SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
One UI 8.5 Is Here (Kinda) Snapdragon vs Exynos, and Android for Desktops
We dive deep into an exclusive first look at One UI 8.5, revealing significant design changes and feature improvements that make this a much bigger update than One UI 8. The floating action buttons, repositioned search bars, and completely customizable quick panel toggles represent Samsung's continued commitment to one-handed usability and personalization.
• First exclusive look at One UI 8.5 early build features and interface changes
• Customizable quick panel with vertical toggles and resizable buttons
• New floating action buttons and bottom-positioned search bars for better one-handed use
• Rebranded "Audio Broadcast" feature (formerly Auracast) with improved interface
• Enhanced notification design with better readability through refined blur effects
• Gallery app redesign with larger previews and new floating interface elements
• New AI routines for Bixby and Gemini integration
• Discussion of Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Exynos 2600 for upcoming S26 series
• Hands-on comparison of latest Apple products from a Samsung user's perspective
• Google's potential Android-Chrome OS merger and its implications for Samsung tablets
If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow Sammy Guru on social media and check out sammyguru.com
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Check out our website: https://sammyguru.com
Welcome back, everybody. This is episode number 45 of the Sammy Guru Podcast. My name is Jeff Springer. With me as always, my co-host Tori. Tori, say hi. Yeah, how's it going? And yeah, man, I feel like about a thousand times better this week. Last week, when we recorded, I was still in the middle of being sick. I was sick for like 13 days. It was the worst cold I've ever had. I took three COVID tests because I was like, I gotta have COVID or the flu or something. Like, there's no way. It's just a regular cold. Yeah. And finally, uh on Monday, I broke down this Monday, just three days ago, recording on Thursday, and went to the doctor and got a ZPAC. Yeah, antibiotics, a whole deal. Yeah. And that knocked it out in like$40. I should have done that a long time ago.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no. Those Z Packs will be bad.
SPEAKER_00:The Z PAC's no joke. Like as soon as I took the Z Pak, like all the sickness came pouring out of me, all the mucus and everything. So that was really easy, and I was glad that I did that. I should have done it a lot sooner because I'd have been able to get a lot more content going. Yeah. But thank God I feel a lot better because you probably can tell my voice is not 100% back, but I feel 100%. My voice will come back. I feel a lot better than I did. Yeah, no, for sure. Than I did before. Um, Tori, how's your week coming along?
SPEAKER_01:Uh so far so good. You know, um just kind of closing out the the first quarter of the school year. Um close it out strong as we get. Close it out strong. Close it out with the kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And honestly, you know, uh, you know, all that's been going well. Uh, you know, I've I've been going to a lot of the high school events and just kind of supporting them. Um, you know, and also uh just trying to make it into more movies, and hopefully we can see one this weekend as well. Um the Leonardo DiCaprio movie, that is like really turning heads. That is getting like 10 out of 10s from a lot of reviews, and I know that's something you're interested in seeing. Um, I think it's called uh One Battle After Another or something like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, the one with Leonardo DiCaprio. That's actually the one that I was gonna ask you about that we could maybe see this weekend. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm excited about taking a look at that.
SPEAKER_01:Like the reviews have been very, very I heard it could be maybe an Academy Award winner.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, it really could be.
SPEAKER_01:You know, he's he's Leonardo, very like diverse actor, like seeing them in all his different roles. It I think it'd be a good time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Hey Leonardo, yeah, you know, and hopefully, you know, whoever's his current girlfriend, it's not their 25th birthday before the movie because they won't make it for the premiere. If they turn one day over 25 before the premiere, gotta kick it to the curb. Yeah, that's the Leonardo DiCaprio policy.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. But I mean uh with how good you know, good looking and the movie star status, like yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he can get away with that, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He can.
SPEAKER_00:There's not very many guys who can get away with that policy, but I think Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the few who actually probably can. Yeah. Uh there's a lot of crazy stuff going on since last week. The world and also in Samsung, you know, they had the one week short-lived Jimmy Kimmel saga. Jimmy Kimmel got kicked off of ABC, then he was back on ABC and all kinds of crazy stuff.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, his comeback was like like that was like so many people tuned in. Like that was like he also got a crazy number of YouTube views just for the monologue.
SPEAKER_00:Like up to 25. It's it's it's in the millions in like the first five hours. He got like 25 million views. Yeah. Um, because the reason being, of course, a lot of the affiliates in some of the smaller markets preempted his uh show. Yeah, and so he wasn't able to be watched everywhere. I mean, in my personal opinion, no matter where your politics lie, he didn't say anything that was slanderous speech. So, in my personal view, I will say on this podcast, I don't know why he was taken off. You can agree with him or not, you don't have to like him. Like even Ted Cruz said, like, I don't like him, and that's fine. Ted Cruz doesn't have to like him. But he's like, I don't think you should be taking him off the air for what he said, because he didn't say anything slanderous or dangerous or anything that's illegal that I feel like he should have been censored for. So I'm glad he came back. I mean, you don't have to like the guy, and in that case, you just don't watch him. I mean, it's very simple. There's a lot of people that I don't like, and I just don't watch their shows, you know. That's not a problem. So, but I don't think we should be taking random people off, anyone off the air. You know what I mean, Tori? I mean, hopefully no one would just randomly censor me, you know, just be like, Jeff, you're gone because we just don't like you. Sami Guru's done. No more Sammy Guru podcast, no more Sammy Guru website. So you know. I mean, I'm glad there was a resolution to that. Um, what else we got? Um well, we leaked one UI 8.5 last week. Yeah. So in the mid all of the uh the other stuff going on in the world, me being sick, the guys got an early build of 1UI 8.5 um through some people on Telegram uh who were able to get this up and running. I'll give credit to the guy who originally did it, which was Reckless. I guess he was a little upset. Uh he's got all these numbers in his name, but that's basically it's an anagram of Reckless. I mean, he did he's obviously a smart guy, got it booted on the S25 Ultra, a very early build, the very first one. And some people made some ports, I think to an S21, and they shared that with us. Yeah. And they were fine with us publishing it. So we did. We published the first look at the new settings. Uh, in a lot of ways, it kind of looks like iOS. Some people did not like me saying that, but there's a lot of design elements that look similar to iOS, namely these new like floating menus at the bottom. Oh, yeah. And you see, like if you go in here, you'll notice like this little floating action button. Now, some people were saying, oh, well, it looks like Material 3 from Google, which they're doing that as well. But some of the ways that the drop shadows just look, maybe it just looks a little more iOS inspired. I mean, it still looks like one UI now that I actually have it. By the way, I didn't really say I have the build running now. I did not have it running last week. I was not the one who originally got it. Um, in terms of being a master Samsung hacker, I I am down the the pole. I have some skills, but my skills are not modifying builds that don't boot and magically getting them to boot. That's why I give shout out to those guys who did. Um but now that there's a little more stable build, I do know the basic tricks of if you have I have an international S25 Ultra. You can't do this on the US one because to do this you you need to have a certain model. This is only for this international model. Um and luckily I did import one earlier this year for this purpose of being able to get early builds. Uh and so I was able to get this build and load it up today, and now I've been able to play with it. I'll have a lot more content coming. It's a full videos now that I have it on my phone. It's gonna be a lot of fun. This is actually a way bigger update than one UI 8. So really if you're if you just got one UI 8. I know people just get pissed off when we say this, but you know, because like, oh, I just got one UI 8. Yeah, and now you're talking about the next thing already. Like I'm already behind. We're not really behind. Samsung's always working on the next thing. Yeah, people like us are just trying to bring you the news, and so we're trying to get it so we can show it off. Samsung definitely does not want me to have this right now. They, if if it were up to them, I would not have this on my phone right now. Yeah, if they could come and take this out of my hand right now, they'd probably ask the FCC chairman to censor me and steal this phone out of the Sammy Guru office. Yeah. Um, which we're glad that it's not gonna hopefully not gonna happen, but they would probably like to take this phone away from me. Um, but you know, I like to bring the preview, and and it is a much bigger update than one UI E. We're gonna talk about it a little bit here in a few seconds at the beginning of the show. Just preview what else we got coming today. This is a huge week. Tori and I could probably sit here for three hours, but my wife will be super pissed and she'll murder me, and then I won't be able to come back for next week's podcast. So instead of doing that, we might try to do like an hour or 20 minutes, hour and a half, and then do another hour and a half next week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I'm here until 8 p.m. recording, she's not gonna be too happy about that one. I may not survive till the episode 46. Yeah. People don't watch that.
SPEAKER_01:I don't think you will. No, I will. There's no way.
SPEAKER_00:It's just not gonna happen. And we got a big football game this week, Alabama, Georgia this week. Finally, Alabama gets a real test after that first game against Florida State, which they failed because they played awful. I have some hope after seeing the previous two games. Maybe they look good in the last two games. Calen Dayborough looks like he may have figured out how discipline works, you know, because he didn't have any when he came from Washington. He didn't understand how big time SEC football works, obviously.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And that you can't just be letting players do whatever they want and being their best friend. It looks like he may have figured that out. Maybe Nick Savan talked to him. Yeah, but we're gonna see what happens tomorrow. I can tell you right now, the Georgia game will definitely be a test of whether or not he's figured figured it out because Georgia is a good team. They're a true, you know, SEC team, defense run first, and they have a quarterback who can throw pretty accurately. So that's gonna be interesting. Snapdragon Summit was this week too. So now we know about processors for the S26 series. Um 1UI 8 continues to be pushed out to a bunch of people. Like I said, most people are just now getting it. Tori got it. Yeah, so let's actually start with 1UI8, and then I'll talk about 8.5 after that because I don't want to just jump into 8.5 because then people be like, well, you're trivializing my excitement of getting 1UI8. So I won't do all the enjoyment. Let's everybody enjoy the 1UI8 because most average people who are just casual Samsung lovers are finally getting a taste of that 1UI8. And I don't want to say that that's nothing just because I have the new version. So, Tori, tell me about your 1UI experience. I know you got it. Tell me what you think about it so far.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, I mean, so far I I feel like there's been like a few different things or things added to like a quality of life instead of like just like the presentation. I noticed uh a lot of different things like when I in the drop down settings and also in the um uh when I go over to like the notifications, um, just like little small, like little differences. You know, I don't ever go into like the all the crevices and the next and key. Uh you know, I kind of I like it to be like kind of like a little discovery. I'd be like, oh hey, that's new. There you go. I didn't know that was there.
