SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
Samsung Dropping The Galaxy Brand + One UI 7.0 AI Notification Summaries
From spooky tales to Samsung's strategies, our discussion shifts to the tech giant’s intriguing plans. The dilemma over holding onto a limited edition Z-Fold phone is just the beginning. We speculate on the Galaxy S25 Special Edition and its potential face-off with Apple's rumored iPhone 17 Air. The naming debate—whether it's the "S25 Slim" or "S25 Special Edition"—is on the table, along with Samsung's ambitious XR headset plans, poised to give Apple's Vision Pro a run for its money at a suggested $500 price tag.
Is Samsung dropping the iconic Galaxy brand? We weigh the rumors and their implications for the company's flagship devices. Our chat reveals exciting features from Samsung's latest One UI 7.0 and explores the evolving landscape of smartphone upgrades, from payment plans to the enticing features of the S25 Ultra. To wrap it all up, we engage with listeners' questions, hint at next week's content, and savor the anticipation of enjoying a Potbelly sandwich. Join us for a packed episode brimming with tech insights and Halloween hijinks!
Get your info off the dark web with Aura: https://aura.com/springer
S25 Ultra Mystery Box Sign up: https://laylo.com/springer/NTdpr
Video Podcast on Youtube: https://bit.ly/3yBw3Ro
Follow Jeff on X (Twitter): https://x.com/jspring86az
Follow Torrey on X: https://x.com/T_Martin_23
Check out our website: https://sammyguru.com
Welcome back everybody. This is episode number 19 of the Sammy Guru podcast. My name is Jeff Springer. With me, as always, my co-host, torrey Torrey, say hi, hey, how's it going? And we're here on the Saturday. We're doing some weekend warrior podcasting today. We weren't able to get it done yesterday, so we're here at the office on a Saturday for you guys.
Speaker 2:Just for you.
Speaker 1:Ready to talk about some Samsung news. I had a pretty good week. It's Halloween. I had a very busy Halloween. We catered Jonathan's kindergarten well, pre-kindergarten, because he's four, so he's in the grade before kindergarten. Nicole's like the class mom, so she planned the party and then I took the day off, so it wasn't the office to go and help her set up. So we went and bought cupcakes from Scottsdale. Um, we got some tablecloths we had to set. We went, we went into the class early while they were at their music class, because they have like rotating classes at the school he goes to, and we set up that. We made like treat buckets for all the kids. We organized some activities. They uh mummified. Their teacher wrapped her in toilet paper.
Speaker 1:That was one of the activities we let the kids do. They really enjoyed that, and then, of course, I had planned everything to take off the day. It was supposed to go really well, and at 6 o'clock in the morning, as I was about to start getting ready to take Jonathan to school and then help my wife set up the Sammy Guru news site, the page just went blank. All the articles are still live, but there's nothing on the news page. An issue with our editor the back-end editor we use on WordPress caused it, so then we had to go through a huge process of getting my IT team to get it restored from backup. I wasn't in the office so I couldn't do it. It took four hours. I was doing it all from my phone while I was also trying to plan the party.
Speaker 1:So that was very stressful. It was not supposed to be a stressful day. And then we went to the Scottsdale-Stillman Railroad thing. They have a hot new train ride over there on Halloween night. Jonathan likes to go there. We go there for Christmas Usually I think Christmas is their bigger one, but they do Halloween and it's not super scary. So it's good for little kids because the train ride is spooky, but it's not like people jumping out with chainsaws or anything like that, because I don't think you want to have that for four-year-olds.
Speaker 1:And then they have like trick-or-treat stations as well, so the kids can still do that. He likes the train, so that's what we did. And then Jonathan fell asleep on the way home. He was so exhausted because they had a costume parade in the morning at the school. Me and Nicole went to that, where all the kids get to walk around. The parents take pictures of the whole entire school in their costumes. Then we came back for the party at 1, set all that up. He got to do stuff at the party and then we went to the railroad thing and then, in the middle of everything, crashing how was your week, tori?
Speaker 2:Honestly I mean outside of the website crashing. It does sound like you had a pretty fun Halloween.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it was good, other than that, I mean, I could have done without that.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and I mean overall a little bit of a busy week as homecoming week at my school. So tonight I will be a chaperoning the homecoming dance.
Speaker 1:All right, yeah, I did that with Nicole once at Kellis when she was yeah. When she was a teacher there. Oh nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's always. It's always fun to see the kids in like a different light than just, like you know, in the classroom during the day. So the kids normally clean up pretty well and look pretty spiffy and nice and so I am excited to go and chaperone. Last night we had our football game, which was a tough mountain to beat.
Speaker 1:I heard that was a rough game.
Speaker 2:It was 36-0 before halftime.
Speaker 1:Uh-oh, that's the time I usually leave.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people were leaving.
Speaker 1:Time to beat the traffic.
Speaker 2:Spirits were low. It's just one of those. It's a difference between a football program and a football team, and I think we're just not a football program yet, but we'll get there. We still have a chance to make it to the playoffs if we beat Tolleson.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, oh hey, alabama, we were wrong. They killed Missouri last week. Yeah, yeah, they did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, we were wrong. A lot of my friends on Facebook say they now have restored faith.
Speaker 1:It looks like Kalen Daybor might have heard all the things about lacking discipline and he got in there and put on some Nick Saban impression and got some discipline, because the defense looked good. The offense still had some penalties, but the defense looked a lot better During the bye week. They could clean up the offense too. We have a chance. We could beat LSU.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1:I think we need to really beat LSU pretty handily to have any chance of sneaking into the playoffs.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, no for sure.
Speaker 1:Like if we beat LSU 34 to nothing, then we'd probably get into the playoffs. Yeah, if we win the rest of the game, but if it's close, I don't know, because we still lost to Vanderbilt Although. Vanderbilt looks better than people thought really isn't as bad of a team as people might have thought they were.
Speaker 1:They actually seem to be a pretty competitive team. So anyway, yeah, let's get into the news. I guess I'll kick it off with, because I don't really have any huge hardware news today, so it might be kind of a short show. So I'll start off with this before we get into the stuff we've got on the site. We were talking about last week the Z Fold Special Edition. Whether or not I have it, I don't, and unfortunately the news is not good. I kind of figured this could happen after I heard the z-fold special edition sold out in like 10 seconds in korea. The retailer that I bought from told us that they heard from samsung this week that the units are backed up and samsung has only released 500 units so far in the whole country seriously and that they were able to secure a few of them.
Speaker 1:But I guess my order is like the third in the queue, so my order may not ship until the third week of November. So I don't really know what I'm going to do. They will refund me if I want, and I could try to buy from someone else. I really am not sure yet.
Speaker 2:Because there's only 500 units.
Speaker 1:Chances are nobody else from YouTube is going to have one yet either. I don't know. I still really want it. But the thing is again, I buy it because I could probably make my money back. If I can't, then I'm just spending. I can't just be spending $3,000 all the time for nothing. Just like other people, I have to be responsible with my money. If it's a good business decision and I could get a lot of content and I think it has the potential to get a lot of views, we can make the money back.
Speaker 1:But if the hype's gonna have died down so it's so late, it's close to the holidays, I don't know. I'm probably gonna keep it. I'm probably gonna take a loss on it though, due to the delay, unfortunately, but I'd say there's a pretty good chance. I still keep it. So if you're interested in the z-fold special edition, most likely we're still going to have coverage. It's just going to be late.
