SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
Galaxy S25 Slim Surprises + Chrome Leaving Galaxy Phones?
As we unpack Samsung's intriguing decision to use M13 Plus OLED panels in the Galaxy S25 Ultra, our exploration shines a light on the balancing act between cost and innovation. We tackle the vibrant, competitive landscape of flagship smartphones, drawing comparisons between Samsung's robust multitasking features and Apple's offerings. Exciting rumors about Samsung's pricing strategies, legal battles impacting chip costs, and the eagerly awaited One UI 7.1 make this episode a must-listen for tech enthusiasts eager to understand what's next in the world of smartphones.
A lively discussion unfolds around the ever-changing dynamics of tech brand loyalty amidst Google's DOJ lawsuit, potential shifts in Google Chrome's ownership, and how this could ripple through the tech community. As we wrap up, there's a glance at the future of foldable phones, Samsung's playful advertising against Apple, and the tantalizing tech on the horizon. Whether you're tech-savvy or simply curious, this episode promises insights, humor, and a glimpse into the future of innovation.
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Check out our website: https://sammyguru.com
Welcome back everybody. This is episode number 22 of the Sammy Guru Podcast. My name is Jeff Springer. With me, as always, my co-host, Torrey Torrey, say hi. Yeah how's it going? And yeah, we're back in real time. We're back here only five days after our previous recording, we're back on Friday, usual Friday schedule.
Speaker 2:Yes, how was?
Speaker 1:your week, Torrey.
Speaker 2:So far, so good. I mean what this week kind of flew by kind of fast, to be honest.
Speaker 1:It always does in academia at the end of the semester, especially towards the fall, because of the holidays.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was really just cranking out some grades. I definitely got to do a lot of that next week, and then we were just told we have a half day on Wednesday, so I should get out.
Speaker 1:That's generous of them, very generous.
Speaker 2:I know it would be nice if we got the actual whole week off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or at least the whole Wednesday. Yes, right, so you can go home and prep some of your Thanksgiving stuff. Are you going to be making that turkey for the family dinner? I know you were telling me about that Nobody wants to make the turkey.
Speaker 2:Uh-oh, you wants to make the turkey.
Speaker 1:oh you guys gonna buy one uh, no, uh, no one actually wants the turkey period, so, oh, we're just gonna do, uh, rotisserie chicken oh okay, actually that's interesting because nicole was just saying the other day she's like uh, you know, I kind of like chicken better than turkey, and we I was like no, we can't do that.
Speaker 2:I was like this is america.
Speaker 1:Come on now. We can't have, we can't have, not turkey on Thanksgiving. I was like you can make a chicken with it, like I can't not eat turkey on Thanksgiving. I mean, the fact of the matter is I don't like ham, but ham is for Christmas. I still agree to the ham because this is you know, it's an American, it's an institution.
Speaker 2:The holiday ham.
Speaker 1:I mean I don't like cooked ham at all, but I still don't say let's not have it because you know. But you know, of course, if she wants to make a chicken too, that's fine. I mean, I understand Some people do Turkey's a little drier. Honestly, I like drier.
Speaker 2:I like drier chicken too, which is a big thing my chicken a little drier.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's because I always, you know, a little scared of like salmonella or something like this when I get it out you know I can get it out in a restaurant yeah I don't want like super juicy chicken because I'm like well, I'm a little iffy about how it's been cooked fully or not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at home I'm not as iffy like I don't mind juicy chicken if my wife is making it, because I know she temperature checks it and she goes through the rigorous processes. But in the restaurant I'm like maybe I'd prefer it to be a little drier, because I know if it's dry, ish is definitely not going to give me any food poisoning because I did get that one time and it will definitely change your, your view salmonella poisoning is no, no joke no, not at all you won't have anything left in your insides at all, no problem, barely any liquid left either.
Speaker 1:You'll throw up everything that you possibly have. I had that when I was a teenager, and so that could be why my paranoia from it Explains a lot. I have a big announcement that I didn't want to wait until the end of the show for this one.
Speaker 1:I didn't even tell you yeah, tell you, yeah, no, I didn't. Even this week I got super lucky. Um, he's been a pretty good friend, slash acquaintance of mine since I kind of started doing youtube 11 years ago almost 11 years ago now. You guys all know him flossy carter, one of the biggest tech youtubers out there. Uh, he made his z-fold special edition video. I think it was monday or tuesday, I think it was maybe tuesday. He posted it in the morning and so I hadn't watched it yet because, of course, I was doing my stuff. I always watch his content. I love his content. He's one of my favorite YouTubers and one of the guys who originally inspired me to start making content on YouTube, and so I always watch his stuff.
Speaker 1:I was just busy doing Sammy Guru stuff and it was the middle of the day because he uploaded in the morning and so I was looking at my subscriber count. I sat down to shoot a video and I looked at my subscriber count and then I came back to YouTube studio later and it went up like 250 subs and it was only like 30 minutes and I was like why did I gain 250 subs in 30 minutes? Like, that's a very atypical for us. We might usually gain like five to 10 subs in 30 minutes, not 250. And so I was like what happened? And so then I keep getting all these comments from people like congratulations, congratulations. And I was like what happened? And so someone finally messaged in the comments and said Flossie Carter actually pulled up your channel on his Z Fold special edition unboxing. He showed it and said go subscribe to my guy, jeff Springer. He does amazing Samsung content if you're a Samsung knight. So he sent tons of people. We've got over like 3,000 subs in like two or three days.
Speaker 1:So if you guys are listening to the podcast and you came from Flossy Carter's channel, I highly appreciate you and also appreciate him. I gave him a shout out on Twitter, on X, thanking him for it, and then a bunch of people were saying because I guess they saw the link on our website to the podcast, we've got a lot of new podcast listeners and downloads this week too because of it. They're like you should have Flossie Carter as a guest, and so, of course, I tagged him and said hey, if you ever would be down, we'd love to have you. And he said I'm down anytime. So we're going to try to have I've been, you know, going to talk to him, but try to have him on for the Galaxy S25 launch sometime around when the phones release so we can talk about the new Galaxy S25 lineup, our next premiere headlining guest. We'll probably have a couple more before then, but Flossie Carter agreed that he would come on the show, really appreciate the shout out that he gave Sammy Guru, our YouTube channel and just everything we do. It's always nice when people who have a huge audience give you a shout out, and I don't ever go around asking people for a shout outs because if you're doing quality work, then eventually hopefully people will do that anyway. And I really appreciate him kind of noticing what we're doing, covering Samsung stuff and sending us a lot of people who are interested in Samsung content. So if you guys subscribed to the podcast channel for that, we super appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Anyway, let's jump into the Samsung news, because that's what we do here. We got Samsung news this week. I'm going to start off with saying this before we get into it, because I said last week I'm not doing any more deep dives into One UI 7.0. The beta did not release it as DC Korea. That's the piece of news you need to know. As we predicted, samsung said absolutely nothing about it and so I'm not going to speculate any further on what's going to happen, just going to say the 1UI7.0 beta is coming when it comes, and when it comes we'll talk about it. We're going to talk about some features that are rumored for 1UI7.1 later in the show, but nothing else to say about the beta other than it's not here, so no beta. I'm sorry to all of you because I know everyone wants it, just like I do.
Speaker 1:But let's start off with some Galaxy S25 Ultra news. This came out on Monday. We had widely reported already, along with a bunch of other Samsung outlets, that the Galaxy S25 Ultra is going to miss out on the M14 OLED panels, which bring higher brightness and color accuracy. Very surprising, because Samsung actually manufactures these panels themselves Samsung Display and they sold the panels. A lot of people don't realize this, but Samsung sells the panels that go in the iPhone, so they sold these panels to Apple for the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, but a Galaxy S24 Ultra is apparently not getting that upgrade, so it's not getting the M14 OLED. However, it is getting an upgraded M13, which they're going to call the M13 Plus OLED panels, and this is going to still bring higher brightness and color accuracy, along with the one thing that I think everyone has been wanting, and that is a fix of the grainy display issue on the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
Speaker 1:I know you don't have one, so you probably didn't read much about this, but when the Galaxy S24 Ultra came out and still to this day, because this is a hardware issue. If you view darker content on your Galaxy S24 Ultra in certain lighting conditions, like when it's darker, like at night, if you view some content that's dark while it's dark, you'll see a grain effect. So it kind of looks grainy on the display at certain angles and it's actually a problem with the panels itself. A lot of people have kept asking me throughout the year like do you think Samsung's going to push a software update to fix this? Of course not, unfortunately, because it's a hardware issue. So I wish I could tell you better news about that, because a lot of people always comment that on the YouTube videos as well. Is there going to be a fix on the S24 Ultra? No, it is there. It's not going away. You can't fix a hardware problem with software. They can try to minimize it, but no fix in sight. But this is good news that they're still going to improve. I mean I had a feeling they would improve the brightness. They almost always do and even though a lot of people are like well, you know how can they supply the panels for the iPhone and then not put that upgrade on the S25 Ultra, supply the panels for the iPhone and then not put that upgrade on the S25 Ultra.
