SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
One UI 7.0 Beta Full Review Part 1 + Samsung Messages RIP
Tori and Jeff are here to share their hands-on experiences and initial thoughts on this much-anticipated update. With Jeff's rigorous beta testing and Tori's fresh perspective, we explore everything from Samsung's strategic release timing to the humorous idea of a delayed S25 launch for our sanity.
This episode captures the essence of user feedback, exploring the latest changes to Samsung's interface, such as the separation of notifications and quick settings. We weigh in on the vertical app drawer debate, discussing its implications for accessibility and user experience. With keen insights into app organization and home screen settings, we navigate the personalization options that One UI 7.0 offers, including widget enhancements and new camera features. Plus, we'll touch on the excitement surrounding Galaxy AI Composer, the native call recording feature, and the shift from Samsung Messages to Google Messages.
Join us as we chat about the transition period for One UI 7.0, the timeline for updates across different devices, and the broader implications for messaging services. We also take a moment to reflect on the challenges and joys of keeping up with these fast-paced tech updates, especially as we anticipate more listener engagement and questions. Tune in for a lively discussion marked by humor, insight, and a hint of what’s to come in the world of Samsung devices.
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Welcome back everybody. This is episode number 23 of the Sammy Guru podcast. My name is Jeff Springer. With me, as always, my co-host, Tori. Tori say hi, hey, how's it going? And today it's finally here, the day that we've all been waiting for has finally come.
Speaker 1:It is time for the One UI 7.0 beta. All it took was us taking a week off. We went away for the holidays and Samsung's like oh, they're serious about it, even though it's just Thanksgiving. They were like these guys are serious, they're not going to talk about it anymore until we release it. And so they did. Thursday morning, 6 am Arizona time, 8 o'clock Eastern time here in the US, the beta was rolled out. We already knew about it on Wednesday night because a bunch of people had leaked it. Some people from Samsung support had said that it was going to be essentially beta was going to roll out on Thursday. So we already knew. I've been running it pretty much nonstop. I've been doing nothing but making beta videos and articles and Tori today will give us some of his impressions from someone who hasn't seen it yet because I've just been sleeping it.
Speaker 1:My wife was like last night that I was mumbling about change logs and such and I was like well, I guess that's certainly possible, I could have been doing that, but how was your week otherwise story?
Speaker 2:I mean, overall, a week was good. Uh, we're kind of just winding down, uh everything and so, um, you know, a little bit tired on that front. But I mean it'll be so great once I'm done and I would just kind of rest for the break for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's always nice at the end of the semester when you're teaching, just kind of getting ready to go and have that break and you know that, yeah, good relaxing time.
Speaker 2:It is much needed. How about you, jeff? You always ask me how about you? How's your?
Speaker 1:I'm doing pretty mean, luckily, even though I'm not teaching anymore because the beta Samsung was so kind to drop it this week once I finish the coverage over the next week or so, I should be able to take off, you know, a couple of weeks over the holidays where I don't have to do a crazy amount of work. Then I'll be going to CES on January 5th, so we're looking forward to that. It's very possible, though, that I could have to do some reservations for the launch, because, as we've heard, samsung might launch the S25 series on January 22nd, and if they did that, then I'd have to do some work at CES. It would be nice if they pushed it back.
Speaker 1:It would be nice if they did. So. Maybe if someone's listening to this podcast at Samsung who has some power, you guys could push it back. I'm thinking like a couple weeks.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because then I don't have to do any work at CES.
Speaker 2:I know that would make your life a whole lot easier. I just think that if they did that, it would probably be only because they care about my personal well-being and emotional well-being. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, like, think about how much you've done for them since you started this podcast exactly and think about how much we've done for them since we started the website, the youtube channel, the podcast, all of it, the mystery boxes.
Speaker 1:I mean, they probably just want to give me a chance to enjoy my trip to vegas.
Speaker 2:So if anyone's listening to that.
Speaker 1:just go ahead and move it back a couple weeks, not too late. We don't want it in March or anything like that that's too late.
Speaker 2:Keep it in February, early February.
Speaker 1:Early February would be the ideal time for us to have that. But, like I said, all the reputable leakers out there have said January 22nd, so probably not looking good for me.
Speaker 2:Otherwise it's a new year. It is a new year. I never know. I could get my wish. It's possible, it could be my Christmas wish.
Speaker 1:So, maybe Samsung will unwrap a Christmas wish just for me Also. Alabama looks like they might sneak into the playoff.
Speaker 2:Yes, it does, and some people are very upset about it because they're like this team has lost three games.
Speaker 1:How can you guys still let Alabama in the playoff? I'm just like, hey, whatever, if you're going to let us in, I mean I don't think we deserve to be there. But people should probably be a little worried because this team is super bipolar. Sometimes they play really great, sometimes they play really bad. You know, if they go on a streak of their bipolar where they just play really good for four games, they could win a national championship.
Speaker 2:And they could get knocked out in the first round.
Speaker 1:So if anyone asks me what's going to happen, I have no idea they could play awful and lose by seven touchdowns in the first round, or they could beat every team by five touchdowns and sweep it and win the national title. This team I have no idea who they are I mean they destroyed LSU at home, destroyed Georgia and they lost Oklahoma by three touchdowns. They lost to Vanderbilt. I mean I don't know. I don't know what's up with this team. This is one of the most unpredictable Alabama teams I've ever seen. So I think, partially because of the Saban leaving and the transition of the new leadership, they're getting used to the new leadership and so that probably created some instability. I'm not saying Devor's a bad coach and obviously if the committee is so kind to leave us in the playoff, I don't think he'll lose his job, so it's probably good for him.
Speaker 1:I guess, He'll be very happy.
Speaker 2:He'll survive this round.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he'll be very happy that they snuck him into the playoff, even though he didn't get into the SEC title Plus, he won the Iron Bowl. So it wasn't pretty, but he did. So let's get into 1UI7. What I have is I have the phone here with it and I thought what would be super fun. I so, first of all, I've already went through all the new features. I'm going to go through a bunch of them in the podcast today, obviously, but what I'm going to do cause I think it'll be more interesting is I'm going to show Tori some of the new features. Obviously, he's running one UI six, dot one and his S22 Ultra, and he can tell me what he thinks about these features, if it's something he likes or dislikes, and then I, of course, will go through some. But if you want to see every single feature and you just want a nonstop barrage of everything from the changelog, I made a 45-minute long YouTube video yesterday which took me four hours to shoot, an additional two hours to edit, and right now it only has 12,000 views. That kind of makes me angry. So hopefully people will watch it. It's because there's so much saturation, so many people make One UI 7 videos. It's hard to get 100,000 views, but I cover Samsung every day, so I feel like I deserve those 100,000 views. So go watch that video. Maybe it'll get pushed more in the algorithm. We can get views, but today we're going to get some real user impressions.
Speaker 1:So, first story, let's start with the very first thing. We talked about this back when One UI 7 was first rumored. One UI 7 now separates your notifications from your quick settings. So you have to swipe on the left side to get notifications and swipe on the right to get your quick settings. Now you can have your own phone there and look at that if you want to see the difference On your phone. You know the quick settings are at the top right. They're above the notifications and they're all combined into one panel. Now the one thing about this is, even though they're separate, you can swipe to the right to get to them yeah.
Speaker 1:You can swipe over and get to them swipe to the left, rather and get from the notifications to the quick panel. But what do you think about this change in general? Because this is the default Good news. If you don't like it, you can change it back. The easy way to change it back is to go to the quick settings there's a little pencil icon panel settings and then go to notification and quick settings view. You can change them back to where they're together instead of separate, but the separate is the default. So this is obviously what Samsung thinks is the best and what they like. What do you think about?
Speaker 2:it Okay. At first I was like I don't know how I like it Just because having to reach over. You know if I'm trying to do something one handedhanded. I had to reach over to pull down my notifications, versus the settings or the quick settings, uh. But I do like the ability to swipe back and forth in between instead of having to just pull down. Um now, what is it like? Or have you had it to where you had a lot of notifications going down? How does that kind of affect your swiping?
