SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
Adapting to Samsung's Delayed Update Strategy + Galaxy XR Ambitions
This week on the SammyGuru podcast we catch up on the latest Samsung news, including the multitude of delayed software updates. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is also taking shape, with quite a few interesting leaks exposing hardware details of the new device. In fact, Samsung may have plans to integrate the S25 Ultra with their upcoming Galaxy XR headset in some way. In the hardware segment, we run down our favorite cases, plus provide a quick hands-on review of the Galaxy Watch Ultra band adapters. All of that and more on tap this week, so join us, won't you?
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Video Podcast on Youtube: https://bit.ly/3yBw3Ro
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Check out our website: https://sammyguru.com
Hello everybody, welcome back. This is episode number eight of the Sammy Guru podcast. My name is Jeff Springer and with me is my co-host, tori. Tori, say hi, hey, how's it going? And we are back, hopefully. A lot of you guys enjoyed the video last week. I think most of you enjoyed it overall who've been watching, or rather listening, for the first six episodes along with us. We're able to do some different things, show some screenshots. You guys were able to see some of the products like the watch and the ring. This week we've got some improvements to the set here. You guys can see we've got the boom arms here which are hopefully going to make our audio business will be booming on the audio now. So that's the goal anyway is that we'll have some nice audio in here.
Speaker 1:It'll make it a little easier for us to position and have room for the laptop over here as well. The next thing I'm going to try to do is get us our logo behind us and then also have an overhead cam here somehow to show off products, like when I wanted to show phone or watch or other kind of stuff right there. So we'll see how that goes. Today we're going to talk a lot of news. We have a ton of news. Samit has been covering stuff all week. I think he posted like 40 articles this week. There's some great stories, also some bad news in terms of updates. So if you're waiting on updates, I'm sorry. There's some unfortunate news when it comes to that, but we'll talk about all that Also some good, interesting news as well. So we'll talk about a little bit of everything as we get into it here Before we do get started. Tori, how was your first week back teaching over at the school?
Speaker 2:Overall it was good, but it was also very long. I think by Wednesday I pooped out around 7 o'clock at night. I was so tired, but it was really nice just seeing the kids. I think that's what makes it so worth it. So yeah, overall it was a great week. Looking forward to next week.
Speaker 1:That's great. Does anybody cry yet in your class?
Speaker 2:No, but they probably will as soon as we start doing some polynomial functions and some trig in a bit.
Speaker 1:You're teaching algebra this semester right and geometry.
Speaker 2:Is that right?
Speaker 1:No, geometry and pre-calc. Geometry and pre-calc oh, some advanced stuff. Is that the AP pre-calc?
Speaker 2:Yes, it is. It is the AP pre-calc. That's very fun. Second go around.
Speaker 1:So I imagine you didn't see any movies this week because you were working hard, huh.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, tori's back to work.
Speaker 1:There's we might see a movie tonight, yeah we got to talk about it. We got the new DD movie.
Speaker 1:It's supposed to be like a trendy like artistic movie, but it is a comedy, so it could be interesting if you're a movie fan. Overall, I just been working this week trying to put a bunch of improvements on the website. We now have a search function on the website. The news page has been revamped. We now have basically all the author bios up there. I actually got to get yours, tori, because I was going to ask you about that, so hey need to get that done.
Speaker 1:Sumit and I put ours up there. We got our author bios. We have a bio page there so people can find out about us. Our social links will be there. So if you haven't been checking out the site lately, definitely check it out. There's been some great improvements to that and I'm really happy with kind of how the site's coming along.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, just getting things ready for the S25 Ultra Mystery Boxes Now that we stopped shipping. We just finished shipping the Z Fold and Z Flip boxes. We never take a break here. So as soon as we ship the Fold boxes we get right into preparing to kind of get people signed up for the next box. To kind of get people signed up for the next box.
Speaker 1:There's also a chance that I might do a program I did last year which was the Sammy Guru holiday mystery boxes. I'm not sure yet. So if people are interested in that, let me know Basically, if you bought a Samsung product or any kind of tech product through Samsung or Best Buy from a certain period, like late October through like the holidays, maybe the end of December, then you could get a mystery box from us. So this would be another opportunity to do it. I'd really like some feedback as to who might participate, because it is so close to the S25 launch in January, I'm not sure if we're going to do it yet just because then we'd be shipping back to back, but I certainly have considered it. So if people have any thoughts on that, certainly hit us up. Back to back, but I certainly have considered it. So if people have any thoughts on that, certainly hit us up. Uh, anything else story Just just sleeping most of this week cause you're going back to work.
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, mostly that, yeah. No time for movies until I even think about movies. Uh, well, actually I thought about the new beetle beetle, beetle juice, beetle juice movie but that, no, it's not out yet. No, it's not out yet, but Regal Cinemas have, you know, because it's the war of the popcorn buckets. Now they have their Beetlejuice popcorn bucket that they just revealed.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's interesting. So when does that come out, do you?
Speaker 2:know Well, I think I want to say like end of August or early September.
Speaker 1:Oh, so it's not that far away.
Speaker 2:That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:That looks like a really good movie if you're a fan of the original Beetlejuice, which I did enjoy. This was also Jonathan's very first week of school, so I took off.
Speaker 1:That was pretty good overall. He seems like he had a good day. Of course, he misses being home. He's four, going to pre-K, four, which is like early kindergarten and I stayed home on Monday so I could be there kind of to take him with my wife and pick him up. But he seems like he's enjoying it for the most part and, you know, getting along and making friends with other kids. So I'm really happy to see that because, you know, obviously it's difficult when you're the kids at home so long and then they go for the first time. He was also born during COVID, so he didn't get to go out a lot in the very beginning of his first couple of years because everybody was staying indoors. And then, you know, 2022, he started going out more. I'm really happy that he's kind of adjusting to school, so that's good. So I spent some time doing that at the beginning of the week as well.
Speaker 2:Does he have a dinosaur backpack.
Speaker 1:He has a Pokemon backpack. He actually has like five different backpacks. He has way too many because lots of people bought them, like Nicole's different backpacks. He has way too many because lots of people bought them, like nicole's mother bought him one. He has a dinosaur one. To answer your question, oh yeah, he's got like a pokemon, a dinosaur a bluey backpack and like a shark backpack.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, me and nicole bought him one, then her brother bought him one, nicole's mother bought him one and my mother bought him one, so he's got four backpacks all right, so just about every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean he just like change.
Speaker 1:He's not really going to do that. He'll probably rotate them like maybe throughout the year, maybe every few months, because Nicole's not going to be taking everything out of his bag every day because it's a lot of work. But yeah, he's got quite a few, so very, very excited for him to be starting. That's also why people are wondering why his animals and dinosaurs he usually gives me to be in the videos. They actually haven't changed much this past week. If you take a look over there on the desk you can see Tori, I've got the panda and the black bear the Lego yeah, I actually saw that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those actually have been in like the last seven videos because, he usually gives them to me in the morning and now that he's getting used to kind of getting up and getting ready for school, he hasn't had a lot of time and Nicole's been trying to get him on the schedule. So eventually, the new dinosaurs and new animals they will make a return to the videos for those who like it. I will get him to do it eventually. He's just got to get used to school so.
Speaker 1:All right so let's jump into the news, our first segment of the week, which probably will be the first segment kind of going forward, since we have so much news coverage now over on the site Lots of interesting stuff that's come out since we've previously talked to you guys. One thing that dropped over the weekend that I actually covered myself, and that is that Samsung is adding a new GoodLock module with One UI 7.0. This was revealed on the community forums and I think this dropped last Saturday, and so Sumit was. It was not a very good time on his time zone, so I just jumped in and covered it. It's going to be a module for gamers. So they already have Game Booster on Samsung phones, which allows you to basically like turn off some of your notifications, turn on performance mode. You know, fine tune your settings for playing games to optimize it, but now they're going to give you a GoodLock module that will allow you to do more with that.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that they were talking about doing inside the GoodLock module that I thought would be interesting for a lot of gamers would be gamepad mapping. So if you want to map your screen or a separate gamepad out for playing games on your phone then you can do that using the good lock module like custom mapping where you want your buttons and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So if you're a mobile gamer, that might be particularly interesting. Good lock module. Samsung usually adds new good lock modules when a new one ui version comes out, so it's not surprising. I'm not a huge gamer not on my phone. Rather, I like to play console games when I have time. But, as we've discussed, I don't have that much time these days with two kids and the business. But when I do have time I usually play console. But I do play mobile occasionally. I play Pokemon Go with Jonathan and we play Mario Kart as well Mario Kart Tour on the phone so it might be a useful function for people who like the game. So I figured I'd mention that. Uh, and then the other do you play any games on mobile tour?
Speaker 2:uh, no, not really, unless you count. Uh.
Speaker 1:The pokemon training card game online oh, but yeah, I mostly just play playstation five yeah yeah, I mostly just play playstation 5 and xbox.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mobile gaming is just kind of tough because the thing is, in order to make mobile gaming kind of something that you would want to do, you have to have like a lot of gaps in your day and, like you, as a teacher, don't have any gaps, and me, trying to get this business started, I have like no gaps. I mean I could take time, obviously, when I want as a business owner, it's great. But I've been pushing myself since I left the university to make sure Sammy Guru is kind of the best it can possibly be. Once we get everything humming, maybe I'll take some time, but I don't play games as much as I probably should, unless I'm doing a review of a phone. I need to test gaming and then I'll force myself. Maybe that's good.
Speaker 2:I force myself to do some gaming.
Speaker 1:The other big story that broke last weekend that I covered because Sumit was not awake at the time was Galaxy Buds 3 Pro received their first software update, and so this actually is a twofer, because today we got some other useful news For those of you who wanted to purchase the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro. You remember last month Samsung halted the launch right after they launched because of some build quality issues with the silicon tips. I got a pair before that happened. So I've been kind of listening to them and I've talked about them on the past episodes. But if you want to purchase them, they're now shipping them again. So they announced they fixed the issues and so they are shipping. So if you can go purchase those, if you want, there'll be a link in the show notes.
Speaker 1:The first software update I got it. It doesn't seem to do much. It's a very small update. It's like 7.69 megabytes here on this update. So it mainly improves some stability for Bluetooth and stuff like that and I don't know the battery life is already pretty good on the Buds. I don't think it really needed a big change there. How much on?
