SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
Upgrade Dilemma + Galaxy Ring 1 Week Review
Thinking about upgrading your phone or curious about the newest smart ring from Samsung? Tune in as we review the Galaxy Ring, discuss its biometric accuracy and comfort, and weigh the pros and cons of the latest foldable phones, the Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6. We also spotlight KWGT Widgets, our app of the week, and contemplate Torrey's phone upgrade options, from sticking with the S22 Ultra to switching to the Z Flip 6. This episode is jam-packed with all things Samsung – don't miss out!
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Check out our website: https://sammyguru.com
Welcome back everybody to episode number seven of the Sammy Guru podcast. My name is Jeff Springer. I'm with you tonight. Co-host Tori. Hey, how's it going? Yeah, so today we have video. Finally, finally have video. Welcome. As rough as the video will be, we probably have no idea what we should be looking at because, you know, maybe I'll look at the camera, maybe I'll look at Tori, who knows?
Speaker 1:we're gonna figure it out though, today, so we'll have some nice crisp video footage. Hopefully it's going to get better as we go along as well. And also, as we talk about stories, hopefully we'll be able to have some screenshots of those stories inserted with the video feed as well, so that, as we're going, you guys can kind of enjoy seeing and actually looking at what we're talking about instead of just hearing our voices and having no idea what it is that we're discussing on a particular device, etc.
Speaker 1:Before we get started, we're going to jump into some news this week, because there was actually quite a lot and we've got some big Sammy Guru website news I talked about a little bit last week. But, torrey, how was your week? I know you're back at work. How's that going?
Speaker 2:I am back at work, full swing. It is kicking my butt in terms of meetings. The first week back is always just a bunch of meetings. So they finally gave us today to work in our classroom. So I'm probably going to be in there Saturday and Sunday, still getting it ready, but I shall be ready come Monday.
Speaker 1:All right. So the students come back on Monday. Is that right? Students come back on Monday. Oh, it's pretty exciting. Oh, it's pretty exciting. I mean, I don't know, is it exciting me? Maybe not too excited.
Speaker 2:Right now, no, but I'm sure once Monday comes I'll be excited awesome.
Speaker 1:So yeah, last week I saw Deadpool and Wolverine Friday night great movie, really enjoyed it yes, sam, I saw it, thursday may have to see that again.
Speaker 1:I'm definitely seeing it. We won't do any spoilers for you guys, but but if you haven't seen the movie, if you're a Marvel fan, if you're a Deadpool fan, you should definitely see it. Definitely see it X-Men fan especially actually. So there's some great cameos for those of you who were X-Men fans of the franchise and wanted some specific characters. You might be surprised. You might enjoy seeing the film if you haven't read any of the leaks and stuff. Tori and I also seen a movie tonight, the new m night shamlon movie trap, which looks pretty interesting.
Speaker 1:It's got josh hartnett in it, I believe, playing the lead character. He's a father taking his daughter to like a boy band concert or something. Some kind of pop concert, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, yeah, and then uh they find out band concert or something, some kind of pop concert.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, yeah some kind of pop concert, and then they find out that they're looking for some kind of serial murderer, and then it turns out it's him yeah so that's kind of awkward, you know awkward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like those kinds because then it's kind of like you're seeing it from the perspective of like the bad guy. Yeah, yeah, that's always a fun and also.
Speaker 1:M Night Shyamalan always has some kind of twist, so we'll see what kind of weird unique twist.
Speaker 2:No, who knows, it could be that he's not actually the serial murderer.
Speaker 1:You never know, because the way his movies go like anything could really happen. The preview makes it seem like that's the case anyway. Okay, so let's kind of jump into a little bit of news. I want to kind of do some more news coverage as our first segment, mainly because we have a brand-new staff writer, as I said, over at Sammy Guru. His name's Sumit and we're really happy to have him.
Speaker 1:He used to write over at Android Headlines and also Sam Mobile, which is our main competition. We're no competition for them yet. They're the largest Samsung news website on the Internet. We hope one day that maybe we can compete with them. But he's written thousands of pieces on Android and Samsung. He's an expert in writing that type of content. So we're super glad to have him on the website and he wrote a ton of stuff. This was his first week full time. We're also in the mix of kind of revamping the website and he wrote a ton of stuff. This was his first week full time.
Speaker 1:We're also in the mix of kind of revamping the website, adding some search functionality. The website's going to get a lot of improvements now that he's writing full time. So he's cranking out a ton of news articles. So I thought we'd kind of go through At some point. We'll probably have him on the podcast as well. If you guys want to give him a follow, head over to X. I'll drop his handle below in the show notes. I forget what it is exactly. It's ADSumit, I think, but it'll be below if you guys want to follow him. We also have a brand new X account for the website itself.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of news.
Speaker 1:It's at SammyGurus Updates on the podcast, like any sort of programming updates, like if me and Tori have to reschedule or something which we haven't had to do that yet. But at some point, if you do a podcast every week, we may have to change a time or a day or something, and that will be listed there as well. That's also where you can find information when we release the new episodes. And eventually, of course, our goal is to try to do this live streamed Once to figure out the video, we take a look at this video, we see how terrible it is, how good it is, and revamp our process of doing this. For anyone wondering, we're shooting this with a phone today because I didn't have a chance to set up the Sony cameras because they were going to need to. I got to change the formatting and I got to get some memory cards and stuff. Shooting over an hour of footage on a nice camera is a little harder than the phone, so we're just doing that this time. But I promised video and so we shall have video today.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about some of this news that Sumit covered here. There's actually a lot of stuff. I'm just going to pick and choose through some of the biggest things that I can think of. The first one is something that I actually talked about a little bit last week when we were talking about the Galaxy Watch Ultra review. The Galaxy Watch Ultra cannot use faces from the popular app Facer. Sumit wrote up the story in full, kind of explained what's going on. Basically, this is a restriction on Wear OS, the new version of Wear OS that Google develops, not really something Samsung did or removed. They didn't really change this in any way. It's particular to Google and Android, but they are working on a fix and hopefully Facer will have a way for you to use their faces with the Watch Ultra. I mean, this is kind of a big deal because Facer is a premium app, so they charge money and so people bought this in the past to use with a previous Galaxy Watch and then they buy this expensive new watch, this one right here.
Speaker 2:The Watch Ultra as you can see.
Speaker 1:Tori and I both have them on the Watch Ultra. You spend $650 on a watch. You're hoping that your apps that you paid for, particularly FaceRide I don't remember how much, it is like $5 or something, maybe even $10, you get unlimited watch customization for your faces. You can mix and match a bunch of different complications, but then if you lose the ability to use that, that's pretty frustrating. So they did issue a statement. The article has that on there. So if you bought a watch ultra and you're waiting on that, that should hopefully be coming pretty soon. And also, while we're on the subject of the watch ultra, I just noticed again on Tori's wrist. We were talking about it before the podcast. If you guys take a look here. We're going to have an overhead cam at some point, but you can see on his wrist he can hold it up here to the camera.
Speaker 2:A little bit for you guys, this is the trail band, right, tori.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, I am still using the regular one, which is the marine band. He was talking a little about this. Um, this is very similar to the alpine band that the apple watch has, but, uh, go ahead and talk about the fit. How do you think it compares to the Marine Band?
Speaker 2:Oh, I mean honestly, it's like a pillow compared to the Marine Band. At first, when I put it on, I had to like kind of figure out how to adjust, because it what do you call this part, the part where you just kind of collapse onto? Yeah, it's kind of uh, kind of a pie, but uh, it's a pretty simple system once you get it. But yeah, once you get it to like a right kind of setting you may have to. Can I see it real?
Speaker 1:quick, yeah. Yeah, is it similar to the apple watch? I didn't, actually haven't looked at it.
Speaker 2:Yet I don't own an apple watch. That's right, I know, I was just gonna see myself.
