can see that I'm not actually lying. If you look here, take a look at this. Not getting notifications on the watch, look at all the ones that it actually failed to send to me in real time.
Speaker 1:So these are not ones that I'm making up. It's only certain apps too. It's like Amazon Shopping, youtube Studio, maybe some of the ones that I get super frequently. So I think it has to do with this battery management, but Samsung is at least trying to mitigate this and trying to help people figure out why they're not getting them. But I do notice that when I do get one on the phone, it comes to the watch instantaneously. So that's something I want to talk about, just because it's something that has always bothered me about Android as a whole, not Samsung, and so let me know if anybody else is experiencing it. I do think it has a lot to do with the volume of notifications you get, because you haven't noticed this at all, have you tory?
Speaker 1:yeah, no, no no yeah, see, tory hasn't noticed it, because he probably gets a reasonable number of notifications maybe the phone's not mad, and then?
Speaker 1:you know it doesn't. It doesn't have any problems trying to save battery life. Um, what about the digital rotating bezel? Let's talk about that for a second. So a lot of people were outraged by the lack of the physical rotating bezel. We, we both kind of talked about this briefly about it on one of the podcasts when we were previewing unpacked. Yeah, we were a little disappointed that they didn't have the physical rotating bezel. But after having lived with it for a few days, I can honestly say I find the digital simulator rotating bezel to be actually pretty fantastic. Um, you, it's not as great as physical, but, um, the digital simulated one, you actually get haptic feedback as soon as you go to each screen, right Like it clicks. So you know that you're going to the next screen and it gives you pretty hard haptic feedback. So I don't actually mind it. I thought I would hate it. I would rather have the physical one, because I don't see why they can't put a physical one on here.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of space, right. I mean, it's not like this is a super slim watch where it's like, oh well, fitting a physical rotating bezel would make this watch way too thick.
Speaker 1:It's already massively thick. Yeah, so they definitely could do it. Yeah, they could do it right. But but what do you think? What do you think about the digital rotating bezel?
Speaker 2:yeah, uh, I mean initially, uh, right out the box and putting it on my wrist. I, uh, I, there's at least three to five times um of first use. I went for the bezel to rotate.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh wait I tried that a few times because it looks like it right, yeah, yeah, yeah, like it looks like the galaxy watch 4 classic or 6 classic that I had before.
Speaker 2:It just looks like you could just pull it and just like and it's like uh, uh, doesn't work, not in here, uh, but then I tried the, you know the digital bezel, but I find just swiping back and forth to be easier to me.
Speaker 1:That's what you told me last week at the theater. Yeah, Tori told me he likes just swiping on the screen and you know it is strange getting used to the digital one. And I will say, until you get used to it, I tried to force myself to do it since it's something new, kind of just for the review. I will say that sometimes you'll accidentally go one page too far.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I was finding Like if you're looking for one of the quick settings on the right, like if I'm looking for my health overview, I might go one too far and it'll take me like to the multi-sport menu, which I didn't want to go to and I have to go back. So you may find, as tori said, that swiping left and right just on the screen is going to work better for you for precision purposes, because you might end up passing up the page that you want, and I certainly understand that and I do do agree on that. But it's not as bad as I thought. I thought it would be like something that would make me dislike the watch, because I really liked that, was one of my favorite things, but I do think samsung should have kept it, because it's one of those things that are uniquely Samsung, yeah, and all those people who are like hey, you're copying the Apple Watch.
Speaker 1:Blah, blah, blah, blah blah. They wouldn't be saying that if they had added kept the physical rotating bezel, because that's something that is very much uniquely Samsung. Yeah, the other thing that I really would have liked to seen, which they didn't add, although if they had added this, they definitely would have been angry People would have been even more angry about them. Copying Apple is the rotating crown.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they should have had a crown that lets you navigate up and down.
Speaker 1:The Apple Watch has that, of course, but that would have been a great feature, because it's really nice to be able to navigate vertically with the crown in addition to the rotating bezel. If they had both, though, that would have been great. They to add, I think physical rotating bezel and rotating crown with haptic feedback for the galaxy watch ultra 2, maybe next year yeah, no, for sure I am.
Speaker 2:I was at this uh training and another teacher he had the galaxy watch 3 and he was just like I didn't think about like updating. And I saw uh at samsung unpack that I watched it coming out and I and I saw you have it, does it rotate? With the little orange button here, and I was like I know, I know it doesn't. It was like, ah, all right. And then he was like, well, what about the rotating bezel? And it was like there's no rotating bezel. He was like, ah, all right, yeah. He was like, ah, all right, yeah, so give me best. I think you know a lot of people do want that.
Speaker 1:I've actually heard from a lot of people.
Speaker 1:I just dropped a video today about the galaxy watch ultra I was actually making a video where I was talking about the different things that they didn't put in there. You know, sometimes you got to make a video highlighting the problems because people should know about them. I always get dislikes when I make videos about problems with the product. But, like I mean you want me to do like continuously praise them all the time. I make Samsung content every day. If I'm just sitting here saying how great they are, everyone would know that I'm not being authentic. I'm just trying to sell you stuff and that's not what I'm trying to do. So no, I mean I try to always make you know as much as I can.
Speaker 1:Uh, a fair and balanced kind of overview of the products. What about the pinch gestures? Have you tried the pinch gestures? I have not tried the pinch gestures. So the pinch gestures are interesting. It'll kind of suggest to you to use them when certain things pop up. One of them where it suggests this too is when you set a reminder or an alarm that I've used it a lot. When the alarm goes off instead of having to tap your watch to actually do it, you can just pinch in the air and it turns off your alarm.
Speaker 2:No, seriously yeah isn't that cool.
Speaker 1:So you can enable this. It actually will walk you through it if you encounter a situation where it can be used. If you take a call on the watch, you can actually do pinch to answer the call and pinch to actually hang up the call as well, oh, literally just pinch yeah yeah, you can also use it for music controls if you want to.
Speaker 1:It's pretty cool so you can pinch to pause, pinch to play that stuff. There's a lot of air gestures that can be used. Unfortunately, this is another thing that they quote unquote, borrowed from Apple, because this is also something that came to the Apple Watch earlier this year.
Speaker 1:But I'll be honest with you, this is a really nice feature for certain things, like particularly dismissing reminders and alarms, because, doing this full time as a creator, I set a lot of reminders for myself throughout the day because I forget stuff and I don't always want to have to go and tap the screen on my phone or the watch to dismiss it. I'm like, oh yeah, I need to send this email. Just pinch the air and then that's gone, and then I send the email and I don't have to go interact with the screen, so that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1:A couple of other things that I want to talk about. These are some of the things I put in my problems video. You may not even know about them. Do you remember? On the previous watches I don't even know this you used to be able to take your watch and sit it on the back of your phone and wirelessly charge the watch on the phone.
