SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition Has Arrived + Bixby is SO Back
Samsung enthusiasts, prepare to feast on a buffet of insights into the latest tech innovations. We’re spilling the beans on exclusive early Black Friday deals, focusing on the much-anticipated Galaxy S25 Slim. Will Samsung’s strategic release of Ultra and Slim models impact sales and consumer choices? From camera specs to the influence of color options, join us in dissecting what makes a smartphone truly stand out in a crowded market. And for our fellow tech aficionados, we delve into the futuristic allure of foldable and rollable phones, and the tantalizing potential of the Galaxy Ring 2.
In a world where digital assistants are becoming household staples, we brave the battle of Bixby versus Google Assistant, weighing their strengths and exploring how Samsung might better position Bixby in a competitive tech landscape. With rumors swirling about leadership changes at Samsung Mobile, we speculate on how these could shape the company’s future trajectory. Who will lead the charge towards innovation, and what could it mean for the tech giant’s strategy? Join us for an episode packed with insights, personal stories, and forward-thinking discussions.
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Welcome back everybody. This is episode number 20 of the Sammy Guru podcast. My name is Jeff Springer. With me always is my co-host, tori. Tori say hi, hey, how's it going? And yeah, 20 episodes Wow 20 episodes. I can't believe we actually made it to 20. That's crazy. No-transcript.
Speaker 2:So yeah, we really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:We have a lot of fun doing the podcast too. Tori, how was your week this week, I mean?
Speaker 2:honestly I want to say it was pretty good. I only had to work Monday through Thursday I mean, I still the word Friday but it was one of those days where we don't have students. We were allowed to just mostly focus on grades, kind of talk as a team with other teachers who also teach geometry with me. So yeah, it was pretty relaxing. My team, my high school team, is making it to the playoffs.
Speaker 1:We were able to defeat oh yeah, you told us they had the opportunity to do that last week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Just about a blowout. Some point they got a touchdown. I want to say, like in the third quarter, the other team, but up until then we were like 27 and zero. Uh, up until that point, um, and so yeah, I know so, so good stuff, and then just pokemon and per usual, and that's it yeah, so when do they play their playoff game?
Speaker 2:uh, so, uh, we're gonna, I think it the we skip a week and then it's the Friday. I might have to come check it out with you, just fun, it's not like a little high school football, at least when I'm invested in the game.
Speaker 1:So if you let me know where it is, maybe I'll come check out the football. Yeah, we'll do. Tori and I are both Pokemon fans. He plays the game. I'm more collected because I just don't have time. I played when I was younger, when I was in middle school and high school.
Speaker 1:I played Pokemon TCG when it first kind of came out you know 1998, because I'm super old, so I played it when I first arrived on the scene and then I kind of took a break, got back into it a couple different times and now I've kind of been into collecting. I collect mostly vintage stuff, but some of the modern sets have tempted me. I was a huge fan of Hidden Fates. I opened a lot of that, and then I also opened quite a lot of the other, like special shiny vault sets, like Shining Fates stuff, but then for the terms of booster boxes recently, of course, evolving Skies, I opened some of that.
Speaker 2:I wish I would have saved all that, because that's I do still have a few booster boxes that sealed um, and yeah. So how are you liking the new set anyway, tori? Uh, I mean so far, you know, with it being this is the first week because I I did participate in the pre-release uh, I actually like the, the the new set. Uh, the executor ex I remember that was always an interesting pokemon when I was a kid, a part of the original 151. So it's really cool that he is getting some EX love and I mean, but other than that, the pool rates are actually pretty hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were talking about that, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I do enjoy the set, but also it's really hard to get some of the good cards in there.
Speaker 1:And I don't think the pricing on the special edition special art Pikachu is going to be able to be sustained, Because I looked on eBay last night because I didn't pull one when me and Jonathan opened our box and I was thinking I was just buying one. The prices on the raw ones are crazy. Now they're like $500, $600.
Speaker 2:They've almost doubled. 're like three to five to six, you know yeah and the psa 10s are selling for like three grand.
Speaker 1:So that's not gonna, that's not gonna continue because I remember when the chunky rainbow pikachu v max came out. Remember that card. Yeah, that card was selling for these price too, and now you can buy a psa 10 for, like, I think, three hundred dollars maybe 250, even, it's like quite down there so, uh, I would say, if you are a Pokemon fan with modern, the thing is, you've got to wait a little bit to see.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying you shouldn't necessarily buy a raw copy, because you probably won't overpay too much for a raw copy. If you find a good raw copy you could grade. If you want to grade it, which is what I want to do with it, buy it Probably still cheaper than ripping product to get it, because it's so hard to pull that you're gonna have to buy like three or four cases.
Speaker 1:You'll spend three, four grand. Pull your own raw copy. Yeah, of course you'll get some other cards, but you probably will lose money in the long run when you do that. Um, tory back actually thinking about starting our own little youtube channel ripping some pokemon products. So if you guys like that kind of stuff, you know I'm always thinking of other fun stuff I can do now that I'm a full-time creator. I I love Samsung, but I'm like, why limit myself to do that? I can do other fun stuff.
Speaker 2:Alabama got a big win. Yeah, I know, I saw that.
Speaker 1:Massive, just destroyed LSU.
Speaker 2:I know they were talking about all that stuff Like oh Alabama, we're going to destroy that winning streak of theirs. But no, the tide came through.
Speaker 1:I honestly think that Nick Saban must have sat Kalen Dayboard down after the Tennessee loss in his office. Because Saban saw his office and said hey, man, you realize this is Alabama, right? If you lose another game, you won't be coaching here next season.
Speaker 2:He's probably like you understand. Three losses here is unacceptable.
Speaker 1:He's like I haven't lost three games in like 15 years. So if you lose three games, you're probably looking for a new job. And so Kalen Dayboard is like okay, we're going to go back to the saving way. Super disciplined, you guys need to show up 30 minutes early for meetings, no BS. And they look like a good team. They could beat anybody, like they played the other night. If they play like that, if Jalen Milrow plays like that, if the defense plays like that, they could beat anybody in the country.
Speaker 2:for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1:Moving on to Samsung news. Before we get into the official news, my personal samsung news this week. Two things. One talking about z fold special edition last week. Is it going to come guess what it is out for delivery today?
Speaker 1:it is in phoenix and on the fedex truck, my z fold special edition has arrived. It's cleared customs from korea and it is here. Uh, me and tori are going to get some lunch out of the podcast I'm debating. If it's here and check with my, I may go home and get it so I can make an unboxing video and get it up, because I'm excited to check it out. But if not definitely tomorrow, which will be Tuesday, we're recording this on Veterans Day because Tori has a day off from school, so we figured we'd just have a chill kind of recording on a Monday. I don't think we've ever done a Monday recording, so it's our first ever.
Speaker 2:Monday recording.
Speaker 1:The other news is, if you guys are looking for some deals on Samsung stuff Samsung and their affiliate program they're giving us special access to early Black Friday pricing for our viewers, readers, podcasts, listeners. We did a full roundup on Sammy Grew and I'll link it in the show notes as well. Basically, anything you want Galaxy Ring, galaxy Tab, s10, ultra, z, fold 6, you get an extra $100 bonus, samsung credit with a lot of those which you can only get through our links or anyone's affiliate links. But if you want to support us, you can get that extra deal. You can't get it on the Samsung site. If you go there directly, you also get increased trade-in values. And the other thing is we're going to talk more about the Galaxy Ring 2 later because Samsung's apparently already working on that, but just last week we noticed this before we wrote up the deals post.
Speaker 1:Samsung has now started a trade-in program for the Galaxy Ring. At launch, you could not trade in anything to get a ring. It was full cost. You couldn't trade in, there was no discounts. But now they have allowed you to trade in an old smart ring from other manufacturers and they're giving pretty good trade-ins. So if you have an old Aura ring or something like that. You get $100 towards your Galaxy ring and you can now also use the education workplace discount. So technically, if you want a Galaxy ring, you want to buy one for a gift for the holidays, you can save $100. If you do a trade-in, you can probably even buy one on eBay. Smart rings don't resell for a lot necessarily, so if you bought a cheap one like old Aura ring on eBay, trade it in Probably could get that extra money, and then you also get the educational workplace discount. You could get one for like $250 instead of $400. At $250, I feel like the Galaxy ring is a much more palatable price for most people. $400 is a lot for sleep tracking, but $250, if you're in the Galaxy ecosystem, may be good. So we did a full roundup. Of course we'll have a lot more deals post because everybody will be buying stuff in the next few weeks because it's leading up to Black Friday. Huge announcement coming as well in a couple weeks about our brand new brand that we are starting here, our own case brand. I've teased it a couple times on the podcast that will be launching during Black Friday week. So we'll be talking more about that and make sure you stay tuned. Follow us on X, facebook, all that stuff, if you want to hear more about that.
