SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
Samsung vs Apple's Ecosystem Battle + AI Overload w/Max Weinbach
Follow Max on X: https://x.com/MaxWinebach
Samsung enthusiast turned tech consultant, Max Weinbach, joins us as our first guest on the Sammy Guru Podcast to unravel his tech journey. Discover how a passion for firmware and APK teardowns led to a career in consulting and his surprising shift from a dedicated Samsung user to embracing the iPhone. With my co-host Torrey, a high school math teacher with a keen interest in tech, we dive into Max's academic triumphs, his role at Creative Strategies, and his insights into product development and user experience testing.
Unearth the intricate dynamics between tech giants Samsung and Apple as we analyze the strategies behind Samsung's focus on user experience and ecosystem integration, contrasting with Apple's approach. With the backdrop of the iPhone 16 launch, we explore the challenges Samsung faces in retaining its user base and converting iPhone users, while emphasizing the importance of innovation and unique features. The discussion delves into how Apple's iMessage and FaceTime play a crucial role in user retention, and the hurdles of switching ecosystems even for those impressed by Samsung's hardware offerings.
Explore the transformative role of AI in smartphones and education, tracking the evolution of AI features like GPT-3 and ChatGPT. Listen as we share insights into the potential future monetization of AI features and the challenges of maintaining free services reliant on expensive data center resources. From critiquing Samsung's One UI to discussing the future of Android notifications and the strategic direction of Samsung's Galaxy devices, this episode offers a comprehensive view of the ever-evolving mobile technology landscape, enriched by Max's expert perspectives.
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Check out our website: https://sammyguru.com
Welcome back everybody. This is episode number 15 of the Sammy Guru Podcast. My name is Jeff Springer and with me, as always, my co-host, Torrey hey, how's it going? And today we have a special guest in the house, our first ever guest on the podcast, so really appreciate him coming on. Max Weinbach, How's it going?
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, guys, it's great.
Speaker 1:So just a little bit of an intro here. I've known Max since you were like 16, right when we first followed each other on X or on Twitter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was when I had like 2,000 followers, so it would have been 2018.
Speaker 1:2018, okay, yeah. So you started off doing a lot of Samsung stuff. You had, like a Samsung Discord. You did a lot of stuff with firmware and all that. You want to talk for people who don't know?
Speaker 2:tell them a little bit about what you were doing back in the early days. Yeah, the very simple explanation is I saw like Android, please, xda doing all the APK teardowns. I started doing them myself through Samsung's beta programs when they were doing their public betas for I think it was Android Oreo and found a few unreleased features here and there. It was the intelligence scan for the Galaxy S9, where you could use iris scanning and facial recognition depending on what was available based on light, and then just kept doing firmware leaks and digging into it and doing AP carry teardowns. Some AT&T used to just post all their updates early, so we'd scrape those and upload those as well. I don know if the source was ever public, but now it is and then continued going from there to do more, I guess yeah, so you do so.
Speaker 1:Since then you've done, obviously a lot of other stuff, not just with Samsung, but now you do cover a bunch of different all tech stuff, including iPhone, which we'll talk about later because I'm curious to get your take on how you because you use mostly Samsung in the beginning, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's hardcore Samsung. Up until actually, I got an iPhone, which would have been 2019. So it's been fairly recent, yeah, and I'm actually curious about what made you make the switch.
Speaker 1:We'll talk about that a little bit later, but, tori, how's your week been, by the way?
Speaker 3:I mean honestly so far the week has been good. I am on the eve of fall break.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great.
Speaker 3:So, as soon as that happens, I'll be a new man.
Speaker 1:That's great. Torrey is actually one of my former students. He teaches high school math. So, as you probably remember, max, before I went full-time doing Sammy Guru on my YouTube channel, I was a math professor for 12 years, so that's my classically trained. I met Tori. He's one of my older students. I met him towards the beginning of my teaching career, so about 10 or 11 years ago.
Speaker 1:I met Tori, and so now he teaches math full-time, but he's also been a Samsung user for a long time. So the main reason that I got him to co-host the podcast is, I feel like most of the tech podcast, you see right, it's like everybody is a pretty hardcore tech enthusiast, whereas there's very few podcasts where you've got people who bring more of the casual user perspective. So Tori tries to give us some of that, because obviously I cover stuff every day with Samsung, so maybe I'm a little bit skewed in my perspective of you know how things are viewed. And then also, I know the other reason I wanted to bring you on is because you are a little bit younger than both of us. You just finished your undergrad, right? So didn't you graduate this past spring?
Speaker 1:Is that true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did in May, June May May, that's right.
Speaker 1:And you did your. What did you do your degree?
Speaker 2:in Was it in business. I can't remember I did a, it was a business degree, and then I did a double major in marketing and finance.
Speaker 1:Okay, very cool, yeah, and so I'm curious to hear. So I read a little bit, I tried to do some research. I read a little bit, I tried to do some research. Uh, I read a little bit. The website, uh, where you work now, creative strategies, is that right, that's the name of the company, that, yep, and so you guys do you advise basically companies on how to make their products better, improve the user experience, is that the idea?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think part of it's that. And then there's you could describe it as like glorified consultants, which is a very simple description, but more or less apt. But there's a lot of things we can do. I think the services we have offered on there is I'm trying to think of like how to properly word this to make it clear Message testing. So let's say a company has a new marketing campaign or is doing a new product and they want to see hey, is this message actually landing? Is this what we're doing? We can come in and advise on that. If they're thinking about starting a new product, we can help them in the product development cycle go in the right direction. We also do a little bit with Wall Street, so sometimes we're helping. You know, you have journalists which are companies to people, and then you have analysts which are kind of companies to Wall Street and investors. So there's a lot of different parts to it.
Speaker 1:And so I saw something on there about the delight scale. Did you help design that? I remember you were talking about it on X one time, or or is that something they designed before?
Speaker 2:that's yeah, that's been there for ages. It's just uh. I've helped build one of our surveys or studies that we are doing on I, vr and ar. I believe we did a delight scale on a meta quest, yeah and uh, to do that just to get a general idea of what people think. Uh, it's just kind get a general idea of what people think. It's just kind of a good. It is what I would describe a very good marker of the user experience and what people think of not only a product but the features in the product and the product as a whole and company.
Speaker 1:So, like the delayed scale, I assume it changes based on the product category. Is that? Is that accurate?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's a few base things that we're going with there. I don't want to get too deep into it, right, but there's a few base variables that we're not necessarily going to change. Uh, just reword here and there and then everything kind of gets adapted to the specific product. So if we want to see, if it's, let's say, a pixel 9, we're going to do google ai on their pixel camera features, gemini and try to adapt it to the Pixel 9.
Speaker 1:Very cool yeah. So you guys do mainly smartphones or every area of tech. Is it smartphones the main focus?
Speaker 2:Every area of tech you can get data center, silicon, smartphones, consumer electronics, enterprise electronics.
Speaker 1:And you've been doing a lot of evaluation.
Speaker 2:You can get into individual parts.
Speaker 1:Oh, phones, consumer electronics, enterprise electronics, and you've been doing a lot of evaluation. Get into individual parts. Oh, you've been doing a lot of like ai program evaluation. I've seen you post about that on x. Is that something you guys do too, or just like a hobby that you enjoy yourself, like it's a little bit of?
Speaker 2:buffering we're getting. We're starting to get more into that as ai becomes more relevant, but it's also something I'm just, you know, very interested, so I do a little bit of that on my own and it helps with actual work where we're, you know, I guess I'd say, advising companies on benchmarking, performance, how to talk about AI and maybe what features they should be rolling out in the future.
Speaker 1:It's a very cool job that I didn't really think about. Did you do like an internship or did you know someone who worked there? Did you work there while you were in college?
Speaker 2:So Ben, it's four people. Tim Beharin founded it or started it, basically brought it from what it was. And his son, ben Beharin, who's now CEO. Tim retired, he's now just chairman Carolina Milanese Sorry, if she sees this, I don't know how to pronounce her last name. Um, she's president ben ceo. Uh, sean is our finance person.
Speaker 1:Then I'm just the analyst under all of them that's cool, so you get to play with a lot of tech, basically, and yeah and I yeah, I did intern for them for a year.