Speaker 1:Well, as we're going to talk about in a few minutes, there's a lot more rumors pointing to the fact that the S25 Ultra will already get a price increase. We talked about pricing last week at the S25 lineup and if they did this if they did the M14, it would probably have to drive the price up even more. Or perhaps Samsung is really trying to cling to that $1299 starting price and they realize that if they added this upgrade, maybe they would have to force a price change. So I think it's probably not a massive deal, but it is certainly disappointing to not have a feature that's on the iPhone flagship model. But also, remember, the iPhone has a bunch of stuff. I mean the Samsung devices have a lot of stuff. That's not that. I mean the Samsung devices have a lot of stuff that's not on the iPhones. Right, they got no S Pen. They got no multitasking.
Speaker 1:They got no they got basically a very inferior and limited camera system. There's a lot, of, a lot of things that we have on the Galaxy phones that they don't have on the iPhone devices, so it's not like well, they got the M14 OLED. We should be really sad about it. As long as the M13 Plus is good and also, to be honest, there's nothing wrong with the Galaxy S24 Ultra display, outside of the grain issue, the brightness and everything in daylight and everything is great. So if they improve that and the color accuracy and they fix the grain and also keep in mind the other thing the iPhone doesn't have, remember we talked about last week is that anti-reflective coating.
Speaker 1:Just look at these two. So look, here's the Z Fold SE and here's the S24 Ultra. Look at it in the light. Look how less reflective it is on the S24 Ultra. You see the difference. I mean, you can clearly see if you reflect them in the lights. Here in the office, the S24 ultra just resting on the table, like you can see, like if you put these two side by side, this one looks a lot blacker, right a lot darker, because you can't see any of the reflective light off the top of it.
Speaker 1:So I think that anti-reflective coating, which the iphone doesn't have and actually it's very reflective it's probably more reflective than the z-fold se.
Speaker 1:I don't have an ip on the table right now, but I own an iPhone 16 Pro Max and it sits on my desk in the office a lot of times and sometimes I'm like, wow, it's really, like it really catches the light, which is not great. It's not good for your eyes. So I think that's a pretty sizable upgrade. I don't know, tori, what do you think? This? You're the expert resident average consumer. No, no average consumer is really going to care about whether there's an m13 plus or m14 oled panel.
Speaker 2:But yeah, yeah, no, I mean honestly, like, as you were saying it, I was thinking, I was like, I mean, I, I don't think I would care, I, I just want the new phone, um, and so like, for me, like, I mean, like you're just gonna say is the panel good, right like is the screen good yeah, yeah, yeah like that's what the average person says because, like to the average consumer, like when you're just getting that, that new device, because, obviously, like you're not getting a new device all the time, like right out of the box, like you're already like.
Speaker 1:I have a question for you because you always ask me questions on the show so I have a question for you.
Speaker 1:It's like what are the top three things that like? If you're just thinking like, usually like average consumers, unlike enthusiasts like myself who are in the ecosystem all the time and thinking about these things, if you had think about it, you can think about it a second. What are the top three things about the phone's display that you'll notice when you first set up a new phone? Like what, what will jump out to you? Like, if a display has this, I would be impressed.
Speaker 2:What are three things you can think of? Okay, for me, I think in the last few phones especially when I'm going into the store and they're, like you know, turning on the phone and they're helping me transfer over my data and stuff For me what sticks out the most is like the brightness and the icons.
Speaker 1:I figured the brightness would be a big one especially in Arizona, right, because also when you get the phone and you take it outside, that's one thing that, like if the brightness wasn't good you would be pretty pissed about it Because you'd be like I can't see it outside.
Speaker 1:I'm going to return the phone, so if it's fairly, dim, which Samsung and both Apple usually don't have this problem anymore because it's gotten to a point with the tech where it's not a problem. But I think if you have a flagship phone, honestly, and you downgrade to a mid-tier phone which people never do that you would be disappointed because the brightness is so much worse than a lot of mid-range phones and budget phones. So that's one thing, okay. And then the icons. You said as well, yeah, the icons. Like the color of the icons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like, just like the color of the icons, the poppiness, I guess, if that's a word, it's like the color saturation.
Speaker 1:So you do care about, see, like these upgrades. The people don't know the names of them, but they do care about the things it brings right, like the panel, the brightness it brings brightness. It brings better color accuracy and saturation, anything else. Can you think of another thing?
Speaker 2:I'd just say like snappiness, as you're kind of like navigating through, like the menus, and stuff Touch responsive through, like the menus and stuff responsive, yeah, yeah, touch responsive. Uh, those are things I think also too, when I talk to others, um, like when you just right out of the box, like that's what you kind of gravitate towards and you're like, oh okay, like I made a good purchase, like you know, that's that's what I feel, yeah, yeah I think I felt like brightness.
Speaker 1:If you ask most average consumers, a lot of them would say brightness because it's important, and if you take it outside and the brightness isn't good. And also another thing average consumers don't think about too, and I've heard some people say to me who are more like an average user if you have a phone and it's bright inside but you take it outside and has poor viewing angles, like you can't look at it.
Speaker 1:If you turn it to the side and it's hard to see, well, then that also is annoying, especially in in arizona so these display upgrades, they help with all that stuff, even though people don't care too much about the numbering, they're just going to wonder are they any good? And I think, in terms of, are they any good, the m13 plus versus the m14 is not going to matter because, honestly, an extra 30 nits of brightness or an extra you know couple of percentage points of accuracy on the color gamut, the average person's not gonna notice that at all, and you know, I think you too.
Speaker 2:You guys just remember, uh, like no kind of like. What I always say like to us, the average consumers, these this is is a legit investment for like two to three years and so, like, um, getting a new phone. Well, you're thinking about someone getting a brand new phone like three years down the line, and so, yeah, if they're getting like either the same tier phone or maybe a step above, like is going to feel like a really nice purchase and like when they're, when you're looking at the display and everything, like you know, like that, no matter what, the phone is going to feel awesome.
Speaker 1:And that's why the that's why the average consumer buyers should be more pissed off than the regular people who are enthusiasts, who buy every year because they're just going to have a chance to get a new phone next year, because they're going to buy it anyway. Yeah, but we, but we go on Twitter and complain about all the minute things like oh no, it's the M13 Plus and not the M14,. Guys, we're going to have to boycott Samsung, even though we know that you have a separate bank account named Samsung, that you have a savings account you set aside to buy the next device because that's the kind of fan you are.
Speaker 1:Samsung knows that, but you're still like, oh no, m13 Plus, we can't have that.
Speaker 2:And I'm like what's an M13 Plus? And then the average person is like this Samsung looks really nice, super bright.
Speaker 1:I think I'm going to buy it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does. They're like oh $1,300, maybe $1,400.
Speaker 1:We'll buy it Just a payment plan $35 a month for 36 months.
Speaker 2:We'll do it all day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the display upgrade. It's interesting because it seems like it's going to be a pretty solid upgrade, even though maybe not exactly the number upgrade. But, as Tori and I just kind of elaborated, for the person buying these phones in general they don't care too much about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, not at all. I am super excited for the S25. I think it's going to be one obviously a nice upgrade from the 22,. But I'm looking forward to the display overall. I'm looking forward to just the navigation, like how it feels going through the menus, and just honestly like the phone. Overall, I am really excited about this phone. I think not getting the 24, but going into the 25, I think this is going to be a really good year for Samsung.
Speaker 1:Three-year upgrade cycle. I think it's great.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, let's see what we got next. I'm going to take off my hoodie real quick.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, All right.
Speaker 1:I just wanted a good segue. I just wanted to do it. I'm a little hot.
Speaker 2:Well, you're the king of the segue, since we got another hour yeah, I don't want to be hot for another hour, I know.
Speaker 1:I just wanted a point where I could be like let's get into what we're doing next, so then I can come back and say all right, moving along, yeah, all right. So let's keep it right there with some more s25 information. We had two different sources this week say, as I just told you guys, the prices on the galaxy s25 series could go up in some regions. So it may be a good time for me to revise my price predictions from last week.
