SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
We're Back! Z Fold 7 Two Week Review, S25 Ultra 6 Month Revisit + S26 Ultra Preview
We're back! After a brief break, we're back with our traditional format and Torrey and I plan to stick around this time! This week we're taking a deep dive into the S25 Ultra after 6 months of use, a 2 weeks Z Fold 7 mini review, and a preview of coming attractions for January 2026. Join us, won't you?
S26 Ultra Mystery Box Sign up: https://laylo.com/springer/8g0gnSvT
Video Podcast on Youtube: https://bit.ly/3yBw3Ro
Follow Jeff on X (Twitter): https://x.com/jspring86az
Follow Torrey on X: https://x.com/T_Martin_23
Check out our website: https://sammyguru.com
Welcome back everybody. This is episode number. I actually have no idea what episode is this.
Speaker 2:I have no idea either. Let's go to the podcast page on the website, because I don't even remember.
Speaker 1:This is episode number 37?. Is that right? It can't be right. Must be somewhere in the 30s.
Speaker 2:Or is it?
Speaker 1:37?. Let's see Me and Tori don't even know's 20, it's 26 actually, wow I thought we did more than that yeah, yeah, anyway we're back um after a very long break uh, I just I just got a little tired from doing all the stuff we do at sammy guru, and so we took a little podcast break.
Speaker 1:Um, for those of you who've been listening to the audio only podcast, we switched over to like a youtube live podcast for a while yeah and uh, that was fun, but the problem was we always have millions of people asking tutorial questions, and so we could never finish discussing a specific topic so I wanted to switch back to the pre-recorded podcast just for that reason, uh. And then every month we're going to try to host a youtube live where we answer some questions. What do you think about the new format, tori? You like it?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, uh, you talking about the one where we were doing the live, or?
Speaker 1:no, this format. Now going back to this oh, you're doing the live q a once a month.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, no, um. I think this is going to be like a way better because, like we can actually get to the issues that the people are coming to listen to. You know, when we're doing the youtube it was a bunch of the same questions just about every three minutes and it's not that we don't like answering people's questions.
Speaker 1:It's just when people listen to a podcast, they want to like put the podcast on in their car and be able to listen to like a journey of various topics. Yeah, instead with the youtube live, if I would, when I'd upload the audio file, you know every five minutes, I'll be like when is that One UI 8 update coming for the?
Speaker 2:S23? And we had to answer that already four times. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So the people who are listening to the pre-recorded you know the reported podcast later on, like you know their podcatcher, they're like well, I don't want to listen to this because I'm just listening to these guys answer questions about the same software updates over and over again. So I think this is much better for the overall podcast format, and then we still get to interact with you guys once a week and once a month on a YouTube live, and we'll figure out when we're going to schedule that. Anyway, welcome back, tori. I'm really happy to be back doing this format.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same too.
Speaker 1:You are just about to be starting your school year teaching, so how?
Speaker 2:are you feeling my ninth year man?
Speaker 1:Ninth year Wow.
Speaker 2:It's really been that long, yes.
Speaker 1:It's so long. It seems like it was only yesterday that Tori was in my stats class at the university, but it's been a long time.
Speaker 2:Are you?
Speaker 2:prepared for going back tomorrow. I think I am overall, obviously the first week always like a lot of information and new systems and stuff. But they did a pretty good job of giving us enough time to work in our classrooms and just kind of like work with our team to kind of feel prepared. But you know, after a while, like it's kind of like riding a bike, like you know, I don't get like the first day jitters like I used to anymore, you know, I just kind of like all right, you know, let's bag it and tag it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, After teaching for the university, for like what I mean I, between my grad school and my tenured time there, I did like 13 years at the university. Eventually, it's just like you know it's a job. Yeah, there's no jitters. You get a little nervous speaking in public, but I was like this is what I do for a living. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I know, yeah, I used to do like the first year or two In my mind I'd be like OK, like how do I like introduce myself, you know like and stuff like that. But now it's just like we just do it, yeah.
Speaker 1:No problem, just boom. No problems, just boom, let's bag it, and tag it as we say yeah, um, tori and I definitely had. Tori was here working at the sammy guru offices over the summer. Yeah so he's been spending a lot more time uh here in the office with me. We saw a lot of movies. We saw a drastic world. We saw fantastic four. What was your favorite movie we saw over the summer?
Speaker 2:tori you know, okay, I'll probably have to. Actually, I'll give you two. There's two top ones. I'd probably have to say Superman and Fantastic Four. I just really thought they were very solid movies. But if I had to pick between those two I'd probably have to say the Fantastic Four. I just thought they really added that summer movie charm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought both of the superhero movies were good too. Obviously I like the Jurassic movie. That's cause, Jonathan. So, I know all the names of every dinosaur now so it was fun to watch it just because I have a lot of background now on you know all those different dinosaurs. But, uh, I really enjoyed both super mirrors. I was very surprised with the Superman movie, cause DC has never really made a movie that I really thought was wow, you know like a wow factor like the MCU, and I thought Mr Terrific was amazing.
Speaker 1:Very amazing character, Best character hands down and just all the characters had really good character arcs in Superman. So yeah, I enjoyed both of them. And I was very surprised with Fantastic Four. You know how good Galactus looked on screen Because it's so hard to show such a colossal character. It's so huge and they did a good job of portraying it, so I'm excited for this uh, next phase of the MCU. It should be a fun like three years of of movies to to enjoy, especially with um Robert Downey Jr Coming back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know they said that he was actually. Yeah, he was, that's what they said he was actually the guy there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it should be very interesting to see how they play with the fact that he was Iron man on the other Earth and if they do anything with that, it should be a lot of fun. We just finished up the mystery box shipping. Tori's mainly been helping with that since he's been here.
Speaker 2:I was putting those boxes, man, I was going through boxes.
Speaker 1:Basically all of your cleaning kits to those of you who got a? Box. Tori made your cleaning kit.
Speaker 2:I did.
Speaker 1:He made 700-and-something cleaning kits while he was here in the office. He's assembled a bunch of boxes, hundreds and hundreds of those, and then helped us with getting the last touches. We just shipped out the last few boxes yesterday, today, the last few boxes yesterday Today. We're recording this on the third. So we pretty much hit our target. There's a few people who had missing address info, which always happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so those were shipped a few days late. But we pretty much hit our target on the mystery boxes, which is good and, as you guys probably expect, because you've seen Samsung sales numbers and they've told you that the Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 are the best selling foldables ever. They released those a couple days ago. We published it at Sammy Guru 50% increase year over year in the Z Fold 7 over the Z Fold 6. We actually had way more than that on the mystery box side. We sold like four or five times more mystery boxes this year than we did last year. It's like a 400% increase for us.
Speaker 1:People love these phones, they're very popular. 400% increase for us. People love these phones, they're very popular. We almost got as close. We almost got close to the revenue goal that we set for the S launch, which is very hard to do. The foldables obviously usually much fewer people buy the foldables versus the S launch, so we usually don't get anywhere near doing the revenue that we would do for the S launch, but we did this time. I was impressed. I'm also very impressed with the phones. I'm going to talk about the Z Fold 7 in today's video Video. I'm so used to saying video.
Speaker 2:It's YouTube. I haven't been doing podcasts in a while.
Speaker 1:In today's show, yes, and then probably next week I might talk about the Flip and the Watch, just so I don't have to give them all their just due, because they're all very good devices and I have a lot to say about the fold. But I thought today, since we're back, I'm not going to go into every. Obviously, if I tried to cover everything that happened while we were gone, we would be here we're recording this.
Speaker 1:On sunday we'd be here until like friday because a lot of stuff has happened in the like four or five months that we've been off, yeah, since our last youtube show, which I think was back in like early march. So it's been like four or five months. But I figured we would go over some really big arcs and I thought, well, it'd be fun, even though the foldables and I'll talk about it later, since Tori and I both have an S25 Ultra it's now six months since the S25 Ultra released in stores as of today, like that was.
Speaker 1:The official launch was the beginning of February, so I figured we'd do like a six month re-review, like retrospective, of the S25 Ultra and just get our thoughts about that, because that has been my daily driver for the last six months and a lot of people have been asking me am I going to switch to the Z Fold 7? I'll address that later, but let's talk about the S25 Ultra itself and also then preview what's coming next January with the S26, because I know that's a big thing on a lot of people's minds. So, torrey, I'll ask you how have your six months been with the S25 Ultra? What do you think about the phone overall?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and actually before we get into that, I do have to give a quick shout out to Samsung on their advertisements. You know we talked a lot about this back when we were doing the podcast, very consistently that they never really had advertisements. But for this full launch, I mean, I've seen it on social media I every movie I've been to there's been it's before all the movies now yep, yep.