Speaker 1:But let's dive into the news. I guess Last week we talked about the Galaxy S25 Slim and one of the things that me and Tori were concerned about was how good are the cameras going to be on the S25 Slim? Will it be similar to the Plus or the base model? Certainly it couldn't be the Ultra cameras. We were wrong. A new rumor suggests this week from Ice Universe that the Galaxy S25 Slim could indeed pack the 200 megapixel primary camera sensor from the ultra, the s25 ultra, which would mean that in terms of hardware it would actually have more in common with the ultra cousin, sibling brother, whatever than the base and the plus models. This still doesn't really say anything here about what the screen size would be, which to me seems to be interesting.
Speaker 1:But here's a little tidbit that, uh, sumit, our head writer over at Sammy Guru, mentioned to me, and he's right. I didn't actually think about it. The model number on the special edition is SMS937, which is just one less than the Ultra SMS938. Usually Samsung sequentially numbers the models by increasing size, so the fact that it's 937 would suggest that it's going to be closer to the Ultra than the base or the plus. So Sumit did a little detective work. I should have thought about looking at the model number too, but I'm sometimes so busy with everything I do. He mentioned this to me when we were chatting in our Slack channel when he was about to write this up and I was like, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1:So this could be interesting. It could have a screen size almost as big as the ultra, thinner than the ultra, uh, which probably means no s-pin camera is almost the same as the ultra and we have to imagine although we haven't seen a full, you know, leak of this yet battery is probably going to be slightly smaller, but it could be close to the size of the Ultra. So this would kind of fill something we've told Samsung maybe they should do and we talked about on the podcast before a Ultra S phone that doesn't have the S Pen. Basically, we'd be going back to the days of the Note versus the regular S phone, because the Slim would just be the regular S phone and now the Ultra would be the Note. Right, don't you think that's what Samsung's trying to do? They're basically trying to go back to having the Note and the regular S large S model, without actually separating it into two separate parts of the year, because they used to do the Note later and then the S model early.
Speaker 2:Don't you think that's kind of? Do you think this would be at the same time, or would this be released separately?
Speaker 1:So this year at least it looks like the Slim might release like a quarter, that means like the second quarter of the year fiscal quarter, March to June, which would still be earlier than they used to release the Note, because that used to be in August or September. Certainly they can't release it in August or September because the foldables launch around that time now.
Speaker 1:So that would be too crowded. We kind of mentioned this last week. Maybe they're going to go to one launch every three months Big S launch in January, Slim in June, or whatever May or June, even April, and then July the foldables and then the end of the year maybe they would do the FE and maybe they'll do the fan edition version of the foldables, Because there's also a rumor that we might get a lower price foldable. What do you think about the Slim if it has ultra cameras? Because you I don't know, you use the S Pen, Would you?
Speaker 1:be, tempted to go Slim. Personally, me, I'm going to say no, probably not. I'd get one to review, but probably, speaking for myself, I still think the battery is going to be smaller and the thermals are going to be worse. I think the battery life will be slightly worse, um, and also I use the s-pen a lot, so the s-pen's certainly not going to be there. If it's slim because you've got to reduce this inside size of it but what do you think?
Speaker 2:well, which one would you be tempted by if they both let's assume they both release at the same time, because obviously this one's going to be later oh yeah, um, honestly, I'm so ingrained with the s-pen I would choose the model that has the s-pen. Now I wouldn't be turned away from not having the s-pen. I think more of my concern would be, uh, with it being so close to the ultra. Uh, you know, because I'm kind of looking under the lens of, okay, how many unit or how many devices would they actually sell with the slim versus the the ultra? Only thinking about, like, let's say, for like, sony, when, like, when they release a new playstation, like a few months later, then they'll, they will release the slim, but I feel like sales aren't as strong for the slim. Obviously people still buy the slim, um, but you know, in relation to buying the full package when it, when it initially comes out, the way I'm thinking for the ultra, uh, do you agree with that?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think that's I agree with you entirely. I think, uh, in general, as a strategy, this it does keep the product fresh in people's minds. But you got to remember the people who are hardcore enthusiasts, most of them are going to want it now. So if they're like, well, the Slim and the Ultra are almost the same except one's thinner, most enthusiasts are just going to be like, well, I still want the S Pen too. They're going to buy it in January because they want it earlier.
Speaker 2:They don't want to wait until.
Speaker 1:Q2. And so none of those people, now anybody who buys the phone in January, at least for an average consumer.
Speaker 2:I'm not talking about me, because I'll buy a slim obviously because that's because I need to make views.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but an average person yeah they're not going to buy a phone in January and buy another one in April and be like oh look, it's a little thinner, I'm going to get this one. That's not going to happen, right? Samsung presumably wouldn't announce the slim during the event in January, so people wouldn't even know that it's coming. If they did that, it might change it a little bit, but then you would slow down your ultra sales.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because they were like, oh, I don't want to get that, I'm going to just wait a little bit longer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it could cannibalize the sales on the ultra, so I don't actually know. It's a very interesting dynamic in terms of how you market this, in terms of, like, how you market this, price it and just figure out how you're going to go about it. I'm not sure exactly what samsung will choose to do there, but for me personally and I think it sounds like you too I'm going to buy the ultra anyway. Uh, like I said, I definitely know that a lot of people who are enthusiasts will do the same thing, so there'll be some people will buy it. Like you said, it's kind of like when apple also goes ahead and releases like a new color of the iPhone.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like down a few months down the road.
Speaker 2:That's all they ever do, because they're like we can't be bothered to make any actual hardware modifications. Yeah, no, no, no. Like Samsung, they're just like ah. So let's slap a new color on it. Don't buy it.
Speaker 1:They're into making a new model samsung could potentially lose money.
Speaker 1:So I do understand, like if you just change the color, that's pretty easy manufacturing process if you already have the machines to make it. Changing the color is one small piece, whereas changing all the components you know the thickness of the device is interesting. I mean, I do think it's great it's going to have the ultra cameras. To be honest with you, if it didn't have the ultra cameras I kind of feel like the product would have been even more dead in the water because almost no one would have considered waiting for it, even if they're an enthusiast. I hate to always bring like.
Speaker 2:The people think I'm sexist, but some women might be interested in this because women we've talked about this before you know they don't have the same pant size as we do.
Speaker 1:They don't have pockets and so they don't want a big bulky phone necessarily. Because some women's we a lot of women wear skinny jeans. Some men do too hey, no judgment. But most more women, I would say, than men wear skinny jeans and so they don't want a big bulky phone necessarily in their pocket. Maybe they want a big screen, but they want less. You know thick, and they also want it thinner, and also not only that, but they might want to be a little lighter yeah um, it also slips into their purse.
Speaker 1:You know, park back, pocket their purse, whatever, a little bit easier, I guess. Um, I don't know, I mean they might be interested in it, but I don't see the hardcore samsung enthusiast going this route no, I see them going for the yes man.
Speaker 2:I feel like most I mean people like you, jeff, who, like, are gonna buy it, like you know these, regardless, you know for reviews, and say, like, obviously they're gonna get the sales, uh, but I think most enthusiasts will probably go for the ultra and I think most, uh, average consumers will probably go for the Ultra. I mean, obviously, because they're not going to announce the Slim at the event. Yeah well, they could. I mean, I don't know, but if they did.
Speaker 1:that would make it more interesting, because then maybe some people would wait, but I still don't think that many people will. The real test would be maybe the next year, if they decide to do it two years in a row, because then people would know that it's coming. And so then people have to think like in january.
Speaker 2:They have to be like am I going to get the ultra?
Speaker 1:I'm going to get the slim later, because yeah, like we said, most people are not going to be buying two phones. Unless you're super enthusiast, who also happens to be very rich, you're not going to buy two. These are probably going to be 12 to 1300 phones. Yeah, you know, because I would imagine we talked about this last week. We don't have any leaks about the pricing yet, but would imagine the pricing on the Slim is going to be pretty similar to the Ultra.
Speaker 1:Yeah, probably If not, you know, it could potentially be more. I don't think it could be, I don't think it would be more. But I also, like we said last week, I still think it's kind of weird having it called Slim. And also, here's another rumor. Actually, I forgot about this one while we're talking about this. I didn't put this on the show notes, but samit wrote this last night. It turns out there's another uh rumor that said they are struggling to get the s25 slim to be as thin as they want while can, while maintaining a substantial battery capacitor capacity. Sorry, capacitor, the flux capacitor. We're going back to the future in this episode of the Sammy Guru podcast.
