Samsung's Stacked Unpacked Event and the Start of Smartphone Season
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Support for the show comes from Toyota. What do you get when you take quality craftsmanship and reliable performance and mix it with bold design and effortless sophistication? You get a Toyota Crown. Whether it's sleek sedan or an impressive SUV, the Toyota Crown family has the car you've been searching for. With a powerful exterior that makes you stand out and a smooth ride that keeps you grounded, you can learn more at toyota.com slash toyotacrownfamily. Toyota, let's go places.

What's going on, 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 today we're going to start it off by unpacking Samsung's packed, unpacked event 2022. Thank you for the pun, David. I didn't think I'd get through that without breaking down, but I got through it. I'm impressed. It's the beginning of our busy season two, though. So that's sort of how we think about these Samsung announcements. But we'll talk through them. There's some good phones and a watch or two watches. And we're going to talk about the Samsung

And then we're going to sort of revisit the beginning of our year in which we made a bunch of predictions about how the smartphone year might go and see how accurate we think we were. Maybe we're still on track. Maybe some of it's been thrown off. I will just throw a spoiler in here. I already have a compact smartphone of the year. Easy front runner. You guys probably already know what that is. But without any further ado, let's just start with the event. Let's start with Unpacked. Unpacked.

Kind of, we were saying the word packs is what we're going to use because we did get a bunch of stuff. There were two phones, two watches, and a pair of headphones. Where should we start? I guess we start on the phones, unless people want to wait till the end. Save the best for last. I think the phones, I mean, the phones are actually pretty simple. Yeah. So let's just do the phones. Okay. Two phones, flip four and fold four.

My summary is flip four and fold four, which both start at the same price as last year's model are incremental refinement type upgrades from the flip three and fold three. Uh,

I think the biggest improvement to the Flip is going to be battery life. We have yet to test these, so this is just my prediction, but it's getting a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, and it's going from a 3400 to a 3700 mAh battery. So for a small phone... Is there 300? Either way, it's getting a bump to 3700. So it should be a nice usability improvement. I've used other phones with Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1s, and they've had pretty great efficiency, so I'm looking forward to testing that. Mm-hmm.

And then the biggest improvement, or at least change with the Fold 4...

To me, seems to be, I mean, it's a lot of minor things. It's three millimeters wider on the front cover screen. It's got some slightly thinner bezels on the inside. It also has a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 and the same size battery as last year, but it also has a second generation under display selfie camera. And that camera, to me, we actually have another phone in the studio that has the second generation under display selfie camera. And we haven't made a video about it yet, but we've tested it.

And the amount of times you actually notice the camera under the screen is way less. It looks much better. There isn't any pixelation when you drag things over the display. It looks really good. But the pictures that come out of it look...

The same at best, sometimes worse. Do you remember when we put the, I think it was the OnePlus 7 Pro underwater with the pop-up selfie camera and it came out? I do. I feel like it's hazed over like that before the phone totally broke. It kind of is what it looks like.

It sort of has like a de-haze effect that applies afterwards and you can see it go from being very hazy to processing and then applying. Yeah, it's funny how dramatic it is. You can see it happen in the impressions video. We have a clip of it and it like snaps into being processed. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Video calls are going to be kind of...

I'm very concerned about how video calls will look on that phone. Which is funny because that's the phone you want to do video calls on and you want to take a conference call and set it up like a little mini laptop and all that stuff. So...

Yeah, that's the phones. I don't know. Do you guys have any thoughts on them being incremental upgrades? It seems like, though, they did one kind of cool feature for both of them, which was they made the Flip 4, the front screen, more customizable, right? And I think the biggest increment from Flip 1 to Flip 2 was actually making that front screen usable and having some things in it. So that feels kind of cool. And then in terms of the Fold 4...

Like you said, it's very incremental. It seems much more polished and the form factor feels better, that outside-like screen. But then also this is the first one shipping with 12L, Android 12L, which is like the Android for larger screens, right? For foldables, yeah. Yeah, and so you have like dock on the bottom, which...