Speaker 2:I did not know that. Did you know about that one? I did not.
Speaker 1:So that's called reverse wireless charging and they actually removed it from this watch. It doesn't work anymore. Yeah, it worked on the old watches, I guess, because I think it's probably partially because of the on the ultra. The watch is so such a large battery, yeah, that the power draw from your phone might be a lot. They didn't do it. Um, I think a lot of regular consumers I was thinking about this they probably didn't know it was gone, so they're not going to miss it um I put it in my problem.
Speaker 2:I would definitely use it still there.
Speaker 1:That's one of those features that we talked about before. Like Samsung should really publicize to regular people. They don't necessarily put it in their ads, but it's an amazing feature that people would love Whenever I had the old watches, and it works with your Buds too.
Speaker 2:Like if you sit your Buds in the back of your phone. That still does work too, oh okay.
Speaker 1:So if you get the back of your phone and you're good to go, whenever I show that feature to someone on the iPhone, like that's one of the features that gets people like, hey, maybe I could leave iMessage and maybe I could stop using AirDrop. To get some real innovation like that, because you know people can identify with like you know you're out and your earbuds are almost dead and you want to keep listening to music, okay, just plop the case on the back of your phone and it'll charge it up, and then you can drop the buds in there and get a couple hours extra charge. That's a really useful feature. No, I see, so it does work now on the buds. But anyway, what you can do now, though so you might want to know this Instead of doing reverse wireless charge, if you don't have a power brick with you and you need to charge your watch, yeah, as long as you bring the cable, you can plug the cable into your phone's usbc port seriously, you can charge it using the puck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, huh, okay. Yeah, I showed that off in the video.
Speaker 1:That's very useful, it's not as good as reverse wireless charge yeah, for sure obviously then you don't need the cable at all or a brick, but at least you don't need a power brick. You just throw your watch cable in your backpack with you and if it gets low throughout the day you just plug it into your phone and it doesn't. You know it's not going to drain too much battery on your phone. You know if you want to get a little bit of juice for the watch, because 15 minutes will give you like 20 on the watch enough to get home, for sure so that's really cool.
Speaker 1:Um, the action button. I want to talk about that for a second, because is that what the orange button is? Yeah, um, it annoyed me the very first bit of time I had it because I kept trying to use it as a back button. Because it's got a three-button setup and the one that's in the middle, of course, even though I know that prior Galaxy watches, like the Watch 6 Classic, had multi-button setups, you're naturally going to gravitate to the middle one.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter how many times you've used a Samsung watch, I gravitate towards the bottom one. Did you All the time? Well, that was the correct one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, tori, just he passed the Samsung quiz of which is the correct button, but this one, you know, it's like orange and I was like, ooh orange, oh pretty, I'll press it, but that's not what you want to press and, unfortunately, the thing that bothers me about this, they're only be stopwatch, samsung Health and there's one other one I don't remember what it was, but there's only a couple different things you can map it to. You can stopwatch, flashlight, water lock and Samsung Health.
Speaker 1:So you can't use it to open, like any specific app that you want, and a lot of people want to be able to customize it to open any app that they want, like, want, and a lot of people want to be able to customize it to open any app that they want, like, maybe their favorite health app like Strava, or even just a random app like a social media app. Why not want to do that? There's nothing wrong with that. So I think it'd be nice if they'd add that customization, because Samsung's all about customization, and so that's something I would definitely like to see them do.
Speaker 2:It's kind of funny. You say stopwatch. Every time I look at the site it gives me a stopwatch.
Speaker 1:Bye Does it? It does kind of look like that. You're right, so that's actually funny enough. The original default Samsung Health. I mapped it to the stopwatch because that finally made me stop pushing it to use the back button, because I was like no, that's the stopwatch, because it looks like one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and now it worked and I stopped pressing it on accident to go back. So, yeah, I mapped it to the stopwatch. That's what I'm using it for, but I would probably use it to open a different app. I'd probably use it to open my music app because.
Speaker 2:I use that a lot. Quick access.
Speaker 1:Yeah, quick access. Or maybe even Google Fit instead of Samsung Health, because sometimes I use that instead of Samsung Health. I use both back and forth, just to do comparisons, obviously, but I might map it to a different fitness app and I know some people want to do that. What about step tracking? Have you noticed that? It's very accurate? I noticed yesterday. It seemed a little suspicious. I don't want to say yet because I haven't had it for a full week and this is not a full review today. I'll have a full review probably next week. I'll give some more in-depth thoughts and maybe I'll write up one on the website and Tori will write up something too. But I noticed yesterday it said I had like 7,000 steps and I was mostly sitting in the chair. So I don't know if I believe that. I mean I walked around and did some stuff, but I was in the office working. So I don't know. Have you noticed anything with step tracking accuracy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have. So, like I've taken it to the gym at least four times now and while, like being on the treadmill, it was definitely giving me a little bit more steps than what I thought I had originally taken, and also along with the distance as well. The distance was um, because I started it, uh, at the same time I started the treadmill, the distance was a little bit behind, but what I actually did like about it was after I was done with the workout, because I did the treadmill exercise. In Samsung Health, it asked about how accurate or like what was. What was there with the distance that was recorded on the treadmill, and it's trying to align or try to calibrate.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's nice. So I'll have to do like I said. That's why I said I've only had it for 48 hours. I need to actually get in and do some workouts. I did some light walking. I have a walking pad in the office. I did that yesterday. I don't think I took 7,000 steps. I probably did like a mile, which is not 7,000 steps. But I'll have to do gym to Lifetime Fitness and I'll have to track some of my workouts at the treadmill and see how that's going, because I'm kind of going to the gym like four or five times a week now as I try to lose weight. So once I get a chance to use it for a full week next week, I'll give some more thoughts. But it does seem to be overestimating steps.
Speaker 2:You would agree. Yeah, same, yeah. So I mean, even like last night I took the off and then, like after midnight, you know, you know like a reset, sound like I may have picked it up like once or twice, but I looked it already, said I I had already taken 136 steps and I was like I haven't, haven't did anything, uh. So yeah, and I do think the steps are off because I've hit my step goal like every single day since wearing the watch and I don't think I'm taking that many steps.