Speaker 2:Like you know, life unfolds with galaxy yeah, I don't understand literally every single movie I've been to there's been a commercial there. They want you to know that your life can unfold with Galaxy.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and actually along that lines and I'll talk about it later when I talk about my Fold 7 thoughts, I've seen a lot of people around the internet, on Reddit and other forums, where Apple users say that they're going to try out Samsung for the first time because of the flip in the fold, yeah, I've seen a lot of ladies saying they're going to try the Flip 7 as a result of this new full-screen cover display.
Speaker 1:So Samsung is making a marketing push. For sure, they're pushing it, but, as we said, the foldables aren't the only thing that Samsung has done well this year. The S25 lineup is also a massive hit. Um, samsung released their quarter two earnings as well, and they had massive growth in the mobile division and, of course, the foldables hadn't come out yet. So all of that growth is mainly fueled by one thing, and that is the galaxy s25 lineup.
Speaker 2:So, tori, what are your thoughts on the?
Speaker 1:s25 ultra. Let's talk first. Let's let's talk about question that a lot of people always have about every flagship, and that's the camera, because the camera seems like the one thing that people are unsure of with samsung these days and the s25 ultra. Some people have some complaints about the camera, but for you, as someone who is an average user, you're on the three-year upgrade cycle yeah s22 ultra, s25 ultra. What are your thoughts on the primary camera, the zoom camera and that ultra wide?
Speaker 2:uh, honestly, uh, so far, like you know, in thinking back to when I had my s22 ultra, uh, the camera has been very solid. For me it gives really good pics. Um, you know, like also also being a teacher, like I have to, like you know, take pics and kind of, you know, put together like newsletters or like about me's and stuff like that. You know that I really like the pictures that I'm getting. When I use them I've literally no complaints. It's probably the best camera that I've had, you know. But coming from the s22 ultra to the s25 ultra, but I I always, I always know the camera and the battery is always the biggest debate or the biggest thing that I would say.
Speaker 1:Um, so do you notice a note? Do you think you notice a noticeable improvement from your S22 Ultra? Oh yeah, In the camera quality?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. In all the camera qualities of the S22 going to the S25, I feel like there's been a big up to it. I really like every single picture I've gotten. Even when I have to use the flash, it's been good. And I just found out there's like a flash for the front camera as well, and so I really enjoy the camera.
Speaker 1:Do you use? Because I always am curious. Obviously all these companies, including Samsung, are putting these. You know, we got a bunch of cameras now on the Ultra. And the iPhone this time is going to put a bigger zoom lens. Do you use your zoom lens very often? Do you find yourself using the zoom capability?
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, like you know, if I'm like far away or something and I'll like zoom in or out, like just to try to get that good picture, uh, I do find myself using it quite a lot, mostly like a, maybe like sporting events or uh, if I'm trying to like see a sign and I'm, like you know, far away, uh and away, uh and and the the quality is so good, because sometimes I remember on my s22, um, if I zoomed in too much sometimes it'd be kind of grainy yeah yeah, um, the picture I would get and a little bit blurry, uh, so so far it's been been pretty good for the s25 when you use the zoom.
Speaker 2:You saw the sign yes, opened up your eyes. Yeah, you saw the sign I did um what about the ultra wide?
Speaker 1:do you use the ultra wide at all? Because I feel like the ultra wide. Which samsung actually made this ultra wide better on this camera. I feel like a lot of average users don't use it.
Speaker 2:I feel like they use the zoom. I really don't use the ultra wide. Is this?
Speaker 1:little 0.6 deal right and samsung actually improved that on the s25 ultra and it is better, but I feel like a lot of users don't utilize that that much.
Speaker 1:I honestly forget about the Ultra Wide, the only time, I feel like I really use the Ultra Wide, or in any sense. A lot of average users use this. When you have this one, you can zoom out a little on the selfie because you might want to get another person in the shot with you, but that's not the main Ultra wide on the back, that's just kind of expanding the field of view on the front camera. Yep, um, but yeah, I don't use the ultra wide that much either, which is, I I think, the case for a lot of of consumers. Samsung really kind of focused on that as the big camera upgrade in the last one, but also I I feel like I'm with you in a lot of ways. The main camera on the s25 ultra is still good enough. I I do think, though, that we're due for finally getting a hardware upgrade, because they've went four, three, four years without changing. They've changed a lot of the computational software in the background and ai processing and all that. Of course, you know ai's, it's ai, ai, ai, ai, you AI.
Speaker 2:You got to have the AI. You can't go nowhere without seeing it. You can't stop AI.
Speaker 1:You know even Google is stealing everyone's traffic with AI summaries. Now you know we've got AI in our life everywhere. But yeah, I mean I like the quality. I do find that sometimes when I take photos in low light, sometimes it can perform not as good as I'd like. I'd really like that primary sensor to be upgraded a little bit, and some of the leaks suggest we might see that on the S26 Ultra, which I think would be nice. I would like to see them bring back a longer true optical zoom, because you said use the zoom zoom. I think a lot more average consumers probably use the zoom over the ultra wide and so it'd be nice if they upgraded that. They took. They used to have 10x optical zoom and a lot of average consumers won't notice because if you look in here you can still do 10 times zoom, right, like there's a toggle yeah but that's not optical zoom anymore it's digital zoom.
Speaker 1:So they're like processing.
Speaker 2:It's just doing it by like upscaling and processing it yeah, I can tell, like when you press the 10, yeah, when you press the 10 it's not nearly as good, as you know, the quality that we used to have with the true optical.
Speaker 1:They say it is, but I find it to still be less. Apple is rumored to do 8x optical zoom, which still wouldn't be as good as the 10 we used to have, but I would like to see Samsung bring at least 8X optical zoom with the S26.
Speaker 2:Ultra. I mean they should be able to because they're Samsung.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the only concern, I think, is that and I think a lot of people have this concern we talk. Unfortunately, we weren't really doing the podcast regularly when it came out. But the S25 Edge their push is to make everything thinner now.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Everything has to be thinner, but that also leaves less room for the camera sensors to go, and if you want quality cameras, you've got to have bigger. The housing is going to be larger, right yeah? So you end up with these big camera humps on this tiny, thin body and it's like well, the argument is it really still thin Because you've got a thin body but you've got a massive camera hump?
Speaker 1:And so when you sit it down, just like the Fold 7, you can hear it if I do this. The Fold 7 wobbles if you try to type on it while it's on a table, because it itself is super thin for foldable.
Speaker 1:But then it's got a sizable camera on the back the s25 edge is even worse because it's even thinner, because it's not actually a foldable um. It's thinner on its actual profile and then you've got that massive camera hump on the back. So I don't know. I mean, we've heard that there's going to be some changes when it comes to the s26 ultra and we'll go through those in just a second um. I have a couple of articles pulled up from the website here that will take a look at some of the leaks, but from what I'd like to see is I'd like to see that improved on the camera side. Let's talk about battery life. How has your battery life been on the S25 Ultra in the six months you've had it?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I feel like you know like in the beginning, going from let's see, I would probably take off the charger, probably around like 6 am Now I probably get back home around like 9 pm and this is like me, not charging at all Like I would still have about. I'll say maybe about like 30%. You know charge and I know I've been out of work for you know a few months since, you know uh, you know not having my long commute days over the summer, um, but I'll, and you use the wireless android auto, just like I do right, yes, I do, which is a battery killer for sure
Speaker 2:it is a battery killer. Um, so like lately, you know, by the time I, I, I home, it's about 20, 28, 27 percent battery that I have left and then, you know, I put on a charger so I still get a full day out without needing to recharge. And if I know I'm going to be out even later, I just kind of pack my charger with me. But so far I've been pretty good with the battery life. But so far I've been pretty good with the battery life. But I do see a difference depending on if I have very long commutes, because yeah, that Android Auto really does just zap that and obviously in Phoenix we have very long commutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a lot of traffic here.