There's a lot of new or there should be a lot of new features to make that inside screen feel hopefully much smoother. I think the dock is pretty sweet. The dock looks really cool. Like it makes total sense. Yeah, just look at the bottom and it has whatever recent apps you've used and whatever favorite apps you want to keep down there. And then you just like swap back and forth between apps. Yeah. I wonder if I switch to navigation gestures, how that will work.

Because when I used it in the impressions event, it was with the button navigation. So they put the buttons over to the side and then the dock was in the middle. But I typically immediately switch Samsung phones and every phone to gesture navigation. So if that's at the bottom...

then where does the dock go? Like right above that? Probably underneath it. Should be interesting to see. You're saying that... Probably underneath it. Because you'd have to swipe anyway. So if you're swiping from the very bottom versus like tapping on the dock, I feel like it would be able to differentiate. Well, you're saying if you added the old three-bar navigation, right? No, it currently has that. It has it? When I tried it. Yeah. So by default, three-bar navigation, they put the three buttons all the way in the corner and they put the dock in the middle of the bottom.

My thought is, isn't the middle of the bottom usually where you swipe up to do go home and multitask? So if I try to switch to gesture navigation, where does the dock go? Sounds like it'll just sit right on top. That's just my guess. What did the Fold 3 do? It still had gesture navigation, right? Yes, but it didn't have that dock, I guess. It almost sounds like they brought back the three buttons onto the dock.

I can only assume it still has gesture navigation and it's just also going to be there. I mean, that's the first thing I'm going to try. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really interested in kind of holding the Fold 4 and comparing it to the feeling of the Fold 3 because of the fact that they changed the aspect ratio slightly. Like both phones have a 6.2 inch display on the front, but I'm imagining that the slightly wider phone is going to feel more like a regular phone.

I think that a lot of reasons that people really liked the Oppo Find N or maybe like some of the Huawei phones is because the aspect ratio feels more like you're holding a regular phone. And the folds have always felt like a candy bar, especially the original one. But over the years, like they covered the screen, the front with a screen, but it's still so narrow. So even the slight change where they like shrunk it slightly and then moved that height to the side so that it has the same width.

Same width, not width. Like pixel density? Yeah, it's the same 6.2 inches diagonally. Yeah. Okay. It's just a very slightly different aspect. I do think... It's really, really subtle. It's very subtle when you look at it, but I agree when you fold it, I'm sure it's going to be far different because...

You talk about the Oppo Find N. People liked it more. They thought this was too tall. Then think about also the Duo feels way too thick. There's something about we're used to holding a phone and the closer we can get to that normal phone. And so you add that little change with end height and you also add this smaller hinge now. It looks so much more like when you look next to them, it's easy to look online and say like, that's so much smaller.

Little of a difference, but in hand, I bet it feels totally different. So I only had the phone for like an hour for my impressions and I didn't get to hold it next to the old phone. But in hand, as I just looked at it, it looked like a very tall rectangle like the old ones usually do. Yeah.

But that is one thing you can say about Samsung's like fold upgrades year over year is some things stay the same. The camera systems are similar usually every year. The battery is the same from last year. But the one thing that they always do is they make the outside screen a little bit better to use as your normal phone so you don't have to open it.

And that's sort of the big advantage of the fold over the flip is you can just use it like a normal phone and never even open it and you're fine. But yeah, I think just a small subtle, I think the Find N is a much bigger difference. I think that's a pretty dramatic, relatively speaking, difference in aspect ratio versus this three millimeter wider versus the old Fold. It's stepping closer. Would you prefer Find N over from what you held with the Fold 4? Hmm.

It's a good question. They're very similar. I think I would prefer the Fold 4 slightly because I like the inside screen better. I thought the inside screen of the Find N was not big enough. If you were going, okay, when you unfolded it, okay. I think it's the question of like, do you want a big phone or do you want a small phone? It's sort of the same idea because when the Find N is closed, it is pretty small. Yeah, it almost looks like a Zenfone size. The Fold and the Fold Pro Max. Yeah. Got it.