Speaker 1:I don't, I don't believe that either. I mean it says I'm like a lot of quite a few steps, like 4,000. Again, I've been sitting here so I think it's maybe helping me out a little bit and reaching my goals too much, because I'm not actually reaching them and that makes me feel like I'm, you know, doing something I'm not, which I don't necessarily want. So I think that's mostly what I had to say. Are there any other thoughts about the watch so far that you want to add? I, I'm going to have you write up something for the website, of course, but anything you want to add today for the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean just overall, like the initial presentation, like if you were to get the watch, the, the initial default of the face is just very nice. It's very attention getting very poppy. I really like it. Um, and also it has like this compass feature. That's like, uh, one of my favorites too, because sometimes I'm like, oh, you know where is north um, but this will accurately tell you here. Uh, another surprising feature that I didn't think I would like or use because it wasn't on other watches, but the night mode. I actually really like it. Like when I'm asleep because I'm wearing the watch, I'm able to still tilt the time and just kind of look at things and it shows up really nice Like it's not like overly bright, but it is a nice appreciation to have that feature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I didn't actually talk about that because I'm so used to that, had been on the apple watch, which I used for a while. But that is new to galaxy watches and it's a great feature because when you're outside at night, or if you're in a dark place even and just inside your room, you don't have to be outside and I've noticed the auto on that is actually quite accurate.
Speaker 1:That's something I was going to talk about, my full review because the apple one sometimes will trigger when you're actually like not fully dark, it's like dusk, and I don't want that necessarily. I still like it to be on the regular. But this one really triggers, like when it's just when I feel like it's dark enough that it should be on, it turns off. So the ambient light sensor is doing a really good job with detecting that. So I highly recommend if you get the galaxy watch ultra, there's no need to turn the night mode on or off manually, like some people feel. Like some people have said on the apple watch, they feel like they have to because it's not good at detecting. I think the galaxy watch does a good job of detecting. Yeah, it does so overall. I mean those are our initial thoughts.
Speaker 1:I mean they were pretty long initial thoughts so basically it's pretty close to a full review, but I want to use it a little bit longer. Toriel will write up his review for the website, and then I'll probably do mine on the video. That way, we have a couple different perspectives from the website, and so that's very exciting as well. Another thing I want to mention too, as we transition to talking about the Flip, the Fold and the Buds 3 Pro, we have a full-time writer, starting at Sammy Guru on Monday.
Speaker 2:So we are going to have a ton more news content.
Speaker 1:We're going to be covering Samsung from all angles every single day News tutorials, etc. Because I can only do so much, obviously, myself. Between the video content, the podcast, the newsletter, I do everything and I'll be kind of announcing and introducing him over on Twitter. So if you guys want to learn more about our new staff writer, you guys can check out Twitter on Monday and I'll kind of give a little bio of him and stuff. But he's a guy who's been working in space for a long time and we're pretty excited to have him. Eventually he will probably make an appearance on the podcast, but Tori and I got to figure that out because he is not in our time zone.
Speaker 2:So we've got to figure out when we will do that Cause you know that's always tough when you've got a guest who's like 12 hours ahead or behind you got to figure that out, but we'll probably figure it out.
Speaker 1:I think we can figure it out. Tori doesn't mind staying up late sometimes on a friday, so that's fine, okay. So let's uh transition to talking about the fold, the flip and the buds 3 pro, and I'm going to probably go in depth on more of these next week, but I just want to give some initial thoughts about them. Um, since you know I've had these for a little while, the fold, I've only had for now three days. Last week on the podcast, I said for sure I would have one by Monday. That turned out to be a lie, you know like on the Moripovitz show.
Speaker 2:We determined that was a lie. So yeah, it didn't come to Tuesday morning.
Speaker 1:Thanks to the whole CrowdStrike, cyber thing, messed up UPS, messed up a lot of people's fold orders. But quickly I'll talk about the fold first. I've had it for three days. I've made some videos on it. My initial thoughts on the build are it's nice, but it's still too narrow for me personally to use on a daily basis. The cover screen just still isn't wide enough. I mean, if you compare this to the S24 Ultra, it still doesn't feel anything like a traditional slab phone, which is I like the width of the S24 Ultra and I'm very used to using it. Could I force myself to use it? Yes, but is it my preference over the S24 Ultra? The answer is no.
Speaker 1:I will mention one thing that I think I was wrong about somewhat. The camera quality is better than I thought. I don't give Samsung a pass for not putting a better sensor in here because they should have put better hardware in here. It's basically been three years since they really upgraded the camera. That's unacceptable. The hardware, but the software processing isn't that bad as I thought and the new ultrawide is an improvement. So while I really bashed the camera before and lot of that's, I know I don't take a lot of it back because they should have put new hardware in here. The software processing does seem to be improved to the level where you at least get same quality, as I would say.
Speaker 1:Someone asked me for a comparison. It's on the level of like a galaxy s24, not an s24 ultra, talking about the base, which definitely doesn't have the same camera as the Ultra but it's on the level of like a Galaxy S24 camera, and I think that's pretty good. I mean, it's still a shame that a $1,900 phone, though, doesn't have the best camera that you can possibly get for your flagship lineup. I think that's a real shame. For sure it's $100 more. Exactly, they charge you $100 more, and for $100 more I really don't know what it is you got. I mean it is thinner and lighter, but you know it's not like it's a.
Speaker 1:I thought it would be revelatory. It's not. It definitely feels lighter in my pocket, but it's still definitely thicker than a slab-style phone. And so, at the end of the day, I really this if you were a foldable fan and you're, you know, galaxy z fold fan I think you'll appreciate the upgrades. But if you're an average consumer who uses a foldable and you're not an enthusiast, you shouldn't upgrade from a fold five to this and, and maybe not even a fold four, unless you know you've had like some build quality issues or something. Your fold four is like falling apart. I don't know that I would necessarily upgrade, but if you're an enthusiast I think you'll appreciate the extra width. The boxy design is nicer, the aspect ratio on the inside is nicer.
Speaker 1:They did some nice things and, of course, it's got all the Galaxy AI features that are built in which we talked about. I played with sketched image a little bit. Those are all going to come to the old phones, though that's like nothing super nothing super important about that, cause you'll get those later. Like, check out this watercolor of me. Oh, wow, yeah. So I did some different things with the portrait mode and I did some other things. One thing I found out, which a lot of other outlets publicized, is you can't use the sketched image to like defile people's faces. So if you try to draw, graffiti or something on someone's face it won't let you.
Speaker 1:It says cannot generate image due to the location of the drawing, and so you can't do that, which is kind of funny. I was trying to just kind of play around to see what it would let me get away with. But all those Galaxy Eye features are mostly going to come to the Z Fold 5 and the S24 line. So it's not like you need to rush out and buy this phone for the Galaxy Eye stuff. It's not like you need to rush out and buy this phone for the Galaxy Eye stuff. It's going to come anyway. The Z Fold sorry, the Z Flip 6,.