Speaker 2:the battery life do you get?
Speaker 1:I mean I listen to my Buds on really pretty high volume, Probably higher than I should. To be honest, your it's definitely not good for your ears, but I probably listen to my buds on way too high volume so I probably get like five hours though listening time, but of course, the case you can plug them, you put them back in the case and charge them up, and like 15 minutes will give you like two more hours of charge.
Speaker 1:So it's really not that bad at all with the case. If you take the case on a trip and you put them back in the case and fully charge them, you probably get like 10 to 12 hours if you're listening on max volume. If you don't listen on max volume like me, like if you're not trying to make yourself deaf, like I do- then you probably so if you're not all about that, then you probably could get easily like 15 hours with the case, the extra charge from the case.
Speaker 1:So with the extra charge from the case. So that is a stage rollout as usual, so you can check your Buds 3 Pro if you have them. It should be there, but it started in Korea and then it's slowly trickling out to the US. Were you thinking about still buying some Buds?
Speaker 2:3 Pro. Yes, I still want them. That's why I was asking for the performance. And again, I'm still rocking the Buds 2. I love them Really great, but I really want to try these 3 Pros.
Speaker 1:Make sure you hit the affiliate link in the show notes. I definitely will.
Speaker 2:Well, is it back open now? Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it is. So if you guys want to, you can also do that. If you want to support the show Buds 3 Pro backup for order over on Samsung's website and if you order some through our link, hit me up. I might still have a couple little Buds 3 Pro cases I could send out from the mystery boxes. We didn't use all of them, so if you do order some, let's see what else we got. Quickshare got another update. We talked about QuickShare. Another update. We talked about Quick Share last week. Samsung is just like they're curb stomping Apple's AirDrop Like AirDrop is looking embarrassing at this point for Apple because yeah, I saw that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they I watched your video. Yeah, last week.
Speaker 1:Remember look at this. Tori's watching my videos. I hear supporting.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that yeah.
Speaker 1:The Quick Share. Last week we talked about private sharing, which allows you to basically then share files with friends or family and then later you can revoke their ability to see it or you can actually prevent them from screenshotting it A lot of cool security settings that we talked about last week. Well then Samsung pushed another update which increases the file size limit from 5 to 10 gigabytes, which is pretty massive. I mean, that's a very large file size to be able to share using your link or QR code or whatever you want to do, and supposedly the update's also supposed to now show you the size of the file you're receiving on the device that you're receiving it on. That doesn't really work very well, to be honest with you. I tested it in the video I made on it and it doesn't seem to really show you that I showed that off. That seems to be a bug, though I'm sure they'll fix it.
Speaker 1:But sometimes, when you're trying to push out really great updates all the time which Samsung does you have a couple little hiccups. So that's version 13.6.51.13. It's available on the Galaxy Store pretty much everywhere. I think that one's pretty much rolled out in terms of its stages, like it's completely done, rolling out so you can go and check it out Again. I'll drop all of these links that we covered down there in the show notes as well, and you can read more about them. Samit covered this one. Another interesting thing about Samit I don't know if you knew this, tori, but he also has a bachelor's degree in mathematics.
Speaker 2:Did you know that?
Speaker 1:No a bachelor's degree in mathematics. Did you know that? No, I didn't. All three of us are mathematicians here working for the site. If you look at his bio, I knew this when I hired him, but he's a mathematics graduate there in India and he taught high school mathematics as well before he started becoming a blog writer.
Speaker 1:So that's not why I hired him, because we are both mathematicians as well, but it is pretty cool that kind of all three of us have that background. But, like I said, not the reason I hired him, but still a very interesting piece of information there. To talk about what else we got Samsung updated Internet Beta with some new features. The Samsung Internet Browser Beta got an update which includes a search functionality for settings, which is kind of a nice thing, because then you can use the ability to. If you want to find a particular section of the settings, you can just search through it and find it. They didn't have that before in the settings. And the other thing that it does is it gives you an end-to-end encryption for Internet Sync data. This is actually part of what we were talking about last week, where you had the option now to back up your data as encrypted to Samsung Cloud. This now gives you the option to do that with your browsing history and your bookmarks on Samsung Internet, so that was added as well. It's a pretty good update. That is the Samsung Internet beta, though, so if you're not running the beta then you might not have that, but you can always.
Speaker 1:There's no reason to not try that Beta. I think a lot of people don't realize. Like I talked about on here, when we were talking about the One UI 7 software Beta, I was like you really shouldn't run that on your main phone. Not all Betas are like that. If it's an app Beta, then there's nothing wrong with running that, particularly if you also run the stable app as well.
Speaker 1:You can run the regular internet app when you're running the beta and you can just run them in tandem to play with the new features. There's really no harm in that. I just don't recommend that you run a beta of an entirely new version of the Samsung software because then not only will you get a lot of crashes but you may not be able to utilize your banking apps and other productivity apps that you need on a daily basis. But there's no reason to not try betas. So try the app betas. I would say the internet app beta. I always run that along with the stable and I also run Chrome. I have like three different browsers on my Samsung phone. You use Chrome, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do Because that's what's kind of there out of the box. Because that's what's kind of there out of the box. Samsung launched a new tablet this week in the US. For those of you who are parents, they launched the Galaxy Tab A9 Plus the kids edition here in the US.
Speaker 1:So you can now go and buy that. Basically, it's just a ruggedized version of the Galaxy Tab A9 Plus, which was already a Samsung tablet. It's kind of like the other rugged tablets that Amazon offers in the Kindle, like the Kindle Kids. It's got like a rubber reinforced back on it so that if the kids throw it down they get angry or tantrum if you have little kids or whatever or they just accidentally drop it because kids, when they're done with something, they're just like oops, gone here you go.
Speaker 1:Just going to throw that on the floor. Who cares if it's a tablet? So uh, it's going to be coming uh to verizon as well as a 5g version at the end of august. Price is 269.99 uh unlocked and you can get up to 170 trade-in credit, although I wouldn't recommend you do that, because I think I looked in the trade-in credit. It's like if you you trade in a Tab S9 or S9 Ultra, those tablets are worth like $500 to $800 on Swappos, so why would you trade it into Samsung?
Speaker 2:for $170?.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't recommend doing that, but you know, if you want to just buy one outright for your kids, it looks like a pretty good like lower budget tablet option. The One UI 7.0 beta has been further delayed again, yeah, so, uh, it just keeps going back and back and back. Originally it's like july 29th was the rumored date and we were all excited. We were talking about that like on the podcast a few weeks ago and now it's basically. Some people are like, oh, it's going to be here in August. And then Ice Universe and Chun Bai, two Samsung leakers this week. Someone asked them if it was said oh, it's definitely going to come in August, right, and they're like I have low confidence about August. So apparently Samsung developers of their software division they've been tasked by the kind of boss of Samsung with making this more stable and polished before it was released and also I guess they're under a lot of pressure because they want this to be really smooth, animations-wise, to basically compete with iOS on that kind of polished level. So I don't really know.
Speaker 1:This is not great news for those of you who think you're going to get the stable version like in october. That's probably not going to happen. I wouldn't pencil in like trying one ui7 stable version like by halloween. That's probably not going to happen, because last year that's when they started rolling it out, but testing started in early august and now, if it doesn't start till september, then you're probably not going to be playing with One UI 7 stable until Thanksgiving. So you might have to move your plans if you're thinking about testing out that new software over Halloween, trick-or-treating around trying some new 7.0 features. Probably not. So it's probably going to be around Thanksgiving, I would guess, hopefully not later. The other thing I wanted to mention here, which we didn't write up an explicit story on, but there's been rumors on all the other Android sites it's rumored that next week and I talked about this a little bit, I think last week as well Google is launching the Pixel 9 Pro and the Pixel 2 Fold Pro.
Speaker 2:Whatever, it's super long. As I said last week, awful awful name.
Speaker 1:Their marketing team definitely needs some work. Someone should get in trouble for that, whoever let them put that out as the official name. But they're launching their devices on august 13th and supposedly there's a rumor that those may not even run android 15 out of the box. Really, yeah, that would be massive, because google is the developed. You know, they create android and they always have the new version of android launch on the pixel phone. It's like that's that's when they launch the pixel phones. When new version of android comes out, the pixel has it. Um, there's a couple of reasons for this. One is google is just a little behind, I guess, on the development of android 15. But two they also decided to move up, like the launch of the pixel 9 and pixel 2 pro fold. Um, those usually launch in like October, so they move their launch event like two months forward. That's a long time. So usually Android's newest version has already been out for quite a while, like six to eight weeks. But now it's like coinciding right with around the time that they usually release the new stable version, and so it seems like maybe their software people just weren't able to keep up with getting it ready in time.
Speaker 1:So next week we will see the Pixel 9 Pro and the Pixel 2 Pro Fold. I'll have some thoughts on that later in the show. Today we're going to talk a little bit about that device and how it compares to the Z Fold 6. I also should have, hopefully, a review of those. Google typically sends me those, like I said. So maybe next week on the podcast, it depends, because sometimes when I get review units I'm not allowed to say stuff.
Speaker 1:A lot of you who are tech enthusiasts know these companies. They put embargoes on the products and so you can only talk about certain things like they're. Like here. You can see, you can play with the device early, early you get units but then you're on embargo list and they're like oh, you can't talk about the camera because it's not final software, or you can't talk about the battery life, and usually it's because they know that there's something wrong with the camera or the battery life Makes sense and they want to be able to fix it in a software update before, like you, talk about it and they don't want any reviewers dissuading people from purchasing it before that. So that's the real reason that they typically do that.
Speaker 1:So there's a good chance that we won't have a full chance to discuss the whole device next week, but I may have a chance to if I have it. I can show it to you if they let me, and then I can say some things about how it compares to the Z Fold 6, at least what they will let me talk about and then I'll have a full comparison at some point. The Galaxy S24 FE is preparing for launch that should come out in a couple months as well. That's Samsung's fan edition, which I still don't know why they're called fan editions? Because they're lower spec versions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what?
Speaker 1:fan If you're a fan.
Speaker 2:Do you really want like?
Speaker 1:a dumbed down version of the S24? I mean, you don't?
Speaker 2:You want the real S24, probably an Ultra if you're a real fan.