Give Samsung any ideas, please. Yeah. Two prices on both of these. We have $1,000. They basically didn't change, right? Same prices as last time. The battery didn't change on the Fold 4. Like, it really is refinement, like you said. It's very rare that in smartphones we get phones that year over year look almost exactly the same.

Every single year, they're at least slightly different. Samsung has slowly transformed their lineup. Yeah. In Samsung world, I feel like it's pretty common for them to just change things all the time. Like we're used to like Apple going, yeah, this is the S year. It's going to look the same. You just have to just see the S badge on the back. But yeah, in Samsung world, that's a little less common. Yeah.

So whether it's changing materials on the back, this one looks like the same satin as last year, or if it's changing camera layouts or whatever it is.

They didn't really do too much of that this year. They're just like, yeah, settling in. Yeah, they definitely do it more than other manufacturers. Like the S20 to 21 to 22 all look more similar than most other phone manufacturers do. But they always change something about it. I think like for their regular phones, they need to like have something a little different to cause a little more hype where this is still a folding phone with an under display fingerprint sensor.

a selfie camera it's like it's pretty wow factor already so they don't have to do as much but like the s21 looked so good and then the s22 ultra they're like let's just screw it up a little bit so it looks different they're like they do change it but they don't change it it's confusing but i like that they're keeping this there i like that they're refining this because this is

this is a new form factor that they have to refine because it hasn't quite. Yeah. This is, I've been thinking about like if this is a whole video that I want to make or not, but sort of what's happened, like the state of foldables basically, because we've, we had the first generation where we got, oh, this is a cool idea. It folds in half. Okay, now what are they going to do better? And the first to second generation jump was, okay, we get to see what we've learned about these foldables and what we actually want to make better. And for the fold, it was like,

We made the outside screen way bigger so you can use it more as a regular phone. We learned all these things about durability. So we got all these big changes. We've got generation three, smaller changes, generation four, even smaller changes. And now we're just sort of like set on like what a Galaxy Fold is. Same thing with the flip. Like we had a tiny screen and then we want like more information on the outside screen. So that got bigger.

And then the next one was pretty close. Was there no screen on the first one? It was very small. It was really small. It was like, it showed you like the time. Yeah, it showed you the time and it could show you little notification badges. Okay, so it was like,

Dot pixel or whatever. It was an actual screen. It was wasn't very useful. And then immediately Samsung and everybody using them realized, oh, we still want to be able to just glance at the phone. Like when I phone buzzes and I look at the phone and I just don't know what's going on and I have to open it. OK, we want a little bit more functionality on the outside. So we got a bigger screen on the outside. Yeah. And now Samsung's settled in. Yeah. Like it just looks the way it looks.

And then you look at the rest of the foldables out there and they're kind of settling into the same form factors. And I just wonder what that says about where we are in foldables. Is it like we want things to fold in half and be practical, but are we out of ideas already? Didn't we just see all these tri-fold TCL concept phones and all these other interesting ideas that might not have a spot yet, but may be doable in the future? I don't know. But it seems like we have like two or maybe three

total versions of a folding phone that you could buy. I think with how many other companies are seeing coming out with them, like Razer just announced they're redoing, they're doing their Razer 3, right? Yeah, the Razer 3. Then was it WowNote?

Xiaomi just released? They're doing one, I believe. It's the Mi Fold 2. Okay. We're seeing a lot of other companies doing these. Okay, you know what's funny about those two phones you just mentioned? They're the same. Yeah, they're the same. The Razr 3 is a flip. Remember, the Razr looked kind of different. It had this sort of retro vibes and it looked like that old Moto phone we remember from a long time ago. The Razr 3, they've gone, hey, okay, turns out you want a big screen and you want it to be flattened up.