Speaker 2:I emailed ben sorry that was all leading up to I dm'd ben on twitter asked if I could intern for them. They said, sure. I continued the internship through my school year and I was my senior year. I was doing school plus working for them and then started full time June 1st. That's awesome. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a very cool job, I don't know. So let's talk a little bit. Let's transition into talking a little bit. I figured today we do like a hybrid, since we have Max here. We usually talk some Samsung news, but I have a couple of stories and I figured we would talk about them and then also maybe talk about some of the general stuff that I was going to get his thoughts on. The first thing I want to talk about was the iPhone 16 launch just happened, obviously, and since you know a lot about iPhones, I mean, I have an iPhone too, but since I use Samsung stuff all the time, I don't use it Probably he's got both right there probably he's got both right there, I know.
Speaker 1:Uh, so I'm curious. One of the things that tori and I've talked about a lot on this show is that samsung seems to be moving towards less like focus on hardware and specs and more on user experience, ecosystem things like that, which is something that apple's obviously been doing for years. Um, what do you think that Samsung can do, because obviously their goal is to try to get some of the market share from Apple in terms of appeal to them, using sort of the same strategy Apple does? Do you think it's an effective strategy for Samsung and what do you think they could do to kind of appeal to the Apple user base, to poach some of those users over?
Speaker 2:Or is there anything? I think that's the wrong way to look at it. Your problem is Samsung has a pretty big user base already.
Speaker 2:I would agree the problem is not poaching from Samsung or poaching from Apple. It's not losing them, because that's not the problem. People don't switch like statistically from iPhone to Android. They switch from Android to iPhone and stay on iPhone. That's just what the data mostly shows. Your problem now is not having them switch back. It's don't have them switch at all. Stay on Samsung, stay on Android. And Samsung's problem was, I think, they're trying to get switchers, which is a bad call. People got Samsung for years because they really appreciated these really I would say, premium, extravagant and expensive phones that were the best of the best, no matter what. There was no competition. It was just Samsung was number one.
Speaker 1:But you would agree right that they are trying to poach Apple users by appealing to some of the same things.
Speaker 2:It's not working because, again, the problem is they don't. Samsung users or iPhone users aren't going to switch, so even if they try to poach them, it doesn't matter. And it feels like you're kind of kneecapping your main. You know your core user base in terms of upgrades and devices to try to get people that aren't going to switch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, tori has mentioned this many times that he thinks that Samsung really should go back to, like you said, focusing on innovation with crazy new features. But it seems like they've kind of gone away from that in some sense the last few years since TM Rowe took over. It seems like he's more like let's just kind of keep the status quo, not do too much in terms of crazy sweeping changes. So I mean, what do you think about that? Do you think that if they go back to trying to do, you know, big extravagant features and new things that Apple isn't doing, that that could help?
Speaker 2:Again, you're not getting the switchers, that's just they're not. People aren't going to switch, but it will stop people from leaving Samsung. It'll stop them from going to google, right, and it'll stop them from going to iphone and you might get new upgrades every now and then. I still see a bunch of galaxy s10s around. Those people would definitely do better if they had any newer iphone period and maybe you can start getting them back to it if you can. You know they were the first to truly do like a proper triple camera setup and a proper under display right and a proper bezel-less display. Start doing firsts again and then maybe you'll stop doing it. You don't have to be like the big extravagant. This is a, you know, ceramic back and giant camera. It's a biggest number ever. But do a little bit better than what you have. Don't make it I've seen the leaks of the galaxy S25, but don't make it just an iPhone. Everyone's going to have an iPhone. The Pixel's basically an iPhone. Now Do something special and try to keep interest.
Speaker 1:Do you think that the reason? So you're saying people will not switch from iPhone to?
Speaker 2:Samsung. That is a lost cause. It's going to be an insignificant amount of people a lost cause.
Speaker 1:It's going to be an insignificant amount of people. Do you think the reason is primarily iMessage ecosystem reasons, that people not leaving? Because I mean, when I show people who use an iPhone, my Samsung devices, they seem impressive by the hardware but they still have no interest in switching. It seems like a lot of that is that they're tied to iMessage, FaceTime, things like that. Is that what you?
Speaker 2:see and believe. I used to, and then I started realizing I think people would switch if these features were worth the hassle of doing it. It is a pain in the ass to switch phones, it just is. You don't want to have even upgrading phones and to switch from an iPhone to a Samsung phone phone it's an even bigger hassle, it's an even bigger pain. Well, you don't want to do it, even if the samsung stuff is so great that you're going to do it. You just you won't, because it's a huge pain right.
Speaker 1:No one knows that better than us. When you switch a new phone every every week it's not fun. Yeah, people think it's fun to have 50 phones now it's not.
Speaker 2:I have like 12 on my desk or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not as fun as you would think Because, like, you know, you're out somewhere and you need an app and you're like, oh, I forgot to install that particular app or a phone. You know an app that you don't keep on every phone. You don't have that thing. Or you know, setting it up is just not a about foldables, I mean. So we've also debated like do you think foldables are going to bring iphone users to samsung? Samsung doesn't have much of a window left because I guess apple will eventually make a foldable where we've heard, you know, 2026, 2027 who knows if that's accurate uh, but you know, eventually they will bring one. Do you think foldables have any chance of bringing over people to samsung?
Speaker 2:if they would have, they would have over the past six years that's a good point. Yeah, I I think that's the only way, like there was more of a competition when samsung did the first c flip and it was what the iphone's 11, iphone 11 right but now it's been six years.
Speaker 2:foldables have been good for four. If they didn't switch, why would they now, even if samsung kept doing these new ones? Or I've got the Xiaomi Mix Flip. That is by far my favorite foldable on the market. It's in Europe, not in the US, unfortunately, but you have to have the Moto Razr.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was thinking about trying that. I gave Tori one of my Razrs to try it. He's kind of liked it. I think the flip phones have an interesting chance to grow just because they appeal to more people. What do you think? I mean, I feel like this is another question that I told you when we were talking about you coming on the flip versus the book style foldable Do you think that the flip is more utilitarian than the book style? Do you think it appeals to more people Because a lot.
Speaker 2:I think you have to look at the demographics for that right. I don't think most men have pockets in their pants Like they don't need a flip phone and that's not going to do it outside of the coolness factor, which may or may not sell that's up to a personal decision so I think the book style does better for them. Then you have women who might have a bag around and a or a small pocket, something where flip style is more beneficial or you could just have people that don't even care and say this is a pain, I don't want to have to worry about it, and just grab an iPhone because they already have that. But again, this idea of switchers just isn't happening. It's what are you having people on Android already using? It's just.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. I agree Samsung should focus on the fans they have and it seems like the best way to do that would be to not keep making. They've made iterative upgrades forever. You said you saw the S25 Ultra leaks. There isn't really anything to get excited about. I mean, is there anything exciting to you in the S25 Ultra leaks that you've seen so far? I mean, I've covered it every day, but it doesn't seem like it's that interesting to the average person. You know the things they're going to change.
Speaker 2:I don't know much other than I've seen that one render. I haven't kept up that much, but my only hope is it's a little more comfortable to hold the edges are a little uncomfortable on the S24. So I think it does that, but then when you round out the edges and throw the S Pen in there, you've got an iPhone 16 slash, pixel 9 slash every other phone on the market but it's an S24 Ultra. Yeah, and you know they look the same, they feel the same.
Speaker 1:The S Pen is kind of a differentiating feature, but it seems like not a lot of people use it.
Speaker 2:I use it, but now it seems like a lot of people don't use the S Pen, so I would love to see the data on how often it's unsheathed from the device.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think it's that often. Because I don't think it's that often. Since you haven't seen some of them, I guess we can talk a little bit about what's in the S25 Ultra, because that's one of the things I was going to talk about in the news stories. I kind of had them listed. So really, the only things that are changing are the rounded corners which Max mentioned. You've seen that. I mean, basically they're not changing much of anything other than just making it rounder on the edges, which I do think the edges are kind of sharp, I think you mentioned too that you agree.
Speaker 1:Tori has an S22 Ultra, you think yours is also still a little sharp on the corners.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know it is Definitely when I'm trying to hold it, or like if I'm laying down and trying to hold it it just hurts the palm of my hand.