Speaker 1:I'm curious, you know, if they borrowed that as well from the apple Watch?
Speaker 2:They actually didn't.
Speaker 1:This is actually nicer. So Samsung actually improved something. They had some innovation I'm going to have to get this band. As you guys know, I didn't get this band for free because they screwed up my pre-orders.
Speaker 2:But I guess.
Speaker 1:I'll have to get one of these. The Marine brand definitely does put ridges in your wrist, as we said last week.
Speaker 2:So that one doesn't do that. No, it still does A little bit. Yeah, so I still get the same ridges that I have here, but it just feels a lot easier on the wrist and less irritation and it definitely feels like a snugger fit around your wrist compared to the Marine Band. I prefer this over the Marine Band. I don't think I would be switching back.
Speaker 1:And I don't think you sweat as much in that one right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, not at all, Because the Alpine one I have for the Apple Watch has the same material.
Speaker 1:And I feel like in the Arizona heat it doesn't sweat with that one. This one sweats a lot on the Marine Band, so, yeah, so if you have an Apple Watch Ultra, you might want to pick it up. It's kind of expensive if you didn't get it for free, with a free $80. So you might be able to find a third party one on Amazon, which actually a perfect segue to me covered a whole bunch of Apple Watch news this last week. You can actually buy an adapter on Amazon that will let you use your old traditional watch bands with the watch ultra. So if you have a bunch of old watch bands, people were worried about the fact that they would need to like buy a whole new set and they'd have to spend expensive prices on Samsung's website to get the bands like that one. But if you have a band you like, you can buy this adapter it's like $9, and then you can use all your old bands. So that's pretty huge.
Speaker 1:I haven't tested it. I ordered one to try it out and see how it works with my older bands. Now keep in mind one thing I will say I found out about this because I made a video about you guys saw last week, if you watch my youtube channel issues with the galaxy watch ultra. What kind of problems might exist with it? Um, that you might know, want to know before buying, and uh, the thing is. A lot of people commented. I said the bands were, you know, new and they're proprietary. So that's kind of a thing you should know people are like why would you say that?
Speaker 1:you know you can buy an adapter on Amazon and I didn't know that. But I'm also a little concerned that because of how big this watch is, even with the adapter, some of your older bands might look a little silly because they're going to be more tapered, a little skinnier. So I will make a video when I get this in the mail. They're a little bit back ordered on. I think they were like a week out when I ordered it, but I'll have like a little mini review of that because I think a lot of people probably have some interest in grabbing one of these, because you can use all your old bands, particularly if you have something you like, like a dressy band, like a leather one. People want some versatility, so that's something that he also covered, which is interesting. What else we got?
Speaker 2:Well, I have a quick question actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go ahead For the band design.
Speaker 2:Does Apple also do the same with the button, like with connecting the?
Speaker 1:band that they do, yeah, yeah, that kind of button thing, yeah, where you push it to eject it, to pull it off. But their clasp isn't as good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, this is really solid, their clasp mechanism.
Speaker 1:I really like the feel of this. It doesn't work that way. It has a hook that hooks into the band oh okay, and it's a little less intuitive. I feel like the clasp gives you like a firmer, like tactile sound that you know it's clipped in there. Yeah, I'd prefer that mechanism. Who knows, if I get the trail band, maybe make a quick like YouTube short. I don't know if I'll make a full video on it. I'll probably be spending like all weekend editing this podcast, since it's the first time with video, so I didn't need more stuff to edit that will be,
Speaker 1:happening. Big news from this week that Samit covered One UI 7.0 beta update is delayed till late August. We thought it was coming here at the beginning of August. There were some rumors about July 29th. That is not the case, unfortunately. Samsung apparently is behind on developing the One UI 6.1.1 update for the S series, so for S24, s23, s22. And so they had to push back the 7.0 beta.
Speaker 1:So if you're waiting on that, we've kind of spent the last few weeks talking about all the crazy leaks and stuff. So if you missed last week's podcast, we spent a lot of time diving into like which features we're interested in, and there hasn't been a whole lot of new stuff. We might touch on a few pieces here, but most of it stayed the same. But we now know that there's a bit of a delay. The one thing that they did release this week that leaked is if you want to download the clock and Samsung Internet applications from One UI 7, those actually leaked on APK Mirror you can download them now on any Galaxy phone.
Speaker 1:I made a video on this. It doesn't really change a lot for the internet app Just get the new icon which has got like a blue and teal color scheme, but it does change the icon as well as the entire set of widgets for the clock. So you've got a whole new set of widgets for the clock. They're redesigned fully. So if you want to download those, you can check out my video in the show notes and grab them from APK Mirror. Now, I don't recommend side-loading APKs if you don't know what you're doing. But if you're an enthusiast and you understand the risks, do it. I trust APK Mirror. I install early APKs from there on my phone all the time. I personally wouldn't install them from anywhere else because they've been doing this for years and kind of trust them.
Speaker 2:Now to get the new internet icon and stuff. You go to the Samsung store.
Speaker 1:No to APK Mirror. So, basically, these are not officially released yet. It's a good question because a lot of people who are tuning in, who are not enthusiasts. This is not like an official download, it's like a gray market download.
Speaker 1:Basically someone who's testing One UI 7, who has early access. They basically bundled up the app and put it on the Internet. And APK Mirror is where people kind of put apps when they release early or unofficially. When they release early or unofficially, and sometimes when Samsung does push out apps on the Galaxy Store, some people will go and grab it and then post it on APK Mirror Because, as we talked about before, Samsung usually does a stage rollout. So if it comes out in like I don't know, like India, it might not come out in the US for five days. So someone in India, like if Samit got the update, he could bundle it up, put it on APK mirror and I could download it in the US and put it on my phone.
Speaker 2:So a lot of people in the community do that.
Speaker 1:The reason that I give a disclaimer is because you really don't want to be doing sideloading if you don't know what you're doing, because if you get it from a wrong source, someone could tell you something is just download APKs from anywhere. So APKmare is the one place that I would say they've been hosting APKs. They check them rigorously for viruses every time someone uploads them, and so they do great work with that.
Speaker 1:So that's where I would say, if you want to try it out, you could probably go. We got a lot of news about the S25 Ultra this week. The S25 Ultra ram upgrade is coming, so it looks like we're finally going to get additional ram in the s25 ultra. It looks like it's finally going to get 16 gigabytes of ram, uh, which is a huge deal. A lot of people have been wanting this. Now. Will this actually make a big difference in performance?
Speaker 2:it's probably not but people like the specs and they like the numbers.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's going to make a massive difference. Maybe if you're someone like me who really is multitasking like crazy all the time because you're doing a million things, it might make a difference for you there. But we already have virtual. Did you know? I don't know if you know this, tori, it's always fun to see. Do you know you can actually allocate some of your storage as virtual RAM on your Samsung phone? No, I do not.
Speaker 1:So if you go into device care, you can actually take some of your storage space if you have extra storage and turn that into virtual RAM, which will give you better performance for multi-task. I did not know that that is good to know.
Speaker 1:You can already allocate 8 gigs of there. So you have 12 gigs on the S24 Ultra. If you allocate 8 of virtual RAM, you've got 20. So do I really need four more actual? I mean physical is better than virtual, obviously, but I mean 24 gigs of RAM, physical plus virtual, is quite a lot for a phone. Most people are not going to use it, but it's a pretty cool thing I think we can agree to have. Yeah, I agree, let's see what else did we get?