Here's a flip three. Yeah. It looks more, it looks way more like a flip three. Like when it's opened, I'll pull it up for you, Andrew. I think I looked at it earlier. Yeah. It's funny because when it's opened, it almost looks like. The back still looks more like a razor, but that could almost be like just a colorway or a skin. Yeah. And then you look at the inside and it looks like a wider flip. Yeah. Yeah. It does. Which at least it's wider, I guess. It's funny. It definitely is like ditching the nostalgia aspect of the razor with that like slim for. Yeah.

The really slim top part that is very iconic. Which is fun. I think everyone's given, they realized the nostalgia wasn't selling that thing correctly. Yeah, I'm guessing it didn't sell super well. But the other one too, the Xiaomi Fold 2, the Mix Fold 2, also looks very similar to a Fold, just thinner. Yeah, I think the, but then there is the like XS, the Huawei Mate XS, the XS2, which is different style. And I think my argument is that one might,

Yeah. If I were to pick one to die, it would be that. Well, sorry. If I were to guess one would die, it would be that. I'm not picking it to die. You can always pick one. No, that's the one where you fold it around the outside. It would be the most fun to break. It's the easiest to break. It's the easiest to scratch. Yeah. Scary. I think it'd be interesting. Like, think back to when this first Samsung Fold came out. Like...

We were all pretty... Well, okay. Let's say the 1.5 Samsung Fold came out. Sure. Oh, yeah. Like, when that came out, what, three years ago now? Four?

Did you think at this point, like, we would be this far along? Like, we would only be... We would be refining at this point. We wouldn't still be... Or did you think we would still be in this very prototype-y feeling? Like, no chance you ever see this. Because I've seen a couple folds in the wild. Like, they're out there. They're out there. I wouldn't have guessed that quickly. I think Samsung, because they're the...

only one like in the US making foldable phones besides like the Motorola Razr which they didn't make a three of this year I think it's coming out next year in the US so nothing even shipped in 2022 from them it's China only for a bit it'll come out in the US eventually I think but

Samsung is like way way way ahead of everybody else at this point and I see Folds and flips more flips than folds But I I saw like it's 65 year old dude with a fold in my cafe the other day and I was like nice you rock sick But at this point they're like four years ahead so I think that most companies look at the entire landscape with a safety measure in mind and it's clear that the small that becomes big is

idea is a safe idea at this point. You can either do really small that becomes big or regular that becomes bigger. And those have proven themselves and nobody else wants to be like the trifold one that has no idea if anyone's going to buy it. Yeah. I think the two basic concepts are small that becomes big or big that becomes small.

So like small that becomes big is you're using a small phone, but you want this crazy tablet thing in your pocket. That's the fold. And the other idea is you have a normal phone or like a sort of a big phone and you want it to be smaller in your pocket when you put it away. And that's the flip idea. I think we're still...

The jury's still out on if we're going to see like a Pixel Fold or an Apple folding phone or someone else might be jumping in eventually someday. But to your question about like, you know, once we saw the first gen, how long do we think it would be till it stagnated maybe? Yeah.

I also look at the other big like phone form factors. Like I think four generations in is when we got a nice holding point. When you look at Galaxy S1, 2, 3, and then 4, Galaxy S4 was like, oh, the identity is set. It's a smooth Android phone with Samsung software and an OLED display and like flagship spec.

And like iPhone 4 was like square edges, home button, small screen iOS phone. Like you got that identity with iPhone 4. And then it was the third phone though. Pixel 4? I'm just kidding. I don't know about Pixel 4. Not a very strong legacy. Google had a really strong identity with Pixel up until the 6. Actually until the 5. You mean Nexus? Well, yeah, it'd be kind of weird because like Nexus. Especially the Pixel 2 through 4.

felt like a cohesive family. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then when it got to the five, they were like, we're going to make it cheap and it's just going to be plastic. And then the six is like, hello, I'm here. Good morning. How are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. It just looks like an alien or whatever. Interesting. Yeah, we could. I think

Yeah, four generations in. We know what we have. But I think there could be some stuff on the horizon that's way more interesting. I really want to see a company come out and just make something that none of us are even thinking of.