Speaker 1:This information came out just a few days after we recorded the podcast last week. Originally I said $7.99 for the base, $9.99 for the plus. I said $11.49 for the slim, but it probably would be $11.99 or $10.99 because they're not going to go with a $49 price tag, and then $12.99 for the ultra. So I guess if I have to revise it I'm going to go $899 for the base, $1099 for the plus, $1199 for the slim and $1399 for the ultra.
Speaker 1:That's where, I think, the prices will be $100 increase across the board, One of the rumors we saw said that there's $120 of extra parts cost in the S25 Ultra over the S24 Ultra.
Speaker 1:I could believe that there's been a lot of prices going up and remember we talked about the fact that the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is going to go in the S25 Ultra and all the S25s globally, that chip is going to potentially be more expensive for a number of reasons, not least of which is the dispute between Qualcomm and Arm that we talked about before that whole legal battle, so that, along with all the other components, pricing could drive it up, obviously, if Samsung's paying $120 more to build the phone it's kind of hard to eat.
Speaker 1:An extra $120 off the top of the profit because then you're not going to meet your price year over year kind of growth targets on the phones. So just as a revision because last week I said you know those were my guesses I want to revise those now that we're hearing this. We'd heard this before, but we've also heard some reports, people saying Samsung was trying to keep the price stagnant. I still don't know. I mean honestly. Obviously we're hearing various people who are liable saying this, this, but it's still like it's going to be a little surprising because apple didn't raise the prices on the iphones. Well, they kind of did, but they just like they raised the prices kind of, but they made the starting storage I think was 256 because their old one used to be 128. So they kind of raised the price, but kind of not because they made the starting storage larger.
Speaker 1:Um, I don't know if samsung samsung usually offers a free storage upgrade, so they kind of raised the price, but kind of not because they made the starting storage larger. I don't know if Samsung Samsung usually offers a free storage upgrade, so that kind of also eases the burden of a price increase if you pre-order. So like usually, like if you buy a 256, they'll give you a 512 instead for no extra charge. If you buy a 512 gig, they'll give you one terabyte for free, for no extra charge. That's really nice if you care about getting that extra storage, obviously doubling your storage that's usually a $150 upgrade. That makes it a little easier to swallow.
Speaker 1:And also, I think the other reason that it makes it easier for Samsung fans is Samsung offers those crazy trade-in values on the pre-order period. So if you have a Galaxy S22 Ultra, like Tori, which he's going to trade in, you're probably going to get $800 even for an S22 Ultra. They really try to give out crazy trade values for, like the previous three years because they know those are the most likely people to upgrade their phones that three-year kind of upgrade cycle. And then, of course, the crazy people just upgrade every year. They give you good value too because they know I mean honestly, if I was Samsung, I mean I obviously you can't do this because you would just piss off a lot of people. But I'd just be like you know what? The s22 and the s23 ultra, you guys get a thousand dollar trade in and the s24 ultra, you guys only get 700. Why? Because we know if you have an s24 ultra and you're trading it in.
Speaker 2:You're just going to buy it anyway, yeah because you have to have it, so you might as well make an extra 300 off of you. Yeah, because you're trading it in.
Speaker 1:You're just going to buy it anyway because you have to have it. So you might as well make an extra $300 off of you because you're going to buy it anyway. Because all those people who are trading S3 for Ultras, they're just like me. They just tech is a hobby and they're not going to not get it. They're complaining about it. They'll probably write a five-page essay about it and post it on X and Facebook and Instagram.
Speaker 2:Instagram and Reddit.
Speaker 1:And then they'll probably send us an email about it and they'll send Sam Mobile and everybody else an email about it, but they still buy one. And so I'm just kidding. I mean you can't do that, obviously, but it would be funny if they did that, because that really is. I'm sure the analytics suggest that people who do upgrade year over year, they would buy it where, no matter where the trade-in value is for the most part. So that's Galaxy S25 stuff, at least what was covered at the beginning of the week. I'm kind of going through the stories.
Speaker 1:Another big software story this is about One UI 7.1, not 7.0, just clarifying One UI 7.1, which will release in the Galaxy S25 series as well. So it kind of ties in nicely is going to come with an AI-powered video object eraser, which we already have for images. Basically open your photos and use Galaxy Eye and you just highlight the stuff you want to erase and poof, it's gone. It's like magic. Now you'll be able to do the same thing with videos. So you take a video of, like I take a video of Jonathan riding his bike and, you know, maybe someone photo bombs or video bombs my video. Someone else is walking down the street and I'm like I don't want them walking down the street, I just want Jonathan riding his bike. Just highlight that person, boom, they're gone. Now it's just Jonathan riding his bike on the street.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's pretty cool. I feel like people would like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think everybody would use that. Enthusiasts would like this. Average consumers use this. It all depends on how good it is.
Speaker 1:Obviously, it's a heck of a lot harder to do this, as we know, as mathematicians and you know, because we talk about this kind of stuff in linear algebra with blurring and deblurring and all this stuff, it's very, very difficult to do this video versus images. In images, it's already hard to do removal and repair a photo so that it blends in nicely, because a lot of that has to do with the same ideas that we use when we talk about blurring and deblurring things using Gaussian sources and stuff in linear algebra, and so doing this with video is even harder. Because now, right, if you have a high resolution, high frame rate video, you, like most people, shoot in 1080p, 60 frames a second. You have 60 frames every second that you have to be analyzing and figuring out how to remove and repair that 60 frames every second. So if you have a minute of video, you have to analyze 3,600 separate frames, repair those, blend them in, but not only blend them in. Blend them in so that the motion also looks like there was, that object, was never there.
Speaker 1:Um, and photos. It's already hard, but we've gotten the computational power and the AI to where that's doable and it looks pretty good. I'm curious to see what happens with video. Obviously, there are some AI video generators out there that make AI video, but they still have a lot of problems too. Sometimes they give people like five arms.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know they got like two noses, know you got like seven fingers. So there's still problems with this kind of thing, so it's not going to be perfect, but would you, would you use it if this came?
Speaker 2:and it was, it was actually good oh yeah, actually, um, you know, because I was thinking like, again, I don't have a whole lot of like tech stuff or like subscriptions to like tech things, but, like you know, whenever I want to make a video, um, I know like, okay, like my phone, you know it's like a good camera and video recorder, um, but like I don't know how to do all that editing stuff but, um, you know, I wouldn't even know like where to begin, and so, like, having more in-house, um you know, tools that I I can use in the photo or video editor, that's something I would gravitate towards, because I really do want to sometimes make a video content or I need to for like a class. And you know, if I was able to have more options and more advanced things to do on my phone that was more user-friendly, that I feel like more people would gravitate and use those features.
Speaker 1:I agree. I think this is something that a lot of people use, Not only the average consumer as well as the enthusiasts are going to like this as long as it's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as long as it's good.
Speaker 1:Hopefully Samsung doesn't release it if it's not good, because if it's not good people are going to get roasted because it's going to do like weird stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there'll probably be lots of like shorts and memes of them of the video, like adding weird artifacts, and then that won't be good, so I hope they don't release this if it's not ready. Makes me nervous just because, going back to the thing that we're not going to talk about, it's like Voldemort.
Speaker 2:I mean wait.
Speaker 1:I shouldn't have said it. It's the software that shall not be named.
Speaker 2:There you go Is not ready yet.
Speaker 1:So, since the software that shall not be named isn't ready yet, I don't know how these insanely advanced features in the next software 7.1, are going to progress and also be stable by the time they roll out. But hey, we'll cross our fingers. Samsung is a multi-hundred billions of dollar, billions of dollar corporation, so you know, maybe they can make it happen. It'd be pretty, pretty nice if they could. So, um, let's see what else we got. Some other good stuff. Oh, gboard added some new features for galaxy this week, including a new emoji kitchen.
Speaker 2:Um, I don't know why, but a lot of people who follow me.
Speaker 1:They hate gboard. I don't know why they hate a lot of people who follow me. They hate Gboard. I don't know why they hate Gboard so much, but they do. They can't stand it.
Speaker 2:Isn't that the keyboard for?
Speaker 1:That's Google's keyboard, yeah.
Speaker 2:I like it. I don't like it.
Speaker 1:Which can be used on Samsung as your default, but they are all like Samsung keyboard fans. I guess they just don't like Google in general. Maybe that's the problem they're just not a Google fan.
Speaker 2:But isn't Samsung messages going away?
Speaker 1:In the US. Yeah, they also don't like that either. I guess they're just like, yeah, Google is an evil company. They're stealing everyone's data, so we don't want anything to do with them.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, they added some new features on Galaxy phones the ability to scan and extract text from real-world objects in any text field. You already have this option on Samsung Keyboard as well, so if you like Samsung Keyboard hey, don't send me any messages about how I'm trying to force Gboard on you, I'm just telling people. There's about still a good chunk of people almost half people who use Gboard as the default, so it's worth covering. You also now get a better grammar assistant with proofreading function that identifies and fixes your errors in just one tap. I really do like the function to scan text and then automatically import it into the field. So, like this is really cool because if you have like a document that you're trying to send some information to someone on a document, you can just scan that and it'll enter it as text in your text message.