SPEAKER_00:So it's like I like that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but you know, uh a weird interesting update that I just noticed. Uh I I use YouTube Music uh as my default music player, and uh I just noticed on my Android Auto, it now just has the like button. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So now I don't have to go. I used to have to like be like, okay, like uh let me hit the three buttons and then hit like. I like that they now move.
SPEAKER_00:I think that might be recent in the stable. I have YouTube Music beta. You know, I run the music beta of everything. Oh, yeah. Tori and I are like exact opposites because I do this for a living. I I run the beta of every app. So all my stuff is usually broken, but at least I have the early features. None of my stuff ever works, though. Oh yeah, they put the like button in the song, is what Tori's talking about. Oh, it's been a game changer. Which is pretty nice. I mean, that's a pretty nice feature. I don't know. Have you used any of the other 1U8 features like the 9010 multitasking split yet or anything other than any of those other pieces?
SPEAKER_01:No, I have not.
SPEAKER_00:But at least it's there, you know, if you want. Yeah, yeah. I know it's there.
SPEAKER_01:I know you told me that it was gonna be there. I haven't had to do any multitasking yet. You know, a lot of my multitasking comes up on the weekends when I have a little bit more free time. Um, but no, I I I like the look though.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, they made some tweaks here and there. Yeah. Oh, make sure you yeah, try out the adaptive clock too if you find a wallpaper that works. I mean, it is really cool. Oh, yeah, you gotta find an animal to put it. You gotta find an animal or person. Like you can put your girlfriend on there and then it'll work with that, or like a picture of both of you, it'll work with that. I have found that if you try to put in like a big group photo, sometimes it doesn't recognize that as a person and it won't work as well. Because it really needs like people, it needs like an isolated subject so that it can adapt the clock to that subject. Yeah. Otherwise, it's not quite, I think the algorithm they use is specifically tailored to that because it makes it look the best. Yeah. Um, with kind of how the numbers do adapt to around the person or the animal. So if you do too many people, it won't work. But I've I've tried like with picture of me and Nicole or Jonathan and Nathaniel, my two sons, it'll adapt if you know, if they're centered-ish. If if you've got a subject, it's two subjects that like weighed to the left or the right, it won't because then it's hard for it to adapt. Because you can see like this one I have with the cat, like it's in the center, it adapts to the cat's perfectly. This is like a perfect one that I chose from an wallpaper app just optimized to show off this demo when I made a video. But you you could probably find one that you'll like. Uh, when did you install it, by the way? Did you install it when I tweeted that to you?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like as soon as you sent it to me, I was like, oh snap, it's here. Let me download it. Or he's like, let's get that shiny new toy. Yeah. Yeah, because I was at the Mercury game. Oh, that's right. You told me that, yeah. Yeah, I remember you told me right then. And I was like, all right, when I get home, I'm gonna download it. And um, yeah, then then uh it kind of downloaded overnight. Got back kind of late, but hey, the Mercury one. Um, and uh yeah, and then the next morning I noticed like a few, like I was kind of messing around with the notifications and the settings. And I was like, oh, oh I like this presentation. It just it just looks a lot nicer, cleaner.
SPEAKER_00:Um have you how many days you've had it probably for like a week now? Almost five or six days.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Have you noticed the battery life? Any observations? Is the battery life better or worse, or are kind of the same as your one UI7?
SPEAKER_01:Um actually, like, so like um, I mean, because uh I've been a little bad about charging it, like you know, till it's okay.
SPEAKER_00:Because the most people do not, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the way we do battery comparisons as like in as like media creators, YouTubers, it's a little unrealistic because people want you to like drain your battery from 100 to zero. Ain't nobody doing that in real life. Just to speak on that right now, because people are always like, Well, did you drain it all the way? Yeah, I'm like, Do you drain yours all the way before you go to sleep? Nobody does, so then why am I testing it like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why do I have to drain it from 100 to zero? I usually don't. I drain it from 100 to 20, maybe, and then I charge it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or I feel like I've been getting um closer to and again, I'm not on my phone that often, but I've been I feel like I've been getting I've been hitting 20 quicker than I usually would. Um, and so I've been like, you know, I just bring my charger with me. I mean, it's not un Yeah, it's not unreading. But it's because I I have such a long commute doing using Android Auto going to work, and then I go another long commute to another place, another long commute back home. At least about 40-50 minutes each go around. Yeah, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it's not unusual when you install a really large software update that you're gonna end up seeing your battery life go down a little. Um, there is one thing you can do, which is to clear your cash partition. I can send you a short that we made on this that'll sometimes help you get you back some battery life because it's organizing all those background files again when you do a one UI update. It's re-indexing some stuff. And if some stuff doesn't get indexed properly or something, then you know that's the thing about Android that sometimes that can happen because you're building they're building one UI on top of Android, which Google built. So unlike iOS, which is all built by Apple, you've got one UI built on top of an operating system. It's a skin of Android. Yeah. And so unfortunately, in my experience, that can happen a little more on Android than it does on iOS, but it's a simple fix. Oh yeah. Just kind of understanding how Android works. And it's not all, not everything that you have on your Android phone is built by the OEM. It's it's kind of built on top of what Google's built, and that's kind of how that sometimes happens. But yeah, I mean, I was curious because I I mean I've basically been on the beta forever. Like I said, I live my life in beta form, you know. I'm like you know, Vin Diesel and in Fast and the Furious. I live my life one beta at a time, just like one quarter beta at a time. Yeah, just like one quarter mile at a time. Every time that one beta ends, I install another beta. And that's exactly the case. I'm always on the next test build. Yeah. So it's hard for me to always people ask me to compare, like, what's your battery life going from this stable to this stable? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. I'm always on the I'm on to the next. I haven't been on the previous stable build for like six months. So I haven't been on one UI 7 forever, since I don't even remember, probably probably like March or April, whenever the first 1UI 8 test build came out. I've been running them. So I've I've been on 1UI 8 for a long time, like half the year. Um that's not bragging, because trust me, it's really nothing to brag about because I have so many bugs from running beta builds and beta apps of everything, so we can bring you guys news. I mean, I do have a phone where I keep mostly stable, but most of my Samsung phones, I do rotate a lot of different beta stuff just to test. Yeah. Um, because they're all not all the same region. And so that brings me to let's talk about 1UI 8.5 because I do have it. Yep. Um, so first of all, you know, people like a little story time. We haven't done a story time in a while. Uh, I did one last year about how I found the One UI 7 build at STC. Tori likes story time because then I didn't just talk. And you know, he can interrupt the story. So the story of how we got this. So we got this before anybody last week, basically almost a week ago, it was Thursday night. Essentially, I usually stay up to around 1 a.m. Arizona time, which is like that's around 1.30 p.m. in India. Yeah. We got we've got a team that's global, right? So we've got a team that's in India. Um, so meet Bene, our India team, that work on India Daytime, which is also Korea daytime. So it's important that we have someone that's working on Korea daytime, because of course that's Samsung's home market. A lot of the breaking news, if you're covering Samsung, doesn't happen on US Day, it happens on Korea Day. So those guys work that time zone. And I usually stay up till around 1.30 Arizona, so I can work with them, make some notes for the next day. Sometimes I even write script or take notes for video, or sometimes I even shoot a video or some b-roll at nighttime. Now that I have my new house, I'm starting to build a YouTube studio at the house so I can also shoot there. Really starting to build that up so it looks nicer. So now I can do that. So I stayed up till around 1.30. I went to sleep. Nothing big had happened. This is last Thursday going into Friday. I wake up at like 6 45, 7, because that's when I usually get up to get my son off to school with my wife. I look at my phone, we've got like 180 messages in our Slack. I'm like, what the hell happened? Usually I wake up and there'll be like 10 to fit 20 messages of, you know, like our writers and our if Samit, who's our editor, saying, Jeff, here's the things we got to, here's what we didn't, here's what you guys could do on the US shift, because we have new guys that come in and work with me on the US shift. And it's like 180 messages. I'm like, what the hell happened last night? And so I start looking through them, and Josh Skinner, who's one of our writers, and a couple of other guys, had gotten this test build. I knew there was a test build out there, but so far we hadn't been able to boot it. I told you that last week on the podcast. I was like, we know there's a test build, but we had tried. Gurwin, who's another one of our writers who's very technical, and Josh, they had both tried to get it and boot it, and we couldn't. We failed. So we were still working into it, and I didn't know that they had any leads. I guess they had worked with someone else who had gotten a test build from Telegram again from this guy, I guess from this guy named Reckless Group, like I said. Kudos to him. He's obviously very talented and he got this running before anyone else on his S25 Ultra. Uh, they got it, I guess, imported it to an S21, and somehow Josh got some screenshots um from them. I believe this guy's name was DevCorps, um, and that's the guy we published the first article under. He got some screenshots of the about phone and some of the little menu changes of these floating action buttons. And so we pubbed it, pubbed it. We were the first ones to publish it. We got tons of people coming to the website from this. I was surprised, not super surprised, but I was surprised kind of the website didn't slow down because breaking news. I mean, like I did invest in February after we had that little crash during the S25 Ultra mystery box launch. Remember doing the live stream, like everything went to hell. I was super upset about that. So I invested in a private server. So now we have a private server, which is expensive, but luckily so far, it's been worth it because it can hold up almost any amount of traffic. Like even if we get slammed thousands of people on the site at once, it it doesn't slow down. So that's great. So it didn't slow down and uh no one else really had a hold on this build. We obviously didn't have the build to run it ourselves, but we had people who had gotten the build, and then we were able to get the APKs, like of all the different apps, the stock apps, uh, from various people from Gurwin, from Josh, from a guy named That Dev on X as well, who joined the Sammy Guru team now. Happy to have him. Lots of people chipped in um due to this original Telegram group being able to get things run, and we were able to go to the APKs, kind of do a little teardown. We shared some with our friends at Android Authority. They did some teardowns. We were able to leak the phone app, the mile files app, the gallery app. We found some new stuff in routines. And so we posted all this stuff, and it got kind of crazy because you know, we're not we're not used to covering that level of breaking news. We cover news every day, but like this is stuff that we had to post bam, bam, bam. And also, I was sick and it was the day of the iPhone launch, so I had to go and pick up my Apple stuff from the Apple store. So I was like running around trying to pick up my iPhones while I was also trying to work with these guys to publish all this stuff. And uh yeah, it was just a very crazy, crazy situation. But I have to give a lot of credit to Josh, to Gurwin, uh to that dev, to DevCorp, to all these guys who did share some stuff with us. Uh and like I said, also these guys on Telegram and Reckless who originally got this booted up and running, because otherwise we wouldn't have been able to bring that look as early, and it was a lot of fun to be able to dive into it. But of course, at that time we didn't have a full build running. But now that I do have a build running and and I can say this is a much bigger update than 1UI 8.0. There's a lot of changes that I think people are gonna really enjoy. Um, one of my favorite uh changes that they added here is that now with the menus, you have the search bar always at the bottom now instead of at the top, yeah, which aligns with 1UI's goal of one hand use. Yeah, and I think that's a better place. So it does look a little, I think maybe they're gonna change the gradient or something. And like I said, you can say whatever you want. It does look a little bit iOS inspired to me, because I have an iPhone in my hand, and I've compared it. I even made a video. You can say whatever you want, that it looks like more like the Google Material 3, and it does look somewhat like Material 3, but look at the search bar on iOS.