Speaker 1:But I mean that's what they call it. It's supposed to be coming out in the next few months, probably going to review that, because a lot of people actually buy these. Obviously, if people weren't buying them, samsung wouldn't keep making them, because that would be silly if they weren't making money. Obviously, people are purchasing these devices. Hey, maybe we can see and kind of compare it to the lower budget iPhone when it comes out as well, because that's kind of a good Samsung probably going to release it close to the iPhone the iPhone will be out next month as well, because that's kind of a good samsung probably going to release it close to the iphone. The iphone will be out next month as well.
Speaker 1:And, of course, we'll have some comparison thoughts on that, because you got to compare samsung versus iphone this is not an iphone podcast, but they are the number one competition when it comes to volume here in the us. Anyway, samsung kind of dominates the worldwide stage, but they are competition and they do outsell Samsung here. So it's important to kind of see what it is that they're doing. So we'll probably talk about it then. Do you know anybody who uses an FE Samsung phone? Tori?
Speaker 2:No no no, no no, most of them have like the really like expensive IMAX. So not IMAX but iPhone pro. And yeah, like I know like a few people who still just have like the older versions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get the S22.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because they're like I'm never going to, or like what's the point of getting the newer phone if they literally are the same thing? That's literally what I mostly get. But yeah, I don't know, We'll see. I think with the budget phones, like definitely now in a very price-centered type of consumer, I feel like these companies are going to have to kind of go towards and create phones that are more lower budget to get in some of those people who only really care about the price of the phone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, if you really do just care about price. And there are a lot of particularly, I feel, like, older people like not my mom my mom actually likes having a flagship phone but a lot of older people, they don't care too much. In fact, not that nicole's mother is old, I don't want to say that in case her or her mother listened to this. She's very nice and she's not old, but she's obviously older than me. Last year she broke her Galaxy S20, and I gave her the Galaxy S23 FE after I reviewed it and she didn't say like, oh, what is this crap? You've given me some lower-end version, that's. She didn't care. She was just like, oh, this looks like the phone I had before. It's Samsung, the UI is exactly like I remember it and I'm familiar with one UI and it's great. She didn't really care that I didn't give her a regular S23 or S23 Ultra. She was very happy. I mean, obviously I gave it to her for free too, because she's my mother-in-law and so she was thankful for that. But she wasn't like I really need to get that flagship phone because it does something else that I need. So we'll definitely have our view of that. I think that's an important phone to cover. I didn't cover as much last year as I probably should have. I wasn't full time though. I was still a GCU teaching, so not as easy to cover everything, but now that I'm full time we can cover a little bit more interesting stuff.
Speaker 1:A couple of S25 pieces of news. S25 Ultras everybody getting ready for that. The beast, everybody getting ready for that. The beastly. Snapdragon 8 gen 4 chip was benchmarked online and it does look like a certified beast. Uh, it was benchmark over on geekbench 6 with an 8840 multi-core score and 2884 single core score. And uh, for tori, who doesn't probably know what this?
Speaker 1:means uh, this is roughly about 20% higher than what was benchmarked on the S23 last year. The S23. Sorry, not the S23. My bad the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which was the previous processor. They both have 3s and 4s in them. So the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is in the S24 Ultra, is about 15% lower benchmark than this processor. So it does look like a beast. But the main thing that's going to be a big deal with this particular processor is not just the processing power, which, of course, 15% for most average users is not going to be like. You're not going to notice that in day-to-day use when you get your S25 Ultra, you're not going to be like oh no, this is so powerful, it's 15% better than my S24 Ultra.
Speaker 1:You're not going to feel that way about the performance, because it just doesn't. You can't tangibly feel 15%, particularly because the phone's already so fast. Unless you're running like 75 apps in the background and you're constantly switching between five of them, it doesn't really slow down or hiccup at all.
Speaker 1:And no one's really doing that in practice. Some of these guys who test on Twitter, switching between five of them like it doesn't really slow down or hiccup at all, and no one's really doing that in practice. Some of these guys who test on Twitter and I like these guys, like some of these very Samsung leakers in the community they just like get their phone when they test animations and they test fluidity and, like you know, lag. They get the phone like load 75 things in the background memory and they're just like flipping through them with their fingers, like so I'm like who's who's doing that, like that's not that's not a real use case because people always ask me too.
Speaker 1:they're like why don't you do like animation tests, like people do on Twitter, why don't you do those kind of lag tests? Because they're completely meaningless, because no one is doing that in real life. I'm not just sitting there flipping through apps. Who's doing?
Speaker 2:that I'm doing stuff.
Speaker 1:I open an app, I do some stuff and then maybe a minute or two later I switch another app. My phone never hiccups doing that, and maybe you run a couple of them in pop-up multi-view. It also never hiccups doing that either, so I don't know. But that's the processor. The other big news we got is Tori. We discussed last week the rounded corners of the S25 Ultra. We've talked about that for a while now. Apparently it's come out that the reason that the rounded corners will be there is that this is apparently tied to Samsung's Galaxy XR ambitions.
Speaker 2:Have you heard about Galaxy XR. I do not know what that is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wanted to talk about this a little bit. It was actually in the show notes for later today, but maybe we'll just talk about it a little bit right now. It's actually in the show notes to talk about this a little bit, and that is Galaxy XR. Is Samsung's basically equivalent version of Apple Vision Pro. You've heard about the Apple Vision Pro? I imagine no.
Speaker 2:You haven't. No, that's.
Speaker 1:Apple's augmented reality headset. Oh yeah, so you strap it on and it gives you a version of Mac OS Not Mac OS, it's actually called Vision Pro OS, I believe, or Vision OS and it lets you interact. You've got a desktop here you can pinch to zoom.
Speaker 1:And you can kind of like Tony Stark stark, you know, like in uh marvel, where you like move stuff around, pinches and throws it. You can do that and it's really cool. I I tried the uh vision pro at an apple store. It's not great for me just because with glasses it's kind of annoying because you've got to get inserts for them. I ended up not buying one just for that reason.
Speaker 1:But what I've noticed is the people who bought the Apple Vision Pro. They loved it in the beginning. But a lot of the people I've talked to, particularly other YouTubers who cover Apple you know some people cover Apple more than I don't really cover it much at all. Some people that's their only thing they do on YouTube and they mostly have stopped using their Vision Pro, like after you know how many of our months it's been. So they use it for a while but now they're like I just went back to my old laptop because it's easier. Everyone said it was revolutionary at the time and then a few months later it's like oh well, I spent $3,500. That's how much it costs. It's a lot of money.
Speaker 2:It is a lot of money.
Speaker 1:You can buy a top-end MacBook Air, an iPad and an iPhone for $3,500 if you wanted to. So it's a lot of money. Samsung is apparently wanting to kind of rival the Vision Pro. That's their goal and they're trying to develop it as part of the Galaxy ecosystem. According to Ice Universe, he's saying that they made the rounded design of the S25 Ultra to perhaps make it compatible with the Galaxy XR headset.
Speaker 1:Now it's not obvious what he means, but one thing it could mean and this is possible, I was thinking about this is that maybe the Galaxy XR could allow you to insert your phone to get some extra power, extra compatibility. It's kind of weird that Ice Universe mentioned this, because so far everyone had heard that Galaxy XR was going to be a standalone device, which is what the Vision Pro is, the Apple Vision Pro. You don't do anything, you don't plug it into your phone, it's just a standalone device. It's got a CPU on it, it's got all of its stuff internally. You just hook it up to a battery pack and you can walk around your house like pinching to zoom and doing all your stuff, which is really cool. But uh, it should be very interesting. I don't know, would you use a galaxy xr? I mean you could play games in it.
Speaker 2:Most likely too, so what do you think I? I think it kind of just comes down to like because, like I, I kind of picture myself when I'm in like the supermarket, like walmart, and I'm and I'm seeing so many PlayStation VRs and Oculus kind of still sitting on the shelf. Me as an average consumer, I feel like it would be nice to maybe try it once or twice, but I just have a hard time seeing myself using it so much. I still like having physical things to interact with versus using AI and stuff like that. So I really don't see myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it feels like to me that it's probably a situation where it's something cool you'd like to try at someone else's house. Like if you went over there for a Friday night and you want to get some pizza and like, hey, we're going to hang out tonight and play my galaxy XR. But then like, if you want to ask me to go, spend like three $3,500 on it.
Speaker 1:I don't know about that because, like it's going to sit in a box eventually after I get tired of it and it's not going to be my main productivity device. Yeah, mainly because, like you know, for me some people are willing to strap it on their heads and go out in public and use it. But like I'm not going to go out like to a coffee shop and strap on my galaxy xr and start, like working on my documents or, like you know, like I'm not going to go and edit the sammy guru show notes or compose a post for the blog or write some scripts for my youtube channel at starbucks using my galaxy xr. I'm going to pull out my galaxy book for edge. I want to pull out my tab s9 ultra, you know, I'm going to pull out my Galaxy Book 4 Edge. I'm going to pull out my Tab S9 Ultra. I'm going to pull out a real productivity machine and I'm going to go and enjoy my Starbucks and do my work if I'm going to go out in public. So it's not a device I could travel with. So I feel like I wouldn't spend that much money Now.
Speaker 1:Is Samsung going to charge $3,500, like Apple? I don't know, maybe they won't. That's a steep price, and samsung would really have to make a big case to do that. I think there's going to be cheaper than that, because the reason apple can do that is because they pretty much baked in a lot of that productivity functionality as well as gaming some gaming and so, of course, the other reason is apple fans we've talked before they'll just buy anything apple puts out. They're like oh yeah, man, they released the new vision pro what am I going to do with it?
Speaker 2:I?
Speaker 1:don't know, but I but I got to have it right now they're like let's go get in line at the Apple store. So we'll get to see that next month, when the iPhone releases, everybody will be lining up and it's basically the same phone that they launched last year just with a slightly new camera sensor. And then they'll have like one new color and everyone will be like I got to get that color.
Speaker 1:So everybody knows that I'm not a peasant that I have the old one because otherwise, if you don't get the new color, no one would know that you have the new phone. No, because it looks exactly the same. So yeah, I don't know. I'm really excited about galaxy xr because this new product from samsung. Of course I'll probably get one to review, because this is a samsung channel, this is sammy guru. But will I use it all the time after I unbox it and review it? I'm not to be honest with you.