Like that we haven't even thought of before. Well, that's the problem is they like prototype things and they get people excited and they're just like, and this is why we scrapped it. And I'm just like, OK, but I just want to use it. I mean, that's what there was like Vivo for a while that felt like they were the ones doing that with like the fingerprint scanner and everything. And they walked so everyone else could run. Vivo has done that for a lot of stuff. Yeah.

They always felt like the prototype company for like a while. However, I did go to China for a Vivo event where they had no buttons or ports on a phone. And I'm just like, please don't do this. Stop Vivo. You can stop now. Whatever you're doing there, please stop. Yeah. I do think I'm excited for someone to come out with something we've never seen before. But I'm kind of excited we're hitting a stagnant point because that means...

they're doing a good job on something already and that it's hitting a stride probably. And they're like, okay, we don't need to make drastic changes on this because it's working. Yeah.

I think the biggest thing next will be starting to get the price down because $1,800 on a phone is insane. Okay, that's what I was hoping would be the thing because remember when the Flip finally got to $999 and we're like, oh, what's going to happen is we're going to have these folding phones and they might not get like dramatically better, but the price will slowly get down so that it's alongside all the other phones you can buy and you can just pick the one that folds instead of the one that doesn't fold.

And $9.99 is like the very highest end of that. There's lots of really good phones for $9.99, but the Fold is still $17.99. Yeah, way too much. Which in the US, you know, people get a contract and they'll pay $35 a month or whatever it is, but it's so much money compared to what you could get for $17.99. You could get two of the best phones. I think the reason that I see flips a lot is imagine you walk into a carrier store and there are multiple flagships that are all $9.99 and you're a regular person.

and one of them folds in half. Yeah, that's kind of interesting. That's like cool for everybody, right? It's kind of cool. It's cool for everyone, and it's still got flagship specs. Do you think it feels risky?

If you go into a flagship store and you're like, oh, there's a 999 iPhone. Oh, there's a 999 Pixel. There's a 999, you know, S22. And then there's a folding one. Maybe it did for the first two generations, but I feel like I've seen a lot of flip threes. And maybe it's just because enough time has gone by where people have gotten used to seeing them in the carrier store. I think there's also a lot of people who just, who don't use iPhone and Samsung's generally that default. So they're like, I want a Samsung. I'm choosing between two Samsung. This one folds. Yeah. Like a Galaxy S21 Plus or...

folding Galaxy S21 Plus. I'll take the folding one. I'll take the folding one. Cool. And your friends are always like, wow, that's interesting. True. Talking point. Don't underestimate the value of the talking point. It's like the Rivian yesterday. Dude, we'll talk about that eventually, but I'll say it now. I said it in the video, actually. I have never... We're using this Rivian truck, right? I have never...

in any of the cars we've tested had more people like wave me down, ask me about the thing in the McLarens, in the supercars, in the other trucks, in the electric stuff we've tested.

none have come close to the Rivian. The Rivian is the most attention-grabbing vehicle I've ever driven by a lot. Yeah. I'd ask about the Rimac, but we weren't allowed out of the parking lot with it. But even the Rimac kind of just looks like an R8 if you squint. Well, it's like an RC car. It's the height of it. Yeah, it's like a little sports car. I guess if you pulled up in a grocery store parking lot, people would be like, what is that noise it's making? What are you putting in there? What is happening? It's really fitting the car. But it is definitely, yeah...

The RIMAC's gone crazy, but we'll talk about it another day. I want to also just mention the recyclable materials. Yes. Because that is, it's a good note. And it's sort of a question mark in the way it's being presented versus the actual facts because I haven't dug into it. But basically the way Samsung presents it is they're taking fishing nets out of the ocean and using that plastic in the plastics in the phone. Cool. Great.

Great. Keep doing that, please. And inspire others to do that because I hate fishing nests. Do you know, we were talking about this. I think the best green thing that Samsung does is have like one of the best trade-in programs ever. That's also really good. I really, really appreciate that, that they're...