Speaker 1:People actually make fun of me when I say this in my YouTube videos that it has sharp corners and I mean it's obviously not going to injure you but it is a little bit annoying to hold. So there's that there's going to be a 16 gigabyte of RAM variant. I don't think anyone cares about that. I mean, is 16 gig of RAM really necessary, even in a flagship? Now, I don't. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2:You think so. On Android, yes On Android, yes. On iOS, no. If you look into actually how the memory paging system works, I saw a chart from years ago. It was like 2014, 16, somewhere around there that how iOS paging works. And six gigs of RAM was equal to like eight or nine. On iOS, after they go through all the optimization cycles, compression and all that stuff, three gigs of RAM was equal to like seven. So Apple's their memory optimization is beyond what you would expect. It just is it is better. They only need eight because it's really equal to 12 and you can have people say, well, these numbers it's just apple playing games. No, that's like. The actual practical application is. Eight is equal to about 12. Android doesn't have this, so maybe apple does 12 gigs and that's equal to like 18. Android still needs 16.
Speaker 2:And when you have the new AI models, the memory, bandwidth on a lot of these chips aren't as large, so you just need things loaded all the time, which means more storage.
Speaker 1:That's what I was going to say. I think they're doing it for the AI reasons. I mean, we'll talk about AI again.
Speaker 2:It's also future-proofing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to make sure that if you buy an expensive phone you can still use it for several years. I think a lot of the Galaxy Eye features, though it seems also like people aren't using those as much as Samsung thinks. I mean, I don't know. Obviously we don't have the Apple intelligence yet on the iPhone. I've been running the 18.1 beta on my iPhone 15 Pro for since I don't know a while, whenever it came out. I don't know exactly. Have you tried out the? I assume you have tried out Apple Intelligence on the beta.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been using it since day one. I think Apple Intelligence will be good. The current feature set is nothing, but you wait until they get Siri in there and you wait until Genmojis and all the image playground and things start to add up to an actual good experience. But, like rewriting tools, it's nice but not game changing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I don't know what I mean. It seems like Apple does have some intuitive features for their AI that maybe Samsung could add.
Speaker 2:That are missing, like you said, Wait until Siri, because the way iOS works is in the developer guidelines every feature should be an app intent and then they store all of those app intents into like an SQL database and then can query it. So Siri, when it gets the Apple intelligence features, will be able to access all of that, know about all of that, grab your user data from whatever app and whatever index index I think they're using Spotlight for it and then control any app based on anything you've asked and any data on your phone. And that's when Siri starts to become a lot more useful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was, and that's when Apple Intelligence starts to hit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was watching their keynote. It seems like they're going to have a lot better integration with all this stuff on your phone versus what Galaxy has.
Speaker 2:It doesn't require developers to do it. The problem with Google and Samsung is, if you want to support any of that, you need to then go convince your developers hey, ours is the best, you should be using us and then have them add support to every single function they want to add support to. It's too much work. No one's going to do it. Apple it's just already done. They're using a thing they added in iOS 16 or iOS 15. I think it was 14, actually they introduced App Intents. So anything that's been added since iOS 14 to now just basically everything will immediately be supported without any developer interaction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's nice. I mean, that's another thing that people like on the iPhone is that their slogan of it just works from back in the day. They make everything seamless, even if it's third-party apps, whereas with a lot of the galaxy I stuff it's siloed like individual things but it only works with samsung apps for the most part. I mean, I've used some of the stuff but I mean, since it doesn't work with any third-party apps and it really doesn't, galaxy I doesn't really seem like it really interfaces with bixby yet properly either.
Speaker 2:I mean I don't think it will. Bixby feels more or less dead, yeah like. Bixby is like just an afterthought. I don't think it will. Bixby feels more or less dead, yeah, like.
Speaker 1:Bixby is like just an afterthought and it's there in addition to Galaxy Eye and it has like a fancy new glow effect in the last version of One UI, but it doesn't really have any improvements. So I do feel like, even though people are kind of laughing that Samsung put Galaxy Eye out first, it feels like Apple might be ahead in the end, out first. It feels like Apple might be ahead in the end because, even though it's not on the iPhone 16 Pro, which I think is kind of funny that they had all those ads which I'm sure you saw there were people advertising. It wasn't one of the Apple stores, they were leading a chant about.
Speaker 1:Apple AI, but then it's not on the phone.
Speaker 2:I was there for that. I was right behind in the media line. Oh, you were, because you went to pick up your iPhone from that store right. That's the one the big one in New York. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. We were all there kind of looking at it like what's going on?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought that was hilarious yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't think they were supposed to have done that, but yeah, I'm sure, tim.
Speaker 1:Cook or Apple's PR, people didn't tell. Okay, oh they do. Well, it seems like a little bit of a mistake on the Apple Store employees part, to do it, but I mean, I think it will be somewhat ahead. I also think Google seems like they're a little ahead when it comes to AI stuff too, which you would kind of expect, I suppose, since they've. What do you think? Do you think Google's not really?
Speaker 2:ahead. I think, in general, google's probably the best in terms of AI. I put them, you know, equal playing ground with Anthropic and OpenAI. But when it comes to on mobile, not just in general models, I don't think so. I think Apple's winning that one out, because when you use Gemini on Samsung, even with Gemini Nano or Pixel 9, it's not doing anything on the device. It's still going to the big cloud data center model and it's not grabbing any of the information from your phone. It's using your linked Google account and grabbing from your Gmail account to answer your question, or it's grabbing from your Google Docs, and that's a very different thing, because now, if you have more than one Google account, which I do, I can't ask it about all of those.
Speaker 1:Apple intelligence will be able to. And also I was going to ask you, since you know obviously a lot about this. I mean, I was testing this for when I was doing a video comparison for the Pixel 9 Pro XL with the S24 Ultra. When you do Gemini and Tori, and I talked about in the past episode, sometimes it actually tells you that it needs to ask the Google Assistant to get the answer, which is really weird.
Speaker 2:Like because Gemini cannot directly control your phone. So if it knows it's something Google Assistant can do, it sends a basically a function call from Gemini's model to the Android phone and then sends the request over to the Google Assistant to complete.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I feel like that's the kind of stuff that Android has a disadvantage with Apple, like you said, because obviously, since Apple's got everything tied in, not only with third-party apps, but they control the whole OS, whereas Samsung has to work with Google on Android, it's annoying because when I ask Jim and I a question, I don't want it to tell me that it's going to ask Google Assistant Just do it. The fact that it tells you is kind of strange to me too, because it's like I don't care, it's all Google product, just do it. Like apple would never. Apple would never say like asking this app to get information.
Speaker 2:It just seems oh no, they do. They will with a chat gpt. Oh, do they send you here to siri when it sends your data outside. They will when it sends your data outside of siri all right for the, for the gpt integration they have access it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then they're going to support other models like gemini, which I think is really funny, because all the features you have on android, as soon as they had gemini, support apple intelligence to be able to do it too, because it's the same cloud model and it's just using the app installed on your phone so will.
Speaker 1:So, oh, so, I didn't know this. They, the apple, said that gemini will be supported.
Speaker 2:Uh, will be able to be used support other models than just chat, gpt, and they specifically mentioned Gemini and Cloud.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, that's interesting. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:I don't know when I don't know how, but they did say that they were going to do chat GPT first and then look into supporting other models, including Gemini and Cloud.
Speaker 1:I mean, I guess it's to Google's advantage, obviously, if Apple supports. Gemini you get more people using Gemini, obviously, and they get more data, but some people don't want to use ChatGPT.
Speaker 2:They want to use Gemini. Sure. Yeah, Some people don't want to use Gemini or ChatGPT. They want to use Cloud Anthropic. It's good to give people options.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, just like any other service.
Speaker 2:Each model does something better.
Speaker 1:Tori, what AI like in terms of generative AI outside of Samsung do you use? Do you use ChatGPT often for teaching stuff, or have you ever used Claude for that kind of stuff? Well, so.
Speaker 3:I never heard of Claude before, but I definitely used ChatGPT a few times, especially when I started doing some stuff for you. Yeah, because I mean I've had a lot of training now in the teaching world of, hey, how can we utilize chat, gbt to help us with like lesson planning and stuff like that, or just creating, um you know, prompts and stuff, uh, for students. Um, so yeah, that's what I mostly use so far.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just found out about gemini like not too long ago so, max, when you were in school I mean chat gbt obviously came out while you're still an undergrad uh, did you have a lot of? Uh, did they have a lot of interesting discussions about AI policy? Because while in my last year teaching at the university and also Tori teaching at the high school, one big thing in academia now is how we're going to stop generative AI. It seems like it's a futile thing, and obviously in math we've also had other programs that you don't really need generative AI to do your calculus homework, because Wolfram Alpha Photomath a million different applications that we've had to like obviously plan our lessons around for the last 15 years.