Speaker 1:If the notifications go all the way down, then what happens with the swipe is basically yeah, it can be a little tricky. I know what you're saying. You're saying if the notification tiles, if you have a bunch of them, then you need to swipe. These will just get clustered together. They won't go all the way down here.
Speaker 1:So it won't interfere in that sense, as long as you're swiping down here, because, like if you have a bunch of them, like you see how I have 12 Twitter notifications, it gives you like a bundle and it shows you the 12.
Speaker 1:So, like if you have a bunch I mean theoretically, I guess if you had, if you don't ever clear your notifications and but yeah, it could be a problem with the swiping, I understand, but I mean, if you can't swipe, I guess you can always go over there. But it is much more convenient if you just have a few notifications, because you can swipe over to get to the quick settings.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, actually I like that better because, like currently, right like during the day as I'm teaching, I'm not really on my phone at all. So when I get to my phone it's a lot of notifications and to just kind of like have to scroll through, to like look through all my notifications, that's a lot. So I really do like the bundling. The bundling is really nice. Yes, I like that.
Speaker 1:Bundling these by default. I think it makes it way nicer to kind of see your notifications. The other thing you can see here is you can see like it's got this nice in the notifications and quick panel, this nice blur on the background which looks way. I mean, I'm using a multicolored wallpaper to kind of accent the blur, but the blur is a lot nicer than it is on One UI 6.1. If you look in the quick panel, you also have these toggles. You can move around now. We talked about this when I came back from SDC, so you can now move where the toggles go. So if you want your media player at the top, you can move it right there. Oh, I love that. And then here the quick toggles you can edit them and they now expand just by swiping down. So if you go in here and you go to your quick panel, instead of having to like swipe left to right, you just pull this down and you get all your quick settings.
Speaker 1:So now all your quick settings are just right there now. One complaint that I've heard from some enthusiasts on x is that they don't like this because because if you have a lot of quick setting tiles enabled, what this does is when you swipe down to expand them, they fall off the page it's like some of them you can't see and then also that makes it kind of difficult to you know, collapse them because you have to scroll down, yeah, to go back to here, what this little light thing is right here, this icon, to actually collapse the notifications.
Speaker 1:And I do agree, I actually reported that as somewhat of a usability issue in the beta Because, of course, as you know, when you're doing the beta test, samsung gives you access to report feedback to them for the beta. That's kind of the whole point of doing a software beta, so I did, don't you think that's kind of clunky?
Speaker 2:I think so too. I don't want anything where I need to slide a lot to find something that I'm looking. I mean I think it's better than going left to right, but they've got to have another way.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't mind too much the icons for the quick settings falling off the page, but I don't really want to have to go down here and then collapse them using this you know, tap the button, because if I have too many, I didn't have to scroll down and tap there has to be a like.
Speaker 1:maybe there's a button at the top. Maybe the button is at the top for you to collapse it, because there's no reason we couldn't have this button at the top of the quick settings and then collapse it. That way, I think it would be better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see too.
Speaker 1:But I do like the editability of all these quick toggles. It's really nice to have that. They did add some new quick toggles as well. One of them is a little controversial because they removed it elsewhere. You have a finder quick toggle now and finder what it does is it lets you basically search anything on your phone. That used to be enabled in the app screen. The recent app screen up here at the top is gone now from there. So if you want it you need to put it in your quick settings. There used to be a little button. If you go into your recent apps you'll see there's a little uh magnifying glass there for search. You see it. That's your finder quick settings let you search anything on your phone. It's gone now. They did completely redesign the recent apps menu. What do you think about the redesign recent apps menu here?
Speaker 2:you can see it's different yeah than the default, different, like I do, like the for me it's the. I like to use the search for apps, like I don't know if this is still in there and obviously we'll get to it, but this is really a lifesaver, the little search bar in the App Store. But honestly, looking at that, that is a lot better and smoother than what I'm used to, right, because then I have to kind of like surf through all the tabs. Yeah, this one seems like a nicer presentation, a nicer. Yeah, this one you can see it's.
Speaker 1:It's light has a nice depth effect to it. Gradient blur is still there you got your active apps here in the top.
Speaker 1:Uh, here you can also get directly into your settings. Uh, you can show the recommended apps or not? I know some people are commenting in my video. They don't like having the recommended apps at the bottom. So if you don't like those recommended apps at the bottom, you you can go into settings here and remove recommended apps and then it looks a little cleaner. So it actually looks a little bit cleaner. If you don't want those recommended apps, I kind of like the recommended apps, but certainly if you remove them it's a little bit cleaner. Look, but I think they did a great job with the recent apps menu. I do think they I mean, I don't know they could add the option in settings to put the Finder search back, because I think some people like having that in the recent apps.
Speaker 1:I know, like you said, sometimes you use the Finder to search and we will get to that. In fact, might as well. Why not? We'll go into it now, transitioning. Guess what? This is mainly going to be a software tour, so I'm sure we'll jump around here and there as I find stuff that catches our attention. This right here is the new app drawer. It's vertical now. You remember how everyone's been asking us about the vertical app drawer.
Speaker 2:Yes, everyone's been asking for a vertical, well guess, what?
Speaker 1:When is the vertical app drawer coming back?
Speaker 1:It's coming, it's already back on the beta and it will be back on your phone with One UI 7, probably in February 2025. But it's here and you don't need good luck to get it, so no more needing to install home up in order to get vertical app drawer. This is the default setting on your galaxy smartphone now. Um so a couple of things. It looks great in my opinion, but I've always been a vertical app drawer guy. There's a very weird secured by nox text at the bottom. I don't know why the heck that is in the app drawer. Well, this is. This is not a pg show. It's why in the hell is that in? I don't know why the heck that is in the app drawer. Well, this is not a PG show. Why in the hell is that in the app?
Speaker 2:drawer? I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't know why the hell it's not in the app, why this is in the app drawer, why does it say secured by Knox? I don't know why they put that there. Knox is Samsung's security suite for encryption and stuff on your phone, and One UI 7 does have some new Knox features like Knox matrix, but it's a weird place to put it in the app drawer. It's very, it's very strange. And then for the search the search bars at the bottom of the vertical app drawer. Some people don't like that. What do you think? I like it because it makes it more one handed, but it is a lot different. So if you have muscle memory, it's going to be confusing in the beginning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I have most of the memory. I actually really do like the search bar being at the very top, but I also do like the vertical draw versus, you know, the flipping horizontally to get to where I need, which is why I think I gravitate so much to the search bar. So have you found navigating and getting to the apps quicker this way than the way you did? Sure, certainly, for me?
Speaker 1:yeah, because, because I mean certainly when just swiping, but if I need to search for something, it's also easy just to tap this and get the search on the bottom once you get used to it, because of course you know I'm used to having the search at the top as well, because I've been using one ui 6.1 forever since it came out and you know before that the search bar has always been at the top in previous versions of one ui. Now someone will probably ask can you get back the horizontal if you want?
Speaker 2:Yes, but it's very confusing as to what you need to do to get that. This is a beta.
Speaker 1:Keep in mind, these are not guaranteed to be the final version of one UI seven, because betas have bugs and even though they took four months delay to push this out it's it still has some bugs. So if you go to the three dots menu on the search bar and you tap sort, if you change it from alphabetical to custom, it moves this to now being the horizontal, but it leaves all this dead space, and the dead space is because these are no longer alphabetically sorted. Now you can go to clean up pages and it will clean up the pages so that there's no longer empty space, but this doesn't put it anymore into alphabetical order either. Pages, and it will clean up the pages so that there's no longer empty space. Yeah, but this doesn't put it anymore into alphabetical order either. You still have the most recent apps on the last page and your oldest apps at the beginning.
Speaker 1:I hate this because obviously I always use alphabetical. So I think it really stinks that if people want the horizontal app drawer I don't, but if someone does, why should you have to use custom order? Why can't you use alphabetical order to get the horizontal app drawer? I don't, but if someone does, why should you have to use custom order. Why can't you use alphabetical order to get the horizontal app drawer? That seems like we're being discriminatory against people who like the horizontal app drawer Because, as we all know, everyone knows, alphabetical order is the correct way to organize your apps.