Speaker 1:We got a couple other things from the S25 Ultra this week we have the battery was certified Some disappointment there because it's the same size as last year. So no battery size increase. I know a lot of people are always hoping for that. When the new S line comes out we're hoping the battery is bigger. That's not going to be the case. In fact, a lot of people discussed this week. A couple of websites reported Samsung is focusing on. Their big theme for next year's releases are thinness. So thin is in. They're going thinner for the s line, thinner for the foldables, thinner for all the stuff next year. So that means, if it's thinner, probably not putting a bigger battery in it, because those two things are, you know, conservation of mass and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, kind of that ends unless we improve the battery technology significantly, like one day if we end up getting graphene batteries, which a lot of people were excited about that years ago. That would enable massive battery life with really thin devices. But we were promised that, like 10 years ago, that was going to be the new rage and that never happened, so I don't really know. By the way, over here I have the Galaxy Book 4 Edge. If people are wandering off to the side, you can see it. Just got all the news up there. So this is the Galaxy Book 4 Edge. I haven't made a full video on it, but I've been using it for a while. It's a nice little machine, so I do enjoy it. If you want a device where it's got a lot of battery life it's a Windows machine and you don't run Google Drive or Adobe Premiere Pro and you have Samsung stuff it's good. But I mean I can't use it in my main phone because you can't run Google Drive Desktop. It doesn't support the Snapdragon X Elite yet.
Speaker 2:Now I have a question, do you feel I mean? Because, based off of a lot of people are saying the Fold and the Flip were basically just rehashes of last year's model. Do you foresee that happening with the s25?
Speaker 1:ultra. Um, I mean, we kind of know that they're going to change the design because, remember, we saw that render a few weeks ago.
Speaker 2:We're supposed to be rounded.
Speaker 1:But I mean, I don't know, I don't see a lot of, I don't see a lot of changes in the design outside of that. But we're supposed to get a massive camera upgrade like the camera sensors supposed to change. That's a big change because on Fold they didn't really change the camera at all. This year, the Flip 6, they changed the camera more, so I would consider that more of a reasonable upgrade, maybe for $100 more yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't know. The rounded design change is going to be polarizing Because some people are going to love it, some people are going to hate it.
Speaker 2:I don't care as long as it keeps the s-pen. If they got rid of the s-pen, then basically it's just an s24 plus yeah s25 plus with a bigger camera.
Speaker 1:Yeah, better camera module. I don't want that. I don't want the s-pen to be gone yeah, so we need that s-pen, but otherwise I'm not too. I don't foresee massive like design changes to the hardware outside the rounded corners, um, but I do think there'll be some big internal upgrades.
Speaker 1:I think the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, I think the battery life will improve, even though the size is staying the same. They also revealed the new Exynos 2500 3 nanometer chip that's going to go on the S25 in certain regions. Of course, the S25 Ultra here will end up getting the Snapdragon chip, because that's what usually happens. A lot of people around the globe get upset because they get Samsung's in-house chip, the Exynos chip, and then we end up getting the Snapdragon chips here in the US and some other regions for the Ultra. It would be nice if they would include the Snapdragon chip in every region in the Ultra at least, even if they put the Exynos. But their chips are performing well these days, so I don't know if that's a massive downgrade, but that was also leaked this week.
Speaker 1:In terms of the chip that will run inside the Galaxy S25 series what else Trying to bake stuff we covered this week? I'll talk about this later in the show because I'm going to give my Galaxy Ring review, but Sumit wrote up this piece about how most people are getting the wrong size of their galaxy ring because they're wearing it on the incorrect finger, so I'll talk about that a little bit later. That's kind of a little bit of a teaser for later on today um, samsung keyboard dropped the grammarly spotify and youtube extension, so this was pretty big news. I don't know if, if you use the Samsung keyboard, because we talked about it before, that's the built-in default keyboard on your Samsung phone. So what happened is Samit wrote this up. Last night, I believe it came out that Samsung is saying they're removing the Grammarly YouTube and Spotify extensions. What those let you do is the Grammarly extension.
Speaker 2:Let you check your grammar as you're writing, and I do love that. I use that a lot.
Speaker 1:That's a big feature. And then Spotify and YouTube basically let you share songs or videos directly in the keyboard as you're typing Very useful, I've used those as well. Yeah, same. It's not clear why they're dropping Spotify and YouTube, but it seems the reason they're dropping Grammarly at least according to the sources that we've been able to kind of confirm and talk to other people around Samsung News they don't want you to use Grammarly because they want you to use the Galaxy AI writing assistant, which is built in now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they want to push their AI writing assist, and their writing assist is good, but I kind of still like to have Grammarly too. But I guess I do understand that. I mean, that is why they're doing it. You know, when we originally saw it and Sumit wrote that up, you know he's like they probably removed that because they don't want you to use Grammarly over Writing Assist, and I think that's probably true. So Spotify and YouTube, though we'll keep trying to dig into why those were removed, I actually really don't. I don't really know why that happened.
Speaker 2:Now for, like most consumers, if they do want like a workaround, do you foresee there being any workaround around it?
Speaker 1:I mean of course you can still use the regular grammarly app, but then it's not big directly and yeah, you could try a different keyboard. There's other keyboards that support it too, if you want a third-party keyboard, but I think in terms of the samsung keyboard, it'll be hard to have a workaround because it's Samsung's phone that you have.
Speaker 1:They let you customize stuff, but if they don't want you to customize something, they can make it pretty hard, Unless of course, you root your phone entirely, which people don't really do much these days, which means basically you also lose all your security features.
Speaker 1:You lose a lot of things. You lose Samsung Knox I used to do a lot of videos on rooting your phone and custom ROMs, some knocks I used to do a lot of videos on rooting your phone and custom ROMs, but these days it's not really worth it, because back in the day you used to be able to do that without tripping some of your security features and losing some of those things. Now companies like Samsung you know they've gotten smart and they don't want people doing that because then they jeopardize their own image If their phones look not not so secure because people are doing that. You know, not so secure because people are doing that. If you're an enthusiast, obviously you don't like that. But for the average consumer which, as we talked about before, samsung is trying to appeal more and more to the Gen Z kind of person who's not really a techie audience, and those people should not be be rooting their phones.
Speaker 1:Like if they see a tutorial on YouTube and do it, they'll probably brick their phone or they'll get some crazy viruses or something else. And Samsung obviously they don't want that to happen. So the Samsung members app was updated for Android 15 API last night.
Speaker 2:What is Samsung members? Good question.
Speaker 1:Samsung members is an app where you can go and get help from other Samsung users. It's a forum. You can talk to other Samsung users and have discussions, get feedback, get help. And also, it's important for those of you who want to participate in the beta programs, because that's where they launch the beta. So if you want to do the One UI 7.0 beta when it comes out you need to download Samsung members, the good news is you can get that from the Galaxy store or the Play store.
Speaker 2:You talked about how confusing it is that you have two choices, but you could go to both.
Speaker 1:It's pre-installed on most unlocked Samsung phones, but if you have a carrier device, like from AT&T, t-mobile or Verizon, you're going to have to go download it. And then you go to the members app and you swipe across at the top and find the banner. I'll try to insert a screenshot of this so people can see it, if you haven't seen it before in the video.
Speaker 1:Swipe across and then you'll find it on the far right. It'll say One UI 7 beta. Of course I'll make a video when it comes out, but that's how you sign up for the beta.
Speaker 1:So the reason this is important is because the One UI 7 beta could be coming pretty quick now. So obviously we heard earlier it's delayed, but it could be around 10 to 12 days off, because last year they updated the Samsung Members app for the next version of Android and then 10 days later the beta came out. So usually about 10 to 14 days after they update the Members app with the next version of Android because One UI 7 is based on Android 15, then we know that the beta is going to be coming pretty soon. They updated the target API last night in an update to the members app, but there's really no reason to go download that particular APK because there's nothing new in it yet and when the beta comes out you'll be able to get the beta in any of the versions you don't necessarily need.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I mean that's the thing. It'll come to your phone eventually. But there's no new features aside from that. Galaxy devices now have even stronger security with two new tools. There's two new tools I want to tell people about. Sumit wrote this up, which is very interesting. One of them is QuickShare PrivateShare so this is a really useful feature if you share photos with family or friends. Quickshare is, so this is a really useful feature if you share photos with family or friends. Quick Share is Samsung's protocol that lets you just basically like airdrop for iPhones, and it's now the official standard on all Android phones. So Samsung and Google came together, they combined.