SPEAKER_01:I know, actually, I I yeah, it actually does look like iPhone.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, aside from the liquid glass effect, which is obviously Samsung did not implement the liquid glass, which thank God, because this liquid glass is hard to read. Like, look at you see how the transparency on that, I mean it kind of looks like glass at the bottom. Yeah, it does. It makes the text hard to read, it makes it really hard to read on your notifications. Look at my notifications.
SPEAKER_01:I think it looks better on the other. Look at my notifications.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, look how hard it is to read your notifications with this glass effect.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, it's hard to read, especially if you have like that like white background.
SPEAKER_00:So obviously, Samsung didn't do that, and I obviously I know Google did implement the floating action buttons with material three, and so some of it is from there. But obviously, Samsung does try to make things look a little bit familiar because they still do want to try to poach those iOS users. Yeah, they do. So whether you believe it or not, I know you guys are Samsung fans, you're like, oh, we don't want to be like Apple. I don't necessarily either, but Samsung really has a massive goal of poaching people from iPhone. This is not me giving you an opinion. I've been in meetings with Samsung's marketing people. It is their number one goal. Not a goal, it is the goal. Their goal whenever they spend money for marketing is to convert people from the iPhone. Uh, I I I wish I could tell you that their number one goal is to keep their current people happy, but that is not their number one goal. No. Um, hopefully, no one from Samsung listens to this. I'm not trying to give out marketing secrets and give myself in trouble. But I'm just saying that's their number one goal is to post people.
SPEAKER_01:So they they are trying to make it at least I think is working. I I've had a lot of friends on Facebook now and be like, hey, like I'm I'm done with Apple. Who wants Samsung?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they should. And they should. And I think a lot of people are coming from that because of the foldables. But I think I think the software being somewhat similar to iOS and cohesive is good, but please don't do the liquid glass. I really hope Samsung doesn't do that because it's unreadable. So I will tell you though, after looking at it, I I said in the original league iOS inspired. I don't know that I'd go as far as saying it looks like iOS. It still looks very much one UI, but it's just got some elements that are iOS inspired. Like the floating action buttons and bars, they look a little more iOS than they do Material 3 and Google. That's my personal opinion. You can take it or leave it. Definitely Google did it as well, but I think the menus that Samsung chose, they do have that that look to them. But they also implemented a ton of fun stuff in in 8.5. Check out this animation. First of all, really big. You can now edit your quick panel any way you want. You can resize all of these and you can make them vertical. Previously, these could only be horizontal. So now if you edit your quick panel, you can make all of your quick tiles any size you want. So you can make these vertical or horizontal, you can make them smaller, pill shape. I actually like that. You can rearrange this and change the toggles however you want, which is something people really wanted with One UI 7, and they finally did it. Um, but if you have a vertical one, because it has to open in a horizontal menu, it does a little flip for you. Watch this. See that little flip animation? Yeah. Yeah, you're always talking about presentation. How about that? That's a presentation. Isn't that nice? Yeah. I mean, there's a couple little animation things they need to fix with it, but it's a really nice presentation, and the animation looks really nice. They also made it so that on the extra large folders, the expanded ones, instead of just having three dots down here, it has the see how that app in the background you can kind of see it grayed out. If you look at one UI8, this phone, this is my US model, it just has three dots down there. So you can see there's clearly a difference on 8.5. And so they've made a ton of refinements. They also now the you have a little bit more blur on your notifications, which actually makes it look even more readable compared to iOS, which with the liquid glass is like completely unreadable. So hopefully Samsung sticks with you know their own thinking of adding a little more gradient blur is the way to go instead of liquid glass, because this looks phenomenal, yeah, in my opinion. I mean, I think the way the notifications look here, and when you pull down the lock screen, like the liquid, you know, the gradient, they don't we don't need liquid glass. Uh I think it just looks great. It looks phenomenal. And they kind of changed how some of the animations work here. You see how you you know these used to pop up all the way. Now the animation's a little bit different on your now bar, your now brief. So you can kind of see those things there on the settings. Um they've changed just a ton of stuff. They changed Oracast because a lot of people didn't know what Oracast was. I don't even know. He has no idea what it was. I have no idea. They renamed Oracast and they renamed it to let me see if I can find it and I'll show you here, Tori. They renamed the Oracast to Audio. Let me see if I can where is it? Panel. Ah. Oh, here we go. Where are you? Oh, audio broadcast. Here it is. It's great TV when you can't find something. Audio broadcast. So if you go to audio broadcast, it now has a brand new UI. It's got the password. This is basically just Oracast. They just built a fancy UI on top of it and called it Audio Broadcast because I think a lot of people hear the word Oracast and like, what the hell is Oracast? So like that's it. But audio broadcast, like people understand that. Sounds like I'm broadcasting audio to someone, which is exactly what Oracast is. Basically, it lets you, if people, you know, everyone has Bluetooth headphones now. Oh, yeah. And so, like, if you're like holding an event, you can start an audio broadcast, an oracast from your device, and then anybody who has Bluetooth earbuds that's within a certain radius will be able to tune into your broadcast. So it's made for like if you're hosting like a banquet and you want to say, Everybody, if you want to hear, you know, tune to channel blank on the the audio broadcast, and you'll be able to just listen to whatever announcements. That is like holding a retreat or rather. You see, it sounds cool once you learn about it. Yeah, that's really cool. They never really publicized it before very much, which I think is why a lot of people were like, Well, what the hell is that? But yeah, you can do both media and voice. And so now they made a really slick UI where you can differentiate between voice and media, and it shows you all the devices. Like, once people connect, I'll be able to see all their devices in this gradient color. So, like if you were connected with your Buds3 Pro, it's like Tori is listening right here, it'll show me like a map of who's listening there.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, no, that's really cool. And then you have another.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, Oracast has been around now for a couple of years, but it's like it seems like no one's found a great way to like put it front and center in their product. Yeah, I've got to do that. And so I think Samsung is finally they might be the first OEM to really put it front and center in their OS. And I think a lot of people actually use it and might be interested in it now that it's there. And you have two different tabs, one for if you want to share one and one if you want to tune in so you can see where broadcasts are. If you're right now there's none. But yeah, this would be very useful. Like if you're hope hosting something or doing something with a group of friends or whatever, and you just wanted to communicate with everyone at the same time, even you could use this for that. You could even think of it like that. Like if you know you're at an event with a bunch of friends, there's a lot of ways you could use this that maybe aren't necessarily conventional. And then up here, uh, you can scan, you see the little QR code. I don't think it works yet because it's early build. You can scan a QR code if someone has a broadcast and you want to join it with a QR code.
SPEAKER_01:That'd be so cool. So it's pretty nice. Um, I think that's front and center.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, they definitely do. I think I think I'm glad that they decided to finally build that in a little bit. So the customizable quick toggles, the new notifications, uh, the audio broadcast. There's a lot of stuff. I mean, the phone app's got a redesign. They all have these little floating action buttons now, which the gallery has a pretty substantial redesign. You can see the gallery now has a big preview at the top now instead of just a smaller preview like we used to get. See how if you scroll here, you see that bigger preview at the top for the most recent app. And you've also got the floating action button down here. I mean, there's a lot of good stuff in here. There's in modes and routines, there's a brand new routine for Ask Bixby and Ask Gemini. So interesting. Theoretically, if you have a routine, you could collect a bunch of data and then you could feed it into the Ask Bixby and Ask Gemini routines, and you'd be able to get some feedback back from those smart assistants with AI. There's supposed to be four new AI features coming that we reported on that are already in China, but I haven't actually seen all of them yet in this build. Again, keep in mind, people, I know I'm Sammy Grew and everyone expects me to know everything, but I just flashed this build onto MyS25 Ultra about three hours ago. So it doesn't matter who you are. I've been in meetings uh, you know, in between this uh for some administrative stuff, and then me and Sori sat down to set the podcast up. So I mean I've just I'm telling you exactly what I've already learned and what I've found. But it's first in. But yeah, next week on the podcast, obviously I'll be able to tell you a lot of other stuff for sure. There's no doubt about that. Um, yeah, I mean they've they've done a lot of stuff. Mainly they're making it more one-handed, they're adding the floating action buttons in here, and they're trying to, it seems like improve their general mission of making one UI more usable, one-handed, and also make it more useful. And it seems like, at least so far, that this is a very good start. One thing that's very weird, someone else noticed, is the cellular data toggle in the quick settings. There is none anymore. I don't know if that's just this is a test build, keep in mind. This is not even this is not even a beta build. Samsung doesn't want this to actually be out there, so this could just be a mistake. But you see the mobile data toggle right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's not even doesn't exist on this build, which is a pretty important toggle because some people do like to somehow sometimes make sure they're only using Wi-Fi. I don't ever use this, but some people like to be able to toggle their mobile data on and off. It's kind of weird that that would be taken away. I can't imagine that it would. So um there's a new weather app, but although the weather app hasn't really been redesigned too much, yeah, just some small changes. It's pretty similar to one UI 8. Overall, though, I mean the crazy thing is considering how early this build is, it's fairly stable. The only thing that really crashes for me a lot is when I try to re-organize my quick panel, because obviously that's one of the massive new features and changes, is being able to change the quick panel and make them vertical. So it makes sense that that feature might not be that stable. Yeah. Sometimes if I try to turn something one way, it'll like crash the entire thing and make it me reboot the phone. But I mean, obviously, I wouldn't say you should use this as your stable build if you're just if it's your only phone. But in terms of like on the spectrum of uh nasty builds that I've ever flashed, I flashed a lot of tests and beta builds and alpha builds. This is not that you know, I could use this. I mean, as long as I don't mess with the quick toggles, it's not that bad. Oh, the Cardinals are playing the Seahawks tonight.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Uh actually, that is where Sammy is. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh man.