Speaker 1:I don't know who does it by custom, probably serial killers.
Speaker 2:Probably serial murderers.
Speaker 1:And some other types of people do it, but not regular people don't organize their apps by recently installed Well, probably my mother too. She's not a serial killer, but that used to be the default and she never changes her settings, so you know um. So yeah, you need to change it to that in order to get your um horizontal drawer back, if you want it. I don't think a lot of people do, but maybe you do. And if you do, there you go.
Speaker 1:Let's move on to the next piece here, which is the settings here for the app drawer and the home screen. So if you go into the home screen settings which if you go from the app drawer and you go to the search, go to settings that's going to take you to home screen settings. Let's take a quick tour. A lot of the stuff here is the same as when you have 6.1.1, but because the app screen is now vertical, you can change the number of columns. You can either do four columns, which is the default. I went and changed it to five because I like a little more information I think I like the five too but I mean honestly, four isn't bad because, since it's vertical, it really doesn't take that long to scroll through.
Speaker 1:But me personally, I still like to have to scroll less, and so if I have five columns I don't need to scroll as far. Um, so that's what I decided to do, is I went with the five columns there. Um, the other settings here inside the home screen not a lot of things new, except one really big thing, and that's the app and widget style. Admin widget style now lets you change the size of your icons on your home screen and app screen. Uh, you have three options small, medium and large. So I have on medium. Right now you see the medium, one story, yep. And then if you go and change it, let's change it to the small. Check out the small ones. There they are, they're tiny, they're so cute, Too small.
Speaker 2:Too small for you.
Speaker 1:Tori Too small, way too small. Too small, too small for you. Tori Too small, way too small. And then, if you go to the large ones, these kind of look like icons your grandmother might use.
Speaker 2:But they're not too bad actually. Yeah, no, actually the large is not that too bad at all.
Speaker 1:Garishly large I love that word.
Speaker 2:It's a great word.
Speaker 1:We're going for the spelling bee today. Actually, we're teaching an English class while we're doing this. Samsung podcast.
Speaker 1:But while we're, doing this Samsung podcast. But I mean to be honest, the large setting isn't bad, but I still prefer the middle setting, so that's what I kept it on. You can also now change the labels that appear on your home screen app labels and widget labels. So with app labels, it'll tell you what the app name is below it, which has always been kind of the case. Widget labels is new. You can now show names for the widgets from samsung and google. So if you have like samsung calendar widgets, you have these two widgets for calendar. It's just calendar above the below the widgets. I don't really like that. I turned this on just so that I could demonstrate it in my video yesterday, but now that I'm seeing it I'm like I don't really like that for the widgets what do you think?
Speaker 1:about it on the widgets, I think I mean for the apps, I'm okay with it, I don't mind it so much, but I don't really like it for the widgets. What do you think?
Speaker 2:I mean honestly and that's what I think I was kind of alluding to a little bit earlier is I mean this whole package kind of seems like something that I would get out of like a brand new phone on opening day, and so I really like the appeal of that. With this update it's polished right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No, it's very polished, it's very sleek. You can see the animations are smooth.
Speaker 1:No, it's very smooth For a first beta, like it's buttery smooth. I know people are really enthusiastic about animations and we'll talk a little bit about it more. Probably next week we're going to go in on this too. There's so much to do with One UI 7. I don't think we can fit it into a single episode Because me and Tori you know it's Friday night we can't be until 10 o'clock at night.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've already been talking about One UI 7 for 36 hours, but it's super smooth so far, and so I don't know what do you think you would use, though? Would you turn the widget labels on the icon labels on or off?
Speaker 2:What do reference on the size of the? Okay, so for me, um, I really like the medium uh size apps. I thought those were perfect. Um, again, like all of it just kind of feels like really nice out of the box. So even if, like, I initially had the widgets, um, I think I would honestly use them. Uh, I mean, so far I like what I've seen overall. But I will add this it does seem like, for the most part, if I wanted to, or if anyone wanted to, go back and change it back to default it doesn't look like I need to navigate a whole lot of menus, which is what I can appreciate.
Speaker 1:No, they've changed a lot of the user friendliness of changing some of these options, especially in the home screen, and explained what some of them do in the original tips. Another thing that's new is the widget adjustability. Previously in Samsung One UI, when you adjusted widgets, it's kind of clunky and sometimes they don't really change. If you adjust the size to look different, there's a lot of wasted space. So now, if you adjust a widget like this calendar widget, check it out. If I want to make it smaller or larger, like if I make this, it'll tell me where I can make it, like you see how here it's telling me no, I can't do it, yeah, but if there is a way to adjust it, it actually uses the space differently. So see how the cactus icon minimizes the smaller I make it. See, I can make it all the way down to a pill size one, and then I can make it all the way up to this large one. Oh no, that's cool. It completely changes the animation and like the images and stuff condensed so that there's no wasted space. And the same thing is true, like of this one too, although this one. This is a double calendar widget, so you can't really make it too small, because obviously you won't be able to see both calendars. But the countdown widget, you can adapt it to a bunch of different shapes, so that way when you adjust it, the animations look nice and there's no wasted space on it. I think that's a huge nice touch.
Speaker 1:They've had a problem with that for a while. Also, the app icons when you move them around, it's a little bit easier to do this on the grid. You can kind of see where they're going. They're also set up so that it's more symmetric on your home screen. Um, in the past you know the way the app grid was. It wasn't very symmetric and sometimes you couldn't place things in the proper way to get a symmetric look. Samsung really took some time to think about kind of the aesthetic look of their device. Um, and you know, some people have said and I'm getting tired of hearing this obviously on that it looks like iOS. It really doesn't look like iOS?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think it does. I think it looks something very Samsung yeah it's still not iOS.
Speaker 1:It doesn't look like iOS. I mean, I'm the first one, tori and I, since we started this podcast. We spent a lot of time before the beginning of the podcast calling them out for the Z Fold launch, bought a lot of things that did look like Apple, like this watch I have on my hand right now my wrist the Apple Watch Ultra, which did borrow a lot of inspiration from the Apple Watch Ultra.
Speaker 1:Like I said, the Galaxy Watch Ultra borrowed quite a lot from there, but this doesn't really look like iOS to me. I'm really happy with it overall. They added large folders now as well. So if you look at this one, tori, this is a large folder. If you look on your phone, in the past you used to have this kind of folder. If you shrink it, this used to be small like this one. But now if you long press and hit the settings cog, the little pencil, you can hit enlarge and it will make it large. And guess what? This is the really cool part. If you have icons that are in, you have icons that are in your apps that are in a large folder. You can just tap on the icon to go right into the app. You don't have to open the folder first.
Speaker 2:I like that, isn't that sweet.
Speaker 1:That makes it really nice and usable for you, because now if you have stuff, you want to organize it still, but you don't want to have to open the folder, which is an extra step, every time you want to go into, like a frequently used icon. Yeah, I love this because I have a lot of Google apps that I use, like Google Keep Studio for managing my YouTube channel, drive and Google Photos. I open them all the time but I also still want all my Google apps organized in one folder, so instead of now having to have it on my home screen so I can just quickly get to it, because I open it a lot I can still put them in the folder and organize them. But I could jump right into YouTube Studio, right into Google keep, or I do all my outlines for my videos and I'd have to go through the extra step. I will definitely use the enlarged folder feature. What do you think, tori? Something that you would find useful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually I would. I really enjoy just putting everything in folders and maybe it's just because I don't want to swipe horizontally so many times, but no, I think it'd be a good feature. I I honestly do feel like and I don't think anything is out of apple, but I I really do feel like this would be a great new experience for all of those, uh, who love samsung me too yeah doing samsung yeah, I think it's uh.
Speaker 1:Overall, the home screen just looks very clean. Uh, I, I think you know I I was, you know I was against the separate lock screen. I mean sorry, the quick panel and notifications.