Speaker 1:So Apple is facing similar challenges and this rumor came out saying that they might not be able to get it quite as slim as they want because they don't want to reduce the battery life, which we were just talking about. Sumit just published this last night and I just saw it as I was flipping through the site. He just published it before we recorded the podcast. He just published it before we recorded the podcast and it seems that because of this, they may only release this in a limited market as well, just like they did the Z Fold Special Edition, because they might not be able to get the yield rate that they want the volume with the slim profile. They might test it again. So it's possible that if you're thinking about this in the US, don't necessarily wait past January to buy one, because it could end up only in China and Korea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you'll be super sad, you'll be like, oh, I didn't buy the S25 Ultra, now I'm waiting, you're waiting, you're waiting. It's April, it's May, it's June. It's like, ah well, you could buy it in Korea and China only. And so then, obviously, the average person is not going to buy it because the bands aren't going to work. Like I said, no one should import a Z Fold Special Edition either, unless you're using it for my purposes of just demonstrating to people and reviewing it. It's not going to work perfectly. 5g is not going to work, so this is interesting. Another rumor. So we might not even see the full launch, which would be disappointing for sure.
Speaker 1:All right, continue to talk about more S25 stuff. I feel like it's kind of like a redux of last week.
Speaker 2:I feel like it's deja vu, because we're talking about some of the same stuff.
Speaker 1:But this time of year it's like the rumors are going to start getting super accelerated about S25 stuff, because we're only about two months away from launch. We're going to start having a lot of S25 stuff to talk about and we do have more Galaxy S25 color options. Last week we talked about the standard color options that will be available everywhere, like the carriers and stuff, and we said last week that eventually the Samsung exclusive online options would eventually leak in. Just only a week later, we had to wait, here they are we have them.
Speaker 1:So let me tell you about the new options. According to Ross Young, who is a display analyst in the mobile industry, he's very reliable, kind of like Ice Universe. He has a lot of sources and contacts along the supply chain for the various manufacturers used, like Apple and Samsung. Various manufacturers use like Apple and Samsung. He says the Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus will be available through Samsung's website in coral, red, pink, gold and blue, slash black shades and the Galaxy S25 Ultra, samsung exclusive colors will be titanium blue black, titanium jade green and titanium pink gold.
Speaker 1:Now, of course this is all of the color options that would be available for Samsung exclusive only. I'll remind you guys, last week we talked about the standard colors for the S25 and S25 Plus would be Moon Knight, blue, silver Shadow, sparkling Green and Sparkling Blue, and the Plus model will also get a Midnight Black shade. The Samsung options for the standard options on the s25 ultra titanium black, titanium blue, titanium silver and titanium gray. Now, very interesting here, as you said you said it as I was talking the titanium jade green for the s25 ultra. That's the one that stands out to me and I'm not trivializing the s25, s25 plus, it's just that I'm more interested in the ultra. We'll talk about those in more in a second. That sounds like the color that I want.
Speaker 2:What do you think about that, tori? Oh same, like we don't get a whole lot of green colors, I think when I initially was buying the S22 Ultra, I was wanting to have like a green color there, but they're all sold out. All I could get was the burgundy, uh, and so I'm hoping to make my redemption. Yeah, tori's gonna redeem himself in january.
Speaker 1:The s25 ultra. Um, yeah, so last week we were talking about it because we saw that the s25 and s25 plus some of the standard colors were sparkling green.
Speaker 1:I was like I mean, I really want that sparkling green on the s25 ultra and so it looks like samsung will give us that as a Samsung exclusive option. So just to remind you guys, with the Samsungcom exclusive options, that means that if you buy them from your carrier, like Verizon, t-mobile, at&t, in the store or you buy it through your carrier website, you won't be able to get those options. You'll need to go to Samsungcom, use Samsung's website directly to purchase a Samsung exclusive color. If you want one of those colors, which is again for the Ultra, the titanium jade green, the blue black and the titanium pink gold, which I think a lot of the ladies will be happy about that, oh yeah, because the ladies like the pink gold and if you're a guy and you like it, that's great too. But my wife has been saying for a while like why do they not have pink every year as an option for the Ultra?
Speaker 2:I feel like they're going to get in the female customers for sure. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I feel like they're going to like that. And also on the S25 and S25 Plus we've got coral red and pink gold, so that's actually two, because coral red is like closer to a pinkish red, so that might be like two shades of pink, almost like, if you want the smaller phones that you'd be able to explore. The titanium blue black also seems very interesting to me, like bluish black. I don't know how that's going to look. It could be like a darkish blue, maybe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, like that's what I'm picturing, and I'm picturing like the jade green to be either like I think it's going to be a brighter green than like the military.
Speaker 1:green is what the S22 Ultra had.
Speaker 2:Yeah, by Like the military green is what the S22 Ultra had. Yeah, by throwing in that jade, I'm thinking like it's brighter.
Speaker 1:I'm hoping it's closer to like the sparkling green that's going to be on the S25 and S25 Plus, and the blue-black should be interesting. I'm curious to see how that looks, but the jade green seems like the one that I would go for the most. Yeah, like I said, make sure that if you want one of those exclusive colors, you go through samsungcom. The other thing that you can I'll remind you shameless plug is if you go through samsungcom, you can also get a free mystery box from Sammy Guru. All you have to do is sign up for our mystery box list and we will send you a text message as well as an email if you put in your phone number and email on launch day, the morning of launch with the links. You actually get the links early because I have them ready to go right when they're live, so I push them out. You don't have to go to the Samsung site and be clicking around. We'll automatically link you to the product pages and we've got some huge surprises this time Free case cleaning kit, all that stuff. This time you'll be able to design your own case through our case brand, so you'll actually be able to pick your own design. You won't have to take a pre-made design that we randomly chose, like we've done in the past, and a lot of other cool accessory surprises this time. So that's the other benefit.
Speaker 1:Now I also want to remind you, because a lot of people don't realize this and I've said it before if you want to buy one through your carrier on a payment plan, you can still do that through Samsungcom. A lot of people think, oh well, I can't get the mystery box or I can't get the exclusive colors because I want to buy it through the AT&T or the T-Mobile monthly payment plan. That's not true. You could just go to Samsung. They have the carriers listed. Just click on AT&T or T-Mobile and go through it and it will automatically go and take you through the process of signing the installment agreement with your carrier. It connects to your carrier's website.
Speaker 1:Then you still get your exclusive color, so you don't have to be limited to the colors that they have on the carrier websites. You could get that titanium jade green and you could get the mystery box too. So you get both of those things and then you can still use your payment plan. You don't have to pay up front, because a lot of people don't want to pay up front. I understand it's a very expensive purchase and some people want to spread it out over the payments. So you can still do that, so you can get those exclusive colors. But I'm highly thinking about it this year. I have to see if we're going to have the budget.
Speaker 1:I've wanted to do it for a while because there's a guy who used to do it. I forgot who it was Detroit Borg. He used to unbox every color of the new iPhone. He would buy every color. I'm thinking about doing that this year just to see how the video does.
Speaker 1:Uh, very risky somewhat. I could lose a lot of money, but not that risky because I'm not going to keep all of them. Obviously I'm going to sell them. Probably I'm only going to keep one of each type per view. I would sell the other colors on swapper or something like that afterwards. So I don't lose that much money, but I mean still gonna have to sell them as used, so I'd have to lose. I lose a little, but that guy used to get millions of views on that type of video and so if I get the millions of views then I would actually make a lot of money. So it's like lose a little or make a lot. Those are the kind of gambles you have to take. So if you guys would be interested in seeing an Every Color Unboxing of S25 stuff, let me know.
Speaker 2:I'm about it, been tossing around the idea what do you think, tory, should I do every color unboxing? Heck, yeah, yeah, just like put all the colors out and be like let's check these colors out. Yeah, yeah, I think you know too because, like, I know a lot of people uh, at least for the average consumer like, like when they see where they read the colors and then versus like when they actually go in store to like get it. I feel like this will also help in their decision of like, oh, oh, okay, I can see myself rocking this particular color. Yeah, I think people like it.
Speaker 1:Even though, it's like you know, people want to see reviews. People also do take the color into account. A lot of people who are enthusiasts are like, well, that's not that big of a deal because you put a case on it anyway. It actually is a big deal to the average person in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because, like we said, it's an investment. Yeah, because, like we said it's an investment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like you're going to be looking at that for a long time and even though a lot of people do rock a case and I do a lot of people like to take their phone out of the case when they're at home. Like I'm not saying on the couch, I don't use it with the case, I take it off you know, and also just like to look at my case.