Speaker 1:On the other hand, initial impressions there, this phone kind of blew me away honestly. You know, it seems like an iterative upgrade, like the Fold 6 as well. But there's a couple of things about this phone that blew me away. One the crease on this phone is much less noticeable than the Z Flip 5. Not necessarily when you look at it when it's open, but when you look at it closed. The off axis, the way the reflections blend in, and not only that, but the way it feels when you touch the screen. It doesn't feel as significant. You can actually feel it Tori in the middle there. It doesn't feel he. You can actually feel it.
Speaker 1:Tori in the middle there it doesn't feel he touched the Flip 5 before and he said the decrease is pretty noticeable. It's not as noticeable anymore. It's definitely there but it's not as noticeable. But the other place where this blew me away, two things that are probably the most important things for most average users on a smartphone the battery life. It's basically like it's almost an extra probably 12 hours worth of battery life compared to the flip 5.
Speaker 1:I used the flip 5 last year as my daily driver for a few days. I couldn't get more than like 14 hours of daily of regular use, not screen on time, 14 hours just using it. So I like take it off the charger at 8 am. It'd be dead by, like you know, 10 pm, easy. So you couldn't have like a night. If you were going out or something, you couldn't use it. But like the flip, the flip six, like I used it for a few days and like I would sometimes I worked till 2 in the morning. I took off the charger at like 8 am and I looked at like 2.
Speaker 2:I don't know that could get me all the way through the next morning.
Speaker 1:I could charge it in lunch the next day if I needed to. That's huge. Getting a day and a half instead of not even a full day. That's massive. So the battery improvement is huge on this phone and the camera improvement is just massive. I mean, this thing had a camera last year that was just as bad as the Fold, maybe even worse because it's got a smaller profile to pack in that sensor. This one is definitely on the same level as the Z Fold 6. In my opinion it's basically like a Galaxy S24 base model quality, but this one's also a lot cheaper. So people are probably like why are you saying the Fold's camera is not good?
Speaker 2:but the Flip's camera is good and they have almost the same quality.
Speaker 1:Well, this phone, the Fold, costs almost $2,000. The other one costs $1,000. So when you double the price, my standards are going to go up. You know, like the camera you give me for a thousand doesn't need to be the same one you give me for 2000. If I pay twice as much, um, but I was blown away by this phone overall, like the build quality improvements. Uh, the hinge is a lot nicer, uh yeah, it is a lot thinner sturdier it's a lot thinner as well.
Speaker 1:Um, just overall the usability of this phone. They've improved a lot of things. The cover display now has the quick replies on the cover display. Uh, it's got the auto framing for the camera and for video. So if you open and use this like you use this to take selfies or take videos and stuff it'll automatically frame you. Like, if you use it on the cover display as you walk, it'll automatically make sure you're centered in the frame. That's an exclusive feature to the Z Flip 6. It's not on the Fold or any other model, and I don't know if it'll come to one, because it's all about the cover screen on the Z Flip 6.
Speaker 1:I like this phone. Honestly, if it wasn't so narrow, I could consider using this as my daily driver, maybe even more so than the Fold, which is surprising this one. Also, though, if you open it, it's almost the same width as the Fold is, which is why I don't use it as my daily driver, because the S24 Ultra is still like 60 to 70 percent wider than these phones, and so I'm probably still going to go back to that, just because I'm a guy who appreciates the extra width when typing, because I have fat fingers. You know people are like why can't you use it? Well, I have fat fingers and it's okay. So Samsung is going to need to give me a wider cover screen on the Fold or make the flip wider if I'm going to use it as a daily driver. Supposedly that Galaxy Z Fold 6 Ultra is supposed to be coming People are saying in October. Man, that's going to make so many people angry. They just bought a $2,000 phone.
Speaker 1:If they sell that in the U oh man, the emails I'm going to get about how angry. The comments we'll get about how angry people are. It's going to be really bad. People are going to be like I just bought this phone for two grand and then three months later you release a phone that's miles better I could have waited for and did my upgrade and got my trading credit on that phone, but now you're wasting my time making me get this particular phone.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I don't. I don't know what that's all about. Um, very interesting for sure. So we'll see how that plays out. If they do release a lot, people gonna be mad. Galaxy buds 3 pro. Let's uh, briefly talk about buds 3 pro for a second. Uh, I really like the buds 3 pro. I think you should get a pair tori they are still planning, they are still back ordered because of the recall that we mentioned.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the issue which I did discover myself because, you know, since I review these things, I had to try to push the limits. Uh, apparently the issue is, if you try to change the silicone ear tips, they rip very easily so I try to change mine, like just regularly. Samsung actually published a video about how to do it today to tell you that you must be doing it wrong. That's because they're not very well made.
Speaker 2:They're really not. You're not doing anything wrong, they're just trying to tell you why they're ripping.
Speaker 1:It's all for your fault, but it's not because they recalled them. I don't know why they made that video. Because you're not selling them anymore. Why aren't you selling them? Yeah, it's because the ear tips are poorly made. I tried changing them and I ripped one easily. You know people are gonna be like oh, you weren't careful enough, I don't need to be careful on any of my other earbuds. I've changed a million pair of earbud ear tips. I got like 30 pair from from reviewing them on youtube. I don't need to be careful with any of them. I did this one just the same way I would do any other one. Just pluck it off, try to put a new one on, and I ripped one. So definitely be careful about that if you already have a pair, but if you don't, you can't get some until the end of August because of this issue.
Speaker 1:The sound quality is amazing. I think it's on par with some of my more expensive headphones like the Bang Olufsen's that are like almost twice the price. The Bang Olufsen's are $400. The build they feel a little cheapish, I'll be honest. They don't have a lot of weight in the hand, but they're earbuds so you don't really want that, but if you compare the build quality to the Bang Olufsen's, they're not really on the par there. But I mean, the extra money goes to some of that finishing. They do feel like a little cheap, plasticky, but the audio quality is anything but cheap. They're amazingly good.