Speaker 1:I was a little disappointed, but I'm not surprised. I don't know anyone who's gotten one yet, and we heard from their initial reports it's sold out very fast because it is limited. A lot of people are trying to buy it to reseale in other markets, like the US, obviously, and then some people say well, why don't you get the Chinese version, the W25 with the gold trim? That one's also going to be even harder to get because I think it's going to be slightly more limited. Plus, with that one some of the bands won't work as well because the South Korean LTE bands and 5G bands they align a little better with the US than China. So I was hoping to get this one, just because then I can actually use it somewhat as a phone here and not be completely, like you know, just a paperweight that I use as a tablet, a $3,000 mini tablet.
Speaker 2:I don't really want that.
Speaker 1:I don't need that. I'm going to at least use it as a phone. It'd be cool to use it as a phone for a little bit, so for a little bit. So yeah, we're going to be waiting on that. They said it could be sooner. I'm the next in line as soon as they secure another unit.
Speaker 1:I guess I was the third person to order one from them. I don't know how I was third because I emailed them right away, but I guess maybe someone else I mean, I'm not in Korea so maybe I don't the time zones, you know. I don't know exactly what time their time. I emailed them, so someone locally may have pre-reserved one because they're like a local phone retailer in Korea. So maybe someone came to their shop and whatever. But I guess I guess I'm next in line. So takes about two days to get it. International priority shipping, which they do ship it with FedEx. So hopefully I will have it sometime in the middle of the month and we'll have some coverage. I know people are looking forward to that, so I'll have that coming up. Uh, speaking of which, I guess we could segue into this. Um, you know, keeping them with that segues just rolling right along from last week and everyone was like, yeah, those are some great segues and I know yeah, I know they're, they're fantastic segues.
Speaker 1:What can I say? I'm professional. Um, the galaxy s25 special edition is rumored now to be a slimmer version of the S25 that could compete with Apple's iPhone 17 Air. So, for those of you guys who don't know, there's rumors around the Apple news sphere for a while that Apple could release a thinner version of the iphone 17 next year. That's like super slim. That they would call the iphone 17 air because you know, like with their max, they have the macbook pro and the macbook air, which is a lot slimmer, doesn't have as much performance and all that various stuff, right? So that's the rumor. Of course, it also gonna have a smaller battery, most likely, because that's just physics. So you can't.
Speaker 1:if something is smaller, you can't fit as big of a battery in there. That's just how that works. There's nothing you can do about that, and so Samsung is reportedly considering having a special edition of the Galaxy S25, which could be either called Galaxy S25 SE Special Edition or Galaxy S25 Slim, so that they would have a competitor to go up against Apple's new release.
Speaker 2:I like the SE. It kind of keeps in line with their little….
Speaker 1:Yeah, because they have the FE already, although, again, like I said, I don't really know what FE means anymore. Fan edition, they could just call it the S25 mid-range, but that makes it look bad, so I guess that's probably what they're going to keep with. If they did this, they'd have five different models of the S25. So they have the S25 base model, s25 Plus, s25 Ultra, s25 Special Edition and S25 Fan Edition. Of course, not all of them would release at the same time. The rumor here is that the S25 Special Edition would release sometime in the second quarter of 2025, which is actually obviously going to be after the regular S25 release, because we expect that to be in January, which is obviously quarter one.
Speaker 2:So would that put us at about like April April.
Speaker 1:May. Yeah. So this would actually be a way, I guess too, for Samsung to keep up the mind share in consumers' minds, because they release something in January and then they usually don't release a phone until July. So you want to stay fresh in the people's minds. So if you release something in the middle of those two, well now you're keeping yourself in people's kind of minds. So that's actually.
Speaker 1:I was thinking about this because I wrote this article. Actually, this story broke like I don't know it was yesterday and also we had the issue with the news page being erased, so we actually lost some articles. So Meat was planning to write this, but he had a draft and it got erased so I wrote it. When I was writing this, I was thinking what if Samsung is thinking they're going to go and try to bridge the gap instead of doing every six months, maybe every three months? But the middle releases are not completely new. They're special editions of the actual previous release. So you have Galaxy S25 in January, then in April or May you have Galaxy S25 special edition, then in July or August you have Z Fold 6, z Flip 6. And then in October or November you have Z Fold whatever special edition, like they did this year. So you would have main release, special edition, main release, special edition and then you keep yourself fresh in people's minds throughout the year. So you'd have main release, special edition, main release, special edition and then you keep yourself fresh in people's minds throughout the year. And also, if you do it such that the special editions are slimmer versions of the regular phones, you do kind of appeal to different demographics, because some people will still want the bigger, thicker phone that has a bigger battery and some people will want the thinner phone that has a smaller battery because they just want a thinner profile. So I do feel like maybe they won't cannibalize their sales, uh, by doing this.
Speaker 1:But keep in mind, if you really want the baddest flagship you could get like the big boy. You don't want to buy a slim version because one battery is going to be smaller. Almost for sure thermals will be compromised because there's less space. Yeah, exactly lower performance because the thermals it's going to be smaller. Almost for sure Thermals will be compromised because there's less space. Yeah, exactly Lower performance because the thermals it's going to get hotter faster because you've got less space in there, less space to do any kind of cooling and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So you're not going to get the same kind of gaming performance as you would, probably even out of the S25 base model. We'll have to see, but these are, like, most likely the assumptions that you'd have to make in terms of they're going to be pros and cons to both sides. So you know this doesn't mean if you're planning to buy an s25 certainly if you want an s25 ultra don't skip it to buy this because this will not be better. You know that's the only thing I don't like about it is like well, special edition sounds like it could. To some people that might seem better than ultra.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of confusing it's like special versus ultra Like which one is better? Some people don't know, it's not clear what the difference is and of course the ultra branding is so ingrained already I don't really know. They can't change that, so I don't really know what a good name for this would be. What do you think? What do you think about this overall?
Speaker 2:Well, okay, well, okay, initially, for them to have this SE model. Do you think it would be a lower price than the base model, or will it be?
Speaker 1:comparable. My guess is so. Here's the thing this rumor, when I wrote it up, this rumor does not substantiate any of the information as to what is going on with the screen size here, so we don't really know if the screen size is going to be comparable to the galaxy s25 or the s25 plus so it could be like the same size as the plus, the same size of the base, or it could be between the two.
Speaker 1:So I don't know, obviously, if it's the same size of the base or it could be between the two. So I don't know. Obviously, if it's the same size as the plus, it's going to be more expensive than the base model because it's going to be bigger.
Speaker 1:But my guess is, even if it were the same size as the base model, which I think it might end up being between the two, because that would also make sense, because then at least you have a different screen size. But that also costs more money, because then they have to manufacture another screen size and that costs money to manufacture another one. I think it'll be more expensive than either the base, it might be comparable to the Plus, that's my guess. Obviously it can't be the Ultra price. But yeah, what do you?
Speaker 2:think you know, because, for like naming, I was kind of thinking about that too, because we kind of ran into that in the gaming industry as well when they started throwing out the base version, then they threw out the slim, like you know, a few years later, I think, to the enthusiasts, you know they're going to buy, you know, whatever you know, especially if they're also running, you know, youtube channels and stuff like that, or they just want to have the latest and greatest phones, depending on their lifestyle. But you know, when I think of the average consumer, I think Samsung would really need to figure out a nice way to market this, especially if they do something like every three months. They're kind of like releasing something, you know, just to kind of help consumers like find their niche of like, hey, I like the Ultra. I'm really just only going to ever buy when there's Ultra, or, ooh, should I be more leaning towards the Special Edition Because it sounds special, right?