Speaker 2:in the beginning that would be the only thing I mean. I feel like it's pretty solid now, but I'm like just to reach over yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm going to try it and see if I can get used to it. I was against it when I first saw it. I've used it now for 36 hours. I'm still on the fence. The good news is, as I told you guys, when this was first rumored and leaked and we covered it on Sammy Guru and people were freaking out Samsung is not going to force you to use it. They almost always will give you an option to revert back to your old version, and when I originally saw it I was like they're probably going to maybe give you an option in GoodLock. They didn't even do that. They give you a stock option. You can do it in the stock settings. All you got to do is hit the settings, cog up here, go to panel settings. Like I said, choose it together here and then, once you go to together, go back, and now they're going to be combined into one.
Speaker 1:Now your notifications and your quick settings are there and you can get back to it. So if you don't like their new default, you can get back to the old look, no problem. So that's nice. Let's take a look now at the lock screen a bit, because I know a lot of people want to talk about lock screen and the first thing I'll do before we do that is let's set a, let's go to clock and we'll set a timer. You know, let's set a timer, for we've been doing this for about 20 minutes. I need to set a timer for about 12 minutes, cause then I'll need to take an ad break. You know we'll have to thank the sponsor of today's podcast.
Speaker 1:This is a preemptive warning, but anyway, this is the new live activities feature. You see how it shows you the times in there in the top corner. That's the new live activities that we talked about. You've got your timer right there, counting down in the top corner. That's the new live activities that we talked about. You've got your timer right there, counting down in the top, and I noticed now that I mistakenly said it for 12 hours. We won't be here in 12 hours but, but it sets the purpose of showing this.
Speaker 1:And now, if you go to the, if you scroll down to the notifications, you also see your live activity up here I really like that. Yeah, that is really and it shows you what is live up here Now lots of things have live activities, not just the alarm but lots of other things like music and things like that can also be persistent and they show on the now bar. So if you go to the lock screen, your now bar is down here.
Speaker 1:There's your now bar, and so you can tap and then expand it to see your new activity. And you can have various different Now Bar activities. So let me go into YouTube Music and let me queue up some non-copyrighted music, because I'm not trying to get sued today. We're not trying to get sued in this industry. So if you go to the lock screen and now you have YouTube Music playing, now you have two live activities. You've got music and the clock so you can swipe between them Still.
Speaker 1:I like that, see, I can swipe between the vertical activities nice animation and check this out with music. If you tap on this, you get a brand new music player with the album art on the lock screen. See, I've got the album art pop up right there it's gorgeous.
Speaker 1:And if you have your galaxy buds connected which I don't right now, but I want to show you this let me open my buds so they do connect. Um, if you have your Galaxy Buds connected which I don't right now, but I want to show you this Let me open my Buds so they do connect. If you have your Galaxy Buds connected and you're playing with your Galaxy Buds here, let me see if I can turn this on. You can do it, I can do it. That's what Ice Cube said. It said you can do it. Put your back into it. Here we go.
Speaker 1:So here's the buds right here. See the buds icon. If I tap on that now, I get all these, these various options for my buds, like 360, audio equalizer, transparency, volume. Um, you can see the charge and everything on your buds and everything. So this media player is really awesome, in my opinion. Uh, you get full album, art and everything. It just looks gorgeous. Um, one thing I will say is that the icons they. They fluctuate between dark and light, even if you have light mode on. I think maybe that's a bug.
Speaker 1:I don't know if Samsung intended that, but the icons go from dark to white and I think some people will probably be bothered by that.
Speaker 2:I don't think it will bother me. Oh, I mean, yes, I do think.
Speaker 1:You know I mean the enthusiasts. They'll just be a little.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I do think you know, I mean the enthusiast, they just be like guys.
Speaker 1:How can we not have consistency between see, look, see what I mean. Like here it's white Cause when it's on the, always on display, and then, when you go here, it's dark. I mean, it makes sense to me, cause this is a light wallpaper. Um, there are new options for editing on the lock screen. So if you long press on the and you go into the lock screen, now down here with your quick toggles, your quick settings, you have new options. Instead of just using apps, you can set all these actions so you could do a sound, turn your sound on or off or mute, flashlight, airplane mode, mobile data power saving. The two that I chose are do not disturb and scan QR code. So now I can just swipe this icon on the home screen and it turns on my Do Not Disturb.
Speaker 2:Oh, I like that and I can swipe this icon on the home screen and it automatically opens up my QR scanner.
Speaker 1:I can scan QR codes because I feel like I need to do that quite a lot. Previously, all you could put here was an app icon, which is nice, but it's nice to be able to have other actions, like being able to quick scan QR and also do do not disturb. So I think adding some options there is really nice. Up here you've got new clock styles that you can edit, new styles for the clock. You can, of course, also add your widgets on here. There's some new fonts and colors. You can also change the thickness of the clocks. Yeah, I went from thick to thin.
Speaker 1:I like it thick. You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean Definitely. I like to like it thick.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. Definitely I like to keep it thick and then you can change your color just like you could before. You've got widgets. They have some new widgets here. They added about, I think, seven new widgets. You've got battery, calendar, camera, clock, device, care, digital well-being, expert raw, which is an interesting one gallery, interpreter, modes and routines, reminders, wi-fi, voice recorder and weather. Um, the weather one is kind of redundant, I mean.
Speaker 1:I guess not if you want to put extra stuff here, but you can already have the weather in the top of the clock, which is where I put in um, the one thing that's missing here from the lock screen that some people like to put from the editing on the lock screen is the contact information.
Speaker 1:So people like to put from the editing on the lock screen is the contact information. So people like to put their contact info on their lock screen. You can't add that from the lock screen anymore, and the reason I figured out why. It's because the now bar is down here and they don't want you to be able to just put it anywhere.
Speaker 2:Oh, I see.
Speaker 1:I mean but? But if you look here, I have Sammy Guru written in the contact information. So how did I add it? Well, if you go into your settings and you go to lock screen, and always on display, in the main settings, you can find contact information. It's right below the roaming clock. So here's where you can put your contact info. Some people like to put their phone number or their email or whatever, and so I just put Sammy Guru there, so I show people, so you can still do that um, with the contact info if you want to. But it's not on the lock screen settings anymore. So you, a lot of people were concerned that that was gone entirely and it's. It's not gone. Um. One concern that I have, and looking at the now bar and the contact info and everything, I like it and I like the lock screen. What do you think about the lock screen? One other thing that we didn't notice. I'll mention this and then you can talk about it the notifications no longer show in the middle.
Speaker 1:You know how your notifications are in the middle. They're now up here by default and so if you want to get them down, you just swipe down. So your notifications are just little icons at the top left. Some people have said they don't like this.
Speaker 2:It's too much like the iPhone? I don't think so.
Speaker 1:But you know it's really personal preference. I mean, I've gotten kind of used to this, but you can change this back as well. Like I said, samsung's never going to leave you out to dry. They always care about choice. If you go into your notifications and go into lock screen notifications in the settings, you can change it from icons back to cards and then ba-boom, you've got your cards right back in the middle just like they were before.
Speaker 2:I like that, so if you like the cards.
Speaker 1:If that's something you're used to, then you know it's not really a huge deal. But what do you think about the lock screen as a whole? I mean the default. What do you think about the icons being at the top instead of the cards? You don't like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, because for me, like I don't know and I feel like other people do it too I mean it's a good way to just kind of keep track of everything, like you know, especially if you're like on the go, and so it's kind of hard at least in my opinion to have to go to another place just to get it to appear.
Speaker 1:Well, here's the thing, though, Tori you can swipe down in the middle still to get all the notifications.
Speaker 2:You don't have to.
Speaker 1:I mean yeah in this case they're already shown. Some people were saying well, yeah, sometimes I glance at my time and then I want to glance at my notifications without doing anything. So I just pick up my phone, boom, I'm looking at my time. My perspective it's like well, all I have to do is one swipe of my thumb and then.
Speaker 2:I can look at the notifications too so I don't know.
Speaker 1:It looks for people who care about this is going to be, you know, the classic debate between anybody who uses anything. Do you care more about form or function? Do you care about how pretty it is or do you care about how well it works?
