SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
Galaxy S22 Ultra's One UI 6.1.1 Victory + S25 Ultra vs iPhone 16 Preview
This week we have some amazing news for S22 Ultra users, One UI 6.1.1 has arrived on your device! After a long wait, the S22 series finally gets the massive update treatment and we're talking about it at the beginning of today's show.
Also, Samsung has plans to release a rollable phone in the next few years, to one-up Huawei's new Mate XT tri-fold device. We discuss the pros and cons of rollable vs foldable and what it could mean for Samsung going forward.
We also have an iPhone 16 Pro Max in studio and we're having a Quick Look at Apple's new innovations (or lack thereof) and what it might have in common with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. All of that, plus your questions and general tomfoolery!
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Check out our website: https://sammyguru.com
Welcome back everybody. This is episode number 14 of the Sammy Guru Podcast. My name is Jeff Springer and with me, as always, is my co-host, torrey Torrey, say hi, hey, how's it going? And yeah, it's Apple iPhone release week. So this is the one week where everybody's got their attention on Apple and of course, we're going to talk about the iPhone a little bit, a little competition, talk about Samsung's main competition in the Us. I have the iphone 16 pro max in, uh, desert titanium, which I feel like I got scammed by apple because this looks like rose gold to me?
Speaker 2:yeah, we're gonna, is? They all just seem to be different shades of rose gold.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I think honestly, and when we talk about the second half of the show, we'll get into a little more. But I post some stuff on like twitter. A lot of people seem to agree, like if you're a guy and you don't want a rose gold phone, maybe don't buy this, because it is like they tricked us. They're like Desert Titanium that sounds pretty manly, but it turns out it's just another name for rose gold. So I'm not saying that guys can't have a rose gold phone. But if you didn't want a rose gold phone and you thought it was a copper, it's not really. It's closer to rose gold. It's a little pinker than you may have thought. So we'll talk about that for sure. Otherwise, torrey, how's your week been?
Speaker 2:You know it's been going. It's the week four of physics class, but hey, you know I got a 96 in the class still so far. So we're going strong. I think we're learning about DC circuits.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, there you go. Parallel and series circuits. We're actually going to talk a little bit more again today about the voltage and amps and the charging for the iPhone and the S25 Ultra, because I got this one. I'm going to do some testing so you can weigh in on some insights. Yeah, I can On that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, other than that, the high school is going pretty well. We got a football game tonight. I'm going to right after we're done with this.
Speaker 1:Home game or away game Home game.
Speaker 2:Home game. Yeah, no, we're playing the Camelback Spartans.
Speaker 1:All right, your high school is not too far from the office. Yeah, no, no, no, not too far, yeah, because last week they won the game right that you went to, because you went to a game after. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, that's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's only one. Yeah, so it should be a fun time. So I'm going to eat some food truck vendors and stuff and just have a good time. There, you go, all right, yeah, tomorrow we got a big day?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do. Tomorrow our Alabama Crimson Tide are playing the number one team in the country, so we're going to find. So far he's been kind of, you know, coddled. He had two really big cupcake games where he should have won and he did, but one of those games was too close. He looked pretty good in Wisconsin. Wisconsin's a pretty quality team from the Big Ten. Last weekend we beat them pretty handily. So I don't know Georgia looked like garbage last week.
Speaker 1:So if they play like that tomorrow, alabama has a shot, but if they play like the real Georgia, it might be a rough first SEC game for Caelan DeBoer. I'm hoping that we have Georgia have the game they had last week and we have the game we had last week. I think we got a chance to beat them. Got a lot of talent. And then Tori and I are both taking my son Jonathan to see Transformers 1.
Speaker 1:I'm really excited. I don't know if I told you my wife she's going to come too. Oh, really oh nice she wants to come along too. I guess she wanted to see the movie Cool. I know you don't care, but I just wanted to tell you.
Speaker 1:So we're going to go and see that and I was like we've got to see it before the kick, like yeah, I don't care, but they're playing the number one team in the country. I can't, uh, can't, miss that. So, uh, it's gonna be a busy day for me. My son's going to a one of his classmates birthday parties early in the morning, you know, because four-year-old, five-year-old parties they're at like 10 am in the morning yeah it's not like a nighttime, you know like disco, you know a pizza party.
Speaker 1:it's not what they do because you, because those kids got to go to sleep, we'll be doing that Otherwise it's been a pretty fun week here. You guys can see that sign is still not mounted.
Speaker 2:You guys are like.
Speaker 1:I thought that sign was going to be mounted. Nope, because it got busy again. It will be mounted eventually. All the things I said eventually happened. They just happened several weeks after I said them. Most of the time, though, they come to fruition. We got all the podcast table. We got these colored things.
Speaker 1:We got a nice setup, but we just got a few more things to do. The iPhone certainly took a lot of my time today because I had to go wait. Of course, I scheduled my pickup at the Apple store, but you still got to wait for all the other people who scheduled their pickup at the same time.
Speaker 1:They definitely do it better than they did years ago, where it was like a mad dash and there was no reserved time. So now it's a little better, but it still took an hour of my time. So I got into the office pretty late today and just started making some content about iPhone versus Samsung and then got ready to record the old podcast. So let's go ahead and jump in to the news. As per usual, we got some interesting stories this week. The first one's a very short story, and that is the Galaxy Ring is now available in more markets. So if you are someone who is looking to buy a Galaxy Ring and you weren't able because it was very limited in the beginning, obviously it came to the US and I still have my Galaxy Ring.
Speaker 1:People ask me like is the Galaxy Ring a gimmick? Do like it? Do you? So? Where I do I actually do like it? I'll be honest with you. Um, I use it because I I don't get probably the best sleep because I work a lot and I have kids, so I like to use it to track my sleep and, like see where and how I can improve yeah um, it really is only good for that particular purpose, so it's all I would only say buy it if you have $400 of disposable income to just spend on your sleep tracking and you care about it.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't say it revolutionizes in any other way. Obviously, the Galaxy Watch does a lot of the same stuff for the other tracking and step tracking. But I think if they improve the gestures like we talked about before, they could be really useful. If they actually allow it to interact with apps and stuff on your phone or control other actions without actually having to touch your phone, it could be interesting. So the galaxy ring 2 could be interesting, but I still use it. I don't have any plans to actually stop using it.
Speaker 1:Um, I know you guys are going to say I thought you said you should be wearing it on the index finger too. I haven't been able to get another one in this size and the color I wanted because they have been backordered. Eventually I will. I'll probably get silver or titanium and probably sell the black one and move it over here, but I just haven't been a chance to get one yet because they've been so limited. They're coming to various places, so it looks like the other markets are going to be Brazil, and it looks like they also are going to be offering larger sizes of the device.
Speaker 1:So if you actually had a finger that didn't fit, this and this is going to apply to the US as well and the other markets if you had a really big finger like mine is actually getting towards the close end. It goes up to 13. Mine's like in between an 11 and 12. I got the 12, but I actually probably need the 11. So that's, when I order a reorder I'll get a smaller one, but it's going to have a larger size. I think it looks like now they're going to go up a couple of sizes larger, so to accommodate more people, because I guess a lot of people complained and said, hey, my fingers are just too big, like if Shaq wanted a Galaxy Ring he's not going to fit a size 13.
Speaker 2:He's not getting one.
Speaker 1:So they had to raise this up. Now in the story, which you guys can see there on the screen, it looks like when Samit wrote this up, the pricing is going to be a lot higher than it was in the US. The equivalent pricing to the US dollar is $645. That's almost two and a half times as much or, I'm sorry, one and a half times as much as it costs here in the US. That's actually more right. It's a little more than one and a half X. That's expensive.
Speaker 1:He did put down here, though, that when the pre-order opens on up to October 2nd, they can get a MXN 1000 discount coupon. I don't know what that equates to. I don't know what that equates to. I don't know what that equates to the US dollars. Oh, this is in Mexico. I'm sorry, I read the update wrong. That's what happens when you're trying to read stuff and also talk. So Brazil opened and then Mexico also opened after, and they can get a thousand I guess pesos discount off of the device up until the pre-orders close on October 2nd. However, they haven't unveiled the Mexican price. So is $1,000 off good or not?
Speaker 2:It depends on how much? Yeah, it really does. It depends on.
Speaker 1:that could be 10% off, it could be 1% off, it could be 20% off, we have no idea, because they didn't say the price. That's very interesting for sure. So don't really know. I don't really know what how, but brazil, that's super expensive. I, I wouldn't pay. I mean, I wouldn't pay 645 for this. Honestly, even though I have I can afford it. I, for slack, I wouldn't do it to track my sleep. 399, though, is I'm okay with, but also they had a discount at launch where you could get $50 off. So I got it for $349, but not twice as much. I wouldn't do that. So what do you think, tori? Are you ever going to think about giving the Galaxy Ring a shot down the road?