Speaker 1:People don't really understand how large Phoenix is in terms of the mass of it. I mean by population it's like the fourth or fifth largest city, but by mass, the largest city in all the us by quite a large margin. Um, and so you know, even though la traffic might be a little worse because it's a little more dense, the more people phoenix, depending on where you live. You know, your house could be 35 miles from where you work. So that means that in addition to the density of traffic, you also have to go a long distance. So you could have an hour hour and a half commute, whatever, depending on the time you leave your house. But also, I always like to mention when I talk about my battery life. I use wireless android auto 2. It's a massive battery drain and you got the watch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so you know my watch. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so you know my commute well previously. We just moved, my commute will be much shorter, but previously my commute was about 35 minutes, both you know each way. So about an hour and 10 minutes a day on wireless Android Auto. That's probably draining like 20% to 25% of my battery. So you know, it's not fair for me to say well, the battery life is good or bad based on those days. The days where I don't use it, when wireless android auto, like on the weekends, the battery life is pretty solid. So I don't like to say anything terribly bad about the battery I'm sure this has been pretty good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even like on the weekends, like I'm really good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even on the yeah, on the days where I don't use a lot of wireless android auto, I say I probably get six hours, six and a half hour screen on time. Um, when I use the wireless android auto it's probably more like four, four and a half, but again, like a quarter of my battery is taken up by that wireless android auto time, especially in the summer because phoenix super hot and that makes the battery worse because the thermals are bad. You know, obviously the hotter the phone runs, the worse the battery. Wireless android auto also makes the phone hotter because it's also doing all that computation. It's doing all that Android Auto computation on your device, on your S25 Ultra. So you've got the Phoenix Heat yeah.
Speaker 1:If you have your phone sitting on like your seat, or in your dash or whatever, if you don't have a place to cover it. Plus, you've got the wireless Android Auto heat. That's heating it up. That's all zapping battery. So I would say my battery life has been good. I have no complaints. Obviously, always bigger battery would be good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the one thing that I do want and again we're going to get to the s26 ultra leaks. In a minute I'll tell you some of them and you can tell me what excites you about them. Just kind of going through the main points now we can address them. One thing I would like to see faster charging. Samsung has not given us faster charging for years and years they've been. They're now the slowest android manufacturer in the industry. 45 watts max charging, yeah, which is seems fast sometimes, but if you really need to charge up it doesn't seem that fast and a lot of manufacturers, you know, have 100 watt charging now so 45 watts is, you know, like at least bump it up a little bit, so we'll talk about that in a second.
Speaker 1:With the s26 ultra, they they are changing some of these things that we we would like about that in a second. With the S26 Ultra, they are changing some of these things that we would like to see, so that's good. The leaks suggest that some of these things are going to get changed. What about the overall experience in terms of with One UI 7? Because obviously, when we first started this podcast, previewing One UI 7 was all the rage we spent months and months talking about it.
Speaker 1:Everyone finally, you know, got it. Technically, the version that launched on the S25 Ultra was the stable version, but it was really a beta version that Samsung disguised. They put it in a Halloween costume and rolled it out there and said surprise.
Speaker 2:I'm stable, even though I'm not.
Speaker 1:I tried to put a big stable sticker on it and no one believed it. But now that we've got a couple of updates and we really do have one UI seven stable one UI eight is actually running on the fold seven, which is also stable and which is disguised.
Speaker 1:It's a beta that was disguised as stable We'll get to that later, but what do you think so far about One UI 7? Now that we really do have a stable build, they've made some improvements. What do you like about One UI 7? Do you find yourself using the Now bar much to control music and stuff, or do you use the Now brief to get your updates? Do you use any of this stuff that was brought to One UI 7?
Speaker 2:So I would say at first I was very excited about the now brief. It's still, to me, not very useful. Uh, you know I I was really trying to give it a try initially in the beginning to kind of like check like my energy score and my sleep score, um and and of like you know news and stuff, but like it just really only gives me my energy score and my sleep score, which, yeah, it's nice to kind of have like the instant access to see it. But I can also see a lot of stuff on my watch and get a lot more you know information from there about stuff. So I don't really find myself using the Now Brief as much as I thought I would. But the Now Bar I actually use a lot and I actually find I would say every other week or so I find something new that I didn't really know. They keep adding stuff too. So that's probably why you keep finding stuff Every time they do an update.
Speaker 1:I've been covering it. They've added a lot of stuff to the Now Bar since it first came out, and the Now Brief is getting more features too. It's just right now. I think that's still kind of a work in progress, but they've added a lot of stuff to the Now Bar over time that you can utilize. Now I would say, you know, for me the Now Bar as well is probably the more useful of the two features right now. I mean, there's stuff on the Now Bar that I use literally all the time. Now, obviously, they have the sports scores from Google that are on the Now Bar. I use that all the time because I watch a lot of sports.
Speaker 1:If you're a sports fan, you can keep up with all your scores. I think there's a ton of potential for the Now Bar. They added Samsung Wallet to the Nowbar. So when I was traveling for the Unpacked event in New York and actually I'll talk a little bit about that when I do my Fold 7 stuff, because I'll tell you guys a little bit about how it is to go to an Unpacked event it was my first Unpacked event ever, which was exciting I got all my flight information on the Nowbar so as I was around the airport, I could just have my phone here and I could just swipe through and see if my gate had changed or anything.
Speaker 1:I can see when I'm supposed to be leaving. If I tap it I get my boarding pass so I can just show it and get on the plane. Whatever you can, you know, have other information there, like for trains, other types of transit, we'll show there as well. Eventually, I think they're going to start bringing suggestions for your favorite payment cards, like when it detects that you're going to be near a checkout.
Speaker 1:So you'll see, like, use your MX or whatever, just tap it, boom. You don't have to use the swipe gesture, it'll just be on the Now bar. Smart Things is there now so I can control my lights at home from the Now bar. Samsung Notes, samsung Health, so I can get information there. And of course, the music.
Speaker 1:The media player clock like I control my alarms, control my stopwatch, and all that without having to go anywhere. I can do it all from the lock screen on the Now Bar. I do think Now Brief is improving to where it was. It wasn't that useful at all when they launched it, but now you know they've got YouTube. They've got full YouTube videos, not just shorts, because they only had shorts in the beginning. They can recommend full videos. Some of those have gotten okay. They do have Smart Home inside the NowBrief so they can give you suggestions on things to do, like if you forgot to turn off some lights at the end of the night, nowbrief can say maybe you want to turn off your living room lights.
Speaker 1:Usually I'm sitting in the living room because I'm always up late and so that's why I haven't turned them off. You can get information about events and tasks and also text messages. So if you missed a text message, it can say do you want to respond to this message? I'm like no, I'm ghosting someone. Calm down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, calm down, and then wireless wearable battery alerts.
Speaker 1:So if your ring or your watch is low, it can remind you at the end of the day in your now brief to say maybe you should plug in or put your watch or ring on the charger. So they are trying to improve the now brief, but I think the now bar has a lot of so much potential yeah, I really love the now bar.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of things I'd love to see now integrated.
Speaker 1:Obviously they're working on some things we uncovered, as well as android authority uncovered in some apks. They're working on some things we uncovered, as well as Android Authority uncovered in some APKs they're working on to work with DoorDash, uber, eats, grubhub, so you can get the status of your DoorDash order on the Now bar so it'll show you where your driver is when they're arriving, when your Uber's arriving. So if you order an Uber, if you're traveling, you hail an Uber, they'll say your driver's arriving blank. It'll have the type of car on the now bar so you need to open your phone for that, the one that I would really like to see, but I don't know if samsung will touch it because they're kind of more of a like you know they want to be a friendly family, family friendly company yeah friendly family family friendly company is sports betting apps.
Speaker 1:I'd love to see like fanduel and draft kings. So I could like see the status of my parlay on the thing, so like if I could have, for instance, you know, if I bet on a football game and I have three legs of the parlay, it could show me the current legs that are active and, like, if I tap on it, it'll expand and show me the stats feature of those players. That'd be a killer feature.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, that people would love.
Speaker 1:I mean, lots of people love sports betting. Now, it's just the way it is it definitely is the way it is.
Speaker 1:It's just like AI. You might as well get over it. If you don't like it, there's nothing you can do about it. It's here. You're not getting rid of AI, you're not getting rid of sports betting, so that would be a feature that they could market to a lot of people. No-transcript, there'd be a way to determine your NowBar would say ding your order's ready and you can then tap it and see you know which counter to pick it up at, or something if you're at a large restaurant. There's a lot of ideas, I think, for for the now bar. Uh, one ui7, I mean. I feel like it delivered on the promise of being a massive change. I haven't had any stability problems with one ui7, really, since the most recent few updates. What about you, tory?