Speaker 1:I might not because it just doesn't seem like a device that's going to fit into my lifestyle. There's some devices like it's just a lifestyle thing, you know, like the Galaxy Ring. I've used it. I found it fits into my lifestyle, so I've been wearing it every day. I'm still waiting for the size 12 to come into stock so I can put it on my index finger because I'm tired of wearing it here. It's. It's still annoying interacting with my fingers. But like the ring, the watch, the tablet, the phone, even the galaxy book for edge, it doesn't hasn't replaced my macbook pro, just because it doesn't work with some apps yet.
Speaker 1:But it does fit into my lifestyle and I use it a lot.
Speaker 2:I actually use it while I'm kind of at home on the couch when I'm doing a little work, and we use it for the podcast every week yeah, um, well, do you think to terms of you know, because we're kind of like in this market and like we kind of talked about it before like is, is it kind of like to the point where AI and us trying to push towards it, like I just don't feel like it's catching on quick enough and it does seem like Samsung is trying to be at that next corner of innovation, of getting it out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think AI and AR, slash, xr, augmented reality, or whatever Samsung wants to call their version, are the two big things right now in tech. Like everyone's like let's do AI, let's do AR, let's do VR. Those are still two very big things. At the end of the day, though a lot of people have kind of settled into it, you really have to have like a revolutionary use for a product, like a huge change. So consumers have gotten used to smartphones because we've had them since 2007, when the first iPhone came out.
Speaker 1:It's been 17 years, so we've been living with them for a while and I think a lot of people thought people eventually are going to stop upgrading every year, and that's not true of most people. A lot of people will still upgrade every year, even samsung fans not as much as apple. You still have to give them some reasons. But I think these companies are starting hopefully to realize that, like, if we do give them decent amount of upgrades and there's still a lot of things they could do for phones, I think there's still a long way for phones to go. Um, that's probably a place they could concentrate their efforts, instead of, maybe, ar or VR. I do think AI people are getting tired of it, but there are good uses of AI. I think I just wish they would stop calling everything AI.
Speaker 2:Because writing assist is great.
Speaker 1:I mean, galaxy Eye is okay to call it that, but making that the main marketing message of everything you do is just annoying to people. If you said like, oh, writing assist, sketched image, you can turn your rough sketches into a drawing, and you just didn't keep emphasizing. You know ai, ai, ai. People are tired of hearing about that. We all know what ai is at this point. Yeah, so like, if you show me a feature where I can sketch something that looks like crap and it turns it into a very amazing artistic drawing, I know that that's ai. The average person even knows that now, because chat.
Speaker 1:Gpt is so ubiquitous right everyone knows what generative ai is. We've really been like saturated with that the last three years, and so I think we can just ease off the marketing buzz and maybe just, you know, tell people what the features do. We don't have to sell the AR excitement because everyone's like we get it.
Speaker 2:It's AI.
Speaker 1:It's okay. If it's cool, then we like it, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we like it just because it has the word AI in it, which seems like and honestly I want to mention this too, because I saw a review this week while we're talking about AI, this PC right here my book for edge has the co-pilot button, which microsoft it's right here.
Speaker 1:This thing is the ai that's built into microsoft's new pcs and it lets you basically, you know, do generative ai and guess how many times I've used it since I got it this time right here, this, this one time I opened it.
Speaker 1:That's the first time I've ever opened it because I don't need to. Yeah, I, I already use enough other AI things, so like it's really saturated. It's hard to sell people other AI functions unless they're really cool. So I like this laptop a lot, but the co-pilot has absolutely nothing to do with the reason why I like it. So what else? Oh, very useful tutorial. Got to give a shout out to useful tutorials that samit made this week that you should absolutely check out. The first one was how to enable custom icon packs in theme park. Now, I've done these videos before on my channel, but he went the extra mile. I mean this tutorial. It's very, very long, involved screenshots. He shows you how to do it, not just for, like a pre-made icon pack on the play store, but he shows you how to edit icons like that you custom create yourself inside.
Speaker 2:Theme Park.
Speaker 1:He goes really in depth, even some stuff that I haven't covered on my YouTube channel before. Really really happy with the job he's doing, and you guys owe it to yourself if you've never customized your icons on Samsung phone, even if you have to read it, because I actually learned a couple things I didn't know and obviously I've been doing this for over 10 years, so check it out. I mainly have always used it to load icon packs that already existed that I downloaded, but he showed you how you can create your own using the editor and theme park. It's really awesome. The other one, if you don't know a lot about um firmware, which is the samsung like updates, yeah, they have a really long, long build number when you download a software update from Samsung.
Speaker 2:I just got mine today. Right, you got the new one.
Speaker 1:We're going to talk about that in just a second as well. The Galaxy S series got their update for August. I made a video yesterday about this. For the S24 Ultra, the build number, that long string, actually tells you information, and so each of the little set of characters tell you something different about the update, and so meet made a tutorial that tells you how to read each of those blocks of letters.
Speaker 1:So, like, the first three characters that are in there are the first four characters denote the model number. It's like s928 is like the s24 ultra. And then the next three to four characters tell you which region it's for, like if it's for the us or india, etc. Uh, and then the next three to four characters tell you which region it's for, like if it's for the US or India, etc. And then the next three characters reveal kind of the updates content, like is it a major update? Is it a small update?
Speaker 1:That's kind of how, when the leaksters like kind of spot an update on Samsung servers, they know, like is that a really big one or is it just a security patch? Because the build number actually tells you this. So if you don't know much about that and you want to learn more about, like, how to tell if the update you get is actually a big one or if it's just a security patch. Check out Sumit's article, because it's really good. I'll put both of those in the show notes. So let's talk about the update that came yesterday for the S24 Ultra, and you said you got it too on the S22.
Speaker 1:So it's come to the S22, s23, s24 here in the US. But it's very disappointing for S24 users, particularly because we were told by all the people who do leaks and also by Samsung, that One UI 6.1.1, which of course, is on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 right here the features would be coming to the Galaxy S24. They're also going to come to the S23 and your phone too later, but the S24, of course, is first in line because it was released this year. But we got the update yesterday and there's no One UI 6.1 features and there's no camera improvements. It's just a security update. So everyone got this update, including me, and we downloaded and we're like hey, where's our sketched image drawing assist? Where's the improved camera zoom that Samsung promised?
Speaker 2:None of that stuff is in the update.
Speaker 1:So it looks like we're waiting until September to get that stuff too. Samsung is just behind on all their software stuff, Not just the 7.0 beta. They're behind on the One UI 6.1.1 update, which will not be 6.1.1. We talked about this before. It'll be One UI 6.1 as a build number, but it will have the feature set from 6.1.1. So they're delayed on that. They're delayed on the camera improvements for the S24 Ultra, Pretty much everything so crazy. But you're going to have to wait for that a little bit longer, it would seem. Another cool story that Sumit covered this week taskbar is coming to Galaxy phones, not just foldables.
Speaker 2:Would you?
Speaker 1:use this story, I don't know. So, on the Z Fold 6, which I have right here down here at the bottom, you can see it. Right there there's a little taskbar.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you guys can see it as well. Right there, if you haven't used a foldable, there's a little taskbar at the bottom and that basically pops up whenever you're in any app and lets you switch between apps. You can also hide it. So, according to a couple reports, it looks like the taskbar is coming to all phones with android 15. Google's going to put it in there, so samsung might bake this into one ui 70, which means you'd be able to then kind of hide or show the task bar wherever you're in an app, even on, like your S24, s22 phone. So I think I would use this on the S24. What do you think, dory? Would you use this?
Speaker 2:Dory Jones oh yeah, no, definitely like for me, like as a consumer and also just like in my daily. I feel like I would just use it all the time, even like also with just like with teaching too, because sometimes, now that I'm like starting to have like English language learner students, it's really good to kind of have Translator.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Google Translate app and so, and I found that to be really helpful this weekend. Learner students is really good to kind of have um translator. Yeah, the google translate up and so, and I found that to be really helpful this weekend. It kind of also flashed me back to with the z uh, z flip six. Yeah, I was like, oh, that's another reason to use it because, like, I think about the commercial uh of them, you know, having like the translator like on both sides, and I'm like, ah, I feel like that would just make um my life a little easier in those regards.
Speaker 1:For sure, yeah, so oh, and, by the way, tori and I can talk about this at the very end of the Q and a. This might be a long show, but that's okay. Um, the Q and a. Uh, tori, and let him try that out, see how he likes it see if he might want to move to the Flip.
Speaker 1:I found it last week I was cleaning my office at home and I told Tori I was like, hey, if you want to try Flip, I have one right here. You can try to run that along with your S22 Ultra and see if you like it. Now it's not a Samsung phone, but he can at least see and then you can see maybe from there if you want to get the Z Flip 6. So that's the Razer 2023. I also did order the Xiaomi 14 Fold Mix Me Fold 4. That's coming, so I'm going to do a Fold 6 comparison to that at some point.
Speaker 1:So I definitely think I would use the taskbar though, so I hope Samsung decides to bring that, because I think a lot of people would use it even on their slab phones, not just on foldables. It seems like it's relevant to kind of all of the difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I feel like or at least a lot of times when I am using the apps, or like if I'm trying to go back and forth between things, I just like as I find myself using what the three bars thing to kind of go back and forth in between tabs and windows. But I feel like it would just be easier if I did have that, but I feel like I'm so conditioned to just with the Slap Phone. I'm trying to envision how I would use it.
Speaker 1:I think you would if it was there. If they make it so it's on by default at the bottom you'll just see the app you want and tap on it, most likely. I mean it's very convenient on the Fold, for sure, of course. There, I mean it's very convenient on the Fold, for sure. Of course there's other ways to multitask on the Slapphones too, but a lot of times on a Slapphone I don't want to do split screen because there's not enough room.
Speaker 1:I like split screen, but it's still not enough room on the Fold. I use split screen all the time. That's a main purpose of opening up the screen is for split screen, but on the S24 Ultra I don't use it that often. So I feel like having the taskbar would be almost more useful, even maybe than the fold in some sense, because I tend to switch single apps instead of multitasking on this 24 Ultra, whereas on the fold I tend to like do one on each side when I have the big screen. So I definitely like that. I think that would be pretty awesome. Oh, sumit actually made one more tutorial. This is the last thing in the news segment and then we will move on to the second part of the show how to create 24-hour time-lapse video from a single photo. So did you know you can do this? You can take a single photo you took on your phone and create a 24-hour time-lapse video instantly inside the gallery. Did you know this? What Isn't that cool? It's crazy you. This. What isn't that cool?