Speaker 1:The features are amazing. The noise cancellation the active noise cancellation is fantastic. They've added some amazing features that integrate with your phone, your watch, the whole Galaxy ecosystem. Really impressed with the Buds 3 Pro. The Samsung case for the Buds 3 Pro, though, is trash, so don't buy that. You'll probably end up scratching up the actual charging case, and it's really hard to pull it out once you put it in there. So buy one of the third-party cases. I'm going to review some. I ordered some from Amazon from a couple different companies, just because I'm too lazy to email them and ask them to send them for free. That's one of the things I could get a lot of work, and then you have to go back and forth and they're going to be like oh well, where are you going to put the review? Is it going to be on the website or the YouTube channel? I'm like I'll just buy it. It's $20.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know people are. It's worth a lot of money and I don't want to spend a ton of money. I can get it for free and I'll do it. But for accessories, typically I just buy them because I can get them quicker and I can give you guys some feedback. So those are my thoughts on the Buds 3 Pro and the Z Flip 6 and Z Fold 6. Definitely have a full review next week so you guys can stay tuned for that. It'll be coming up very soon. But before we do get on to the next segment of the show, talking about One UI 7.0, we'll go ahead and take a break here to hear from the sponsor of today's podcast.
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Speaker 1: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 trymintmobilecom 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. All right, welcome back everybody. From that ad break, we are now going to talk about One UI 7.0 and all the massive leaks. Now I've covered these in a bunch of YouTube videos and Tori watched them. There are some interesting things that have come out. Last week we talked briefly about these, but even more crazy things have come out since then. So almost all the icons have leaked. Have you taken a look at the icon story? I know I showed off some of them in the videos.
Speaker 2:Yes, I have, and you know I do have a few thoughts on those.
Speaker 1:Go ahead. What do you think about?
Speaker 2:them. Yeah, so because I was like man, you know, I don't even really like pay attention to the icons no, I don't really know if other you know average day consumers of Samsung products do but to me in the update they seem like more colorful and poppy versus like. I was looking at the gallery and the internet and then I started reflecting. I was like, yeah, you know, they've been kind of consistent with each app having like a certain color and then just kind of having like you know, that color theme with some white here and there. So I think by adding color, at least in my opinion, we'll just kind of make things feel more poppy or vibrant to the Samsung feel, especially when you're first firing up the phone, maybe for the first time I feel like consumers are really going to like that.
Speaker 1:And I like Tori's insight here because a lot of us don't like. A lot of the Samsung fans seem to not like the gallery icon. I love the internet icon, by the way. It's got like a nice blue with a teal ring around the planet. It looks good. The internet icon is definitely their best, but the gallery icon a lot of people don't like it because it looks like it's lifted from Apple, but it is a lot more colorful than the previous gallery icon. So, in keeping with Samsung's new kind of goal of reaching Generation Z or whatever, that probably will appeal to them because they like that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:I think that's part of the reason they're going towards. That is that a lot of the things that Apple does also appeals to gen z and so samsung's trying to get on that same bandwagon maybe not necessarily copy apple exactly, but you use that same strategy to appeal to those users. Um, I think you know, of all the icons, the gallery, one's the one I like the least, mainly because I just like the color of the old one and I've used samsung so long, like that familiar, like, like whatever it is pinkish, maroonish color.
Speaker 1:I saw someone did a concept on Twitter. I forgot who it was. It might've been VTROX. I'm sorry if I messed up the designer's name. I'll put it in the show notes for sure. There's so many guys who do these and they all. I appreciate all their work, but he had one where, instead of having the multicolored flower, it was white icon but had the pinkish gradient all on the flower just a single monochrome.
Speaker 1:It actually looked good and it looked like a pink gradient. That's what I would prefer. It keeps more of a Samsung style instead of going the opposite direction. But at the end of the day, we'll see what they end up doing. The Dynamic Island. So did you get a chance to see this, tori the Dynamic?
Speaker 2:Island.
Speaker 1:You know, apple has this on their new iPhones where at the top you can put different activities, like you can see sports scores and weather and stopwatch and alarm up there. Now Samsung's going to do that. It's not going to work exactly like that, because of course, samsung doesn't have a big cutout in their phones. It's going to just go back up to the status bar, so you can just flick it up to the status bar. It's going to just go back up to the status bar, so you can just like flick it up to the status bar. You can see your music, your reminders, all that stuff.
Speaker 2:What do you think about that as an idea overall?
Speaker 2:So like initially at least, I'm just so used to and maybe in my opinion, with just like my everyday life, like I'm just used to how I navigate the phone. Uh, I do feel like a lot of people, especially also to those gen z years where, um, you're kind of looking at as phones as being able to multitask a lot of things, and I feel like that's a direction that samsung uh tries to emphasize on and does really good in those innovation markets. So I really do feel like this could be a good thing. Like, obviously it's going to be in beta, but I do think this could be a thing that if they can really just find out a way to uh to, you know, now that they have the full, the flip um and the s line um, they can just kind of work it out to where, uh, it's nice on those and they have a lot of innovate innovation window, um, I think it's going to be a good thing that people probably go for, especially those gen z years yeah, I'm actually not against it.
Speaker 1:A lot of samsung fans are like oh, we don't want this because it's emulating apple. But you know I've never said that I don't want them to emulate apple on anything I said. I want them to emulate apple on good ideas and not take apple's bad ideas.
Speaker 1:some of the ideas they've taken have not been good ones, but this idea is not a a bad idea. It depends on how they implement it. They're not copying directly from Apple because we're not going to have a massive cutout in our phone. Now, if they did that, that would honestly piss me off a little bit. If they put a massive pill-shaped cutout in the Galaxy S25 Ultra, I'm going to say that right now. If that ends up happening we haven't seen any suggestions of that in leaks, but if that happens, I'm not going to be super happy about it. But if they just have it so that the live activities live in the status bar, it could be good.
Speaker 1:So far, in the leaked videos that people have shown though, the animations where you flick it up and down look really janky. They don't look good at all. They look very stuttery. But it's a beta. It's actually an alpha. Right now it's not even beta because you know it's not even being tested by the public, but you know it's getting ready to come out in beta, maybe next week. Ice Universe said we might even get it next week, which would be crazy. But since it's so early, I'm okay with it being a little janky.
Speaker 2:But if they get smooth animations and it looks useful. I think a lot of people would use it, like you said. Well, so then, with that, because, as I was kind of looking through the comments in the videos, uh, several people were asking should samsung focus on the animations for the things that they're trying to roll out, um, and not just rush?
Speaker 1:these things I would like to see a little smoother. Yeah, ice universe said he originally said it might come next week and then he said but samsung shouldn't put it out next week because it's so buggy. Ice, you know our good friend, the most prolific samsung le. He knows everything that's going on with U1 UI. He said that it's so buggy the versions he's seen that he would suggest they not release it.
