Phones Are Finally Fun Again!
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Marvel Television's Daredevil, born again. Now streaming only on Disney+. Okay, here's the move. Here's the move. There is this park house in my neighborhood that I go to that's outside, and I sometimes work on my laptop outside. Wait, there's a what? Park house. It's like it used to be a government... It doesn't matter. It's just an outside building.

Are you outside or are you in a building? Outside, but the building is next to... Aren't all buildings outside? I don't know, man.

What is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And in today's episode, we just have a lot of stuff. MWC was this past week, basically. I think it might be finishing up by the time you listen to this, but it was a pretty good one in that there was just a ton of stuff showing off, especially in the smartphone world, but in others too. Great.

And also Apple decided to sneaky drop two press releases this week, some press release product announcements. And we had products that we reviewed on the channel. It's a good time. There's a lot. Ellis this morning came up and was like,

It feels good to have like a product podcast episode today. And I was like, Oh yeah, we do. It's like only products today. Yeah. Oh, just wait. Just wait. There's something that's not a product that I'm very excited about. That will come towards the end. Gotta wait for the end. There's the hook, baby. But first of all, okay. If you're listening to this on Friday, uh,

We're on our way to South by Southwest, and that's where we will be doing, like we've mentioned, our first ever live podcast on the Vox stage at 10 a.m. on Saturday, 10 a.m. Central Time. Obviously, if you're there, feel free to hop on over. For those who aren't, we will be publishing it as a bonus episode, so you'll be able to hear it. We'll have some live, fun stuff.

studio audience interaction, hopefully. It should be a good time. MARK MANDEL: If you're there, please come. We need an audience. MARK MIRCHANDANI: Yeah. It would be pretty embarrassing if we showed up and nobody else showed up. That would also be sad. MARK MANDEL: We'd be podcasting for ourselves. MARK MIRCHANDANI: Yeah. So if any of you guys are actually there, see you there.

But yeah, I think we should just jump right in 'cause there's a lot to cover. And I feel like if we don't jump right in, we'll never get to the end of it. - Agreed, yeah. - So, okay, first thing. Xiaomi modular camera phone lens thing. This is MWC material. - Yes, okay. For those that don't know, Mobile World Congress, big technology trade show a few months after CES. Generally, specifically focused around phones and then more recently, smart home stuff.

So there's always a lot of smart home stuff. But this year in particular, this kind of feels like old CES levels of smartphone weirdness. I love it so much from what I've seen. Yes. Lots of concepts, lots of strange devices, lots of solar powered technology. For each one of these things, we should figure out and just establish if it's a real product or not. I think you can blanket say no to that. It's like no on most of them. There are some. I was going to say we should very quickly run through them and...

There's essentially a gimmick to everyone. Let's try and see who we think would use this gimmick or if we think anyone would use the gimmick. And a very quick, I think David's gonna have more than a few quick thoughts on the first one. That's why I put it first. But everything under that's a bit quicker. - Okay, yeah. So Xiaomi says we can attach an entire smartphone camera, or a bigger than a smartphone camera and bigger than smartphone optics to the back of your smartphone with some pins.

And so you can take these great pictures and then when you're done, you just take it off the back of your phone, put it back in your pocket and you have a regular Xiaomi phone. It's not the first time we've seen this concept before. I have vivid memories of two of them. One of them was a Sony version of this, like the QX100 back in the day, which is literally the same thing. Like everyone knows the RX100. It was a little sensor with a lens that you slapped onto the back of your Sony phone and the Sony phone became the viewfinder.

And you have a nice camera. Very cool. And then, what was that? There was like a Hasselblad Moto Mod. Yeah, there was a Hasselblad Moto Mod. There was the Samsung phone that just was a camera. Oh, this Galaxy camera? Yeah. Yeah. So we've seen versions of this before. This is Xiaomi's version, 100 megapixels.

Big lens, F1.4 wide open to F11. Yeah. Roughly 35 millimeter prime focal length, not a zoom. And then these pins are super powerful. So they built a phone so you can transfer 10 gigabits per second. So you get like real time viewfinder, all the information from your lens. Yeah.

It's a cool idea. Yes. They said it's a four-thirds type sensor, which I don't really know if that means micro four-thirds or if that is sort of the 1.0 type kind of situation. Sounds like it's a little probably smaller. If I'm doing straight math, it's bigger than the 1.0 type sensor. Yes, definitely. It means four-thirds-ish.

Nice. Four thirds vibes. Which is what 1.0 type is as well. It's also vibes. Yeah. The cool thing about this is it's like a physical lens that has the sensor in the lens. And then it transfers via these pogo pins at 10 gigabits per second, which is very cool. And I find that super interesting. I wish it was not 100 megapixels.

The reason they're probably doing that is because it's not a zoom lens, and that way you can crop into the center of the sensor, but then you have pixel pitch issues, which means you're not getting as much light per pixel. So that's a whole thing. However, again, micro four-thirds type is definitely bigger than one inch.

And if you can just like slap it on the back of your phone, the question becomes, and again, this is a concept, so it's not actually coming out right now. The question then becomes just like with the Moto mods, where they actually did keep releasing Moto mods and being able to use Moto mods on newer Motorola phones for a few generations, but they did eventually give up on it.

so the question then becomes do you want to buy a lens for a system of smartphones that you're not sure how long they're going to actually support it for that's a question because when you buy a regular lens for like a Leica camera or like a Canon camera you assume you're going to be able to use it basically forever especially with adapters this is so proprietary yeah that you're not sure very one-off accessory type vibes I think what

What's cool about it versus the QX100 was that had a little clamp on it. So the Pogo pins are just for the file transfer. It connects magnetically, actually, almost like MagSafe. It's literally a circle puck on the back. And the lens aspect of it, I know you said the sensor's in it. This is basically a standalone camera that you control with your phone and then transfers so quickly. But yeah, if you were to buy this and then lose or the next...

xiaomi phone you like doesn't have those pins on it then you don't you just have this like standalone camera you can't control unless you still have the phone well xiaomi has a sub brand called realme and they also did a camera concept phone which was similar but different in that it basically had the sensor on the back of the phone if i understand this correctly yeah like inside the camera bump

Right. And then you they had a mount where you could actually mount existing lenses from other camera brands to the back of it and then just condense the light onto that.

Which is like similar to what the red hydrogen one was supposed to do. Oh man, that phone. Yeah. Yeah. I got very excited for that because it was supposed to take like Fuji lenses and stuff and then they just never made the adapter. Yeah. Yeah, there was all those pins on the back of the hydrogen and then everybody used anything. They didn't use anything. Damn. Yep. Yeah. I added this one because it felt more like an in-between of

of like cool external thing that's not caring because everyone everyone that i read that used the real lens on the real me one was like the balance of this is totally so bad it's like you're just just holding a cine lens with a phone like on the back of it yeah i mean there's no way that you could use like a zoom lens or a telephoto lens because it would just the balance would be insane you'd be holding the lens with your hand and then just like tapping on the phone as the screen which is what some cameras are like nowadays anyway too but

Yeah, overall, I think the idea is like super cool. And I love the idea that you're like hiking and all you have to do is carry some lenses with you and you can just slap on whatever lens you want to the back of your phone. I think that's very cool. Delve's Advocate. If you're going to pack a bunch of lenses. Why not just pack a body? Yeah, just pack a camera. Yeah, I mean, there are some benefits like phones have.

much more computational photography chops than cameras do these days, which could be for the best, could be for the worst, obviously. But also you immediately have the images on your phone. It goes through the same pipeline. You can share them to social immediately. Was it Sigma who made the camera that had like Lightroom built into it and you could share to Instagram instantly? I remember what you're talking about. I don't know who made it. I can't remember who that was. But then there's like some half-baked like

Like Sony has an app you can put on your Sony Alpha phone. The old Alpha. And on your camera. And it'll like Wi-Fi connect them and you can download the picture from the camera. Like some of that stuff works okay. But it's bad. It's not good. It's bad. Yeah. All camera apps are bad. This is true. Yeah. Yeah. So if that came out, I think price of lens would be the biggest factor. Definitely. What would...

would entail you wanting to actually get that? - Again, especially since you can't use it with anything else, if you upgrade your phone, you can't change brands. There's so many factors here. - That's the one we're gonna talk about the longest. - I was gonna say only nine more to go. - No, do not worry. I put that up front because the first thing in this document was me and Slack saying, David, I know you have thoughts on this. Get ready to talk about it on the pod. The rest of these will be really fast.

have you guys heard of the company nubia oh yeah really i've never heard of them definitely because i'm an idiot they make a lot of gaming no it's not weird that you haven't heard of them they made a lot of weirdos well here's two weird phones that i saw at mobile world congress the first one real sorry real phone or concept phone uh these might actually one of these i think is a concept one of these i think is real because it's two is real the music two has a it's a predecessor okay um

Okay, so the Nubia Focus 2 Ultra on the back has a spinning dial around the circular camera bump that lets you adjust the camera's zoom. Is it real? Yes. They say it's really easy to move in landscape mode, or sorry, in portrait mode. And I think it's actually kind of neat because...