Speaker 2:You know, I thought about it, which kind of brings up another question, because from what I can tell, it does seem like it's mostly just for tracking purposes and maybe for, I guess, ring aesthetics. But how does it compare with the Galaxy Watch Ultra in terms of the sleep and the step tracking? I know we kind of talked about it a little bit before and I think we're mostly only talking about the steps, but how does it work with the sleep? Because as someone, I also like to monitor my sleep. How do you find it to improve? It does a pretty good job.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you use it in tandem with your watch and your phone and you have them all by your side, it'll record like when you're snoring and stuff, so you can figure that kind of stuff out.
Speaker 1:And then also kind of help you, you know, determine if you have patterns that might lead to sleep apnea, it does a little better job. I think it gets some more detailed metrics than the watch does with the sleeping. If you're willing to wear both of them, you can get better detection overall because you can get oxygen levels and stuff from your watch which this can't do all of the detailed stuff. The watch doesn't have as many sensors but it also is on you the whole time and it's right here on the finger, so it has an easier time monitoring your sleep in terms of movements and things like that. I'm not willing to wear the watch in bed because it just bothers me, but overall when I did wear it with my watch, it did give me better battery life too. That is also the other benefit because all the sensors kind of share, they distribute the load a little differently.
Speaker 1:But I think overall, the main reason that you would want this is if you just are like me you don't really want to wear the watch in bed which I know there are a lot of people like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do. Yeah, I wear it all the time. Yeah, you wear it all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you don't like wearing the watch all the time, the ring is a good, viable option to make sure you bridge the gap overnight, because I don't find this as uncomfortable as I do the watch.
Speaker 1:But if you already find the watch comfortable, I mean you already get a lot of those metrics. Really, if you only want some extra stuff on top by wearing both or, like I said, if you don't want to wear the watch, you can get the baseline metrics by wearing the ring on its own. That would be the main reason to buy it, I think. So it's valuable to me, it's valuable to a certain segment, and I think it's also valuable to people who just don't want the smartwatch as well. That's the other thing, right, some people don't want a smartwatch at all because they don't want notifications buzzing all the time. They're like you know, you guys have seen, I wear my traditional, my T or a mechanical watch. I like having a nice mechanical watch sometimes too, and some people prefer to wear a mechanical watch all the time, but they still want to track some of their health stuff. So this will let you do it in a less obtrusive way.
Speaker 2:You can still have your mechanical watch.
Speaker 1:It doesn't look like a piece of tech. Really. It actually looks pretty nice. If I could get the titanium one, I think it would look even sleeker and even more like a real ring from what I've seen.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, I mean, I think that's the main purpose for it and you guys probably noticed yes, I have an Apple Watch on today. I know this is Sammy Guru, but how else can I tell you how bad the Apple products are compared to Samsung if I don't try them? Otherwise people would just be like this guy's a fanboy fraud. He doesn't know, he's never touched it. So I'd actually go out and get the products and try them. So I just put this on and paired it to the 16 Pro Max to test it out.
Speaker 1:This is the new Series 10. And I'll have a video comparing it to the Watch 7, and I'll have a video comparing the Galaxy Watch Ultra, which Tori has on still, and that is still the smartwatch I wear the most, actually over the Apple Watch Ultra, because, as I said before, I'm wearing Apple Watch Ultra as my main smartwatch. When I wasn't wearing the mechanical watch for a long time just because the Apple Watch Ultra was better than a lot of Samsung's offerings, it was just the case. But the Galaxy Watch Ultra has become my main go-to smartwatch. So I will have a big video probably be 25, 30 minutes comparing Apple Watch Ultra 2, which isn't really, you know, a new. They just put a black color on it. I don't know if you know they didn't release a new watch. It's basically the same Apple Watch Ultra 2 as last year, but it's in a black color now.
Speaker 2:Kind of like with the phones. Yeah, yeah, it's the same thing. Basically it's the same, except and just a different shade. Yeah, just a different shade. It's all about the color with.
Speaker 1:Apple. If you give people a new color, they'll think key. And you know it does seem to work because I'll tell you, right now there's a lot of people at the apple store. When I went to go pick up these devices earlier so they're selling a lot of these uh devices, so don't don't let anyone tell you that apple uh can't get away with it, because they can with their particular audience, like their particular audience is not really hung up on innovation.
Speaker 2:They're like yeah, you know and I because I I've been seeing um with the upcoming launch this I've been seeing a lot of people on social media and like my friends and stuff who are just kind of like average consumers of Apple products. Like they love Apple for the FaceTime with the family and stuff but they do not feel like they need to get a new Apple phone all the time because it's the same phone. But some are complaining of I mean, I don't know if Apple still does this, but slowing down older models, so some people are feeling that they need to get the new one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, superstition, I don't think it's on purpose. I think this is the case, though we were talking about before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I was thinking Like with a lot of manufacturers is.
Speaker 1:It's not necessarily that they do it on purpose. It's that a lot of the new features that they release require higher processing capability from newer processors, and so you know people want things both ways. You've got to think about it this way, right? So it's a catch-22 for the manufacturers, right? Like if they release a phone and they're like, okay, well, because this phone has this processor and in two or three years it's not going to have a very good processor by the standards two to three years from now, we're just going to support it with new software features for three years.
Speaker 1:Then people are upset. They're like, oh, how can you only give me three years of software updates? That's garbage. I want to keep my phone for longer. It's a cash grab. Blah, blah, blah. So they're trying to slow it down, so I'll go buy a new one. Well, they're not slowing it down. You kept your phone for five years and you insist that they keep pushing new features. Well, those features require processing power that your phone no longer perhaps has, and so, especially with the AI features, a lot of the processors, even from like three years ago, they were not engineered with the AI, like coprocessing, that would allow you to do AI stuff while also doing other stuff. So some of that AI stuff is going to really slow those phones down and that's why also, some of the Apple phones are not getting the Apple intelligence, the Apple AI features, because some of the older ones they don't have processors that can do a lot of those AI co-processing.
Speaker 1:So it really is a catch-22. I mean, I'm not jumping on the bandwagon of any company or defending trillion-dollar companies like Apple and Samsung for doing anything that they otherwise should be doing right by consumers, but there is a real reason for it. You know otherwise should be doing right by consumers, but there is a real reason for it. If you want to keep pushing out new hardware so you can keep seeing innovation, at least samsung, that's what we want as samsung fans. I think we want that you also got to understand that. Like well, just like we said last week with your s22 ultra, yeah, you're gonna have to upgrade like every three years, like maybe that's the sweet spot, because eventually you're gonna stop getting every single feature and we do have good news and that's a great segue for you, tori.
Speaker 1:Oh, we speculated, I speculated and I said the Galaxy S22 Ultra had been left out of the original press release. I never said it wasn't going to get the update. I just said we didn't know when, we didn't know how long Samsung started pushing it 48 hours ago. I don't know if you have it already, but it started to be pushed out in Korea. You can go into your check updates right now if you want on the podcast.
Speaker 2:We're doing live reporting now.
Speaker 1:Go and see. I don't think I've seen anyone pull it yet in the US Go where. Go to Settings, so swipe down, go into Settings, scroll to the bottom where it says Software Updates and then go Check for Update, check and then go check for update.
Speaker 2:Check for update.
Speaker 1:I don't know that you have it yet, because I think only Korea does so far. But let's check it out and see. Okay, current software is up to date.
Speaker 2:It's up to date.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that means that you don't have it.
Speaker 2:Okay, you didn't get an update right in the last few days, Okay.
Speaker 1:But great news for you 6.1.1 got pushed to the S22 series series in korea and pretty much all the features that were there for the s23 ultra are there, so samit wrote the article.
Speaker 2:It was huge breaking news again.
Speaker 1:I never said, guys, this win yeah, I never said that it wasn't coming to these other devices. Some people were tagging me like oh man, you said it wasn't going to come.
Speaker 2:I never said that I wrote yeah, I saw that in some of the videos.
Speaker 1:Article that was based on fact. I wrote an article that said samsung didn't put it in the press release. That's not speculation. You can go read the press release. There was nowhere where it said s22. It wasn't in there.
Speaker 1:I was making an observation. I said these are the devices that samsung says are eligible in their initial press release everybody else was just speculating on. Will it get it, will it not? And I said I think it will get it eventually. We just don't know when. Because Samsung said these are the initial phones that will get it. And it turns out it got it a little bit closer to the earlier bit of that time window.
Speaker 1:I thought that maybe, since they were working on 7.0, they might wait and push some of the features then. But I was wrong. Like I said, unlike all the other internet pundits, if I make a mistake on a speculation I'll mention, I'll say it. But I mean I wasn't speculating in my original article. I was saying those phones were not in the press release. That's a fact. And then I speculated saying they might wait to push some of those features. But I'm hey, I'm glad for you guys. I'm not like, oh, I'm sad because my speculation about the timeline was wrong. I'm glad that most of the features came to the S22. Not only did they come to the S22, the Fold 4 and the Flip 4 also started getting those features in Korea as well. So he has the updated timeline right here for you guys. You can kind of see the full guide here. All the phones and the tablets have already gotten it. We kind of expect that the Fold 3 and the Flip 3 will also get it. I don't know if they're going to get as many features. They may not. The S21 series has been confirmed not to get it. That's been confirmed. So if you're an S21 user, I'm sorry that's not going to happen and we can talk about this.