Speaker 2:Quick Share and Nearby.
Speaker 1:Share and it works great. But now you have the ability to turn on private sharing inside of the Samsung Quick Share when you're sharing a photo. If you turn that on, you then have the ability to set an expiration date on the file, so a person will no longer be able to view it after the expiration you set. You can also revoke access after sending it and you can prevent people from sharing or screenshotting the media that you've shared with them, so they won't be able to screenshot or share it if you don't want them to, I feel like a lot of consumers would actually like that, especially ones who are kind of like on the fence with Apple.
Speaker 1:And AirDrop doesn't really have these features at this level.
Speaker 2:So this is something that.
Speaker 1:Samsung is taking to the next level with QuickShare PrivateShare. Right now it only works between different Samsung devices, as far as I can tell. I made a video on it earlier. I tested it with my Samsung devices, tested it with the Pixel. It doesn't work yet. The private share, quickshare, works with the Pixel. But I tested it with my Pixel 8 Pro it doesn't work yet. But maybe they'll eventually expand, since QuickShare is now the default on all Android phones. It'd be nice to see. And then phones it'd be nice to see. And then the other thing is you can encrypt your cloud backups now on your samsung phone with enhanced data production.
Speaker 1:So no one can get access to your backups. You know it's a techie kind of technical thing, but it's really important thing if you back up your data to the samsung cloud. If they get hacked or something, you don't want people to have access to your data. So if it's encrypted, be very hard for them to get access to the actual media, messages etc. If you have some sensitive photos or videos or whatever, you can then encrypt it and take care of that.
Speaker 1:I did it earlier. It's pretty seamless. They give you like a 17 digit encryption code that you have to enter if you want to decrypt it. So it'd be very difficult. It's quite secure. Very difficult for someone to get in there with. With that. It's a pretty simple process. You can do it with inside the Samsung Cloud settings on your Galaxy phone and I'll try to insert a little clip of this as well from my video, if I can. If it's up by then it should be. If not, I'll have a little screenshot of where you can enable it so you guys can see it. That's the great thing about video.
Speaker 2:I can it is a great thing about video.
Speaker 1:Some visual pieces as I edit the podcast. It's also why it's going to take me 15 years to edit it. But hey, we do it because we love it. We do it because we love you guys. So if you guys want to check, that out.
Speaker 1:We really do. You can go ahead and enable your enhanced data protection. So those are most of the big stories I think that Sumit covered. There's another story, though, that I want to cover, two stories that we actually didn't get a chance to cover yet. I might write them up for the website, but Samit wrote like 30 articles this week, so I can't ask him to write too much more.
Speaker 1:He has been killing it. The guy is killing it with the content, so you know we can't get too upset about him missing a couple of stories anyway. Yeah, Apparently, according to SamMobile, Samsung's top boss was upset that all the Galaxy devices from Unpacked were Apple copies we had originally heard that Samsung was perfectly fine with this we originally heard that there was no big deal about this, but they are now reporting that he was apparently very upset about this and told them that they need to stop implement.
Speaker 1:We talked about Hubert H Lee, who is one of their designers, but now apparently the top boss of the mobile division was not happy that Samsung was copying these things from Apple. So I don't know. A lot of people on Twitter are discussing this and saying that Sam Mobile's source doesn't know what they're talking about. I really am not sure. It was JY Lee, the Samsung Electronics chairman, so he's actually above even the. He's like the top top.
Speaker 2:Samsung.
Speaker 1:Electronics as a whole, not just mobile, and so apparently the mobile people were fine with it. They're like, yeah, let's just rip off Apple, it's great. But then the chairman of Samsung Electronics and that's no joke he said you guys got to stop doing this.
Speaker 2:So the question is is this legitimate?
Speaker 1:I mean a lot of people on Twitter are asking me. I don't really know. I mean, obviously, sam Mobile. I have respect for them and their integrity.
Speaker 1:I don't know that they would publish something that was just absolute trash. They did grab it from a leakster on twitter, so they did say that it might not be true. Um, but I don't know what to think. I would hope that someone at samsung is like you guys need to go a little bit the opposite way in terms of going back towards true samsung innovation and not copy-paste. Sure, no, they're kind of like playing it safe. Yeah, not copy-paste the Apple strategy, but from what we've heard, everyone in the mobile division, the head of the mobile division, the chief designer, hubert H Lee, who's a big Apple fan of design and who came from Mercedes we've heard that they were all okay with it. In fact, someone had interviewed one of the people on the design team afterwards, I think, about the Galaxy Watch Ultra and they said that looks like an Apple Watch and the person from Samsung said oh, we don't care. So I don't know.
Speaker 1:I mean, maybe someone does care, I mean hey, I hope so If Jay Lee really does care obviously his opinion matters a lot more than mine and maybe some people in the mobile division will be like, hey, maybe we should start making something with a real brand identity.
Speaker 2:Again Going back to innovation, yeah, I'd be happy with that.
Speaker 1:So I don't know. People are asking me about the truth value. I don't know. I mean, of course, as a news outlet, just like we're going to do on Sammy Guru, if something comes out from a leakster, you usually publish it and discuss it, because that's what you do You're trying to bring people up-to-date information and, of course, you always publish it, with the aside that it might not be true, and we don't know if this is true or not, but I hope it's true. That's what I'll say. I wanted to comment on this because a lot of people asked me about this and I just wanted to comment on it for that reason. The other one and this is a funny one I made a little joke about this on Twitter. Some people got super angry, so we talked about the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and how its camera is definitely not up to par with the competition in terms of foldables, and so, funnily enough, dxomark, who I know you probably don't know much about, because it's really like an insider deal.
Speaker 2:They rate smartphone cameras.
Speaker 1:So every time a new one comes out they're like the camera experts. They take the camera, put it through rigorous paces and they rate it on a scale. The scale just keeps getting larger over time. It's kind of interesting. I read through their rating scale one time the numbers always came to go up. I always thought they were out of 100, but now the Galaxy Z Fold 6 has a score of 135.
Speaker 2:So, but now, like the galaxy z fold, 6 has a score of like 135, so it's like as the phone.
Speaker 1:It's very strange. I might have to write an article about it at some point to explain how the ratings work, because they confused me when I first read them. And I read through them. It makes sense. They like adjust it based on the quality, because the camera's always getting better yeah it's like originally like, the maximum you could get on a smartphone camera was 100. And so now the cameras got better, they went beyond that.
Speaker 2:So now it's whatever.
Speaker 1:So, funnily enough, after I said, the Z Fold 6 is definitely not top dog when it comes to camera and the foldables, the XOMark publishes today their rating and they say it's the best foldable camera that you can get. But there's an aside to that If you read down the list of all the foldable cameras. They only tested the Z Fold 6, the Z Fold 5, and the Pixel Fold. They didn't test any of the folds from China.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Vivo, no, xiaomi, none of these folds that actually have better cameras. So it's a big asterisk. I just posted a joke on Twitter saying that Samsung sent them a nice big check to give them the number one rating.
Speaker 1:I'm just joking, I know Samsung didn't really send a check, but it does seem a little facetious Like maybe they were doing it just to get some attention and clout that they gave the Z Fold 6 the top rating. But then the only thing they compared it to was the Pixel Fold. I mean it's a year old at this point. The Pixel 2 Fold is about to come out In fact later we're going to talk a little bit about that because that's coming up in two weeks but I don't know, comparing it to a year old phone, I mean of course it's better than that.
Speaker 1:And also here's the other funny thing On the total list of all smartphones, even though it's the number one foldable, it's number 45 on the list of all phones.
Speaker 2:Whoa, that's not good.