Speaker 1:So, like you know. If you're like, you know, here's a recipe I want to give to someone and you want to have it, you know, in text form. You could scan it and it'll take the text of the recipe and put it in the text message or your email or whatever you want to do. A lot of the Samsung apps will do this as well. And then Emoji Kitchen. I don't know if you've heard of Emoji Kitchen. It lets you. It's on your Gboard keyboard.
Speaker 2:If you press the emoji, you can combine two emojis into one and it will animate them.
Speaker 1:So it's really cool. So, like you can do like a poop and a Santa emoji and it'll make you like a piece of poop on Santa's head or something you know. Whatever it'll it'll, it'll mash it up like using ai uh, and so this is now. They've added more options to emoji kitchen. It's been around for a while, but they added more options, so I just wanted to let people know. I mean, hey, like I said, if you don't like g board, don't, don't get too angry, just calm down. Have have a relaxing beverage, it's gonna be fine.
Speaker 1:A lot of people send me. They send me comments all time. This week I've probably seen at least 50, 60 comments because I made a video. That video about Samsung Messages and Google Messages again and how Google Messages was adding high-quality photo sharing, which actually did roll out this week. So if you have Google Messages, you can use that now. And people are like well, I don't want it. I don't care what features they add. They're like even if they add the best features, I want to keep Samsung messages forever. And I'm like well, you got to talk to Samsung about that, because they don't seem to want you to do that. It doesn't seem like that's on their particular plan. So you know, we'll see. We'll see what happens there.
Speaker 1:The Galaxy S25 Slim so this is another one that came out. The slim flagship is going to feature a new iso cell hp5 200 megapixel camera with an app optical format of 1 over 1.56 inches. That's a smaller sensor than the galaxy s24 ultra's 1 over 1.3 inch 200 megapixel sensor. And the galaxy s25 ultra is expected to feature an unchanged unit, though we wouldn't be surprised if it features the same sensor as the Slim. Now, this rumor I don't know about this this rumor came from a. Fairly, this is a. We publish rumors from everywhere, just like Sam Mobile does. This one's a little more skeptical, to be honest to me and we put that in the article that this is a very you know, take this with a grain of salt, but it's we try to report. You know what's out there. I don't know that. I believe this one. Basically, they're saying the S25 Ultra could have a worse camera than the Slim. I don't see any way like I'd be willing to bet most of my net worth.
Speaker 2:I mean, nicole wouldn't be very happy if I did most of my net worth that that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1:Because how can you call the phone the ultra if it doesn't have the top tier camera? Like you've got to have the top tier camera, otherwise it's just a waste, right? I mean, there's no point in trying to sell an ultra phone that doesn't have the best camera. Yeah, um, so how can you put a better primary camera with a smaller aperture inside a better aperture rating inside the slim?
Speaker 2:because then the slim is basically the ultra.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's not a clear, defining marketing campaign, then, because it's like the slim is ultra for the camera but it's slim, and then the ultra is ultra for the s-pen but not the camera, because it's worse than the slim which is ultra for the camera.
Speaker 2:It doesn't make any sense no, I mean, how can you market?
Speaker 1:that, like you're asking for a lot of trouble, because then consumers can't figure out. Like, which phone do I buy? Like, if I want the best camera and all the stuff, do I buy the slim or the ultra? Well, if the slim has a better camera but not the s pen, I can't get all the stuff yeah and the ultra has a worse camera but the Pen. There has to be one phone that gets all the top stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just like Apple does, preferably the Ultra. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean the Ultra. That's why it's called the Ultra.
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, it's supposed to have everything. Yeah, I don't believe this.
Speaker 1:I mean, we really hope this happens. People will be super excited if this happens, because a lot of people were, because they're like, oh, it's only going to get an upgraded ultra-wide sensor and not a new primary sensor, and that primary sensor isn't even that good. Well, if this happens and the Slim and the Ultra both get the same unit, that would be great, because now the S25 Ultra not only has an ultra-wide camera upgrade, it has a primary sensor camera upgrade. You've got build quality upgrade, display upgrade, processor upgrade. There's a lot of upgrades, and I'm sure they're going to upgrade the anti-reflective coating on here too. It's shaping up to be a pretty interesting phone.
Speaker 1:People keep crapping on what's going to happen with this phone and the upgrades, but I don't know. I think it could end up being pretty good. And I don't know, I think it could end up being pretty good and if this ends up happening, we would have a pretty nice upgrade to the camera. I don't know. What do you think, tori? Is there any way? The Slim is going to have a better primary camera than the Ultra.
Speaker 2:No, it just doesn't make sense. The Ultra maybe it's because we don't have those marketing degrees we were talking about. We've got to get our marketing certification. I think so too. Yeah, no for the Ultra. Like I want the best stuff on it. That's why I'm spending so much money on that, to get the Ultra. So if the Slim's going to have, I mean I can see it in a sense of maybe if they want people to buy the Slim as well, like you know, you kind of have like a different separation, like all right, you know, you hit the S pen on the ultra, but you're going to get the better camera on the slim. I don't think that's really going to get the effect that you're looking for. Um, so I say, put the best camera. I mean, like, if you can do it on both, do it on both, you know, because then still the slim isn't getting the S Pen. So you know, the Ultra should literally have everything that you have to offer at the time being.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, I don't think there's any chance, but we'll see. I mean crazier things maybe have happened. I don't actually know if crazier things have happened, because that's pretty crazy, but you never know it could happen. Crazy things have happened because that's pretty crazy, but you never know it could happen. Google and Samsung posted a joint press release this week talking about their partnership with RCS messaging. As we know, the iPhone also got RCS messaging and one of the things that Samsung put at the end of their press release there's a lot of stuff We'll talk about the second half of the show too another Samsung-Apple kind of feud with their latest ad. But at the end of their press release they reminded us if you want to get the best encryption, security encryption from RCS, it has to be between Android phone to Android phone, android to iOS. If you do Android to iPhone, even though you get the reactions and all the read receipts and all that stuff like tell you when someone read your message, you don't get the end to end encryption. So they wanted to let us know that if you're using an iPhone, you're not really getting the full benefits of RCS, and I thought that was kind of interesting in that particular post and also, again, please don't get angry at us, we're just the messenger. I can't help that Samsung and Google are highlighting how much they're working together for RCS. Basically, in the post they were also saying how Google Messages is great and that's what they're planning to switch everything to Google Messages.
Speaker 1:Like I said last week, why would Samsung spend in the US to get Samsung Messages certified to work with RCS and all the carriers? It would cost millions of dollars. So why would they do that? I mean, they already have a partnership with Google. Google already has an app that is perfectly capable of doing RCS. It's already been certified, tested. They're kind of the ones who originally kind of established RCS. So they're saving millions and Google's probably paying Samsung a decent amount of money to make Google messages the default.
Speaker 1:Samsung probably didn't just say you know, hey, we're just going to switch on our own accord because we like you. They're probably like, hey, you guys pay us a lot. They pay Apple at. They pay Apple a ton of money to preload certain things on to yeah, to pay to preload certain things onto the iPhone and so to be the default search engine. Google is the default search engine on Safari. If you search something in Safari browser on your iPhone. It goes through Google. They pay Apple I think it's $20 billion a year to make it the default search engine. Of course, the estimate of what they make back from that traffic is like $100 billion.
Speaker 1:All of their ads business, because with all the people with iPhones searching and then they click on all the ads and Google, of course, is the one who runs and serves those ads they get money for all that. So it's $20 billion well spent. But I'm sure Samsung also said hey, we'll preload Google Messages if you pay us some money, so Google's probably paying them for that. We'll preload Google messages if you pay us some money, so Google is probably paying them for that. But yeah, so I mean Apple's doing RCS but no encryption. So that's the story there. Next thing I'll talk about and I know people are just going to probably be like what is this Like? Is this like the Chromecast? Now?
Speaker 2:No, there's another podcast called the.
Speaker 1:Chromecast, which is a Chromebook podcast. They're great guys actually Just check them out. But no, we're just talking about Google today, because there are some Google stories and Google makes Android, which runs on Samsung phones, a huge story, which is that future Galaxy phones may not come with Google Chrome. Wouldn't that be crazy?