Speaker 2:You know, I think they would need to be a little bit careful with how they're kind of marketing. But I know that's probably something that they are, you know, focusing on, because I'm seeing a lot more Samsung commercials and stuff. So I wonder if that's like another component of them trying to work on their branding and marketing and getting their names out there, but I think they do this to make sure that they are appealing to as many consumers as they can and getting the type of devices that consumers will probably want, especially the average consumer. I think they'll need to probably work on marketing and really highlighting the features so that they know what they're signing up for, because, like I said before, these phones are expensive. They're like an investment, so someone's probably going to be keeping these phones for at least three or so years. So I don't know what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:I think personally that a couple of names were floated for this device. One outlet said S25 Slim and then someone said S25 Special Edition. I think S25 Slim would be a better name because it makes it obvious. It makes it obvious what the difference is between that and the other devices.
Speaker 2:You're making it slimmer. The special kind of makes it seem like, oh, what's better about the special than the Ultra that I just bought?
Speaker 1:That way people don't think that they're getting something better than the Ultra with the Slim, because if you hear Slim versus Ultra, obviously the Ultra sounds better than the.
Speaker 2:Slim.
Speaker 1:Slim, you think, oh well, it's thinner but it might not have the same performance, which is going to be true. However, they've already set a precedent now with the Fold Special Edition. So if they call that the Slim and they call the Fold one the Special Edition, now you have like a disjoint. This is the hard thing about marketing. Marketing is very difficult. As I'm working on our new case brand that we're going to be launching, I've learned there's a lot of decisions that go into how you market and name your products and the consistency across that Turns out.
Speaker 1:I always thought people getting marketing degrees they're like oh, that's easy. Well, maybe getting the degree is easy, but the actual job of doing it is not that easy. So I was wrong about the actual discipline. The degree itself is quite easy to get, but when you actually go out there and put this into practice and have to do the job, that's not as easy, I think that's probably true of a lot of business communications type degrees where it's like, yeah, it's pretty easy to get the degree, you don't need to study as much as you were getting a physics or math or computer science degree.
Speaker 1:But when you actually go out and get the job in order to be at the top of your profession as a marketer or as anyone in those business, you obviously have to learn how to apply those things and it can be very difficult. There's a lot of trial and error, so it should be fair. I'm just being fair to those disciplines because I used to say, oh well, anybody could get a marketing degree.
Speaker 1:And while that may be true, not anybody can actually go out and do the job. The true Not anybody can actually go out and do the job. The job is actually fairly difficult to do. Okay, so another S-25 thing.
Speaker 1:This is a smaller one, but the S25 was officially named by Samsung in their earnings call along with the Galaxy S25 XR headset. So we knew that they were planning to do this, but Samsung hasn't officially commented on this, and so they said that the Galaxy S25 series would be their next launch device and they expect a boost to their earnings from this. Expect a boost to their earnings from this. And then they also said in their earnings that they said, with the Galaxy Ring launched this year, the company plans to contribute to the expansion of Samsung's health ecosystem and enhance the connectivity experience between its products, including our upcoming XR device. So this is their first time commenting on two things. One, the official name of the Galaxy S25, which that's a snore fest. We have to write this because all the other it gets clicks. I don't know why Every year like everyone writes this.
Speaker 1:They always comment on it pretty much around this time when they do their earnings call for the end of the year. Everyone knows it's going to be the Galaxy S25. If it was called like the Galaxy, thanos, alpha, omega, supreme which is what. Flossy Carter calls the Ultra version. If they called it that, if that was the official name, like that would be news, like wait they're going to get rid of the S 25 name.
Speaker 1:They're going to call it the Thanos, alpha, mega, supreme. That would be something worth writing. But I mean is everyone knows the S 25. It's just now. Samsung has officially called it that. So now we can officially say S25, which is kind of good, because now I can put that back on our mystery box pages and Samsung's PR people hopefully won't be angry at us.
Speaker 1:So now they've actually said it in their marketing call. So we know the next name. The more interesting thing is they finally commented this is the first time we know about this. They commented on the existence of their XR headset, which we've talked about a few times here on the show. We still don't know what kind of format it will be. It will be a strap-on headset, it will be glasses, what's it going to be? But they do say that it's coming and it does say upcoming. It doesn't say when. They just said you know, the Galaxy Ring was a success, which I love, the Galaxy Ring.
Speaker 1:Honestly, I still wear mine. Some tech devices I get, you know, because I get so many as a YouTuber and people send me stuff. Sometimes I try to use them for a little bit, like a week or two, and they go back to collecting dust and I pull them out when I need to make another video with that product. I can't use all the stuff I had. Sometimes I give them away, whatever, but I've worn the ring every day and I actually kind of took the place of my wedding band. Nicole Doesn't Mind, so the ring is a great product.
Speaker 1:So this is the first time they commented on the XR device it doesn't say when, though it does seem like they also have some interest in perhaps lowering prices across some of their devices. It says that they're interested in considering ways to lower the entry barriers so that customers can actually experience foldable products. So this is interesting, because we had heard before they were not going to make a lower cost foldable, and now they're saying maybe they will. I don't know. What do you think about these three things? So first, well, these two things the galaxy S 25 naming. That's stupid.
Speaker 1:We already know that that's just what actually is probably going to get the most clicks because it has the word S 25 in the title, but the XR headset. I would kind of prefer if it's the glasses, cause I've seen some XR glasses that look pretty cool, Like the meta glasses. I think those don't look too bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, especially if you know I think we were talking about one time on the podcast uh, like being at like a coffee shop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not wearing a headset to Starbucks.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, yeah, and if it's something along the lines of that, I can see that being like a better trend, like for people to be using it, you know, uh, outside of their homes. But again, um, this could be something that maybe revolutionizes and push, uh, you know, that experience out because, like you know, right now, like with just other vr headsets, like I don't really see very many people using them or buying them or rushing to the stores to get them, and so I am more interested to see, like, what features and you know, now that we have AI coming more about, now maybe they can use some of the Samsung AI to really market it in a different way to get the consumers to want to purchase it. But, you know, I think we just maybe have to wait and see what Samsung has in store, you know, especially if they're already considering the ring to be a, you know, very good product that they've just recently released. I'm hoping that they have the same success with this as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I hope they do. Also, in terms of the ring, I won't go off on a tangent on this. I'll talk more about the XR thing because of what we're doing, but I hope with the ring too. I'm really excited for it. I hope next year they make some improvements to the gestures. This could be a great product that more people would buy. I think maybe if they increase the number of features. Right now it's kind of limited because it really is basically for the health.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's Mostly if you just don't want to wear a smartwatch all the time but you still want to track all the smartwatch stuff, Because I switch between my regular watch and my smartwatch a lot, but I don't like the fact that when I take my smartwatch off I don't want to get my tracking, so now I don't have that problem.