Speaker 1:It's not like it's a new thing in math, but did they have a lot of discussion at the university you were at about generative AI?
Speaker 2:So there's two things I want to say to that. There's two different types of models. You have the base model and then an instruct tune. Instruct tune is a chat model. Base model is just you'll type in something and it'll complete the rest of it essentially.
Speaker 2:When the base model of GPT-3 launched in September, october of my junior year and I was using it for, let's say, two months before chat GPT hit. And then chat GPT took a month and then all these other models hit afterwards, but in that time people kept using it and didn't realize how to use it. So it wasn't a big deal because you could always tell when someone was using it and it didn't really hit until, I would say, the second semester of my senior year more second semester than first that people realized, oh, this might actually be an issue. And then that is when they started doing an AI policy, which was you can use it, fine, just tell us when you use it.
Speaker 2:It's probably going to be wrong, so you can use it, and if it's wrong, that's on you.
Speaker 1:That's what I think is great. I mean, that's what I did when I was teaching too, and I would teach statistics courses. I mean, I'm not going to—why outlaw people using it. They're going to use it anyway, right? I mean, I think you agree that even if the instructor tells them not to use it the professor tells you not to use it You're going to go and do it.
Speaker 2:So if you cite it—, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:I had a few professors that would stuff. We're asking like, hey, how can we use this to help you guys learn? So for one of my history, uh professors, I uploaded all of our course textbook into a vector embedding and did into like a little custom gpt and sent him the link so you could ask about any of the information and we'll respond to you. And then you could. I uh recorded a few of his classes through the transcripts into a, into a large context window model how to describe how we spoke and then, through that as the system prompt, into a custom gpt so you could answer is in his voice in his voice, with the correct, with the same knowledge that he gave us for it, and we could do that.
Speaker 2:So there were people that actually cared to try to make this beneficial, and then others were just like who cares it'll be useful in the future, and others that just didn't even think about it and it was what it was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's the right approach to try to use it as a tool, because just like any other I mean just like any other thing like it has its uses. But there's places where it also still has shortcomings. It's gotten a lot better, obviously, but obviously, if you asked Chad UBT something in the beginning, especially with math, like with high level math proofs it was not very good at math proofs in the beginning. It's gotten better over time.
Speaker 2:But it's oh, one should be great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's still. It's still occasionally, if it's, you know, like a graduate level you know real analysis question, it'll tell you something wrong. That's that's you know and it will give you some things with you know certainty almost. But I mean, for the most part it's gotten really good at doing those, but in the beginning it was pretty bad. Like it. I did the fundamental theorem of calculus and it gave me a proof that was not completely right.
Speaker 1:So you know, but that was like really early days. Like you said, it was doing that a lot.
Speaker 2:I think the other thing is you have to still do part of the work yourself. You can take out the last step of writing, but if you want to do an essay for you, for example, you still need to give it the sources, you still need to give it the information, you still need to come up with your own thesis, and then you can feed it the structure, what arguments you want it to do. No-transcript, and I don't think schools are teaching the proper way to use it, which is that you do the logic yourself and let it write it for you. Who cares about that? There's no value to you as a student to do that. But the upfront logic is where the actual value is.
Speaker 1:Right, yes, I agree, I mean, I use it a lot for coding, like for you know, like web programming, like HTML and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Create a JavaScript cursor. You add to it. It's great.
Speaker 1:Because I don't know those languages perfectly, but I mean I can tell it what I want and I know enough of the languages, like I can debug the code. If there's something in there, fix it, but it'll write lines and lines of code that you don't want to spend writing yourself. So I feel like as using a tool to do the grunt work. It's great for almost any task, and so you know we should. We should really probably teach it at the university level as a tool like there. Maybe should be like a generative AI like course at some point, because you know it is a useful tool just like any other.
Speaker 2:I think there needs to be a well at this point. I think there needs to be a well at this point. I think there just needs to be like a generally agreed upon way to teach it that you can give to elementary school, middle school, high school, because at this point they're going to be using it. So you need something at that level to kind of bring up to the college level, where maybe you don't have to mention it because it's already assumed. But there needs to be some sort of relatively standardized guidelines, maybe by state, maybe by district, just something where it gets you from point A to point B without having to reteach the same thing over and over again.
Speaker 1:I agree. Yeah, I'm going to teach my son my son's four and a half so I'm going to try to start. I mean, I've already started teaching him a little bit. We play with Pixel Studio on the Pixel 9 Pro and he loves, you know, typing in descriptions and generating images. So I try to teach him a little bit about what's happening. But you're right, I mean, the younger kids need to learn so that they're not using as a tool to replace thinking, because that's my biggest concern. It's like I don't want, you know, we don't want people to replace their own thinking, research capabilities, like you said, feeding them all the sources, giving them the logic of the structure of the code that you wanted to write. That's like that's the thinking part that you don't want, you know, chat, gpt or any of those models to do.
Speaker 2:And these reasoning models, I think, are they're starting to do it. I mean, opening eyes on one is a reasoning model that kind of does the chain of thought to think for you. But that's again that starts to hit weird points, where I think it was Sam Altman who went on to an interview and said you know, there was a point where it was fun to get to this point where you had to still think and you had to still do things daily, and that was fun. There was an enjoyment to working daily towards an end goal. What happens when it can just do it for you? Where do you come in there? Where's the personal enjoyment there? And I think some of the 01 models, where it can actually start to reason and think instead, is hitting a weird point where we want AGI, where it can do anything, but we also want to do stuff ourselves. So where do you have it get up to a point where you can finish the task, but it gets you from steps one to 27,. Then you have to do 28, 29, 30.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, that's a great way to look at it. I think there's a small chance that we end up getting federal legislation right now, because the federal government's not good at legislating tech as you as you know, they shouldn't do it but maybe at the state level or the local level we can get like schools, I mean like in terms of getting like a standardized, you know, curriculum yeah, it's gonna be on the stool at that point.
Speaker 2:I don't think you want. As soon as you start trying to get that federally, then you're going to get into a full game of well, why don't we just stop it from being made in the first place? That can do this, and then you have out-regulated any innovation.
Speaker 1:I agree. So do you think Samsung? I mean, I assume they will. But do you think Samsung, since Apple obviously is building ChatGPT into iOS, are they going to bring ChatGPT to One UI? I mean, or is that going to be a weird?
Speaker 2:thing, but they have.
Speaker 1:Gemini? Yeah, they have Gemini. So you don't think ChatGPT will exist integrated with Samsung, I think you have to look at it differently.
Speaker 2:It's not that ChatGPT is built into iOS. It's that ChatGPT is accessible in iOS. You still need the app installed. You don't necessarily need an account to go on any of the good features. You need an account. It's accessible in macOS and iOS. It's not built in. You still need to download the app, you still need to do whatever, and it's still Apple intelligence first with hey, it can access chat GPT to do things. Apple intelligence can't. I think Samsung's using Google to fill in those gaps, right, I mean, they are.
Speaker 1:If you look at, almost every model provider outside of live translate is yeah, and there was actually an article that we just wrote on Sammy Guru that they did some data set. Samsung posted that the favorite Galaxy Eye feature so far cited by users in Korea was Circle to Search, which isn't a Galaxy Eye feature really.
Speaker 2:It's a Google feature. It just came to every other Android phone. Xiaomi 14T was the first non-Samsung or Google feature with it. Yeah, so I mean it's like— oh, and Circle to Search can now do, or technically, under the Circle to Search, Google Lens, whatever. You can now record a video and ask it what's happening in the video.
Speaker 1:That's really cool. Oh yeah, no, that's cool. Oh, can you? You can record a video now with Circle to Search.
Speaker 2:It should be rolling out now but it's part of Google Lens and that whole suite and Circle to Search is basically just Google Lens.
Speaker 1:So technically then, because one of the things people were really upset about in the most recent Samsung update in One UI 6.1.1, samsung killed the ability to create GIFs using Smart Select. They took the feature out and it made a lot of people angry. So I was wondering if Circle to Search would eventually add the ability to create a GIF. If it can record videos technically, you should be able to, maybe eventually have that.
Speaker 2:It opens in a new UI. It's still not because it freezes it in there, so you don't miss anything.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Maybe it can, because it now does music in the background.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a Google question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they said they're going to add it back. But yeah, I was surprised how many people were upset. I wouldn't think that that was a highly used feature, but when one of you asked me my question did it get around DRM?