Speaker 1:I would not like to see a super buggy beta because obviously I'll be running it and it's always nicer if it's a little smoother in the beginning, because when I'm making videos on all the features I don't have to have apps force closing and then I have to restart my video 10, 15, 20 times to get a video out to you guys. It's happened on previous betas before. It's always nicer if the first beta is somewhat nice and not everything is crashing. So I would prefer they perfect some of it a little bit. Of course I'm being a little selfish because I'd also like to be able to finish all my content on these current devices that just came out before. I have to make 20 videos on one UI 7, because that's a lot of work. I love it, but it's a lot back-to-back.
Speaker 1:I wish they would wait, make it a little more stable, because why not they're not going to be rolling out the stable version until October, middle of October, end of October. A couple months to beta test is fine. They don't need to push it out necessarily right now. We saw the new camera UI, which is where everything's on the bottom. They actually put a screenshot of that. We talked about it last week, but he actually showed a screenshot of what it looks like. It looks good.
Speaker 2:I mean I don't have a problem with the camera UI, the camera UI looks fine.
Speaker 1:It's more one-handed, like we said last week, which is great. That goes along with One UI's goal of being one-handed. I think there's nothing wrong with that. I'm perfectly happy with the camera UI. The new notifications on the lock screen don't look good, though. Those look particularly terrible in my opinion. Did you see those?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did the ones that are rounded notification.
Speaker 1:They look bad. I made a video on this today. I'm pulling it up again for Tori.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they just don't look good.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's just the transparency of them, but they kind of look like pixel icons. I know you haven't probably used a pixel, but they're like Google's pixel icons and you know it's just weird because One UI 7 as a whole seems to have design inspiration from like 20 places. It just seems like it's a huge cluster F. No, you know, pardon my French, but it's just like we took some stuff from Apple, we took some stuff from HyperOS, we took stuff from our own past OSs, we took some stuff from the Pixel Launcher and we're just like we're going to just make all of that into one OS.
Speaker 1:And it just doesn't work great. The icons are the same way too. We talked about the icons. Some of them are old-school, samsung-inspired. Some of them are inspired by Apple or HyperOS, like the Gallery. Some of them are completely reinvented samsung icons like the internet, which I love. I wish all of them were that style but, like some of them are flat, some of them are 3d. Some of them have different design philosophies. They just don't look like a cohesive product, and so when you I said it right now, of course it's an alpha. We're not saying it should be a finished product three months before it comes out. I'm not saying that, but the design philosophy doesn't seem to be a finished product. I saw the battery percent inside the battery icon. That looks okay. What do you think about the battery percent?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did too. A lot of the people in the comments were saying that it's too small. They don't like it. This isn't a change that they want. I don't think I would mind it, or even other consumers as well, especially if they're also trying to convert those Apple people over as well. Because isn't that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also the other thing about it is it is a usability improvement, because if you have the battery icon and the percent next to it, then those two things side by side take up more space in the status bar. Yeah, so if you have the percentage inside of the icon, you're taking up less space in the status bar where you could have other things, like your notification icons on the left, and that's particularly important, as I was talking about earlier, with phones like the Fold 6 and the Flip 6. They're more narrow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they are the cover screen and the Flip, so you need more space to show more notification icons, and I'm okay with that because it's a usability improvement. Like I said before, if we take some good ideas and then they're for a real reason, like they're actually going to improve the overall experience, then I don't care. But I don't like just taking a bunch of ideas and like throwing them together Like this is the new One UI crapshoot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, seven OS where we took ideas from everywhere we have no idea what the cohesive vision is.
Speaker 1:We're just going to throw all this stuff on there and see if it sticks. I don't like that approach. But if there's real usability reasons behind making a change, that's fine um what about the tap the?
Speaker 2:oh, go ahead, tori. Oh, I mean I, I was just gonna say you know as just like an average consumer, um, or even someone who would even be interested in like getting the new phones or like upgrading, I like the direction of focusing on the user comfortability and focusing on the one UI One-handedness. Is that what?
Speaker 2:you mean yeah, yeah yeah, I think it's a good direction. I like it. I feel like they're trying to find what fits for their flagship phones, you know, and I think it's just like a growing pain that you know, all Samsung users are, you know, trying to find. But I think, too, if Samsung is good about listening to their base, they'll be able to get to a solid place of things that will meet everyone at the same line.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like it. Yeah, I mean, I know that. Yeah, with the beta testing, it's all about getting feedback. So people are going to give feedback about what they don't like, and the one nice thing I will say about Samsung that you can't say about other manufacturers, whether it's Apple or other Android manufacturers, is they do listen to their fans when we test the beta. You know there's been many betas that I participated in and myself and other enthusiasts and YouTubers, creators have given feedback in the beta because they have a nice forum for us to post feedback during the beta testing. We tell them we don't like something. They've changed it a lot of times.
Speaker 2:You know they're not going to change the whole UI.
Speaker 1:But if there's one thing you know that's a small tweak that they can make, they'll do it. You know Apple is never going to do that. They're like you're going to use what we put out and you better like it.
Speaker 1:You know, Samsung is not that way. They're not like. You know if we thought that this was something that people wanted, but it's a terrible idea, and you pointed out why it's a terrible idea. Don't make a change. What do you think about the stack tasks changer? Because that's going to be the default now where you've got single cards. Oh wow, the current one is where you've got multi-view, like this one, the little ones. What do you think about that change?
Speaker 2:You know, I think I like the new one, just because then in that way I can kind of like move things around. Then, in that way I can kind of like move things around because sometimes, depending on what your situation in terms of like where you're at you may be easier for certain ones, and so it'll be easier to kind of like be able to select which one that you like just kind of fit your current situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's also to. It also is what the iPhone has the stack one. It's also easier to see more information because you have a bigger preview of each app versus the current one.
Speaker 2:Where you're like at a squint yeah where you don't necessarily have that.
Speaker 1:So it's an improvement from that. So again, since it's a usability improvement, it's okay with me. You'll be able to change it in GoodLock anyway. Goodlock has always had the ability to do this inside HomeUp. They're not going to take that away. It's like if you're a hardcore Samsung user, there's no reason to rage against the machine about this because you're still going to be able to go in there and just switch it anytime you want.
Speaker 1:As long as it's stuff that I can modify in GoodLock, I'm not going to throw a fit about it. If it's a usability change or a design change that I have to look of the phone, that I can't really modify. But a lot of the things I can change in GoodLock, it's like why am I going to get super angry about that? I mean, I can say I don't like it. But if I can change the default, Samsung gives me the chance to customize it. I'm okay with that. That's fine. I think that's mostly what I have to say about One UI 7. We covered a lot of it last week as well. Once the beta comes out we'll talk about it, probably an entire episode, Because you know I have a bunch of phones. Maybe I'll see if Tori can play around with it a little bit too. We can both experience it. Oh yeah, Because I don't want Tori running this on his main phone, because that will be terrible. He'll probably really hate me if I ask him to run the beta on his main phone.