Speaker 1:because this is the more utilitarian thing is having the cards there they don't look pretty, they're kind of ugly, and certainly if you use the icons in the top left it makes it a lot prettier because of course, look, you can see your whole wallpaper. It just looks beautiful. I mean, it's minimal but it's not as functional because then I have to swipe down to see all my information yeah so it just depends do you like?
Speaker 1:do you like form or do you like function. I'm perfectly okay with either one. The main thing that matters to me, and the one thing I'm glad they didn't do, and I don't think Samsung or Android will ever do is on iOS, when you look at a notification, it goes away from the lock screen. That's something I would never be able to deal with, Like if I looked at my notifications and then I couldn't view them anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm not a fan of that. Like that's the default.
Speaker 2:I will just sit there with them. Yeah, I'll just leave mine there all day.
Speaker 1:I'll have like 7,000 notifications at the end of the day because you know so many people message me because social and everything and YouTube studio, I don't care, I'll care.
Speaker 1:I'll use it as a filing cabinet throughout the day and I will not let anyone take that away from me. That's why people have to pry my Android and my Samsung phone from my cold dead hands. I'll never switch to iPhone as my main device. That one thing will never let me switch, because I hate the way they do notifications. But this, this implementation, I could go either way with it. It's not a huge thing to me. There's one that's even worse. You can do just dots, check it out. This one's really minimal. It just shows you actually, with the, with the carrier up there, it doesn't even show it to you. It just shows a little dot up here to say you have a notification. There's no icons or anything. Now, I wouldn't want that.
Speaker 1:That's, that's a little much. I still want to know, like, which icon, which which apps do I have notifications from so I can see the icons, because otherwise, like, how do I know if I need to take a look at something? Because, for all I know, it could be a notification from the mcdonald's app telling me that I can get a free large fry today.
Speaker 1:That is true, which I mean isn't necessarily a bad thing, because I mean I would like a free large fry on friday it's my cheat day but it might not be critical for me to look at that notification right now if I'm doing some work or, on the other hand, you know, like if nicole is messaging me something, I better look at that notification no, you better.
Speaker 2:Better, because I don't trouble.
Speaker 1:There's gonna be some big problems there's a huge difference in the hierarchy of those notifications so you have to be a little careful with that. Um. So that's. We dug through notifications uh screen, the quick settings, the app drawer, the home screen, and now we went through a lot of the lock screen. We might have a few more things to say, gonna dig into some more. We still got about 30 minutes or so left today to get through some more stuff. Like I said, this is probably going to be a part two show.
Speaker 2:It's all about the cliffhanger because I want you guys to subscribe to the podcast so you can come back for next week as he's the king of transitions.
Speaker 1:When you get to hear all the stuff that we found between now and then, but I'm going to come back and talk about some huge features, changes, improvements to usability that we can talk about and some camera features and gallery features that I want to talk about today. But of course, before we do that, got to pay the bills. If we don't pay the bills can't keep the lights on. So before we do that, we got to thank 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's 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, et cetera. If you want to avoid instances like this, you can use Aura to protect your sensitive information and also get your information removed from these data-broking websites on the internet. I use Aura to not only give me these protections, but keep my family safe. In addition to getting antivirus protection, a password manager, a VPN and identity theft insurance, aura gives you all of this in one app at an affordable price. If you guys are interested in checking out Aura today, you can check the link in the show notes and you can get two weeks for free and see if Aura is right for you. We love using them and find them to really help keeping all of our data safe while we're online.
Speaker 1:All right, everybody, we're back from the break. I hope you guys enjoyed helping us keep the lights on here at the office. It's always appreciated. A couple of things we want to talk about. Uh. One big one in terms of features is we now have native call recording in one ui7 on the galaxy s24 ultra at least, and I'm assuming all other devices will as well. If you go into the call settings, you know how the tab called recorded calls or record calls and you can find your recorded calls right here. I did some calls to myself yesterday to test. I called myself.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I like to do a three-way call when I'm testing and call it me myself and I and that's what I do and I do like test conversations too and I have to take screenshots. But yeah, in the past never been a native call recorder on us galaxy phones around the world. They've had it. So if you're an internationalist or you're probably like why the hell is this a big deal? Why do we care? We've had this forever and you're right, you have. If you live in another country, samsung has had call recording for a while, but if you live in the US, you haven't, because there's various state laws in some states that don't allow recording, or at least recording without the other person's consent. Samsung got around this because now if you call someone and I'll actually show you see if we can get a little little sound of this, um, I'm gonna call tory. Okay, call tory, I gotta call him and uh wait, I got.
Speaker 1:I don't even think I have your number in here. Tory, what the heck? How do I not have your number? You don't, what's?
Speaker 2:up with that. No, you put your number in there.
Speaker 1:I don't even think I have your number in here, Tori.
Speaker 2:What the heck? How do I not have your number, Tori? You don't. What's up with that.
Speaker 1:No, you should Put your number in there. I don't know, maybe it's because I didn't sync my Google contacts. Anyway, I'll have to save it in contacts. If you're not in my, maybe you're not in my SIM card contacts. Maybe I didn't sync Google contacts to Me and Tori usually converse on Facebook Messenger or other stuff.
Speaker 1:Slack or something, so let me call you and then let's check this out. So it's actually going to play. No, I don't want to take it on my Galaxy Book. No, no, no, no, don't do that. No, it's trying to play on my Galaxy Book. It wants to do this on my Galaxy Book, but no, okay, go ahead and answer it.
Speaker 1:So now what I'm going to do? See it says this call is being recorded. It told Tori that the call is being recorded, so he has a warning and so that gets around. You know, like the issues with some of the laws in various States. And at the top it'll say that it's transcribing the call as well, and then here it says recorded. You can see on my watch says call recorded. Oh, I really like that. And so now it will automatically record your calls and it'll use galaxy eye to transcribe your calls into text so you can review the text of your calls anytime from the call log, which is really awesome.
Speaker 1:Um, the get the transcribing is actually new to everybody. So even if you're in another country, this is a new feature. But the call recording natively has been every other country for a while, but now now we have it in the US. So I know people in the US are going to be stoked, because every year, unfortunately, this takes away one of my most popular videos. Every year, when the Galaxy S phones come out, I make a video about how to record calls on your Galaxy phone.
Speaker 1:Now people won't need me for that anymore.
Speaker 1:That video has a couple hundred thousand views, so they're taking away my business over here, but it's good, I mean I'll still make the video. I'll probably just show people how to use the built-in call recorder, which is obviously better for everybody to have it built into the OS instead of having to install a third-party app, because you don't know what the third-party app is going to do with your data and so you don't want them to have all your call logs and everything. That doesn't sound appealing, but that's what people have had to do in the us for a while. Uh, what do you think, tori? You like that feature, having call recording and transcription?
Speaker 2:actually I do because, uh, I would use it a lot in my job because, like, there's so many times when the parent does not speak english, um, and so uh, like, uh, when I'm on the phone. So I, I would really like that, um, if I was using my phone to call a parent. That would just help me out tremendously.
Speaker 1:Great feature. Yeah, I really do like that feature and I think a lot of people use it. Some people were asking is there a way to turn the call recording off? Well, you don't need to turn it off because the only way to enable it is to do it on a per call basis. When I called Tori, there's a little button that pops up next to the call on the call screen. That is the recording and transcription button. If you don't press that, then the call is not recorded. So no big deal. So there's no need to turn it off. On a global level, you can choose to have it either turned on or off for a specific call and if you turn it on, it's going to show you a countdown three, two one saying that it's going to tell the other person, and then at the end of the countdown it'll say this call is being recorded, so the other person knows, and then it starts the recording and transcription. So it will transcribe it to text and you can review it later on. Um, really great. If you have like a business call and you need to remember like what you talked about on that call as well, you have a full transcription. You can read it, uh, instead of just listening to it which is a lot more convenient because sometimes you don't have time to go back and listen to an entire 30 minute call you just want like to look through some text and skim it, and I think that's very useful.