Speaker 1:There's actually another story that I wanted to mention as well. We've kind of waxed poetic on 6.1.1. It's not that I don't want to talk about, it's just that the last like two and a half or three weeks of the podcast we've just talked about 6.1.1 forever. So if you're, if you've got an s22 and you're super excited about it, which should be go to my youtube channel. I've got a full playlist where I curated all the videos. I made 16 videos, I think, on it on 6.1.1. Watch the last two weeks of the podcast. You've got like two hours and 40 minutes of us talking about it. Yeah, and go check out Samit's super long article that rounds up every single new feature you need to know as well as the release timeline.
Speaker 1:But there is another story that I wanted to mention along with this, one kind of skipping around the list here, but it's this one Samsung. There's a leak that came out so this is not confirmed, but this is a leak that said that the galaxy a16 5g, which is an upcoming budget phone, um, that they're going to launch, it's one of their lower models that retails for the equivalent of like a couple hundred dollars 150 200, is it kind of like the, the, like the fe that?
Speaker 2:no, it's way below that way below that, way below that so.
Speaker 1:Samsung has in the US. We don't get all of them because other countries like India around the globe. They have a lower per capita income per person.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They get these lower end devices because that's what they can sell in those countries. They can't necessarily sell a bunch of higher end devices to everyone necessarily.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not everyone can be able to buy, it sell in those countries.
Speaker 1:they can't necessarily sell a bunch of higher end devices to everyone, necessarily, um. But so, like you know, you've got the s series, the flip and the fold. Those are the top. You've got the fe, that's like right below, and then you've got a bunch of lower budget models. Samsung makes like a hundred plus like different models for different regions.
Speaker 1:So there's like the a series, the m series, the f series, there's all these like series, the M series, the F series. There's all these like budget and mid-tier models. Now, the A series is more like a mid-tier, that's like neck and close to the FE, just like just below, but then those other ones are significantly below. So this is going to be, you know, by any stretch of the imagination, definitely a budget phone. And there's a sketchy leak that came out that said it's going to get six years of security and OS updates. So I don't know if I believe this, and so me, I don't know if I believe that either, but hey, we're supposed to touch on all the possible news and of course he responsibly said that this is a sketchy leak.
Speaker 1:But this would be interesting because, for one thing, this is actually more support than the S23 Ultra and the phones from last year got, because they only got five years of updates. So I think Samsung would make a lot of people angry. Someone bought a Z Fold 5 last year for two grand and then a phone that cost $200 is getting more security updates a year later. It doesn't seem like people would be very happy about that. I wouldn't be happy about that if I was in that position, if the Z Fold 5 was my daily driver. But another thing again to clarify about this, because a lot of people actually did reach out. When I was talking about this in the podcast last week, a couple people reached out on Twitter. I actually don't know where the comments were. They were close to when I had launched the audio version of the podcast.
Speaker 1:I was talking about the fact that people don't understand when Samsung says six years of security on OS updates or seven years, which is for the S24 ultra and the z fold 6, z flip 6 they don't mean every single feature. That's why I like the s21 people we're talking about. Some of them are super mad because they're like why am I not getting one ui 6.1.1? My phone is only three and a half years old and it is. It's three and a half years old and they're like I was supposed to get more support than that. That's true. You're going to get all the os updates and security updates. That does not mean you're guaranteed to get every single feature in every single version of one ui.
Speaker 1:Os updates means android updates notice the language. If you read samsung's language on this and it's intentional it's that you're going to get, even for the S24 Ultra, seven years of OS and security. That means you're going to get Android updates all the way up until whatever that is, android 21, and security patches that will make sure your device is secure. It doesn't mean that whatever features that are coming out in One UI whatever it is 12.0, 13.0, in five or six years the S24 Ultra is probably not going to get all those features. So Samsung never really guaranteed that you would get every single feature from every single One UI update for that full seven year period.
Speaker 1:So I just want people to understand that. I understand it's frustrating because it is a little facetious in that they're trying to convince you to buy the phone based on the information that you're going to get a lot of support for your software, and then people feel like they have the rug pulled out from under them. But that's the case. What do you think about that wording, tori? Do you think from an average consumer perspective, what is that kind of confusing of what that actually means?
Speaker 2:uh, yeah, it is, um, I think, for just like the average consumer, in the sense of phones are not cheap and you know, uh, we just kind of have or we're kind of like in a time of like, you know, the middle class is kind of like in a time of the middle class is kind of disappearing a little bit when we look at people's incomes and phones are just such an integral part in just most common people's lives.
Speaker 2:Everyone needs a device that does more and more, and people want nice devices for a long time.
Speaker 2:So when they're spending this money, they're not going in to buy a phone every year or every other year, and so when they're buying it it's kind of, like you said, it's a double-edged sword.
Speaker 2:The phones are going to come with updates.
Speaker 2:You want to be able to use and keep up with everything that's also going on with that particular brand of phone, as new iterations are coming out, so like so that you kind of still feel like you're part of the ecosystem, but over some time you're you know you're not going to be able to just keep that phone and stay within the complete ecosystem of that, and so when they see those updates, like people are going to be really grabbing on to those words of like hey, I'm buying me as an average consumer, I am buying this phone and I know I can get six or seven years of keeping up with everyone before I need to buy another phone, but not in, you know, like it's that fine print of like, yeah, you only get the basics, what you need, but you're not going to get all the new stuff, and so I think that's what us, as average consumers, um, probably need more education on right yeah, I think I might make a video on this specifically, uh, and and samit said he would like to make a post on this, specifically explaining it.
Speaker 1:So we do educate people, because there's a lot of what we want to do. It's a lot of the mission at Sammy guru. Uh, and I think you're right. You know, unfortunately, that's why actually I, that's why actually this podcast format exists, why Tori and I do this I mean Tori and I are friends but why I chose Tori. I didn't just choose him right.
Speaker 2:No, I mean obviously we're friends.
Speaker 1:We've been friends for a long time. But I wanted someone specifically who is not like someone else in the tech community. Because in the tech community we kind of get a little bit jaded and in our own world like, okay, yeah, seven years of security updates and software updates Everyone knows what that means and it's not even a big deal because you're going to get a new phone every year every way. That's not true. Like the average American family who has two kids, they can't afford to buy a phone every year these days, like phones cost flagship phones cost $1,200 to $1,500. If you want a foldable, it's $2,000. They're not buying a phone every year, right, if someone has a family of four, they've got other priorities.
Speaker 1:In this economy and in this day and age it's expensive, like Tori said, to raise a family. I know Having two kids myself. I obviously know that it's very expensive to raise a family and so, yeah, you're not going to be going out buying a phone every year. Obviously, I'm very blessed to be able to do this. I enjoy doing it, but for me it is really related to my business. If I wasn't doing this, if I was just a math professor again back at the university, I wouldn't be buying 5, 10, 15, 20 phones every year, because I'd be just throwing that money in the trash and I wouldn't be able to take care of my kids because I wouldn't be making any money off of it.
Speaker 1:When I can make money off of phones, it's great. But if I was still teaching, I wouldn't be buying. I'd have one phone and that'd be it and I'd have to really make a really intentional decision like which phone do I want to buy? Who's going to give me the best value? So I feel like maybe these companies should say, well, here's the here's, you know, give it like, you know, kind of like an explainer, like how they do on.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you've seen now it's a good. I mean, I'm not segwaying into the sponsorship now, but mint mobile is a partner for the podcast and they now make the wireless companies put like a thing like a nutrition label. You like a food has nutrition labels. They have to explain all the fine print in plain English and line by line here's the taxes and fees, here's everything explicitly. The government made them do that, not to Mint specifically. I'm not saying that Mint wasn't trying to be. This is all wireless carriers. So Mint's a very good partner, love them. But they made them do all wireless carriers. Maybe they should make the phone OEMs put specifically not only hardware facts but also software facts. Like you get this many years of security updates, this many years of base OS updates, which is different for Android because Samsung doesn't make Android.
Speaker 2:Google does. Yeah, yeah, Google does.
Speaker 1:And then feature updates for one UI. That would be three different numbers potentially and so people could distinguish like, okay, you know, which phone do I want to buy based off that information. So I think it's a good discussion. Like I said, I'll have a video on it, and Samit is going to make an article on the website, because we do want to educate people about this. Make sure you're buying the phone that kind of works for you and that's going to make you happiest at the end of the day, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's almost kind of like buying a car now, you know, because, like when you go in for, like the consumer, most consumers are financing the phones, you know, these days, and so it is like an investment when they are getting these phones.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so I think, having that, so I kind of like how you said that yeah, speaking of which you know like too.