Speaker 2:uh, no, no, not at all. I mean I would say honestly, uh, going from the s22, ultra uh to the s25, I mean I I think I really like the S22, like the design overall of the phone, but I'll say, in terms of like usage and performance, the S25 has really been a game changer to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one UI 7 is great. I've been using it in parallel with One UI 8 beta because I have One UI 7 on one of my S25 Ultras and then I have the One UI 8 beta on another one and I think you know if you're excited about One UI 8, you know there's a lot of stuff coming but it's more of a refinement update. So, you know, don't expect massive changes in One UI 8. There's a couple little things, but I think Samsung's saving the massive changes for One UI 8.5.
Speaker 1:We actually heard that Samsung has a new strategy when it comes to their software releases. They're going to release the new main number, which is the main Android upgrade, with the foldables in July and then they'll do a 0.5 update in January with the S line. They used to do it the other way around. They used to do the main update like 7.0 would be in January, 7.5 would be in July, but this time they released 8.0 with the Fold and 8.5 will come in January with the S26 line. But weirdly enough, their plan is to make it so that the 0.5 release always has the big content changes, feature changes and stuff from the Samsung perspective, which kind of makes sense if you think about it.
Speaker 1:A lot of people are like 5 release always has the big like content changes, feature changes and stuff from the samsung perspective, which kind of makes sense if you think about it. A lot of people are like, well, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but they're basically getting in google's changes for android with the 0.0 release, with the foldables, but they're not making massive changes because that's a new version of android. They're just getting the new version of android. Whatever those changes bring, maybe a few tweaks to one ui and then in January, when they roll out the flagship S line, they'll make some big changes to like their features. Now bar, now, brief, whatever. What do you think about that, tori?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say I think it's a pretty good tactic, you know, and obviously I think Samsung is also trying to maybe shift some gears after the One UI 7. Shift into high gear. Yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 1:I think they were trying to push out One UI 8 super quick which they basically have.
Speaker 2:Which it did feel like that Because One UI 7 basically came out only in March in stable.
Speaker 1:So I mean essentially this month you're going to get a One UI 8 update on your S25 Ultra. You're going to get it because it rolled out on the folds.
Speaker 2:That was my next question. I was going to wonder. You were going to ask yeah, yeah, it's in beta 4.
Speaker 1:I have beta 4 on here. It's going to stable will be very soon. They usually don't do more than five betas, so by the end of August. Think you're right. They're like we need to rush out 8.0. So people are like these guys are good at software updates again.
Speaker 2:Don't want to have a redux.
Speaker 1:Establish some credibility. Don't want to have a redux of like. It takes 16 months to get out an update like it did with the 7.0. But now you know they can relax a little bit, get some new features in with 8.5, which we'll talk about plenty on the podcast in the coming weeks. But let's switch gears to talking about the S26 Ultra, because you know, in this business it's always about what's new.
Speaker 2:It's always about that new People love new, that new, new People want new.
Speaker 1:People are like give me that new, new. Yeah, Like I don't want that phone that came out six months ago. I need the one that's coming out in six months.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's all I want to hear, not the old, old.
Speaker 1:So, going back to what we were talking about with our S25 Ultra re-review, mine and Tori's thoughts you could kind of summarize our collective thoughts, as battery life is okay, but it would certainly be nice if we could have some faster charging. Samsung is doing that based on the leaks. They, if we could have some faster charging. Samsung is doing that based on the leaks they're going to bring 60 watt charging to the.
Speaker 2:S26.
Speaker 1:Ultra, Now is that 100 watts.
Speaker 2:No, is it 85 watts? No.
Speaker 1:Is it even 65 watts? No, which 65 watts is like a standard. But we've heard from Ice Universe who is, you know, like the guy in the industry that it's 60 watts. It's a very weird number to me. Yeah, it's a weird number to me 60 watts. I mean, it seems like 65 would have been the way to go, but maybe they're like. We don't want to be like every other company. We're gonna do something slightly different, so we're gonna knock five watts off there for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, chop the five watts off the top then make it a mic drop and just leave a nice samsung number but uh, 60 watts I mean I'll take it, it's better than 45 yeah, it's more better. I'm a mathematician 60 is decidedly better than 45 it's a bigger number, yeah you know, like we kind of have to, like, you know, when we're talking about, like, daily drivers and, uh, the average consumer and stuff, like uh, people need that faster charging because like we're just so much of a on-the-go type of society now.
Speaker 1:So it's like my guy, flossy carter, says I mean I don't want to say it here, because this is the, because we're just so much of a on-the-go type of society now it's like my guy Flossie.
Speaker 2:Carter says I mean, I don't want to say it here because this is the family show.
Speaker 1:But it's the S shower and shave phone. Yes, s you guys know what I'm talking about, the come home you got to take a dump, you got to shower you got to shave. But right before you take a dump you put your phone in the charger. Yep, how much charge can it get from the time that I'm taking my dump, my shower and my shave can I get charged up for?
Speaker 2:that night out. So people, that's what people care about, that's important and 45 watts.
Speaker 1:Honestly, as flossy carter has said before in his reviews, is not enough for that scenario no I mean, I guess it depends on you know some logistics of like how long does it take you to take a dump?
Speaker 2:yeah, how long do you relax in the shower?
Speaker 1:do you do like a full shave, like the shave brush and everything? But assuming that you're in a hurry and you've got to do all those things quickly, let's say you could do them in like 30 minutes. Your phone is not going to go from mostly dead to 100 in in that time with 45 watts. You probably still need another hour.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you probably need like another at least 30 to 45 minutes to get to that because you might go from like 20% to like 80, but if you want to go all the way to 100, because if you've got a long night out, maybe you're really going to hit it hard tonight. Maybe you're going out like I do all the time these days. You know, at this point in my life, I'm always going out to the club, hitting the clubs, boom, boom, boom. You know partying the club, drinking bottles in the club, bottles in the club.
Speaker 1:No, I don't do any of that. But if you are doing that and you're a young person who Samsung is targeting for their target audience, you probably do want that ability, and I think 60 watts gets you a little closer. Maybe it gets you from 80 to 90%. That's meaningful. It's something we also heard originally in the leaks that there might be an upgrade from 5,000 to 5,500 milliamp hour battery, and people were really excited about that. They're like, oh, bigger battery and faster charging. But Ice Universe shot that down. One leaker said it's true, but then Ice said it's not, and I tend to believe Ice, even though the other guy is also pretty reliable. Here's why I believe Ice. Samsung has been widely believed to be slimming down the entire S26 lineup, not just the Edge. This time, all the phones will be slimmed down, and so if you're going to slim it down as the physics dictates and thermals, dictate you can't really slim the phone down a lot and make the battery bigger.
Speaker 1:You maybe make it a smidge bigger, but you're not going to be able to slim it down a ton if you do that. So plus the other variable which we don't even know yet, is the S-PIN here or is it not next year? Does it stay or does it go down? If you say I could be trouble, I don't know that song but, anyway. Um, I don't know. They want to save space. The one way you can save space with the s ultra snatch the s-pin out.
Speaker 2:That's save the most space yeah, but like okay, look, I mean obviously it's ways away. But like questions I have are are we going to get another edge? Um, is that going to come next year? We are, we are okay. So the leaks?
Speaker 1:so far. Show and tori, it's good you asked this, because I did want to mention it. We can obviously, like I said, we've been away for a while, so we got a lot to talk about in the upcoming episodes the leaks show that there's going to be three models this year, but they're not the same three models we've been used to. Last year we got S25, s25 Plus, s25 Ultra and then the S25 Edge. Later this year, the leaks show that we're getting rid of the S25 and S25 Plus entirely.
Speaker 1:The new lineup will be S25 Pro, s25 Edge and S25 Ultra.
Speaker 2:The s25 pro. Oh, you mean the s26, I'm sorry s26 pro, s26 edge, s26 ultra.
Speaker 1:The pro is supposedly going to be one that's closer in size to the current base model but it'll have an upgraded main camera, kind of like the ultra. So it's more pro, less base feeling. It's still like a flagship. The edge will be basically what the s25 edge was, except they're trying to increase the battery size while still making it thin and increase the camera to be a little better like the ultra and then the ultra.
Speaker 2:So those are going to be the lineup, so these are really going to be like three different flavors. Finally, yeah, because in the past.
Speaker 1:The s25 plus has honestly been like a kind of a boring phone because, it's kind of stuck in the middle and the s25 has also been boring because it's it's the base model but it didn't have any of the appeal of of the ultra. Yeah, like you think about, this is what I'd asked them to do last year when we did a podcast episode. You think about apple strategy. They have the Pro and the Pro Max and there's almost no difference. Besides the size difference between the Pro and the Pro Max. The Pro Max occasionally gets like one camera feature that's different. So it seems like Samsung is trying to do this as well, where the Pro and the Ultra might be closer, aside from a few features.