Speaker 1:No, no, yeah, so spoiler, so you guys didn't have to go through and read the whole list he's saving you time. It's behind the Galaxy S22 Ultra. It's behind Tori's phone. That's two and a half years old.
Speaker 2:That's not a good rating, no matter how dx omark wants to spin it best foldable.
Speaker 1:Whatever we know, that's not true. In fact, I ordered a xiaomi um mix four, or me four fold um from giztop, to compare to the z fold six, because I just want to do a video on that for fun, and I'm sure that's probably quite a bit better from what I've seen vivo as well.
Speaker 1:Um so yeah I mean it's very facetious. I mean I was joking on twitter about samsung paying them. But the fold 6 has an okay camera, at best for a 1900 phone. I'm not going out and saying, wow, this camera amazes me, because you pay over two grand for the phone after tax and tori's phone right now, which is like almost two and a half years old, you could buy that on swappa for like 400 bucks or 50. That's like a quarter of the price, 20 of the price for the z-fold six. The camera is actually better. It actually ranks ahead of the z-fold six. So you know you guys can take that what you will.
Speaker 1:You can you know, go ahead and process it yourself, don't let me tell you. But if you rank something 45 behind a bunch of other phones, I don't know that it matters too much that it's the best foldable camera, especially when you compare it to almost nothing. That's current, so anyway.
Speaker 2:Go ahead, tori, actually kind of with that. Do you know a lot about the Motorola Fold? Do you know anything about the Spencer? You mean the Razr, yes, yeah, yeah, fold. Do you know anything about the?
Speaker 1:Spencer, you mean the Razr? Yes, so the Razr camera. The new Razr just came out recently. I was thinking about getting one of those, as well as the Xiaomi Mix Flip. They have a Xiaomi Mix Flip. I think it's the Mix 4 Flip. I was thinking about ordering one of those from Giztop, too, to compare to the Z Flip 6. Both of those are very interesting as well. I think, though, I'd have to have it, of course, in hand to compare the. The pros and cons are from what I've seen from other people's reviews. Obviously I can't buy every phone. People always ask me like why don't you compare these phones? Well, I mean, we do really well here, we do very well, but like I don't have unlimited money, so it's like I have to pick and choose based on the business. What's going to give me some return on investment. Like if I covered every phone, I'd be bankrupt.
Speaker 1:You guys wouldn't be listening to the Sammy Guru podcast You'd be listening to, like the Jeff living under a cardboard box under the I-10 podcast, because that's where we'd be doing it from. I wouldn't be able to pay rent on this office and we wouldn't have any of this equipment. So what I can gather from what I've seen from other people, the front of the Motorola Razr has a much bigger like the screen has less bezel than the Z Flip 6.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's got more usable area? Yeah, because it kind of looks similar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's similar, but it's got a little more usable area. And then the x, the xiaomi, which I don't think you should import because it's got a lot of you know. It doesn't have sufficient us support. Yeah, if you're going to use as your main phone, don't do that. I do it for review purposes and to compare, which is fun, but if it's your main phone, you're not going to have a good time. Uh, that one has even more like it has almost no bezel, like everything is screen on the front. I'll show you a picture later. I think tory's asking this because he's considering potentially.
Speaker 1:We talked about this earlier this week. He's considering the z flip 6. I don't have it here with me, in fact, the only phone that I have right now. I have the z fold 6 right here, um, in the uag plyo pro case, but he's considering purchasing the z flip 6 and replacing his s22 ultra. So tori is deep in the tank about smartphone decision and this is a big decision. So if you guys have some feedback for Tori, what you think he should do, let us know over on Twitter, Let us know on Facebook, et cetera.
Speaker 1:Let us know in the show notes feedback. We have a link. You can text us in the show notes too to give fan feedback. So if you want to tell Tori what he should do there, flip six s22 ultra, or should he wait?
Speaker 2:for the s25 ultra, because that's another big question that's five months away.
Speaker 1:So let tori know what he thinks. But I would say at the end of the day, if you're going to get a flip, probably the samsung is the best one, because you already know samsung. But two software support the camera. For what I've seen, the razor camera is not as good as the flip 6 camera. The Xiaomi camera might be, but again it has no US warranty or anything, so that's a bad idea. I'd say the Flip 6 is probably the way to go. But we'll see what Torrey decides. You guys can maybe try to help him.
Speaker 2:Please let me out.
Speaker 1:So now that's kind of mostly the news that I wanted to, I think, cover today. We had a long news segment. Hopefully we have longer news segments with fun stuff to discuss, since now we're going to have a full slate of news every week on the website, so I'm really excited to be able to cover that and we'll have a lot more to talk about. The other thing I wanted to talk about really quickly on the next segment is my Galaxy Ring review. I posted a video on YouTube, but before we do that, we're going to go ahead and take a quick break here from the sponsor of today's podcast.
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Speaker 1:All right, so let's go ahead and get right into my Galaxy Ring review. I know Tori's probably interested in this one because he doesn't have the Galaxy Ring. I have it right here. I've been wearing it now for almost a week continuously. I got this last week when I got back from seeing Deadpool and Wolverine. I put it on actually because it was on my porch when I got home but we had to put the kids to bed and go right to the movie because me and my wife saw Deadpool and Wolverine. So I've been wearing it almost a full week, tracking my sleep, tracking my workouts, using it in tandem with the galaxy watch ultra, testing the gestures and all that stuff. So I want to figure, you know, kind of give you guys some ideas about what I think about this. The first thing I want to tell you is, in terms of the sizing on this ring, you should not be wearing it on your wedding band finger you see, see, I still am.
Speaker 1:And that's because where you should really wear it, which is the index finger, this one's too small for my index finger. But I'll tell you a couple of reasons why you don't want to wear it on your wedding band. The first reason is it interacts too much with these two fingers here your middle finger and your pinky finger. I don't want to flip anybody off here, but it interacts too much with these two fingers because this is actually a lot thicker than a traditional wedding band. Yeah, I don't have my wedding band today because nicole basically told me just wear the galaxy ring as your wedding band for now. Um, you know, because I don't want to.
Speaker 1:She didn't want to wear two rings, but this one is a lot thicker and so it's going to like be uncomfortable with these two fingers, and I've gotten to it. But I wouldn't recommend it. If you're going to have to pick which finger, the index finger is much better because obviously it's not going to play with any finger really, because your thumb is all the way over here. It's a lot more comfortable for that reason. But the other reason is when you wear this on your wedding band finger, it doesn't track the heart rate as accurately the index finger gets better pulse readings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, so it's closer right here. You're going to get better pulse readings. This is not as accurate. I tested that um back and forth, kind of doing the readings and testing manually and some different devices, other smart devices, testing it against the watch, etc. So you're not going to get as active, uh, accurate biometrics on this finger. Same thing when it comes to tracking sleep and stuff, it's better on this finger just because of the way the sensors do work.
Speaker 1:So I highly recommend when you size this, if you decide to buy it, do not size it for this finger, because that's what I did when I went to Best Buy. They had the sizing kit before pre-orders or during pre-order time. I went ahead and sized it on here because I figured, hey, why not, that's where I wear my wedding band, that's where I wear this one. Not a good idea. I definitely recommend the index finger. I'm actually going to sell this to someone, probably on eBay or Swap. If someone wants to buy it, I'll give you a good deal. It's size 11. I'm going to get a size 12 buying a size for your index finger, the other thing that works.
Speaker 1:Go ahead, tori, but does Samsung even say that? That's a good question. I was going to try to mention that in a minute. I had just forgotten about that. They do, but it's in the fine print and it's also. We talked about that ring and you set it up in the app but you have to have already bought it. They tell you like we recommend putting it on your index finger, like oh well, hey, I already bought it and I sized it for this finger, so I can't put it on my index finger because my index finger is too fat. You guys can see like it's not comfortable. I can't bend my finger. I can get it on there, but I can't wear it, so this can't. That's not really an option for me. So yeah, they don't make it explicit on the buy page.