SPEAKER_00:So see, we could talk for three hours and Tori won't get in trouble, but I wouldn't. Yeah, I won't, but I'll get in trouble. Big trouble, so we won't be able to, but I I definitely would get in trouble. But dang, I was so busy with one eight. I had actually done some research on this and I had a parlay. I was ready to fire in there tonight. Yeah, I don't I don't like firing parlays that are only by the half. I like to do whole game parlays. So I guess have to wait until Saturday and Sunday for the football this week to parlay it up.
SPEAKER_01:Overall, it looks like um to me, some added extra quality of life in the presentation. Um, I think even people who are either coming from my phone or even just like your average user, um, I think they would really appreciate that in like some of those presentations. Because I feel like the presentation is what really just kind of sells phones in general, uh, at least to like the average.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I think the UI does sell phones a lot. Actually, people don't think that phone maybe that the UI does, but I think it does. There's a couple of new clock styles too, but there's nothing crazy in those just yet. I mean, the adaptive clock, the adaptive clock is actually a little buggy, even though you can see it does work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's it's a little buggy still. I mean, it was buggy on Wendy 8, so I'm not surprised that it's buggy on this test build. If you set it, it doesn't fully work once you actually set it. But I mean, seems like Samsung's in a never-ending struggle with the adaptive clock. Hopefully, hopefully one day they overcome their demons and the adaptive clock works fully. But when UI 10. Yeah. Maybe that'll yeah, maybe for when you I10, they'll do a big anniversary and they'll be like, oh my God, the massive feature you've been waiting for is here. The adaptive clock finally works. I know.
SPEAKER_01:They'll make a commercial for it.
SPEAKER_00:And people will be like, I don't believe you. You know, like that, like that meme. I don't believe you. I don't believe you. I don't believe you. I know. But you know, uh, I mean, overall, it looks great. There's a lot of other smaller features that we've dug into over at Samiguru. They've got some um features for they've got a revamped software update screen. Actually, I didn't show you that. It looks really cool. The gradient on the revamped software screen. Yeah, if you go into about phone, you go sorry, go into software update. Look at the software update with the gradient. It's kind of nice, pretty that's a nice looking presentation right there, huh? We like that. Very nice presentation.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, I actually like that.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, and you probably noticed as well. If you look here at the top, you can hide the battery pill in the notification area in the status bar. A lot of people don't like having the battery, the pill, a little battery shape. Now you don't need it. You see how I just got that right there? Boom, don't need it. Don't even know it. Um, so yeah, they they've allowed, they've allowed a lot of changes here. I'd say it's bigger than one UI 8. Uh, it kind of feels like someone, one of our writers, uh, Fidel, he was saying that um it feels like OneUI7 was so big that they just decided to release it in three parts. Yeah. Seven, eight, and eight. Because it feels like all of these were part of the same general design plan.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe they're like trying to avoid what happened with yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Cause I feel like with 1UI7, they had to rush out the final stable version. They were so far behind, they had to rush out a stable version that wasn't their final plan. So they're like, well, okay, well, then we'll just put that out and then we'll put out eight and eight. Those will actually just be the changes we actually originally intended to be one UI7. So 1UI 8.5 could just be the final evolution, yeah, as we say in Pokemon terms of 1UI7.
SPEAKER_01:Because it really feels like 1 UI 9 would just be the mega evolution.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it could be. I mean, 1UI9 could start some new design language things because it feels like they haven't changed, like, I mean, aside from the floating action buttons, which aren't really I mean, they're cool, they're a new design element, but they're not like a massive change.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:People are looking at the screenshots and saying, oh, this doesn't feel like one UI. It still feels like One UI. I have it now. I thought that too last Friday when I saw it. You always jump to conclusions when you just see screenshots that someone plucked. And you know, as media, we're probably a little responsible for that because we're reporting the news. People would like to jump to conclusions, you know. It's like, look, it's a jump to conclusion, Matt. Yeah, and it's not. It's got all these conclusions that you could jump to, yeah, like an office space. Yeah. So, you know, we just give you a lot of conclusions by showing you various photos and you could jump to, but it's up to you if you jump to them. Yes, yes, yes. I didn't make you jump. Yeah, I just gave you the conclusion. But now that I actually have it in hand, I would say it it's it feels very much one UI. And I think Samsung made some intentional changes. There's gonna be a lot more features I'll find in the next week. So stay tuned to my ex. Stay tuned to Sammy Guru because we're gonna post all the stuff I find there. And of course, next week on the podcast, because I haven't had a lot of time with it, I'll probably have another 40 minutes of stuff cool stuff to show Tori. I'm just talking about the stuff we've found that sticks in my mind. But we still have a couple other things news related that aren't hardware discussion, because I do want to talk about in the second half of the show hardware. We've kind of started a pattern of like all the news and software, and then just hands-on hardware expressions in the second half, and then QA. Yeah. But a couple of big things. One, Snapdragon Summit. We gotta talk about that. We can't forget about Snapdragon Summit. So Qualcomm took to the stage in Hawaii, and I did not get to attend again this year. They actually did invite me, but we just moved and I wasn't gonna go to Hawaii because I've I got a lot of stuff going on.
SPEAKER_01:You would not live to make it to Hawaii. No, probably not. In this time, I wouldn't have been able to because I was so sick. Yeah, yeah. I would have to cancel it even if I had booked.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But yeah, so next year I'm planning to go, but they unveiled the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 uh system on a chip, so c uh mobile platform, and it's got some big changes, but there's some controversy. Oh big time controversy because Samsung was at the keynote for unveiling in Hawaii, um their senior product development uh chief, was there and they always kind of make a comment that's like, oh, we love Qualcomm, we're great partners. You can see this processor coming to the next Galaxy S device in early 2026. They said that last year, teasing that it would be in the S25 Ultra. But this time, while they were there and they praised their partnership with Qualcomm, they said how much they love them and how much they love the processor. Conspicuously, they did not say anything about the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 being in the next Galaxy S with the S26. So a lot of people have speculated, including us. We wrote some speculation about it, because that's what you do. We're media, we we try to draw conclusions. I tried to get some conclusions and jump to them. And so there's a couple of different ways you could view this. You could say, oh, well, one, maybe it's just an oversight, and maybe Samsung forgot. That seems very unlikely. I mean, these are very intentional companies, and I highly doubt that they just forgot. You know, because they say that they've said that almost every year at the Pragan Summit. I doubt they just forgot to mention it. The other two options are one that Samsung is actually going to go back to their own in-house processors, Exynos, the 2600, that we already have some information about across the entire S26 lineup. That's highly unlikely because at least in the US, Samsung tries to use Qualcomm because Qualcomm is a US company and it makes our government, you know, particularly certain people, happy that Samsung does business with a US company for processors. And so I doubt they will abandon the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in the S26 Ultra. At least in the US and certain other regions. However, the fact that they didn't mention it or confirm it for the entire S26 series does lead me to think, and it might lead you to think, that they may go back to a strategy that they had a few years ago where they would release the Snapdragon chip in the Ultra, but the Exynos chips in the other models, the S26 Pro and the Edge, or they might do all Qualcomm in the US and some regions, but Exynos in other regions. You know what I mean? Like certain regions, including their home market of Korea.
SPEAKER_01:Now, like what would be like the advantages? You know, why why would they might want to move to that?