Speaker 2:Wait what? That makes no sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, so we're going to tell you all about it right after we hear from the sponsor of today's podcast. This episode of the Sammy 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, 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. All right, everybody, we're back from the break and yeah, as we teased before, we went to the break, future Galaxy smartphones may not ship with Google Chrome. Here's the deal.
Speaker 1:The Department of Justice, the United States Department of Justice they are not too happy with Google. The United States Department of Justice. They are not too happy with Google, particularly the fact that Chrome and Android creates anti-competitive practices in those segments, and they are bringing a lawsuit against Google, and one of the things that they would like Google to do is they would like Google to sell. They want to force Google to sell their Chrome browser to another company and they want them to unbundle Android from all the Google services apps, like Google Photos and all those things, and give people a wider choice over what apps to utilize. This would have a very big impact, obviously, on Android devices and Samsung as well, because obviously it would mean that you would no longer have Google Chrome preloaded, potentially. Now, to unpack this a little bit, the DOJ is saying, basically, that Google uses Chrome to force people to use their engine and then that also makes them money through their ad business, and so that then makes it very difficult for people to break away from that ecosystem. But Google fairly says that they've been seeing more competition from search engines, including OpenAI with ChatGPT, who they're making their own search engine to go up against Google and other search engines out there as well, like Microsoft and Bing. And, in addition, the other thing that they said is that if they indeed did sell to another company, who's going to have the money to buy Chrome?
Speaker 1:Chrome is very I forgot what the valuation is, but it's a ridiculous amount of money. It's in the billions and billions and billions of dollars. Anybody who bought this would have to be another huge company. They could then use Chrome to make their own competitive structure. Obviously, microsoft also runs an ad business as well, because Bing is their browser and they're also trying to get people to search so they can serve their ads and make money from their ad network. So it's not really any different, I don't think the likely outcome. So what does this mean for Samsung users right now? Well, first of all, even if, let's say, they were able to get Google to not own Chrome anymore, they forced them to sell it. Even if they didn't bundle the service with Android, some other company would maintain chrome in a similar fashion to what it is now. It just wouldn't work as well. All year, the google services.
Speaker 2:So that wouldn't be good what about like chromebooks and stuff like that?
Speaker 1:oh well, they would still be able to run it on that, because that's their own hardware okay, they just wouldn't be able to pre-install it on all android phones. And all that because they would no longer own it. They could still use chromium. Chromium is. They might not be able to call them. I don't know if they'd be able to use the Chrome logo anymore.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of implications, but you would still be able to sideload the Chrome app from whoever bought it, because you can sideload APK on Android, you can download an app APK and install it yourself. That's one of the beautiful things about Android. You can't do that on an iPhone. So if let's say someone else bought it, let's say in a very dystopian world, hopefully this never comes to fruition.
Speaker 2:Hopefully, let's say Elon.
Speaker 1:Musk acquires Chrome somehow and he uses it to also bring all of his optimized opinions from X to the entire search sphere Sounds like a terrible dystopian nightmare to me. But he's one of the only people with enough money to actually purchase it. That's why I'm saying Elon Musk. There aren't very many other people who could purchase it. So let's say that he were to purchase it. If he did, then you know, you would still be able to download Chrome and sideload it but also in the sense that if he purchased Chrome, you would now have another person who owns something that's super powerful, because Chrome is used by everyone, everyone for everything, right, literally All their stuff. So you could still do it, but it just creates a huge, huge kind of problem. What I personally see happening here's what I think would happen. What I personally see happening, here's what I think would happen. I don't think that the outcome of this case is very likely that Google gets forced to sell Chrome.
Speaker 1:Because I think a lot of their legal arguments are very solid legal arguments. That one it would make the browser less secure. It would also then they'd have to desegment all of Google services out of there, and a lot of those are closely tied to Chrome. They also have hardware products that use the Chrome branding. So it would be very difficult to have that be the outcome. And Google obviously has some very good lawyers. They're one of the top five most wealthy companies in the world. They obviously have very good lawyers, just like Samsung, just like Apple, just like Tesla and anyone else. They have great lawyers. So they're probably not going to have that be the outcome. The more likely outcome. What I think is I think that the DOJ may force and we just talked about this before the break Google to stop exclusivity agreements with other mass companies, which means they would no longer be able to pay Apple $20 billion to make Chrome the default search engine on all iPhones, billion to make chrome the default search engine on all iphones. So then apple would be able to make it the default browser or the default search engine, whatever they want, whatever would benefit them the most. In that case, they wouldn't be able to do an exclusivity agreement anymore, or they would just have to make the default browser like part of the setup process for your phone, like you choose the browser when you go through the setup on your iphone or whatever. But if they took away some of those exclusivity agreements, which also might mean, hey, here's the light at the end of the tunnel for you guys maybe if samsung decides they really do want samsung messages and, as I assume, maybe google is paying them to put google messages now as the default maybe that's part of a financial agreement, maybe they stopped google from paying sam Samsung to put Google messages as the default in the US and maybe Samsung says, hey, you know what, it's time to go back to Samsung messages.
Speaker 1:Baby, let's go, let's roll. You guys will be so pumped. If that happens. That could be the ending outcome of this lawsuit. That might just make everybody who's been commenting on my videos super excited. You guys might love that. What do you think about that, tori?
Speaker 2:Do you think?
Speaker 1:there's any chance that Chrome is really going to be sold from Google? I don't see any chance of this happening.
Speaker 2:I mean like Chrome is literally used with any and everything tech-wise. I mean, like even at all the institutions I've taught at, like the go-to is Google Chrome. I mean it has to be used everywhere, and so, no, I don't think so. And yeah, like, for how often it's used on so many different, you know, types of devices, it has to be wickedly expensive. So, yes, probably Elon Musk is probably the only person possible to buy it, maybe, no, I mean honestly, like, I think for me, like, because actually I was just talking about this with my coworkers yesterday about lunch.
Speaker 2:You know we were talking about, like, the Apple ecosystem, because some of them were like, oh, like you know what about if we transfer to Samsung? And it's like, ah, but like the green messages and stuff like that, so I can see where they're coming from, if they're going to hop down on Apple about, you know, keeping ecosystems closed and making sure that you know kind of like alienating people, so that way you stay on Apple. I get it if they're going to do that for Samsung. But I just think Chrome is just so awesome and I think it really does help with the whole package of like, at least to an average consumer. Most average consumers have a Gmail of some sort. Or again, google Chrome is used everywhere, so just being able to have Jim and I in assistance going off in the background here.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, okay G.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, g no, but just having all that being able to be connected with my phone and I'm able to check the same stuff that I'm able to check on Google Chrome and like just kind of having that whole ecosystem, I will hope that it doesn't go away and but I think I would need to know, like what grounds really do they all have to stand on in terms of pursuing them? And again, I know they have really good lawyers. They could probably handle this, hopefully.
Speaker 1:I mean you could also make the argument I mean, I'm not one of Google's lawyers, I'm not a lawyer at all. Yeah, I mean, my background in education is in math, but you could almost make the argument and I bet they will make the argument that the Chrome logo, which would have to obviously be sold off with Chrome, is almost more recognizable as a representative logo of Google than the actual Google logo. Yes, I think most people identify that logo, the multicolored red, green, blue and yellow logo. They think Google when they see that.
Speaker 2:Even more so than just the Google. Google changes every day Exactly. You know the thing, so you know I would be hard-pressed to where, if you ask, probably like one of my students, who I mean because I remember seeing like the Google, like the colors, like when I was younger, like when, you know, I was first able to actually like get on the Internet and like search things up like using Google I'm hard pressed that if you ask one of my students they would probably be like what is the colors of Google, is it?
Speaker 1:just like you know what they see. If you ask one of my students, they would probably be like what is the colors of Google? Is it just like you know what they see? If?
Speaker 2:you ask them what the logo is, they'd probably say the Chrome logo. Yeah, yeah, no, I bet they would tell you that the Google logo is the Chrome icon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and so right there is a thing that they could definitely make an argument to the DOJ, because if people identify this, then if you're selling that, you're also selling off brand value of Google itself, and then pretty much no one can afford to buy that. And still, whoever bought that would then also be, like I said, anti-competitive, because they would have some vertical integration with their services, which would create the same issues that Google has now. Anybody who could afford to purchase it would also be facilitating anti-competitive practices. That's my opinion anyway. So we'll see there. But I mean, you know, like I said, this is not the google podcast, but since they do make android sometimes, we got to talk a little, a little google you know we got to get a little sometimes we have to get a little googly, you know, like that movie with uh vince vaughn and owen wilson where they become employees.
Speaker 1:It's one of my favorites A little Google-y action. Android 16 beta actually released this week. Samsung hasn't even released the software that shall not be named, which is based on Android 15.