Speaker 1:Now I want to mention one other thing about the now bar that I forgot to say before we went to the break. I don't know what Samsung is going to do on the cheaper Galaxy phones that have the optical fingerprint sensor, because the optical sensor is lower on the screen it's actually down here, and this one is the ultrasonic. That's on the flagship models that we have. But if you have a cheaper phone like the S24 FE, the scanner is further down and that's going to interfere with the Now Bar or your contact info. So a lot of people have asked this question what are they going to do about the Now Bar? Is it not going to be available when you install it on something like an S24FE?
Speaker 2:And I don't know, Is this the Now Bar for my phone or we don't have?
Speaker 1:one. No, that's just a Google search widget. Yeah, it doesn't have Now Bar yet on that one at all. That's a new feature. But that's the Google search widget which comes by default on a lot of us phones.
Speaker 2:Now there's now bar that just basically searches a majority of things that are already on the phone.
Speaker 1:Any of your live act in like any activities that have like information you need to stay aware of. Can go on the now bar like music timers, alarms, anything that's like time sensitive.
Speaker 1:So, anything that's like going on currently. Eventually, I would imagine, they'll probably do kind of like Apple does with the dynamic Island and you can pin like sports scores and stuff to the now bar, which would be really cool. I would love that because I'm a big sports fan and so I'd love to have my sports course pin there. That's something I'd probably use more than anything. It's actually one of the few things I like about the dynamic Island on the iPhone and definitely something I'd like to see Samsung use. But people have asked this question do is the now bar going to come to some of the mid range and lower range Samsung phones? I don't know, because it's going to interfere. The fingerprint sensor is definitely going to interfere with this bottom information. There's a lot going on.
Speaker 2:It's really low, just looking at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there could be some problems there. We'll have to see. It's definitely going to be very close if, because I have to look at my s24 fe and just see the placement I haven't booted it up because obviously I've been, you know, just living with one ui7 on this phone the last few days. But I I will look at it and kind of let you guys know what I think, but I definitely think it's going to be a little, a little bit tight, so we'll see what happens. Uh, we do have a brand new.
Speaker 1:Another new feature I want to talk about when you go into the paste menu. So when you long press to paste something like here on x, you have this sweet new galaxy ai icon up here and if you tap it you get a brand new galaxy ai composer right here and it's absolutely fantastic. You can now check your spelling and grammar, writing style, summary, convert to bullet points and now you can compose directly from this menu. So if you hit compose, you can now write what you want to write. So I can say, like we're recording the Sammy Guru podcast live and then I'll say the best Samsung news source on the internet and let's see what it says. I want to do it in a social media style my own style. It learns your style posting over time and it says we're recording the Samsung podcast live. Right now still trying to fix this weird scrolling issue in One UI 7.0. It's the best Samsung news source on the internet, even if my phone isn't fully cooperating. Clearing the cache didn't work, so I'm exploring other options. Hopefully this update 7.0 feature will be working correctly soon. I'm still digging for answers. Maybe talking it through on the podcast will help. That seems a little pedantic, but hey, it's trying to help me.
Speaker 1:Here's the big feature, though Previously you couldn't use the Galaxy writing assistant if you used a. Use the galaxy I writing assistant if you used a third-party keyboard. So if you want to use google's keyboard gboard instead of samsung keyboard, you couldn't use it because it was built into the keyboard. Now, because it's built into the pasting menu, you can use galaxy I writing assistant with any keyboard you want. So if you're a gboard user, now you can use this and it is actually a good feature.
Speaker 1:You can also convert things, you know. See, this was standard. It's a little pedantic. This was actually the standard length. If I convert it to detailed, it's going to be super long. It has a standard or a detailed length for Galaxy Eye. But yeah, I mean, it's a really nice feature and I think the better thing is that now you can utilize this with a third-party keyboard. I forgot, do you use Gboard or Samsung keyboard? We talked about it at one point Gboard you use Gboard, so now you'll be able to use this Galaxy Eye Assistant writing assist with your Samsung or with your Google keyboard on your Galaxy phone which is great.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people want to use Gboard because they might not be Samsung keyboard fans oh yeah but they might want to use Galaxy I writing assist because it has some nice features. So that's a new feature inside One UI 7 and brings some actual utility to Galaxy users. Trying to see what else do we have? What questions do you have about the beta? Anything, tori, that you want to know about One UI 7?
Speaker 2:No, I mean honestly like I'm just excited to get it and I want to get it on like the new phone, uh, when it comes out, hopefully they're going to give you a break and give you a few weeks, um hopefully they'll give me a few weeks. Yeah, if they're listening to the show, I mean since, since we've been going it's been we've given out so much good samsung knowledge. I'm sure they probably have people you know waiting every time they're always dropping the samsung knowledge knowledge bombs.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean yes, we just explode samsung knowledge into your brain every time we come on the show, every single time um expanding your horizons. But I do want to make a quick uh known to actually uh, actually do like a majority of the features. Uh, I still, and I think to, uh, people cheering outside.
Speaker 1:They must be, they must be huge fans of this.
Speaker 2:They must be. They must be somehow listening in, uh, but no, I I I'm sure that once it comes out I will eventually get used to how the drop downdown settings and notification, but literally everything else you've shown me, I think, has been a huge improvement quality of life and truly I can do a great majority of things with just my one hand if I needed to do so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good question, Do you think it's? I mean, I think it's still pretty one-handed friendly. They did redesign the camera interface too, which is another one. I want to show you See how the camera toggles are at the bottom now.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Including this little thing that expands so you can do everything with one hand. I think it's still in line with their original vision of One UI to be a one-handed operating system. Some people have said that having those notifications at the top left makes it not that way.
Speaker 2:That's what I was initially thinking, but I do think I'm like come on on a regular basis. How much am I really going back to any app or program that I have running?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and since you can swipe anywhere on the lock screen to get your notifications anyway, it's not too bad.
Speaker 1:I think they've kept their kind of goal of making One UI 7 one-handed in line for the most part. There's another new feature I want to talk about too. There's a new feature in the sound settings that's called app sound settings. So now you can have different sound settings for different apps. So let's say that you use, like YouTube, spotify and maybe YouTube music. You might not want the same volume settings for all of them. Maybe you have a podcast app too, like Pocket Casts, because you're listening to our podcast. You can change the volume setting for each app and One UI will remember the volume for that app. So if you open the app again, it'll keep the volume settings for that particular app when you're listening to, like headphones and stuff. That's pretty awesome, I think, because one problem that I have a lot is I do use YouTube music and Spotify. Youtube music the way the quality of the music, the bit rate it is a little bit higher volume than Spotify.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:So, if I keep my Spotify volume turned up, but then if I use the same volume in YouTube music, it destroys my eardrums. So now you can have separate sound settings for your headphones for each individual app. So if you, want your YouTube music to be a little lower now you don't have to destroy your hearing, so one day, when you get older, you'll be able to hear stuff so, yes, that'll be the plan. I do not want hearing aids or anything. That's a pretty big positive, I think so so, uh, that's a pretty big feature.
Speaker 1:That's that's one that I like. We wrote that up on sammy guru. There's a couple of other sound features as well, um, which is normalizing the volume.
Speaker 1:You can normalize the volume across all apps, so basically, it's the same level of volume across all apps if you want, of course, since you can change the settings individually, you could toggle it so that one is lower or other, but it can normalize it so it's kind of the same volume across all of them, which is nice for particular um for a particular set of audio equipment like my Buds 3 Pro I played with it on there. That's a really nice feature. There are a couple of things that of course, people are going to be disappointed about with any release. That's always the case. Two things that are missing, that were rumored, that are not in the first beta we have no app lock. People have wanted app lock forever, so that means you can lock an application so basically no one else can get into it. I don't know kind of shady stuff people are doing that they really need app lock, but I guess people must be out there doing some shady dealings yeah I'm not doing any shading dealing, so I don't need to be locking my instagram or anything well, yeah, no
Speaker 1:but you know, um, people are worried about this. I'm just kidding, by the way. It's a great feature to have. I mean, Samsung should bring it. We still have app pinning, but it's not the same as a real app lock. We have secure folder, but that's also not the same as a real app lock. You can put apps in the secure folder and then they're kind of locked, but it's not the same as just locking one application. I mean mainly. It seems like a lot of younger people want this feature, which I think so too.