Speaker 1:So, like, I got my orange S24 Ultra, like this is a nice color, um, and so, you know, some people do take the case off their phone and admire the case, you know, uh, at the end of the day. So I think it's important. I think colors do matter to the person who is buying a phone and keeping it for three years. Um, whether or not, if you buy a phone every year, maybe it doesn't matter to you because, like, I'll just pick a new color next year, but if you're keeping it three to four years, it's a pretty big deal. Um, the s25 ultra is getting an overclocked version.
Speaker 1:Going into the more technical side of the release, continuing with the s25 leaks, uh, we do indeed have the overclocked snapdragon 8 elite. So we talked about the snapdragon 8 elite a couple weeks ago during the snapdragon summit week, and now we have heard that there was a rumor Samsung might get their own specific Galaxy version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite. We talked about that during that week as well. That usually happens, like they get an overclocked version because Samsung is the biggest Android mobile phone manufacturer.
Speaker 1:So of course Qualcomm gives them whatever they want. So they're like we want an exclusive version that's faster than any of the other phone makers can get OEMs, because we want to obviously be able to market that and say ours is the best, and so they give it to them. And so it does look like we're going to get a Galaxy version for the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Some benchmarks surfaced over there. It looks like we've got a Geekbench 6.3 score of 3148 on the single core, 10,236 on the multi-core, and these are pretty substantial improvements over what we've got on the S24 Ultra this year. So these are not just the 5% improvements, like I said, that we usually get. These are around, I think, 20% improvements year over year. And this doesn't even take into account the fact that the chip is more power efficient while also delivering more power.
Speaker 1:It's also less battery drain, so we're going to see improved battery life while also getting a huge jump in performance. So this could be, you know, a massive, a massive deal, in my opinion. Um, I I'm pretty excited about the snapdragon 8 elite. I think we talked about that before it's. You know, there's not really too much more to say about it because we said everything that there is to say, but if you like to look at benchmarks, these benchmarks should get you pretty excited. We still do have this rumor that the Snapdragon 8 Elite has some overheating issues, but I hope those will be resolved by launch. I don't think Samsung will allow the another overheating chip to make it into one of their phones. This has happened in the past and obviously they also had the debacle with the Note 7.
Speaker 1:So I don't see this being a problem when we get to the final launch. But in some early testing it seems that people are a little worried about the thermals. But Samsung is just. You know, they're too cautious right now to allow that to happen. So could it happen that if the original chip or this one has some thermal issues, that they end up underclocking it? That could happen, but I think that would be really bad. So I don't think Samsung. Everything else about the S25 is shaping up to be like a super cycle year where a lot of people upgrade and also they have this reputation we talked about before where the odd numbered S launch is always the best one, that's fans.
Speaker 1:So they've got a lot to live up to this year, so I don't think they'll let that happen. I think we're going to get the beastly performance and I think they'll get the thermals under control. Have you been playing? You don't play too many mobile games. Do you play Pokemon Go? I was going to ask you.
Speaker 2:Do you play Pokemon Go at all? I used to play it.
Speaker 1:just released a Pokemon Pocket I was going to try that I was taking a drink. Sorry, that's the thing about the microphone. How is that? Because that's basically like the TCG, but in your pocket right, yeah.
Speaker 2:So essentially what they have done is they've kind of made their own cards and put it into this game, and so every day you get to open two packs um and then you can also battle. Um is not the typical standard, or as people would say in the pokemon community, of how you would play with pokemon cards. Uh, you play with the 20 card deck and essentially you try your best to knock out three of your opponent's pokemon. But it looks like it's starting to gain some traction. I'm thinking about participating in a tournament. Already. Some local game stores are already starting to offer tournaments for Pokemon Pocket.
Speaker 1:But how do you play the tournament? Because you don't really need to be there in person, right, you can do it remotely, or what?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. Man, I'm going to be there remotely, I mean, sorry's not remotely, but I'm gonna be there in person, uh, just to kind of like see what the community is like for it. Uh, but yeah, yeah, like essentially, yeah, you wouldn't need to, you just need to. Yeah, just get their friend code, I'm assuming. But uh, so far it's pretty fun. Uh, I've seen some stuff on the internet of like, uh, there could there's some broken cards, so I don't know if at some point they may try to, you know, do some balancing or uh, maybe do like a ban list. You know a certain they did that early in days of TCG.
Speaker 1:I remember back when I was younger they started banning cards that they realized were just, uh, too overpowerful. You know they were like a cheat code in the game. Yeah, Essentially were just too overpowering.
Speaker 2:They're like a cheat code in the game. Yeah, essentially they're like so we?
Speaker 1:can't let people put these in their deck anymore because we've got to balance it out a little. Yeah, I might try it After we go to lunch. I might download it and play it because I saw a lot of people. You know I follow a bunch of Pokemon YouTubers because I am interested in Pokemon collecting like Leonhard and Darium Some of these guys and watch them open some packs and stuff like that, and Jonathan also likes it, so you might have to check that out. I'm going to also interested in what our audience thinks. To tie this back to the Qualcomm, I don't do a lot of gaming, so I want to develop a standard gaming benchmark test for our Sammy Google reviews because we're going to start doing a lot more hardware reviews.
Speaker 1:I reviewed the Z Fold 6. That was my first big one. I wrote like 3,500, 4,000 words on it. I'm going to do a full review on the Z Fold Special Edition, mainly to have a nice comparison to the Z Fold 6, plus. Not very many people are going to review it because not many people will have it.
Speaker 1:There are probably going to be written reviews over on the website, because I just don't like doing video reviews. I mean, to be honest with you. They don't want, they don't get pushed by YouTube from my audience a lot and video reviews just take a lot of work. I've mentioned this before, whereas I enjoy writing reviews more because if I change my mind about something, I can save it as a draft. I could think about it, I come back, I can reword it. If I make a video, it's really hard, like if you record a video the way I record them, and then you need to come back and edit the audio like you've got to get it in there and sometimes it doesn't sound right. It can really mess up and you've got to record like really large, you know kind of swaths of the video. But if you guys have games that you want me to try I know, like Asphalt, some of the other ones are standards, the test processors, things like that. We want to have those. So drop them in the show notes, put them over on X, facebook, on YouTube. Let me know which games I should use as our standard benchmark test for making sure that a particular phone is up to par when it comes to gaming, because I definitely want to have some benchmarks for that. Force myself to play some more games so I can give you guys a good test, because that's the one place where I feel like I'm lacking. I take a lot of photos because obviously I have kids. I'm taking photos all the time, so camera tests are easy for me to do. I have a good job, you know, easy time judging camera quality. Battery's great because I use my phone all the time for work and for semi-guru, so I can test battery drain. I can do that. Obviously, I really into One UI and software so I can do all that testing. But I feel like gaming is what I'm lacking, so we want to try to get a little bit better right there, I think.
Speaker 1:Next, in the second part of the show, we've got quite a bit more still. Today might be a little longer, last week we were shorter. We're going to talk about the Samsung Trifold. Samsung has a Trifold that might be coming soon. Talk a little bit more about One UI 7, because we've got some more leaks about that. Of course, a huge change Bixby got overhauled completely, and then also the Galaxy Ring 2 looks like it's finally in development and so a lot of exciting stuff there and we're going to talk about that right after we hear from the sponsor of today's podcast.
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Speaker 1:All right, everybody, we are back and we'll start off the second half of the show here talking about the Galaxy Ring 2 a little bit. You guys know I talked earlier about the fact that they started the trade-in program for the original Galaxy Ring. You guys know I'm a huge Galaxy Ring fan. I'm wearing mine right now. In fact, I wear it all the time. Love the product. But there are some things they could definitely add and we already have some rumors that Samsung is working on the Galaxy Ring 2.
Speaker 1:Samsung is working on the Galaxy Ring 2. Now could this necessarily launch with the S25? I think that it's at least possible. There's an outside shot. I would give it like a 30% chance. I don't think it's very likely.
Speaker 1:But Samsung leaker. The Galaxy posted on X that the new model is around the corner and they said the Galaxy Ring 2 will be thinner while still offering a longer battery life. Since a thinner profile may not allow it to pack bigger batteries, the company must have achieved this by other means potentially better software optimization with Samsung Health, and in addition to that, the Galaxy also said there will be additional features. Now, thinner is definitely important because I will tell you this, I'm looking at my Galaxy Ring right here and you've seen it. This is a lot thicker than a standard ring. I don't have my regular wedding band here, but I was reminded of this because on Saturday we went and took our family Christmas photos. We went and took it to JCPenney's and we get our photos in every year with the kids and us and all that kind of good stuff. I'll make sure I send you a Christmas card there, tori, with the family on it.