I hate circle camera bumps. So if you can add a nice, if it feels nice to spinning wheel, if I'm thinking of like galaxy watch classic with that really nice spinning bezel. Yeah. I think that would be pretty awesome. Yeah. And if it's mappable to other things, that'd be cool. Yeah. Like volume, dude, a DJ app. Oh my God.

That'd be dope. I kind of like that. Yeah. So the other one is called The Music 2, which I'm almost positive is real, but I just had to see it, one, because it looks wild, and two, because Dominic Preston at The Verge titled this little subject, The Most Annoying Phone Ever Made Adds AI. Hell yeah. Which is, you can't not click that article. So what's the concept here? So the Nubia Music has a...

Two cameras and then what feels like a camera bump but is actually a speaker on the back of it to play music out loud. They claim it plays music at 600% louder than the average phone. Oh, my God. And then Nubia Music 2 now adds LEDs and an AI music generator. Oh, my God. So you can just get on the subway and just generate terrible music to annoy people with. And then yell, you're the first people who have ever heard this. Yeah, this... I...

I don't like this one. No, okay. It looks cool. It has this like cool comic like cell shaded box grid on the back as the pattern. And I think it looks pretty sweet. I think that I do like it for the reasons where you don't want to carry a Bluetooth speaker with you to the beach and you can just use your phone. I think that's cool.

I could see. I mean, there are times where I don't want a Bluetooth speaker. The opposite of that is if you're at a national park and you're playing like music out loud on this. Yeah. I will throw you off the bridge. Yeah. I guess the question is how often are you wanting a Bluetooth speaker versus like I would like to buy a phone that is specifically good at blasting music. So I don't need a Bluetooth speaker. Do you know what I'm realizing? What?

the Moto G had G Play, right? With the back mods. Had a JBL speaker also. Are these just taking all the old Moto mods and turning them into singular phones instead? Yeah. So Moto mods were ahead of their time. Oh, they were way ahead of their time. They were. Yeah. Interesting. They lasted a while, but they did eventually die. I would say that this phone looks horrible.

I would just throw that in there. It definitely looks like an old comic strip for sure. So it's going to be controversial. I dig it. Okay. Next. Next. A lot of these are just like literally what I say out loud and the picture is all of the information we have. This included, this is the Samsung flexible briefcase. What?

I know, right? So I feel like Samsung saw the LG Stand By Me because it looks very similar from the outside. And when you open the briefcase, it's just a giant folding screen. No way. Yes. Jesus. They would not let anyone touch it. Of course not. That's funny. Because it's not real.

because it will break when you touch it. Probably. There's no stands as far as anyone can tell, so I don't even know how you open it up. But in my eyes, just like the Stand By Me Go, this just to me feels like the new crypto way of opening up a briefcase full of money.

You know what's funny? Because it's on a screen instead. Yeah. Or like, here's your NFT. No, this would be good as a prop for a YouTube. Because you know that moment in a video where someone opens a briefcase and whatever's inside glows onto their face? Yeah. You just load it up with a yellow PNG. Oh.

And you got that moment right there. This is a video prop. For eight times the price that it would cost for like a little aperture light. As the battery dies. Yeah, this is hilarious and useless, but good job, Samsung. But inside that same booth, Samsung showed a prototype of a folding gaming handheld. Let's go.

Imagine a Switch that folds in half and the way they deal with the joysticks is the extra D-pad and like AB buttons look indented in so the joystick can fit inside it when it folds. Yeah, it looks horrible. So it can be flat. The buttons look terrible. Yeah. But if they were good... I...

I don't know, man. Really? The only reason this would be cool is if you can fit it in your pocket. Yeah, which I don't think... Because you can't fit a switch in your pocket or a Steam Deck or anything in your pocket. But if you could fold it in half and then actually fit it in your pocket, that would be cool. But I don't think you can. I still think this would save space inside your backpack, unlike a plane. If the switch could fold in half... But is that worth the crease in the center of your screen?

Yeah, you're already bringing a backpack at that point. Yeah. I think so. Just bring a Switch. I don't... Yeah. I have what I call my emotional security backpack. And by that, I mean I never leave anywhere without my backpack. It always has a battery bank in it. It always has my laptop. It always has a Bluetooth speaker. And it always has a small towel. So you don't need Moto Mods. No. And you don't need...

Is there extra space in there? There's extra space. The downside is that my spine is compressed. So maybe you need Moto Mods so you don't need the backpack. That's true. That's true. So I could fit my Switch in my backpack is what I'm saying. And I'm not sure that I would need a folded Switch. But, yeah. I'd be there for it. Okay. But it sounds like I'm the only one. I would like to see it in person. I just think, logically speaking, if you're adding a folding screen, you're adding...

Cost and complexity you're also splitting the battery in half and you're doing a whole bunch of other complicated things. It could be better because then you could charge it twice as fast. So this thing will cost more than a regular version of a handheld gaming console. So you really have to want to fold it in half for some reason to pay for this. Adam looks like he wants it.

The main reason I don't carry around my Switch is because it's just a little too big. Like it's just... When you get a Switch Lite... I've been debating it for that reason. Like I think the Switch is the perfect size when you're using it.

But when I'm carrying it around, it's just a little weird in my bag because it's too small to be in a big bag, but it's too big to fit in any of the little pockets. You're the perfect Switch Lite customer, my friend. I know. You are. You're also potentially the perfect fanny pack customer. Oh, shoot. Consider that. Wait. A fanny pack just for a Switch is like the most baller move ever? Just throwing that out there. Just saying. What you got in there? A Switch and a Zen.

Okay. Next.

We're going to talk about Lenovo because we talked about them a couple of times. And I think Lenovo is the new LG at this point with some of the stuff they're throwing out there. They're going that crazy. They are. This is the Lenovo ThinkBook Flip, which reminds me of, I think, a previous Lenovo. The rollable. The rollable one. So it's essentially a laptop that can turn into a portrait screen, essentially twice the height of a regular screen. But in this case, it happens by...

You fold open the laptop, and then if you imagine your normal screen, there's also a screen on the back because that folds upwards to make an extra tall monitor. And this definitely won't scratch a ton. Yeah, what? So you close it by folding it back?

over itself. But then you have a tablet. Yeah, but then you have to put that in your bag. I guess, okay. And when you're using the tablet, you won't have to feel the keys on the back. Yeah, honestly. This looks hilarious wide open with the screen up. Yes. Just being in a coffee shop and having the tallest laptop of all time. The barista's like, what would you like? And I'm like, sorry, I can't see you. I feel on a plane this would be a

Someone would lean their seat back and your screen would just break in half. Yeah, I do. I like the rollable one better because I want to be at the coffee shop and someone's staring at me and it just like it rolls up. It becomes like the divider. And the rollable one is actually for sale now. Is it really? You can actually buy it. Yeah, it's great. Lenovo, if you hear this, please on the podcast, I just want to be talking as my screen rolls up and blocks me. Picture walking into a coffee shop and you see some dude sitting there with the podcast

portrait laptop and he's also wearing like a really tall 10 gallon hat and everything he's doing is just God dang it. Yep. Wow. I love it. 18 inch tall display. Yeah the rollable is $3,500 but you can buy it. Is the balance not terrible when you open it? Does it not want to flop over? You gotta make sacrifices sometimes. Okay. That's what's wrong with all existing laptops right is they're not portrait

True. Right? Am I right, guys? Okay, here's what I would do. I would flip it open and then set it sideways because the keyboard becomes a kickstand. And then you have a full 16 by 9 larger screen that you can watch content on. But then you have to type like this.

you gotta make sacrifices. Bluetooth keyboard. Yeah, you have another keyboard. That's already how David puts his laptop on the floor. That's true. When I'm working, or when I'm doing something else, I just put my laptop like this. Wow. Yeah. It's an idea. Look, Lenovo, I'm not gonna say don't keep trying things, but this one...

You can move on from Pro. Do you want me to try and sell you on the other one? Sure. Uh-oh. Okay. They also made a solar power laptop. Let's go. Where the whole back is solar panels to help charge. There are so many reasons. I feel every time I talk about solar panels, I feel like the biggest hater. I want solar panels to work. But think about where you use a laptop.

In the sun. Yeah. If you ever use a laptop in a place where there's so much sun that it can power your laptop. It's going to overheat. Number one, you can't see your screen. Number two, your solar panels are not facing the sky. They're facing down. That's actually a good point. You have to have it closed and sitting in the sun. You're telling me you can bring a bounce. A bounce.