Speaker 2:it's crazy you gotta see the tutorial. I, I, I knew about it, but I've never actually kind of seen how it works. Access to this, like right now on the s22.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly so it basically, if you take a photo of like um something outdoors, it works best with outdoor photos of course, all right.
Speaker 1:So if you take a video, if you take a photo like of like the sunset, or you take a photo like in the daytime outside, uh, outside in Arizona, then you can set it up. It'll make an automatic time lapse of how that terrain would look as the sun's setting, as it gets dark and as the sun rises and goes all the way through the times so you can see. Here I'll insert the screenshot so you guys can see as well what's on the computer. Here you can see how it kind of looks here at dusk this photo he took here.
Speaker 2:It really changed the game a lot with just taking pictures in general, and I feel like a lot more people would—actually, I feel like a lot of people would probably want to use this, because there's a lot of aspiring people who like photos and to be creative. I'm not a very creative person at all, but this would make me want to take more pictures.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think this is another feature that Samsung doesn't really advertise. They have a lot of features that they release and then they don't really tell anyone about them. Some of their best features actually are not things like Galaxy Eye, which some of the Galaxy Eye is good, but they put in their big marketing stuff. They're features that they release and they never mention them again. The only way you can find out about them is if you watch my channel or go to our website or go to another YouTuber who covers it which is actually good for us because that's job security for my business.
Speaker 1:But they really should probably consider telling people about it because it would help their business. But I guess in some sense it's good that they let me do that, because then I can continue to operate as a business and make money with that.
Speaker 2:You're a businessman. That's right, I am a businessman.
Speaker 1:Not just a businessman. I'm a business man.
Speaker 1:All right, so that is the news. Before we get into the second part of the show, we're going to talk about some various kind of hot topics. I'll talk about a little bit of hardware that I have in-house and then get into the app of the week. Before we do that, we're going to go ahead and take a quick break to hear from the sponsor of today's podcast. Today's episode of the Sammy Guru Podcast is brought to you by our partners at Mint Mobile.
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Speaker 1:All right, so let's go ahead and get into the second half of today's show. Here. On the second half of the show, I want to talk a little bit about a couple pieces of hardware this week. Not really so much devices, because we've kind of waxed poetic on the Galaxy Unpacked devices for the last two or three weeks. We've talked about the Ring, we've talked about the Watch Ultra, I've talked about the Fold and the Flip. We've kind of gotten into all of that.
Speaker 1:But I do want to talk about the Galaxy watcher ultra band adapters. I did get them in, um, and I will insert some pictures that I have here and maybe a short clip that I have that I'm planning to put in my youtube video for you guys, um, so you can see it, because they're really small, so you have to see the close-up, but, uh, they do work pretty well. One thing I will say, though, that you should be aware of, because we talked about this last week. Basically, you can buy on amazon it's a pack of like two sets for nine dollars and what you do is they're just little clips that clip into the proprietary locking system on the galaxy watch ultra, and once you put them in there, you can then use traditional watch bands with your galaxy watch ultra, so they just let you like clip this in to the mechanism, and then they've got little pins so you can put in like a pin regular traditional watch band, so kind of like the which watch did.
Speaker 2:I just have the Watch 4 Classic I could take those?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So that's a good question. That's an answer. The answer is no, so you can only use yeah, this is really bad.
Speaker 1:So Samsung introduced a new mechanism with the 4, 5, and 6, I believe, which are the ga 5, and 6, I believe, which are the gapless ones, and those have an angled band. So, even though they have pins, they don't work with the adapters. So what you have to have is you have to have a band from a Galaxy Watch 3 or earlier, which probably no one has, or, of course, a traditional 22mm band, like you wear on a regular watch, like you have a leather strap, like if you have a regular, like just plain, not smartwatch. You could use any of those and you can also buy those from Amazon. But in my opinion, going back to when I talked about how I made the video about the Galaxy Watch Ultra and people were saying, oh well, the band's not working out really a big deal because you can buy the adapter, I want to say to those people you are wrong, sir, Because the reason people would really want to buy the adapter would be to use the bands from their previous Samsung watch.
Speaker 1:You might have a bunch of Galaxy Watch 5 Pro bands, or Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, galaxy Watch 6 Classic. None of those bands work because of the angled bracket. So I bought this to kind of investigate. Are these people on YouTube commenting? Are they correct or are they just trolling me? It seems like they're just trolling me a little bit, because these adapters don't really allow you to use all of your old Samsung bands. Now can you go out and get some cheaper bands on Amazon that work with the adapter? The answer is yes, you can, but you can't use your first-party Samsung bands from the past. So, in terms of being able to recycle your old Samsung bands that you liked, that's not true. Yeah, because I kept mine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that would be great if you could do it.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, I would say they are worth it. Though, if you have bands from a traditional watch you want to use, or if you want to buy traditional bands on Amazon to use with it, the thing does fasten really nicely into this mechanism and it's very sturdy. It doesn't come out. I wouldn't worry about that at all. It won't look too bad. I thought it might look a little weird because I thought it might look too tapered, but it really doesn't.
Speaker 1:Like I said, I'll have a little picture or a video that you guys can see these, but it looks fine. It's just that it's not really as appealing as these people sold it to me in the comments, because it doesn't really work with your previous-gen Samsung bands, which is the whole reason that I thought that people might want them. So not as exciting as I thought, but still useful. I'll drop a link below if you guys want to check them out. I also sent out a link to that in the newsletter this week. So if you're subscribed to the newsletter, check it out. If you're not subscribed to the newsletter, the question is why are you not subscribed?
Speaker 2:to the newsletter.
Speaker 1:So you should go subscribe and then you can check it out once you get the newsletter the Z Fold 6, s24 Ultra and Z Flip 6 case recommendation. So that's something that I also talked about this week on Twitter and in the newsletter. People have been asking me for a while what cases I'm using on my various devices, and I often have a case in my videos and people ask and then I put it down in the comments, but usually not everyone sees it, so I figured I'd talk about it on the podcast today. What case am I using on each individual device? I'll put pictures here as I talk because I don't have all of them with me right now, but, as you can see, right now on the Z Fold 6, I have no case on the Z Fold 6. Zero, completely naked. I was using a case on this up until like two or three days ago, and the case I was using is the Binx case. That has just a back cover and it has hinge protection.
Speaker 1:If I had more foresight I would have grabbed it, because it's right over there, but I didn't grab it, so I'll insert a little picture here of how it looks on the Fold 6 when I do the edit here, but right now it's completely naked. Now the problem I have with foldable cases and I want to talk about this in general I do not like foldables. For one reason when cases is that on the foldables all the cases pretty much come with like a front plate that you have to snap on and it has adhesive on it. So it makes it really difficult. Like if you like to switch cases like I love switching cases on my S24 Ultra, I actually am a case guy and I like to switch cases on it on my S24 Ultra, I actually am a case guy and I like to switch cases on it. But if you like to switch cases, like if you press the adhesive down and every time you take it off you've got all this residue, you've got to peel it off it's just silly and I don't like it.
Speaker 1:And also this phone is already pretty thick, even though Samsung has slimmed it down. It's a lot thicker than a slab phone huge, massive brick if it's relatively thick. So the only case I recommend on these is like the Binx one, which is the Aramid fiber case, or one from like Pataka. They make the same kind Thinborn. They're sending me one as well, but I really don't like the front piece. I just usually snap the back piece on and rock out like that. Basically, if I sit it down, then I won't have to worry about scratches. Obviously it's not going to do anything for drop protection, because if you drop this thing, if you don't have the front plate on it's still cracking.
Speaker 1:There's no doubt about it. But I honestly for foldables and amazingly I still am using this as my main phone. It's been two weeks, which is almost a record for me. I almost always go back to the S line as my main, but if I'm going to use a Fold as my main phone, I pretty much have to use it naked, because it just feels nicer and it's not too thick if it's completely caseless, but if you put a case on it, I just find the Folds are too thick.
Speaker 2:And actually go ahead, tori, I mean, no, I was just saying like I remember, like when it was first introduced, I think like one of the first things that kind of came to my mind was like how are they going to make cases for this? And also without feeling like it's really big in your pockets, like you know, especially for you know, us guys, because where else are we going to put the phone Exactly?
Speaker 1:They're going to have a purse and no shade to my friends at Urban Armor Gear. I love UAG. They make great cases, but they sent me some of their cases for the Fold and they usually make like cases which I use. They're one of my main cases I use on my s line and also I have on my iphone because of course I have an iphone that I use. For comparison, I use those a lot, in fact it's on my 15 pro max right now. But I tried their fold case and man, it's just you can't, you can't use that case like if you put it on like the phone, it like at least. I mean I'll have to show a picture, but it doubles the phone in thickness, and so they know like I'm going to be honest. And also they made the front part of it so recessed that you can't use the gestures. So if you want to, use gestures and you can't use them.
Speaker 1:You've got to use the three-button navigation. So that takes away some of my freedom to customize One UI. I'm not feeling that. So I already sent them these comments privately when the PR guy who sent me the cases and I love their cases in general, like I said. But people got to realize. I think all case companies have to realize and I told them this as well If you're a company that makes like bigger cases like OtterBox or UAG for the slab phones, you can't do that for the folds.
Speaker 1:You have to find, like go back to the drawing board, obviously, pataka, thinborne, these companies that make the Aramid Fiber ones, those give you good protection while still being thin. You're going to have to do something like that because big, thick, giant cases on the fold. Until Samsung releases that fold Ultra that's as thin as the S24 Ultra, I'm not using a massive case on my fold. I'm just going to have to buy Samsung Care Plus and hope I don't crack it and if I do then I'll get a replacement Because you know I'm not putting something in there that doubles the thickness of the foam S24 Ultra. What am I using on that? Let's talk about the flip, because I'm still talking about foldables. What case am I using on the flip? Pretty boring.