Speaker 1:And Google has already released the developer preview and it's going off in the background here, very noisy background day to day. We were recording the podcast earlier, so there's a little more action around the building here today. So if people are wondering, yeah, android 16, already out in developer preview, so if you have a Pixel you can go and load that up. It's a little buggy. I put it on my Pixel 8a. We have a write-up on Sammy Guru outlining the new features that are coming to Android 16. We don't know which of those will ever come to Samsung, so you know. It's just to tell you what's coming in the Google version of Android 16, considering we don't even have one UI based on Android 15, or which we call the software that shall not be named. I'm not going to speculate on that. If you want to go read the features, you should. But, like I said, since we've already talked a bunch of Google, I won't run that down.
Speaker 1:Uh, if you have a samsung tablet, this is just a quick one the clock mode to daily board app, the. The daily board app is the thing where, if you plug in your tablet I use this on the tab s10 ultra when it's at my desk you can display like a night, like a night mode, kind of like the iphone does this too, a bunch of different devices will and it shows you, like, your information, your weather, your notifications, whatever. Uh, now it has a night clock so you can do this at night. You can plug in your tablet and it'll have, like you know, big giant clock there and obviously on the tab is 10 ultra. It's massive tablet, so it looks like a massive, super huge clock. Um, but yeah, you can do that now, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Uh, what else we got? One plus is going to make a rival to the galaxy Z flipped series. Uh, the fan edition, which is supposed to be the cheaper galaxy Z flip that we talked about. That's going to come in 2025. So, finally, another company is going to enter the clamshell flip fold market. Right now we only have two really in the U S Samsung and Motorola. You've tried the Motorola, you know it's. It's pretty nice to have more competition, I guess.
Speaker 2:I mean, I mean, it drives innovation.
Speaker 1:It does drive innovation. I mean, I'm curious to see what's going to happen with these clamshell foldables If they're going to make that we talked about this before the screen smaller on the outer, outer side, to make it cheaper.
Speaker 1:obviously, make it cheaper yeah if it's going to be a seven or eight hundred dollar flip, it can't have the same features as a thousand or eleven hundred dollar flip. Um, that's what motorola does, their cheaper version of their foldable. They have a cheap one I think it's 699 and then they have their premium one that's 999.
Speaker 2:They have a tiny little ticker screen on the outside, so I think that's potentially could be interesting yeah, like I think um to um, a lot of people at my job they're interested in like the clamshell flip um, but I don't really hear too many people are interested in like the actual fold I think that's because it's mainly enthusiasts. Yeah, I know, yeah, but I think, though, like you know where they're going to make the bang for their buck is going to be off the flip.
Speaker 1:It's funny too, because when you pull this out, like in public, people are impressed with it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:If you show someone this in public, like I mean especially this one, because obviously no one's ever seen this before, because it's one of like probably 20 of these in the US, this Z Fold Special Edition that I have right now. If you pull this out, like if you're at a cheesecake I was at a cheesecake factory eating the other day you pull it out and you're like boom. People are like whoa, let me check that out.
Speaker 1:I mean that's been the case since they started releasing these, like six years ago. I had the first one. I mean the first time. The person went super insane, actually also was at a cheesecake factory and the waitress just like went crazy. She's like. She's like what's going on with your phone? She's like it folds.
Speaker 2:I'm like yeah it's a foldable phone.
Speaker 1:You want to see that again? I was like check it out, Just close it, open it and close it in public a bunch of times.
Speaker 1:But, people are impressed with these. How much did you pay for this one? Oh, $3,000. And they're like, oh, maybe I'll just keep my regular slab phone a little bit longer. Oh, yeah, $3,000 is a little bit much. And of course that's not the retail price, this one. But even if you tell them you've got a Z Fold 6 and you're like, oh, I paid $1,000 slab phone Because $1,000 is already a lot of money to the average person, people keep forgetting.
Speaker 1:Like you know, if it's your hobby, then of course you've already in your mind you've allocated discretionary income to your hobby, just like Tori plays Pokemon. So in his mind he's already like, he's already like allocated some of his income to that hobby because it's something you do for fun. And so if tech is your hobby, $1,500 is not a big deal, because maybe every month you allocate like $100 of your discretionary income to that, and so in your mind you've already spent $1,200, so $300 more isn't that much. But if you're not an enthusiast it's not your hobby you're like $1,500? Geez, I was like. I was only thinking I was going to pay 800 because you know, six years ago, six years ago, 800 was enough for getting a good phone, and now it's like, oh, it's doubled.
Speaker 1:Well, if it's not your interest or your hobby, it's a little bit of a sticker shock. Uh, samsung did unveil something at SDC Korea.
Speaker 1:You know, they didn't unveil what you wanted, but they unveiled something. Samsung unveiled the Gauss 2 AI model, which is going to bring performance and efficiency to Galaxy AI presumably, which we will see in the software that shall not be named. It's coming whenever it comes and also in One UI 7.1 on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. So that's great. I mean we need faster AI. I was playing around with Galaxy Enhance X today, which is Samsung's AI-based photo editor app. They had an update. I mean a video on it. It's a little slow. They need a little tuning, a little model, but I mean they're doing a lot of advanced stuff in these AI models so it takes a lot of computational power. It's a lot of work, especially, I mean I didn't even want to think about how slow that potentially that video object eraser could be, because that's going to require a lot of computational power to do that correctly.
Speaker 1:What else we got? Trying to read through, we updated our Galaxy S25 Ultra and S25, s25 Plus guides. Samit has done an amazing job on those. Those guides are over 5,000 words. Each now has every single leak that we've compiled over the last like five months from Galaxy S25 rumors. So literally everything you should possibly learn about those devices is in those articles. I'll put them in the show notes again. I think they're the best on the internet. To be honest with you, I haven't found anyone any other site that's compiled the same level of information, detail, rumors about the prices, rumors about the features and, of course, when the phones launch, we'll have all the places you could buy them and all the official info in there. The Galaxy we already heard this last week the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition 2 could potentially this is a rumor that came out this week that phone, this phone, the sequel to it, could actually be the trifold. So the galaxy Z fold specialization, second iteration, could be Samsung's trifold. But here's the bad news. There's always bad news, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:There's always a but and the but is if exactly, if they released the?
Speaker 1:trifold next year, just like this one. They were testing some tech that was not quite ready for the global release. The trifold may be Korea and China release only, which means next year around this time you guys will be like Jeff, do you have $6,000 to import the?
Speaker 2:trifold from Korea.
Speaker 1:Because the Huawei trifold Floss paid five grand to import that, oh really. And you know that Samsung is going to cost more because there's going to be higher demand.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, sick, so they're probably going to be like Jeff, did you buy that one for six grand? Can we see some videos on it? And I'll be like I don't know, that's getting up there, guys, you guys for me to get my money back. Like there has to be a break-even point. Can't just be buying $6,000 phones if we don't know if we're making money. Luckily, I got lucky and I was the first one in the entire English-speaking YouTube tech world to get the Z Fold SE. So we got lots of views and we made our money back.
Speaker 1:But I can't guarantee that every year, so I'd have to think about that. Six grand's a lot. I mean, of course, I would want to get it first trifold from Samsung, but that's a. That's quite a tall, tall task right there. What else we got? Lots of good stuff. Oh well, I guess I'll mention this more Google news. There's a lot of Google news. If you use Gemini, you can now share files directly to Gemini on your galaxy phone. So if you hate Google invading your privacy, now you can let them invade your privacy even more by sharing your personal files in Gemini and training their AI algorithms on your private data.
Speaker 2:So if you want to do that, then you have the opportunity.
Speaker 1:I tried it. It's only for Gemini advanced users right now. So, basically, if you want to give data to Google to train their AI, you have to pay them for the privilege of doing that, and then you can get them to help you with some of your documents. So that is interesting. Openai I mentioned this earlier is planning to launch their own browser, as well as, eventually, a search engine, and they're thinking about partnering with Samsung. So this could be interesting. What if Google did have to sell Chrome and then Open AI browser, developed with Samsung, becomes the default on Galaxy phones? What if Samsung internet browser on Galaxy phones morphs into the chat GPT browser in the future? That could be spicy.
Speaker 2:No, that will be spicy.
Speaker 1:That would be a very spicy chicken. That's what I call Blaziken in Pokemon. I call him a spicy chicken. Yeah, he is he kind of looks like a chicken, but he's a fire type. I call him a spicy chicken. Yeah, he is. He kind of looks like a chicken, but he's a fire type. I call him a spicy chicken.
Speaker 2:Spicy chicken so anyway.