You're right. Bring a bounce with you. You're telling me you don't like doing all your work on that really little bar they cram into the front glass of every coffee shop, and then you also want to have your laptop like this? Facing the sun to keep it alive? Okay, here's the move. Here's the move. There is this park house in my neighborhood that I go to that's outside, and I sometimes work on my laptop outside. Wait, there's a what? Park house. It's like it used to be a government... It doesn't matter. It's just an outside building.

Are you outside are you in a building outside, but the building is next to our all buildings outside? I don't know man Okay, regardless there are benches outside the building yes, which are part of the building Yes, some sort of and you can work. I work there sometimes okay. That's all that matters Okay, the move okay. They also sell coffee inside the building though. Okay, so the move

And other stuff they also sell other stuff Okay, so you work on the bench outside bench outside until your laptop gets really low battery And then you call your friend and you say want to come have some coffee with me You close the lid of your laptop you have a coffee for an hour and then you get one more hour of video playback when you reopen your laptop and

- Realistically, you probably get about 4% battery. - Yes. That's always the thing people see. They see solar panels and they think they're gonna get a ton of energy from them. Lenovo is quoting that 20 minutes of sun gives it one hour of video playback.

20 minutes of sun can give it one hour. I love, okay, that's great. That's way better. Video playback is the easiest possible thing for computers to do. This is also true. They are using video playback for a reason. But 20 minutes, that means, okay, I'm about to die. Close it for 20 minutes. Max sun exposure. Laptop's heating up. Hold it up to the sun. Here we go. 20 minutes like this. And now you can open it up and use your laptop theoretically for another hour.

Yeah. That's really cool. There's definitely going to be some extra weight on the back for all the solar panel stuff and all the electronics and the glass. I would devil's advocate say that if you put a bigger battery in the laptop, that would be a better use of extra weight and space. Yeah. But if it's already 100 watt hours and you can only bring 100 watt hours on the plane.

Checkmate. Checkmate. Got him. You're on a plane. You have an outlet next to you. Okay, wait. I have a use case for this. Okay. What if it just keeps the laptop at its current battery level? But how would you do that when the lid is going to be like... The lid's like... No, I mean, like, you close it. Like, you know how, like, if you keep it in standby mode, it'll slowly just, like, drain over time? What if it doesn't? Theoretically, it's supposed to drain extremely slowly. Have you used a Windows laptop recently? Yeah, that's true. Oh.

Also, not all airplanes charge your laptop anymore, even with outlets. A lot of them now are rated. I forget what they're rated to, but it's a specific wattage. So if you plug my big chungus 87 watt MacBook charger into them, it'll just be like, I'm not charging this, bro. I did go on a plane that charged a 240 watt thing. Damn. Yeah, that was crazy.

But usually they short. They don't short. It's just like they say. So there's a situation where you have a long flight and a 100-watt-hour laptop that you charge to 100% and you're going to use this laptop for so long during this flight that your battery is going to die. So you hold it up to the plane. And you have a window seat. Imagine you're flying to Singapore, right? It's the longest flight from New York City. And you're like chasing the sun.

So it never gets dark. You have to fly during the day. You got unlimited battery power for your video playback. Yeah. Every hour, you close it for 20 minutes. You hold it. You put it back down. Sir, what do you... I think this is a billion dollar idea.

I want solar panels to be more efficient so these ideas don't sound so ridiculous. I think they're getting better. Well, don't worry. If you're not into solar panels, I've got a good another one. They made a gas-powered phone? It's like the Rivian, right? It's an electric car with a... Oh, no, sorry, the Scout Motors. It's an electric car with a gas-powered generator. Well, Infinix also came out with a solar-charging phone.

Where the back of it is a solar panel. Two watts? Same exact thing. Okay, yeah. And what is the max power? It says basically all they said is up to two watts. And they also had to create something called maximum power point tracking because the problem with heating your phone up as the sun is it causes overheating. And they also have to manage maximum power generating efficiency while also managing overheating on your phone. There's a reason why these things don't ship.

Uh, it's a cool idea in theory. It's a great way of imagining efficiency and free energy. It just doesn't work very often. But we, we had the, remember the Prius from back in the day? We had a couple years ago reviewed the new Prius and it had a solar roof option. Yeah. That's the best I've ever seen it work because it had a battery and we could leave it sitting outside in New Jersey for several days and gain a few miles of really usable range. Yeah.

which is like okay if you live in california or somewhere where you can park every day outside at work like you can actually gain free driving energy yeah it's the best i've ever seen at work yeah we had a fisker

it didn't work very well. We've had other solar things that are concepts that don't work very well. So it's just teetering. I did a video on the solar on my house. That works amazingly well. That is an enormous amount of surface area. So it works. So yeah, a tiny phone is probably the worst case scenario. That would be a good video though is I use my phone for a week only using the sun. Two watts? Yeah.

I didn't use it very much. That's the tough thing. I feel like when your phone gets hot, it dies faster and you have to get the phone hot to get the power back. And I just feel like this is probably negatively efficient. If you leave your phone face down outside for an entire day, then the next day you can use your phone for a little bit. For two minutes. Yeah. Very nice. Cool. I have two or I have one more and David has one more. The last one is the Spark Slim. It's a

concept phone that's 5.75 millimeters thick while also having a 52 milliamp hour battery so this is kind of like our holy moly this is our like sneak peek into these new thin phones that we might be seeing yeah 2025 could be the year of the skinny phone maybe i mean this isn't something i'm just forecasting because now we have three we have this we have samsung galaxy edge yeah we have rumored iphone air

It says it's three. But Techno Spark is the first one to show something in person. No, Samsung showed us first. Anyway, this sparked a question that I posted on Twitter.

And I want to ask you guys your thoughts on this. - Smartmark says we're not bringing back skinny jeans. - No, this is a real question. When we consider the thickness of a smartphone, when it's like ultra, ultra razor thin, but then there's a camera bump, does the camera bump count towards the thickness of the phone? - Only if it's the same thickness as the phone itself.

So this little techno spark, which is five millimeters, it's crazy, crazy thin. Yeah. It has a camera bump, which makes it like eight millimeters at the camera bump. But nobody talks about that. It's crazy because the rest of the phone is super thin and has 5200 million powers.

Is that cool? Who cares? That's a valid answer. I'll say why. I have a reason for why it's still beneficial. Because if you put a case on it with the camera bump cut out, the case will still be thinner because the camera bump just follows that. So it makes it flush. So it's still thinner than a thick phone with a case on top of it. But counterpoint. Yeah. Why do we need our phones to be thinner? We don't.

Yeah, we don't. So what if... Okay, stay with me. I've never heard a person ask for this. A thin phone? A thinner phone. I've never seen someone pick up a phone and be like, too thick. Remember when Apple decided to make the iPhone thicker and the battery life got way better and everyone was like, yes. And then now they're doing the opposite and everyone's saying, no.

but they're still doing it anyway. You know what I wonder? Because I feel like universally, everyone for years has always said, yeah, make the phone thicker. But then engineers work on these devices and the natural progression of technology kind of feel like thinner is more advanced. You see movie props, they're super thin. Everyone thinks that the future should be it's efficient. And then they make a phone thinner and then they get a bunch of praise when it looks cool.

And then they sort of believe that they should keep doing that. I wonder if the like make a thicker phone with more battery actually sells better than the thinner phone. Like if you could isolate that variable being the only difference. It's a great question because the number one concern of almost every single consumer is that their devices die too fast. Most people are like, I only want to upgrade my phone because it dies too quickly. Yeah.

The question becomes, like you said, is that more powerful of a marketing tactic than looks flashy? - Looks cool. - Yeah. - I feel like I have two thoughts on that. - Okay. - One is, I spaced out. - Two thoughts. - What if this happens live on the podcast? - That's gonna be a problem. I'm gonna need you guys to save me on that. - Does the thickness count? - I have two thoughts on that. One is I think the perception of new and advanced

like thinness gives that off and when you're paying for something super expensive being new and advanced and that feel of it whether it means you literally get worse battery life could be a selling point um then my other thought is just is thin phones the new curved edges where we all think it feels super great and the new technology and in like three years we're gonna be like it actually made that's a big question because everyone like

heavier phones feel more premium. That is a thing that they have tested. People think that heavier things are more premium. Yeah, the same with steel iPhone. But there's a feel. It's true, but then the next year they go with titanium and it's lighter and they market the lightness as being a better thing. Isn't that weird? It's weird. The one thing I'll leave this on is I do think tech in general...

Think thinness is actually a proxy for efficiency when we see something get thinner But have the same battery life that means it it's more efficient with the space It's working with and I think we want technology to move forward by getting more and more efficient in general and staying the same size and if it can get more and more efficient then that means it can get thinner and thinner and have the same battery life or It can stay the same size and have way better battery life, but as long as it's getting more efficient. It's winning so this techno spark slim is

is going to fit a silicon carbon battery, I assume. I hope. It's 5200 milliamp hours. It's thinner, but has the same capacity. Yeah. That's better efficiency. That looks more high tech to me. I'm worried that because it's thinner, it's not going to transfer heat as well. It's not going to cool as well. Yeah. That's definitely true. So it will probably die faster. Probably won't be as performant.