Speaker 2:He on his main phone.
Speaker 1:He won't be able to use anything, he won't be able to use any of his apps.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, no.
Speaker 1:You don't want that. You've got to do your banking and your other secure apps won't run on the beta. Let's talk a little bit about the app of the week and then get to the Q&A. Google Keep Notes is the one I chose with the app of the week because this week I'm making A lot of people compare it to Samsung Notes, and I've also done that. I made a full video comparing the two as well. But Google KeepNotes has some advantages because it syncs across all of your devices because you can use it on the web.
Speaker 1:in a little more cross-compatibility, I can use it on my Apple devices as well.
Speaker 2:It doesn't really have great S Pen support.
Speaker 1:Of course that's the advantage of Samsung Notes. But have you ever looked at KeepNotes? Have?
Speaker 2:you ever seen it? Yeah, I have, I think. Actually, when I had my HTC, I used Google Keep a lot because at that time I just got like a Google Chromebook. So I was like, oh, like it's nice for me to be able to write on like my Google Chrome, and then I also have it on my phone, you know, because back then I was like a college student, so it helped out a lot but just kind of keeping track of like the schedule and the things I needed to do by the time I got back to the dorm, because you know you go through a lot throughout the day. But what I really appreciated was that you could color code like the notes.
Speaker 1:You can see I have that in my pin notes.
Speaker 1:You can also pen stuff to the top which I always do yeah, like that feature, yeah, so, and you can also put these little check boxes.
Speaker 1:People always ask about this in my videos, like because, as I do my longer videos, like my tutorials, I make a keep note and I keep it open in multi-window and I open it and I check off the items as I go, just because, like I said before, I don't script my videos like I'm doing everything off the cuff as I go, just because, like I said before, I don't script my videos Like I'm doing everything off the cuff, so I just write down a general outline, I'm just checking stuff off as I go so you can tell, like I'm not giving you any BS, because it's just off the cuff what I think.
Speaker 1:And also, you know, I know most of the tutorials that I've done a lot of times by heart, because I always am spending time with the phone before I make the video. I don't need a script because I've already spent so much time playing with it before I make a video on it anyway. But people always ask me about this and it's great. It has sharing, it's got rich link previews, so if you paste a link from the web, it'll give you a preview of the link.
Speaker 1:I've got some links from various websites you can see what that actually is. You can insert drawings. So it does work with the S Pen, but it's not as good, obviously, as Samsung Notes. It's got a lot of advanced integration with the S Pen because it is a Samsung product. Samsung Notes this is not.
Speaker 1:But KeepNotes is great for sharing. You can share with various people, you get reminders. There's a bunch of different themes you can get too for KeepNotes, in addition to color coding, the actual notes, as Tori said before, and you can also add recordings, voice recordings or images or photos directly from there. It's got an archiving system which you can use for the notes and, like I said, it syncs to your Google account, which makes it particularly useful. So I highly recommend trying it if you are a Samsung Notes user, just to compare it, because why not? I mean, even if you're an everyday user it might work better for you if you have multiple devices that aren't all Samsung. Like maybe use a Samsung phone, but you have an iPad and you have a Windows PC. A lot of people are in that camp because the iPad is a great tablet and Windows PCs not all of them are made by Samsung. The one I have is the Galaxy Book 4 Edge so I can use Samsung Notes on there.
Speaker 1:But some people may not be using Samsung Notes. If they have, like, an HP, that might not be their default, so this might be something they want to try and just see if it works for you. And I use it in a lot of my videos, like I said, with tutorials, and I find it's great just for syncing it cross-platform. So I'm bringing people's attention. As always, it'll be in the show notes. I'm curious if our listeners have some suggestions for apps of the week that we can try, because, of course, I'm talking about the ones that I use all the time, but I'd like to get some more adventurous ones that me and Tori can try that we don't know about. So if you guys have apps of the week, put them over on Twitter, put them on Facebook, send us a text message, because there's a link in the show notes to send a text message directly to the show or email us, jeff at sammygurucom.
Speaker 1:I, jeff at SammyGurucom. I've got to get Tori a Sammy Guru email, so you can email him too. I'll get him an Add Sammy Guru domain at some point too, so you can email us and let us know what apps you want us to talk about, because we'll try some apps and give them a shot.
Speaker 1:I like trying new apps and I probably don't do it as often as I used to, but I would love to start doing it again. Q&a we've got three today that I highlighted. Uh, they asked what case do we use on our phones? So I use a bunch of them, but I'll let tory go. What case are you using on your s22 ultra?
Speaker 2:uh, yeah, currently I'm using the uh samsung uh flip kick uh kickstand case, or, yeah, uh, kickstand case.
Speaker 2:Uh, I love it. Um, just because you know, like I have Netflix, hulu, I'm always like trying to, during lunch, uh, when I have a break, uh, be able to just watch something while I eat something and just kind of like decompress um a little bit, and so it's just really nice to have. That case is very durable. Um, uh, the only thing about that case is, like you know, it gets dirty like over time, cause it's clear plastic and also we live in arizona. The sun does some damage to it as well, um, if it's, you know, out for extended periods of time. But overall, it's a really good case.
Speaker 1:I do like the samsung case yeah, so their kickstand case is pretty good. Samsung's a first party case that sometimes can be hit or miss, so sometimes they make some great ones, sometimes they make some terrible ones. I remember back for the z-fold four, which is when I first came back to doing youtube full-time after covid because I took some time off during covid. They made a case for the z-fold four. That was their original s-pin type case for the z-fold four. It was absolutely terrible. Like it it. You couldn't even open it without the s-pin falling off the back.
Speaker 1:Wow, I don't know sometimes how they don't quality control, some of their first-party cases, but that kickstand case that they've made for a couple generations now. Usually, once they make the case for a couple years, it gets to a point where it's good, but then, for some reason, samsung's like hey, let's just get rid of all that stuff that we've made, that's working so many years, and let's just make different cases. This year.
Speaker 2:I don't know why they do that.
Speaker 1:They do that like every three or four years, maybe two or three years. They're like yeah, this case is great, People love it. We've been doing it for the S22, S23, S24. Should we make it for the S25? Nah, we shouldn't do that.
Speaker 2:People really like it. It's reliable.
Speaker 1:It serves a purpose. We sell a lot of. There's no complaints. Don't make any more of those. That sounds like a bad idea.
Speaker 2:It is a bad idea. Why did they do that?