Speaker 1:The question is is the S Pen going to be one of those features? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know it's going to be a good question, but it seems like we're not getting 5,500 milliamp hour battery, because I don't think Samsung can really slim the phone down at all if they increase the battery and keep the S Pen. There's no way you either have to increase the battery, get. There's no way you either have to increase the battery, get rid of the S Pen. If you want to slim it down some, you could keep the battery the same and keep the S Pen and probably slim it down some. If you do a little bit of redesigning of the chassis, yeah and hey, if you keep the battery the same and get rid of the S Pen, you could slim it down a whole lot and probably make some people really angry. I don't know. But the problem is Samsung has learned. We just taught Samsung a valuable lesson with the Fold 7 launch. People like thinness.
Speaker 2:Yes, people do like thinness.
Speaker 1:Because this phone is insanely thin and that's why it sold so much better than the Z Fold 6. Yeah, people didn't buy this because of its crazy battery life and they didn't buy it because of the S Pen. In fact, they took the S pen away from the fold. It doesn't work with fold anymore. So we're kind of telling people Samsung, hey, it's okay to get rid of the S pen, people don't mind, so don't be surprised, we'll see. My personal bet is that it will stay on the S26 ultra, but I think it'll go away on the S27 Ultra. I think Samsung's going to take a two-year break from the S Pen, do you?
Speaker 2:think it's needed? Do you think they need to take a break from the S Pen?
Speaker 1:I don't know. I think in their mind, I think it's a way to catalyze sales, because the thinness is a sexy marketing thing. The S Pen has been there for a while, so I think their strategy is this. This is what I would do. They're working on technology that allows to have the S Pen without a digitizer. The digitizer is why they're taking the S Pen out, really, because that makes the phone thicker. The actual silo they could probably still include in the Ultra and be okay. They just won't be able to increase the battery size, but they can still slim it down. But the digitizer layer makes it thicker. So I think they're going to take the S Pen away, like they did on the Fold, make the S Ultra thinner and then, once they perfect the digitizer, free S Pen, maybe with, like the S30 Ultra. They could bring it back and be like hey, 30th anniversary of the Ultra, even though it's not because they jumped from 10 to 20. It's actually the 20th anniversary. They'd be like the 20th anniversary phone, the S Pen is back, the fan favorite returns.
Speaker 1:And then the crowd will go wild and unpack Because it's been gone for two or three years and they'll be like now it doesn't need a digitizer because we've got digitizer-free tech and it still does all the same stuff and we bought back the Bluetooth capability. People will go insane. Oh yeah, they will love it. So sometimes you've got to take something away. That way you can bring it back and save this kind of new feature, because then you would have a thin phone that also supports the S Pen without the digitizer. I think in their mind they probably think it is necessary, whether or not it is. I mean, it's a competitive market and they got to stay ahead of Apple and Apple's releasing the iPhone 17 Air next month, because September we're already a month away. Only We'll be talking about new iPhones, which isn't really exciting to me, because I'm not a huge. I'm not a massive iPhone aficionado. Maybe I should be. I'm not a massive iPhone aficionado. Maybe I should be, but sometimes I'm just not an aficionado.
Speaker 1:Anyway, let's talk about the camera. The camera on the S26 Ultra. I said that I thought it could use some low light boost to the main sensor. It looks like Samsung's getting it. There's a leak that says that they're going to use the new HP 2 Plus ISOCELL sensor with a larger aperture. What does that mean? In everyday language, it means larger aperture lets in more light, which means your low light photos are going to look better because they're going to be able to get in more light through the camera and give you better lit photos that have crisper images when you're shooting indoors or you're shooting outdoors at night. And it is the first primary camera upgrade in about four or five years to Samsung sensor, which is exactly what people were wanting. So I mean just looking at these changes, I think the S26 Ultra is looking like a pretty big upgrade to the S25 Ultra. We're going to get faster charging, we're going to get One UI 8.5, which again we'll talk about some of the rumor changes but there's going to be some upgrades there and you're going to get a better primary camera, which is cool.
Speaker 1:Now let me show you. Before we take our first well, I guess our only break for the show, but take our break Let me show you the render of the S25 ultra that someone did based on some CAD information that Ice Universe leaked. This is a render of what the S26 Ultra could look like right here. There you go. Let me open it up there. It is Tori.
Speaker 2:Oh okay, S26 Ultra.
Speaker 1:It basically looks like an S25 Ultra, but they used the camera housing from the Z Fold 7.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can kind of tell the phone will be thinner. Yeah, it's going to be thinner.
Speaker 1:And it looks like it's probably going to have this kind of camera housing, which I do. Like this better than the camera rings that they had on the. That's one thing I do not like about the S25 Ultra these camera rings, the faux camera rings, with those black plastic rings. Those are just plastic rings they put on them. We could do without those.
Speaker 2:So I think this is a good decision.
Speaker 1:I think it looks good. Someone rendered it in mint, which is the same color that the Z Fold 7 comes in for the special edition color that Samsung sells on Samsungcom. I think it looks good. I think if we get a bigger camera, a better camera sensor on the primary camera and we get faster charging and I'm sure a couple of other little upgrades will come, of course we'll have the new Snapdragon processor in there, which is always probably going to be more efficient, so it'll give a little bit better battery life. In that sense, it really depends on what they do with the S Pen, because who's going to buy it depends on if they really just make these changes and they keep the S Pen. A lot of enthusiasts might be interested. If they remove the S Pen entirely, it's going to make a lot of people angry who are like S ultra loyalists, because they love the S Pen, I love the S Pen and I do like the S Pen too.
Speaker 1:I certainly see Samsung's vision for why they might take it away. I don't think they'll take it away forever, but I kind of hope that they at least have it for one more year. So, we'll see. Anyway, of course we'll have full reviews of the S26 Ultra when it comes out. Tori hopefully I'll be able to upgrade Tori's phone again Should be able to and then he'll be able to give some thoughts about jumping from the one-year cycle. Tory's probably never done a one-year upgrade cycle.
Speaker 2:I've never done a one-year cycle, so he'll be like is this a massive change or not?
Speaker 1:We'll be able to get Tory's thoughts on like does it blow his mind after one year? Probably not, because year over year it's usually not like mind-blowing, but it's still fun to get the play with it. Uh, okay, we'll take a quick break. Um, we come back. Z-fold seven. I'll give us some z-fold seven thoughts and then a couple of other quick little news stories before we leave and, uh, we'll keep expanding your galaxy right after these messages. All right, welcome back everybody. We are here in the second half of the show and I'm going to talk about the z-fold seven a little bit and give you know, tori, some thoughts, because you know he hasn't spent any time with his evil 7.
Speaker 2:He's seen it yeah, he's been in the office, but he's definitely seen, you know you can feel to see how thin that is.
Speaker 2:Story is just a it's quite a piece right when you hold in your hands, you're just like wow this is quite a piece good like, actually like nice feel, feels good to hold it like in both hands when you have it open. Um, just really good with swiping, uh, very responsive. Uh, I really like the hinge, like it's not really that noticeable, like, obviously, with the lights, the way it's glaring now if you tilt it to the left, to the right, you can see the crease, but you know, yeah, it's not too bad.
Speaker 1:I mean, the thing is, I talked about when I first got it and people ask you know, is the crease less noticeable? Well, every time you get a new foldable, the crease is less noticeable because you have folded it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1:You know, the crease gets worse over time on every fold because you're going to fold the phone and as you fold it of course the crease is going to get more noticeable. But I mean, it's not ever a big problem when you're just viewing the phone straight on, because when you view it straight on obviously you can see, you know what you're looking at the content. You're not really going to be looking at the crease. But yeah, if you turn it off axis, of course you're going to see the crease. But I mean, I'm not. I don't make it a habit of turning my phone 30 degrees to the left or the right when I'm looking at the content, because who the heck is doing that with their slab phone? Anyway, no one is. So when you're using the Fold it's not like you're going to be like, oh my God, the crease is just so bad. I can't enjoy the phone because it's just so creased. No one's going to be saying that, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:But the thinness of this phone is insane. It's quite remarkable. It is an engineering Marvel, honestly, because you know. Tori just took it out and compared it to his S 25 ultra. I have my S 25 ultra on the table here. It is thinner than an S 25 ultra with a case on it. If you put a case on your S 25 ultra, the Z fold seven is thinner than the S 25 ultra and I have a thin case on mine. Tori has the UAG Monarch, which is pretty thick, which I love.