Yeah, that too. But they're probably underclocking it as well. But it looks cool. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. My thing with this is, and this is I'm sure what they're going for because it's like concepts and stuff. But back in the day when they released like the Samsung Edge where it was just like one side of it was curved. I was like, this is. The S6 Edge. Yeah, the S6 Edge. I was like, this is cool. But like, what is, what is this for? Fast forward a decade. Stock kickers. And it's. That's what they marketed it for. But.

Fast forward a decade and now we have folding phones, you know, like what is this actually for? I don't think it's thin phones. I think somewhere down the line we'll have something that makes it worth it because we experimented this early. Well, I think that everything is just a tick tock cycle and you can market anything if you just convince people that it's good.

It's definitely true. You can go thicker one year and be like, look, more battery. Nice. And then the next year you can be like, look, it's thinner. It's lighter. Nice. And then the next year it's thicker again. Look. Exactly. So it's totally fair. That's literally what Corning does every single year. With Gorilla Glass? Yeah, because there's an inverse relationship between scratch proof and crack proof. And every year they're like, it's 50% more scratch proof. They don't talk about how it's less crack proof. And then the next year they just do the opposite. And they do that forever. Can we make an exposed video? Does this? The new DxOMark video? I'm sure there are like

Other improvements that they're making to the glass for sure. Science. You know. Anyway. Other thing announced at MWC was the new Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro. And these are just earbuds. They look like OnePlus Buds Pro. You know, they're not that interesting looking. However.

In October of 2023, Qualcomm unveiled the new S7 and S7 Pro chipsets, which are Wi-Fi earbud chipsets. And the awesome thing about this is that your earbuds can now connect to your home Wi-Fi, so your phone can be charging in the other room, and you can just have music playback or audio playback coming from the cloud.

And this makes a lot of sense because our smart home devices use Wi-Fi for playback. They're not connected to your phone via Bluetooth or anything like that. So just being able to stream music to your earbuds, I think, makes a ton of sense. And I'm very glad that someone is finally releasing them. Unfortunately, right now, these earbuds only work with the Xiaomi 15 and 15 Ultra earbuds.

They said that it might come to more phones in the future that are using chipsets like the 8 Gen 3 or 8 Elite. But for now, only these two phones, which kind of blows. Got it. Yeah. Does this feel kind of like Chromecast for earbuds? No, it's like Sonos for earbuds. I mean, Chromecast is also like you pick it on one thing and then send it to X other device and then it's still pulling from the Internet. Yeah. Yeah. Chromecast audio.

I think that tech is really cool. I'm struggling to picture a scenario where I'm listening to music on my earbuds and my phone is not with me. I do this all the time.

Oh, is it going for a run or something? No. Well, no, you need Wi-Fi on the run. Right. So you want to control the music, but you don't have your phone. If I'm charging my phone in the other room because it's low battery, but I want to do some stuff in other parts of my apartment, but I'm lonely and can't deal with life without audio playing back in my head 24-7. Same. You're outside of Bluetooth range of your phone. Yeah, because I live in a railroad apartment where there's walls every five feet. Sure. And they're made of...

Is that really toxic material? Wait, is this building like outside? Right. Well, the building is. Debatable. I guess, yeah, as long as the Bluetooth, the buds, sorry, as long as the buds have good controls to like, yeah, you know,

Fine because you're just on whatever playlist you're on you can't really serve for songs or well or can you I don't know Maybe you can voice I think you do I can I think you can do voice commands Same as you could do on regular earbuds. I'm basically picturing you have like a Google home attached to your head That's basically what it is Okay, my question here is if you go to you're listening to something right you go to the room you plug in your phone and

You're already listening to something. Can you just walk away and it'll switch to Wi-Fi? Or do you have to go into the app, select the AirPlay icon or the Chromecast icon? When it notices your Wi-Fi network, it just switches to Wi-Fi automatically because the Wi-Fi is actually more efficient than...

Yeah, but will it like pause the audio or stutter or anything like that? That's what I'm curious about. It'll probably acknowledge before, oh, like if you walk into your apartment. Yeah, like if you're switching midstream. Good question, but I feel like that's a very minor thing. To you, my podcast cannot be interrupted. Okay, up until recently, every time you would be streaming YouTube with your phone off, like the screen off, and then you turn the screen on and it started the video playback again, it would like stutter. Did you guys notice that?

I don't think I've noticed that. I think I've noticed. I've had a million problems with YouTube playback. They fixed it recently where now you can unlock your phone and it just continues and it doesn't do the like... Anyway, I'm just like saying it's the same kind of thing. And while it's minorly annoying, it's not like the end of the world.

Anyway, I want this. Is this a real product? This is a real product. Okay. Yeah. Nice. It's coming out with the Xiaomi 15 and 15 Ultra, which also launched recently. So I'll keep an eye out for that. Okay. Cool beans. All right. Well, we got a lot more to get to, obviously. But before we do that, we should take a quick break, which means trivia. Just want to say I'm really proud of us for getting through that whole Nubia Music 2 segment and no one made the joke. Wait, they made Music 2? Yeah.

It's funny. Sitting right there and we spared our audience. Anyway, forget about music. It's time for music. We're going to ask a modular phone camera accessory attachment.

Project Aura? Project Aura. There goes the question. David already got it. Where's the point? No, I'm just kidding. We've seen plenty of these things over the years. Marques brought up the Hasselblad Zoom for the Moto... Moto...

Moto Z series. It was bad. Droid. Yeah. Not that one though. We also want to give a shout out to the LG Cam Plus grip. If you remember that thing, the like battery grip. Yeah. On the G5. G5. Wow. The G5. It was ahead of its time too. The G5. Like a G5. That's right. Just like that song. Yeah. But. It's not like a.

Oh, true. It wasn't the Leica G5. It was the LG. We are on it today, boys. The very first. No way. You're right. David, two points. I'm sorry. Continue. Continue. No, the very first conversion lens, attachment conversion lens that ever came out for a phone came out in what year? I'm not going to ask for the phone because it was only available in Korea.

But I would like to know the year that a smart, that, it's not a smartphone. I guess that'll give you a hint. The year a phone company was like, you need a wide angle slash tele lens conversion kit for your, and here, I'll give you another hint, for your six megapixel camera. Ooh. Damn. Dang. Six whole megapixels. I'll remember that. This is going to be before my time. I'm going to guess this came out before I was reviewing anything. Before 1993. Before I reviewed anything.

I'm going to guess before Ellis was born, which is only like 13 years ago. Yeah, exactly. All right. All right. Well, we'll think about that. The answers will be at the end, like usual. We'll be right back.

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All right, welcome back. So this next segment is something that I've hidden from you, David. Andrew's already seen this. But it comes in this box. No, it doesn't. This is just a box that it got shipped to us in. What, the Sigma? This is a Sigma camera. Remember last week we talked about the Sigma BF and we were all marveling about how cool it looked but that it might not be ergonomic to hold?

Now, we get to find out. That was an extremely fast turnaround. You're not letting him open it? Oh, would you? Yeah. Wow. Okay, yeah, you should open it. You open it, and I want your first impressions, because as far as people in this office goes, you may be the one who has held the most cameras. That's probably true. And, you know, are familiar with camera ergonomics. So, I would love you to open this box and give me your immediate impressions of the ergonomics of using this camera. Okay. Zoom in on my face. Oh, okay.

It's wrapped up. Oh my goodness. Oh no, it's not. Whoa. Okay. Interesting. All right. Yeah. These are some first impressions. Definitely front heavy. I'm glad that they put the little mini thumb grip on the back. That is handy.

Got him. How do you turn it on? That's the first thing all of us struggled with. One of the five buttons is the power button. Oh, I don't tell. Oh, sorry. Never mind. He knows now. The one that looks like a record button is the power button? Yes. That's nice. Okay. Ooh. Okay. LCD is better than I anticipated. Sub-LCD is very cool looking.

Okay. Have any of us used this outdoors yet? No. I don't think so. Because I don't know how this LCD does in sunlight. I started recording when I did that. How do you switch it to shooting mode instead of video mode? I think the three dots is mode.

This is extremely hard to figure out. People have been comparing this design to teenage engineering a lot or like this sort of aesthetic. And this is exactly what it looks like when someone uses a teenage engineering product for the first time. Like, how do I use this? This is like, it's beautiful, but I don't really know how to use it. I figured it out. Single capture. And then how do you look at the playback? Okay. Ooh. Okay. Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. This is the perfect example for a teenage engineering class. I'm confused. I'm confused. I'm confused. Ten seconds later, I'm elated. I am delighted by the quality of one shot already. The colors are really true to life, really accurate. The 24 megapixel seems totally reasonable. And actually...