Speaker 1:Keep in mind and this is not really the iPhone segment, this is not specific to the iPhone. At&t had a promo where you could like trade in a phone and get a free iPhone 16 Pro. It's not free because, if you look at the fine print of that, you have to pay like $2,700 for the plan cost over the commitment time, because you have to be locked into three years of payments, yeah, and so you're going to pay them over twenty seven hundred dollars to get that free phone, whereas if you go out and buy the phone unlocked, yeah, this phone's expensive. I got the one terabyte pro max. This was fifteen hundred nine nine dollars. But guess what I can do with it? Again, not plan, but I can take a sim from my partners in mint mobile which only cost me fifteen dollars a month, not like 150 a month or whatever the AT&T charges you, or $90, $100. Put it in here and over the course of three years, $15 a month. Over three years I've only paid $540. So $1599 plus $540, well, I've paid $2,100 roughly for this, not $2,700. I actually saved a lot of money. So you have to realize it depends on if you're getting a good deal on the plan but you're still paying more for the phone to finance it. They say there's not a finance fee, but there kind of is because they're building that into the cost of the postpaid carriers. They're raising up the prices versus. If you go with a cheaper MVNO, they will be able to give you cheaper service. Like I said, Mint is a great option. There's a lot of other great ones out there, Obviously. I love them because not only do they partner with the channel, but I think they have great service. They have really good service here in Phoenix and I really enjoy using it. It's on the T-Mobile network.
Speaker 1:So what else? Trying to see what we got? Oh, Galaxy S24 FE and Tab S10 near launch. So if we go over here, take a quick look, they're going to launch next week. So S24 FE and the Tab S10 are going to launch next week, on September 26. And it looks like we may just have a press release or something like that. It doesn't look like they're going to do a full event, because usually if Samsung's going to do an event, then they'll send out invitations, just like Apple does. They'll send them out early. We haven't gotten invitations. No one has. So it doesn't look like that's going to happen. They did open pre-reservations for the phone in certain markets not the US but in Vietnam and it looks like India and a couple of other places. They open pre-reservations, but it doesn't look like there's going to be an official launch event. So these are both not the most exciting devices honestly.
Speaker 1:The Tab S10,. We've already seen a lot of the leaks. We've talked about it on the podcast many times. It looks like a Tab S9 series, the entire thing. It looks like we're only going to have a couple of tablets instead of three sizes. This time they decided to slim it down to two. We do know that it's going to look like. For the first time ever, samsung's going to put MediaTek Minstead chips inside of their flagship. So not a Snapdragon this time. That's polarizing. We'll definitely have one to test the performance, because if it's not as good as qualcomm, people are going to be pretty upset. Even people aren't going to buy it, because that's what people do in the tech community they get upset, they're like I'm not buying it.
Speaker 2:But I'm still upset I'm mad.
Speaker 1:Why didn't you put the snapdragon in there? Uh, I don't know. So you know that will be the interesting part, I guess. Um, the galaxy s24 fe is interesting if you don't want to buy a super crazy expensive phone, but you still want a phone. Oh, I clicked on the Mint Mobile link. I did not mean. People are going to be like Jeff, you're trying to advertise Mint Mobile hardcore today.
Speaker 2:I accidentally.
Speaker 1:All I did there is I accidentally clicked on the link because we have one on the side of our website. So the S24 FE is going to be more expensive and it looks like it's going to be, you know, basically the same as the S23 FE in terms of the camera and stuff. There's a couple of upgrades. The design is going to be upgraded to look like the Galaxy S24. And there's really not a lot of things to get super excited about. You can kind of see that even Sumit doesn't seem super excited about either of these devices in this particular article, and I can't blame him, because I don't see a ton of things to be excited about. At the end of the day, they just don't look like devices that are going to get people hyped. Obviously, since they're Samsung devices, we're going to cover them. I'm curious what our audience thinks.
Speaker 1:Are any of you guys planning to buy Tab S10 or S24 FE? The S24 FE is a great value but honestly, my opinion has always been, for the most part, the FE phone always gets released at such a weird time in the year because it's like, okay, I could buy this phone. That's like a slightly watered-down version of January's flagship from nine months ago or eight months ago, but right now the S24 has been out for eight months, so I could go on Swappa and buy a used one for even less in mint condition than the FE and if I really wanted to get the better one, it's only three and a half months away from the S25 launch, so I could just wait three and a half months and buy a better version of the S25. So it's like a weird time to release it, in my opinion. I don't know Like I feel like it would be a better time to release it a couple months after you release the flagship phone or something. Google used to do that with their mid-range phone. I think it's a better time because people could be like, oh well, it's still fairly new and the other one's still kind of expensive, so that I can see where the value is. I mean, I don't know, we'll see the official stuff, but from the leaks it doesn't look like either of these are super exciting.
Speaker 1:I don't know why Samsung got rid of the base Tab S10 size. We talked about that. That's weird. The tablet keyboard now has a Galaxy. I key on it because of course it does. It's kind of a weird launch. I mean weird launch. Um, I mean, I'm gonna get one and we'll see how it goes. I'm more mostly interested in this processor, so no, qualcomm is going to be interesting. I know you're not a tablet guy, tory. What do you think about, though, the s24 fe? Do you think it's kind of interesting?
Speaker 2:yeah, and spot in the lineup yeah, it is because. Well, I do have a question does it come with the pen or is it just like a phone?
Speaker 1:oh, it doesn't have an S Pen no, it doesn't have an S Pen. No, it's just like the base, like the vanilla bottom, galaxy S24. This is the Tab S10, also with the Galaxy AI keyboard button.
Speaker 2:Probably costs $400 now because they put an AI key on it. What were you saying about the S24? I think, because, as you were just kind of talking about just the release time and how it is awkward, I I also agree, you know, because I think when I think of, like, those who are buying this phone, they are probably, um, either they don't want to keep up with like the big, you know, they don't want all the fancy stuff, like they just want a phone. Or maybe it's um, a parent who has a kid going into high school. Or maybe, like you know, they're sending them off to like college and stuff and like they just want to have, you know, like a nice budget, you know, phone that's not like a prepaid phone. I feel like the best times to do that would be like going into, like the school year or maybe coming off. Yeah, it might be better to do this. I mean, I think the reason they don't is because the foldables come out like going into the school year or maybe coming off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it might be better to do this. I mean, I think the reason they don't is because the foldables come out, but I think why not just release this at the foldable launch? Yeah, because people who are going to buy the fold and the flip they're not going to be interested in this anyway. So you're not cannibalizing your fold and flip buyers. People who are going to buy a $2,000 foldable. They're not going to be like oh, maybe I'll just buy that $650 mid-range phone instead.
Speaker 1:No, and people who are going to buy the Flip are going to want that flippable form factor. They're not going to go and buy a mid-range slab phone either. So, like, why not just release it? Then I can see the value proposition. Yeah, for like people college kids going back to school and, honestly, some people like older people. I think maybe Samsung's just trying to save some money on internal components. Probably Because if you put the S24 and the S24 FE on the website next to each other, if you get some people who are older, who don't know much about tech, just looking at them, they're like it's like the Spider-Man meme.
Speaker 1:Same phone and they're like well, this phone is $650. The other one is $850.
Speaker 2:I'll just buy this one.
Speaker 1:And Samsung, of course, spends a lot less money because the hardware and everything inside of the FE is cheaper, so they get probably better profit margins on it, I would imagine, than the flagships. I gave my S23 FE last year to my mother-in-law, to Nicole's mom, and she loves it, and I actually took a regular Galaxy S23 because I still have one at home and I showed it to her next to her, and I was like what do you think the difference between your, this phone and your phone? And she said nothing except mine's purple, and that one is, you know, white or whatever color I had for the, whatever color I had for the s24 yeah and, aside from the color, they do put fun.
Speaker 1:That is actually the only difference it's kind of funny.
Speaker 2:I actually noticed that because we were talking, the entries that I'm and I look at it. They have all these fun colors. Because I was talking about, yeah, because I was talking about.
Speaker 1:You know how Apple just changes the color. Well, what Samsung usually does with the FE is it looks the same, but they put interesting colors on the FE, whereas the base Galaxy S24, it's all boring. It's like white titanium, whatever, just like Apple does on there. Why can't flagship phones have interesting colors? They have to be boring. This S24 Ultra it's okay, but this is dark gray, this is gold. It has to be black, gold, gray, white. Yes, it can't be like a green, like a purple no, they don't even really have.
Speaker 2:Uh well, google did do a pink pixel 9 pro, but there's not very many like poppy colors anyway, well, just really quick, just to back off of that um, because now that my brain is kind of going with it now, uh, with the poppy of the colors and everything. Honestly, though, because we talked about it a few times on the podcast, their marketing, if they like take off on those times of like during the foldable launch and they're like blowing out, like you know, because Best buy would do like ads or whatever they could make good like ads. That target, um, the fe phones for, like college students and stuff, and it will probably, like I think, do really well, they can do well on tiktok, the youtube shorts, the instagram reels yeah, that's for sure, they definitely could.