Speaker 1:So if you're someone like me who doesn't necessarily want a smartwatch all the time, but you do want your health tracking all the time, well, the ring is there and is less obtrusive and will do that stuff. In terms of the XR, one thing I was thinking about that when I wrote I didn't write this one when I read this article that Samit wrote, and that is that this is one instance where and I know some people are going to say, well, Samsung did it first because they had the Galaxy Gear VR headset like 10 years ago, but that wasn't really an XR headset in the sense of today's XR headset, that one I told you about before I won previous episode you put your phone in the headset and it was basically, like you could see your phone.
Speaker 2:That's not really what these are I mean not 10 years ago.
Speaker 1:So Samsung did it, but they didn't really do this. This is one instance where Samsung made the right choice and I think as a conscious choice, they waited for Apple to release the Vision Pro and get a gauge on how that did, I think, with the pricing. I think this is one time where Samsung is usually the first one to release everything. They don't ever lag behind Apple. But I think they were unsure because obviously they could have pushed something out Samsung. Obviously they can push something out faster than Apple. They've done it for years every new product category. This time they were like we don't know where to price this. We're not really in this market. Let's see how other competitors perform. So they saw.
Speaker 2:Facebook. I like that idea. Yeah, they saw.
Speaker 1:Facebook do the meta quest A couple generations of that. They saw the Vision Pro and they kind of now have an idea of where to price it, because obviously, as we said, for all intents and purposes you can say whatever you want. If you're an Apple fanboy, the Vision Pro was a failure. I don't care what you say. The Vision Pro is a failure At $3,500,. All the people I know who bought one, they basically tell me they've either sold it or it sits inside their dresser drawer Like if they're a.
Speaker 1:YouTuber. It sits in their product closet, just like I was saying, my product closet of stuff I don't use. They have a $3,500 Vision Pro that they don't really use because it's easier to use your iPadad or your macbook if you're an apple user than to strap on a headset yeah and the macbook is better for productivity just because of the keyboard and how the inputs work.
Speaker 1:So they don't put it on to do video editing if they're a youtuber, because that's harder than using your macbook pro. So now I think samsung knows like we can't offer a two thousand dollar xr headset that's not going to sell the facebook. It's not going to sell the.
Speaker 2:Facebook. The market is just not there yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, by all intents and purposes, the MetaQuest is very successful. So Samsung is probably eyeing that and they're like, oh, $500 around that. It's a sweet spot.
Speaker 2:We could sell a ton of these around $500.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I think if for that, yeah, because it can have so many nice integrations with your Galaxy devices. If you've got a Galaxy book, you've got a Galaxy phone, galaxy tab, you're going to be able to get notifications. You'll be able to do cross-device messaging. When you have your headset on, you'll be able to get your phone notifications and stuff like that They'll be able to sync that up.
Speaker 2:I think the key is do you mean to sell it as an accessory and not so much as another? Yeah, not as a primary device. Yeah, as a primary device.
Speaker 1:I do think that was Apple's problems with the Vision Pro. That's great insight. They were like, yeah, this could just one day it's going to replace everything you have.
Speaker 2:Most people were like no not right now, Maybe one day. But don't sell it like that. In the beginning I think that was Apple's problem too.
Speaker 1:They're like we've introduced so many revolutionary product categories.
Speaker 1:And they have to be fair. You've got to give Apple their props because, no matter what you say, if the iPhone launch hadn't happened in 2007, if Steve Jobs didn't do that, there would likely not be an Android and Samsung to the degree we know it now. They would still exist as companies. But smartphones themselves were very much spurred into the limelight by the first iPhone and of course, android then kind of came along and did a bunch of stuff too, but a lot of the things that they did were revolutionary. I'm not going to say anything crappy about Apple in that sense. It's just, unfortunately, after Steve Jobs left they kind of went to like let's just rest on our laurels and do the minimum amount change the phone color and keep it moving. I had an iPhone up to the four, but then around the time that steve jobs stopped being active as like the main, you know person behind the scenes at apple and the transition to tim cook.
Speaker 1:It was a lot of like let's try to eke out as much money as we can from people and, uh, you know, change some colors, whatever and that's also why I'm frustrated with tm row because he's doing the same thing at samsung and does it make money?
Speaker 1:does it make money for the company? Sure, but I also think you can make money by doing a little bit more in terms of pushing the envelope, which Samsung is trying to do now, like we saw with the Z Folded Special Edition commercial. They are pushing the envelope under the door and they're trying to say that they are going to go back to doing that. So we hope that they do. But I'm excited to test the Galaxy XR headset if it's around $500. Yeah and I. It's around 500 bucks. Yeah, and I feel like it'll be interesting to our audience, because if it was three thousand dollars, I'd probably review it, but I would feel like I wouldn't be really doing much of a service because no one would be interested in it.
Speaker 2:It's like yeah, because nobody else would probably. That's why I didn't even buy a vision pro.
Speaker 1:I mean, I have a macbook pro. That's my main video editing machine that I use for my my work. But I didn't buy the vision pro because it's like man man $3,500, I probably will never use it. It doesn't really seem like the tool I need for my particular use case for work. But I'm excited about the XR headset and I'm not excited that the phone is called the Galaxy S25, because everybody knew that already. But hey, that's what you've got to put in the article to get the clicks.
Speaker 1:I guess, we now know the official name is the Galaxy S25.
Speaker 1:Everybody knew that when the Galaxy S24 came out, so I don't know why anyone thought they would change it. Now, what we don't know, the better question actually, is what happens when we get to the S29? Are they going to go S30 or will they go up like some other crazy amount of numbers? Because, keep in mind, you know they went from S10 to S20. There was no S11. So are they going to skip some other crazy amount of numbers? I mean, that'll be the real article. So in like six years, that's the one that you should be clicking on, because, we don't know, maybe there'll be the Galaxy S50 after that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know why we're skipping so many numbers or whatever.
Speaker 1:Anyway, that's most of what we had in terms of hardware leaks. It's basically the S25 information in terms of the special edition and then the XR headset information coming out. In the second half of the show we're going to talk about One UI 7.0, because One UI 7.0 has got a lot of leaks, so it's mostly going to be that kind of stuff, and we're going to do that, of course, right after we hear from the sponsor of today's podcast. This episode of the Semi-Guru Podcast is brought to you by 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. 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, and before we get into the One UI 7 stuff, there's one last thing in the show notes that I had about Galaxy hardware news and this is kind of a crazy rumor that we covered on Sammy Guru this week. There's a rumor going around that samsung may consider removing the galaxy branding entirely from their flagships. So like the s line and like the foldables, like the z fold, z flip line, and only like budget and mid-range phones would be galaxies. So like you would have, like your galaxy a55, sure, but you wouldn't have a Galaxy S25 Ultra, you would have the Samsung S25 Ultra.
Speaker 1:This is not uncommon in other product lines, like with cars, toyota a lot of people know they own Lexus and so Lexus is a completely different name than Toyota. But really, if you know anything about cars, if you're a car guy, I mean I don't claim to be like the number one car guy, but I know a decent amount. I like cars the Toyota Camry and the base Lexus. You know sedan, I forgot the name of it. Those two are basically built on the same chassis, and so chassis.