Speaker 1:They just tell you oh, whatever finger you want to use, make sure you size it properly for that finger. They don't say this is the finger you should use. To be fair. They do picture someone wearing it with the index finger. But the average consumer is not going to be like, oh well, that's the one I should do.
Speaker 2:Especially if they're married.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're going to be used to wearing their ring here and maybe they want to make it that you know that becomes their wedding band. Like Nicole said, you can wear that as your wedding band. I don't. She's like she don't mind. So the other thing that also doesn't work as well down here is I talked about this a little bit previously you have gestures with the Galaxy Ring.
Speaker 1:So you can basically do just like with the watch. We talked about the pinch gestures. You can do that with the ring as well and you can use it to take selfies. So if you have it connected to your phone, just pinch, double pinch or whatever.
Speaker 2:Take a selfie when you have the camera open and you can also use it for a few other things too.
Speaker 1:There's only a couple limited options, but the gestures don't work well at all on this wedding finger. I tried it with this finger. Even though it doesn't fit on there very well, it works a lot better with the gestures. The gestures still need some work, that's for sure. There's no doubt that the gestures need a little bit of work, but they do work better on the index finger than the wedding finger. I'd like to see them improve it. And also, there's only two actions. It'd be nice to add a lot more actions with the next one, but they definitely do work better on the index finger as well.
Speaker 1:Now, sleep tracking. I found it to be very accurate for sleep tracking. I've probably had a very good variation of my sleeping over the past week. Some nights I would sleep like three hours, some nights I would sleep seven hours. That's like the maximum I ever get. It's the daily grind On like an amazing night.
Speaker 1:I get seven hours and it did a pretty good job of my sleep score, like on the nights when I was tossing and turning or I got very little sleep. You'd be like oh, your sleep score is at 30 out of 100. I'd be like yeah, I know it's a terrible night. And then the night I got the one night I got seven hours, which was probably saturday or sunday night it was like, oh, your sleep score was 95 and I was like, well, that's pretty accurate. Yeah, the one thing that I will say the stress score is a stress score in here. I don't feel like that's accurate at all. There were some days when I was so much going on I was almost have a panic attack and it'd be like, oh, your stress is like five out of a hundred super low, and I'm like, yeah, like in the yellow, yeah, I'm like I don't know about that.
Speaker 1:I almost had a nervous breakdown, so I'm not sure if that's accurate. Um, and then some days I'd be like super relaxed and be like, oh, you're about to have a heart attack because it's like red and I'd be like I don't know, I'm not sure these are accurate and it also doesn't really correlate very well with the heart rate measurements. So I think they might need to work on the stress meter. I wasn't super impressed with that. Now the one thing I can tell you about the ring is that it does work well with the watch in terms of giving you better battery life for both of them. When I wear the ring and the watch together and Samsung mentioned this in the Unpacked event I do notice better battery life on the watch and the ring gets amazingly good battery life.
Speaker 1:Samsung said for sizes 11 and under, you should get about six days. My first week with this. I haven't charged it yet and it has about 20% left, so I could probably get about eight or nine days. Size 12 and 13, which are bigger batteries in there, supposed to already get like nine days. Samsung says I bet you could get close to two weeks. I'm gonna buy size 12 when I sell this one. So I will report back some battery life.
Speaker 2:You know estimates from that as well now like what heavy lifting does the ring do from the watch?
Speaker 1:Basically they work in tandem to measure. So the watch doesn't have to activate as many sensors to do step tracking and heart rate, because they work together to lessen the load Depending on where you have your I would say your strongest pulse, because sometimes it might be the wrist. Sometimes if you're wearing the index finger, it really improves the battery life probably more, because then it can measure sometimes the heart rate from here and combine those metrics so the sensors don't have to work as much. They're not as active all the time. So it does you definitely notice it on the watch more than the ring, because the ring already gets amazing battery life. I was very impressed with that. So the ring, in terms of battery life, is very, very good.
Speaker 1:I do think it'll be very comfortable. Once I get on the index finger, it's not uncomfortable. The one thing I will say is that on the bottom here, if you can see it right there, the little ridge, there's a little groove right here. Samsung says you're supposed to wear that down towards your palm, so you wear it on the bottom. The one thing I'll say about that is I like to turn my ring during the day and play with it, because I do that in my wedding band and sometimes I like freak out because I'm like, oh no, is that mark on the bottom?
Speaker 2:What if it's messing up my readings?
Speaker 1:I don't know why I'm super paranoid about that. I shouldn't really care, but that might bother you. If you have like obsessive-compulsive disorder, you feel like where is that little mark it's supposed to be palmed down? Becauseant of that, because that is something to worry about. I was very impressed overall. I mean, the functionality on the gestures needs to be improved. I do think that for the next version, NFC payments could be improved. That would be a big thing if they get out NFC payments to this.
Speaker 1:The gestures really have a ton of potential because they could make it so that the gestures work not only with Samsung Camera or the Samsung apps. They could make this work with any app. So what if you had opened your Facebook feed and you could use it to scroll through your Facebook feed? Or you could use it to double click to like something on Twitter or Instagram Lots of gestures you could use in apps for this ring. So I could see a lot of potential of this down the road, and Samsung has the ability to do that more than any of the other smart ring providers Like Aura.
Speaker 1:They probably have more accurate health tracking right now, but Samsung can improve that and they can add integration with your Galaxy phone. That'll go way beyond whatever Aura could possibly do. So I would say, if you want one you're a Galaxy user it's not a bad thing to invest in for $400. The thing is, because it's a first-gen product, Samsung isn't really giving any discounts or trade-ins, so you're going to have to shell out $400, which is different than the Galaxy Watch Ultra. If you trade in a pretty new watch, you could get it for $250, $300. Save a lot of money. You're not going to save money on the ring, but if you're a health person, you really like tracking your sleep. It does a pretty good job of that and the gestures are useful. There's a lot of potential for this product.
Speaker 2:Oh excellent.
Speaker 1:That's my review, so any other things about that? Tori questions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually, because I kind of noticed this the other day on my watch. In terms of like step counting, how accurate have you found step counting?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a good question, as I mentioned, if you wear the ring and the watch together, it's a little better. We talked about this last week how I thought the watch was doing not as good of a job the first two days I had it.
Speaker 2:It literally adds like 20 steps yeah. Like every time you take a step. It's like whoa man.
Speaker 1:I was like man, I'm super fast, I could win the gold medal at the Olympics this year because just one step. I went like 200 feet, I don't know. Win the 400 meter.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go sign up.
Speaker 1:If you wear this, it's more accurate.
Speaker 2:I still think it overestimates, though.
Speaker 1:Because you know, some days I'll be sitting in the office doing a lot of editing and stuff and I'll be like, oh man, you took like 9 000 steps and I'm like where have you. Where did I take 9 000 steps from?
Speaker 2:yeah, I was laying down the other night and, like you know, past midnight and I like woke up and I haven't watched or anything. And I was looking at my watch and it said I already took 20 steps. Yeah, I was like there's no way, some phantom steps going on the ring seems to improve it.
Speaker 1:I would say when I wore it without the ring, the watch probably overestimated the steps by like 50, 60%. Maybe now it's like 20%, but still overestimating them. I think they need to improve that.
Speaker 2:There was a software update though.
Speaker 1:Did you get it or did you check? No, I haven't got that. I forgot to tell you I haven't got it on mine the unlocked one, so that that could have fixed it. So we'll have to revisit it next week. Because there was an update pushed out to the Watch 7 and the Watch Ultra. So we'll follow up on that. Please don't go and send us a message like oh no, you guys are bashing it and they had an update.
Speaker 2:I know, I just haven't got it on my watch yet.