Speaker 1:I'm also using the Pataka Aramid Fiber that one on the flip. I don't mind the front case as much and I I'll sort of picture the one I have. I posted on Twitter as well. It's still got the adhesive but it's not as invasive as the one on the fold. The adhesive is a little bit less so you can peel it off and change if you want.
Speaker 1:I also find because the flip is just not as thick open and I don't always fold mine flipped unless I'm putting it in my bag. I don't close it, since it's mostly when it's open. It's as thin as an S24 Ultra it's actually probably thinner, I think and so I don't mind putting a case on it because it doesn't really make the thickness larger in my pocket because I don't usually flip it up, so that's not a problem. So I'm still using the Pataka one, but the one UAG sent me for the flip actually is pretty decent and is very protective. It does make it bulkier but it's usable for the flip. So I would say if you want a really good protective one, the UAG one is good for the flip. If you want to get one that's thinner, either the Pataka one or the Samsung Kind suit, which is like a leather non-vegan leather alternative. It's really good and I got it, but it's like $90 at BestBuyersamsungcom.
Speaker 2:I would not do that so.
Speaker 1:I mean, obviously I did this for a living and so I was trying to cover the case and give you guys some feedback, and that's why I spend $90, so you don't have to.
Speaker 2:It's not worth $90.
Speaker 1:It's a good case. I like it, but it's not worth $90. No, what about the S24 Ultra? Well, no, what about the S24 Ultra? Well, the S24 Ultra. I use a combination of basically four cases. I love rotating my cases on my S line phones. Like I said, I use the Kadabay sheath, which is an amazing case, a minimalist one but still has good protection. I use the UAG Monarch Pro. That is a case that cost $100, but I do think that case is worth it If you really work outdoors or somewhere and you need it, if you're worried about your phone getting dropped.
Speaker 1:That case is made. It's got Kevlar. It's got a real Kevlar bulletproof vest on it. If you drop that, you could drop that. It's rated for 27-foot drop protection. You could literally be a construction worker and drop it from the top of a building you're working on. It'll survive. I've seen people drop their uag mike monarch pros and and the phone like has no, it's not touched at all. You can drop it from a long, long way up in the air. So that one, I think, is worth it.
Speaker 1:If you have a specific job, if you just did a desk job all day, probably shouldn't spend a hundred dollars on a case like that, because when are you going to be dropping it from a roof? Most Most $40 cases have 7 foot drop protection, which is probably as far as you're going to drop it, but I use the Monarch Pro. I also use the Pataka 3 button pin case. This is a crazy case which, at some point, I want to make a video on. It's got 3 buttons on the side that double as NFC tags and when you press them, you can actually trigger any action on your phone. So you can actually trigger any action on your phone. So you can press the button and it'll open your camera or your Twitter app or turn on your flashlight or whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1:So all you have to do is, when you get it, you program it inside Samsung's modes and routines for each one, and then you can set any action inside One UI.
Speaker 2:It's very awesome. I think that one's $50 or so.
Speaker 1:And I think I have a Pataka discount. If people want it, I'll put it below, but that one's really awesome. I really like that case. And then the other one that I use is the Mouse case M-O-U-S. Not the animal, but they have a really good case as well. I typically tend to use their carbon fiber one or the wood one. They have Some really good materials, and so that's the other one. I like to rotate for the S24 Ultra. So that's all my case recommendations. What case are you using on your S22 Ultra?
Speaker 2:So just the Samsung. Oh yeah, the Samsung kickstand I've got to get Tori a few cases because I have a bunch of old.
Speaker 1:I'm going to get Tori a case library, since you know he's working for the site. I mean, I probably have like 30, 40, 50 S22 Ultra cases, because I don't get rid of them half the time when I stop using the phone. So we'll have to check that out and kind of talk about that off camera. Okay, so that's cases. The other thing I wanted to do two things. One it was revealed this week that Apple by Apple leaksters I don't read a lot of Apple news, but I did see this story on Twitter that Apple might be charging for some of the Apple intelligence features, their AI suite and so I'm wondering if this could be really bad news for us, because a lot of times when Apple makes like a pricing model decision or something, it sounds like Samsung especially since we've been talking about the last few weeks like they're looking over the Apple camp.
Speaker 1:They're like hey, what are those guys doing?
Speaker 2:over there. Maybe we should.
Speaker 1:You can't beat them, they're like hey, can we see you guys' homework really quick. Let me just jot down a couple of notes. Don't worry, We'll change it so it doesn't look quite the same. So will Samsung do this? Apparently, Apple is thinking and this is insane thinking about, according to the report, charging as much as $20 a month for some of the features in Apple Intelligence.
Speaker 2:No one's paying that from Samsung's side, so they're not going to be able to get away with that.
Speaker 1:I don't see iPhone people doing that. So here's the reason, though Tori, for students, maybe because I don't know if you know, but iOS 18 and Apple Intelligence is actually going to include ChatGPT access and so it might have.
Speaker 1:ChatGPT Plus, so some students might subscribe just for that, because that already costs 20 a month, I think. Um, if you want that, I have a subscription to it because I use it for business stuff and is chat. Gpt is great. I think it's the standard. That's why everybody else is playing catch up when it comes to ai buzzwords, because they set the standard.
Speaker 1:Um, so maybe, but samsung's not going to be able to get integration with chat gpt because apple already has it and they're not gonna. Samsung's not going to be able to get integration with ChatGPT because Apple already has it and they're not going to. Apple's not going to allow ChatGPT to integrate with the Galaxy devices.
Speaker 1:Not at all, is anyone who's a Samsung user going to pay $20 just for the Galaxy Eye features as they are? No, they'd have to improve them a lot. Samsung would have to make their own ChatGPT, like clone. That's as good as GTP 440 or 4-0. If it was, then maybe someone would pay close to that Students mainly because they want to cheat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, $20 a month is nothing if you're trying to cheat on all of your assignments in college because you know that'll get you to pass and you won't waste your thousands of dollars or your parents' thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't want to waste your parents' money on tuition while you're partying, just pay $20 a month. Chat to BT Plus, get it to your homework. So maybe, but this is not good. I wish Apple wouldn't do this. I don't like Samsung falling in these footsteps. I hope they don't do that. I'm glad they backed away. Remember, we heard there was going to be a subscription for the Galaxy Ring and I'll be honest with you, as much as I like this I've been using it for two weeks. I really like it. I haven't barely taken it off and I like how it tracks some of the metrics in my sleep. It actually kind of helped me minimize some of my snoring, which Nicole always complains about.
Speaker 1:It actually a really cool thing that I found when I was digging into the sleep metrics. I didn't know this it it actually records sound bites of your snoring throughout the night.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so you can actually hear those. Yeah, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:That I did not know until I dug into the sleep metrics more. I was playing around with them for my full review the written one and I found that out, so that's cool. It's helped me minimize, like figure out why I'm snoring and when, and try to minimize some of those things. No, it's a. I like the device. I think it's great. I think the potential of the Ring is massive. Like I said last week, if they add NFC payments and they increase the number of gestures, this could be like Samsung beat Apple to the Ring. This could be another product where they get a bunch of iOS users and they're like hey, I like having that Ring because it's got all these cool gestures. It's got payments in it and I will say payments would be a lot. I was thinking about this the other day because I was paying for my son's kids meal at Carl's Jr. The watch is kind of awkward sometimes to tap on the terminal.
Speaker 2:We talked about this a little before.
Speaker 1:It'd be so much easier if I was just like. Of course you've got to make sure you don't flip someone off accidentally, but you know like if I just went like this and I paid, it would be a lot easier if it was on my index finger which, like I said last week, is where it should be and it will be eventually. I just go boop and pay and people will be like wow, that's amazing so I really hope samsung figures that out.
Speaker 1:I know it's a security issue. I talked with a lot of people who cover samsung as well, including the guy who's the owner of sam mobile, and it's obviously a security issue. That's what Samsung's saying, because obviously, with a watch, you can have a PIN or password when you do your payments and you have to enter that in order to use payments. You can't have a PIN or password on a ring, so you're going to have to have some kind of gesture that enables you to use the payments. So you would look a little weird doing that.
Speaker 2:You'd be like whip your finger like this before you do your payment.
Speaker 1:I mean that would be kind of funny. I'll be honest, like if I roll up to Target and they're like that'll be $75.67. And I'm like like a wizard. Wouldn't that be crazy If I was like a wizard and I'm just twirling my finger, like that's my gesture that says, okay, I authorized the payment. That's what I think they have to do, though I was thinking about this week. I think they have to use a gesture because you can't swipe to do a pen and a pad.
Speaker 2:Could they make a? I mean, which I don't know why. Someone probably would. But what if they did have the watch and the ring combo?
Speaker 1:I think, in that case, then you would be fine. In fact what I could see happening, and that's a good point. I thought about that too. I could see them trying to use that as a way to upsell people to get both devices, yeah, where they're like you can use NFC payments only if you have a Galaxy Watch and Ring.
Speaker 2:It's like if you have a Galaxy Watch and it has to be the Ultra, exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly so if both, because right now people have no good reason to have both yeah, right, really, I mean I have both, but most people don't you know why would you?
Speaker 1:uh, because this watch does a lot of the same stuff, um, but if you want to encourage people to get both and of course they do be like, okay, you can use payments. If you have the watch on at the same time, it automatically authenticates to the ring and then you just go boop and you pay. You don't have to do any weird like twirling gestures, so, but hey, I, I'm down for that. If they want to make it so that I have to do like a Harry Potter like thing, I'll do it to use my ring as payments. Okay. The last thing I want to talk about before we get to the app of the week, which is actually a good app of the week this week. Did you check it out, tori?
Speaker 2:No, I didn't, you didn't, I didn't get a chance. We will talk about it.
Speaker 1:I know you've been busy this week, so we will discuss the Apple of the Week. But before we do that, let's talk a little bit more about the Pixel Pro, the Pixel Pro 9, and the Fold. So I mentioned this earlier. They are going to come out next week, on the 13th. So if you have a chance, on whatever day that is Tuesday when you get home obviously I know you're teaching during the day, but come home and try to watch a little bit of the event Next week we can talk about it.