Speaker 2:I think it might have. Yeah, when if they're like, if you?
Speaker 1:could record. Yeah, yeah, if you record copyrighted stuff from YouTube, it will still.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't like flag it. That could be one of the reasons.
Speaker 1:So that's probably a good thesis. I did not think about that fully. That's a good thesis. That's probably why they got rid of it. They said they're going to bring it back and they had to do some stuff. Maybe that's the stuff that the Samsung team is working on for Smart Select. The other thing, too, is what do you think about charging people subscription fees for these AI features? So Samsung made a pretty big point several times this year in the Galaxy S24 launch, when they first introduced it, and then also they introduced the Tab S10 series last week and they put in the press release Galaxy Eye features are free until the end of 2025, blah, blah, blah. Do you think people are actually going to pay money for these features? I don't know about that. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:I think it's going to be bundled into something else where, if you have Google One, you have access to it. But the reason I also like Apple intelligence almost every feature runs on device, almost everything. That's not true for Galaxy AI. All of the photo editing is not done on device. The only thing done on device is there's like one feature using Gemini Nano, which is Magic Composer. That's the only thing. And then you have Live Translate, which is, but everything else is done on a data center and that costs money. You can't subsidize that forever. If it's on device, you can, because you don't have to worry about it. It's just throw out the update. You're using the user's battery and they're paying for electricity. That's the only cost to anyone for it. But when it's on a data center, that's expensive. Tpus aren't cheap. They're efficient, but when you have millions of people doing it I think they said 200 million Galaxy AI users now that's really expensive, yeah, and you can't keep that forever. I don't think people are going to pay for it, because it's nice when it's free.
Speaker 1:But no, no-transcript. And obviously Circle to Search is one of the most popular features. They might want to get some money out of that as well.
Speaker 2:Circle to Search is just Circle to Search isn't a Galaxy Eye feature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess it's different search isn't the galaxy ai feature?
Speaker 3:yeah, I guess different right.
Speaker 2:I agree that that will never. You will never be charged for that. The galaxy ai features are like summarization and recorder the transcription.
Speaker 1:The magic editor, I don't think for circled search well, I'm just saying that that's how samsung phrased it when they, when they released the thing about the most used circle to search is always going to be free, okay yeah, I mean because that's a google feature, that's an app feature you feature.
Speaker 2:It's free on the Xiaomi 14T. No one's charging for anything on there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm just saying, that's what that stuff will always be free. That's what Samsung said. They said that Circle to Search is the favorite Galaxy AI feature. They said in their little data set that that's what people like. The best. I'm just saying it's not. It isn't a Galaxy AI feature.
Speaker 2:It's just funny that that will never be charged for. And anything that uses Gemini Nano will never be charged for, because you're not going to lock that behind a paywall. It's dumb.
Speaker 1:Don't ever do that, Because you want to get the data from people, obviously for those things.
Speaker 2:I don't think they're collecting much user data on all this. I think that's an option for you to select.
Speaker 1:So you think they just want to get people to upgrade to Gemini Advanced?
Speaker 2:I think they want to get people locked into google's ecosystem.
Speaker 2:The only way to use google gemini advanced is to have an account, use gmail as your main email account and gmail as your main inbox, and google drive is your file storage and google docs for your documents and blah blah google flights to book stuff, like. I feel like this is more getting people into the Google ecosystem rather than collecting data. That makes sense. They're not going to be indexing your Google Drive for training data. They just won't. Maybe Google Photos if you want there, but they're not using your Gmail.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think people would be pretty upset if they were indexing their Google Drive for training data. I know, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I don't think it's about data collection. I think it's about getting people to use Google services and then charging for storage and then doing the upsell to Gemini Advance.
Speaker 1:That makes sense.
Speaker 2:It's not about data. I think there's too much data and a lot of it's not going to be good data.
Speaker 1:That's a good point, tori. Are you going to pay if they charge $5 a month for galaxy? How are you going to pay them $5 a month?
Speaker 3:Uh, I mean, you know, as you guys were kind of talking, I was kind of trying to think of just like cause I was thinking about this the other day when I saw Disney plus is now like if you have, um, someone else on your account outside of your home to charge you $7 and 99, just like Netflix yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, just like Netflix, I think we are in that subscription age and I mean, the average day consumer is just being beat to the ground with subscriptions, and so it really is kind of like a competition of what are you going to pay for, and kind of like, as we're kind of thinking about that S Pen. It's kind of nice at first when you're using it, but over time it's competing with other things that are happening in your life and I think right now it's really nice because it's free and AI is on the rise, but I'll be very hard-pressed that most casual people who own Samsungs will pay for that.
Speaker 1:I don't think so either.
Speaker 2:What if it was bundled with Gemini Advanced and you just got it, if you already subscribed to Gemini Advanced?
Speaker 3:You know, I think people who are probably already using Gemini Advanced yeah, they would probably keep it, but I don't think any regular Joe Schmo who just has a Samsung. I don't foresee any like uh, regular, uh joe schmoe who just has a samsung.
Speaker 1:Um, I, I don't foresee them maybe if it's bundled with google one.
Speaker 2:Maybe like you get your google drive, yeah, but google one, yeah, yeah so here's my other question do you guys use galaxy ai features every day? Do you use it once a week?
Speaker 1:maybe once a week. Yeah, yeah, I mean go ahead, tori, you go first.
Speaker 3:So, actually just to educate myself, because I just started noticing this, Whenever I go to Google, it'll be, like you know, waiting for it. There's like a separate top part that will give me like I think is some AI-generated response.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they've had that for a little bit.
Speaker 3:It's like they try to give AI to answer your question, if it's a question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's probably a generative search experience.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so mostly that. But I just started noticing in my top right-hand corner like, oh, try Gemini, try Gemini, and I've never tried Gemini. So yeah, I can't really speak on that.
Speaker 1:But what about the other Galaxy Eye stuff? Have you used sketched image since you got 6.1.1 on the S22 Ultra? Because you got it right?
Speaker 3:Yes, no, I didn't get it, but no, I have not. I have not used sketched image.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, I would say like once a week and I mean, obviously I run a Samsung YouTube channel. I use it once a day, probably for making videos. I have to do stuff for writing articles, but for my personal use, maybe once a week outside of. My son likes to play with sketched image, but that's it. I mean, that's not for me personally. Um, what about you? What? What AI feature? Have you used any features? Max on the galaxy? I have you even tried, you know?
Speaker 2:when I used my s24 ultra for a bit like not really, yeah, there was, it was transcription and recorder and summary, fine. But I also never really felt like the Galaxy AI features were compelling. I don't feel like most AI features are compelling. I don't think any on the Pixel are the only ones. I really think is a compelling use case is Siri, where it can do anything your phone can do. You don't have to think about it, you just ask it and it does it. And I think when you get into this automation where it has access it doesn't store, but it has access to your data when it needs to and can do anything you ask that's when AI starts to be compelling.
Speaker 2:But rewriting stuff isn't useful. Summarizing texts fine, maybe, but if I didn't have it I wouldn't complain. These are nothing to me. Genmoji is cool not, you know, killer, but cool. I want to be able to type in whatever and just have the emoji immediately created and sent to my friend. That's a cool feature. But none of this is really like oh, I need this in my life outside of.
Speaker 1:I can tell it anything and it will immediately work right, and pixel pixel studio is cool too, but I mean, I don't think anybody's using that after they get the phone and try it for a few weeks and then it's like it's not that useful after a few weeks.
Speaker 2:Well, the part about Genmoji which I liked is it's already in the emoji window on the keyboard. You just start typing, searching for your emoji, and it generates it for you. There's no going out of your way to do it. You just search and it's there.
Speaker 3:That's a really nice feature, generated in real time, yeah, yeah, I kind of want to ask something.
Speaker 3:As you're kind of saying, max, I started to think I feel like, when people think of ai, people think of like it, kind of like what they see in tv shows and movies, like it is just there and I don't need to do anything extra. And the way you describe like the apple ai, like you know, whenever you know we, we get to like a really good sweet spot with it, like I think that's going to do what people expect ai to do, and it's not something like just out of the way, like like all the ai stuff, like which you're kind of highlighting a point with us, like, yeah, those are cool features for the samsung sorry for samsung, but like man, I need to go out the way and be doing this very specific thing to be using it versus like, yeah, if it's just integrated all the way with my phone, like you know, I just see a lot of people using the Apple AI currently. You know, just kind of thinking as someone who's not on their phone all the time.