Speaker 1:Samsung stage rollouts are kind of crazy. We already know about that. Last few things I wanted to kind of close the book on the Z Fold 6 and the Z Flip 6 a little bit. We kind of already talked about it. But I kind of want to mention the Z Fold 6. I'm writing up a review for the website Tori is doing the Galaxy Watch Ultra with our final kind of full thoughts on those with more details. But the Z Fold 6, you know, it kind of is what we thought it was. It's like that football coach who said you know we are who we thought they were.
Speaker 2:Yes, who said you know, we are who we thought they were.
Speaker 1:It is who we thought it was. It's just a Z Fold 5 refinement that has a slightly different aspect ratio and the camera is improved due to the software processing, but it's not like a revolutionary change. It's not going to be like. It's not like you're going to use your Z Fold 6 camera and be like oh my gosh, does a Z Fold 6 take those pictures, or was it an S24 Ultra? You're not going to be like did my s24? Do I have an s24 ultra and a fold? No, you just have a fold.
Speaker 1:You're not going to think that you have like an s ultra flagship because it doesn't look. They don't. Pictures don't look like that good, particularly in low light. So, um, I mean, I'll write up full thoughts and off camera samples and all that. The battery life is a little bit better. It's not like amazingly improved, though, or anything on the fold. Now the flip. I think that is a phone like, if you want it and I'm trying to make tori spend money here because I know he wants, but the flip is a really good upgrade, like if you have a flip 5.
Speaker 1:Even you can trade it in and get 650, so it's only like 300 and something bucks to upgrade. You should do it because I mean it's a. It's a really good deal. Um, they've got a bigger battery. The battery life is a lot better, probably going to get an extra two hours of screen on time over the flip 5. The camera is like massively upgraded because now it's basically like galaxy s24, like based camera, the camera on the flip. I don't know I'm going to do a comparison between those. That's the video I want to do. The flip six might have better camera with the processing on there, or at least comparable to the fold. I don't, I think it could be.
Speaker 1:So you know, the massively improved camera uh, the crease is less noticeable in terms of the feel you can still see it, but the feel is way less noticeable when you feel it, when you scroll through like your twitter feed or something, you're not going to notice it as much. Uh, and just the build refinements you know that they made there as well. It's overall like super good package. They added some cool software features like the quick replies on the front. Um, they did a lot of things with the flip, so those are like refinements that matter. Battery life, camera yeah, you know they didn't just like throw out some refinements for the sake of saying, hey, let's add a number to that last year's phone and just sell it for more money. Like on the fold there's like let's make change that five to six square let's just square off those corners a little bit and boom there you go
Speaker 1:add 100 to the price and just put it in a new box and push it out. They didn't do that with the flip. It's definitely a big upgrade. You should buy it if you're a flip fan. Um, I considering getting the xiaomi mix flip. Um, you know, again, I don't have unlimited money, but it would be fun to compare because I've heard a lot of people say the camera on that's really good. I wonder which of those flips is better? Um, tori obviously would love for me to get a razor so I can compare those, so he can decide which one he likes. But you know, the razor, getting all three of those would cost me another two grand.
Speaker 2:I bring it up because we talked in the podcast I think it was an episode or a few ago about how Samsung really doesn't feel like they have competition in the foldable market here in the US. But the Razr could at some point. Yeah, the Razr could.
Speaker 1:Well, in terms of the flip, they don't really have any competition at all because no one else sells a flip aside from the Razer. So I wonder if Google will eventually do that with the Pixel, because right now they only have the Pixel Fold, which is actually what I wanted to talk about briefly before we go on to the app of the week and the Q&A. The Pixel 2 Pro Fold I think that's the name. It's a very bad name. It's awful. Whatever it is, pixel 2 Pro Fold or Pro 2 Fold it's releasing in a couple weeks, on August 13th. That's going to be the big competition in the US for Samsung. I say big in quotes. It should be in quotes, because it's not really. Google sells like 1% of the phones Samsung sells. It's not a competition. Google sells like I don't even know. It's like 1% of the phones Samsung sells. So it's not a competition. But it is another phone that has the same form factor in this country. So there's that.
Speaker 1:If you're on the fence about a Fold 6 and you want a new Fold, it is an option for you to consider. So what are the really big differences? Well, one, it doesn't run One UI. It runs Google's version of Android, the Pixel Experience it's got a wider cover screen. So if you want that, it is a wider cover screen. But let me tell you this I've told you guys how much I want a wider cover screen and how much I don't like this narrow cover screen on my Fold. But by the same token, I don't like the Pixel fold either. Because guess what, when you open it up on the pixel fold, you've got a really square aspect ratio. It doesn't look rectangular, it looks terrible for vertical content. So you can't just make the cover screen wider and still keep it short. You've got to grow both dimensions to keep the aspect ratio.
Speaker 1:So before you go out and buy a pixel fold, last year when I got the pixel fold the first gen I thought I was going to love it and I'd be like, oh, maybe I'll just start a channel on pixel and Google and stop liking Sam, I'm just kidding. But I thought maybe I'll switch to pixel and just use, you know, the pixel fold as my foldable. But the square aspect ratio is terrible. So this year it has changed a little bit, but it's still not as tall as the Z Fold 6. So I will have a comparison on because Google usually sends me review devices. That'd be nice. Hey, samsung, pay attention, you guys could ship me out some review devices. We would like to see it. But Google sends me a review phone, so I'll have that and I won't have to spend extra money to do that. I'll compare the Fold 6 to the Pixel 2, whatever it's called. Do that.
Speaker 2:I'll compare the Fold 6 to the Pixel 2, whatever it's called, whatever their marketing team, whatever bad decisions Google's marketing team made.
Speaker 1:Whatever the name is. We'll compare those on YouTube and I'll have them on the podcast whenever it comes into. I think that's mostly it, in terms of hardware stuff, that I wanted to talk about. Before we get into the app of the week, let's go ahead and take a chance to hear from our sponsor of today's podcast. This episode of the Sammy Guru podcast is brought to you by Aura.
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Speaker 1:If you guys are interested in checking out Aura today, you can check the link in the show notes and you can get two weeks for free and see if Aura is right for you. We love using them and find them to really help keeping all of our data safe while we're online. All right, so let's go ahead and get into the app of the week. The app of the week this week is KWGT Widgets, and I kind of sprung this one on Tori because we've both been so busy this week.
Speaker 1:I didn't have too much time to prep the app of the week, but I want to talk about this because so many people ask me about the widgets that I get on my home screen, and so the way you can get a lot of extra widgets for your Galaxy phone or for any Android phone is by using KWGT widgets, and what it allows you to do is you get access to a bunch of pre-made custom kind of widgets that you can make, and I kind of show it here, but I'll probably have a little screenshot inserted from the Play Store as well and you can get pre-made packs on the play store and then you can add them to your home screen. So this is the one that I have right here. It's from one for kwgt pro, which is made by our good friend, vuk andrick. I'll show a tutorial, right there as well um, it.
Speaker 1:Basically this is one that has the date and has, like, the day of the week and stuff like that. You can change the color, all kinds of cool stuff on it. You can also make them yourself using kwgt, so it's infinitely customizable. But if you don't have a lot of technical knowledge it can be a little tough to use. I've made a full tutorial on youtube which I'll drop in the show notes. But the easiest thing to do what I recommend people do if you want to get started with it is download kwgt and then go to the play store and just search for kwgt pack p-a-c-k and you'll find a bunch of pre-made packs like this one that you can install.