You have really, really good trade-in deals. We were talking about... It feels like you can almost get a new phone for free at this point. I think Samsung's like, please trade it in so your battery doesn't start swelling and we realize that... Okay, maybe, yeah. That's true. Get the old Samsungs out the streets. All right. Every Samsung phone. I retract everything I just said. No, it's good. It's a good thing. I don't want grenades in our closets. All right, let's go to trivia before we get sued. It's real. I'll just...

You know we have the smartphone closet. Honestly, who else just tweeted recently they had Samsung phones? Arun, right? I thought Saf may have. Saf or Arun or both, probably. Just if you keep a Samsung phone long enough, the odds are much higher with a Samsung phone. You'll find it's swollen. Especially during the summer. I remember I had a studio with Michael Fisher and David Kogan a couple years ago. We had all the studio together. There's a lot of old phones in there. There was a lot of Samsung phones in there, and I went in during a summer day one time and...

And Michael had this like rack of phones and it was a note like a note five and a note eight and a S 20 or something. And it was only the Samsung phones that literally the batteries were popping. Well, it's crazy. I don't know. It was bad. Yeah. Well,

Recycle your phones, folks. That's how you get ahead of that. We're going to talk about the watch and the watch pro after the break. But before we get there, let's get to trivia. Trivia. Oh, I forgot to record. Oh, wow. Oh, wow.

All right. It's time for trivia. Adam is gone this week. It's just me, which means hard questions only. Nobody to rain Ellis in on these. Yeah, exactly. No one to check me. All right. First question. Who owns Arm? And it's not a person. Okay, I was going to say, so it's a company who owns Arm.

Okay. Wait. Oh, yeah, I know this one. What company owns Arm? Ha. All right. Ha. Ha. Cool. And we're also doing our point system when we come back is David has points, but he hasn't been on as many episodes of Trivia, so we're doing points per game. Oh. We're still working on a lot of things. Theoretically. I...

Have how many points David has written in front of me. I think it's tied with me. I don't have how many games we've played. Well, well, well, it's only one, I think. Or no, two. Is it two? It's like two and a half. Since we reset. Andrew was gone one week. We'll figure this all out. I don't know. In a, in a, through the magic of video editing, we'll figure this all out later. Which I am editing. So I guess, I guess I'll figure it out later. Good luck with the scores. And yeah, we'll be back after the break.

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Okay, welcome back. So Samsung Unpacked is more than just the phones, of course. I actually low-key think that the things that weren't the phones were the most interesting announcements. So we got the two phones out the way. What we also had was the Samsung headphones, which were, I'll just say they were the new Samsung Buds Pro, active noise cancellation, slightly new design, much better quality focus. I haven't gotten a chance to handle them or listen to them, so we just have to fully wait until we get to use them. But we also got two new watches. So we got the new

Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro.

Galaxy Watch 5, Galaxy Watch 5 Pro. This is interesting to me for a lot of reasons. You've been testing, you've been using one of the Galaxy Watches, right? Funny story. I have the Watch 4 right here, the regular Watch 4, not the Watch 4 Classic. I've been using it for like four or five months and we were like, I wrote a script for a bit rate for the studio channel and we were shooting, like, Hayato and I were setting it up and David like messaged me on Slack like, hey, we're in the briefing right now. They're announcing the Watch 5 and I was like,

Okay, I guess we won't do this. It's the life of a reviewer. So we will be looking at that. I'm very excited, though, because I've been using this watch a lot, and I really, really like it. I have two main gripes with it. One is a terrible bug with it right now, where if it loses connection with your phone, you have to reset the entire watch and lose all of your data to reset it back in, unless you did a backup. But I have it right now. I...