Speaker 1:So you know go ahead and give us an email samsungmarketing at sammygurucom and we can put you in touch with our marketing. We have a marketing girl now that works for us. So if you can go ahead and put you guys, we've got some ideas we can run and get you guys set up with an ad campaign and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can here to help you, just hit us up.
Speaker 1:So we do still have a few more news stories, which is fine, so we're just going to. We don't have a lot in the second half today because I really just going to talk about the iPhone and then the Q&A, so I'll go ahead and push these last few news stories for the second half. But before we do get into the second half, I'm going to take a moment to thank the sponsor of today's podcast this. Hi Aura, are you tired of receiving spam calls and text messages all the time? There are so many data breaches these days, with one of the largest just revealed by AT&T that leaked almost all of their users' data call logs, text messages, etc. If you want to avoid instances like this, you can use Aura to protect your sensitive information and also get your information removed from these data-broking websites on the internet. I use Aura to not only give me these protections, but keep my family safe. In addition to getting antivirus protection, a password manager, a VPN and identity theft insurance, aura gives you all of this in one app at an affordable price. If you guys are interested in checking out Aura today, you can check the link in the show notes and you can get two weeks for free and see if Aura is right for you. We love using them and find them to really help keeping all of our data safe while we're online.
Speaker 1:All right, guys, we are back from the break. We've got a couple more stories going to run down here, starting off with a pretty fun story break. We got a couple more stories going to run down here. Starting off with a pretty fun story, samsung is apparently eyeing a rollable smartphone because they are a little upset that our friends in china at huawei I don't know if you saw this story huawei released a tri-foldable phone that actually folds three times. So it folds once, you know, and then folds again to an even bigger tablet, actually unfolds to like, I think, a 12 inch tablet-inch tablet or something like the Tab S9 Plus. And so now Samsung, you know they tried the tri-fold and I guess theirs wasn't working very well in testing, and so now that Huawei has actually released the Huawei Mate XT Ultimate, which is the one that's the tri-fold they released, they are now Samsung wants to one-up them by releasing a rollable phone.
Speaker 1:So they actually showed this off at a bunch of different tech conferences. They showed off some concepts at CES, they showed some off at some display conferences and basically it lets you push a button and so your phone would look like basically an S24 Ultra and you'd press a button here and the phone would like expand. It would roll out from the side.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:So you'd be able to hold it like this you press this button and then it rolls out from the back out into a tablet Interesting, and so the benefit of this. Well, there's a lot of benefits to this. First of all, you wouldn't necessarily have as much of a crease as you would on a traditional foldable foam and it would be able to be a lot thinner because you wouldn't have to have that whole extra piece that folds in the back, because the rollable part would be able to fit under kind of the back mechanism plate.
Speaker 1:And then also, you can have a variety of different kind of sizes, because you could have different models that roll it out, different lengths or however far you want to go out to a full tablet. This is pretty exciting. There really is a lot of interest in these phones that can change form factor now, and I do believe the rollables are going to be better than the foldables. I really do hope that Samsung ends up bringing the rollable first, because that would get them back to leading the innovation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so too. They've let a lot of people beat them. I don't know that. The tribe in a lot of things lately, ever since we talked about this before, like DJ Co versus TM Rowe and the lack of pushing the boundaries, because he doesn't want to get caught doing anything crazy that hurts the brand, but it would be really nice to see them beat up the other people to the rollable phone market.
Speaker 1:I think at CES, which of course I'll be attending, we will hear some more about it, because they usually like to introduce their crazy concepts. They actually showed off some of the rollable concepts last year, but, who knows, they usually don't talk about phones though, and it's, yes, usually. Last year, I think the rollable was like more along the line of like a TV or like business signage display that you could use it for like different size displays in your business. But uh, you know they don't usually talk about phones at CS, but we might, we. They don't usually talk about phones at CES, but we might, we might see a concept. Sometimes they have them at their booth. I would love to play with one, if they have one, because I'll be touring the Samsung booth. That will be one of the first things I do on the show floor, since we do cover Samsung.
Speaker 1:So I mean they were first to the foldable party for the most part. I mean there was another company that did it. I forgot the company who did it before them. But they were not a real company. They were like a pretend vaporware company. They didn't release it at scale. Samsung was the first real manufacturer to do it. Now the trifold looks cool, but it is thicker. It does present other problems.
Speaker 1:You do have more creasage. And plus Huawei again. People always say well, you know Huawei, they make great hardware, and they do, but because they're in China I don't know if you remember Tori, several years ago, while we got banned, basically, from the US, they got put on the US's entity list, which basically means not only can they not sell anything here, which they weren't even doing before, they also can't even use US vendors, so they're not allowed to have Google services on their phone, so you can't have Gmail or Chrome or any of that stuff on a Huawei
Speaker 1:phone. They were able to have it for a long time, up until around 2017. I actually made some videos on this when it happened and there's some of my most viewed videos, so they've got like 800, 900,000 views. When they got banned and the whole story, I made some videos about the story, explaining what happened. But yeah, so they're not allowed to do that anymore and so you can't really get services loaded Google services loaded on Huawei phones and, unlike Xiaomi and some of the other Chinese manufacturers who aren't on the entity list, who do still run Android, they can't even run Android, so their phones have their own OS called Harmony OS. They had to build their own operating system. They're not even allowed to use Android because they can't do any business with Google, because Google is an American company. The federal government doesn't allow it. If you're on the entity list, google could get fined. You know lots of money.
Speaker 2:They're never doing that yeah.
Speaker 1:So they get in a lot of trouble. So I hope Samsung does bring the rollable. I mean, obviously the rollables are probably not going to be better than foldables when they first launch, because they'll have all kinds of problems that we can't even think about. Just like when foldables first came out, there was all these issues with dust getting stuck in there and the displays cracking or malfunctioning and all kinds of issues when the first Galaxy Z Fold arrived. But I still bought one and had fun with it.
Speaker 2:It was very expensive and it was not that good of a phone.
Speaker 1:It was just for the sake of saying I had the first one, but it wasn't a great phone. I used it because I paid a lot of money for it. I used it for a long time as my main phone. It was also cool to show people, so it had that value. But I babied mine because I didn't want anything stuck in the hinge. Now, like my Z Fold 6, I just throw it around, I just toss it like a regular phone, just slam it, throw it into the mud, I don't care.
Speaker 1:The Z Fold 6 is super durable. We'll give Samsung props there, even though they haven't really innovated a lot with form factor and the cameras. We criticize them a lot for that. I talk about this in my full review on the website. If you read it it's really long 4,500 words on the Z Fold 6. I finally posted it. They have the best hinge and the best mechanism and the overall best durability. I think of any Fold Like you don't have to feel like you need to baby your Z Fold 6.
Speaker 1:It's a tank basically, so hopefully they're able to keep going. We know the Z Fold Special Edition is coming next month in Korea. We'll import one. We'll see how it is. Hopefully they don't sacrifice durability for the thinness because we know it's going to be thinner. Yeah, but I don't think they will. I think they'll make sure they have both, make sure they they have both. Um, the galaxy s25 and s25 plus may feature this new camera design and actually we got to look at the side view of it. We talked before about how the galaxy s25 is going to have the camera design that looks like the z-fold six, remember we talked about the rings.
Speaker 1:yeah, well, it turns out, even though they look like that from the front view, they actually have a pretty interesting change from the side view. They have been reduced in depth by about half a millimeter slightly more 0.06 millimeters from the S24 series, and they also have like a floating design. So basically there's a little bit of metal there in the bottom where the module kind of opens to the back of the phone, and then the glass piece in the top is slightly larger. It has a little bit of a bevel area to it. Theoretically, this might allow these devices to lay a little bit flatter on the table.
Speaker 2:Because right now.
Speaker 1:I can tell you you can actually hear it right now. If you have an S24 Ultra or an S24 and you tap on it, you're trying to type, it will definitely do this on the table kind of wobble, back and forth. So we don't yet know if this is going to come to the Ultra. We haven't really seen any confirmation one way or another from Ice Universe and the other leakers. Ice Universe is the one who tweeted this image out. So, of course, but we haven't really seen for the S25 Ultra that this is going to happen. I don't know. Probably not because it's going to have a bigger camera modules, because the ultra always has the better camera, of course, than the base and the plus. So that's one of the main differences, aside from the s pen is the better camera. But this is pretty cool. I mean, I like it. I definitely would like it if this didn't wobble as much yes, it's actually kind of.
Speaker 1:I mean, I usually have a case and then it doesn't wobble. But I mean that's one thing I will say. The iPhone does wobble, but not as much as this one yeah, so. Samsung could reduce the wobble, that'd be nice.