Speaker 2:Uh, I mean, you know, we're we're kind of like at that point where, um, as I'm also seeing a lot more young people also get a Samsung, but like they're all about keeping uh locks on like certain apps and stuff. So, uh, I I do think uh with the maybe that's, but maybe that's cause they're significant.
Speaker 1:Others are trying to go through their stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, probably.
Speaker 1:I don't have that problem, thankfully, because, I mean, I don't care what age you are. If you're in a trusting relationship, you shouldn't need to be worried about locking your phone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, yeah. I've had it Like you know, if Nicole has something she knows, she knows that too.
Speaker 1:But but I mean, yeah, I mean I got nothing to hide, so I mean I'm not too worried about it for that reason. Uh, dark mode icons are also missing. So a lot of people were hoping that when you turn the phone to dark mode, the stock icons would automatically also go to dark mode. That doesn't happen. Um, they wanted that to happen because that's what Apple did with iOS. I don't know why we want to be copying iOS. Everyone's always complaining about it. They're like don't copy iOS. And then Samsung doesn't copy iOS. And they're like hey, why the hell didn't you guys copy iOS? What is wrong with you? We wanted that feature that Apple put in iOS. Why didn't you steal it? And they're like well, hey, you guys told us not to copy iOS. We were just listening to you. You guys got to make up your mind, do you want?
Speaker 2:to. I mean, it would be the other way too. Hey, why the hell did you do that? If they put it in there, they never want to be like look, this is a direct rip off of iOS.
Speaker 1:This is a Galaxy S24 iPhone edition.
Speaker 1:I know they would be, and then they'll start doing when they did like the whole, like the camera yeah yeah, yeah, making fun yeah, they'll be trying to really go in if they did that, so you know, will that happen? I honestly don't know. These were both rumored app lock. I really would like to see them do that, because that's not really a ripoff of iphone. We'd love to see that, although apple did add that in ios 18. Now that I think about it, yeah, but that's a feature android other android oems have had for a long time.
Speaker 1:They should bring app lock. I don't really care too much about dark mode icons, but I know some people do care about it. I mean it's probably not that hard to implement, but the problem with dark mode is there's so many things that get automatically themed when you switch to dark mode. There's always room for bugs, like with the coloration in certain UI elements. So, playing with one more thing I don't know if Samsung wants to do that because they're already a little behind on the development trail, but they might want to. We'll have to see. Those are pretty much all the big things we've covered. I mean, we've wrote a ton of articles on Sammy Guru. I'm just looking all the way from the fifth. I mean scroll down the page. You've got to show more to even get to all the articles we wrote.
Speaker 1:I know Busting them out, but these are all kind of, all the big changes to the UI, design elements, all that stuff. Some questions about availability, because I know people asked about that. So let me answer a few of those questions. For can you get it? When will you get it? All that stuff? Everyone wants to know when they can get One UI 7. If you have an S 24 in the U? S, the beta is available now but unfortunately it filled up in one day. It's now full.
Speaker 1:So you can't join the beta for S 24. At least, as last time we checked people tried to join and they reported to us on X that they got the message from Samsung the beta is full. Samsung has a limited number of slots they allow in the beta. That way they can respond to feedback from all the people who are testing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because otherwise, if they let 5 million people in and all those people submit feedback, they don't have enough people to process and bring that to the engineers. So that would be silly to let 5 million people in or whatever. Whatever the number is, they can reasonably accommodate.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it looks like they've reached that number in the US so they will reopen it for other devices. I've got the question when will it open for the S23 series? Probably in two weeks, based on past launches. Two weeks later we probably will see the S23 get it. Probably a week or two after that, the Z Fold 6 and the Z Flip 6. I've heard a lot of displeasure from people who have the Z Folds and they're like why don't we get it first? Mine's a $2,000 phone. It's the most expensive phone they sell around the world I know, but it's a foldable. It's a lot harder to develop software for the foldable because it has two different screen sizes. Just think about it from the engineering perspective of it. Like it's not possible to necessarily have the same development timeline for the S series and the Z series because, you have to take into account all these different folding screen sizes and they're all different.
Speaker 1:Like the cover display on the Z Flip is different, the inner display, the outer display on the Fold and the inner display on the Fold. That's four different screen sizes you have to now worry about for the new operating system, right? So that's one of the big reasons why.
Speaker 2:Well, you know which? Uh, I think it'll be really cool, but I I actually like looking at or not actually getting to see it.
Speaker 1:I think these would be actually pretty good changes for the foldable line yeah, there actually are some specific changes for large screen devices that are in the change log. I didn't get to show them my video because, well, it's not available yet for a large screen device.
Speaker 1:So there will be specific changes that are listed in the change log for getting more information on your Fold or your tablet and, of course, when the beta is available for those, I will make another video showing those changes. But you're right, I just want to justify to people why Samsung can't push out the Fold beta at the same time as the other betas for the S series. It's because it's just not as easy, because you've got more going on right. Like when you fold your Z Fold 6, the screen size changes. That doesn't happen with an S series phone. So there's a lot of animation stuff they have to work on. You know, there's a lot of pieces that go into making a great piece of software and this, in my opinion, is great. I mean, samsung has really risen to another level with One UI 7. They've taken that big step, so probably in early January you'll see it. For the Folds, I mean hey, if you guys feel bad because your $2,000 Fold 6 didn't get the beta right now, I paid $3,000 for a Z Fold Special Edition.
Speaker 1:It don't have the beta either, and so I still got that One UI 6 1.1 software on there, and the beta probably won't even come to the special edition, because Samsung probably doesn't have enough resources to devote to something that not very many people own. So all of us who paid a ton of money to get the Z Fold special edition, we're probably going to be waiting even after the Z Fold 6 owners to get One UI 7. It'll probably come in March. So that's what we'll get for spending all that money. And it's not because Samsung hates you although it probably seems like that because you spent more money than anyone else on your phone. It's because they have to prioritize by the number of devices people have.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They go by, like how can we fulfill the software for the biggest majority of people and the Z fold special editions, like the tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny number of people, because there's only sold in two regions. And then there's idiots like me who imported to the U? S, who they weren't supposed to do that, and they're like well, you shouldn't have paid $3,000 for it. You're an idiot, why didn't you just? It only sold for 2,100 in Korea, so we didn't market up that much, so we don't care that you spent three grand, so I don't even have it on Z fold special edition. What about S22? And before? Well, s22, tori's phone probably going to get the beta sometime in January, I guess around the first or second week of January. Keep in mind that S25 series is supposed to launch on the 22nd of January.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's supposed to launch with One UI 7.1. So they would theoretically have to roll out all of those betas for the phones that are eligible before the S25 launches.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they would. They would have to do it.
Speaker 1:So that seems like that could create a little bit of a time crunch. They might need to theoretically just move it back a little bit to accommodate me and themselves and their software development schedule.
Speaker 1:So, they might have to move back the S25 launch if they're behind on 7.1, and that means the betas for the S 22 could then come out later in January. It could be the second or third week. Stable Everyone wants to know when will my phone get it. And stable, cause some people don't want to install the beta. It's a great question. The answer is S 24 series. We'll probably start getting the stable update after the S 25 releases. So let's think about it.
Speaker 2:Let's do some math, I releases, so let's think about it.
Speaker 1:Let's do some math. I'm a mathematician, tori's a mathematician. The S25 series is supposed to launch on January 22nd. So if that happens two weeks later would be February 5th, and so if it launches on February 5th, the S24 Ultra could then get the 7.0 or 7.1. I don't know. I assume they're saying the S25 will launch with 7.1. So that might be what the S24 series gets, that launch with 7.1. So that might be what the s24 series gets. That would mean the s24 series would probably get it two weeks after that, which would be february 19th. Now if samsung were in a very unlikely event, because everyone has said is launching on the 22nd, if they were to push it back a few weeks, that would then put the s25 ultra events somewhere around the 5th of February, just spitballing, and then the S25 series would be in stores on the 19th. That would mean that the stable version of One UI might not come to the S24 series until March 3rd. That would be a long wait, people would not be too pleased by that at all.