Speaker 2:Every time you get a text, it's automatically summarized.
Speaker 3:I do like that Every time you get an email, it's automatically in there.
Speaker 2:It has the summary for you. If you miss group chats, it's there. You get like this is stuff you never have to think about, it's just there. I do like the summary, the current way it's built. You can't do that. You have to really go out of your way to build into Android and I just don't think any Android OEMs maybe Google will do it in future versions but you have to really go out of your way to do it and I just don't think any OEMs are willing to do it. Period.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think any Android OEMs are going to do that because they need to work with Google too much to make that happen. Apple obviously has their own OS. It's a lot easier to kind of control all the pieces that they need to.
Speaker 2:I know you can do it on Android. It's the problem is app developers might start complaining first off. Second, you have to. Notifications work in a different way. It's not as clean on Android because sometimes you'll get more On iOS. It starts stacking your notifications if you get multiple from an app. On android it doesn't. It starts putting them into like different android windows until you close it, reopen it. Then it starts stacking at the bottom.
Speaker 1:Like you have to essentially rework how notifications work on android, which actually I think google's rumored to do with beta or uh quarter update 2 which I'm gonna hate because I actually hate the way ios notifications work. That's actually one of the things that keeps me on Samsung and Android, because I do not like just the notifications. As you said, they're not grouped really in any.
Speaker 2:It stacks. All the apps are stacked onto one app.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know Google is rumored to change it and it's probably going to come to Samsung too. That's probably going to be a little upsetting. I also heard next year Android 16 is supposed to launch earlier. I read that yesterday. Michelle Roman was saying that Q2. Yeah, that's pretty crazy Because Samsung is actually behind and Google is behind this year with Android 15. Samsung has not released the One UI 7.0 beta. People have been complaining about that.
Speaker 2:I don't think this is a bad thing. I think trying to separate Android as an operating system from vendors is a good thing, because maybe Android 16 is available before the Pixel team is ready. You shouldn't hold back Android, especially with whatever new features, platform updates you have, just because Google isn't ready.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because developers need that stuff too, obviously. To start getting their apps ready for the next platform, I agree.
Speaker 2:But did you see? The rumor name of Android 16 is Baklava, baklava, yeah. And people were saying, yeah, sorry, yes, they're saying that this means the end. So I think this is Google's way of saying look, we're going to fully rework Android after 16.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember there was always the rumors about what was going to happen once they got to the end of the alphabet A long time back. There was the whole thing about what was it? Fuchisa OS? Is that what they call it? Fuchsia, fuchsia? Yeah, I'm sorry my mispronunciation there.
Speaker 2:That was a kernel to replace Linux. They've more or less done away with it on Android, I think it's. Now it's powering little iot devices. I don't think they'll bring it back right because linux just works.
Speaker 1:It's easy yeah, I think for a while there was a thing that that was going to be like a front-end like ui ui that would replace android's ui. I don't think that was. That was just a cut, so all those rumors were no.
Speaker 2:That was just a custom ui built on top of the kernel to give a demo of hey, this is what we could do running our custom kernel.
Speaker 1:But I do think it's time for maybe a rework of a lot of the way the architecture works on Android, like you said. Not that I'll necessarily like it if they rework the notifications, because that could improve some things, like you said, in terms of bringing it more in line with how iOS works for like siloing notifications.
Speaker 2:But from my perspective, android was built really well to just do new versions of the phone every year. But now when you're starting to add in, you have whole new platform features like AI that have to be added in year over year. It's just better to start fresh and rework the entire operating system from scratch. Have developers go do what they're doing and essentially rebuild Android into Android 2.0, if you want to put it like that and start rebuilding the platform to be more future-proofed, where maybe we can just throw. If a new groundbreaking thing comes out, we can just throw it on top and everything already works. Where iOS works like that, android doesn't. So I think there's no way to just build that into every nook and cranny of Android. You have to start fresh.
Speaker 1:I mean you can, but it's easier just to start fresh If they called it Android 2.0, that'd be really confusing for people, since we already had no, no, it'd have to be the new Android or something like that.
Speaker 2:Google knows what they'll do.
Speaker 1:It'll be a naming scheme disaster, what do you think about? There's one other thing I wanted to touch on. We haven of stuff I was planning to, but, uh, in terms of, like, the chinese android oems. One of the reasons that samsung is able to kind of do whatever they want in terms of doing nothing, in terms of year over year iterative hardware upgrades anyway, is because they don't have a lot of competition in the us anyway. Here they can kind of coast along in terms of, you know, android competition. Um, do you think any of those chinese oems will eventually sell in the us? There's been so many rumors over I can't remember how long ago, you know, huawei was supposed to and then they got banned by the government. Uh, xiaomi, at one point I think people were saying we're gonna bring phones here that never happened for years, would say they were going to and never did yeah, yeah, saying and saying they they won't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know they won't, so so, yeah, it's kind of you know. I think I feel like they have the best chance right, xiaomi have the best chance against Samsung if they came here, because they have they have a pretty refined hardware and software.
Speaker 2:I mean obviously the Chinese version of the skin is good. It's the same as the global, it's just. You've had Google apps and I've used both all the time. The Chinese version of the skin is identical, but I think there's a lot of things that come into it. There's a lot of different elements.
Speaker 2:Let's say you shall, we want to launch into the millions per carrier. Then you need to get registered by the FCC. Then you need to get registered by different regulatory bodies, then you need to set up a repair program in the US with a warranty, then you need to set up a US support system to it. This ends up being it probably cost you $50 million to set up all of the infrastructure just to launch one phone where you will most definitely lose money. And then the next generation you lose money. And then the next generation you lose money.
Speaker 2:It's you'll burn cash for negligible market share and appeasing fans. It genuinely is not worth it. I think the only reason OnePlus does is because they they did it at the right time where they could build out that infrastructure and relationships, where it was cheap, and now that it's here, it's whatever cost, to do it. Maybe they'll break even, maybe they won't, I don't know, but it looks good for OPPO and OnePlus to say, hey, we're shipping in the US and people like it, and they're in Best Buy and people do like it, but right now no other brand could reasonably, without burning, let's say, half a billion dollars, launch in the US and do anything close to like matching nothing, which I don't even think is doing that well in the US.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, nothing. People seem to like nothing phones, but I've seen they don't have a large market share. It seems like I mean.
Speaker 2:No, they do in India.
Speaker 1:They're doing really well. Oh yeah, in India, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's just Just US and Europe. It's iffy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't seen a ton of people even like tech enthusiasts. I mean, I saw some people in the beginning when the brand first launched, but since then I haven't heard a lot of people saying they use the Nothing phone, the earbuds, though people seem to like the Nothing earbuds.
Speaker 2:I love the earbuds. Yeah, people seem to love those. The Ear Open I have. They're great. Yeah for the quality. How much are they?
Speaker 1:They're not that expensive right, they're pretty good quality for the price.
Speaker 2:Nothing. Ears are like 150. And genuinely I can't wear them because of the comfort. There's something about the shape that hurts my ears, but in terms of sound quality and just like overall ecosystem, easily on, like just a step below AirPods, I would say on part of Galaxy Buds.
Speaker 1:All right, yeah, that's pretty good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what I assume you use AirPods Pro as your main buds. Is that what you use for your main buds? Yeah, so these are the only ones outside of, like Pixel Buds 2, which, by the way, sound awful that don't hurt my ears. So I'm wearing a lot of these earbuds. For more than 45 minutes it's like a stabbing pain in my ear. Everyone's a little different. I just can't wear those. Airpods are the only ones that work for me. Airpods are the only ones that work for me and OnePlus Buds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the thing about Buds. Right, it's not necessarily if you like the sound it's about if you can wear them if they don't fall out.
Speaker 3:That's what works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if they don't fall out when you're in the gym, because a lot of Buds you know fall out of your ear when you're in the gym. You tried the Pixel Buds 2 Pro.
Speaker 2:They're not them. I have a pair that I need to pick up from UPS.
Speaker 1:I was hoping they'd be good. Oh, I got the wintergreen color too. Yeah, they're not good. That's too bad. No, these are great.
Speaker 2:So the thing I'll say is, when you turn off ANC and transparency, they sound fine, but as soon as you turn on ANC or as soon as you turn on transparency, sound quality drops and it's just. The sound is not good.