Speaker 2:I would appreciate that.
Speaker 1:What's the other story? The other story was the Blackmagic camera is now available for your Galaxy phone, if you want to try it. So they expanded it to the z fold six, the z flip six and it gives you pro grade videography to your galaxy phone. Now, if you, if you, know about black magic, they make some really high-end cameras, mkbhd on youtube. He has like one of their fifty thousand dollar cameras that he uses for his professional. He probably has like four of them he uses for his professional production over on his channel.
Speaker 1:Um, a little bit overkill for what I do on my channel, because right now I don't do a lot of cinematography. I mean, I try to. I think we've upped our video quality 100 times from where it was when I left the university because I was shooting at my desk at the university with a phone, not a really good camera. But uh, if you want some of black magic's tools, software tools, you can utilize the black magic app version 1.3. You can download it and download directly and then utilize it. So what I would say is if you want video, um, it's really good. But if you just care about pro grade photo, samsung already offers the RAW app, but it doesn't have video. We talked about Expert RAW a little bit before. Maybe in a couple weeks we'll have it and talk about it a little more, because we haven't done an app of the week in a while.
Speaker 2:I'm going to try to do that.
Speaker 1:This is mainly because I've been so busy with the 6.1.1 update and now the iPhone, I just haven't had time to pick a good one. If you guys have apple the week, send us one. Yeah, we'll use your app of the week. We'll talk about it, tori, and I'll install it. We'll go through it like user user chosen app of the week. That'd actually be fun. So we might I might post that somewhere in the newsletter and the website and get people to like participate. That way someone can choose an app of the week and whoever like suggests the best one, we'll it. We'll install it throughout the week and we'll use it.
Speaker 1:But Expert Raw is a Samsung app that lets you take basically granular manual control of your photos, and so Blackmagic basically does the same thing, but with video, like you can change, for instance, higher frame rates, anamorphic lens, desqueeze, various other things, off-speed recording that will allow you to get, like you know, looks that, look like a Hollywood movie, like some of those things. That's actually some of the compelling features the iPhone has which we're going to talk about. Next Of all of its features, they added. They added some new software video features, which are exciting. So if you are a creator and you enjoy playing with pro-grade video. I'm going to install it and play with it on some of my Samsung phones, because I had forgot it was available for the S series for a while and now it's on the foldables. So have you ever heard of Expert Robo for?
Speaker 2:this I have not. Or Block Magic no, none of these. No, yeah.
Speaker 1:so I mean, for the average user, is it really going to be the best?
Speaker 2:I mean, if you're a photography hobbyist, then yeah, I mean if you're a photography hobbyist then yeah, but if you're just kick, point and shoot photos, these are not what you want to install because it allows you to tweak things.
Speaker 1:But you also kind of have to tweak things. So if you don't want to, you just want to take out your camera and take a photo. The regular camera app is, of course, best. Take out your phone, take a video. You don't want to use Blackmagic because you've got to tweak all these settings just like you would over on my Sony cameras that I use for my video, so like a professional camera. But it is a cool app.
Speaker 1:I know we have a lot of people who are into the camera stuff and so people who watch the channel, who actually are smaller creators as well, shout out to you guys. I appreciate that A couple of smaller YouTubers and stuff watch the channel. So if you guys are interested, it's something you might want to try. So, if you guys are interested, it's something you might want to try. And now we can segue into the iPhone, because our last story there that I didn't cover yet is about the iPhone, and that is the fact that with iOS 18 and the launch of the iPhone 16 Pro, apple pushed out iOS 18 to all other iPhones, basically recent ones.
Speaker 1:We now have RCS on the iPhone. We now have RCS on the iPhone. So when you text your iPhone friends, no longer will you have to use silly, dumb SMS capabilities without smart replies, without reactions, without read receipts. You're going to get all that stuff now when you talk to your iPhone friends. So you're going to get all the benefits of RCS. Of course, Apple still has you as a green bubble.
Speaker 1:They're not going to change you to a blue bubble, because they still want to be discriminatory so that they can make you feel bad and let your friends ostracize you into buying an iPhone. But if you don't care about the color of your bubble, you still get basically all the features that were great about people doing iMessage to iMessage now Android to iPhone instead of just iPhone to iPhone. So that is great news. That's actually of all the things, because I'm going to talk about the iPhone a little bit now about the hardware.
Speaker 1:That's probably one of the biggest things for me because, as a Samsung user, as my main phone now I know everybody else who has an iPhone has that capability. I'm able to use smart replies and things like that, and I was actually texting earlier some people who I don't know or a lot of people who have iPhones, but I was texting some people earlier who do have iPhones and I was able to see the read receipts and stuff like that. It's pretty cool to be able to add reactions and things like that with the RCS messaging. So that's a pretty cool story. Everybody has iPhone friends, you know.
Speaker 2:unfortunately, no, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about the hardware. First thing. As I already told you guys, this is not. I don't know what this is. They call this desert titanium. This is rose gold 2.0 or whatever. I don't know how many rose gold versions they released before. It's rose gold 3.0, 4.0, it it looks like rose gold if you put it in the light. For sure it's not as pink as the rose, the old rose gold on the old iPhones. I realize that. But it also is not a copper. A lot of people said that it kind of looks like a copper.
Speaker 1:It's kind of a blend of their old gold, which was more yellow, and then the rose gold together, but it doesn't look like copper. To me, copper looks more brown than rose and this one is kind of halfway in between than rose and this one is kind of a halfway in between. So I would say, um, if you or someone you know hopefully not you, because you're, hopefully a samsung user and you're not leaving unless you want to buy an iphone for a secondary phone which is yeah, yeah, play with it if you want to.
Speaker 1:We will allow that, that's fine um, but uh, if you want to buy it and you don't want a rose goldish tint, maybe don't get this color. It's the new new color, which is why I bought it, because when you make YouTube videos, if you have the new color in the thumbnail, they do better. So that's why I buy it, but I mean it's not necessarily the color you're going to want. So that's the first thing. Second thing, in terms of what stands out in terms of the hardware, keep in mind I've been using iOS 18 and the developer beta for a while on my 15 Pro, so the iOS 18 isn't really that new to me. So the software features I'll talk about a few of them, but I've been using them for a while. The hardware few of them, but I've been using them for a while. The hardware they did improve the bezels. The bezels are a lot smaller.
Speaker 1:You can actually see I don't have my other iphone next to it, but the bezels are a lot thinner but if you actually look at it next to the s24 ultra like, the bezels aren't embarrassingly different like if you look at the s24 ultra versus the iphone. The s24 ultra definitely has slightly larger bezels, but it's not like by a lot. The S24 Ultra doesn't look outdated next to this phone and, remember, we already know the S25 Ultra is actually going to have smaller bezels even than the iPhone 16 Pro Max, so that won't be an advantage that Apple has for very long. But the S24 Ultra looks fine, so I don't think it's really a big deal. That's one thing they changed. They did make the display larger, so 6.9 inches, now 0.2 inches larger. That's actually how they did it. The size is almost the same as it was before, but they slimmed the bezels down so they could make more screen real estate. So that was kind of nice. Um, not bad. Um. From the rear right, they changed the camera. They only one change the change no one cares about which, which Samsung is apparently also doing.
Speaker 1:We talked about this last week. They gave a new ultra-wide camera 48 megapixel, ultra-wide which of course, we've had high-res, ultra-wide cameras for a while on Android. It's always funny, though. I talked about this last week. I posted a meme on X where someone had I retweeted it. I posted a meme on X where someone had I retweeted it. Someone had posted a Back to the Future meme. That said, when any Apple product releases, the Android users are like Marty McFly in Back to the Future. When they're watching the reruns of the Jackie Gleason show, it's like, hey, I've seen this one. And they're like what do you mean? You've seen it, it's brand new.
Speaker 2:And so the Apple users are like what do you mean?
Speaker 1:you've seen it it's brand new, but we've seen ultra wide, high-resolution, megapixel, ultra wise for a while, yeah but, samsung is apparently following apple's lead with the s25 ultra, which we've heard they're just going to upgrade the ultra wide. Like that's the thing now, like that's. That's kind of that makes me angry, because it's not the camera people are using the most upgrade, the primary upgrade, the zoom. Those are the two that matter.
Speaker 1:Yes, upgrade the selfie camera, even over the ultra wide. I think people use all three of those more, yeah, so like we'll take the least important in the selfie.
Speaker 1:We'll take the least important camera and that's what we're going to upgrade. Least important. Just here you go. Um, we do know. I haven't tested it yet. The other hardware feature, um, and we covered this over here.