I am a proponent of lower megapixel, larger sensor. Which this is. Which this is. Full frame. 24 megapixel. But I want to steer you a little bit. Okay, steer me. Back to the way that you're holding it. It's not focusing. And the way it feels slash like holds. Okay. Yeah. So you have to hold it by holding the lens with your left hand. Otherwise, it just doesn't work. It's kind of sharp, is it not?

Yeah. Like the corners of it. Yeah, they rounded the bottom right corner a little bit, but it's still sharp at the edge. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. A lot of camera manufacturers try to make it so you can do most of the things with just one hand. Yeah. This is not that. You have to hold it with two hands, and this is probably one of the smaller lenses. Can you do me a favor? Yes. Can you turn the aperture dial in front of the mic? It's so good. Do it in front of the mic so they can pick it up. Let's pick it up.

Yum. It's nice. Oh my goodness. And if you actually point it at the camera, they can see the aperture open and close. It's a nice little thing that they've done with this lens. Oh my God, it's beautiful. Yeah, so the lens inside, it's a nice lens that we've got on it. It's also silver. So for those who are listening and you want to picture this, it's a full silver aluminum camera with an also full silver, which also appears to be aluminum, lens inside.

With a manual aperture ring that has clicked stops. It's not actually think this is a digital Yeah, sure ring with quick stops. Oh, yeah, yeah, correct. You need a controller and it takes a second That's what I was just but when the aperture does open it's very smooth and beautiful, which is nice Oh, am I coming around to this? So this is what happened to almost all of us here is the first impression was like wow, this is a cold piece of metal and

Yeah, the second impression. I don't know if you've noticed by now It starts to get a little bit warm like the entire aluminum body is a heatsink. Yeah, just kind of interesting Yeah, and then you are reminded so it kind of comes back around you're like, oh, it's nice It's got this nice nice feel takes pictures well, and then you're reminded of all the downsides that we talked about last week which is one

No SD card slot. Internal storage only. OK. Two, that battery at the bottom? Yeah. Super proprietary. Right. You just got to get more of those. At least it comes out. Three, no viewfinder. So you have to use the screen for everything. Have you used it outside? We haven't tried that yet. OK.

And then four, this is something you might not have noticed yet, but those buttons on the back are not real buttons. They are haptic buttons. No way. Really? So turn the camera off and try pressing any of the buttons. How do you turn it off again? So that same power button, hold it down, which are like two seconds. Oh, right. The record button's the power button.

It turns off and then try pressing any of the buttons while it's off. They don't move. It's completely fake. That's crazy. Yeah. I didn't know that until I was like messing around with them trying to feel how clicky they were and the camera was off and I was like, wait, these are not real buttons. That is incredibly deceptive. So the haptics are actually good. It's just like the MacBook Pro touchpad. Very Apple-like. Wow. That's like...

- Legitimately unbelievable. Like I'm pressing it and I'm like, no, that's real. And then I turn it off and it's not doing anything. Can you give it to Ellis? - I haven't seen this yet. - Pass it to Ellis. - Turn it on first. - Well, I said off first. - I think turn it on first so you feel it and then turn it off. - I will say,

I don't have that much of a problem with having to use two hands to take photos. Sure. Because I like cameras with aperture rings anyway. Yep. And so I'm usually holding it like this because I often change the aperture in order to take a thing. A lot of cameras have added control rings. A lot of lenses have added control rings. Yeah. In the RF world especially. I like that. I do iris control with the ring on Canon RF cameras. Ellis, what do you think about the fake button? The record button's a real button.

No, that's not a record button. The bottom button is the only real moving button. Oh, really? And then the rest are fake. You felt it before, right? This is the first time I've held this camera. But what I'm saying is, did you just try when it was turned on, pressing the buttons above the record button? What? There's no way. This is pretty unbelievable. Is the shutter button? That's real. That shutter button on top is a real shutter button. It actually moves. There is a little bit of give to these. It's not like it's just... I mean, it's...

Almost fairly solid dude. You guys are not kidding. This thing is Yeah, like you could like grate a block of cheese or so I would kind of worry about having it like on a strap and having it knocking into things Boy, do I have good news for you?

There's no lugs. There is a strap lug on the right. There's like a little lanyard. Yeah. The lanyard lug. Yeah. It is. So, I mean, we haven't shot with it very much yet, but I'll have a couple more observations. One is the camera weighs about a pound without a lens on it. It was funny. I made a short about it and I was looking up things that weigh about a pound. So a can of soup is what I referenced in the video.

And one of the top comments was like, Americans will use anything but the metric scale. You're right. It's a can of soup. Okay, but how many micrometers or whatever does it weigh? I don't know. What is that? Kilograms? How many kilograms is a pound? It's one pound. Grams. But it's dense. 16 grams? It's dense. And it really feels like high quality, like you were talking about, like weight feels like quality. Oh my goodness. And...

I don't know. There's a lot of cameras that are this size. Like Sony A6000, you can get a lot of good camera for this exact size of camera. So if you're after just having a small compact camera that's this size, you can get a great camera that's this size. Weird battery. Weird battery, yeah. Yeah, that's true. And so if you get an A6000, you have a viewfinder, you have all the Sony lens system, you have 4K video, great low light performance. You get a lot.

We also do have to note that the lenses are like $2,000. I was just going to say, how much is that specific lens? $2,000?

Think you're right the camera body itself is $2,000 and then the lenses are each in the range of several thousand dollars There's a $2,000 lens. There's a $6,000 lens. There's some crazy one. I'm telling you this is like the the poor man's Leica is what I'm saying, which is crazy to say for Yeah, well like a bodies are like $9,000 yeah just for the body so but Wow I just don't know like as our bigger - right I

Not by a lot. Mostly because they have viewfinders. True. That's actually a lot of the size of it. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Well, I do have to say I am much more delighted than I thought I would be. Also, this sub-LCD screen that just does a lot of cool things, I'm very delighted by. And the shutter button feels really good. Yeah. Yeah.

Dang, we got some nice shots out of it. We didn't get to see the black version. I think it's safe to say the silver lens on silver body is so good. I can't imagine the black version being better. Sigma, if you're listening, send us all one. I would like to play with one more.

More than just on this podcast. I would like to play with one forever. Forever. Yeah. I spent like a solid 30 minutes on Monday just like taking pictures with that thing. And it was pretty fun. I really want to like try this in the field. Yeah. Hmm.

Bring it to South by. Out here in the field. I was just going to say that. I'll bring it to South by. Let's bring it to South by. I'll let people see it, yeah. All right. I'll bring it out there. All right, cool. Very cool. So yeah, just wanted to show that a little bit. I will say, why didn't they make the lens cap silver? It's just black. That is really annoying, actually. That is kind of sad. And you know...

I didn't bring it, but there's another lens that had a magnetic lens cap. So it's not even like the pinch plastic. It's literally just a metal magnet lens cap. And you can put it on the back of an iPhone and it sticks to it like MagSafe. Except the 16E. That's true. Are we pro or anti-magnetic lens cap? I couldn't tell from that.

I thought it was hell yeah, yeah, yeah Have you ever David you ever been on the subway and you try to take off? Like on the subway platform and you try to take off one of the pinchy lens caps and one finger slips and so the lights just go Have fun with it rats Surf on it and stuff. Yeah. Yeah interesting. Well, yeah, I'm um Consider me impressed consider me impressed. All right, very nice. I don't know what else is impressive. I

I don't think they released anything else this week. Segways. Segways. Segways are impressive. The new MacBook Air M4 dropping for less money than the last MacBook Air. Really? All right. This is actually, yeah. This is actually cool. Pretty good announcement. So MacBook Air, as we've reviewed the last couple, and they have graduated to Apple Silicon, and they've become very, very easy standard baseline. Do you want a laptop?

this is the one you should probably get type recommendations. And they'd been 999 for a while, and then they bumped up, I think around the M2 generation to 1099 base. And they'd still continue to improve it. I think it's doubled in RAM. It's 128 gigs of base storage now, I think. Which is- 256. 256. Okay, so these specs keep getting better. It keeps getting more powerful. This is an M4 update of the base MacBook Air, and it's gone back down to 999.

Not for nothing. That's pretty good. This is, again, the sort of default Mac that you can recommend to just about anyone who just needs a laptop to do basic stuff. It's funny because I end up reviewing these things and...

Almost nobody buying a MacBook Air should get it to edit videos or do anything crazy, but the M chips are so good that you kind of can do that anyway. You totally can. So we get to this weird place where I'm reviewing a MacBook Air and trying video editing on it, and it's like, what am I doing here? I guess I could do this, but you don't really buy it for that. It's that capable. I think this is another one of those laptops. It's going to have good battery life. There's still a 13 and a 15-inch version. It's just a solid...