Speaker 1:But Nicole asked me could I wear my regular wedding band Because she thought it would look better in the photo than this one. Just because of the color we were wearing like red with khaki she thought the silver, my platinum wedding band would look better. So for the first time in a while because I've been wearing the Galaxy Ring since July I took this off and I wore my regular wedding band for a while. It's substantially thicker than a regular wedding band. When I put the other one on I was like, wow, this is so much lighter. I have a lot more space between these two fingers, because this one really does bump into your other two fingers. Of course we talked about the fact that really you should wear the Galaxy Ring on your index finger, but I've gotten so used to wearing it on my wedding band finger that I've just continued on because, especially since the Galaxy Ring 2 is coming out, I'll probably just move to my index finger whenever I get that one. So the thinner I think is a big deal. And better battery life. I mean I don't know that we really need that because it already gets nine days battery life. I mean I don't know that I need too much more, it already gets nine days battery life and I don't know that I need too much more. The only thing I think they need to do is they got to give you more obvious notices when the battery is running low in the Samsung Health or wearable app, because I often miss the notification. It's not very obvious, they don't make it like a critical or persistent alert, so I often forget to charge it towards the end. I just set a reminder for myself in my reminders app to check my ring battery every eight days, because their notice is not very obvious and so sometimes it's easy to miss. They should probably do that. Maybe if they could even make it so that the ring vibrates or something or it lights up in like a weird color that you never see otherwise, then that might actually be good too, because the battery life is fine.
Speaker 1:Nine days is a lot of battery life. Um, I can charge this every nine days. It doesn't take that long to top it up. Plus, you can charge the case in the interim and so if you're traveling and just drop it in the case, yeah, charge it up while you're gone. Um, so well, what? What do you think? You, you, you didn't get the first ring. Um what? What features would it need? Before I tell you some of the features that we might see, because we have a couple that we might see, um, what features would make you consider a galaxy ring too?
Speaker 2:well, uh, before I answer that, I actually kind of I I am hoping that they actually would just release the ring around the same time they released it this past year.
Speaker 1:Just only thinking because, like it was still, it's still very recent and I know like, again, most people who are average consumers will probably be like yeah wow, like I just spent all that money to get this, and now you're offering a new, sleeker and possibly thinner yeah this time around like it'd be kind of like a and remember we heard also that this time I don't think this is going to make it into this version, but remember I think a couple weeks ago we had the rumor that the Galaxy Ring could be adjustable in the future so you don't have to get different sizes, you could just adjust it to your size. That I don't think is coming with Galaxy Ring 2, because that's going to take more engineering. But go ahead, continue.
Speaker 2:I'm just kind of hoping that they do release it around in that same ballpark time and then, so that way people can also kind of expect that, oh, all right, well, maybe not I, they may skip an iteration here or there, but you know, they can plan out like when they may buy the next version, you know, obviously, with this being a successful item. Um, the other thing and actually I kind of had a question on, I've seen a lot of my friends lately. They they've been buying the Aura ring instead, and so I don't know very much about that product, but I'm assuming it's just like the cheaper version of what Samsung is offering. Well, actually not, it's more expensive, oh really.
Speaker 1:Aura actually has been doing the ring for like, I think, five or six years now. They were the first smart Ring the other thing is, you've probably seen your friends buy them because this guy doesn't work with Apple.
Speaker 2:So if you have an Apple phone.
Speaker 1:Aura works with both. I've thought about comparing the two, but I might wait for the Galaxy Ring 2 just because I didn't do it in time, because people wanted to see a comparison. I know a lot of people did them, but for myself, to kind of see how aura stacks up, um, but I've seen the galaxy ring is fares pretty well in most people's reviews, but that could be why you've seen it is that?
Speaker 2:um, indeed, you know this doesn't work with apple, so if you have an iphone, anyone smart ring, most of my friends have apple and apple doesn't have apple doesn't have their own smart ring yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they are rumored to be working on one eventually, but right now, if you want a smart ring and you got an iPhone, you're not going to be buying the Galaxy Ring.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, well, I mean honestly for me I would go for the ring just for all the tracking benefits, especially like my sleep and stuff, because I do like checking my sleep score in the mornings when I wake up on the Samsung Health app. So I would be interested, based off of everything that I've that I've read, definitely making sure like I get like the right ring size, because, yeah, I do think it just from looking at it it does look a little bit thicker, so I'd definitely be rocking it on the index finger Like adjustable would be great too, because the other thing people forget about is your fingers, like swell, and like these, swell throughout the day and also throughout the year when it gets colder or hotter.
Speaker 1:So one size doesn't always feel the same on your finger, even if you buy a size 10 or whatever. Like I have it, sometimes it's really tighter and sometimes it's a lot looser, um, so if you have that adjustability, you can make micro adjustments, like throughout the year as it gets hotter, your fingers swell, whatever, uh, which is also gives it a huge benefit over traditional rings yeah because you can't really like resize a traditional ring.
Speaker 1:So if you wanted to wear this like as your wedding band kind of like I am then you have that extra benefit. Not only does it have these smart tracking benefits, you also then can make it more comfortable throughout you know the year, whereas you know, if you've got a platinum or gold wedding band, you can't it more comfortable throughout the year, whereas if you've got a platinum or gold wedding band, you can't obviously resize it throughout the year because it's not something you can do. There's a couple of features that are rumored, and it's two that we really talked about when the first ring came out. That would be very interesting.
Speaker 1:One of them, which is the one that I really want, if they add this, I will be more excited for the ring than I will be for the next fold or whatever and that is NFC payments. If you could pay with your ring, I'll be super excited Because then I don't have to like putting your wrist up to the terminal sometimes weird, but my ring I can just be like boom, right there, it's easy. It's a lot easier to do. I would love Samsung Pay on my Galaxy Ring. I would use that all the time and it would be super convenient.
Speaker 1:I think the big issue, as we talked about we spent a lot of time talking about this on the podcast a few months ago is how do they secure it? Because with the watch you can obviously force you to put a pin or pattern on the watch because you know, obviously it's got a screen. How do you make it so that someone has a pin or a pattern? We suggested maybe they could do a tap pattern. You've got to do a gesture to get it to unlock so you can use payments, because obviously you don't just want it unlocked, because then someone takes your ring.
Speaker 1:They're just punching terminals, buying all kinds of stuff on your car.
Speaker 2:Do you think maybe they can incorporate, because if it's meant to be on the index finger could they put like a fingerprint thing on the side?
Speaker 1:Possible, but I don't think there's enough room for your whole fingerprint to go, and sometimes partial fingerprint matches or look close between people, whereas the actual full fingerprint won't, so that would still have a security issue. I think the gesture might be the best, because we had talked about this before. Like you, do a little air gesture with it, but that's a little harder to recognize than a real pen or pattern, because you could mistake a gesture.
Speaker 1:You're probably going to have a lot of false positives. You could also have some false negatives, those sort of things where you did it correctly and it doesn't work. It's going to piss people off. If they're doing the right gesture, they look like an idiot because they're in Target, yeah, and like I said, I said abracadabra.
Speaker 2:Alakazam and they're like what is up with this guy? And they're like what is this guy doing?
Speaker 1:He's like I swear it works my ring, it pays for stuff. And these people are like, yeah, this guy's crazy, Get him out of here.
Speaker 2:Well, like what sends like a notification to the watch and you just hit something on your watch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's probably most likely. But of course that takes out the ease of use and fun factor that I want from it is that it sends. If you have a watch, it will send it there. You just approve the notification or it sends it on your phone, and if you have like a pen, you just put your fingerprint on your phone.
Speaker 1:But, then it kind of defeats the purpose because then I have to take my phone in my pocket. Still, um, obviously paying with my phone isn't that hard, but it's one extra step. I got to take it out of my pocket and unlock it. The whole thing would be cool to pay with a ring and then not have to do anything else, because I think people would be kind of you know, amazed by that kind of like they were when samsung pay had magnetic stripe technology. I love paying, we've talked about that before everywhere and they're like, oh, we don't have nsc and I'd be like poop. And they'd be like, oh my gosh, how did they do that? I'm like, yeah, it worked, give me my stuff yeah, it's paid for, but you know.
Speaker 1:Then samsung got rid of the mst because pretty much everyone has nfc now. Um yeah, I mean also why you know, walmart still doesn't have tap to pay what is going on with walmart?
Speaker 2:I never.
Speaker 1:It's just ridiculous I'm gonna boy boycott Walmart soon Target only for me because I'm getting tired of that. I do not like the fact that I can't tap to pay. It's really that big of a deal, because sometimes I do like forget my wallet in the car because I used to have to pay my watch my phone so many places. Now no-transcript Because I have my license on my phone too. Now we've talked about so sometimes I just leave it at home and I'm not worried about it If you guys love Bixby.