SPEAKER_00:I like I like where your head's at, Tori. It's a good question. I like how you segued it in there. Yeah. So there's a couple of things. Um, well, I mean, one for one reason, obviously, if Samsung Mobile is buying a lot of X and O's chips, that's making a lot of money for Samsung's chip business, right? Because all people don't realize. I've said this before, Samsung is a massive multinational company. They they make everything, right? And they they they don't just have like a consumer electronics business. People think just, oh, Samsung. Well, they just make like phones, TVs. No, they make like the chips and stuff that go in these products too. They have a software division, they have a hardware division, they make their own chips, they have a fab where they actually make this silicon. You know, they don't need necessarily Intel or Snapdragon or anyone to make their stuff, they do it themselves. But sometimes they don't use their own chips because they've been inferior in the past. Yeah, and that's actually why a lot of people are worried about the Exynos because when it was previously in the Ultra and previously in the S20, you know, S series, it ran kind of hot in a lot of regions. No. And the Qualcomm sometimes has always ran cooler, has a better modem, sometimes better performance. But there's a lot of evidence that suggests that Samsung is really getting their stuff together on the Exynos 2600. Some of the early benchmarks we've seen have been really impressive. It could actually be more powerful than even the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The question we don't know is the thermal performance. And then also the other big question, because you said why would they maybe want to do why would they want to go with one versus the other? What are the benefits? Well, we've already heard, and we wrote an article about this, that Samsung may include support on the S26 Ultra for the APV codec. That's the professional video codec that they actually created themselves, which allows you to get richer colors out of your videos if you edit them, things like that. It's a big thing if you're a creator, if you want to market as a professional phone. Apple has a similar version, ProRes, which is their version of this, basically, their codec for this. Um Qualcomm made it a point to mention at this keynote that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 has native support for Samsung's APV video gig. So that makes you think, well, the Ultra is definitely gonna get the Snapdragon chip. Because I don't know. Will the Exynos have the same native support? Is it gonna give you the same gains if you're you know processing, if you're shooting video, if you actually want to edit, you want to use these codecs on the 26 Ultra? Um I don't know, but certainly it would be Samsung wants to get their chip business back on on board. Um and obviously they can sell chips to other companies and they do. Yeah, and just like they Samsung makes their own camera parts too. The crazy thing about Samsung too is some of their best stuff they don't even sell to themselves themselves, quote unquote.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Even though they're not the same company. That's actually the problem here. Is Samsung camera operates separately from Samsung Consumer Mobile who makes the phones.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Because Samsung still has a super old sensor in the S25 Ultra, and they actually have they have camera hardware that's way, way better than what they currently have in the S25 Ultra, but they're not using it because they're selling those to other people, they're selling those sensors to Chinese companies who are putting it in their phones and then outperforming the Galaxy phones. Yeah, in some sense, it it doesn't make sense on paper, but we actually look at it and think about it numbers-wise. If you're gonna if you think about it like if we're best friends or if we run a if we're a family and me and you run two businesses, but they're symbiotic businesses, if you're my friend, I'm probably gonna want a discount if you sell it to me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But if you sell it to Bob and you don't know Bob, you're gonna be cutthroat and sell it to Bob for as much as you can.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And that's exactly why this is a problem because Samsung Camera and Samsung Chips business, they make more money by selling to other people. Because if they sell it to Samsung Mobile, Samsung Mobile's gonna be like, why don't you just give me that little friend discount?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, just give me a little friend discount now, you know. Like we were just having a beer down the road here in Seoul, getting a little bit of that ramen in Korea here, having a little ramen party. Yeah, yeah. You guys just give me a little 10%, a little 12%, a little 15%. That way we get our margins up on the phone business. And like I said, they operate a separate business unit. So our stock goes up, but then your stock goes down because you're not making as much profit. So that's the problem. Can't have that. You're gonna want your friend your friends are gonna want a little discount. This is the most average person way I can explain it, but that's basically what's going on. Is they're making more profit by selling to other companies. Yeah, but Samsung has to find a way to vertically integrate this. Nearly trillion dollar business, you got to find a way to vertically integrate this because they can have the best hardware on everything. They make some of the best hardware in every aspect of the business. Yeah. Uh honestly, I'm really rooting for Exynos 2600. I know a lot of the guys on our team are as well, because I think it'll be good for Samsung as a whole if they can get that chip business back. And a lot of other companies are skeptical for the cameras. Everyone loves Samsung's cameras. So the Chinese companies, a lot of them are buying those cameras. Um but a lot of companies are skeptical about buying Samsung chips because they have had problems in the past with performance, with thermals, throttling. Yeah, and so maybe the only way for Samsung to get back in the business of going up in their chip business is for Samsung Mobile to invest in really pushing Exynos in the S line. Because keep in mind, the Z Flip 7, they tested it with this Z Flip. The Z Flip 7 runs in Exynos processor. The previous and it runs really well. I actually wanted to write an article about that, Sammy Guru. You know, I have so much time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just I just get to everything I do because I have so much time. I want to write an article about it because I've used the Z Flip 7 now for a couple months. It runs very well. You know, very little, very, very well. I was really impressed, and I I really am as a result of using the Z Flip 7 and how well it's run. I really am rooting for Samsung's Xnose to make a comeback. We'll see. I mean, obviously, Snapdragon has a lot of fans in the US. I don't think we're gonna see all Xnos here. And obviously, Snapdragon does make great modems. I'm not crapping on Snapdragon. If anyone's a Snapdragon fan, don't think I'm crapping on it. Snapdragon and Qualcomm have made great processors the last few years, and I'm very happy with the processor on the S25 Ultra. Yeah, but I think Samsung could really use a boost to that business. But at the same time, they need to start buying up some of those Samsung camera sensors that they're putting out that they're letting these Chinese companies curb stomp them on imaging, you know, and start bringing the people what they want. Like it's because honestly, they should look at Sony. What happened with Sony? You know, Sony used to make phones and they used to have a pretty good phone business. But what happened with Sony? They stopped putting all of their own best because Sony also makes camera sensors. Yeah. They make a lot of that hardware that goes in the phone. They started just selling to other companies, making higher profit margins and not vertically integrating into their own mobile business. And now no one even knows that Sony makes phones, except for me and a couple other people. Yeah, they still do, but they don't really sell them in the US and they're overpriced and they don't sell much volume. I don't want to see that happen to Samsung because I love Samsung. So I hope that one, Xnos can get back on track, and two, maybe they start bringing some of those camera hardware that they're you know really working on. So yeah, it's gonna be an interesting battle. Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 versus Xnose 2600, who's gonna come out of the battle royale? You guys gotta find Sammy, you know, follow Sammy Grue because we'll be bringing you a lot more information about that. But there's a lot of other great stuff um at the Snapdragon Summit 2. They introduced the next generation of the Snapdragon laptop chips, the X Elite 2 Ultra or Extreme. Those are gonna start going in Windows laptops. Remember, I had the Book 4 Edge when we first started the podcast. That was the first Snapdragon X Elite laptop chip. Um, they're gonna have the second generation, those will start being in laptops in early 2026. Samsung will probably make a Galaxy Book 5 Edge, which will be a sequel. Maybe they'll even make an Edge Ultra because this now has this like ultra powerful Snapdragon chip. I'm excited about that because the book for Edge got crazy battery life for a Windows laptop of eight to ten hours. I would love that. Who doesn't want eight to ten hours on their Windows laptop? It's the kind of performance that the people want. It it is, honestly. Because you know the people love battery life.
SPEAKER_01:You can't never battery life, battery life, battery life.
SPEAKER_00:It's all about the battery life in this industry. If you can't bring the battery life, then what are you even doing here? You know what I say?
SPEAKER_01:Battery life and camera.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and then the last thing I want to mention before we go take a break and then get into the hardware is that Samsung finally released the 1UI 8 watch update for or beta update for for the Watch 6 series, and they said that the beta program is ending for the Watch 7, which means the stable should be coming soon, but they haven't actually rolled it out yet. It's taken a long time to get stable 1UI8 watch for the watch 7. Because think about it, the Ultra, you got 1U8 watch pretty quickly. People are like, Oh, if you didn't buy the Ultra, well, here's the finger for you. Yeah, right. Here's a bird, you didn't spend the most money, then you don't get anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You bought one of those peasant watch sevens.
SPEAKER_01:Because they say thanks for spending your money, but you get nothing.
SPEAKER_00:They came out at the same time. Yeah, they did. It's like, why didn't you release the update? It's been like two months, and the watch seven people were like, Where the hell is my update? Like, I bought it at the same time as the guy who bought the ultra, and he's had the update for two months. Like basically right after the July Unpacked, a couple weeks after that, yep. They started getting 108 watch on the Ultra. I remember that. And obviously it launched on the Watch 8 Classic and stuff, but yeah. Um, so you know, if you're on the Watch 7, you should have it. If you're Watch 6, you should be able to kind of grab that soon. And uh oh, also, Samsung released a Samsung Health update. Remember how last week we were talking about the ads on the refrigerator? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now they released a Samsung Health update that I got this week. And I'm reading the changelog. Let me read the change log to you because it's funny. Like last week I ran with I read with the health thing. I'll read you the changelog on this. It's right here. I I saw that the size of the update. It was like 300 megabytes, and I was like, wow, this is a great update. It has a lot of great features. It says, be a fitness pro at home with iFit. We're now unveiling iFit, a global fitness content. There's a lot of exclamation points in here. Subscribe now to our partners and bring positive change to your life at a discounted launch price. Oh my. Don't miss out on the benefits. There's there's like 10 exclamation points in every line. No, no, no, no. Swipe a recommended card at the top of Samsung Health to find hidden discounts and events. A discover tab with a selection of our best partners has been added. In select countries, personalized health info, meal plans, and products from our premium partners are available. Discover everything you need for a healthy life today. Exclamation point. No. And I was like, this entire update is not any new features. It's just the addition of a bunch of ads to the health app.
SPEAKER_01:Do you yeah, no?
SPEAKER_00:I made this video today showing this. I was like, guys, there's this change log is all ads. Like, look, they add this discover tab. It's now has the call map, which they've partnered with a while, and this another app called Find Care, which will let you book a healthcare visit. And then if you book it through this app, Samsung gets a cut of whatever your copay is, basically. I did some research on this company. And then you've got this fitness tab where they've added all these workouts from a company called iFit, Aruba Pilates. And of course, there's a couple of free videos, but then at the end of the video, it's like, you want some more? Time to give us that money, money, money, money.
SPEAKER_02:Money.
SPEAKER_01:Go ahead and give us that account in routing number. And they're like, go ahead and count routing number, hit us with that credit card.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. 100%. Just drop the number right there. Yep. So basically, if you get this update and you're wondering what's new, because it's a massive update, 300 megabytes, there's actually not any new features at all, other than the fact that Samsung wants to sell you a bunch of stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Oh no.
SPEAKER_00:They're like, you know what? Last week we got the people. Like, we already got the ads on the TV. Yeah. We got the ads on the fridge. So the guy who's sitting on his butt on the couch, you know, eating and drinking, we got that guy covered. We're going to get money from him because we got the ads. But what about the people who are actually trying to improve their life? They're going to the gym. They're using their Samsung Health. We got to sell them. We got to sell something to them too. We can't just get the guy who's sitting on the couch watching our TVs. We need the people who are also going to the gym and using the health app. I want to sell them something too. Yep. Next, just like me and Tori said, ads on your washer and dryer. It's coming, guys. Yep, it's coming. Guaranteed. If you have a Samsung washer and dryer, you better get ready because they're going to be selling you some fabric softener. They're going to be selling you some dryer sheets. Yep. They're going to be selling you some clothes hangers. It's going to be on. Bed Bath and Beyond, probably their first partner. I can already predict it.
SPEAKER_01:It really will be.
SPEAKER_00:Bed Bath and Beyond in your local supermarket to get some uh refills of your laundry detergent, etc. All right. Well, that in mind, I mean, you know, we also have to make some money just like Samsung, like I said last week. We got a lot of people to pay now. We got like nine writers, you know. I let all these people join. Every time I just let someone new join the team, I'm like, damn, how am I going to pay all these people? But, you know, somehow we just keep getting views and it just keeps working out. Hopefully that keeps happening. That would suck if it doesn't. But so far it's just it's been a good plan. You know, it's like say, hey you guys, why don't you join us? And we'll hope that joy you joining us gets us enough views to pay you. With that in mind, I hope that you guys want all of our writers to get paid because we bring you great content, which is exactly why we need to hear from the sponsor of today's podcast. This episode of the Sammy Guru Podcast is brought to you by our partners at US Mobile. U.S. Mobile has wireless service on all three of the major carriers in the United States. You can get service on their Darkstar, their warp, and light speed networks, and you can even switch between those on your plan at any time that you like. They have various different promos running right now, including their yearly promotions. They have a 30-day free trial if you bring your number to US Mobile, as well as three months of service for$45, which is$15 a month, on their unlimited starter plan. And you can do that with porting your number in or getting a new number with US Mobile as well. They have some really amazing deals, and the fact that you can actually switch between the three major US carriers is quite a great deal for a prepaid carrier and something that I really like about US Mobile. If you guys are looking for a great new wireless service, check out our friends at US Mobile. We appreciate them for sponsoring this episode of the Sammy Guru Podcast. All right, guys, we're back in section number two of the podcast. Let's talk a little hardware. Um before I get into my iPhone thoughts, because I have two iPhones here, and I'm gonna give thoughts on both of them because I feel like this is the Sami Guru podcast, and people don't want to hear about iPhones the whole time, so I'm not gonna drag it out into two weeks. Usually when it's Samsung hardware, like I give I dedicate an entire week to one product, so I can give it it's just two, but that's because it's a Samsung product. Um but I I'll give my thoughts on all the Apple products because I have actually all of them on the I have my Apple Watch here. Yep, I have both iPhones and I have the new AirPods 3 Pro. So I'll give thoughts on all of them. But I do want to talk about another piece of hardware and show Tori this that was just released last night. It's actually gonna be the it's not gonna come to the US, but it's actually the first phones that are gonna run the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 that we were talking about earlier, and that is the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max, which has a screen on the back of the phone right next to the camera module where you can get notifications. And I really like it. Xiaomi did this before on one of their other phones, and I love this implementation. What do you think about it, Tori?