Solid laptop. Nothing amazing about the screen. It's still a 60 Hertz. Like nothing. Nothing's going to blow you out the water. It's just a solid base laptop. You know, what's my favorite thing about it? It supports two external displays now. Yeah. Shout out to M4. Two 6K external displays. Which is funny because like if you're doing a MacBook Air, are you also doing two 6K external displays? If your name is Mark S. Brownlee. Wait, I know this person. Really? This is so funny. Okay. Yeah. I know someone. This is hilarious.

She is a filmmaker, but she so she does not edit video, but she does need to receive editing projects to like review them in proxies and maybe make like small adjustments here and there. So she does need a video card that won't just like the bed. And I do know her home setup has two displays. So specifically needs quality displays. Yes. But still needs to be able to make very basic video editing moves.

This person is real. I know her. This is hilarious. This is good. Does she really, really like the smallest amount of blue possible? The smallest? Because that is the new color of this one. I could see her being into it. Yeah.

Yeah, there is that new color. Is it called blue? It's sky blue, I think. This is like the silver, like they didn't finish running the finishing machine and there's still a little bit of blue left. The story gets even funnier because three weeks ago she was like, what computer should I get? And I was like, you should get a MacBook Air. And she was like, shouldn't I just wait for the new one that's probably going to come out in a few weeks? And I was like, I don't know, I guess. It can't be that much better.

Boy, was I wrong. Now she's sending you this clip. Good job for waiting. Yeah. No, it's funny because Apple demos these setups with an iPad Pro and a 6K XDR display, and they're like, come on, this is a real person, right? And I'm like,

Is it, though? But, you know, this MacBook Air, this is at least one real person. Also, I used to have an M1 MacBook Air and I used to edit red raw footage on it. Which is not the typical buyer of a MacBook Air. Yeah. But you can. It wasn't as performant, but it was doable, you know? Which is amazing. Which is crazy. I will say these things start to slow down a little bit once you run out of storage because they use a lot of swap memory.

But they both upgraded the memory to 16 gigabytes of RAM, which famously will be completely eaten alive by Adobe programs. But 256 gigabits of storage is better as well. So, yeah. Also, no need to fear. They have Apple intelligence. I know you all are wondering. That's going to be a common thread of today. They are built for Apple intelligence, just so you're up to speed. Why? Great. Why?

Does she need Apple Intelligence? She needs Genmoji. Obviously. No, there's also some other Mac updates as well this week. So that was the Tuesday update. Sorry, the iPad Air was Tuesday. The MacBook Air also comes with Mac Studio updates today. Mac Studio updates are a little more nuanced. There are two new flavors. There is an M3. And there's Chipotle. Ultra.

And then there's the M4 Max. So if you want a Max level chip, M4 generation. If you want an Ultra level chip, which is higher than Max, M3 Ultra. So there is no M4 Ultra yet. M3 Ultra is the new most powerful chip we've ever seen from Apple.

I don't know how far away we are from M4 Ultra, but I assume that that will be coming up eventually in Mac Pro. We're also around the corner from M5. So could be interesting to buy an M3 Ultra chip the same year that M5 comes out. This has kind of become a staggered

Or an M4O. Is it coming out this year, M5? I think so. Yeah, probably. Probably. Because it's in November or something. Yeah. So I think, yeah, this might deserve an explain video at some point, but it's kind of become this like staggering wave of new chips as they came out. It's not like we got the entire M4 lineup at once. We got M4 base, M4 Pro, and M4 Max in the laptops.

Now we have M4 Max in the Mac Studio, but no M4 Ultra. So if you want an Ultra chip, you can get M3 Ultra. M4 Ultra will probably be coming soon, but by that time, M5 base is going to come out somewhere, and it's like this...

rolling system. It needs a visual. We all understood that perfectly. I'm saying it into a microphone and it sounds like I'm just blabbering. This needs a visual. I literally needed you to draw it out for me. I know. I had to like diagram it. So yeah, this may be a video. We'll see. Maybe realize this morning that I think Max is the dumbest name possible because it's not.

The highest one? Ultra is higher? Yeah, wait a second. The description of the word maximum is the greatest or highest amount possible or attained. And then they're like, let's double it. Go off. Yeah, this is true. That is very true. Max plus, you know? What? Yeah, pro max. Pro max. But that is. That is the max. Pro max is the max you can get size-wise. And actually, it makes sense because the big regular iPhone is just called...

The plus. So are you saying that in Max, Max is not the Max? That is also very confusing. Maybe I was so confused. In Max, Max is not Max. Correct. Okay. Ultra. As long as we're on the same page. Ultra is more Max than Max. In Max. In Max. Yeah. In the Max. But outside of Max, Max is Max. Yeah. Because it's pro Max. Got it. There's something wrong with my brain because I understood that. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect.

Yeah, no, that's kind of it. That's our Mac update. I think I want to review the new Mac. We didn't talk about the iPad. Do you want to do it really quick? Because that's about all there is to it. Okay, we can also do the iPad. There's a new iPad. It's got the M3 chip, iPad Air. Beautiful.

That's kind of all that's new, right? Maybe double the RAM? It's built for Apple Intelligence. Excuse me. It's a new chip. It has these colors. It's neat. It looks exactly the same. The new Magic Keyboard for it has function rows and a larger trackpad, which I do think is actually good. And I believe it's cheaper. It's cheaper, but it's still way too expensive. Is it $50 cheaper or something? $269 and $319. It's a little bit cheaper, but it's so expensive.

So that came out and there's also a new base iPad. It's still 329 and it has a new A16 chip and doesn't support Apple intelligence.

Maybe that's the one to get. I guess that's a gated feature now. No Apple intelligence for the baseline iPad, but it does have the newest, not the newest. It does have a newer as an a series chip, right? A16. Yeah. A16 generation. So which is one, one old or no old, too old. Cause we're on a, we're on a 18. So that makes sense that it wouldn't support Apple intelligence. That's correct. Why not put the, you just put the a 18 in the $600 iPhone. Yeah.

Maybe that's too pricey for the $300 iPad? Can you help me understand? I'm so confused.

Is Genmoji Apple Intelligence? Yeah, it is. It is. Yeah. And then the new Siri GPT is also Apple Intelligence? Eventually when it comes out, yeah. But like the chat GPT like integration into... That is also Apple Intelligence. That's also Apple Intelligence and also not here yet or that is here? That's Apple Intelligence. It's here, yeah. Is Apple Intelligence in the room with us right now? Yeah, so like it's just like... Okay, so what they mean when they say it's built for Apple Intelligence, they mean you can do Genmoji on it?

Yeah. So I did a review of like all of the currently available Apple intelligence features and the list is not very long right now. Okay. Notification summary. But it is like a promise. It's an IOU of like, you will get these features. It's growing. It's growing.

It's growing with iOS updates. So as of right now, if you have a device that supports Apple intelligence, writing tools, summarization for reconstructing the notification, notification summaries, Jen Moji is in there. Remember the image playground where you can make weird emoji things? No, I'm starting to understand. That's, that's all Apple intelligence is at this point.

It's not really a buying. It's really, yeah. They said there was going to be a super cycle of people buying AI phones where smartphones would be back, baby. Yeah. No.

When does the Apple Roadster come out? Soon. I'll bring up one more device since we're talking about AI. I reviewed the Nothing Phone 3A and 3A Pro this week. Oh, yeah. And those phones really don't have much AI at all. Like, if you've followed Nothing Phones for the past couple of years, they have not done the, like, remove part of your image from the background thing. They have not done writing tools or notification summaries or any of this AI stuff. They did something better. Yeah.

So you can have Gemini and all the basic stuff, but the one thing they did on these nothing phones that is AI is they added a button to the side of the phone. Yeah. And as I described in the video, it's literally just like a place where you store stuff. It's like I've described it, like Google Screenshots app on steroids.

It's fine. It works. It allows you to parse information from the screenshot and save some of it. So if you want to search back for an old screenshot, it's easy to remember and find. You can attach voice notes to things you save by holding the button down. But that's kind of all it really does. It's not backed up anywhere. It's not going to sync across devices. It's kind of just like built into your phone. The essential space is what it's called. Essential space. Yeah. But notably, it's the nothing phone, not the essential phone. That's true. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, I thought it was interesting. They have said it's going to be upgraded in the coming months to have more features. Yes, just like everyone else and all of their AI promises. Yes. Wow, someone's got a grudge. Well, you know, that's also what Apple Intelligence is doing, and that's also what the rabbit's doing. The best thing about Apple Intelligence is that it forced Apple to put 16 gigs of RAM in everything. That's true. That's actually the best thing. That's honestly, yeah. That's a fact. Yeah. But now here we are. We got new iPads. We got new MacBook Air. We got new Mac Studio. Yeah.