Speaker 2:Which he loves. I gifted him that case Also. It's a good. What was it? The good kind? Yeah, the. What was the other one? Oh, that was the Samsung official leather one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:The UAG Monarch is really nice. It's a $100 case but it's very productive. You could drop it from the roof of your house and your phone will be fine. But it's also very thick. But I have a Pataka MagSafe case on mine. It's a pretty thin case and the Z Fold 7 is still thinner than the S25 Ultra with that case on and that's when it's folded. If you unfold it, the Z Fold 7 is thinner than pretty much anything. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:Including even the S25 Edge. The S25 Edge can't even best Z Fold 7 when it's unfolded it's razor thin. I've got some questions about is it uncomfortable to hold because it's so thin? In my opinion, no. I read some people's stuff on Reddit where they're like, well, it's hard to open it because it's so thin. I entirely disagree.
Speaker 2:It's light.
Speaker 1:It feels very light. I spent some time. I think they're saying it's just because it's so thin. It's hard to wedge your fingers in here to open it.
Speaker 2:I don't think so.
Speaker 1:I spent some time unfolding this one versus my Z Fold 6 because someone on Reddit was like, well, it's way easier to unfold the Z Fold 6 because it's got a little bit more thickness to the sides than the Z Fold 7. I disagree. Now, if you're talking about trying to unfold it with one hand, yeah, I guess it's really hard to do it. But who's unfolding their $2,000?
Speaker 2:foldable with one hand.
Speaker 1:Even with the Z Fold 6, it's kind of risky to do that. You could do it but it's certainly easier to try. But I don't think very many people are going to be trying to unfold a $2,000 foldable with just one hand. It's just not practical. So I don't think that's really kind of a non-starter kind of problem. Of course you know there are some trade-offs with the build quality, namely to get this thin they had to get rid of the S-pen.
Speaker 1:That's one thing. So if you like the S-pen, you don't have an S-pen this time. This time I do have a video up on YouTube where I show that you can use a regular stylus just fine with the inner and outer screen. So if you still want something to write with, it's obviously not an S Pen, because an S Pen has a digitizer. It's more accurate. The old S Pen also the S Pen Pro that you could buy for the Fold had the Bluetooth functions that Samsung took from the S25 Ultra as well, so you could use a stylus like, if you want to do it for Samsung Notes, if you want to do it for drawing assist, you can use a stylus with it, but you lose your S Pen functionality, obviously with you know.
Speaker 1:The concerns about it being thin are thermal concerns about the phone. You know not dissipating heat very well, because obviously the thinner it is, the less room there is for heat to be dissipated. That is a legitimate concern. In my first few weeks using my review unit, I did notice a little bit more heating up outdoors. It's calmed down a little bit after this first software update that the phone got. I will say, though, that if you expect it to be as good for gaming, in terms of long gaming sessions, as something like the S25 Ultra. It won't be, just because it does get hot inside the phone and so because it's thinner, it's harder to dissipate heat and so it's going to basically clock down the processor compared to something like the S25 Ultra, just to kind of deal with that heating issue. So that can be a concern.
Speaker 1:If you play something like really heavy games like Asphalt or something like that for 30 plus minutes, then that could be a concern. I don't play any mobile games that are super powerful for 30 plus minute sessions. Very often I force myself to do it just on this phone, just to test it, and I can say that that is going to be a bit of a concern. What other concerns, tori, just looking at this phone, because I mean I've mentioned some of the ones on Reddit If you were thinking about buying this phone, switching from your S s25 ultra, what other concerns would you have about a phone like the z fold 7?
Speaker 2:well. So I guess, like my main things would be, you know, obviously, because as an average consumer, this would be my literal phone. Like you know, I wouldn't have any other extra phone yeah, pretty much everybody's in that case yeah, yeah, yeah, especially spending two thousand dollars yeah uh, you know, I, I think for me, my, my big things would be um, how's the camera, the battery?
Speaker 2:uh, and how does it feel? Uh, or how, how well do you think the phone would last? Or what, what, what changes in lifestyle? I would need to do like for me to carry the phone throughout my day and protect my investment essentially it's a good question.
Speaker 1:I mean, I would say, in terms of durability, which is a question I was kind of alluding to, which is, you know, in your day-to-day routine you don't have to baby this as much as you did, like early foldables. It's still not, as it's still not as durable in terms of its ip rating as the s25 ultra. This is ip48 instead of 68, so this doesn't have as good of dust protection. Basically, you still have to be you. Technically, you start to be somewhat careful about getting dust in it, which basically means you don't want to take this to the beach and throw it in the sand. But I wouldn't do that with my s25 ultra.
Speaker 1:Anyway, people are like well, I can't take it to the beach. Well, I don't. I'm careful when I take my s25 ultra to the beach too. You know why? Because sand can scratch the display. Sand particles are one of the few things that can scratch a phone display. Um, that that's why I'm always careful with this phone. So I wouldn't throw a slab phone in the sand either, and I would still be careful with it at the beach. But just for day-to-day stuff like you, there's no concerns. Like I throw this in my pocket when it's got lit. I'm not careful about like you know. Obviously I got dust in my office. I don't worry about like if I throw it somewhere where there's some dust. I was super worried about that with the first fold six years ago. I was like I need to go into a vacuum sealed room yeah, I know, I was like before I come in with my fold.
Speaker 1:Can someone please vacuum seal this room for?
Speaker 2:me, and that's like samsung was kind of like marketing it, you know. You know like it was like here's this cool phone, but it's also very fragile. Yeah, yeah, it's not it's not anymore.
Speaker 1:I mean it has a water resistant rating. It does have have the dust resistant rating, just not as good as the S25 Ultra. But in terms of that you don't have to worry about it. Some people worry a little bit about the fact that this phone doesn't. They say it doesn't fully unfold entirely. But this is not really a concern either. Basically they're saying if you unfold it, it doesn't look like it unfolds flat. There's a slight curve, you know a slight little angle. That's natural for all folds and it's because if it unfolded 180 degrees completely, that puts more stress on the hinge which makes it more prone to cracking and stuff. Yeah, so you want some give to it. So they make sure it doesn't really really unfolds like 175 to 178. To it, so they make sure it doesn't really it really unfolds like 175 to 178.
Speaker 1:You can force it to 180, but it's not a good idea because technically it won't crack, but over time it'll put more stress on the inner display from the way the hinge actually bends and stuff. So all folds are like this, not just the Z Fold 7. And that's not really, in my opinion, a big issue. It's something that some people have complained about on reddit. People have also found that some units have a gap on the side when it's folded, so along the side where the power and volume button is.
Speaker 1:I do not have this on my review unit. I actually also have a personal unit that just came in. I bought a black one that I'm going to make my main unit, which I need to set up. I check that one. It doesn't have the defect either. That is really a hardware problem, though it seems like it affects a small number. If you see that, I would return it. Let's make Samsung give you a replacement, because that little gap when it's folded on the power button, right above the power button, where you can actually see through the gap in the phone, that would be bad. It's like right here. There's like right here is like a little gap it doesn't close all the way.
Speaker 1:That's a defect. I would say the hinge is definitely better on this phone in terms of, like you know, build quality of the hinge. It unfolds so smooth, like it's much smoother than the Z Fold 6. I mean the smooth, the folding action is impressively smooth. So I really think Samsung did an amazing engineering feat by making this phone and it's really impressive what they achieved on that end. Um, in terms of usability, it's also way more usable because now you have a wider cover display and you can see, tori, that if you compare it to your s25 ultra, it's not that much more narrow anymore, you know it used to be.
Speaker 1:It used to be way more narrow on the front screen. You know, like so much so that you'd be like I don't know if I can type on that, but it's not anymore. I mean, you can easily type, like you can type out your tweets, your emails and stuff. I mean, of course, it's not as wide as the Z, as the S25 ultra, but there's still plenty of room for you to do your typing, your emails. I have no problem answering messages and firing off stuff. I always had that problem up to last year. That's why I never used a Fold as my main phone, because, you know, as I tell people when they're thinking about buying a foldable, 90% of people are going to use the cover screen more than the inner screen.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so you have to keep in mind On the go. Yeah, you have to keep in mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have to keep in mind like you need to be comfortable with a cover screen because even though the sexy appeal of the foldable is the inner screen, like the whole appeal of it is that you've got that big tablet, mini tablet inside. This is not what you're going to use the majority of the time. I would say as a foldable user for myself, when I use it as a daily driver, I use the inner screen probably 70% of the time and the inner screen about 30%. I would say some foldable users get closer to 50-50, but I still think almost every foldable user, the majority of your time is spent on the outer screen, just because if you're an on-the-go professional or parent or whatever anybody, for the most part you're going to be using this screen a lot because you're going to be.