Speaker 1:you can be fixed with an update, but it's just not good that's terrible, because I mean, of course, the anc is one of the main use cases, for I find the anc really good.
Speaker 2:Some people have said sometimes it can actually make background sound louder. But yeah, I don't know, I haven't used them that long. All right, just can't get over the sound quality.
Speaker 1:We're coming up on about an hour. Tori, what else? Do you have any questions for Max? I'll go to the Q&A from other people that have sent in some stuff, but I'll try to pull it up. Anything else you want to chat about with Max?
Speaker 3:Yeah, just overall, I am really blown away with just how you're able to talk back and forth between Apple and Samsung and Google. You just seem very knowledgeable in that. And so just to kind of go back to something we were kind of talking about earlier, like my girlfriend, she's a hardcore, you know, apple person. She finds Samsung like intriguing. But I was starting to kind of think about like I feel like once to get those people over on, you know, to Apple, I can kind of see it now where, like they're just not going to get those people back.
Speaker 3:I like to think maybe it's because they're already in the Apple ecosystem and you have, like all your family. They also use FaceTime, like you know. There's just a lot of things that are just once you get behind that wall, um, you know. And so I think for a samsung people, um you know, like what are, like you know, we could just talk to the head of samsung mobile person right now will be like top three things you think samsung should probably just focus on instead of just trying to win people over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I don't know. I think you have to worry about like hardware for a lot of the software experiences Fine People are. I'm not content with Samsung. I think the reason I stopped using Samsung is I think their software went downhill. I you don't like the change?
Speaker 1:from when one ui first came about, or I think one ui hit I wrote an article for android.
Speaker 2:Please saying this feels like a really cheap chinese phone skin when chinese phone skins were bad. Now I say they're like tops here most of them are but I when it first came out it felt like a bad clone of it, trying to hit the Chinese market and get a weird unique middle ground of iOS and it just fails on all fronts. I know people swear by it and the customizability. Good luck whatever. I think it misses every mark and I think it's a bad user experience. I don't like when you lie.
Speaker 1:That's going to be blasphemy here, max.
Speaker 2:I know People love it but when you've used anything else you start to realize all the little places. This just doesn't feel right.
Speaker 1:So you don't like GoodLock at all. What's wrong with GoodLock? I liked the original one on Android 6. You don't like the fact that it doesn't feel optimized with the rest of the UI. Or what don't you like about GoodLock in general?
Speaker 2:I don't care about the customization.
Speaker 2:I don't want to have to go out of my way to make the UI work for me. I want it to work for me out of the box and check every mark for almost 99% of people. And then these little things here and there I want to be able to change myself. I don't want to have to go and spend the three, four, five, six hours to to make it work how I want. At that point I'm going to put down the phone, pick up a Pixel, an iPhone, a OnePlus, a Xiaomi, anything else, and just use that because it's already there 99, for almost 90% of the things I want.
Speaker 2:So you don't think, I don't want to have to go out of my way. You don't think there's any.
Speaker 1:There's a good point to have it, but have the stock system work I've said that for a while to build some good lock features into one UI like the stock one UI not even build it in, just make it by default, have it a good UI and then leave all this stuff as an option.
Speaker 1:But don't you think, like I mean, are you saying that people, that maybe we shouldn't give people the option in one UI to have like a custom icon back? I think the reason Samsung does that in good lock is because they don't want to overwhelm people in like the stock. Look, you can put does that in good luck is because they don't want to overwhelm people in like the stock. I'm not saying that.
Speaker 2:Look, you can put it into the stock functions. You can do whatever you want. I think the stock functions, how they are, are bad. I think the stock design is awful. I don't like how notifications work. I don't like any of the Samsung apps. I don't like the UI. I don't like their font. I just don't like it. It not as good as everything else. I've used everything and I think Samsung is the worst. This is my opinion on it. I'm not saying it's bad, I just don't like it. I think in my ranking, dead last, everything else is better. I don't want to have to go out of my way to change these things. It should just be how good. So fix that.
Speaker 1:But can you change the font easily on the iPhone without?
Speaker 2:No, you don't need to because the font is fine out of the box, okay.
Speaker 1:That's my point.
Speaker 2:I shouldn't have to change things because everything is already good. That's fair. You just don't like it On Samsung. That's not true. Things aren't good and you have to change them to be good, okay. And anyone that picks up an iPhone is going to be happy with almost everything how it is.
Speaker 1:That's not true for Samsung. People have to go and change things. I don't like that. The data supports that, since there are a lot of people who are complaining about One UI, so I mean we can't say that. That's not the case. Supposedly, in 7.0 they're making a lot of changes, so maybe you'll like it.
Speaker 2:I mean, from what we've seen from the leaks, maybe I'll like it. I hope I'll install it day.
Speaker 1:It seems like also that maybe they're trying to copy iOS again too, which I don't know. That that's necessarily.
Speaker 2:No, that's good, do it, but you obviously think that's great. Not the bad parts. No good parts, not the bad parts. You can copy Google, do it. If you just throw straight Pixel OS, it's not Android stock anymore. Just throw straight Pixel OS and I'll be happy. I don't care, just anything better than how it is. I just do oxygen os from oneplus. I don't care, just anything better than one of the chinese manufacturers.
Speaker 1:You said the chinese skins are the same as global, but they they really throttle like notifications and such. Don't you find that the case when I?
Speaker 2:use. No, that's. That's not what I meant. I meant the design is the same. Okay, the the notifications are the back end when google yeah, that's different because all this stuff is everything's run through google's back-end services to do uh, fire Firebase for notifications and Google's backend services. When that's not installed as a stock app, android's native battery functions can kill it in the background.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:On Android phones because it doesn't need to have Google. They don't install it, so it kills it in the background and then refreshes like any normal app would. But most normal apps use the Firebase notifications through it, so everything's delayed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all your stuff is terrible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but when you install that on the global versions as a system app, everything works with the same UI and it functions properly.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, that's why I always feel like when I get the Xiaomi phones, I always try to get the global one if I can. It's usually not out first, but if I can get it later, don't get the first one, wait for it.
Speaker 2:Trust me, not out first, but if I can get it, don't get the first ones. You wait for it. Yeah, trust me, wait for the global versions. Yeah, I know you want to do content first. It's not worth it wait for the global yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1:Um, what about I? I asked this question too, because we were talking about this with smart watches. I know you probably use the apple watch as your main watch. A lot of people are surprised. I also, however, a long time use the Apple Watch Ultra as my main smartwatch because I find that the Samsung watches don't send you notifications in real time. Have you ever noticed this? When you test Samsung watches or any Android watch, it seems like also maybe Android's battery management.
Speaker 1:Like I don't get like a lot of my social notifications. I mean I get probably more, just like you do, more than the average person because of what I do but I won't get X notifications for likes or sometimes mentions on my Galaxy Watch Ultra, but I always get them on the Apple Watch Ultra, so I don't know, have you ever noticed?
Speaker 2:this I have, and I think the other thing with that is notifications are delayed on Android. I don't know why. I think it has to feed different pipelines and it just takes a second where it's not constantly refreshing. Ios is better at that. But I also think the other thing is just the apple watch is top tier best watch period hands down. You can't argue. The apple watch is the best in terms of like software ecosystem, whatever, and once you've used an apple watch, it's really really hard to use anything else. You try to and then you notice all the little things here and there that don't match and you're like why am I using this? I have an apple watch in my drawer well, max, you're gonna get lots of uh tags for people who listen to the show
Speaker 3:luckily it's only.
Speaker 1:It's only our 15th episode, so we only have about 1500 people listening each. I'm glad it's not bigger yet, so that way you don't have to deal with too many.
Speaker 2:I think I have good reasons for everything and I can usually back up.
Speaker 1:I know we're enjoying chatting with you. One last thing I'll ask before I get to there's two questions that I saw in a couple of the Q&A threads I started. What about the smart rings? I know you you liked. You used the aura ring for a while. Did you try the galaxy ring at all?
Speaker 2:No, cause I don't really use Android phones. It's my main device. It's hard to do it. I always have them on me. But the other things I don't wear. Rings I don't like the feeling of rings. Yeah, I, I. It doesn't fit for me. It's the same thing with smart glasses. I don't wear glasses. I don't need glasses. I'm not going to wear smart glasses. I don't care to test things that aren't useful for me. I don't have a good opinion on it. I can give you one. It's just not a good one.