Speaker 1:Bixby is getting a massive overhaul. Who doesn't love Bixby? A fan favorite again by announcing a massive overhaul coming to Bixby with the Samsung W25, which is the China version of the Z Fold Special Edition. We talked about it with the gold and the bling when they announced that with the press release. Buried in that press release, they also announced that that phone would ship with the next generation Bixby assistant. It's not coming to the us or korea or anywhere else, only china for the time being.
Speaker 1:It's weird. I don't really know why, but samsung released a lot of information about it. It's going to have more ai features, trained with large language models, and it will have contextual awareness and it also will have intelligent extraction of screen information. So now you'll just be able to say, like you know, if you have a map on your screen. You'll be able to say you know, hey B, tell me you know what are the nearest places around this location that I'm showing you now, that sell Pokemon cards or something, and it will be able to help you try to find that information. Or it will be able to tell you, like you know, here's a map. I'm going home. Do I have time to stop and get some milk, and it will be able to figure out, like which fries are on your way home, how long it will take, and then tell you, like an estimated time that would add to your trajectory. So, instead of you having to type it all in if you already have the map up, like you're searching Google Maps, you know where you're going. Just say, hey B, look at my screen, figure this out. So it'll have that kind of contextual awareness and it also is going to have a new UI overhaul. You can already type to Bixby. You've been able to do that for a while, but now you'll be able to get more contextual awareness when you type, so it'll be able to read everything that's on your screen if you give it permission. Of course, you have to opt into that, as usual with anything AI-related, because of privacy restrictions and all that stuff, but if you give it permission, you'll be able to get all that contextual information.
Speaker 1:I just don't know that people are going to move back to Bixby. I mean, I want to like Bixby because I'm a Samsung fan, but I feel like bixby is one of those things where samsung just totally missed the the bus, because there was a weird time where they kind of half gave up on bixby. Um, they released bixby and they're like everything should be bixby. But then they kind of realized that people didn't like bixby and they're like, oh well, google assistant is doing a lot better than bixby, so we'll kind of tell people they can use Google Assistant on their Samsung phone, and so then they kind of push that, but then they also push Bixby. But then people realized Google Assistant was better and Samsung told them that it was fine to use it. So people just started using that. And so now I feel like everybody who has a Samsung phone mostly use Google Assistant for everything over Bixby.
Speaker 1:What about you, tori, do you use? I mean, I use Google Assistant for everything in terms of looking stuff up. I use Bixby for on-device stuff, but I feel like most people have just neglected it for everything. Do you ever use Bixby?
Speaker 2:I neglect it for everything. I find it very annoying. I don't know if this is a good thing, but literally I'll say 25% of the time whenever I'm getting out to my phone, if I accidentally touch anywhere below, like towards the bottom of my phone, Bixby pops up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can turn that off. I can try to turn it off.
Speaker 2:Oh, excellent Thank you, but I use Google Assistant literally for everything. It's just so intuitive. And actually I was going to ask you what do you think would make Bixby be on the same level as what? Is it Siri for Apple, like I mean, because people who have iPhones, like a lot of my friends, like they do utilize Siri, but Bixby I've just never really been a fan.
Speaker 1:Well, here's what I think about that. I think Bixby is just as good at Siri.
Speaker 2:It's just that Samsung is just not necessarily as good at marketing and tricking people as Apple is, I think, siri sucks equally as much as Bixby in terms of some tasks.
Speaker 1:But here's my take on it Samsung should not market Bixby as a Google Assistant competitor, because Google Assistant is a little different than Siri and Bixby. People often think of them all along the same lines, but Siri and Bixby really are more designed to help you do things automate tasks on your device, whereas Google Assistant is more designed to retrieve information from the internet and do stuff with that. So they're really designed for two separate purposes. And in fact, google Assistant can work with Bixby if you design certain routines, and it actually works really well. So what I use Bixby for is I typically use Bixby, like the Bixby routines, to do specific things on my device. So like I have it set up on my S25 Ultra where when I get home, for instance, right to my house, I can press a single button and actually my thing that opens my garage on my Android Auto and as soon as I do that, it will start an entire routine that unlocks my smart door lock on my garage. It'll turn on the light that's right inside the front, the garage door, on the inside of my house, my Philips Hue light, and then also, if I want to, I have a dinnertime routine where it can also preheat my oven. Because I have the smart the smart Samsung oven. I can also have it set my oven to preheat if I want to put something in the oven. Now, since, luckily, my wife makes me dinner most of that, I don't need to use that. But I set this up just for fun. Like if they are away and like I'm there by myself and they're out doing something, I can like pop in a pizza or whatever I want to do. You know, if I want to make something, I'm probably not making a five course meal if I'm eating by myself.
Speaker 1:But there's a lot of cool routines and Bixby can also like do specific stuff on your device. Like it can. You can record a routine and it can draft like a message for you every day at a certain time. So like if I want to send nicole a message like hey, I'm going home or I'm leaving the office, I have also office routine. Like as soon as I leave, it'll like set the adt alarm for me here at the sammy guru offices. It does a couple other things turns on my location, so when I get in the car I can use location with android auto and also send nicole a message and it inserts the time I'm leaving, so it says leaving at this time.
Speaker 1:Here's my estimated arrival time. It'll attach it. Bixby can draft that in real time for you. So adding AI contextual awareness, I think, will be very helpful, but they need to stop marketing as like it's an information retrieval tool from the internet, because Bixby on its own is pretty bad at doing that. Google assistant is the best at that and I use it for everything. And at doing that. Google Assistant is the best at that. I use it for everything. Google needs to work on their own problems too, though. They've got Gemini and Google Assistant, and they both sort of do the same thing.
Speaker 1:Sometimes Gemini has to call Google Assistant. We've talked about this before. There's way too many different voice assistants and AI chatbots now.
Speaker 1:No one can keep any of them straight. But if Samsung really wants big speed to make a comeback, I think they have to market it as like you can press a button or you can type a command or you can say hey b, run this routine or whatever, and it can do a whole bunch of stuff on your device right, like it can open the x app and send a tweet for you. You can just say that in voice and it will do it. Say hey b, open x and draft the following tweet. And it's pretty good with voice recognition. So with AI learning it could get a lot better. But they need to stop marketing it, as this is as good as Google for like information retrieval. But maybe they should say hey, here's an easy way to integrate it with Google and maybe illustrate how those routines work.
Speaker 1:You could grab information from the internet and then it could actually write a tweet from you and include that link to your blog. I've used it before to tweet out Sammy Guru stuff. I mean, we have most of that automated now, but Bixby can do that. So that's my take. Siri is also equally, in my opinion, bad at getting online info. It doesn't do very well, like you can ask Bixby very easy questions. It doesn't know the answer. Google is the unmatched winner. People um Google is the unmatched winner. People on iPhone should be using Google assistant too, cause they they actually Google assistant app for iPhone.
Speaker 2:Google has one.
Speaker 1:You, if you have an iPhone, probably not listening to this podcast, but if you do, you should use Google assistant on your iPhone for search as well, Cause it's just better. Um, but that's my take. Bixby is good, but it's just not's used. It should really should be used for something other than what most people use it for, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it would make sense, yeah, yeah, no, actually that that explains a lot more, and I think, um, for most people, when we, when we think about AI, um usage, uh, we are thinking about like grabbing things from the internet, and that makes more sense why I think people gravitate more towards the google uh ai versus like the bixby, or you know, yeah google had a massive advantage because they're already the number one search by a massive, massive, massive margin in the world so of course, they already have a huge advantage when it comes to, you know, anything that has to do with like grabbing information off the internet.
Speaker 1:But in terms of doing stuff on your device, obviously bixby is the best for that because it knows your Samsung device, because obviously it was made by Samsung. So if you wanted to open an app or run a routine or do anything with your connections Bluetooth, all that stuff, it's really good at helping you automate some of the usage of your phone.
Speaker 2:Well, you know what I would like to see and I think, well, samsung is kind of getting more into like the marketing and stuff now, because we're seeing more and more Samsung commercials. They are.
Speaker 1:They're doing a good job with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah I think they are what I would like to see a little bit more, and I see a lot of say companies are starting to do this, but Samsung can make like a quick little video of like Bixby how-tos you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I feel like people gravitate towards that because people want how to do something, but very quickly, and they don't want to read, they want to watch a video. So I feel like if they could just get ahead of that and kind of like pop some videos on YouTube like hey, how to Bixby, or at least how they're intending for Bixby to be used, I think that will help the consumer base be like oh, okay, like they can just pay me and subcontract me, and I'll do it for them.
Speaker 1:I mean it'll cost a little bit of money, but I mean I can do it yeah, and then they can just put in fact it won't actually cost anything as long as the official samsung account links sammy guru in the description. I won't charge them for it, you know, because I think that will make us sufficient enough money oh, yeah, back that I don't need to worry about getting paid up front.