Speaker 1:Specs leaked out 6.8-inch screen on the Pixel 9 Pro XL. Tensor, G4 processor, 16 gigs of RAM. That's pretty big news because that's more than the S24 Ultra has. That's not great for Samsung, but supposedly the S25 Ultra will have that Storage 128, 256, 512, and 1 terabyte. Why in the heck are they still offering 128 gigabytes of storage on a flagship? I have no idea. That's not enough storage Like. The operating system takes up like probably I don't know 30 gigabytes, so you only have 98 left. If you put any music or movies on there, you're going to use it all up, yeah it's gone If you put any music or movies on there.
Speaker 1:You're going to use it all up. Yeah, it's gone. 50-megapixel main camera, 48-megapixel, ultra-wide, 48-megapixel telephoto with a 5X zoom maximum. It seems like Samsung has kind of set the standard of 5X is where people should be 42-megapixel front camera and a starting price of $1099. And so it looks like Google is going to raise the price of the Pixel 9 Pro over last year's 8 Pro, which is $100 increase over the 8 Pro to $10.99 starting. However, what they are going to do is that they are going to make it so that you can have a storage upgrade for free when you pro order. And guess who also does that? Samsung. They stole that one from Samsung. So Google was looking at hey, what are you guys doing over there? And they copied their homework.
Speaker 2:They're like here let's use that as a pre-order.
Speaker 1:Everybody's copying, they're like, let's use that as a pre-order deal, no-transcript. So Google's like instead of giving you a $350 bonus for pre-ordering here, have this $100 bonus, like Samsung does, and you guys have a great day. The problem with this is that, unlike Samsung I don't know why I couldn't find the word there, this is a Samsung podcast Unlike Samsung, they don't give you much for the trade-in value on their pre-orders. So you know, like Samsung, they gave $1,200 towards the Fold 6 for the Fold 5, which you're damn right they should have, because it was the same damn phone.
Speaker 2:It was right If you want to trade in the same phone.
Speaker 1:For another version of the same phone, you should give them $1,200.
Speaker 2:But Samsung always gives great trading credit. They also give you trading credit at launch.
Speaker 1:But Google they don't. If you want to get a Pixel 9 Pro, they're going to be like oh, you got last year's phone here, we'll go ahead and give you $400. People will be like but I paid $1,000 for it last year. They'll be like oh well, I don't know what to tell you. Samsung they're very reasonable in that regard. Like, if you want to upgrade every year, if you're one of their top fans, like when the S25 Ultra comes out, they're probably going to give you $900 to $1,000 for your S24 Ultra. So they're giving you back 80% of what you paid last year.
Speaker 2:That's pretty good you only got to.
Speaker 1:So Google doesn't do that. So if you're a Pixel fan, you're kind of in this space where, like, you're going to have to shell out money every year to upgrade and it's going to be expensive. Thankfully, google hopefully sent me some review units, but yeah, I mean that's definitely not going to be great for Pixel fans. So we'll see how these compare. The Pixel's always had a great camera, and so I'm certainly excited to see how the camera stacks up and compare that to the Z Fold 6. I have a feeling that's going to be bad news for Samsung. Most likely they're going to have a much better camera than Samsung on the S24 Ultra Because.
Speaker 1:Samsung still hasn't really ironed out the full camera on the S24 Ultra. They've still got a lot of problems with low light and zoom and stuff, so they really need to fix that. Now the Pixel Fold 2 is going to have also a camera that's supposed to be flagship quality, so it might also obviously destroy the Z Fold 6. So Samsung might be in a little trouble there. It's also going to have a wider cover screen, but it's shorter, so we talked about this last week. I'm really curious to try this foldable and see, did Google make it too square on the inside? Again? Because I told you last week the one thing I don't like about the Fold 6, you guys know it's too narrow on the front. But what I do love about the Fold 6 is when you open it up, the content still looks good on the inside because it's not so square, it's rectangular. You want it to be taller than it is wide, and so you have to find that perfect balance. Last year Google had one that was a lot wider on the cover screen, but when you open it up it's basically like a square and that doesn't look good for most content Like Instagram doesn't look good. Twitter doesn't really even look good. Most of the apps that you use to scroll on like browser even doesn't look good. You don't want to use that for those particular apps. So hopefully Google can improve that a little bit. I think. Otherwise it looks really appealing.
Speaker 1:But they're supposedly charging the same price as Samsung. They're raising the price to match the Fold 6. And that's not going to go well for Google because they just don't have. They don't spend the same amount of money as Samsung does on marketing hardware, because their business is not hardware. Their business is ads. Google is all about search and ads and all that stuff and YouTube. They make 95% of their revenues from search ads and then YouTube. That's the majority of what they make their money on. So they're not as worried about selling hardware. But I am really interested to check it out. I'm curious if any of our listeners are thinking about purchasing the Pixel 2 Pro Fold whatever it's called or also the Pixel 9 Pro, and if you're thinking about switching from Samsung or maybe even getting a second device. You know, hey, I don't judge.
Speaker 2:As I talked about.
Speaker 1:I've got 30 of them. So, as I said last week, if you want to get a second device, no judgment here. We'd be happy to hear what you're considering getting you're considering getting. So if I get them next week and I'm allowed to talk about them, hopefully I will say as much as I can on the podcast and show them to you guys.
Speaker 1:The only thing that kind of stinks about getting review units and people don't understand this because you're not like a phone enthusiast, because I still am a phone enthusiast Like if you see the leaks for a phone you always have like your favorite color that you want to get. If you're going to order that phone, you're like I want that color. And the thing about getting review units is like you don't you have to take whatever color you get, because you can't be ungrateful, like if they send you a free, like thousand dollar phone and then like a free two thousand dollar foldable. You can't be like oh, you sent me black and I want white or I want gold or I want green. That would be pretty rude. I still hate it though, because it's like I really wanted the white one and now I have to deal with this black one. I know it's first world problems to the maximum, but still you can't get the exact color that you're interested in when you get reviewing it. It's something that perhaps, maybe no one ever thought about.
Speaker 1:So you know, pray for me. No, I'm just kidding. You should understand my struggle. What color are you hoping for?
Speaker 2:I'm hoping for white. Hey, so if the people from Google's PR is listening, I know they'll probably pack those out early next week.
Speaker 1:You guys want to go ahead and send me a white one. I'll take a white for either one, and I think there's a gold color too. If you want to send me one white and one gold for the full, look me up. But if they're both black, you know I won't complain because it's free and I don't have to spend $3,000 then to make comparison videos. So that's something you know. I won't complain too much, All right. So before we move on to the app of the week in the Q&A, which we're going to get to because we are a little bit longer, second sponsor of today's podcast.
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Speaker 1:Now let's get into the app of the week. This week's app of the week is Wavelet. It's a Headspace specific equalizer for your Galaxy phone. I have it up right here, just taking a look at it just to remind me, and I'll actually show this kind of scroll through. I'll insert that in the edit, so you guys should be looking at the same thing I am. It's on the Play Store and basically what this allows you to do is it allows you to have an equalizer for each pair of headphones that you connect to your device.
Speaker 1:So if you use multiple pieces of headphones, this is really great because it has an auto EQ for all different headphone models, like Bang, Olufsen, Sony or Samsung Buds Shure, which we're using for the podcast. And so if you collect a lot of different headphones and you have a bunch of pairs that you use for different things, like a Buds most people have at least like a Buds and an O'Rear headphones or something like that, like your workout headphones they don't all have like the same max volume, the same settings that you want, and you might also use them for different purposes. You might have some, like I said, for workouts, some for in the studio, like we are with the podcast, or some for your general casual listening, and so you might want to want a different sound profile for each one of those. And so what this allows you to do is they measured all the different headphone models to compensate for the Harman Target to provide you with the best sound quality you can get out of each pair of headphones.
Speaker 1:It has a nine-band graphic equalizer. It has a reverberation feature which simulates reverberation from your tracks. That's a pro feature, so it costs some money. A virtualizer which adds spatialization to your music. Now that already is a built-in feature on the Buds 3 Pro, so you wouldn't need it. But if you have a pair of headphones that don't have spatialization, which kind of moves the music as you move your head, then that will allow you to kind of simulate that A bass tuner which adds extra oomph to your beats. Or remove unwanted resonance from the lower frequencies. That's also a pro feature Limiter. Remove unwanted volume peaks and dips from a track. You could do that with something like if I had the podcast and you know I try to edit the podcast for sound quality, so you guys have to deal with that because I spend a lot of time editing it before we post it.
Speaker 1:So you shouldn't have any unwanted peaks. But if you had the podcast and we had like a really high pitched or you know, big pop which I tried to take out, you could remove that while you're listening and channel balance, restore balance between left and right channels if you have unbalanced channels. So really, really cool. This app is something that I highly recommend and I'll kind of show it on the video as you guys are kind of looking through the feature log there, and I'll show some other screenshots. It's an app that I saw because Michelle Roman, who's a very big guy in the Android world, he's kind of the Android guru. If I'm the Sammy guru, he's the Android guru he unpacks every Android update and goes through all the changes.
Speaker 1:Sometimes he talks about some of his favorite apps and he talked about it and I download it. I've been using it. It's just awesome because I use a ton of headphones. Do you use more than one pair of headphones, tori?
Speaker 2:I mean I also have like a skull candy that I mostly use um for like um I'm doing like a zoom call or something like that. Other than that, I mostly use the samsung buds just gravitate towards the buds yeah I wonder if samsung will release an over ear pair of headphones.
Speaker 1:They used to have some, uh yeah a long time ago I had them I think it was maybe like 78 years ago with like the galaxy s6 or S7 launch. I forgot what they were called. Someone's going to call me out on that because I'm supposed to be the Sammy Guru, but I don't remember. Someone can remind me what they were called. They had their own first party over headphones. I don't know if they were just called Galaxy headphones, I don't remember. I'll have to look it up. But I probably still my archive of devices. I have so many devices between here and my home office. At one point I've got to dig them out and do some retro tech kind of reviews.
Speaker 1:But Tori, highly recommend Try Wavelet this week and then see how you like it, especially the reverberation feature. I know the developer reached out to me because I actually retweeted his thing and he gave me some pro code so I can hook you up with that, maybe hook up a couple of the listeners with that. If you guys are interested, just let me know below. That's one of the nice things about having a podcast and website. If you try an app or you tweet about how you like this app, people are like here, have some free codes. That happens a lot Of all the free stuff I get.