I can show you on my phone if I go to... If it loses connection as if you, like, leave the house without your watch? If it, like, somehow the Bluetooth connection has to be, like, reconnected, essentially. Like, I can go away from it and come back, but if it ever, like...

blips in that and this is something there's a reddit thread i found that's nine months old and people still to this week are commenting like i just had this problem how do i fix it that's a big problem more like a lack of a feature than a bug yeah so if i go into my galaxy wearable right now looking for it doesn't show it oh yeah it's an airplane which still should show

Is your Bluetooth on? It is. You better go catch it. Oh, this might not be on. Anyways, I'll try and reconnect it, and it'll just say, it'll say, we found it. In order to add a new device, you need to reset the device from your watch. And then on your watch, it'll say, do you want to reset this? That's really bad. It's awful. But other than that, my biggest gripe is battery life. The battery life on this is terrible. I would say...

I'm okay with it because I don't use sleep tracking so I can charge it every night, but it will not last two days. And I've seen that a lot of other people with that same issue. That's what I was going to say. So how bad is terrible? Because I've been an Apple Watch person for the better part of like four or five years. You'd call that a two-day battery life, right? I would call it a one and a half day battery life. Yeah. Very specifically because I cannot get to the end of two days, but I can always get past one day.

Yes, this can get past one day. If you use sleep tracking, I would say by the time you wake up, you're under 40% and like...

I would not expect it to last more than that. Like this would never last a weekend as far as I use it. So you'll be happy to know one of the new features of the watch five is it has a larger battery, 15% larger battery, I believe. And the other gripe, the other way to get around bad battery life is faster charging. And this does have fast charging. Specifically, what do we have? 13% larger battery on the watch five.

And the Watch 5 Pro we'll get to in a second, but I think that should at least help with the battery life. We'll see. We'll get it in hand. I think if you're someone who does a lot of things during the day and also wants to sleep track,

You're going to have to find that perfect time. Maybe the fast charging will help. So you could do it maybe while you're showering or something like that. It really becomes a habit of like, you know, when you end the day, you look at your percentage and you're like, this won't make it through the night or this will. With Apple Watch, it's like 25%. I know if I go to bed anywhere around 30 that I just need to find time to charge before I put it back on.

I hate that. Just, yeah. It drives me insane. Part of the downside. The design is very similar, but it does have sapphire glass now on the outside, which is much better. I love this design. I think this design looks good. And the sapphire glass, which is stronger. I tested three watches. This is the only watch where the screen didn't crack.

or chip when I was rock climbing. My Apple Watch has a big chunk taken out of it. Yours does as well. The screen? It's not a chunk, it's more of like a star. Yours is like a crack. Tim's has like a chunk. Like multiple stars. Actually, I do have a little chunk. But that's the metal or the screen?

The screen has a bunch of scratches down here. But rock climbing holds are so coarse that they will just destroy. But if you look at mine, the outside edge of it got really scratched, but the glass didn't get touched at all. Maybe because it's flat.

Well, it's going to get even stronger. I have a Garmin Venue 2, which I love, and it got really messed up climbing. Those are the ones I expect to be super strong. Yeah, I agree with you. One thing about these, though, is I debated using the watch Classic because of the dial has a little more of a lip.

but I didn't really love the spinny part in that. This Galaxy Watch 5 Pro has that new lip and doesn't have the thickness. Let's talk about the Watch 5 Pro. I'm really excited for that one. So the 5 is great, but the Pro, well, first of all, I guess we could speak about this at any point, but there are lots of rumors that we might see an Apple Watch Pro, and I think Samsung has a tendency to go, they're going to do what? Okay, trust me, we're on that. We'll beat them to that, trust me. We got it. So we got the Watch 5 Pro. The Watch 5 Pro is a larger...

thicker, stronger, more activity-focused version of the Watch 5. So it's, think like GPS-related stuff, much longer battery life. It's a 60% larger battery life. And it also has a thicker, I believe it's thicker. They say stronger sapphire glass on the outside. I don't know how you have different strength levels other than just making it thicker. It's probably thicker.