Speaker 1:I mean that could be very spicy if OpenAI partners with Samsung to make a browser and then Google did have to sell Chrome Again. I'm not saying it's going to happen. I said already that's super unlikely. I would assign the chances of Google being forced to sell Chrome at less than a tenth of a percent.
Speaker 1:It's very very unlikely Now. Is it very possible they'll have to break up their exclusivity agreements, like with Apple? I think that's highly likely, which would honestly suck for Apple more than anything because that's a lot of revenue that they're losing off their iPhone business. Getting paid $20 billion before you even ship a single iPhone is a pretty good deal. You know, even before they shipped an iPhone 16,. If you ask Apple how much money did you already make off the iPhone launch before they even sold one, they could say at least $20 billion. And if, hey, I could say I made $20 billion off a product launch before even selling one product. I'd say that's pretty good. Google cut us a check to just put Google Chrome on there as the default browser. So we already made $20 billion in revenue before even shipping a unit. That's pretty good. That's not a bad deal. I mean, I think Apple would be definitely a loser in that situation as well. Oh, galaxy Enhance X. So I mentioned the Galaxy Enhance X app. If you don't know about this story, it's a separate app.
Speaker 1:I know nothing about it, you can download it from the Galaxy Store. We've talked about Galaxy versus Google.
Speaker 2:Play.
Speaker 1:I can. Yeah, you can download it from the Galaxy Store and basically it lets you use Galaxy AI to do various things, and one of the things you can do is now you can import longer videos and you have this little timeline. You can long press on the timeline and it lets you zoom into the timeline and you can edit your video in kind of a more precise fashion.
Speaker 2:I like that. I'm doing that right now.
Speaker 1:And it has a button to the side where AI will automatically try to find the most interesting portion of your video and clip it for social media sharing. It's kind of hit or miss on the AI thing, but as a video editor it can do a lot of things. It can automatically make your video in slow-mo. It can do long exposure for your pictures. It could change the camera angle, so like if you're looking down at the camera and you're like, oh my chin's looking a little thick there, I would like it to look tilted up, it can actually use AI to make it so that the camera angle is tilted up and so that you're not looking down, looking all aggressive.
Speaker 1:You're like oh, I look a little bit nicer there so you can clean up some stuff. It now has the ability to add longer videos and also the long press to zoom in on the videos, so that's pretty cool. And then two last stories here. The first one we'll talk about is Samsung's ad, which we watched before the show. You and I watched it. They put out a new ad criticizing Apple for lack of innovation, and it's a pretty good ad, I thought.
Speaker 2:I really liked it. I really feel like this is the kind of ads I would like to see on a more daily basis. I feel like it really gets Samsung out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so the ad basically starts off by saying Think different. And that's Apple slogan, but not too different, because then it shows everyone standing in line for the iPhone launch outside of an Apple store with all of their iPhones lined up, typing in an iMessage, and they all kind of look the same. And then the guy's coming out of the Apple store with his upgraded iPhone 16 pro and he's like, wow, check out this new phone. And he's like what's different? And he's looking at the back camera module and he's just like looking around trying to find the difference.
Speaker 1:And then this lady comes up looking super confident, like a late twenties, early thirties, something, uh, very well-dressed woman, and she opens up her galaxy Z, fold six, and she's got like three multitasking windows. She's like editing a photo while sending a text message and browsing her social feed or whatever, and, uh, you know, she closes it into her clamshell factor and then she's doing a text message as she's walking down the road past all these people who are just all looking kind of the same and obviously she's kind of standing out because she's a trendsetter. And so then it keeps going saying Simon says stand in line, simon says upgrade every year, blah, blah, blah, and then at the end it says Samsung says you know. And it's saying Samsung says you know, try something different, et cetera, all these different pieces. I don't remember the whole ad, but at the end saying Samsung says to stand out from the crowd, whereas Apple's saying you do the same thing every year, you get no upgrades, et cetera.
Speaker 1:I like the ad. You said you like these two, tori. What did you think about the ad in general?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I really liked the ad and I think I talked about this before. I feel like over the last few months, I've seen Samsung step up their ad game because I think even before I even saw like the recent one, like no, obviously you know we go to a lot of movies Like the one that they've been showing in the movies like can you kick it?
Speaker 1:Yes, you can, or the other one where yes, you can.
Speaker 2:I think it was like the google ai and like the guys like asleep, um, I'm like okay, like those are, those are good ads because, like before, like you, you were never hearing anything about samsung, you never see their stuff and, like most stores, kind of like how, on the other side, like you see Apple and so and you see Apple advertisements any and everywhere. So I really like the smart ads that they're posting where, like either like the kind of poking fun or like it's something that's kind of catchy, that's going to get like the average users, because I feel like you know we talked about this before this is going to get more of the average users back into like, uh, you know, buying a lot of samsung stuff versus like, um, I don't think they're really going to win over apple people.
Speaker 1:I mean, there could be, there could be some some tides returning yeah, this was the, this was the argument help you that max we Weinbach made when he was a guest on the show that you know they're not necessarily going to be poaching people from Apple. They just need to focus on keeping the Samsung audience they have and bringing back some of those loyal Samsung fans that may have left for other Android devices like Pixel or OnePlus. I mean, there's probably not many of those because OnePlus is very small.
Speaker 2:I know one person that has OnePlus. I mean, there's probably not many of those because OnePlus is very small. I know one person that has OnePlus, but basically the Pixel.
Speaker 1:You know, in the US that's really the other big competitor in terms of Android. Motorola is doing some stuff. They're just still not making a big enough market share for Samsung to take them seriously.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like they have to like come back. I mean, obviously when the Razr originally was out, they were dominating. Yeah, after the Razr.
Speaker 1:Honestly, I would like it to go back to 2024 when I first started YouTube and really Samsung, lg, htc and Motorola were all doing big things in the Android space and it was really a lot of competition.
Speaker 1:That was great. I mean obviously it's great now because I cover Samsung and obviously they're the winners. They're beating everybody in terms of the Android market share. That's good for me because it helps my business, but I mean it was great for consumers when everyone was competing, because obviously when everyone competes, you get a better product and people are like well, the technology has stagnated to a point where smartphones, year over year, we don't see big upgrades. One of the reasons is because Apple and Samsung kind of destroyed everyone. They were like the Terminators and they just destroyed every other company in the US anyway, and so they don't have to do innovation at a crazy level because their fan base just keeps upgrading year over year, no matter what they do. And so you can criticize tm row, you can criticize tim cook for doing that, but uh, or tim apple, as we call him tim apple tim cook.
Speaker 1:You can criticize tim cook if you want, but at the end of the day, uh, they're just making money for their companies if people are going to upgrade anyway and you can have higher margins because you're putting less expensive stuff into the devices.
Speaker 1:Well, why not spend less money on r and d and then you can trickle out those features longer. You have a longer extended product upgrade cycle. Back in the day in 2014, if you were samsung, you couldn't be holding on to your crazy idea because you didn't know if lg or htc or motorola was about to take that same idea and release it next month at their launch event.
Speaker 1:And so you had to push out like the craziest stuff you had right now or people weren't going to buy your stuff, cause, like whatever was the craziest new thing. That's what Android fans wanted back then, cause Android was about being on the cutting edge. Apple was still a little more about trickling stuff out, but they also had to be a little more aggressive because they didn't know when Samsung was just going to hit them with a haymaker. Samsung had some opportunities in the early 2010s. They didn't obviously finish Apple off because Apple had a lot of market share for a lot of reasons and they're a massive company and they have a loyal following too.
Speaker 1:But they had a lot of things where they forced Apple to do something they didn't want to do. Apple didn't want to make really big, giant smart phones, right. Samsung forced them to make those smartphones by making the Galaxy Note lineup popular. When the Galaxy Note lineup came out, all these like Apple fans were like mocking it, like oh, it's a joke, it's way too big. How can you put it in your pocket? Ha ha, I would never put a five inch phone in my pocket.
Speaker 2:And now we have almost seven inch phones in our pocket and all the iPhone users do too, cause the pro max is the biggest selling iPhone.
Speaker 1:Samsung, you can say whatever you want. Apple did start the smartphone business basically with the iPhone, but Samsung pushed them in the direction that. Necessarily, they didn't want to go certain directions and Samsung pushed them there in a lot of ways, with camera tech too, and they were one-upping each other back in that time, right, and so it was a great time, and that's one of the reasons why things are stagnant year over year, because if you don't have to keep doing so much Samsung has even said as much. They released that press release we talked about before they don't see anyone else as their competition except Apple. Apple is the only company they're focused on competing with, so unless Apple is doing something, they don't feel the need to do it. All these Chinese OEMs that are doing stuff, like Oppo, who just had a bigger launch- Samsung's like we don't care.