Speaker 1:So if they want some free tutorials on how to use the next gen bixby, get in touch with us. Me and samit will work on it. And, uh, you guys just have to link sammy guru and say, hey, here's the source you should go to for your samsung news. If you guys give us official endorsement from samsung, I think that'll be enough payment. We'll be just, we'll be fine. Yeah, um, even you will call it. Even, we will call it more than even probably, yeah.
Speaker 1:So two new foldable rumors, one of them which isn't maybe super exciting and one that's actually super duper exciting. Um, we have a rumor that the galaxy z flip fe fan edition again, don't understand the name, whatever could join samsung's foldable lineup in 2025. We talked about this for a while. Samsung was rumored to have some cheaper cost foldables coming out and, uh, people are on the fence about whether or not it'd be the fold or the flip. I think the flip makes more sense because it's still already the lower cost phone and most people Folds we talked about before are pretty much enthusiasts, so I didn't think they would really buy a cheaper-cost Fold. Cheaper-cost Flip makes a lot more sense. What do you think about that, tori? If you get a Flip. You could price it around like $799 instead of $999.
Speaker 2:Do you think people are going to be purchasing that For sure. I've actually already had friends. I went out for brunch, I think, saturday morning and all of the four people were huge Apple users. But three of them were like, hey, you know, like we've been kind of noticing Samsung with their flip game is really strong, and like we're actually like really interested, but man, we just wish it was a little bit like, you know, a cheaper model.
Speaker 2:And I feel like we're starting to get to that point where even apple users or people, you know, obviously, now that the foldables have been out for a little bit now, people are starting to turn their heads and and are interested, and I think this would be a really good entryway for some of um, the consumers who, you know, don't buy every single phone that comes out every year and is looking for a cheaper entryway, you know, obviously, because we got so used to the slot phones, you know. But I think the key thing to get people over will be what the crease will look like. Get people over will be what the crease will look like.
Speaker 2:I also talked to someone else yesterday who's interested in a flip phone. They're interested in getting into it, but they're mostly concerned about the crease.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Samsung is apparently reducing the crease in a lot of their phones. When I get my hands on the Z Fold Special Edition, which will be today at some point, I'm very excited about that. Supposedly, the crease is very, very, very reduced from the Z Fold 6. Now I do think, though, that, unfortunately, if they do a lower budget one, the crease reduction is probably not going to be the first thing that they're going to include, because that requires some new hinge tech and stuff.
Speaker 1:I also think that, unfortunately, the other thing that might get cut in terms of reduced cost, because they've got to reduce the cost somehow to build it is the cover screen might not be full screen, it might just be a little window like it was before, which might turn people off.
Speaker 1:The full cover screen is kind of one of the big selling points of the Flip. I actually really like the Flip. I was an anti-Flip guy for the first four years of the flip, just because the battery life sucks so bad, uh. And then this year, like, they changed it. The battery life is really good. They put a better camera in. It's basically on the level of a base galaxy s24.
Speaker 1:Um, I mean, it's not my phone kind of phone because it's not wide enough for me still. So it's just not for me personally. But now when people tell me like, like, should I buy one? I'm like, yeah, it's got great battery life, it's got a really good camera, it's got unique use cases. You can use it as a tripod, it's cool, it looks cool. If you like it, if you like the look of it, it's a solid phone. Now there's no reason not to buy it. I could see them selling a ton of these. Like you know, maybe their parents are going to buy them a phone. They're a teen, they're like you know, their parents don't want to spend $1,000. They don't want to buy us flagship money. But this is basically the same price as an entry-level iPhone 16, not the Pro model, just a regular. So if they're adventurous and they're willing, I guess, to get bullied for, having a green bubble instead of a blue bubble.
Speaker 1:They could be like hey, mom and Dad fan edition, a Z Flip 7 fan edition instead. I could see them selling some of these though, so we'll see. We'll keep our eye on this. Of course I'll have a unit if they do release it next year. That would put a total of I guess it would be four folds that. We know that would probably come out next year. We'd have the fan edition Z Flip, the regular Z Flip 7, the Z Fold 7, and the Z fold special edition number two or whatever they call it Could be Z fold seven ultra Maybe.
Speaker 1:I don't know yet what they're going to call that. Now the more interesting rumor Samsung is working on a tri-fold foldable. We've heard this for a while and now we have a new patent that's been filed that we found and a bunch of sites kind of found evidence of this that shows the specifications for this new tri-fold and how it could work. So they released the technical document. What's particularly noteworthy is the patent was originally filed in 2021 and has only now been made public, so they were somewhat trying to hide this. Get the patent office to help them kind of hide the proof of this. As detailed in the patent, there's improvement to the screen tech, including a stronger protective layer for the inner displays and special openings to reduce stress at the hinges. The design also features anti-reflective coating made from synthetic resin or another material, per the document, and the screen can be built from glass and stainless steel.
Speaker 1:So Huawei introduced their tri-fold, but that was only in China. That was this year. Samsung has the chance to do exactly what they did with the original fold and become the first tri-foldable available globally, because obviously Huawei is banned from the US and most places in Europe don't sell Huawei either, so that was basically just China only kind of deal Asia. So if Samsung were to release this in 2025, they could be the first. I think a tri-fold would be incredibly interesting, but I do think the thickness is a concern. How they implement it, yeah, because we already know the folds are pretty thick and they're just getting to the point where they're reducing that thickness to acceptable levels. When I get my hands on the Z Fold Special Edition again today, that's supposed to be really thin. I'm excited to see you know how close is it to my S24 Ultra with the case on, because, basically, if the Fold Special Edition is the same thickness as my s24 ultra with the case on.
Speaker 1:It'll basically be the same, because I carry the s24 ultra when I'm out with a case all the time, so that would be no big deal. Yeah, um, but trifold. I am concerned about thickness levels, so we'd have to see. I think it's really exciting. Of course I would love to get one. Probably the first one would be priced like three grand 3500 something crazy it's gonna be.
Speaker 2:It's going to be the new luxury phone. Yeah, it's going to be off the charts expensive.
Speaker 1:My more interest, though, is in rollables. We've talked about that a few times. We don't know when Samsung will ever bring one to market. We've seen it at CES. I'll probably see some in January when I go to CES. I'll send you some pictures, Tori. Maybe one year we can work out a way for you to come see us for a few days. It'll be fun to come and check out a little bit of the show for a couple days.
Speaker 2:I'll take off if I got to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's always some cool stuff to see. It's the beginning of the semester, so you know, maybe next year, maybe in 2026, we can plan ahead and you can come for a few days to the media events. But we'll probably see some rollables. They had some last year. Basically, just press a button and the screen rolls out into a tablet phone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've never seen that. Yeah, those would be crazy.
Speaker 1:I would love to see that, because then the thickness isn't as big of a deal because the screen rolls under the main screen and so you should have a much thinner profile than if you have a big hinge on the back. But I'm definitely excited to see a trifold on the back. But I'm definitely excited to see a tri-fold. I don't know that I see this coming down the pipeline in 2025. I think maybe 2026 is more likely. I also think maybe it's good for Samsung because they're finally fine tuning and optimizing their current foldable offerings. Maybe not time to introduce another foldable display to the mass market yet? Maybe educate people and make sure that these foldables are working the best they can and, you know, fix all the shortcomings, like make sure we've got flagship cameras on all the foldables.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:And any of the other issues with battery before we kind of move in that direction. Oh, one other thing before we get into the Q&A we got a pretty spicy Q&A here, so we'll take a look at that. The last thing is 1UI7. We couldn't have a whole episode without talking about 1UI7. We expect 1UI7 to finally come out in beta next week. Ice Universe said he expects the beta to arrive from November 17th, that is, next Sunday, so anytime the following week. I already predicted that last week because we had heard many times that the most likely release for the beta was during SDC Korea, which the keynote starts on November 21st, which would be next Friday. Yes, right, friday, thursday.
Speaker 2:Next Thursday.
Speaker 1:So that would be most likely where we'll see the beta. So if you're wondering around the beta, that's going to be next week. Samsung has already officially commented on one feature that's coming to One UI 7, which they don't usually do. We already saw this when I went to SDC in San Jose for the US version last month. Galaxy Avatar is replacing AR Emoji, but it's not really a new app. It's just the same app that we've always had AR Emoji, just with a new name. Have you ever used AR Emoji at all?
Speaker 2:No, I mean I've seen people use it, like on YouTube, but I have never personally used it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like this is another feature where, like, it's just obvious that Samsung users maybe it's just the difference between the users and not the companies apple just markets these like gimmicky features better than samsung, I guess because, like everybody uses, like the animated, like apple emojis like you know where you can animate your head, like it's usually just all the time, but with ar emoji, this kind of just you know ends up being you know, something that gets thrown to the side by samsung users.