Speaker 1:Now, this one is a paid pack, so this one costs like I forgot 2.99 or something, but there are free ones. You can try just to test it out and see how you like it. You can go down here at the bottom and edit the colors and all this stuff like the time the day it's not just limited time of day you can get weather, you can get battery status, all that cool stuff that you have, anything you want. And if you try the free ones and see if you like it well then, you can download a paid pack like this one from VOOC, and I do think they're worth it, because you can add a lot of personalization to your home screen. Whenever I make a video, I always have one of his widgets on my home screen. People always ask about these widgets, and so I figured I would talk a little bit about it. Now, you know, just like with anything, you are going to have to invest a little bit of money, because you do have the cost of buying the kwgt pro license, because yeah, I saw.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you need the pro license in order to 99 yeah, to do all the editing, and then you're gonna have to buy a pro pack if you want a lot of the really good widgets. So it might be like seven to eight dollars. But yeah, in total, I mean for something you're going to use. If you're a customization junkie, you like changing your icons, you like changing your wallpaper, you probably change it like once or every two days. So over the course of a year, paying like five cents a day to use it, I mean that's less than you pay for coffee or so way less tea these days.
Speaker 1:So you know I don't think it's a crazy amount. It's one of my favorite apps in terms of customization outside of the samsung application. So obviously I use GoodLock a lot. We talk about that a lot on the channel, but outside of GoodLock I really enjoy using KWGT overall. So maybe I can set Tori up with a KWGT widget. He can try it out and give us some thoughts next week.
Speaker 1:And I want to mention too, if you guys sign up for the newsletter or if you participate in the mystery boxes. The S25 Ultra mystery box is already open. We send out a lot of promo codes with those to the apps that vuk has that are premium apps. He sends out promo codes so you may be able to get kwgt pro pack for free from vuk or his wallpapers or his icon packs. We just finished sending out all the mystery boxes for the galaxy fold launch and the Flip launch, and so you should have gotten your tracking for that. And the S25 Ultra, like I said, is now open. So if you guys get your mystery box in the mail, please use the card. I included a QR code. You can scan it.
Speaker 1:Share the mystery box over on X and Twitter. I mean X and Twitter, x and Facebook so we can see the contents. We love to kind of interact with you guys and see what you guys got so everybody can share. A couple of people already shared their boxes today so you can check out our X feed. I've been retweeting them so people can see kind of how that looks. So let's end here with some Q&A. I didn't write any down, but I do have three questions that people kind of wrote in the comments section. One of them was for you, tori, because it's actually about your girlfriend, because they know that she's an iPhone user. They were asking does she use any of the other Apple products? How deep in the ecosystem is she? Does she use a MacBook? Does she use a watch? Does she use AirPods, et cetera? What other Apple products does she use?
Speaker 2:No, a watch. Does she use airpods, etc. What other products does she use? Uh, no, and actually, like I feel like her iphone is actually kind of old, but uh, she does have a ipad but she really doesn't use it very much, um, mostly to let, like, her nephew play around with it sometimes, or games or something yeah, or if she's going on a trip, she likes just being able to take that as a travel and just something to use while you're either waiting for your flight or once we get to our destination.
Speaker 2:She can do whatever on it. But yeah, she's not that very deep inside the ecosystem. She doesn't have AirPods, nope, she buys a lot of off-brand.
Speaker 1:That's crazy, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Again, her main thing is the what is it FaceTime. Yeah, and so like she was like hey, if so.
Speaker 1:I would say I think the person who commented that I forgot what their follow-up comment was, but I think they were saying if she's not in the ecosystem, maybe that would be easier to convert her to Android. I think maybe we could convert her eventually.
Speaker 2:I really do. She was really interested in the flip as well. Yeah, she's not that deep in the ecosystem. We could pull her back. We could pull her back to the light side.
Speaker 1:She's not so far on the dark side that she's completely gone, so I think maybe we could pull her back in. Yeah, so we will have to see. Maybe we can work on that over the course of the next few months of the podcast. If Tori gets a flip and she sees it, she's like oh.
Speaker 1:So that actually segues into the next question, which is also for Tori, and then the last one was for both of us. The question was you already kind of answered it what is your next planned phone upgrade? So we're going to talk about this a little, but there you go. What are you thinking, tori, at this point in the podcast? I, but there you go.
Speaker 2:What are you thinking, tori, at this point in the podcast? Yeah, you know several things, because I started to look at the Z Flip and I think I drove all the way to AT&T just to kind of like look at it and kind of do the comparison and like I'm kind of torn between do I get the Flip, do I keep this, or do I upgrade and wait to the S25? You know, I'm looking at the specs and I'm like man, like the S22 is a very solid phone, it's very good, but man, like I feel like I want to be on that innovative edge and so like that's what brought me to the S22 was because they had the pen, but like now, I want to be on the foldable side or the flip side.
Speaker 1:And everybody knows what I suggested to Tori. I was like just get a prepaid Mint SIM and just throw in your S22 and then put your main SIM in a Z Flip and now you've got two phones, just like me. You can just split one phone to your work phone, answer student emails on there.
Speaker 2:The other one's your main.
Speaker 1:Then you can play and then you can do some more stuff for the site, because now you have a foldable and you'll have a regular phone. So you know, just bring us more value and also have more fun yourself by having two phones. So that was my advice to Tori, but you know I'm an enabler when it comes to having foldable phones. I've got like 30 phones in this office.
Speaker 2:He's like Tori, you're asking the wrong guy If you want to know who you should pick.
Speaker 1:Which phone you should pick. I'm not the guy to ask. If you want to know which phone you should buy next, in addition to the phones you already have, then I'm the guy you should ask, but definitely not for deciding which phone you should get rid of and replace with a new one.
Speaker 2:So, oh yeah, I'm very tempted to get the flip, but hey, I really want to hear from you guys on x. Let us know um. What should I do? Should I keep or should I progress on to the flip? Definitely or should I hold on?
Speaker 1:Maybe you guys will influence Torrey's next phone decision yourselves. People are curious, so maybe you could be the one to help us decide. Yeah, the last question is one. I actually don't know the answer to this question, torrey, and I can discuss it right now, because I actually don't know. Torrey, when do you start back in January, do you know?
Speaker 2:It's usually about the second week, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, if you know the actual date someone asked me do, I think that maybe we could get Torrey up to Vegas with me for CES coverage this year. And I could get Torrey a press pass but he would have to be able to get the time off from work, because it's like the January 6th through the 10th or something and I don't know it could conflict with the schedule and I don't know that might.
Speaker 2:It could conflict with the schedule.
Speaker 1:So I don't actually know. I would love to see Tori come with me, because then I would have an extra person to help kind of go around the show floor make some connections for Sammy Guru.
Speaker 1:Tori can go out and talk to the accessory people, give them our business card for Mystery Box stuff and we can have a lot of fun in Vegas. So, hey, if stuff and we can, you know, have a lot of fun in vegas. So, uh, hey, if tori can, I definitely am happy to get him a media pass and I always have a hotel and stuff there, because usually some brands, will you know, pay for my stays and stuff. I mean, I usually have one anyway, because I go to vegas pretty often yeah, so we might be able to make it work.
Speaker 1:If tori wants a free trip, well I'll call it free because he'll be doing some work. But definitely it'll be a trip to Vegas, where we'll also be able to have fun at nighttime, and he'll get to go to CES, which is a cool experience. So if he wants to, we can definitely try to do that. We'll look into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we will look into that.
Speaker 1:So I think that's pretty much it this week also on X. If anyone has any ideas, let us know what we should use for our jingle.
Speaker 2:Because let us know what we should use for our jingle, because I'm going to have someone work on that now that we've got video, and I'm also going to get someone to do a graphic for the logo at the beginning so we don't just fade right into the podcast because it's going to be weird.
Speaker 1:This video is going to be like one of the most awkward I've ever edited because my YouTube I have a lot of professional elements already in place. I've been doing for years, but we'll eventually figure it out. Appreciate everyone kind of sticking with us. If you watched the whole thing, definitely let us know. We appreciate it. We've been doing this for seven episodes. Most people don't make it beyond like two episodes with a podcast, so I hope you guys appreciate the perseverance. Thanks to Tori for co-hosting. We've had a lot of fun so far. We're going to keep doing it, so we will see you guys next week.