SPEAKER_01:Oh no, I actually like that because you know, like I feel like a lot of people. It makes sense, right? If you flip your phone over, you can see it.
SPEAKER_00:And on this one, you can see full screen notifications. No, that looks actually really nice. I mean, I I you know, some people trash on the Chinese phones, but they do come up with a lot of innovative ideas. Um now, now I said something nice about them, but they also blatantly copy everything Apple does, even way more, way, way. I mean, I shouldn't say even more. I say Samsung is not even close to copying Apple at the level these guys do. Yeah, like literally anything Apple does, they will do just to try to sell some phones. Their last phone was the 15, and they entirely skip 16 to go to 17. And someone asked, Why did you do that? And they said, Oh, well, because that's where Apple is. Yeah, they just admitted it. Yep. They just skipped 16 entirely so they could be on the same numbering as Apple, try to sell a few more phones. I'm like, guys, have some respect for yourself. I know, right? Like, this is a pretty good be self-respect. This is a good looking product with a green build. It looks good, and the hardware looks good.
SPEAKER_01:I like that back. The bat looks really good.
SPEAKER_00:And they partner with Leica, you know, the camera brand. Leica is very well respected for their optics, and their cameras are usually very good. Their software, eh, one UI is miles ahead on the software front, in my opinion. But you know, it's not as bad as it used to be. It's just this particular one is gonna be the Chinese model, and I am gonna import one because I just want one because I like that back display. Yeah, and as you guys know, now on my personal channel, I'm covering stuff that's not Samsung, so I'll be covering this on my personal channel. Yeah, um, and I really like the back display. I'm not saying Samsung should do it, but maybe if they, you know, wanted to do this something like this on an ultra or they wanted to go like one above the ultra, like an elite or something crazy, like ultra max. I don't know if they should call it that, but whatever. I I like the idea of having display on the back next to the camera module. Yeah, uh, I do think it's a little harder to do on a this one, doesn't have as many cameras as the S25 Ultra because this is their pro, not their Ultra. Oh, yeah, yeah. They still have an Ultra, it'll come later this year. I don't know if it'll have the display, but they had a previous one that was their, I think a Xiaomi 11 Ultra. I got I had that phone and it had display on the back, but that one only did like time and basic notifications. This one does like full screen clock and notifications and everything. It looks good. I'll have a review on my personal channel, and also I'll be able to test that Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for the first time because we obviously know that there's a good chance that's gonna be in Samsung's phone, so it'll actually have a little bit of Samsung connection as well, since I'll be able to test that upcoming processor from Samsung. Um, so there's that. Also, just another aside for my personal channel, I got my DJI Mini 5 Pro. I did an unboxing of that on my channel today. Super excited to fly that drone. I did not realize though that apparently because I'm going to fly it to get footage from my YouTube channel, which I make money on, the FAA requires me to not just pay the$5 general hobbyist fee, I have to take a commercial flying exam and get a permit and pay a$175 fee to fly the drone to capture footage that will be monetized on YouTube. Otherwise, technically it's illegal. And the FAA apparently, if you have a big YouTube following, they like to notice videos that have drone footage and then send you a violation. And the fines can be thousands of dollars. So I'm gonna have to not everybody obviously gets fined, but yes, people have people have got fined several thousand dollars because they didn't register for the part 107 permit. Yeah, part 107. I just learned this yesterday. I did the unboxing post on my channel. Someone's like, Don't make don't don't fly it until you get the permit, or don't put it in they're like, You can fly it, but don't put that in your monetized content. Um, because if you just want to fly it as a hobbyist, you just have to register it with the FAA and pay five dollars. Okay. And you're good. Yeah. That's easy. It takes like five minutes. But this is hard. You actually have to study, take an exam, which is a fairly long exam. That I've heard is not that easy to pass. It's comprehensive. It's a lot of stuff you have to study and know. Weather conditions, some basic physics, all kinds of stuff about flying drones. Pass that, then fill out an application attaching that you passed it and$175. And then it takes another like four to six weeks and they'll process it.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00:So my plan was to do a full review of that on my channel. It might take until January before I can post the review. I'm going to do it and get the permit. I'm going to do it legitimately because I don't want to get fined. Yeah. Because the whole reason I bought the drone was so I could get some cool cinematic footage and kind of improve the video quality of my videos on my personal channel, and I might use it on Sammy Guru, but I don't really want to take the risk of getting fined. No, that's not true. It might be fun and interesting to learn some stuff anyway. I think so too. I mean, it's just it's going to take a long time to get the permit. So don't expect to see that review for a while because I'm not actually going to post the review with the footage. Doesn't mean I'm I can't fly it at all right now. I can. I just can't monetize it. I can't post commercially used footage from the drone. Yeah. I can only post it for fun. So I can learn to use it, learn to fly it myself as a hobby with my son. Maybe Tori and I'll even go and Tori might enjoy going. We'll go somewhere and like learn to fly it, but then the review will be later on. So I've got that going on. And yeah, let's talk about um let's talk about these Apple products. So I'll just go in order here from my favorite to my least favorite of the devices.
SPEAKER_01:Can I can I rate them for you?
SPEAKER_00:Uh yeah, you want to take a guess at which product I like the most?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Sure. Okay. I would say I think you like the watch the most.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Then what was it called? The air? Yeah. Okay. The uh the air will be second. And then the buds. And then the what is it? The ultra? No, no, the the Pro Max. Yeah, the Pro Max.
SPEAKER_00:Uh it's close. The the watch, uh the it's somewhat maybe slightly flipped. The watch and the buds are definitely the one and the two. I don't the buds are a huge improvement. So I'll talk about those first. But Tori's right, the watch is also great. Um the Buds are the biggest improvement, I think, generation over generation, which makes sense. Apple hasn't upgraded these in like four three or four years, I think. Oh yeah. Um, the base on them is very impressive for$250. Honestly, as much as I hate to say it, the base is better than the Buds 3 Pro. It's only slightly different, but I did I listen to them back and forth for a while, and I think it's they're they're a clear winner. But keep in mind, keep in mind, that doesn't mean as a Samsung user you should go out and buy these because the interaction between the device and the buds and the way that it's encoded in the software makes a difference because Samsung and Apple both kind of enhance their buds when it's compared to their phone. Did you know this story? I don't know if you knew this. I know like if you go and bear your you pair your Samsung buds to an iPhone, they don't sound as good as if you pair them to a Samsung phone. And if you pair your AirPods to a Galaxy phone, which you can do, they don't sound as good on a Galaxy phone versus an iPhone. And it's because of the encoding and kind of the software and the chip they use to have them talk together. Yeah. Um now they don't sound bad if you pair them to a different phone, but I'm definitely not saying I did listen to them vice versa. Like I paired these to my Galaxy. The Buds 3 Pro still sound better when paired to the Galaxy, but if you have these paired to an iPhone versus the Buds 3 Pro paired to your Galaxy, I still think the AirPods 3 have more bass, they're a little bit louder, and the really big thing that they've always been good at because of Apple's chip, they put a new chip in these Buds, is the active noise cancellation. Like these are like next level god-tier noise cancellation. If you put these on and like you're on a plane, you won't hear anything, including the engine. Like I put these on in my house when I was downstairs working, I can't hear anything. It's kind of scary. I'm worried to leave them on on cancellation because sometimes I need to hear, like if the kids wake up or something. Now, of course, you have transparency mode, you can turn that on. But if you have the active noise cancellation fully on, engaged, you won't hear anything. So these are great for 250. I would say at 250, I mean, I have a ton of earbuds. I'm an earbuds enthusiast. I like earbuds, I like headphones. I'm not gonna say audiophile because I don't like obsess over every high, mid, and low, but I like hip-hop music, so I really like bass-heavy things with some pretty big some nice drivers in them for some earbuds. Uh, I would say these are pretty close to the Bowers and Wilkins that I have that are about$400, which is interesting because I don't know if you guys know this. Samsung also owns Bowers and Wilkins. Oh, really? Samsung owns like a ton of audio groups. I don't know if you guys know. They own Harman Cardin as well. Samsung owns like a bunch of companies that you don't even realize. Yeah, Harmon Cardon, they own Harman Karton. They own Bowers and Wilkins. They own a bunch of audio brands, like four or five different audio brands. Um yeah, they own tons of them. So, you know, the Bowers and Wilkins are 400 bucks though, and these are 250. So I sure Samsung is gonna obviously we've already found references in some 8.5 code. We posted an article about it. Android Authority found it, I think, and we maybe we reported on it from them. Buds 4 Pro have already been referenced, so those are going to release with the S26 series. Oh, I see. So soon enough, Samsung will have another pair coming. Remember, the Buds 3 Pro are a little log in the tooth because they've been out for 14 months now. They came out last year with the fold six, right? So it's been a while for our Buds 3 Pro, you know, marinating. So it makes sense that these are slightly ahead. I wouldn't say they're leaps and bounds. Now the Apple Watch. I mean, I know Samsung fans hate when I say this, but the Apple is just Apple is just ahead on smartwatches, just like they are, in my opinion, on tablets. Like, they're not so far ahead in watches that like it's embarrassing. The tablet it is like the iPad is so far ahead of any Android tablet that it's literally embarrassing. Apple and Google.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like the the iPad has just been like a staple. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Google and Samsung. Anyway, there is actually some news on that. So we'll we'll talk about that in the QA. Someone actually, there's a question about that. We have two questions this week, which is about Android tablets. But I it's not embarrassing, but Apple just has things like on the watch that you can't get on a Galaxy watch. Like, for instance, the smoothness just like of going through, you know, like the notifications and like just the just the general UI fluidity here and and the animations is closer to what's on the phone versus on your galaxy watch. It doesn't mirror what's on the phone as much. And also the biggest problem, which I've talked about many times, and other people say, Oh, well, I don't have that problem. Maybe you don't get as many notifications as me. I don't get real-time notifications on my galaxy watch all the time. You know, I've talked about this before, Tori, where sometimes I'll get like Gmail notifications on my phone, but they won't get pinged to my watch. Yeah, and I think that's on purpose because Google has even said in Wear OS they sometimes limit the number of notifications you get if you get too many because they don't want to destroy the battery.