Speaker 1:I mean, if people like this case, then just keep making it. They had a case like the Clearview SU cover for a while that people liked a lot and they had perfected it. It had some issues in the beginning. It's actually one of the cases that I made one of my first videos on that has like a million views the one for the s6. They made it for like four or five years and it perfected it and then one year they're just like, ah no, I'm not gonna do that anymore. We're gonna start doing led covers and they're not as quite as good they didn't have quite the same functionality.
Speaker 1:Um, I use a lot of different cases. My favorite ones are urban armor for the S24 Ultra, pataka, kodabe, magback. These are some of the cases I use. And then on the Fold 6, I currently have the Binx AirMid Fiber. I really like this case. I highly recommend it for one reason it does not have a front plate. I hate Fold cases that have the front plate. 99% of them do you have to put a front plate around the front?
Speaker 1:It has an adhesive and it makes it harder to use the phone. It's not as ergonomic. This one only has a back plate and then a cover for the hinge.
Speaker 2:Before you can see it. It looks really nice and it's nice and thin.
Speaker 1:It doesn't add a lot of bulk because the fold is already pretty thick. I don't want to make it extra thick with another case, so I highly recommend Banks Armor. I'll drop a link to some of these in the show notes as well. We're going to do some case roundups on the website with our new writer who's joining. He's going to make a lot of case posts because I think a lot of people are interested in that. So I have some buying guides for like the fold, the flip, the S line, all that kind of stuff. We kind of answered the second one earlier. We can kind of mentally mention it again. Which apple features do we think samsung should consider borrowing? I like the live activities, the dynamic island quote unquote, even though it's not the same implementation.
Speaker 2:I like it. What do you think, dory? Um, I mean, I like that one too.
Speaker 1:Uh, I mean overall um, you like the camera ui at the bottom right. I mean, that's basically.
Speaker 2:I do like the camera ui uh, and I think that would probably be like my only real thing that I'm really interested in, because, uh, when I currently look at the camera, like sometimes I just get a little overwhelmed with like because I have like the bar stuff at the top, like to to like kind of click through and stuff now and navigate. When, like, I would like a little bit more streamlined process where I don't have to like kind of go and use two hands, especially if I'm trying to take a picture in the moment yeah, I mean those are two things I think that are great.
Speaker 1:The live activities is really cool. Um, the camera ui being at the bottom is a really good idea, I think. As long as it's something that improves the usability, yeah, even if it looks similar to apple, I'm not as against it. If it improves the usability, it makes the product better, just like I said with the buds 3 pro. They look like the airpods but they improve the usability because the old buds had terrible touch controls. Samsung's always had better audio than apple and now they improve the usability. Their, their, their buds are like light years ahead of apple. There's some places where samsung is way ahead of apple and with the buds, like the airpods, are just garbage comparing them. I'll probably make a video. Uh, quickly talking about comparing those two, because people love apple versus samsung comparisons yeah, it brings all the haters out and they get a lot of views.
Speaker 1:You know, I gotta go out there and do some click baiting, get some views from people who are like this guy he thinks he knows how good the airpods are. He probably doesn't even own any airpods. When I have the airpods in the video, I'm sitting there like in my hand. They're like this guy doesn't own airpods.
Speaker 2:I'm like they're, they're right here, yeah, yeah, they're like people just do your research and you're like I I am.
Speaker 1:People just go to the comments and start posting stuff without even watching the video. Most of the time they're like I, you know, the thumbnail just says you know, galaxy buds 3 Pro are better than the AirPods and they're just like. This. Guy doesn't have any AirPods, but the video is like me holding both pairs one pair of AirPods, one pair of Buds. I still don't get that, but whatever. And then the last question, which is a question people were just asking in general on a lot of different socials. We just wrapped up the Z Fold 6, z Flip 6 Mystery Box program. In fact, they're packing some out right outside the door here in their office here.
Speaker 1:Those are all going to UPS this weekend. We've got some out yesterday, some are going out today, friday the 26th, and some are going out tomorrow. People are asking are the Galaxy S25 Ultra boxes going to start soon and the answer is yes. I already put up the page for early notifications for the S25 Ultra mystery boxes. You can sign up. The link will be in the show notes Put for the S25 Ultra Mystery Boxes. You can sign up. The link will be in the show notes, put in your phone number and or your email. You'll get the links on launch day. It's going to be in January. We always start early, it's like six months away, but you'll get your links on launch day to order. You'll get the mystery box verification form to put in your address to get your mystery box if you use our link. I'm coming up with some ways this time to make sure we don't have link problems. I want to promise people, if you go through the mystery box links this time things are going to work, because I have some ideas this time that should make this a fail-proof kind of deal. I never want to say guarantee, but I'm really working hard on my end and also going to work with Samsung's affiliate people to make sure it doesn't happen again, cause it was a real disaster on the foldable launch, not only for me but for you guys too, and I feel bad because I get you guys the early links and you want to order right away to get your box and not everyone was able to do that and I I'm disappointed about that. So I'm working very hard on the administrative side to try to remedy that problem. Remedy that problem.
Speaker 1:So next week we'll be back with video. Are you excited about video, tori? Oh, I am really excited. People finally get to see our beautiful faces on video. I'm going to work on lining up some guests as well as we start going on the video. We should have more guests. I already got like two or three people who are interested in coming on A couple of them. We have to work out time zone issues with, because the time zones are a little tricky, but we will figure that out and we're going to have video not only of our faces, but also top-down video of any products we want to talk about. So you guys will be able to see all the cool stuff that we're discussing as we go through the podcast. So that should be a very, very exciting thing. Then I've also got someone who's working on a little bit of intro and outro music. I don't want to promise that for next week, but we should have it that way. At the end it won't just be like bye.
Speaker 2:Or like I said last week.
Speaker 1:stay classy Samsung fans. I don't want to lift it from Ron Burgundy. Someone suggested that we use stand-up Samsung Knights, but that's Flossy Carter's thing, I'm not going to steal his thing.
Speaker 2:I mean's Flossie, carter's thing.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to steal his thing. I mean, flossie Carter, he's a good you know. I've talked to him many times. He's a great creator and I don't want to steal his catchphrase. He's not copyrighted. I mean, samsung community calls themselves Samsung Knights in general because he said that and I consider myself a Samsung Knight, but I'm not going to steal it for the podcast. So we got to come up with something better, like Samsung Guru Maniacs.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Hulkamania. Samsung Guru Mania is running wild, I don't know. So if you guys have some ideas listening to the show, let us know what you think about that.
Speaker 2:Yes, please. What should we?
Speaker 1:do for the outro. Yes, please, what we should call the listeners, our enthusiast audience. So we'll see you guys next week and everybody have a good one.
Speaker 2:Yeah.