Speaker 2:They're both in the same chassis. Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 1:They're built on the same chassis, so they're basically the same car from a lot of perspectives. This is also true of Audi. I'm an Audi fan. That's lot of perspectives. This is also true of audi. I'm an audi fan. That's what I have. If I have an sq8, the audi rsq8, which is the top performance level of the audi suv, I don't have an rsq8, just an sq8, which is still a nice one, but the it's built on the same chassis as the lamborghini, uh, urus, and which is the fastest suv in the world. Um, and so they have. They basically are very similar cars from a lot of perspectives. Just a lot of the performance on the inside is souped up, and so this would kind of be the idea, right? Samsung wants to differentiate their premium products by removing any sub-branding, so it's just Samsung blank. And then Galaxy would be like you know, you're getting a lower tier device of some sort. I don't know how I feel about this, though. I feel like Galaxy's got a lot of brand value now.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And plus this would create a host of problems. I don't know how I feel about this rumor, because you've got Galaxy AI, you've got Galaxy a lot of things. I just don't know. There's actually a rumor. We're going to talk about One UI 7 in just a second. They're rumored to change the name of AR Emoji to Galaxy Avatar, so you're still going to have all these software things that are called Galaxy blank Galaxy Store. Well, actually they did remove Galaxy from the Galaxy Store. It just says Store now, but a lot of these brands, sub-brands on the software on the One UI side are Galaxy.
Speaker 2:What do you think, tori, about this idea? Yeah, no, I'm in the same bucket as you in terms of, of, like, when I hear the word galaxy, I hear premium, you know, uh, just I think, like from my overtime, because, like, when I first started to get into samsung phones, like, uh, everyone was talking about galaxy and I was like, oh, like, you know, that just sounds like better, you know, and so, like I feel like they were to drop the galaxy one. It would create like a lot of confusion, um, but you know, I'm I'm more in favor, at least as, like, uh, the average consumer, as in, maybe like the lower tier, just be samsung, whatever, but have that galaxy stay with the. I would like that too.
Speaker 1:Actually, I would prefer that. It would be interesting actually to see now what they do for the S25 event, because usually their events are called Galaxy Unpacked. The last one, I think they called it Samsung Unpacked it was. So are they trying to push it away from the Galaxy for the premium devices? So are they going to call the S25 event Samsung Unpacked or Galaxy Unpacked? We have to watch that. That's a subtle little thing that we should keep. I might write an editorial on that when it comes time for the event announcement, when we get them and we will get one because we actually are on the list now. Oh my gosh, I can't believe it. When I get my media invite to that, I'm like, oh my gosh, I finally did it. I feel like I made it. Say, mama, I made it All right.
Speaker 1:Anyway, oneui7, there's a whole bunch of crazy OneUI7 stuff. That's going to probably be most of what we talk about here. The rest of the show, so lots of stuff. One OneUI7 internal build is now basically to beta stage, which means it's stable enough for beta. That has happened Because October 31st was the deadline. They now have one. The next thing. I'm just going to run down some of the things we know and then we can talk about them. The next thing is Ice Universe, and a couple of other leakers have said that we're going to get the beta by the end of November, most likely around November 15th through the 21st.
Speaker 1:Interestingly, sdc Korea the Samsung Developer Conference Korean version, like the one I went to in San Jose, but they hold it in their home country. That's November 21st. We talked about that a little bit last week, so that could be a possible date. I would say, based on my experience covering Samsung all these years, the most likely dates for the beta to launch are either the 15th, which is two weeks from yesterday, that's a Friday or the 21st. If they don't launch on the 15th, I think they'll wait until SDC Korea, that's on Thursday. I'm going to put my money on SDC Korea being the day, because they already said they're going to live stream the event and this week we saw Android headlines got their hands on some exclusives. I've got to talk to how are they getting some exclusives? We've got to start getting some exclusives. If people have exclusives, man, email me, jeff at sammygrucom. I'm willing to pay you some money, man. Come on, they can't be paying that much.
Speaker 2:We got resources.
Speaker 1:Just email me. They posted a video that looks like an official promo video showing like the animations, new icons, everything we've seen Like there wasn't a whole lot of super new stuff, yeah, but it looks like it's from a keynote and so obviously Samsung usually does a keynote introducing the news. Since they didn't do it here at SDC, they might do it in Korea. Now I'm not flying to Korea to go to the Korean version of SDC. It's just a little too far. I mean I would love to go, but I mean just to. I mean I can obviously download the beta here and I can watch the live stream event. I already went, you know, in san jose, but I think that's probably the most likely date because we saw that promo uh image leak.
Speaker 1:Um, the other thing is the beta forums are now open, which means if you go to the samsung community forums, they have now opened a forum that says beta testing s24, s24 plus s24 ultra and for the s23 Plus S23 Ultra, because those would be the first two phones to get the beta. They always do that. Usually about two weeks to a month before they open the beta testing, they open the official forums. That's where people can give feedback on any bugs and stuff like that help improve. That's the whole point of beta testing is to give them feedback on what's wrong with it so they can fix it. And Samsung fans definitely do. They love with it, so they can fix it. Uh, and samsung fans definitely do. They love to complain, so the forums get filled up very fast with people complaining.
Speaker 1:Um, then also last night, chun bai, who's another samsung leaker. We've covered before on x. He now talked about three other new features he's discovered. He has the beta running on a phone. He obviously has a build from someone inside samsung. We don't know exactly how he gets it, but but he has. Obviously he's been running it. One the new live activities feature. We talked about how Apple has the live activities on the dynamic Island. Samsung's going to have the little pop-ups. They're going to live on the lock screen, at the very bottom of the lock screen, and the name of it is going to be called now bar. I don't like. What do you think of that name? I don't like, what do you think of that name?
Speaker 2:I don't like that name. I don't. I feel like they could have came up with something a little bit more catchier or simpler.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah I feel like someone was like quick, we need a name for this like what should we do it like? There's a bar there right now and someone's like oh, that's it now bar, now bar. Yeah, there's a bar there now we call it bar now and someone's like no now, bar Now Bar.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, oh wow.
Speaker 1:That's what you call marketing Innovation, right there.
Speaker 2:Using those degrees. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1:Now, that's the easy version of marketing right there, but it's not very good though.
Speaker 2:I don't like the name, but I get it because it's right there it's the bar.
Speaker 1:It's there now on your lock screen. So you want the information. Here it is.
Speaker 2:It's now and it's in a bar, maybe like QuickBar or something. Quickbar would be a good name.
Speaker 1:I like QuickBar actually.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I would even call it LockBar before I would call it NowBar, because it lives on the lock screen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:So I don't know.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of better names.
Speaker 1:This to be something like quick and catchy, yeah, like yeah but chun bai did mention that this is the current internal name, so it's possible. Before they unveil the beta later this month they might be like, wow, that really sucks. Maybe they'll listen to this podcast.
Speaker 2:The sammy guru said this sucks we should change it.
Speaker 1:You should change it. It's not very good, but I mean they have some other names that I'm not a huge fan of too. Within good luck it actually sounds more like a name for a feature they would put in good luck versus the actual stock one ui.
Speaker 1:Like if this was in good luck no one would care, because not as many people see it yeah if I saw like now bar is a new module in good luck, I'd be like, oh, that makes sense, but putting it in the stock one ui it doesn't sound very good. Usually they think about it a little more with the stock one ui kind of features, but anyway it very useful. I actually like their implementation better than Apple's. You also have a persistent notification area where it shows your live notifications so you can run like a timer, like a voice recorder calls, whatever they can go in the live notifications, as you're kind of you know, working on things like that and it seems like it could be good.