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But on the Apple Watch, it doesn't matter how many I get, I will get vibrations for literally every single one. And even though I do get all those, the battery life is still passable. It's it's not great because obviously, since I get so many, you're gonna if you turn on the screen, it's gonna kill the battery. Yeah, for real. But at least you get all your notifications. And I will say they did make improvements to the battery life. I still get probably by like a day and a half on this. I mean, I can still leave it off the charger, take it off at 6 a.m. in the morning, not put it on until 2 p.m. the next day, and I'll I'll make it, which is fine because I have a charger on my desk, so I can do that. Um the design, I still prefer the Samsung design. I'll say that. Yeah, the Samsung general, I like the circle design of the Watch 8 Classic, and I like the rotating bezel. Um, but a lot of little things about the Apple Watch. The build is beautiful. I mean, the the build quality on it is aside from the Squirkle design, which like I said, I like the Samsung full watch design that's circular, but like the build quality, the haptics, the vibrations themselves are a lot more solid than the Samsung one. I feel like the notifications are a little more reliable. Um, again, I don't really know which watch to compare this to because people right now are listening. I just realized people can't see this watch. I didn't even say which one I'm talking about. This is not the ultra. I'm talking about those series 11. Uh I have the Series 11 stainless steel, a gold one, which is on a gold Milanese loop. Yeah. Um, this is not the ultra. I'll talk about the ultra maybe next week because I do have one, but I haven't had a chance to wear it yet. So this is the series 11. I don't really know which Samsung watch to compare it to, because you can compare it to the Watch 8 Classic, or you can compare it to the regular Watch 8. Probably makes more sense to compare it to the classic because they're this is the more expensive model. And this Apple Watch right here is like$800. Yeah. Um, but I would say it's not like it's so bad. Like with the iPad, it is literally, in my opinion, embarrassing because there's so few apps optimized for Android. The Samsung Hat Troplet hardware is amazing. And next week I'll also do a full Tab S11 review because I haven't had a chance to do it yet. We talked about it, but I never reviewed it. But it's it's just insane because like none of the apps are optimized on my Tab S11 Ultra. So even though I'm like, wow, the screen is beautiful, this hardware is great, the speakers are good, but the software just not optimized. Whereas with the iPad, not only did Apple improve it by making it more like the Mac interface so you can actually do more stuff, but it also like if you actually use the iPad apps, they're all perfectly optimized, at least most of the big apps for running on the iPad. Even Instagram has an iPad app, which took like 20 years. Yeah. Now you can even get it an optimum optimized for Instagram on your iPad. So it's kind of hard, you know, to say that Samsung can come back with tablets, but I hope they can. And here's the thing I wanted to mention about that before I get into the phone reviews. Um the tablets are going to get a big boost because at that Snapdragon summit we talked about, Google was there, and they talked about the fact that Google is trying to vo bring an Android version to desktop. They're gonna have a desktop slash laptop quality operating system that runs on Android. And this is the rumor that we've heard for many years since I was at XDA. I used to write about Chrome OS when I was a writer at XDA before I started my own website. We've heard for many years that Chrome OS and Android were gonna get merged into one Super OS. And so that it would probably still be called Android. So Chrome OS would go away. Yeah. Because right now, Chrome OS is what runs on Chromebooks. You know about Chromebooks because they're they're in every school, right? Every school owns a fleet of Chromebooks. And so Google actually does very well with Chromebooks because so many education platforms use Chromebooks, uh, GCU uses them as well. So many different universities and schools buy them. Google has a big business selling Chromebooks, even though it's not as many consumers buy them, but there's a lot of people, who cares? Because you buy from business to business and just sell to the businesses. And that's okay. Um, but Google has a lot of incentive to keep Chrome OS going. So what they're gonna do is merge it with Android, and now Android could just run anything. Android can run on your laptop, can run on your desktop, your phone, your tablet. But Michelle Ramon from over at Android Authority, who's hopefully a friend of the show, I I I consider him a guy that I know. And we used to work together at XDA, he was the editor in chief there. He does great stuff. He made a post that he was excited about Android for desktop because this could improve the optimization for tablets. Because if you think about a tablet, it's more like a desktop than a phone. And so if Android gets optimized for desktops, if it merged with Chrome OS, we might get tablets that are Android tablets that are more like the Microsoft Surface than the current Android tablet. Now that would be what Samsung needs to kick their Galaxy tab business right in the keyster and then down the road to competing with the iPad. So when I saw that, I didn't think about that. Michelle pointed this out, and I was like, that's true. That would be sick because that would finally allow if Google can do that and do it well. Yeah, Chrome OS is great. If you if you get that on Android, you have the best of both worlds. They might be able to because their hardware is good. Like the hardware is good, the iPad is also super expensive. Yeah, so we've made fun of how expensive the Tab S11 Ultra is, and it is funny because it's like almost 2K if you buy it with a keyboard, and that's a laptop price, but the iPad is also 2K if you buy it with a keyboard. So it's not like the price is different. If they could get to the same level of productivity, the hardware is great, their screens are great, they can compete with Apple and hardware. So I don't know, that could be very exciting. Let's talk about the two phones. So uh Tori said that the air, um, I I like the air, but I will say this about the air. The battery life was the question that everyone had about the air, and the battery life is not great if you use it off of Wi-Fi a lot. So if my this is my recommendation, and again, this is a Samsung podcast, so absolutely nobody is listening to this podcast asking for iPhone buying advice. But if you did somehow click on the wrong podcast and you're listening to this and you want advice on buying a new iPhone, don't buy this if you're off Wi-Fi that much. Like if you have a job or you have a life where you need to be away from your Wi-Fi very often, I would say if you're away from Wi-Fi for more than 25% of your day, do not buy this phone. Because off Wi-Fi, right now at least, it gets hot. And this was a concern because it's then the thermals plus the battery size. If it gets hot, the battery's gonna drain faster.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yesterday, for instance, I took this out to run some errands. I got my pedicure. I've said before, love getting pedicure. Yeah, all everyone should do it. Doesn't matter if you're male, female, you know, white, black, purple, yellow, red, yeah, whatever color, whatever person you are, you know, you should get a pedicure. It's great. It's fantastic. Um, and I went out and did that, some other areas had to go to the bank. I was off Wi-Fi for like half the day. This thing right here was dead at like 4 30 because I tried to I used it primarily yesterday. And I used it over the weekend. I was on Wi-Fi most of the day. And also Monday and Tuesday, I was on Wi-Fi a lot because I was at the office. Obviously, you have Wi-Fi here, it's great Wi-Fi, very strong. So it was great. The battle life was pretty good. It was like lasting me until like nine at night, and I was like, Oh, that's great. It's pretty good. I didn't expect it to be that good. But then I went out and spent the day off Wi-Fi, and then you know, today also when I went to lunch, I used this on purpose just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. And sure enough, right here, right below the camera bar, it gets quite warm when you're on 5G, when you're using it on data. And so, right now, at least, until they do an update, I would not buy this for that reason. It's it feels amazing. The phone feels amazing. Right now, I have a bumper on it, so Tori, you can't really actually see how thin it is. This is how thin it is without the bumper. Oh my god, it is quite thin. I mean, it is nice. Yeah, it this is very the titanium build on the round the outside that's polished with the curve edges makes it feel a little thinner than the S25 edge, even though it really is only 2.2 millimeters thinner, and it's actually a little bit heavier. It feels a lot thinner than the S25 Edge because the S25 Edge doesn't have those subtle curves, and it also has matte sides instead of polish. So this one looks a little sexier and it does feel good, but there's no second camera, so you only got one camera. It's very limited. The battery life, in my opinion, is either middling to pedestrian to bad if you're on LTE or 5G all day. Um, but I mean it it the performance is fine.
SPEAKER_01:Other than that, it's just I don't want the presentation like just looking at it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the look in the presentation of it, it is it is a stunner. It really is. I will tell you this. I mean, that's why I'm trying to, I mean, again, no one's asking me for advice on iPhones, but I'm giving it to you anyway. If you see it in the store and you're an Apple fan, you're gonna want to buy it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean it looks really nice.
SPEAKER_00:If you hold this in your hand, you're gonna be like, that's a sexy phone. I need to buy it right now. But then later, I I made this analogy on X. You'll be burning your hand. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:I made this analogy burning that hand.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I made this analogy on X. I said the iPhone Air is kind of like a one-night stand. You know, it's very sexy and fun in the moment, but sooner or later, you're gonna regret it. Yeah, probably when you have a burning sensation later that day. Yeah, which is a lot like a one-night stand, you know, because that can happen. And that will probably happen to you with this too. And so just keep that in mind when you see this phone in the store, just like when you're thinking about, oh man, one night stand sounds fun. There's always consequences for everything you do. If you buy this phone, there'll be some consequences because you have some trades off trade-offs. That's my personal opinion. Now, iOS 26. We already know I'm a Samsung guy. I don't, I've already told you earlier, I don't like liquid glass. It's it's damn unreadable. Look how look at if you have a white paper like I do, look how hard it is to read some of the text.