Speaker 1:I was going to click on the article as well on the website. The Galaxy S25 series is going to get 45-watt, 15-volt charging, which, as we talked about before, electricity and magnetism circuits if you charge the same wattage but higher voltage, you're going to get more efficient charging, which means technically, the thermals should be cooler, which means technically, it should charge faster. Not a lot faster, not as fast as if you increase the wattage, but faster due to it being more efficient. Guess what? Apple didn't even mention it in the launch. I talked about this briefly last week. This phone has 45 watt, 15 volt charging too. They didn't even tell you. That's probably one of the biggest hardware upgrades and they're like. I wish they'd mentioned that because, like we said last week, the iPhone users won't understand it. But anyway, I'm going to test this. I have two different cables, the two different voltage-rated cables. I'm going to test and see Charging this at 15 volts does it make a difference? If you're using a 15-volt rated cable? It should. I imagine that the charging speed won't be so crazy.
Speaker 1:It'll probably be you know't. I don't know exactly because I haven't done the calculation. Obviously, hopefully I could. I mean, I have a pretty advanced math degree, but it's probably going to be like no more than I would say seven to eight minutes, probably more like three to five minutes is my guess. I bet it'll be three to five minutes faster charging with the with the higher voltage rated cable. So we'll see um. So technically that means that the s25 ultra will also have faster charging because it has the same standard. This is actually a massive upgrade for the iphone. Why they didn't mention this, I don't know, because the iphone it's not just getting the voltage upgrade, it only charged at 25 watts before, so it's almost double the wattage. That's actually super much. That's like so much faster for the iphone. Why would you not put that in the keynote? I have no idea.
Speaker 2:Well then, Jeff, you forget.
Speaker 1:I know they're just going to buy it anyway, I know but telling people that the phone charges way faster, you would think even Apple fans would be like oh well, now I can come home and charge my phone faster before I go out. That seems like a good selling point to me. I would have mentioned that. They did say that it gets a better battery life, which is fine. I mean it does get better battery life because the processor is more efficient too. Of course they upgraded the processor inside. They always upgrade to the newest Apple Silicon.
Speaker 1:That's par for the course, and, as we talked about last week as well, I love their processors. Obviously, I use a MacBook Pro as my main editing machine, but on the iPhone they limit it, so the processor can't do anything. So, like I said last week, why are you buying a Lamborghini or a Rolls Royce to just drive once a week to the grocery store? If I'm buying a $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 car, I'm driving it like a lot of places. I'm going to some fancy dinners, I'm taking it to the golf course, I'm going to the country club. I'm not just going to leave it at home. Go to the grocery store in that car, take my Corolla go everywhere else I got to go.
Speaker 1:I'm not just driving that car once a week. You want to use that really nice, powerful car that you bought. So if I buy a really powerful phone that has a powerful processor in it but then there's no multitasking, you can't even do split screen on the iPhone. How embarrassing is that? This is a 6.9-inch phone. It doesn't even have split screen multitasking. I made a video on this today. Every year I call Apple out for it and I'm going to keep doing it because it's absolutely insane. This phone has got massive screen real estate, no multitasking, the gaming performance is not really as good as qualcomm chips on android for most games.
Speaker 1:um, it's, I don't know, man, it's just the processor is great, but it's you can't do anything with it. Why have great processor if there's no support for it in the software? Um, the other thing they added, which I don't think is going to make a big difference to me or probably anybody else who uses the ip, maybe some people will care A dedicated camera button which is up here.
Speaker 1:So this basically will allow you. Once you press it, it opens the camera app immediately and then you can also use it as a shutter, so you can use it to take photos.
Speaker 2:Oh no, that would be great. And I do wonder okay, so there's this feature that my girlfriend loves, but you can only do it when the camera's facing you. It's like this most fine, like 0.5 or something like that, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Are you talking about the ultra wide with the selfie camera? That's what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:Well, no, you can only use it when the phone is facing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you're talking about the ultra-wide the selfie camera, like when it does this this.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no, no. It's like a really fine point.
Speaker 1:Because this is the ultra-wide, but it goes to 0.5. Yes, yes, that that's when it's facing away though. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think I'll make it easier that button, because just about everyone that's like in their 20s or 30s who likes to take pictures. Yeah, so maybe I'm wrong, Maybe people will use this, but I will say people who think once again that Apple invented something they didn't.
Speaker 1:Sony's had this button on their Android phones are all about the camera. They've had a dedicated camera shutter button forever.
Speaker 1:I think Samsung people are going to get on me for not remembering this, since I'm the Sammy guru. I think Samsung might have had one on one phone a long time ago, but it wasn't a mainstream one. But I know Sony's had it on for like the last 10. The Sony Xperia that I have in there the brand new one has this on it too. I might use it. I'm going to give it a try, so I shouldn't say that I won't use it.
Speaker 2:Maybe I will.
Speaker 1:I mean, I do like having the dedicated shutter, so maybe it's useful and what you can do. One thing I do like about it I was just playing with it. Again, keep in mind too, guys, I just got this phone like five hours ago, so I don't know everything about it either. I'm like I don't take to use this phone for two weeks. It's not my favorite phone. If you hold down on the button, it has haptic feedback and you can actually zoom in. See how the little zoom at the top with the 1X.
Speaker 1:You can change the zoom. You can actually go to 0.5 using the button, because your girlfriend would like that.
Speaker 2:Maybe don't show her that, because she'll be afraid. No, I'm just kidding, I know.
Speaker 1:But yeah, you can just slide along the button haptically and it does the zoom right there.
Speaker 2:So actually I might use it because of that it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Actually, that's actually a pretty cool feature. So I would imagine, now that Apple did that, a lot of other Android companies will try it, because a lot of them like to copy Apple, not just Samsung. The Chinese companies like to copy Apple more than Samsung does, so probably on the next Xiaomi, the 15 or whatever in January, they'll be like check it out, we've got a dedicated camera button up here. Oh, and they had one too, though Someone else is going to get on me.
Speaker 2:Xiaomi, I know they had one, One of theirs.
Speaker 1:I don't think the 14 has it, but I think one of their Ultras had it previously.
Speaker 1:Because, those are always camera focused, so let me walk that back. Apple copied this from a bunch of the Android manufacturers, so no one sent me any messages. I'm not saying Apple's inventing anything here, but the haptic feedback to slide this and the other thing I like about it. Here's the thing I like about it. If you have an Apple case so I have have the apple this is their official silicon case um, if you have an apple case, you can still use the button through here. And guess what? Usually, if you have a haptic feedback deal, you wouldn't be able to use the haptic feedback because there's a case over it. You can still use the button and it still works.
Speaker 1:You can still slide along it and it still does the zoom, even when it's on the outside. Now, of course, this is only going to work on Apple's cases, like if you buy a third party case, it's not going to work that way. But you know, it is really cool that they designed it so it still works with their case, so you don't have to take it off to use the sliding mechanism to do like the zoom. So I think that's pretty cool. Um, overall, I mean there's nothing revolutionary here. If you're looking for a phone that's going to stand out and show people that you have last year's iphone, then I guess you have to get the desert titanium, because from the back it looks just like the last year's one. No one would know that you have a new one. So if you need people to know, I have the new iphone yeah, if that's you, I have the new one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if they think.
Speaker 1:You know you don't want people to think that you're a peasant. As Flossie Carter would say, if you don't want to be a peasant, then you're going to have to get Desert Titanium, because no one else is going to know. They're going to be like are you a peasant? Do you have an iPhone 15 Pro Max or is that a 16 Pro Max? Well, actually, I should say I guess if they look from the side because of this button, the camera but they look from the back, one's going to know they're going to be like yeah, I was gonna know they should have like made this stick out more, so then people could be like oh, look at that, even though it would look terrible people would
Speaker 1:know that you have it anyway. You guys know that I'm not going to say that it's the greatest phone in the world, but they did make some subtle improvements. There's a lot of software, video features for creators that allow you to do instant slow-mo and some other cinematography effects. I'm gonna play around. Play around with that. As you guys know, I told you last week I use my iPhones a lot as B-roll cameras, so for that I am a little excited, because I usually use it more as a camera.
Speaker 1:It's a great camera, a great video camera not the greatest phone, so I'm excited to use it as a video camera and test that out. But aside from that, the processor is still severely limited by the software in terms of it can't do as many things as you can do on an Android phone, just because they don't let you. The software doesn't let you do anything that you would want to do.
Speaker 1:Next week we're going to talk more iPhone, so I'm going to save the Apple Watch for next week because I have only been wearing this for like. I put this on like 20 minutes for the podcast, so I don't have anything to say. The iPhone I did play around with for a while once I got to the office. But before we get into the Q&A next week, max Weinbach he had to push this week. That's why last week I didn't say for sure he'd be here this week. He's guaranteed, confirmed, he's confirmed, ready to go. He's coming on the show next week, episode 15.
Speaker 1:Max Weinbach, I call him. In my tweet introducing him, I tweeted out saying he'd be our first guest last night I said he's a renaissance man of the tech industry. That's because he has done pretty much everything. He's been a writer for tech blogs. He's been an influencer. He's got like 300,000 followers on X. He's an analyst now for a firm that does basically advice to different tech companies. He evaluates products and analyzes market segments for that kind of stuff. He's done a little bit of everything. He's done some leaking back when he was younger, in high school he was leaking stuff.