Speaker 1:What do you do the majority of the time on your phone? Like you're not gaming and watching media on a phone. The majority of the time You're answering messages. If you're doing work, you're firing off emails, you know. You're doing your to-do list, you know all these things that typically you're doing while you're doing other things You're on the go. It's hard to unfold the phone and when I'm walking down the road or if I'm in a busy restaurant, I'm usually not unfolding it to do stuff.
Speaker 1:When do I unfold it? At night, when I'm sitting on my couch, when I want to multitask but I don't want to pull out my computer, or when I want to game or watch media and I don't have my tablet or my laptop. It's a great phone for that and, don't get me wrong, at $2,000,. There's a lot of people out there who are probably thinking should I buy this and replace my phone and my tablet? And that's actually a good question. But it really comes down to what size tablet are you used to and what size tablet do you need, because while this is a tablet-like interface, it's not a big tablet. So if you are someone who needs a 10 plus inch tablet because you do things that require you to have two, two pretty large size windows, like when you multitask, this one's not going to give you two large windows.
Speaker 1:Like if you're someone who's doing like email, slack, asana, you could do that, and that's what I do a lot at night, when I'm working with the writers, like I'm answering emails from brands who want to partner with us, I've got Slack up talking about different article ideas with my writers, and I'm at Asana managing all of our various tasks that we have to assign articles and stuff. That's great for this, but if I want to write a full article myself on here and do research in a browser, it's a little difficult. It's a lot easier to do that on a tablet or a laptop. So you know a lot of people are like should I buy this and replace my laptop and my phone, or my laptop and my tablet and phone? And it depends on what you need to do. For a lot of people that won't be a good replacement just yet. But with Dex, obviously, if you want to have this and just hook it up to a monitor, you can get that full desktop experience using Samsung DeX.
Speaker 1:That's a great thing, but that also means you have to hook it up to a monitor. It's not just you know, it's not just the device itself. So that's something to keep in mind. The camera good, but it's basically just the same as the s25 ultra. It has some problems. You don't have the same zoom that you have on the s25 ultra. So tori was saying earlier he uses the zoom. So if you're someone like tori who uses the zoom camera, this does not even have 5x zoom. It only goes up to 3x optical. So that's a downer. But I mean, again, that's a space saving constraint. So I mean, but the primary camera is good, it's good. Um, it needs a camera sensor upgrade, just like we talked about the s25 ultra. So hopefully for the z fold 8, they find a way to get that sensor with the larger aperture from the s26 ultra into the z fold 8. That'll be massive. Um, I mean, I really don't have like.
Speaker 1:There's not a lot of complaints about this phone. The S Pen being gone is going to be annoying for a lot of people. Battery life is not the best. I haven't really talked about that yet, but that was the other big thing I wanted to talk about. The battery life is a step down from the S25 Ultra. There's no getting around it. It also kind of makes sense, though, because, if you were thinking about what I just said earlier, I thought about this because I'm working on my Z Fold 7 review for Samiguru.
Speaker 1:I use this device differently than I use the S25 Ultra, because for the S25 Ultra, if I wanted to do Slack Asana and Slack Asana and like some research in Chrome, I would probably always switch to my laptop or tablet from the S25 Ultra. I would never do that on the S25 Ultra, but because of the Z Fold 7, I can open it up. I sometimes, if I don't want to go to my laptop, I'll just do those tasks on the Fold because I can. So, if you think about it, I'm actually using the Fold for a lot heavier workloads than I would on the S25 Ultra, which then also is going to make the battery life worse because it's doing more multitasking workloads right. So, if you think about it, yes, the battery life, I don't get as many screen on time hours. I probably get like four and a half, which is like one and a half hours less than I average on the S25 Ultra, but I'm kind of using it as a phone tablet hybrid, which I would never do on the S25 Ultra.
Speaker 1:So I kind of think it makes sense, like I don't feel like you should be that disappointed if you use it in that way. You can't expect to replace two devices a tablet and a phone and get the same battery life that you just get from a phone, because of course you would be using your tablet for some of those tasks if you didn't have a foldable. So I kind of justify it that way. I don't think from that perspective the battery life is that bad because I'm kind of using it slightly differently for heavier things. Does that make sense, right? I'm just kind of justifying this. When I was writing I've been making notes for my z fold 7 review I feel like it makes sense, like I should expect a little bit less battery life oh, yeah, right, uh, because you are doing or I call it a twofer, so like you're trying trying to get more out of the fold than you normally would.
Speaker 2:Right Cause, yeah, like, if I have my S a 25 ultra light and I need it to do a lot of computational things, well, yeah, I'm still gonna have my S 25 light by me and I may use it for like a thing or something, you know, if I, you know, find it you're going to pull out your laptop or your tablet or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the majority of it I'm. I'm doing it from the laptop. So, uh, if I'm replacing, um, a tablet and a phone for just the one phone, like the fold, then yeah, I should expect a lower battery life yeah, just because I'm demanding more. You know, I'm trying to make one thing, do two things exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think this is ignored. I haven't seen really any reviews in all the history of foldables that talk about this. It's like you you sell people on replacing two devices with one, but then you're judging it against regular slab phones as a battery in terms of battery life that doesn't seem like it needs to be like his own, separate, like like you can.
Speaker 2:That's how I feel.
Speaker 1:Foldable to foldable, yeah but a lot of people like oh, it's not as good as the s25 ultra, so you should never don't consider buying it because it's a really big knock. I don't think so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's fine and actually that was like my, my follow-up question. I was gonna say, you know, like we talked about it before, like when samsung released first first release to fold. Like you know, this is a very like at least the vibes I got from it is this is the type of phone that you show up to like the nba games with. You know in you know some high profile event, like you know, this is the phone for you to just kind of stunt, um, and I I haven't really gotten that vibe so much you know from samsung lately with that, but would you still say that this phone, like you know it, like you know who, who are they marketing this phone towards? Like who, who would value this phone the most?
Speaker 1:well, I, think you're right, tory. In the beginning they really marketed this with the first couple folds as like uh, this is exclusive phone. No, don't buy this unless you either have a lot of money or you're an enthusiast and you want to try something different. But with this launch, I think they finally with the c-fold 7 and z-flip 7.
Speaker 2:It feels like they're marketing this to the mainstream.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're like you should buy this if you're anybody because basically, if you switch from your slab phone, you're not compromising anything and you're actually gaining something. You're gaining a small tablet in your pocket and everything else. The camera is just as good as your S25 Ultra. The front display is now a lot bigger. You can do all of your regular phone stuff and you open it up and you get this big display where you can multitask. I mean, of course, with the caveat, it's still $2,000. That's the big thing. For most people, it's still $2,000.
Speaker 2:It's still $2,000. That's the big thing for most people.
Speaker 1:It's like a lot of people are like, yeah, I want it, but $2,000 is a lot of money. I still think for the foldables to go truly mainstream, we have to get this quality of phone and obviously it's only going to get better from here. Oh yeah, they're only going to improve it and it's already very impressive this year in terms of the quality. But I think we got to get better, the better quality with like a 1500 price tag. Yeah, once we get down to the 1500 range now there's only like 200 I think those things are selling now there's only like 200 difference between the s?
Speaker 1:ultra and the fold. Yeah, a lot of people will choose the fold over the s ultra, I definitely right now it's 800 difference.
Speaker 1:800 difference is not nothing. Um, and people are like well, I've been using s old for my whole life. It's very good, I like it. Why do I want to jump to the full for 800? I need to be convinced that it's like far and away the best choice. And even though they've made a compelling case at the I mean this these phones have rave reviews from everyone, not just from from Sammy Guru.
Speaker 1:Obviously, we only cover Samsung, so we like the phone. I mean, if the phone's garbage? I'll tell you, last year I didn't like the Z Fold 6. I told you it was basically iterative trash and Samsung should be ashamed of themselves for doing nothing and putting out the same phone and trying to make people upgrade. I did not like it. I thought it was terrible. But this year, you know they did something. They should be commended. It's impressive.