SPEAKER_01:I know it is, yeah. Yeah, especially with that white white paper. And it kind of blends in with the white paper.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, like sometimes I'm looking, I have to like get really close to the phone, be like, Tori texts me. He's like, I parked. I'm like, what doesn't say? I don't know what that is. Yeah, I can't even read what the hell it says. I mean, luckily I knew Tori was here and he had parked, so I kind of figured what it said. But I like to have to interpolate what things say instead of actually reading them. I don't want to have to guess or interpolate on what my notifications say. I want to be able to actually read what they say. Yes, so that's not ideal. Um, so that's the air. And then lastly, the Pro Max. Um, I mean, software concerns all the same, but otherwise, this phone, Tori was slightly wrong. This would be my preference. If I have to carry an iPhone, this is gonna be my preference. Even though, in terms of the look, it is butt ugly compared to the air. Yeah, like I mean if you look at the two of them. The air looks phenomenal in all honesty, but looking at the back of the iPhone, but again, Tori, going back to my analogy, I know this is your classic one night stand. Yeah, it is. This is your wifey material. Yeah, yeah. If you're an iPhone user, this is your wifey material right here. Because even though she might not be as sexy as the one night stand, what she's got for you is she's got longevity, just like your wife. She's got reliability, she's hardworking, yeah, she's a professional, and she'll make sure that you're taken care of. And that's what the iPhone 17 Pro Max will do for you because you're gonna have all day battery life. This thing is insane. You probably can almost get two-day battery life because of the optimizations. Wow. Apple actually made it thicker to get a bigger battery in it because Yeah, no, it definitely thicker, but yeah, it's thicker, you know. You know, and sometimes you like a thicky, you know? And that's what I'm saying, is that it's okay because you get that reliability out of it. And what I mean by that, in the phone sense, enough of the analogies, even though they're funny, you've got the crazy camera. They made those crazy improvements. You've got the crazy zoom capabilities they added. If you're a creator or you're someone who takes a lot of photos of your kids, your pets, you're gonna regret buying the air because the camera system is just not to the same level. Like if you're a hobbyist who likes the camera and stuff and you use your zoom lens, you use your ultra wide, you gotta buy the pro. Plus, you're gonna get an extra like pro the battery life is literally an extra day over the air. I'm not even joking. Like, you'll get a whole extra day of battery life out of the Pro Max versus the air. Yeah, I mean, that's no joke. So not only do you get a camera that's about 10 times better and it's more robust, you also get a battery life that'll last you a whole extra day. Now, what both of them have in common that is absolute marketing joke is the ultra glare display. That stuff is not is is not legit because I compare it.
SPEAKER_01:There's a lot of glare to get it. Yeah, yeah. Compare this to the S25 Ultra. Yeah, no, I feel like there's a lot of glare.
SPEAKER_00:Like, just look at this. Like, you you can get yours out, and I'll get mine out. Like, look at this. Let's take a look at this. We gotta see it. I mean, you guys can't see it. This is great TV, though, because you guys can't see it, and we can. But look, like if you compare these two, look how much glare there is on this iPhone versus my S25 Ultra. The glare from the iPhone is blinding me right now, in fact.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, it's very short.
SPEAKER_00:I may have to go get my retina examined after this because it's blinding. I'm blinded by the light, you might say. Blinded by the light. Anyway, Apple's anti-glare coating is about 20% of what the S25 Ultra is. So if any of your iPhone friends say, Oh, I have an anti-glare coating too, just be like, No, you don't have a real anti-glare. No, you don't. You don't have a real anti-glare. And it's because it's just the coating, it's not baked in like it is, uh, obviously, with the corning, you know, glass that Samsung partnered on. But it is not, it's not even close. I I had them sitting on my desk. The S25 Ultra just traps so much more light.
SPEAKER_01:It is very black.
SPEAKER_00:It's basically it's all it's almost the same as the old iPhone. It's really not a huge difference. Yeah, it's not like when you have the S25 Ultra sitting on your screen on your on your desk. I've had people ask me before, like, how is it so black? And I'm like, well, that's a racist question, but I mean, it's because it's got an anti-glare screen. And uh it does. You can see, like, you're just sitting there next to this one, like, look how much glare there is. Yeah, no, no, no, no. I don't want to wax poetically, but you know, it's like it is what it is.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. No, like uh like holding both in my hand. Uh I feel like I like the feel of the oh yeah, yeah. That's the other thing I was gonna say. But yeah, the ultra, I mean like the back just protrudes like so much.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know if you know, too, Tori. They changed the build to aluminum. So that's aluminum now. They used a so yeah, I don't like the way the aluminum feels. It feels less premium. Yeah, I think the iPhone 16 Pro Max did feels less premium than the S25 Ultra or the Z Fold 7. Yeah. Um, but at the end of the day, if I was recommending you to buy an iPhone, you want to get the best iPhone for you, and you don't care about spending money. Obviously, this one's more expensive than the air. Uh, I mean, this one's not gonna let you down. If you're an iPhone fan, this one's not gonna let you down in terms of performance. Now, are you gonna love to look at it? Yeah, probably not. It's not the most beautiful, yeah, it's not the most beautiful phone I've ever seen in my life.
SPEAKER_01:It is uh and I think I've seen better looking iPhones. Yeah, um, it's an acquired taste. What we talked about uh on the show before, too, is like if you're going for ultra and pro things and and you want everything out of the way. You can't you can't be too upset about the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no. And like, and just in reflection, like I think of the S25 Ultra, like with all the things that it comes with. Like, I I think this is like a very comfortable range of where to kind of keep the phone for ultrasound.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I think you do like that's what Apple and Samsung are both doing, is they're saying, well, if you want the sexiest phone, you buy the edge of the air, yeah. But if you want true pro features, you're gonna have to compromise a little bit on the look because it might be a little thicker, it might be a little heavier, it might be a little uglier, and that's just what it is. But you get everything, you get everything, the kitchen sink, you get great battery life, great performance, and hopefully we still get an S Pen for a few years. I'm hoping. I think we're gonna get one for the S26. So anyway, those are my thoughts on the iPhone. Um, it's it's you know, not my favorite phone, but I mean Apple did do some nice things this year. But my advice is for most people, still to buy the Pro or the Pro Max over the Air. That's my personal opinion. But if you see the air in the store, you're gonna want to buy it. So don't pick it up. I mean, again, don't pick it up because you're gonna buy it, probably.
SPEAKER_01:It looks like you're it you're in pretty hard.
SPEAKER_00:You'll probably be like, oh, I slipped and swept my credit card. Because that's what's gonna happen if you if you do it, you know. Which is how it happens with the one night stands too. Like, oops, I did it again, like Britney Spears.
SPEAKER_01:That's what they say.
SPEAKER_00:I love that song. Well, we're all we're went a little late. We got time for one question, though. I'll save the other one for next week. We have a great question. It's one of the greatest questions that we've ever had. Oh, really? Yeah, in the history of questions this week. Um, and the question is this, quite simply. They said, let me actually actually I said that it was the greatest, but I forgot to pull it up to actually read it. Because you know, you can't read the greatest question if you don't actually have it here. That's very true. So someone here says that if you get the chance, would you use an iPad with a Galaxy smartphone and also like other Galaxy ecosystem items? Like, would you use basically what they're saying is because I've said we've said before, and this goes as what we talked about earlier, because I've said Apple is ahead in some areas like tablets. Do you think it's a good idea to mix the ecosystems? I don't think we've ever really talked about this idea on the podcast. I obviously do mix the ecosystems because I review tech in general.
SPEAKER_01:Um I mean I would yeah, I I just every time I see an iPad, um like you know, I see like students who have them and stuff like that, you know, at like the university or the college. Um like it just looks nice. It does.
SPEAKER_00:Apps run great, yeah. And their current ones are like super powerful, they get good battery life. Yeah, I know. I mean, I would say I agree with Tori. Like, I say, even though obviously people are like, Jeff, why are you saying that? You're the Sammy crew. I mean, I say I'm like Flossie Carter on this. Use the best stuff, you know. If there's one day where Samsung doesn't make any of the best stuff anymore, then maybe I won't be using Samsung anymore because I want the best possible stuff I can get. In my opinion, Samsung still makes some of the best stuff, especially when it comes to Android. And I happen to love Android, so I think they make the best Android phone, I think they make the best Android watch. And yes, they make the best Android tablet, but unfortunately, it's much worse than Apple's iPad. So if you're someone who needs a tablet and that's like an appealing form factor for you, and you're actually going to use it for a lot of stuff, I say go for it. There's ways to transfer your files between stuff. Yeah. I mean, of course, you have to keep in mind, I think their question was, you know, is it worth it to get the better tablet for the productivity and for iPad OS and lose some of that interoperability between your ecosystem? Because obviously, if you have a Galaxy tablet, you can see your phone notifications on your tablet.
SPEAKER_01:But like you you in that, yes, I get, but I mean, like in terms of her productivity, the I think just having Google, like you know, drive and stuff like that just I think it comes down to your use case.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but for me, for the most part, it's such a huge leap right now between the Android optimization on tablets and iPad. If you're using a lot of tablet apps and you're using it for creative work and stuff, I I still have to say, use the go with the iPad and lose some of that interoperability. You can still get a Galaxy book for a Windows machine because those are good if you want to get a Galaxy book as your laptop. But if you're using a tablet for creative endeavors, particularly, the iPad is still better just because the tablet apps are optimized. Now, the new Tab S11 and the DEX mode is better, still not as good as the iPad OS that they have now, and all the raw power for creativity and you know like video edit, you can even edit you know, 4K, maybe even 8k video on the iPad Pro now, because it's got basically the same chip as the Mac.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so Apple is really making it like a true laptop replacement now. Yeah. And Samsung hasn't fully gotten there. They're on their way. And as we talked about earlier, like I said, this question kind of ties into the Android desktop thing. If Google really does go forward, and it looks like they are, with this Chrome OS Android Supermerger, and Android becomes basically able to run smoothly on a desktop and adapt and all that stuff, well, that might change the game entirely. Yeah, no, no, no. Next year, if that happens and we have, you know, the Tab S12 and it runs this new version of Android that's basically a desktop operating system and it's basically like a surface. I might say throw your iPad in the trash and just go get the Tab S12 because now you get all the interoperability and everything's optimized. And then why would you buy an iPad? Yeah, no, right. So that's my opinion. I think there's hope that maybe after hearing this stuff at the Qualcomm Summit, that we will see Samsung get to the level where they can give you a true iPad replacement. So maybe if you don't need a tablet right now, hold off and see if that happens. If you need one right now, I mean I still recommend the iPad personally. If you're gonna be doing serious productivity and creativity with it, yeah. If you're just gonna be watching media. If you're just gonna watch media, the Tabus 11's great, but you're spending a lot of money just to watch Netflix on your tablets. Yeah, no. So that's still my opinion with the tablets, and stick to stick to that. Um, otherwise, that's pretty much it for me. It was a pretty long show, which I kind of expected. Not three hours though. So hopefully I won't get murdered. Yes, no.
SPEAKER_01:Um, Tori, anything else to add?
SPEAKER_00:Uh nope, but just to keep expanding your galaxy and don't buy any stock in Tylenol.