Speaker 1:Do you wear your Apple Watch then when you sleep, though, for sleep tracking?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I use it for sleep tracking, but I also have a Whoop. I love my Whoop. This thing weighs nothing, tracks everything.
Speaker 1:You don't even have to Facts can hold it up again. It's like a smart ring.
Speaker 2:It's just a little puck. Oh cool, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like does it do pretty much what the smart ring, what the Galaxy Ring does as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does. I would say it does more than the Galaxy Ring they. But the subscription includes the hardware, which I think is a good way to do it. You don't buy upfront hardware and then pay more on top. It is, let's say, $240 a year. Hardware is included. If they do a new version, you get that. If it breaks, they'll ship you a new one overnight. I've forgotten my battery somewhere and they overnighted me a battery to my house at the hotel I was at just because I didn't get to charge it. Whoop support is really good and the subscription you do get a lot from it.
Speaker 1:That's actually a pretty good way to do it yeah. If you automatically get upgraded to the newest hardware every year. I mean $240 a year. It's not every year.
Speaker 2:The Whoop 4, it's been about four years on the same hardware or whatever, and they've been doing about new features every month, still just with the current data and the amount of data it collects, too, too, yeah, it's, uh, I thought they. The it tracks biomarkers, I think five of them, a hundred times a second. The next closest is uh, pixel watch and samsung at once a second wow, oh, wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I mean if you, if you want to track like the health stuff at a granular level, it seems like that might be.
Speaker 2:It has a chat gpt integration too. So if you don't know what something means, you just type it in and ask and it will pull from your data. It'll pull from the whoop like database of information and answer your question for you and explain it oh, maybe I need to check one out, I mean yeah me too, so you you wear it on the other the other wrist, I guess opposite your smart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you can do that.
Speaker 2:But they also have bicep bands, make clothing. You can put it in a pair of underwear that just goes on your hip If you're swimming. They make swim trunks with it. They make shirts with it too. You can put it anywhere.
Speaker 1:They have like certain places you can put it. There's a lot of options you don't have to. That's very cool. Yeah, I saw you posting some health stuff, so, um, yeah, let's uh, let's see. There's two Q and a questions. I mean, since you just uh leveled everybody with all the Samsung hate, these are going to be Samsung questions.
Speaker 2:So I'm sorry, it is a Samsung podcast Constructive criticism. I know, I'm just kidding, we're just playing. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So Samsung's? Apparently this story was from just last night. Apparently, samsung is going to get rid of the base model for the Galaxy S26. So not this January, but the following January. What do you think? Do you think that's a good idea?
Speaker 2:I have kind of thought that that's a good idea for a while now, because I mean the base model has so many, yes, and then replace a good idea for a while now because I mean the base model has so many places with the s26 fe.
Speaker 1:yeah, that's a great idea actually, yeah, really good idea, because the price of the s26 or the whatever the lower s model is, every year is so close to the fe. The fe doesn't make sense anymore, don't you kind of agree? I mean, they just released it and it's like no, I do.
Speaker 2:And then you could also do like a little gap where it's probably fe. Let's assume we're getting price increases between then. Do that feel like 700, the plus at like 11 and the ultra 12, I think that's, or not a lot of thousand? 13 or 11, 13, 7, I think that's a good one. 300 to get to a plus and get rid of the branding. So just call it s26, then that's 26. Ultra, do you?
Speaker 1:same size, 6.5 inches, and yeah, I think that works out well actually yeah, and I was also thinking, you know, it would also be nice this is something else we talked about is if they would try to put the same cameras on the plus, that's, on the ultra, because the ultra I mean really no, you can't do that.
Speaker 2:It's the thickness, it's lenses, it's cost. There's too much to it.
Speaker 1:You think that's not gonna happen yeah, I guess maybe.
Speaker 2:I think, if you look at a lot of the reason why you don't even get in foldables is there's two reasons you can't dissipate heat from the sensors and you need the sensor. There needs to be more space in the uh, x or z axis to actually yeah, you're talking about the flagship cameras on the foldables.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah you just can't, even on thinner phones like the s24s. There's always a good reason. I wouldn't necessarily say this outside of apple but and to some extent google, but outside there's there's usually a reason why they don't do it. Outside of cost and marketing there's usually a reason, and I think it's going to be getting into the z-axis. This is a thicker phone, right? Those protrude more. It's just harder to do. And then, even if you do it for the smaller lenses, if those protrude more, you need to rework the camera range. It becomes more expensive.
Speaker 1:It's just, and you're thinking they probably wouldn't want to make the s24 plus or s25 plus thicker, right, I mean because they could do that, I guess, and then try to get the camera in there, maybe you could but then that gets into.
Speaker 2:Like well, at that point why wouldn't I buy the ultra? And what's the point of this existing and the sales drop for that one? People get the Ultra, sure, that's good, but then they're manufacturing phones no one's going to buy and it looks bad for them in terms of the market and business and market perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:And then carriers will get mad because they bought a bunch of SKUs and fun stuff.
Speaker 1:I think getting rid of the S26 makes a lot of sense, though I think we can agree Because the FE comes out at such a weird time. It just came out right now like why would I buy the s24 fe when I could buy an s25 in january? It's almost the same price, I mean there's not a huge difference between them. I think a lot of people probably won't buy s24 fe. I mean it seems like it's not a popular phone here, but it might be because of when they release it, in relation to the next s line at least, I mean from what I've seen, it's not very popular yeah, um, the last question, that um too, which was, I think was on YouTube or Twitter.
Speaker 3:See if I can find it.
Speaker 1:Someone was asking oh, this is a question that was on Twitter but also that I had put in there about us to discuss. We kind of already discussed it. Do you think that Samsung needs a leadership change in terms of? You know, a lot of people don't like TM row, for whatever reason. Samsung circles I kind of made a joke about this on X. It seems like a lot of people want to get rid of him. Do you think that getting rid of him would really help Samsung in any way? It seems like your thesis so far has been that that probably wouldn't help, because even if someone more innovative came in, it probably wouldn't help them get any more market share. Do you think it would help them keep users? Do you think he's doing anything?
Speaker 2:particularly wrong as the head of Samsung Mobile. I honestly couldn't answer that. I don't know. If you look at the products, the stuff under him hasn't been as good, but I don't necessarily think that means he's bad. So I struggle to make a comment on that because I just don't know. Think that means he's bad I. So I I struggle to make a comment on that because I just don't know fair enough I can't answer that one for you yeah, fair enough yeah there's a lot that goes into leadership, even outside of fame.
Speaker 2:It goes into investors, samsung, family, career. There's a lot of stuff and I just genuinely couldn't answer.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry that's a reasonable original answer. If you don't know, then don't. Uh, don't weigh in.
Speaker 1:I mean we can, can speculate, but I think a lot of people's hate for him is driven by the fact that they just haven't seen products that seem innovative. But since stuff is in the pipeline for so long, that doesn't necessarily mean that he is even the person who originally kind of stewarded those products anyway. I don't know that that's. We have no idea. Like you said, there's a lot of things that go into creating products and people just see the final, final result.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a lot of internal politics at Samsung.
Speaker 1:Yeah, certainly, yeah, certainly, samsung being like the flagship company for Korea as a whole, like they have to carry the whole South Korea banner at Samsung. It seems like that they have a lot of politics going on because of that. In fact, dj Ko himself he's actually I think he's running for office in South Korea now or something. I believe he's actually running for a political office, so the politics actually now are completely intermingled.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, I think that's mostly what I want to chat about, anything else, roy, I think we've had a lot of fun. Max, you've brought a different perspective, constructive criticism, as you call it from the opposite perspective of kind of using Apple devices and using other Android devices that aren't Samsung.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I wouldn't necessarily say opposite or bad, it was just I used to like Samsung and their direction changed and I don't like it. It's not for me.
Speaker 1:That's not to say it's not for others, it's just not for me, yeah and I think it's interesting to get that, because obviously most people who listen to the podcast they are already Samsung fans, but it's good to see why people are leaving and so maybe we can try to discuss how Samsung might evolve people. Whether we should or not, whether we have the insight. Like you said, people love to speculate on how they could potentially improve. So we appreciate you coming on and also maybe eventually we can get you on again down the road once we've had a few more guests and I can improve the video setup here as well. We made a little bit of lag this time, but I think we made it work, so we appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 1:Thanks Max. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course, Thank you guys for having me All right. Thanks a lot.