Speaker 1:I like app codes and cases the most, even though, of course, I like getting free phones too, because that's nice. But I love trying new apps and cases. So that's one of the best parts of this job is I can just try a lot of premium apps and cases that I might not have otherwise tried. Okay, so let's then transition into some Q&A. We actually have quite a few questions here this week. Let me start with the ones that are on Twitter, because there's a decent number of tweet questions, twitter Twits.
Speaker 2:I don't know, you know, whatever they DX.
Speaker 1:So there was a couple of things that people were asking, and one of the questions was am I going to check out the OnePlus Open Apex Red Edition? So OnePlus just released another version of the OnePlus Open, which is actually probably the best in my opinion, the best well-rounded foldable in terms of size that's ever come out in the US. But it was released a year ago, like in October 2023. It's kind of old now, so in speed and some other things, you can't compare to the Fold 6. But they released an updated version that has a higher storage capacity and a few new features Not a new processor or anything, so it's not a brand new version.
Speaker 2:It's got a red color?
Speaker 1:The answer to that is I've thought about it because I am a phone nerd, but I've tried to convince myself not to because it would be a waste of money. It's not going to get that many views. Again, like I said last week, I have to think about what makes sense for the business we do. Well, like I said, but if I just spent money on every phone that I wanted and I can't make an ROI on that, nicole's going to be like why can't we pay our mortgage? This month? Oh, I bought like 30 phones and we didn't make any returns on them from the videos because they were not phones that anyone wanted to see. So now we can't pay our mortgage, so I don't want to do that.
Speaker 2:That would not go over well.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I mean they're offering a good deal $300 off plus trade-in but if I sold, I have the original OnePlus open so I could sell it. This is how I try to justify it to myself. I'm like, if you sell it for $1,000 and there's $300 off, you only have to pay $599 to get a new one in a red color. Yeah, but then I actually just lost $600. So even though it's only $600, it's still a lot of money if I'm not going to make. If I thought I could make like two-thirds of it back in AdSense for $200, I'd be like, yes, we should do it. If I thought I could make $400 back off the video. So the answer is probably no. Did I think about it? Yes, but am I actually going to do it? No.
Speaker 1:The xiaomi for the xiaomi mix, or me fourfold. I bought that because I feel like the comparison to the z-fold six. That's a phone you can't buy in the us, and so comparison people really would like to see uh, and so I really think that one probably will make me back most of the money I spent on it, uh, which is why I decided to buy that one, uh. The other question was actually posed on our Sammy Guru account, because we do have a new account. I forgot to mention that at the beginning of the show. I probably should have put that at the beginning of the show.
Speaker 2:If you guys are on X.
Speaker 1:follow us at Sammy Gurus. The new question from Tim over on the Sammy Guru account says what's the easiest way to set up eSIM to operate on two phones? I've got a Fold 6 and a Flip 6. Congratulations, tim. That's a great collection of devices he needs to easily switch between. I'd love to use the Flip on trips and then the Fold the rest of the time. So he goes on a lot of trips, I guess, and he has a Fold and a Flip 6. Tim's out here falling out of control.
Speaker 2:We like to see that. Congratulations Tim.
Speaker 1:We're very happy for you. So to answer your question, esim the best way to do it. Samsung has a way to switch and I actually brought up this reference article from a few years ago. You can easily switch between Samsung devices eSIMs. It's device-device eSIM transfer and that works within One UI. Very simply, you just open the Settings app, go to the SIM manager, go to Add eSIM and then you can do Transfer SIM from another device and you can just transfer them back and forth as much as you want.
Speaker 1:There's no limit to how many times you can transfer your eSIM, so you can do that between your flip and your fold as much as you want. Now, if you wanted to use the one number on both phones simultaneously which is what I thought Tim meant originally, but I guess that's not what he meant you can do that too, but the best way to do that would be to get a Google voice number and then have your number forward all calls to that messages to the Google voice number, and you can use it on multiple phones. That's what I actually do for my business phones and my review phones, so I can get all of my stuff on one phone number.
Speaker 1:But, that's a little bit more work, a little bit more bookkeeping to do, but you can do that if you want to. But I would say the built-in feature to transfer SIMs inside One UI is very intuitive and it works great. So I would consider doing that method. And then we have four other questions here that I put in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Which S-Pins are compatible with the Z Fold 6? The S-Pin Pro and the Fold Edition. Both of them are the ones that are compatible with the Z Fold 6. The ones that come with the Z Fold 6, the S Pen Pro and the Fold Edition, both of them are the ones that are compatible with the Z Fold 6. The ones that come with the S24 Ultra or the S22 Ultra, like Tori's, those are not compatible with the Z Fold 6. I probably didn't know that yet. Specific one because of the display technology in here, on the inside it's softer, so you want to make sure it doesn't scratch it or put a divot inside the inside it's softer, so you want to make sure it doesn't scratch it or put a divot inside the display.
Speaker 1:And the other question someone asked, which is a follow-up question to that why doesn't the S Pen work on the Z Fold 6 cover screen? It does not work on the cover screen. Did you know that?
Speaker 2:No, I didn't know that either.
Speaker 1:That's a good question why doesn't it work on here? So here's my guess samsung hasn't ever given a full, straight answer to this. A bunch of media outlets have asked them. They've hinted at the answer. I think it's because of the pressure and the digitizer like. In order to make this display and the inner display both work like when it's folded versus unfolded, the digitizer has to be and like the amount of pressure you put, because this one, right like the s pen, is pressure sensitive. It's like a Wacom stylus. So this one may not have the ability to have all of that digitizer touch points because it's a display on top of another display.
Speaker 1:It probably has to do with the inside controller that controls the displays and just figuring out the space to put that there to recognize all those different touch points. That seems like the most likely reason. Will they fix that eventually? I hope so. That seems like something that their engineering team a multi-billion dollar company should be able to figure out. I don't think it's necessarily an easy thing because they have to move around. There's a lot of components in a smartphone and a foldable one's even more complicated because you have the hinge. But I think eventually they should be able to figure that out. So I would love to see Fold 7, fold 8, the S Pen works on the front screen. Not as many people are going to use it there, but it would certainly be nice. Particularly, I think, here's another thing. I think we keep saying we want them to put the S Pen in the Fold like, have a slot for it. I don't think they'll do it until it works on the cover screen.
Speaker 2:Because that makes sense right.
Speaker 1:Because then if it's in there, you shouldn't just pop it out and make a quick note. You're not going to open it. Probably to do that If you're taking long notes you probably will open it, but if you have the slot there, you're probably going to try to write on the cover screen. So they probably don't want to put it in there until they can do that. So I think those two things will come together. This is a question for both of us. What would it take for you to switch to an iPhone? That's a tough question, Tori. What about you? What would it take?
Speaker 2:You know, I just really don't know. You know, because I had like the iPhone 3 as like my first smartphone.
Speaker 1:I did too. I had an iPhone 3, 3gs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know I liked it for like the time, just because I saw everyone else using the iPhone. But I just don't see innovation and uniqueness and I think that is something that I just look for now. In such a technology-driven, Everyone's like what's new, what's next, Unless you're an iPhone lover, I mean back when the iPhone 3GS came out, the iPhone was cutting edge.
Speaker 1:Also, Android hadn't matured to the sense where it was actually a viable option yet. But yeah, I mean for me, first of all, Apple would have to pay me a lot of money, because I make a lot of money covering Samsung.
Speaker 1:So it would be very hard to get me to switch because obviously I do this for a living. But all jokes aside, I mean I love my Android phone, my Samsung phone. There's almost nothing they could do to get me to switch. I mean I use a MacBook as my main phone. I mean not my main phone. It's such a long day.
Speaker 1:My main laptop. So I mean, if using a MacBook as my main laptop doesn't get me to switch to an iPhone, I don't know what would, Because obviously, since that's my laptop, using the iPhone would be convenient because I could have AirDrop and all this integration with my laptop. But even that's not enough because iOS is so closed off, you can't customize it, you can't basically edit any of the features you want. There's no multitasking, the notifications are absolute crap. I mean, all that integration I could get with my MacBook still isn't enough to make me use the limited software of iOS. Apple would have to completely revamp their entire approach to mobile OS, change their notifications entirely, open up the OS so that you could actually customize a lot of the features, and they'd probably have to change the iPhone hardware so that it actually has some various features from Samsung I use, like the S Pen, which there's no indication they're ever going to do that, because they seem to not want an Apple Pencil to come on the iPhone. There's a lot of things. It would be very, very difficult for me to get switched to an iPhone and I highly doubt that's ever going to happen.
Speaker 1:The last question we already answered, which was our thoughts on Galaxy XR. Can it be successful? I think so if it's not $3,500. If it's not $2,000, it probably needs to be like $1,000 or less, and then maybe it has a chance. If Samsung can offer similar features to the Vision Pro but price it at $1,000, which would be very hard I would buy one and maybe use it more often. But it's going to be hard for me to buy it and keep using it after review. If it's $3,500 and it doesn't do anything my laptop and phone don't do Because, like I said, I'm not going to go sit in public with a Galaxy XR strapped to my face.
Speaker 2:It's just not me, I don't think it's most people there's some fringe people who would do that, but it's not my style, I just like. From a consumer standpoint, I don't like, and I think that's probably why a lot of those VRs are still kind of just sitting on shelves at like Walmart and target every time I go by like it's just not something, or at least I don't think is at the level yet for people to like, do a whole lot with it outside of. Hey, oh, that's so cool that you have that. I just want to try it. You know, I just think it's going to take a little bit while to get to that. But yeah, if they put it like $2,000 or higher, I really don't see. People are buying a paperweight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's a conversation piece, for sure, but eventually you're probably going to get tired of it, like the Vision Pro. But we'll see. I mean I will review it when it comes out, because it's a Samsung product. We'll see if I end up using it long term. I think that's pretty much it for the show. Next week we'll be back. Nicholas on Twitter here suggested a catchphrase for us to close with, so I'm going to try it today because we've got nothing new yet we're still working on the jingle, the catchphrase.
Speaker 1:That's still going to get there, though We've got a lot of improvements coming. We're going to get a logo for the background here. It's going to go up. We'll have some accent lighting, some colored accent lighting. Tori and I got some new pop filters that are colored. We'll have some music and stuff eventually. So this podcast will get to. I'd call it right now semi-professional. It'll be, professional in the end. But in honor of Nicholas I will say don.