Speaker 1:But of course, the make or break I wrote this up, the article last night when he published this leak over on x and the maker break for me is that they got to have third-party apps integrated, like in the video they show, like their own apps, like phone voice recorder and clock timer. Those are all samsung apps. Of course they're going to work, yeah, but what about you know, like other apps that I want to have live activities for, like what about door dash?
Speaker 1:yeah, am I going to be able to get you to the. What about DoorDash? Yeah, am I going to be able to get the status of my DoorDash order down there? Am I going to be able to get like timers and things for other video apps like Netflix? Am I going to be able?
Speaker 2:to get things that I might want down there.
Speaker 1:I don't know. That's where Apple sometimes kills Android because they work so closely with third-party developers, because they own the software and the hardware before launch. They don't just throw it out there and they're like oh well, this new feature only supports Apple-made first-party apps like phone and clock. They're like no, this supports everything Twitter, facebook.
Speaker 1:It's going to support all the big third-party apps, so Samsung really should make sure that it does support some of those like sports scores for instance, like with Google Now, like Penn sports scores. Those should be able to be penned to the lock screen now using the Now bar.
Speaker 1:And those should be able to. You can swipe between them too, which is very convenient, but it's going to come down to how many third-party apps, because if I can only use like the stock Samsung apps, well, the appeal is very limited. But if there's a lot of other live activities that I can use with Now, bar that exists for third-party apps, then I definitely will want to use it. It'll become a fixture on my lock screen. The other big feature, which they borrowed from Apple and iOS 18.1 Apple Intelligence, is notification summaries on the lock screen. Galaxy AI will now summarize all of your notifications from a particular app and bundle it into one message. If you want. I've been using this on the iPhone. I will tell you it is very hit or miss. In fact, I'll tell you guys a story in just a second. That's funny about Apple Intelligence. I wanted to share it and I didn't know if I'd really have a chance to make a video, because I wasn't going to make a video specifically for that. That's what the podcast is good for.
Speaker 2:Here's your exclusive. Exactly, yeah.
Speaker 1:But basically, if you have a bunch of messages, like a conversation, let's say, with your girlfriend, or I'm talking to my wife, and you got like 10 messages from her while you were away, I mean my wife usually doesn't do that, but sometimes people will keep writing messages while you're away.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't mind if she does, she's my wife, but it'll summarize them so like if she's like go to the store and get some milk and then she's like get some eggs and oh yeah, I forgot, also get some baby wipes, then it will summarize that in one bundled message and say needs milk, eggs, baby wipes, and then that'll be it. So you don't have to look through all the messages. You don't have to click into the app either to see all the messages, because they're all threaded and they're all in one message there. The problem is with Apple intelligence at least hopefully Samsung improves this. For some messages the AI messes up the context terribly.
Speaker 1:In my own case, on Halloween, you know we were away because we were at the rail yard in Scottsdale. We weren't home. My mother-in-law had some candy. She was handing out some candy. She put it on the front portion of the bucket and was like take one, in case she wasn't out there, cause she was also trying to help Nicole do a few other things around the house. And the Apple intelligence a AI summaries on my iPhone. While I was at the rail yard I got a notification that said the there are many people at your door, the police are there. And I was like what? And I checked my nest doorbell, and it was because some kid had dressed up like a police officer, and so they thought the trick-or-treaters were the police and I was like why are there a bunch of people in the police at my door?
Speaker 1:and it's because there's a bunch of trick-or-treaters and one of them had on a police outfit. So the ai thought the police were at my door and I was like whoa. I was like I need to check my doorbell camera.
Speaker 2:Why are the police at my house?
Speaker 1:And so yeah, so I can mess it up. Then I saw another person who was talking in conversation with her mom and her mom was telling her this was on X that she had gone hiking and she said that hike was crazy. It was so tough I almost killed myself hiking, or that hike almost killed me. She said that hike almost killed me. It was a rough one, and so she had posted a couple of the threads and the girl came back to her phone and apple intelligence had summarized it almost committed suicide but recovered and hiked palm canyon so you know there's some problems.
Speaker 1:You know you don't really want to get those kind of summaries because, like, oh no, there's a lot of people plus the police at your door and then like your mother committed suicide. Those are not exactly the summaries.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then hiked she committed suicide.
Speaker 1:But she recovered and then hiked palm canyon. That's not exactly no, the useful ai features that you want.
Speaker 1:So hopefully samsung does a better job with this. I kind of figured this was coming in one ui7 at some point or 7.1, because apple did it and it is a useful feature. Um, sometimes it's useful. If I have a long thread of like slack notifications for work, it'll say, like you know, samit said this, this, this, and it's all in one line. I can take action and I don't have to read the whole thread. But obviously there's some problems, as you can see so we'll see, what do you think?
Speaker 1:Does it sound like a useful feature? I mean, aside from the obvious flaws there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean honestly, overall it does, because, like, we're such a on-the-go type of society now, and like because we're also so busy, like, and people do send multiple messages, this would be quite useful and I do think people will gravitate towards it. But obviously, you know, just like with anything, it takes time to get better. Yeah, those would be a little scary. I don't know about those particular summaries.
Speaker 1:But Samsung has more experience in AI than Apple. Apple is pretty new. They actually said internally if anyone saw Apple actually admitted in their own earnings, call. They think they're two to three years behind other companies in AI, which Apple never admits they're behind. But they did, they think they're behind in AI, so perhaps Samsung's Galaxy Eye feature for the AI.
Speaker 1:It's going to be called AI. Notifications is what Chun-Bi said would be nice. I actually think they should have named it Notifications Assist, because we have Node Assist and Call Assist and all those other ones.
Speaker 2:I don't know why they call it AI notifications it should be called notification assist. Maybe it'll change it. I think it's that push. I want to call it the war for dominance of AI. You know, literally everything is AI, so I feel like they have to.
Speaker 1:Everyone needs to be the best. Yes, ai.
Speaker 2:They have to have that in the naming.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think, so.
Speaker 1:But hey, if TMRO is listening to this podcast, we've got all kinds of great ideas. They're free. We really do, as long as you guys, you know someone, send this to TMRO. We've got great ideas here. So we'll forward that over to him and make sure he gives it a listen while he's polishing up One UI 7 for the beta phase. But the last feature that Chun Bai revealed is that One UI 7.0 has an option now in the developer options not in the main settings to completely turn off thermal throttling entirely. Thermal throttling means when your phone gets hot it throttles down the CPU clock speed so it doesn't get even hotter or so that it cools, because phones don't have a lot of active cooling.
Speaker 1:If you have a big gaming PC at home, you have some kind of active cooling inside the case. But because your phone is so small, right, like, if you have a big gaming PC at home, you have some kind of active cooling inside the case, yeah. But because your phone is so small, right, like, use vapor chambers, these vapor chambers, things like that in phones, but you don't have like really crazy active cooling like you do on a big PC tower. So if your phone gets really hot, it can either get hotter or you could throttle down the CPU, which gives you less performance.
Speaker 2:So if you're gaming.