Speaker 1:You guys have better Zoom or better resolution Zoom, we don't care, because your marketing can't compete with us. Your software can't compete with One UI. You don't have a lot of the same brand identity and brand value that we have. We're competing with Apple. We're in the premium, top tier space, first class mobile phones. So anyway, that's kind of the Apple Samsung story. We've talked about it many times, but I thought it was interesting because of this new ad, Samsung always taking an opportunity to take a shot.
Speaker 1:And some people will say, well, Samsung needs to get their innovation together as well. We've talked about that and they do need to. But in my humble opinion, as someone who covers Samsung all the time, they still do a hell of a lot more than Apple does to put out the best possible upgrade every year. They don't just plug the same stuff out with a new processor and call it a day. They at least give you like another four to five upgrades minimum on top of the processor upgrade where they're like. Here's why you should give us, you know, an extra $500 after the trade-in value to get a new phone, Cause you know Apple is just like oh yeah, new processor. We changed the camera a little, but not really. I mean, it really looks like the same exact phone. We just put a new processor in it. You guys want to buy it?
Speaker 1:oh, and it comes in rose gold now, but we call it desert titanium to trick you into buying one in that color, which is what happened to me as those, I don't appreciate that anyway. Last story, uh, and someone sent this to me on x this morning, I don't remember who it was um, one of our listeners, slash readers and uh, yahoo launched a brand new launched. Yahoo released a new launcher. They launched a launcher, uh, and a launcher, of course, on android for tory. If you don't know, your samsung phone comes with the one ui launcher, which is basically what you let you get into your app drawer and everything like like your app drawer yeah that's the launcher.
Speaker 1:You can install a third-party launcher that will give it like a different look and feel like you can install. Like nova action preset yeah, yeah it is, but you can actually change it if you go into settings, so like right now like that.
Speaker 2:That was the launch, that's the launcher.
Speaker 1:So if you go, into your settings and you search for default apps. Where it says choose default apps, yeah, one of the default apps you can choose. When it says choose default apps is right here, it says home app. You can change this and you can choose. When it says choose default apps is right here, it says home app.
Speaker 2:You can change this and you can install other third-party apps and it will change the way your app drawer looks and behaves on your home screen.
Speaker 1:And so one of the most popular ones is called Nova Launcher. It's very good and I used to use it on a lot of phones, but since I review Samsung, I'm always looking at One UI and I stick with the stock launcher for the most part. But yahoo already has another launcher that they own, which is kind of funny. Um, they bought aviate launcher back in 2014 for about 80 million dollars, so yahoo does own a launcher and now they made another one called yahoo launcher.
Speaker 1:I can only assume that this is to like get them more search traffic. Probably yeah. So we tried it this morning because someone sent it to me and it was so bad that I felt compelled to may have one of our writers write up an article on it. I tried it on three different phones on the z-fold se, the s24 ultra and my galaxy s24 fe because it's like a mid-ranger it crashes as soon as you like swipe up into the app drawer on all of the phones and, like I, took screenshots. It took me like 15 minutes to take these screenshots because I had to try to get it to stop crashing. This is what the app drawer looks like on yahoo launcher. It's right there. You see the little guy, the yahoo logo, up there, and then, of course, if you go to the search bar, guess what? You get a bunch of trending yahoo searches which you can then click and search on Yahoo.
Speaker 1:So they're trying to get their ad business and search volume up, trying to take some from Google. But we wrote this article as a PSA and the reason I'm putting it in the podcast is to tell you, if you saw this and you were thinking about trying it, do not try it yet. I'm not saying that you. I mean if you want to try it later. It doesn't have malware on anything in it, it's just they're just trying to get make some money off yahoo search and maybe, if you like the ui, you could try it later. But wait for a couple versions because it is garbage. Like it's slow, it crashes almost on the fold se. It doesn't work at all. Like you can't even swipe into the app drawer. If you try to swipe up, it crashes automatically. I could finally get it to run a little bit on the S24 Ultra to take the screenshots, but every time you go into the app drawer and you try to scroll, it basically crashes back out.
Speaker 2:It takes you back home screen Swiping it. Yeah, so don't give this a try.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of our audience are enthusiasts and they like to try new apps. So if you saw this, you might be like maybe I should try it. Try to save you some time, Don't waste your time. Once it's stable-ish, maybe I'll do a video on it at some point, Because people keep asking me. We've talked about this fast on the show and this is a question I get literally every week, since we're towards the end of the podcast.
Speaker 1:Question we've had from the beginning of this podcast is when is the vertical app drawer coming back to One UI and HomeUp? No one knows. They can't even get the software that shall not be named released in beta form. So how can we possibly know when they're going to release the HomeUp update for GoodLock to get the vertical app drawer that's supposed to come after that software update that we're not talking about? So I have no idea. I mean, the vertical app drawer could take until the middle of 2025 at this point, because they don't even have stable next platform release and it's not even beta. So if you want a vertical app drawer, your best bet right now, honestly, is to install a third-party launcher Not this one, though.
Speaker 2:Don't install the Yahoo launcher, install like.
Speaker 1:Nova or Apex or Action Launcher those are all good and if you really want a vertical app drawer, I've considered it. I just cover one UI so I feel like I need to use the stock launcher so I can report on performance or updates. But I've considered installing a third-party launcher Nova onto one of my phones maybe my Fold or something because I hate the horizontal app drawer too. I'm with you guys. I do not like having to scroll horizontally. It's so much easier just to flick my finger up and it scrolls through the whole list. Yeah, like when you have a bunch of apps I have to go like so far over because I've got a ton of apps on my phone Because I review all these things.
Speaker 1:Your apps are living and of course, I organize them in folders. People are like, oh, you organize them in folders? Well, yeah, but sometimes I don't want every app in a folder and with the vertical one I can get right where I'm trying to go instantaneously. So that's pretty much it that I had. We want to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving. If you guys celebrate Thanksgiving here in the US is next week, I will be posting this, probably Tuesday before Thanksgiving, so you guys can enjoy it over the break. We will not have a podcast the following week, um, because we're going to just take off the week for thanksgiving. Just kind of enjoy. We've. We've done 22 episodes here in a row without a break. That's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty happy with that yeah, um, by the end of the year we should have 25 episodes in the can. That's's pretty good for a Samsung show. You know, if you look at the other Android shows out there, honestly there aren't that many that are done consistently at the level that we do them. That's my personal opinion of the quality of what we put out every week. Of course, we're not just Android in general or Samsung specific, but All About Android is the only other really long running Android specific podcast that I really feel like. You know. Obviously they've been doing it for so long and I love their stuff. You guys should listen to them. But really appreciate you guys supporting us. We'll be back, probably. What day will that be? Tuesday will be the 26th next week, so we won't have a podcast on the third. We'll be back on the 10th, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the 10th.
Speaker 1:So I have one on the 10th, and then we will have a podcast presumably on the 17th, and then also, I probably won't post it Christmas Eve. I'll try to get it out the day before. It's probably Monday that week, because I'm not going to edit a podcast on Christmas Eve, but we will record one. I think that previous week Tori and I decided so the 23rd will be a podcast, uh, and then we should be good from there.
Speaker 2:Hopefully, so we're going to take off this week thanksgiving.
Speaker 1:We're going to recharge, we're going to come back, and when we come back, when we come back, there better be something in my samsung members app the next time that I jump on this podcast, mike, when I fire up my Rodecaster duo and Tori and I sit at this table to record. In two weeks there better be something special in my Samsung members app that I can download and run that has the number seven.
Speaker 2:But it can't be fully named. But it can't be fully named.
Speaker 1:That better happen because that's a long time from now. December 10th is a long time for the next podcast after this one to go live. Samsung has plenty of time. Let's make it happen. Anything else to say to our people for Thanksgiving here?
Speaker 2:No, just I really hope you guys you know, for those who do celebrate have a very good Thanksgiving and get out there, do some Black Friday shopping as well.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Make sure you use the Sammy Guru affiliate links in the show notes. We've got guides for everything. It's a good thing you reminded me, Tori.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, the most important thing is the first time. Happy Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1:But after that, if you're going to shop for Samsung items, make sure you use all the Sammy Guru affiliate links which you can find. We wrote a guide on Samsung phones, samsung buds and watches, samsung galaxy books, samsung appliances. We have five different guides that Sumit wrote on Sammy Guru. They have all the best deals. We're going to be updating them throughout next week. So if you need to buy any of those things and, let's be honest, you do you need at least one, but probably multiple of those items. Support the show Doesn't even cost you anything. Just use our affiliate link and we can keep bringing you the great Samsung coverage we do. And while you're doing that, make sure to keep expanding your galaxy.