Speaker 1:I think if you've been waiting to try Fold this is kind of what I'm using as my tagline for the review If you've been waiting to try Fold, this is the year to finally do it Like. If you've always been intrigued and you've been like, ah, but there's this, but there's that. This is the year to finally try it. I think you're going to be okay with the battery life. Most average people, I mean I put my phone through an absolute massive workload. When I do the reviews I try to do everything on there. I mean I wrote some articles entirely on the Fold and also play a lot of games and do other stuff. So I don't think you're going to have a problem with the battery life. If you're an average person, they'll keep refining that with software updates. Not a huge problem.
Speaker 1:The camera is is is great, obviously. I mean really the only thing is like if you miss the s bin, you know that's. That's a concern I I would say durability, there's nothing to worry about anymore. The usability of the front cover display there's nothing to worry about anymore. The camera quality there's nothing to worry about anymore. And if you're one of those people who, well, I don't want a foldable because it's too damn heavy, it's too damn bulky, you don't have to worry about that anymore either it feels very light.
Speaker 1:It's actually lighter than the S25.
Speaker 2:Ultra by three grams. It feels very light.
Speaker 1:And it's thinner. If you put a case on your S25 Ultra, it's thinner. I will say the state of the foldable case market is really bad, though. I hate foldable cases, so the only downside is, you know, if you spend this much money, I highly recommend just get the samsung care and just go without a case, because the cases are really not good most of them.
Speaker 1:Either you have a huge trade-off, either you buy one that's super thick and then you completely defeat the purpose of having this nice, sexy, thin light phone, because you basically turn it into a brick.
Speaker 1:Why buy $2,000 worth of precision engineering to turn it into a brick, but it's protected. Or you buy a thin case that goes on here, but those cases are so bad for the foldables If you drop it they often pop off the front piece. We put some in the mystery boxes, which I liked, which are like a nice middle ground, but even then the ones we put in there are a little thicker than I would like. It's just like there's no way around it. If you put a case on a fold, because of the fact that it has a front piece and a back piece, it almost doubles the thickness of the Fold 7, which takes away, like it's engineering, marvel and the whole point of kind of having one.
Speaker 1:So, that's kind of a downside is that slab phone accessories are still in a better place where you know it makes sense to have accessories that do something. I don't know that they're in a great place yet for the foldables, but that's my thought. I'll have a full review but in general, I mean everything has impressed me about this phone. It's had rave reviews from everyone. I thought the speakers would be bad because it's thin. The speakers are not bad. They're almost as good as the S25 Ultra. I mean I am impressed. I don't know how Samsung did it. Like everything about this phone is great.
Speaker 1:The displays are amazing, of course, because they're Samsung. Oh, I didn't comment on software. Let's talk, let's say that real quick. The software, obviously, that when stable really comes out they'll fix it. There's a lot of bugs in one ui8 on this phone which is unacceptable. The hardware is so amazing that everyone has overlooked this in their reviews. But since I cover software and samsung software every day and using the beta from the s25 versus the z fold 7, which is supposed to be stable, it's a joke. The Samsung should be embarrassed about that. I mean I guess they had to overlook something to make out this amazing hardware.
Speaker 1:But that should not be a compromise that they should have. I mean, you can't say that they're really behind there, because Apple has put out embarrassing software lately too. Ios 26 had all kinds of problems with their liquid glass. It wasn't even readable A huge disaster. Apple has really fallen behind when it comes to software stability, but Samsung shouldn't use that as an excuse. I mean, I was disappointed that, like the new clock, like this adaptive clock on here, this clock is supposed to contour like to the face of, like an animal or a person. That's cool. It doesn't work, though half the time it's supposed to work really nice, yeah, it needs to work every time and two thousand dollars.
Speaker 1:Yeah, see, like look you see how this like, you see this right here, how the three like contours, like if you move this around, see how the three comes down. But if you hit done and you like try to actually apply it, sometimes it doesn't actually work. You saw how it wasn't working before because it didn't have that originally. It sometimes doesn't apply the adaptive clock on the lock screen. It's really cool. Look at the animation how, like the three comes down when you have the aod on too. That was supposed to be a feature from one ui8, but it doesn't work every time. There's a lot of these features like that were introduced with one ui8 and this is supposed to be the stable build and they don't work. So that tells me that it's really still a beta build, that they just put a stable sticker on and said hey, slap it on the phone is released, and so we got to shove it out the door.
Speaker 1:That's the same thing they did with the s25 we'll get together by 8.5 yeah they're like maybe by 8.5, the stable build that we release on the s26 will really be a stable build. They're like, shh guys, don't tell anybody. It's really a beta. They're like just don't tell the media, We'll just say it's stable. It's really an internal testing build.
Speaker 2:But hey, just put it out, there We've got to release the phones. No one's going to know.
Speaker 1:It's July 9th, just shove them out the door, no problem. But they've done that twice now and that's kind of annoying. Obviously, the average consumer won't notice because, for one thing, samsung didn't do a good job of advertising this new feature with the lock screen clock. Maybe they didn't do that on purpose, because they're like hey, we know it's broken, we just won't tell anybody about it. The only people who will know will be the media and the people who cover it. But that shouldn't be. That doesn't feel right. I mean, you want to show off your brand new features and tell people about them, like that should be in the setup. Be like check out this new awesome adaptive lock clock.
Speaker 1:You know, like Apple publicizes their new features a lot, samsung should do the same. But when you don't have a really stable build, can't do that because you don't want people to find out that the feature doesn't work. But yeah, there's been a few hiccups with the build. Also, all the GoodLock modules weren't ready yet when One UI 8 came out on the folds. Not a good look. Samsung should do better. There's always room to improve. But from the hardware perspective I can't say anything negative about the phone. It's the most complete foldable there is in the world. One UI 8 is still the best software for foldable because the multitasking. There's certainly a couple of things they could add that I think would make it better, but overall the software is the best and with upcoming updates I'm sure it'll get more stable in terms of the overall stability of the software. So if you want a Z Fold 7 and you've been intrigued, I'd say buy one.
Speaker 1:I think there's still like 70% of people who are still like slab phones are my thing. I'm never going to do it. There's like 15% of people out there who are like I've tried a foldable and I like it and I'll stick with it. And then there's like 15% of people who are like I don't know, I'm on the fence, should I go? Stay slab or should I go foldable? Those people, people. If you're in that camp, this is the year, if you have the money, to finally try it, because this is the year where it's finally good enough, where it's like there's no big compromises, and I would recommend it if you're interested in a book style foldable. Um, apple is probably going to release their first foldable next year, so that'll rocket the market off of everything, because when apple releases it then you know, all the iphone fans will be like look, apple invented foldable phonesable phones.
Speaker 2:That's going to be a very competitive scene.
Speaker 1:They'll be like look, apple just invented foldables. And we'll be like wait what?
Speaker 2:The Galaxy Z Fold came out in 2019, seven years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like invented. What did they invent?
Speaker 2:They didn't invent anything.
Speaker 1:Sounds like copy and from the looks of the leaks I've seen for spin on it and it's always something that's really cool. Maybe that'll be in the software, because the hardware leaks I've seen they're not it. They look too thick, the bezels are too big and the aspect ratio on the front screen looks more like the pixel 10 pro fold which is coming out later this month from Google, and it's not. I think this is. Samsung's got the right front cover screen aspect ratio.
Speaker 1:I think they got it right. Anyway, I think we'll probably end there Next week. I'd really like to get some Q&A from you guys now that we're back. I didn't have any this week, but I think me and Tori would love to have some Q&A. We tackled two big things this week because I didn't want to try to get into a bunch of small granular stories since obviously it's our first week back. We covered S25 Ultra, a six-month review, and S26 Ultra leaks, so actually two things there. And then a third thing, the Z Fold 7, kind of several weeks impressions. I've had it for like three and a half weeks. I'll have a full review on Sammy Guru, hopefully this upcoming week, so you guys can read that Probably going to be like 5,000 words. I've been working on for a while. This is a big phone. It's an important phone, so I have a lot of stuff to say, but you guys got a preview of kind of what I'm going to say in the review. There's really not a lot to complain about.
Speaker 2:So anyway, tor comments how does it feel to be back in the seat, guys? You know it honestly feels so good to be back. Uh, this was something I really would look forward to every week. Uh, just getting to talk with jeff and just, uh, you know, create that community with you guys and you know a lot of people have been wanting it and so we're just glad to be back.
Speaker 1:We're bringing it back, yeah, and so until next week, for the first time in a long time. Keep expanding your galaxy.