Speaker 1:That's unfortunate for gamers If you have thermal issues if they, if it gets too hot, because then your performance will be downgraded, because it obviously slows down your performance. Yeah, so this is something gamers have wanted for a while, but a little depending on how good. We don't know the Snapdragon. There were some rumors. The Snapdragon, uh good. We don't know the snapdragon there were some rumors. The snapdragon uh eight elite had some thermal issues itself. So if that's true I hope that's not true, some people said no, but if that were true, that'd be bad, because then you might end up burning your hand if you turn off thermal throttling. But I hope you have a case on it. Um, and also it makes me worried because you remember the note 7 debacle with things blowing up. You know you don't want things getting too hot.
Speaker 2:No, spicy, too spicy yeah, yeah, yeah, and I was just reading, uh the other day. It was like some uh, I forgot what her actual thing was, uh, but or her actual title for this company, but like they work on, um, like just keeping parents and stuff uh informed, and they're like hey, like you know, make sure like your kids aren't falling asleep with their cell phones and stuff, you know like on the bed, oh yeah yeah, yeah, yeah you got to be careful with that, so this could be interesting.
Speaker 1:I think gamers will appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Obviously, regular users are never going to find this oh yeah, Because you've got to go in and tap on the build number a bunch of times to enable developer options. Yeah, no, I turn it on. It's not like you're turning this on by accident. That's why it's in the developer options. But if you want this as a gamer and you know the risks, obviously hopefully you're using a case that's got some decent insulation so you don't burn your hand and you need it for gaming performance. If you do it in short gaming sessions, probably not a big deal. But we'll have to see how the thermals are.
Speaker 1:On the Snapdragon 8 Elite, I am going to import a phone. I think probably Xiaomi or someone's going to have the very first phone with a Snapdragon 8 Elite. I'm going to import one of those just so I can kind of see the performance of the processor and kind of report on that a little bit. Of course, we never know until we see Samsung's version, because they could get a special version. There could be a Snapdragon 8 Elite for galaxy exclusive, because sometimes qualcomm will make a specific processor with samsung that's tuned for specific things they want in one ui that's how much pool samsung has. They can get a custom version of the top chip. So we'll see what what ends up happening there.
Speaker 1:But if you're waiting on the beta most likely beta happening 15th or the 21st that's gonna be where I peg it. Ice universe said we have to wait at least half a month, but he said it would be by the end of November. You can take that to the bank because he never is really wrong too much, but I'm guessing half a month means 15th or 21st. If I had to put my money, if I was betting in Vegas, if I was setting the line on this, I'm going to say it's about if I was making the odds in like DraftKings. I'm going to say it's about 2-1 on the 15th, 2-1. So if you bet 50, you're going to get your bet back plus twice that bet. Right there You're going to get it.
Speaker 1:And then I'm going to say the 21st is almost even money, Maybe just like I don't know, maybe like plus don't know it's it's pretty close to even money. I'm gonna say the 21st is probably the best bet that's.
Speaker 2:That's what I would.
Speaker 1:That's what I would say if I were betting and those were the options I'd put my money on, even if it were just, even if it were just, you know I get my money plus, you know, a little back I would still bet on the 21st over the 15th, because the 15th is a friday. I don't know when they've released a beta on the Friday in the past. I don't remember that happening. I'd have to look back at the beta releases, but I don't remember. It's usually on a weekday in the middle, like Monday through Thursday, and SDC is on a Thursday. So that would be where I'd probably put my money. Okay, so that's pretty much what I had to say about One UI 7. It's going to be massive. When it does launch. We're going to have tons of stuff on it, on the site and stuff. So make sure you bookmark the website, make sure you check out the Galaxy S25 articles everything you need to know, because that's being updated by Submit every single week now as Galaxy S25 gets closer. Very exciting there. Mystery boxes, of course. Sign up for that. We got over 5,000 people signed up for S25 boxes this year. It's going to be massive. It's going to be our biggest. That's actually we got all these boxes in here. These are shipping boxes. Products are already coming in for S25, because I know it's going to be so huge. We need to start packing this month for S25 or we won't get done. So if you want free accessories for your S25 devices, go sign up. That's in the show notes too.
Speaker 1:But one big question today that I got it's a couple part question. I think it was Larry on X who asked this in the thread that I asked for questions yesterday and that is that Samsung. You know they release phones every year for the flagships and we had said previously that three years is kind of a sweet spot, which is what Tori is going to upgrade is S22 Ultra to S25 Ultra. And Larry asked what do you think the pros and cons will be of upgrading the S25 Ultra or keeping my S24 Ultra? And also, what do you think that you gain or lose by doing either a one, two or three or longer upgrade cycle? So comment on what you gain or lose each year. So first of all, the first part of that question. If you upgrade every year, obviously the only thing you lose is the implied value of your money, because really the upgrades year over year are not usually worth it. I mean, I'm just saying on the average. I'll talk about this year specifically in a second, but on the average there's no reason to upgrade year over year. That's just point blank.
Speaker 1:If you have an S24 Ultra, do you need an S25 Ultra? No, it's still going to get security updates for another six years. It's still going to get platform and feature updates for another at least three or four years. It's going to be set. It's still a very powerful processor inside. It still probably has lots of storage. Obviously, that's a personal thing. If you just bought a phone that has too little storage for you and you end up you know you need a lot of storage cause you store a lot of movies, pictures, whatever, then that could be a reason to upgrade and then obviously I would just get the newer model cause yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, that could be a reason.
Speaker 1:Like, if you have gig S24 Ultra and you're like, oh man, I'm at 240 gigs, I'm using a lot of movies and I have a lot of photos, I store stuff because I travel a lot, then I want a 512 or one terabyte. Well then, yeah, buy an S25 Ultra, they'll give you a trade-in, it's not a big deal. But otherwise, I mean, there's really no reason to upgrade year over year For two years, which I don't think is a bad one. I said three years is the sweet spot for most people. Two years would be like if you are kind of into phones and you do game with your phone a lot and you do a lot of multitasking, two years is probably the sweet spot because two years is probably where you see like a decent performance jump. Like if you upgrade every two years, you're getting two years newer processor and even on an average year that's like a 30 to 40% performance boost. So if you play games and of course as game developers make new games, they're taking into account which processors are available, so they ramp up their graphics proportional to how good the processors are. So if you have two years ago's processor, the games two years from then will obviously not be keeping up as well. So if you're a gamer or if you do tons of multitasking, two years is probably the sweet spot. You're still not losing security updates. You're still not losing platform and feature updates, so you're still getting all the software stuff from Samsung and your phone's still perfectly secure. And if you're just a light user, no problem.
Speaker 1:So three years is kind of where things get to, where the most average consumers probably want to upgrade for a few reasons. One, your battery is probably degraded a decent amount, and that's probably the biggest reasons a lot of people do. After three years your battery is probably to around 75 to 80 percent of its original life cell wise. So you're probably getting about 30 to 35 percent less battery life than you did when you first bought it. So you're going to notice you have a lot less screen on time. You have to charge it more often. You're also getting to the point where it's getting towards the end of getting the feature updates. You might not get certain features the following year if you don't upgrade, so you might miss out on One UI feature updates. You're still getting security updates, so no problem there. And then plus, because Samsung adds all these new features like AI and stuff. Your phone also might feel a little bit slower after three years because some of the new AI features and stuff if you want to use some of those, even if you get them, the processor from three years ago may not be optimized for those tasks.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of the breakdown like after one year. You're not losing hardly anything. I would only upgrade if one you just love to have the newest stuff and if it's a hobby for you obviously it was for me before I started this cool, do it if it makes you happy and you've got the money. Cool. But you don't really need to unless you have, like a storage concern or something like that. After two years, like I said, you know that's the time where it's basically you know you're going to want to upgrade. If you're like a gaming guy, a multitasking guy, used a lot for work, the processor jump is going to be pretty significant. And then after three years, that's where most people should upgrade because battery life is going to be significantly degradated. You're going to lose a lot of those feature updates in the following year and obviously it's going to feel slower because new features are going to be pushing that three-year-old processor Now.