We got a new AI, new nothing. I knew nothing. The nothing phones are quite good value though. $379 for the 3A. In the US anyway. That's crazy. That's pretty good. That's so good. Also have to acknowledge that there is now a 3A Pro and the A series was supposed to be the cheaper version of the standard number. So where does...

There's going to be a 3 that hasn't come out yet. Correct. It's kind of like the M3 Ultra. Yeah. I assume the Nothing Phone 3, when it comes out, will be a, quote, flagship, and it will cost more than the 3A and the 3A Pro. Yeah. It will probably be in the $500, $600, $700 range. Yeah. And it'll probably have a better chip, and yeah.

We don't know when that's coming. Carl has said specifically that it is going to be an AI-focused phone, and I really wonder if that means that they're just going to lean harder into the button, and if that's the main thing, or if it's going to be even more AI. Like catching up with all the Samsung stuff? Maybe. Like drawing something in your picture and then it being a sketch or something? I don't know. I hope it's more to do with the button. Yeah.

Do you like the button being totally different than all the other buttons? So the button is in a place right next to the power button where it is very, very easy to press it accidentally all the time. And it's like bulging out and not flat. I don't like how it looks. It doesn't look great, but the fact that it is domed and feels different from the power button at least helps me press it accidentally less often because it's right next to the power button.

but it is still annoying and I press it accidentally all the time. I take screenshots of my home screen every day. So that's a thing. Have they said what the essential space is like for, you know? Not any more than we have. Kind of store stuff in it. You can't like ask your phone about the stuff in the space. Oh no, no, yeah. So like I said, the screenshots app on steroids, like the screenshots app is supposed to be able to like parse through and sort through all the stuff that it finds in your screenshots. So this is the same way.

And if you have an event that you took a screenshot of the event page, it will remind you of that event when it comes up. Or if you have a voice note and you say, remind me to buy tickets for this tomorrow, it will set a to-do action in this app to revisit this screenshot so you can buy tickets to the event. Question. Yeah.

Couldn't you just tell Siri or Google Assistant? Yes. Cool. Yes. Okay. I think it sounds cool. But I also was the only person who liked the screenshot app, I feel like. I love it. I think this is like a to-do list app built into your phone. They do need, like you said, Marques, cross-platform functionality. If they get a Mac app and a Windows app, I think that's enough. That would be so sick. I agree. I just can't hold my breath for it. I don't think it's coming anytime soon.

Are you while you're using this phone, are you like that should go in the essential space and you put it in there? It's more of just like reminders and things I need to remember later. Why wouldn't you just use your reminder that? Well, because I mean, this is a button on the side of the phone, so it kind of is encouraging you to remember more things. So I'm just texting someone and oh, I got to remember to answer this text later. Let me just hit the thing, save it and tell tell myself later what I want to do. Doesn't Google messages ever remind me to answer this text feature?

Yes. Individual apps have versions of these features, but it all being built into one hub is maybe the nice thing. Yeah, so some people are going to be into that. Yeah, because the Reminders app, if you want to set a reminder, it's just text. Can you attach anything to your Reminders app? This is all associated with the screenshot that it takes at the time as well. So you can be like, remind me to buy this for Claire on her birthday, for her birthday, or something like that. And then it's like,

Claire birthday presents I can probably search and find all the times I had said this is something that might work for a good birthday present. You can build collections which are kind of like folders. Okay. Well, I'm going to try it more. I feel like it's the best use of an AI on a phone thus far besides like circle to search.

Yeah. Oh, I love Circle of Search. Circle of Search is iconic. But this is pretty close. Google Now on tap. Yeah. Yeah. I love Google Now on tap, too. It's just rebranded. Yeah. So, yeah. OK. OK. That's the nothing phones. We should take another quick break. We got a little more to get through. But before we do that, some trivia questions. We're going long. So how many transistors does the M1 have? Go.

Oh, I know this. Transistors? M1. The M1. The base M1. You know this? Well, I've been researching a specific transistor. Oh, yeah. I'm still going to get it wrong, though. Okay, we'll think about that. Answer's at the end later. We'll be right back.

Today at T-Mobile, I'm joined by a special co-anchor. What up, everybody? It's your boy, Big Snoop Deal Double G. Snoop, where can people go to find great deals? Head to T-Mobile.com and get four iPhone 16s with Apple Intelligence on us, plus four lines for $25. That's quite a deal, Snoop. And when you switch to T-Mobile, you can save versus the other big guys comparable plans plus streaming. Respect. Only up out of here. See how you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com slash switch. Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later.

You don't wake up dreaming of McDonald's fries. You wake up dreaming of McDonald's hash browns. McDonald's breakfast comes first. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.

Welcome back.

I have a family, specifically David Amell. And by that, I mean we share a YouTube premium account. We do? You're in my family? Yeah. Is this recent? No. Oh, God. This is like as soon as I started working here. Is this legal?

I don't know. Continue. So we only pay like $3 a month or something. My brother. For YouTube Premium. It's dirty cheap. That's good. Narcs. If you wanted to pay more than that, but less than it actually costs, there's now an option. There's a new tier in the US. Yeah, tier. That's the right word. Yeah. Correct. Wow. It's called YouTube Premium Lite. It makes sense when you think about it. YouTube Premium gets you...

No ads and offline downloads and YouTube music. What?

- Wait, stop, really? - Yeah. - It's always coming with YouTube. - It's a deal, bro. You haven't paid for this and not even using it? It's good. - Yeah, at least you get free YouTube either. - It's good. And also there's offline playback. I think there's a picture in picture feature. A couple little things that come with it. - And they turn your screen off. - Turn your screen off and it's continued to play back. - So that's great. That all comes with paying for YouTube Premium. But if all you really care about is no ads, now there's a new tier that's just YouTube Premium Lite and that's no ads on non-music videos.

So if you don't listen to music on YouTube, you're a Spotify, Apple Music person, you can only pay $8 a month in the U.S. for YouTube Premium Lite and still get an ad for YouTube. Wait, there's ads on music videos? Yes. Why? Because it's more expensive. Oh. You gotta pay, like YouTube has to pay for the...

That would be my guess. Also, YouTube is an extremely popular music streaming platform. Maybe the most popular. Can I tell a really funny story? When I got my iPod Touch in seventh grade or something like that, I distinctly remember seeing the YouTube app on it. And the first thought I had was,

Why did I waste 99 of my hard-earned cents on Kanye West's Heartless when I could listen to it for free wherever I am with this? Oh. Yeah, the YouTube logo on the iPod Touch was a TV. Yeah. Do you remember that? Because it was old. It was like an analog TV. You guys got the iPod Touch in seventh grade? I got it in middle school. No, because the iPhone came out in 2007. Yeah, I got it after...

After the iPhone came out because I couldn't get the iPhone as long as I was in sixth grade I want to say I was in actually I have like an even funnier story about this because I got it because as I mentioned on a previous episode my parents were really anti kids having cell phones they were like Ellis should not have one of these but

I was a pretty independent kid and needed to let my mom know where I was a lot of the time. And so my mom read somewhere that you could get texting apps, like old text over Wi-Fi apps for the iPod Touch. But I don't know if my parents fully understood what Wi-Fi was. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So yeah, in my school, in high school, like all the kids that didn't have smartphones just had iPods and they were able to do iPod touches and were able to do all the same thing. Oh, yeah. Did you have a did you have Pal Ringo? What's that? Oh, my God. Pal Ringo is this crazy. It was essentially woof.

What's that? That's not a real sentence. No, but it's essentially like it was this app that could unite all of your different messaging accounts into one inbox, including all of the weird off brand texting over Wi-Fi apps. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, I get my aims. There were some weird my my SMS is my Facebook messengers. That was kind of all there was back then.

all in my pal Ringo inbox. Yeah. By pot touch came out and do those in seven as well. Yeah. That's the first piece of tech I ever actually owned. Oh, and it got stolen like a week. Oh,

I spent like my life savings on mine. Same. I was like the happiest kid ever for a week and then it got stolen and I was the saddest. It got stolen in a week? Yeah. That sucks, bro. Yeah, I got it. I like brought it into school because I'm an idiot and then I like had it stolen out of my locker and then, yeah, like my life savings is gone. I can't even listen to music or anything. Someone would financially recover from that. Yeah, yeah, it was tough. Well, did it have YouTube premium light on it? No, but you know, some kid out there could get that now. It would be great.

Dude, someone out there has Marques Brownlee's iPod Touch. That makes me so sad. And doesn't even know. It's probably e-waste by now. Some thief. Definitely. Some high school thief. In my head, they're still a high school thief. They never grew up. Yeah, they never grew up. It's like Biff. You know? Yeah. Deep reference. Anyway. I missed that one. Is there anything else about YouTube Premium Lite that we missed? In the coming weeks, they will also make it available to users in the...

the current pilot countries, which include Thailand, Germany, Australia, and also that YouTube music and premium reach over 125 million subscribers globally when you include trial users, which is a very funny amendment. Yeah, that is. Wow. But it will expand to additional countries later this year. Last thing, Google Fi just got an update. Let's go!