Speaker 1:Because, Google is saying that Android 16 is going to roll out in the spring next year, so samsung might just be pushing out android 15 a month or two before they roll out android 16. That hasn't happened in a long time. Samsung has always been on the ball with one ui, but you've got to understand tori's seen it today. This is the biggest overhaul in the history of one ui I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of new stuff here, like the amount of effort that went into this. The animations are amazing, the smoothness is fantastic. You can't just say, oh well, yeah, they deleted, and we should be, we should be pissed about it. You can be pissed if you want, but they made some impressive changes and I would rather them do the full overhaul, then put out something that's mediocre with very minimal changes, like apple does, and then people are still just upset and saying, oh well, why didn't they change this, why didn't they change that?
Speaker 2:well, because still buying the same film exactly well, because you wanted the beta in september.
Speaker 1:So they didn't change anything, they just put it out to accommodate you.
Speaker 1:That's what would be said if they had done that yeah but now, since they waited three or four months later, people are like, well, why did they wait? Because they made massive changes and they for the better. So yeah. So everyone is saying when am I going to get the stable? If you really want now, it could be a while. I'm not gonna lie to you. Early march, I would say at the latest for s24, um, so I would say all the samsung phones. If I'm being cautious, all the eligible phones will have it by april 1st of 2025 and that means like all, like the mid-rangers and everything that are eligible. Now, remember, if you have a mid-range phone or a lower phone range phone, they're not necessarily going to get every single feature from one UI seven dot O. So there you go. That's most of the big questions I've had in terms about availability. One more key question I got that I want to touch on. That's not when you I seven related. One more key question I got that I want to touch on. That's not One UI 7 related, but we did cover this week. It's a big one. We've gotten a lot of questions about this. We talked about it a lot on this podcast.
Speaker 1:Samsung Messages is being replaced by Google Messages, as we know Samsung has told everyone this. Well, this week that got escalated to a new level. Verizon started sending out text messages to all their customers in the country. Have Samsung phones? Do all their customers in the country have Samsung phones? Saying RCS messaging will be removed from Samsung messages starting on January 6, 2025. Several of our readers sent us screenshots. So if you use Samsung messages as of January 6, 2025, you will no longer have RCS. So you'll have no read receipts, no reactions like thumbs up or hearting or any of that. You'll have no high quality media send. And in the message, verizon says you need to switch to Google messages to continue getting a great messaging experience and they give you a link to install Google messages. So Samsung is serious about moving from Samsung to Google messages, at least in the U? S.
Speaker 2:We've we've, we've, we've seen all the signs.
Speaker 1:We've seen all the writing on the wall, but now it's legitimate. My mom even asked me about it this morning. She has her eyes and she got a text message. She's like what does this mean? And I'm like it means that you need to move to Google messages because you want RCS.
Speaker 2:Yes, you do, you do want RCS.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, a lot Other people have asked me are the other carriers going to follow suit? My guess would be yes, because why wouldn't they?
Speaker 2:T-Mobile and.
Speaker 1:AT&T are probably going to follow suit. It seems like Samsung does not want to get certified to work with RCS for all the US carriers because that costs money and Google Messages is already certified because Google kind of built the RCS platform in the US with the carriers. So they're like well, why would we spend money? We can just do Google messages and we we already partnered with Google, so no big, no big deal for us, let's just push everybody to Google messages. Will that happen in the rest of the world? I don't know. I mean, it's mainly a U S carrier thing right now, but the U? S is a big market and eventually Samsung could say well, why the heck are we still maintaining Samsung messages? We already got rid of it in the U S. Why do? Why? Are we still doing support for it and all the updates? Let's just force everybody else to use it.
Speaker 1:The only reason I would say they might not do that is Google messages, and Google as a whole is not as big of a deal Other places, like in Asia, as it is here. Um, so they might not do it, but I mean, I'll be honest, I really do think in Europe at least, this will happen. I think eventually Google messages will help replace Samsung messages in Europe, because Google has a lot of influence there and it's very widely used Google services. Maybe not in Korea, maybe not in China, because those are different markets with different kind of software schemes and kind of how people use their software and different apps. But I would guess in the US and Europe at a minimum, this is going to happen. So let us know. If you guys have seen this Text, if you have Verizon and certainly if you have another carrier and you get this message, let me know. We'd love to write it up. We wrote it up. We've got a lot of questions about this on the website, people coming by the website and asking us what this means and how it's going to affect them. So that's what Samsung and Verizon have said about it. I think that's mostly what we wanted to say. I admit we went for only an hour. We should be like only an hour.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm a little tired. I did like four videos, a bunch of shorts. I've been nonstop tweeting all of my One UI 7 finds. We wrote a ton of articles. I love One UI 7. I love Samsung, but I also have to rest and take a mental kind of break from it.
Speaker 1:Next week what I'd really like to do and some people already started putting a bunch of questions over on X is to mainly do like a Q&A show. I mean, I still have a few more features that I want to go through as well, that are more hidden features, and I'll have more time between now and then. So if you guys have questions about One UI 7, specific features, things you'd like to see, send them in. And if you have a question comment concern improvement, bugs that you've noticed, me and Tori will talk about them and kind of give some feedback. We'll probably go a little bit longer next week because I won't be as tired. I got through the really tough part of the coverage where I have to make really detailed logs of every single thing and all the notes I have to take. I now kind of know when you, I seven like the back of my hand, but I'm sure I'll find a few more things still. Does it say like the back of your hand? You know, it's a weird saying, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It's like, it's like what's the implication there?
Speaker 1:You know, like, why do you know the back of your hand so well? Yeah, know One UI 7. Very well, in terms of what else we have coming up here on the channel and on the podcast, we are going to have Flossie Carter on during the S25 launch.
Speaker 1:I've already booked that. I'm trying to get a couple of the. Let's see if we can get a couple of the people that people have requested. Juan Bagnell was one of the guys people requested. My buddy, Shane Starnes, is another YouTuber who does Android. He might come on the show as well as a guest. I will be at CES and Tori and I will figure out the podcast. I don't think we're going to stop that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think we can do it.
Speaker 1:We'll still do it while I'm at CES. I'll talk about some of the cool stuff at CES. Samsung's holding a press event. They already announced the name of it, but it's going to talk about it. But it's not like in our wheelhouse. In our wheelhouse, cause we mainly do mobile, we're going to talk about it Cause it's Samsung. I'll go to the press conference course they invited us and we'll talk about whatever they talk about. But it's usually like home, smart home and other stuff. At CS they don't really do a lot of mobile, ai or any of that.
Speaker 1:A lot more on the website. What else I'm trying to think? Galaxy S25 launch January 22nd. It's coming up fast. Can't wait for that. Make sure you sign up for your mystery box on the website, sammygurucom slash pre-order and then we are going to be launching our case brand very soon. I've talked about that a couple times on the podcast. Bukadrik and I showed Tori a preview of the website here before the who. Godric and I showed Tori a preview of the website here before the podcast. I think it's looking pretty good. Got a few more things to polish up. So if you guys are interested in cases and stuff like that, we have some great designs. It's going to come with a lot of customization options. You'll get a full pack of premium wallpapers with every case purchase. So we're really excited about that and that should be launching. So if you guys follow us over on x and all the places, we'll be making the announcement about that too.
Speaker 1:Anything else story to add before we get out of here today I know.
Speaker 2:I mean, I mean being honest, I really like the one, the one ui. Uh, I really do like all the features. I like all the coverage. I think it's really going to be a game changer in a lot of ways. Um, I think it. For me it would just be taking getting used to, and uh, one thing too uh, I know um, just keeping all like the customization and like an easy way to find. But I'll really be looking forward to next week as you go a little bit more in detail with some of those things that we may have to use.
Speaker 1:Good luck for definitely and we'll definitely answer a lot of you guys questions. Hopefully, drop those. We already have about 16 or 17 of them on X. I just couldn't answer those today in the podcast Cause a lot of people dropped them right before.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I didn't have time to make a list and I wanted to go over some of the high level changes. If I'd answered all those, it would be a three hour. Three hour show that.