Speaker 1:After that, of course, who should?
Speaker 1:I say should not upgrade for three years? I would say mainly like your grandparents, people who don't use that phone for any smart functions other than just phones for the most part. Maybe they view photos. You send them in an email once every week. Well then, yeah, they don't need to upgrade for like five or six years because that's when the security updates run out, and then you obviously want their phone to stay secure if they're still accessing some of that information on the internet. But if you have, you know, parents or grandparents who are like 65 plus five or six years is probably perfectly fine, right, like it's not a big deal. But for most average Americans that are in like the 18 to, let's say, 55 demographic who are working, have kids, family, whatever they do, care about the performance. Two to three years, depending on if you play games or if you use it a lot for, like multitasking for work, that's what I would say. What do you think, tori? What do you think about that analysis? Because you're kind of an average consumer, do you think that seems reasonable?
Speaker 2:about that analysis because you're you're kind of average consumer. Do you think that seems reasonable? Uh, yeah, yeah, I know, and I was actually just thinking uh, I think before 2013. Um, at least from my perspective, it seemed like from cell phone company or not cell phone companies, but cell phone carriers uh, most people were upgrading their phones about every two years, because that seemed to be like the upgrade cycle. So I remember like a lot of my family and friends were like, oh okay, well, yeah, every two years I'm eligible for upgrade and I should probably upgrade because I want.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, because when we didn't have the payment plans, we were talking about that. Yeah, they did the subsidized devices, yeah.
Speaker 2:But now we have the payment plans, so people are kind of like oh well, I'm holding on to the phone a little bit longer because I don't want to necessarily be on another payment plan. Exactly, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think the carriers kind of lost themselves some money there. I think a lot more people upgrade when they have the subsidized device because it's like oh well, it's only $300, $400 to upgrade to the new S25 Ultra. I'm going to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why not? Because it's pretty cheap.
Speaker 1:Why not? Because it's pretty cheap. In the end it's basically the same, because they just built in the cost of the plan to be higher when they subsidize devices. If you're a person just looking at that, it seems that way For this year, particularly because Larry did ask S24 Ultra versus S25 Ultra. From what we've seen, this is a bigger jump than usual because we talked about it last week. The Snapdragon Elite is a big processor upgrade. I still don't think you have to or need to upgrade, but if you are a gaming or multitasking guy and you take a lot of photos, the computational photography upgrade alone, aside from just the camera hardware that samsung will bring, should be pretty big. So this is a year where I would lean more. Like if I were leaning one way or another, if I, if I was on the fence about year over year, this is a year where I would lean more towards doing it Like last year S23 to S24, I would have told people don't do it.
Speaker 2:If you've got an S23. It's the same phone, yeah.
Speaker 1:I was like congratulations, you bought the same phone twice.
Speaker 1:I mean it had a flat side instead of a slightly curved, but there was almost nothing that much different. They didn't even vastly improve the camera. I mean I'm glad a lot of you guys bought S24 Ultras because that helped us make some money and we got to send a lot of mystery boxes. It did really well, which is great. Maybe those are people who are upgrading from the S21, which is fine, or the S22. But if you went S23 to S24, almost the same phone I mean it had the anti-reflective coating but it's not like a massive. The S24 Ultra is still a champ, a beast. I have one, I mean I can use it or the S24 Ultra. There's no performance, real changes in day-to-day, even on 6.1.1. So I mean, yeah, I would have told people the other year, absolutely not this year. If I were on the fence and I were someone who likes phones, I would lean towards upgrading because one you've got the rounded design I design. I actually like that over the squared off corners because it fits nicer in the hand when.
Speaker 1:I don't use case. Big fan of that. Actually this year we do have. They're going to improve the anti-reflective coating. They're changing some of the camera hardware this year. Last year we didn't have any change to the camera hardware. We're going to get a better processor. That's actually significantly better. Instead of 5%, it's like 30. That's a pretty.
Speaker 1:That's like usually like a two-year jump yeah from last year to this year is basically like a two-year processor upgrade, um plus. You know there's some other surprises I'm sure that samsung hasn't trickled out plus, keep in mind, if you are an enthusiast one, ui7 is coming to the s25 ultra and stable first. If you have an s24, you're not getting it until s25 ultra. So if you love trying out the new software and you don't want to do the beta, the only way you're getting the stable first is to buy the S25 Ultra. So there's that added little benefit of it as well. So this is a year where I would lean a little more towards upgrading, just because one.
Speaker 1:I do think the Snapdragon 8 Elite is a massive change in kind of the paradigm for Qualcomm's chips. I think it's going to bring a lot of improvements, including battery life, and I personally like the rounded design, the corners, because I, just when I use it, I use my phone without a case at home sometimes and it feels nicer. So I personally like that. So that would be my analysis. Do you have to upgrade s24 to s25? Of course not. I mean it's not like the s24 ultra is going to become garbage when the s25 ultra comes out. It's. It's going to be a great phone, but I think it's a much bigger I'd say two to three times bigger upgrade than S23 Ultra and S24 Ultra. So certainly if you have an S22 Ultra or older, I would say upgrade for sure. If you have an S23 Ultra, I'd still say this is a good time to upgrade because you're going to get a lot of camera upgrades. I mean, of course it also comes down. Do you like the rounded corners, like I do?
Speaker 1:If you don't, then, you might hang on to your S23 Ultra a little longer because obviously the design is not something you can really change the physical design, but in terms of camera upgrades, processor upgrades, this is going to be a pretty big upgrade from S23 to S25 Ultra. So I would probably lean towards upgrading. So I would say S23 Ultra before I would say I would probably lean towards upgrading. So I would say S23 Ultra before I would say I would do it S24 Ultra. I would say it really depends on if you are enthusiast, if you have the extra money After trade-in it's probably only going to be about $400 to upgrade because Samsung gives you a lot of money. If you have an S23 Ultra, s24, even the S22,. Tori's probably going to get like $700 or or 800 for his S22 Ultra.
Speaker 1:They give you a lot for the last two to three years because they want to push the people who are in the two to three year because they know they really might be on the fence about an upgrade. So they're like here, let's give you a massive trade-in credit and then you'll definitely want to upgrade because it'll be super appealing.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I think that's mostly what we're going to chat about. That was a really good question that we got this week. I like when we have the longer kind of questions I can dive into like multiple parts. So if you guys have those, definitely send them over. I think Tori and I are about to go get some lunch here, Going to go grab a sandwich from Potbelly here on Saturday.
Speaker 1:Good place and, yeah, next week we'll be back, probably going to be a lot more One UI 7.0 stuff. Who knows, maybe they send my Z Fold Special Edition early and I'm sure there'll be a lot of other Samsung news every week.
Speaker 2:That's how we exist.
Speaker 1:There's 10 to 15 pieces of Samsung news every day, otherwise Sammy Guru would not exist. In the meantime, hope you guys all have a great week and this week keep expanding your galaxy.