- Well, it's not Google Fi that got the-- - Sorry, T-Mobile and VMOs have worked with Apple, I guess, in order to make this iOS 18.2 beta support RCS with them. - 18.4, sorry. - 18.4. - I meant to write four. - 18.4 beta supports RCS. So if you're a Google Fi user and you have the iOS 18.4 beta, flip that switch, baby. RCS is gonna work on your phone. - It's just the greatest. - All right, David, you're a Google Fi user, right?

Yep. You've been waiting. Yep. I've been a Google Fi user for a very long time. Me too. I have been screaming into the void for a very long time. The void has answered. The void has finally answered. They said, here, have this beta. Yeah. Have this Sigma. There was this report that Apple was the one that was basically holding back

releasing the ability for MVMOs to be able to use RCS. And now they've finally done it in the beta. So...

I'm extremely excited. I finally turned it on yesterday and my life is 100 times better. Oh, you're already on the beta. Of course you are. Here's number one. Why did I even ask? Of course. Yeah, I was the alpha beta user. Adam, go ahead and get cracking on that download. I'm literally about to turn on betas right now. Yeah, so thank you. Wait, public beta or developer beta? Developer beta. Developer beta is beta iOS 18.4.

Beta 2. Yeah. I'm on the public beta, so I'm on 18.3, I think. Wow. Which is still fine. I've just been waiting for the new Siri, and I don't want to be on a developer beta. I don't know, man. I don't know when that's coming. I don't know when that's coming. The developer beta is fine. I haven't had any issues with it at all. I sometimes have battery issues, so I just need to pay attention. Yeah. It's fine. Well, to all my Fi users out there who are on the iPhone, which is like three of us,

Hell yeah, brother. I got one more request for Fi. Let us attach the Apple Watch. You can't do it. The cellular. Can't do it. Can you attach a Pixel Watch? You can. For free. For free. So do it. You don't even have to pay. If you're on Google Fi, Pixel Watch, cellular, free. Well, is that still the case? Because I know it was when it came out, but I'm not sure if that's still the case. Yeah, it's still the case. Okay. That's really funny, actually. Yeah. Like, you have a Pixel Watch? Dude. Yeah, it's free. You can use it. Yeah. That's great. All right.

I think that covers it. Look, there's going to be more announcements. It's like the end of MWC and the beginning of South by and there's just a bunch more announcements and tech things happening. So stay tuned.

Keep it locked, as they say. Get subscribed if you haven't already. I think radio people say that. Yeah. I don't know why I said it. Keep it locked. 96.9. Yeah, keep it locked here on WVFRM, which kind of sounds like a radio station. But we should wrap it up by finding out the answers to those trivia questions. I'm pretty sure back in the day of radios that had knobs and dials and stuff,

you could lock the dial so that no one could change the station. But I am not old enough to do that.

I could not confirm that, but it makes perfect sense. That's hardcore. I have listened to a lot of terrestrial radio in my day, but I've never had one with a knob. Dude, especially when you had to fine-tune it because it was just the little dial thing, I would definitely lock that. Because you go over a speed bump and it's like... You know? Yeah, I was talking about some old people stuff. Yeah.

Who else but us? All right, question number one. Modular phone camera accessories. Year. I was wrong in the beginning. I said six megapixel and I meant, did I say megapixel wrong? It just fell out of my mouth and felt incongruous.

Earlier I said six megapixels and I meant seven megapixels. What phone? No. What year did this phone come out in? And it had a telephoto conversion lens and a wide angle conversion lens. And both of them looked really silly. And bad. It was unbelievable how much better quality film was back in the day. I can see why they thought digital would never catch on.

Yeah. With like two megapixel cameras. Yeah. All right. Oh. Okay. I did not say if we were doing closest delta or Price is Right rules. True. So we will do closest delta, but Marques, let me see your point. Oh, that's 2008. All right. Is that an M max tip on the right? Yeah. Yeah. God damn it. You mother f***ers. Did we split it?

It's just 2006. You did split it if we're doing closest to it. So we all get the point. But if we do Price is Right rules, only two of you get it. That would be mean. That would be mean. That'd be great. I'm down for everyone gets a point.

Well, you get a point either way, so let's not... Everyone gets a point. The answer was obviously... 2006. Andrew and I both put 2004. The phone was the Samsung V770.

Huh. Never heard of it. Someone will correct us. Yeah, and if I'm wrong, no, I'm not. He's only wrong if it goes lower. Quick update on the score after those correct answers. Marquez with eight. Catching up. What?

Andrew with five. MSOE or something? David with 11. Nope. Nope. No healthy lead has become a little more sickly. Let's do another one. How many transistors does the original M1 chip have? Closest delta or... Without going over. Without going over. Price is right? Yeah. Price is right rules. Because we did delta last time. So this time I'll do closest delta. I'm going to be so wrong.

You say that, but if you just pick an absurd number, you might be right. That's true. I'm trying to remember. All right. Flip them and read. I thought I was going over and I'm the lowest bite.

$4 billion. Wait, so what did you say? $1 billion. You said $1 billion? Yeah. Okay. I said $40 billion. $40 billion. Marquez? Right in the middle? $9.5 billion. So if we're doing prices right... Wait, $40 billion is a horrible answer. That is a horrible answer. Marquez gets the point. The correct answer is $16 billion on the original M1. You were closer also. Oh. Mm-hmm.

16 billion, yeah. Yeah, that sounds more feasible. The M1 Ultra or Pro? I forget which one. It had like 33.7 billion, so you were close. If we were doing the other one. But it was the base chip. Right. The little square. I didn't realize that. I thought it was the Ultra. All right, so what do you know? Your lead is shrinking, David. How do you feel about that? Let's go back to only David and I getting points on the first one. No, I kind of liked all getting points. The node size is also shrinking, so one day I will be correct. Man.

That's true. Thank you. But, hey, until then. How? It didn't make any sense. No, because you can. Well, sure. But there will be $40 billion on a MacBook chip at some point. I bet the M4 Ultra. No, the M2 Max has $143 billion, doesn't it? On the whole SoC. Jesus. That seems like a lot. Fact-checking time. M3 Ultra, $184 billion, Apple.com. So I'm just wrong.

What about the... Okay. That's the ultra, though. What about the pro? We can narrow it down and find one that's close to your number. I don't think that makes it right. But yeah, we learned something today. Okay. What about the second trivia question? That was it. Oh, right. That was it. That was it. Because the phone. It's great. With the phone thing, did we all get it or did just... We all got it.

That's a minute. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. See you at South by. If we're not at South by, see you at the next regularly scheduled episode. If we're not at South by? No, we're at South by. We're definitely there. Sorry, I wasn't clear. If you're not at South by, you, the listener, well, we'll catch you on the feed. But see you at the next episode. Catch you later. Peace. Still true.

Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars too. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Pluto was the furthest planet from the sun. But then it got demoted from Mars to Earth.

Today at T-Mobile, I'm joined by a special co-anchor. What up, everybody? It's your boy, Big Snoop Dio Double G. Snoop, where can people go to find great deals? Head to T-Mobile.com and get four iPhone 16s with Apple Intelligence on us, plus four lines for $25. That's quite a deal, Snoop. And when you switch to T-Mobile, you can save versus the other big guys, comparable plans plus streaming. Respect. When we up out of here...

See how you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com slash switch. Apple intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later. All right, Sean, you can do this promo talking about all the great Vox Media podcasts that are going to be on stage live at South by Southwest this March. You just need a big idea to get people's attention, to help them, you know, keep them from hitting the skip button. I don't know. I'm going to throw it out to the group chat. Kara? Kara?

Do you have any ideas? In these challenging times, we're a group of mighty hosts who have banded together to fight disinformation by speaking truth to power, like the Avengers, but with more spandex. What do you think, Scott? I'm more of an X-Man fan myself. Call me Professor. Can I read minds? I can't really read minds, but I can empathize with anyone having a midlife crisis, which is essentially any tech leader. So, yeah.

Minds are important, Scott, but we're more than that. I think that you can't really separate minds from feelings. And we need to talk about our emotions and explore the layers of our relationships with our partners, coworkers, our families, neighbors, and our adjacent communities. I just want to add a touch more. From sports and culture to tech and politics, Vox Media has an all-star lineup of podcasts that's great in your feeds, but even better live.

That's it. All-stars. Get your game on. Go play. Come see a bunch of Vox Media All-stars and also me at South by Southwest on the Vox Media podcast stage presented by Smartsheet and Intuit. March 8th through 10th in Austin, Texas. Go to voxmedia.com slash SXSW. You'll never know if you don't go. You'll never shine if you don't glow.