Speaker 1:Not many people use it. I've've done tutorial videos on it on YouTube, so I've used it, but I feel like they're not usually watched that much. So I mean, that's an indication people don't care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think it's more like I never hear of these things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like Samsung has to market it better. I guess Galaxy Avatar is by far a better name than AR emoji in my opinion. I name than AR emoji. In my opinion. I think maybe that will increase the adoption because, you know, Apple also usually tends to as much as I hate to say it tends to name their things a little bit better than Samsung for certain features. But I mean, I like the name, do you like the name better?
Speaker 2:I like the name Galaxy.
Speaker 1:It tells you what it is, yeah you're creating an avatar for yourself on your galaxy AR emoji doesn't really sound like you're making one for yourself. It's like you could be making emoji of anything yeah but really it's mainly about making an avatar for yourself, and so I think they finally dialed that in.
Speaker 2:We've got to get some marketing degrees.
Speaker 1:Maybe we've got to get our degree and we'll get a job with Samsung and say hey, we'll also go to sammygurucom.
Speaker 1:I'll put that in. All the marketing materials Just condense our you, you know, vertically integrate our businesses here. Um, okay, so that's one ui7. I'm not going to talk a bunch about that today because, guarantee you, next week, in the following next two weeks, because when the beta comes out, probably the whole entire show will be one ui7, because we're going to be unpacking every single feature, all the ui changes. I mean there'll be a whole month of it. By the the time we get to Christmas or Thanksgiving, probably the middle of December, you guys will be like I'm sick of One UI 7, which will be great, because then it'll be almost time for the S25 launch.
Speaker 1:We'll get to talk about that for a whole month, but I'm sure we'll be talking about that a lot. To finish the show, though, q&a Great question here. This was someone. Someone sent me this and because I hadn't seen the tweet yet, and then we actually wrote an article about it, which is Ice Universe tweeted out that potentially TM Rowe could be replaced as the CEO of Samsung Mobile the head of Samsung Mobile. So Ice Universe just simply tweeted out a photo and said he's coming, and it's a photo of Juan Joan Choi, who is EVP and head of mobile R&D office, mobile experience business from Samsung Electronics, and it's just a picture of him with a quote that says we believe our hybrid approach is the most practical and reliable solution to meet all these needs and put Samsung ahead of the curve. So it's a young, up andcoming Samsung executive. A lot of people have believed for a while that he might rise to a leadership role, and it seems that Ice Universe is suggesting that perhaps TM Rowe could be replaced by this guy. Now he doesn't say that, but Ice Universe is often very vague with his leaks, so you kind of have to try to interpret what's going on here.
Speaker 1:Tm Rowe obviously has a lot of pressure from Samsung fans and also internally from the top of Samsung as a company, right? Because, remember, samsung is a huge company. Mobile is just one part of it. It's a big part. There's no doubt Mobile is massive, but they have TVs, they've got home appliances, they've got a semiconductor business. They make the chips that go in their products. They're a massive company. So mobile is just one part and he has a lot of pressure from the upper leadership in Samsung as a whole. He's the head of mobile, but he's not the head of Samsung, right? So he has a boss as well, and so people have been speculating could he be replaced? I don't know. I mean I don't know if Ice Universe is suggesting he's going to replace TM Rowe or maybe he's just going to get a higher role in Samsung Mobile.
Speaker 1:I think you know people who are fans of Samsung, like we are, misjudge how much people don't like TM Rowe within Samsung, because even though he has stagnated the innovation, he's also made the money by doing it, because he's cut the cost. That's his whole thing. Let's not be doing these crazy products, because that costs a lot of research and development money and stuff like that, and also let's put slightly cheaper components in some stuff because then we get higher profit margins. You know, if you're his boss, you're going to like that part because you're making more cost, more money per unit, right? If you're his boss, you're going to like that part because you're making more cost, more money per unit, right? So, while they might not love the innovation and all that kind of stuff that he's lacking, they certainly love making more money. Everyone loves that in your business. So I don't know, tori, what do you think? This is a very vague rumor, but what do you think? Just looking at the tweets, very little to go on.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I feel like I'm kind of like along the same vein. Um, I think it may be refreshing, or or it may be like the time for, like, a new, younger ceo who's probably a little bit more innovative, like, like you know, I think, what, uh, and we talked about this before on the show, getting back to that root of innovation, but then also on the business side, I do also understand that they do need to them back to what they were kind of originally known for in terms of that innovation piece. I don't know, I guess we have to see.
Speaker 1:It could be you know better to connect with some of the younger consumers, which certainly seems like one of their goals. So in that sense, I don't know a lot about this guy's background in terms of aside from the fact he's obviously been an executive and engineer with Samsung for a long time. How does he feel about innovation? If you just read the quote, though, he said our hybrid approach is the most practical and reliable solution to meet all the needs and put Samsung ahead of the curve. It seems like he's at least interested in continuing to innovate.
Speaker 1:I know the very top leadership of Samsung wants Samsung Mobile to innovate. They said in their earnings call they were going to go back to doing that. So I would assume, if there is a change made, it's a change that's made in the direction of more innovation, maybe less trying to do the cost-cutting deal, which, at the end of the day, I do think is good, because they're really trying to compete against Apple at their own game, and that usually doesn't work when someone's already established and has a strategy that works, as a company like Apple is good at the cost-cutting the. Let's just change the color of the phone and not add too many new hardware features to save money, people will buy it anyway. They don't really want to try to do that, because Apple is already good at that. You're competing against something they're already the best at.
Speaker 2:And they already have a loyal fan base.
Speaker 1:Whereas you already have a fan base that cares about innovation and you made money doing that for a long time I feel like you could probably find someone who's willing to push it back in that direction. I'm not saying you have to go and spend crazy on new components for every release, but at least give people a reason to upgrade year over year, because if you want people to continue to upgrade year over year which right now Samsung still has these yearly upgrade cycles they're going to have to do that. Apple actually said they were thinking about going to not yearly upgrade for certain products.
Speaker 2:Not the iPhone. They're still going to do that. That makes too much money.
Speaker 1:But certain other products, like the iPad maybe and stuff like that, just release it when they're ready, which would make sense. But also somehow these companies have built the hype of every year there's a new launch and it makes a lot of money because people pre-order them. There's a lot of people who are just super hyped about getting that new thing and they like it. I just don't know that that's going to end anytime soon because there is so much hype around S25, S26. We know that certain time of year it's like an extra holiday on your calendar. As a Samsung fan, you know you're going to get to watch the Unpacked event.
Speaker 2:You'll get to see some cool stuff.
Speaker 1:Maybe you'll buy a new phone. So it's kind of an extra holiday. It's actually a holiday after the holidays because it's right after Christmas.
Speaker 1:You can get yourself another Christmas present with some of that money you got for Christmas, Something. Get yourself another Christmas present with some of that money you got for Christmas, something like that. I think that's mostly it. Someone else was asking me a question of on Sammy guru. Someone was asking are we going to have more other types of content other than news? And the answer is absolutely we. You know, we just got a full writing team starting at the beginning of August. So me came on and we've had other people join the team.
Speaker 1:I'm working to bring a lot more content. We're going to have a lot more reviews. I'm going to start doing a lot of written reviews. I talked about that before. We're going to have a lot more deals content, especially with the holidays A lot of deals, Black Friday deals, Cyber Monday, holiday deals for present gifts and things like that. We will have a lot more tutorial content once I bring on a couple more writers. So Meet's going to primarily switch to tutorials and not do just news. So we'll have more reviews, tutorials, deal content like roundup of accessories and stuff, cool spotlights like that. So news is not only the only plan forever. It's just that in the beginning, news is the easiest thing to get started on to get the site out there, and it's topical and it's something I already cover. A lot on YouTube is like breaking update news and stuff like that and it's also something I enjoy because I get to keep up with Samsung stuff no-transcript updates happening all the time so I think that's pretty much it, tori.
Speaker 1:Anything else for you? No, we're about to get out of here. Get a little lunch. It's 1 o'clock. We're having a relaxing Veterans Day here here and tomorrow I'll get this edited and posted for you guys. And to the grind. We really appreciate all you guys joining us every week. We've got grown the podcast quite a lot around 500 downloads every week. Now we're growing a ton. We started with like five downloads a week, you know five months ago. So we've 100x our weekly downloads, you know. So the effort's paying off. If you know someone who's a Samsung fan and you know they like Samsung, the podcast with them. We appreciate that, of course. Check out the Discord. We have the Sammy Guru Discord over there. Come hang out with us and chat Samsung stuff during the week and this week. Make sure to keep expanding your galaxy.