Speaker 1:He was actually hardcore Samsung before, like I said, but now he kind of uses everything, including iPhone.
Speaker 2:But I get it.
Speaker 1:I get it at the end of the day. You know we're going to have a good discussion with him. I think we'll have a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Apple versus Samsung next week in terms of ecosystem, because I know he's a guy who likes to talk a lot about ecosystem and how important it is that all the products integrate so we can talk a little bit about the two ecosystems and I'm interested to see what he thinks Samsung could do to improve their ecosystem, to kind of poach people who are ecosystem-focused from the Apple ecosystem and bring them over to Samsung, because he has a lot of insights as an analyst as to how important that is to people like different market segments. How much do you care that your laptop integrates with your phone, integrates with your watch, integrates with your tablet and all those products kind of sync seamlessly? All right, so let's answer a couple questions. We have a couple.
Speaker 1:A couple of them are questions I've answered many times but I figured I'd answer them one more time and this one. People are asking this question. I understand why because we got the 6.1.1 update and I said maybe in 6.1.1, the vertical app drawer would be back. It's not happening, Sorry. Samsung is really behind on 7.0. It looks like the beta for 7.0 is not even coming out until Octoberober. Starting to get a little upset about that because, as I said, I don't want it out october 10th, because I'm going to vegas that week.
Speaker 1:By the way, tori and I will do the podcast, but we're both going to do it on video, so we're both going to do it on stream yard because we won't be in the same place. But I've already told nicole we podcast. She understands she's going to go and do some stuff, maybe play some slots, you know, by herself for a little bit. Um, and me and Corey are going to do the podcast and I'll do it from the hotel room that's from the Aria in Vegas. Um, it'll be fun, but uh. But yeah, it looks like they might release it, yeah.
Speaker 1:They're not they're not just the whole time, except during the football game. So I can make 20 videos, because when new software comes out there's tons of videos to be made, because every little feature I need to make a separate video on, and so, but hopefully they would do it. The week before October 3rd is the Velver conference. What if they release the beta? Because usually they introduce the stable version of one UI. What if they release the beta at the dev conference? So I have a week before I go to Vegas Let me make those 20 videos.
Speaker 1:I have a huge queue of videos that I don't need to work in Vegas because I can just release them while I'm there. Come on, Samsung, Hit me up. Come on TMRO.
Speaker 2:Give me a call, we can discuss it.
Speaker 1:Any issues you guys have. I can help you test some of the issues. We can iron out some bugs.
Speaker 2:We with the issues. We can iron out some bugs, we can push the bait out.
Speaker 1:Make sure we get that content rolling. But anyway, look, you are the guru. Vertical app drawer not going to happen right now. If I had to guess, it's going to be after 7.0. And they're not going to be in a hurry to do it because it's a good lock update. It's not a main feature of the OS. You've got to understand. It's not like something's in their mind, not something's not broken in our minds. It is because the vertical app drawer is way better than having to go horizontal swipe through everything. I hate it. I I want it back just as much as you guys. I hate having to do that. I've been tempted to use a third-party launcher so I could get it back, but I just like stock one ui because it's so smooth. But uh, it's probably gonna be like december or january. I don't. I don't want to lie to you, because they're going to update the GoodLock apps after 7.0 stable comes out and that usually happens like in the beginning of January somewhere. So I would guess HomeUp will get the vertical app drawer back. They probably want to make sure it works with the new UI because when UI 7 has got a lot of new animations and stuff like, they can't just build that stuff and then they don't test compatibility with new animations, everything will break and then people will be mad about that. So there's that, uh.
Speaker 1:The other question was where do I get my keyboard? I've answered this question a couple times on the podcast and a lot of times on youtube. It's from keys cafe, from good luck. So I have a video that shows you how to create a keyboard like that using keys cafe. I'm going to make an updated version of that too, probably the same time that the vertical app drawer comes, because that's also in good luck. So they'll update keys cafe when they add the vertical app to our back, most likely, and I'll have a video. That's on the new version of keys cafe, but I'll try to drop the link to the old one. It hasn't been updated in about nine months because the last major update came out in January. So I updated every year when there's something new to report, because otherwise I'm just making the same video, because the same features are there.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to make a video where it has all the same features, because people don't want to watch. They've already seen it the people who subscribe to my channel. What was the last question? I forgot? I'm trying to remember. No, it was just that, that was it yeah it was just for the updates.
Speaker 2:the keyboard yeah, it was just for the updates, the keyboard.
Speaker 1:Someone was asking me about a charging case for the S24 Ultra.
Speaker 1:That was the question, so someone said is there an S24 Ultra charging case you recommend? Here's the one I recommend. I'll show it to you here on the screen. It's the Zero Lemon S24 Ultra charging case. This is probably the best one out there. Now I'll be honest with you. This is not a case that I would ever rock. They actually sent me one, so I have one somewhere. So if someone wanted to buy one, buy it from me. Theoretically I could sell it to them. It's $60 on Amazon. It's super bulky. It adds, like here's the S24 Ultra it makes it more than twice as thick probably about two and a half times as thick.
Speaker 1:So imagine, actually imagine taking the iphone and putting it with the case with the s4. This is how thick your phone will be. These two phones together, um, maybe slightly thicker. Um, it's a 10 000 hour milliamp hour battery, though, so it basically gives you even gives you two more full batteries on top of your battery, so you're going to get three times your original battery.
Speaker 1:So, it's really good as pass-through charging as well, which means, basically, if you plug in the charger there, it charges the phone as well while you're, you know it charges the case as well. So that is, you know, my favorite option. They usually send me some products, but again, you know, I always like to be very honest. When people send me products, I tell them. You tell them if it's not something I would use, I'm not going to make a video on it because I'm not going to tell people that I use this. I would never use this for a long period of time. It's just too bulky for me.
Speaker 2:No, if I needed it.
Speaker 1:I guess I could use it if I had taken it on a trip. But what I usually do is I have really slim power banks that are like the credit card size, that are like the credit card size. Those are like 4,000 milliamp hours. That's almost a full extra charge and it's way thinner than this. I can just slip that in my pocket or my shoulder. I have a little sling that I carry when I go out in Vegas I carry a sling. I prefer that over the fanny pack, but it's basically a fanny pack you put on your shoulder. That's what a sling is, so I can slip that in there and it doesn't add any extra weight because this is heavy and just too bulky for me, too thick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I don't yeah those. I mean they're becoming really popular, just as I kind of also wrote a paper on this too for physics, on this, you know we're kind of getting to a point where people need and want longer duration of battery life, you know, on their phones or their electronic devices, and so I know these are getting like really popular. But I've mostly seen it for iPhone people. I haven't seen a lot of this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's because they have official, like ones that the iPhone fits in a little better and they're a little thinner. Maybe companies should try that for Samsung.
Speaker 1:The problem is though Samsung doesn't get as much third-party accessory support as you do for the iPhone. That the problem is, though. Samsung doesn't get as much third-party accessory support as you do for the iPhone. That's just always the case in the US anyway. So, yeah, that's kind of the reason. Hopefully, samsung will eventually come out with the graphene battery technology. We heard about it so many years ago how it would revolutionize the game and you'd have six-day battery life. That would really change the game. If they get the graphene battery tech to work in mobile phones and they come out with, like, the S30 and it's like you can use your phone for six days on a single charge, then I'll just be like, wow, there's the innovation, that's what we need, that's the innovation we need. That's six hours, six days, on a single charge. Like, let me just give you my money, take it all.
Speaker 2:Take all the money now.
Speaker 1:Six days on a single charge? That would be fantastic. Anyway, next week we'll be back. First guest Max Weinbach Massive get for him. We have some other guests I'm trying to line up to throughout the rest of the year. Finally, we'll have some various people coming on here and chatting with us, which is great because me and Tori like talking to each other.
Speaker 1:But we'll get some differing opinions on here as well. A lot of big news coming from Sammy Guru. I'm looking to expand some things. I put out a post. We're trying to hire one more part-time writer. We just brought another employee to help us out with marketing.
Speaker 1:Mystery Box is in full effect. We already have over 1,500 people signed up for the S25 launch. So if you haven't done that links in the show notes you can check out the Mystery Boxes. Big the show notes you can check out the mystery boxes. Um, big time venture coming up. I teased this before between us and our partners at a one four wall, vu condrick, who makes the wallpapers and icon packs. We've reviewed on some of the early podcast episodes. We got some big things coming. So if you like his wallpapers and, uh, you like his customization, we have some potential options that might help you protect your phone while also looking stylish while you do it. So hopefully we'll get that going by the end of the year as well, definitely by S25 season. You'll hear more about that, but other than that, anything else, tori, that you have to add? No?
Speaker 2:that's about it Pretty much.
Speaker 1:It Just want to remind you guys to keep expanding your galaxy.