So it's stronger, probably thicker sapphire glass on the outside. And it's also inlet or inset underneath the bezel. So you have a little bit of protection there for the glass. It seems if you can deal with the larger size, it's a 45 millimeter size only to be like the best version of what Samsung can make as far as a smartwatch that has a long battery life and actually deals with like

heavy long GPS loads maybe you're gonna go I heard there was a actually a golf version of this watch but if you're gonna go like play golf with just your watch there are GPS apps that will tell you for the entire four hour round of golf exactly how far you are from all of your your targets and the bunkers and the hazards and everything biking hiking just going for a run all that sort of stuff and

this seems like the way to go for that stuff. So watch five pro is real. Did we get it confirmed that the golf version is real? It's in the notes that they sent us. It is a golf version. It's all it is. They never told me. They didn't bring it up at the briefing. And then someone told me about it and I was like, what are you talking about? I think that we don't have to put this part in, but I think it's, it's 329.

I think it's more like the regular one. Wait, the 5 Pro Golf version is $3.29? It's just the 5 Golf version. I don't think it's the 5 Pro. I think it's the regular 5. All it is is custom watch faces, a free lifetime subscription to Smart Caddy app or something. And it has a...

A different watch band. Oh, okay. It's more like a... It's just like a brand partnership. Is it PGA branded? No, I think they're probably just partnered with that app. LIV? LIV? No, you can't even use GPS. For the golf fans here. Yeah. That would be a good reference. But no, it's just probably just the caddy app.

It's basically a caddy app for an extra $30, it seems like. And limited watch faces with it. And a different band. And a different band. Okay, well... It's more of a limited edition thing. Are you interested in that? No, because I could just turn the Watch 5 into the Golf Edition. Just buy the app with the Watch 5 Pro and then get way better battery life out of it. I'm really excited for the Watch 5 Pro because...

I love hiking and stuff like that. I like outdoor stuff. And when I was using my Garmin, like it's incredible for, for really long hikes and stuff. It's got great GPS. All the different apps for it are fantastic, but wearing it every day, it just felt clunky. And they'll like the watch for is so much nicer just so to have that,

In my mind, and we'll see how they execute it, but to have a watch for that feels more like Garmin activity ruggedness with it, that's really, really exciting for me. I think we talked about this in the foldable space earlier about things like finally coming to the point where they feel like very cohesive products. But I feel like we're in a little bit of a wearables renaissance or golden age right now when it comes to both wearables.

smart watches and then also earbuds because the earbuds have ANC. Now it seems like you can get a ton of different earbuds with ANC and it just depends on what company you want. There's the Pixel Buds Pro they have ANC now. Just like pick your company. And then the other thing was when Apple announced all of the additions to the Apple Watch tracking.

whether it was like tracking the little micro movements of your run and your stride height and all these things. And now there's possibly going to be a pro watch and then there's going to be a pro version of this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like this wearable tech is getting really good now. I agree. It's kind of amazing looking back what all of them do. Like you mentioned the watch tracks all these things. It has a slightly different shape with the bottom of the watch. It's a little bit flatter so that it has more contact area on your wrist.

So that's your blood oxygen levels and all the things that tracking can be even more accurate. It's like, that's amazing. It's half the stuff I didn't ever think I'd need to know about myself, but here we are.

And also true, like back in the day, I remember in like 2013, 2015, the Jaybird earbuds that I love so much, like to picture something that small having active noise cancellation, I was like, never. No way. Of course not. But now, yeah, Pixel Buds Pro come out. It's like the exact same size, no wire, long battery life, popping your ears, active noise cancellation and transparency mode. It's not that good, but it's still got it. Yeah. So that's pretty impressive. I have a question though. Yes. About the Watch 5 Pro. Do you think now...

let's say it has a one and a half times longer battery life. Is that enough for you to say it's not terrible? Here's, here's, I will listen. So the, the Venu 2, I, it's like an eight day battery life and I tried that and it works and I'm still kind of confused how that can have eight days and this can have a day and a half. Describe the functionality of that one.

I mean, it still has notifications. It still has like my calendar comes into it. My text messages come into it, track steps, attracts heart rate, all that stuff. Like it's constantly tracking. But generally when I'm using it, it's on a long trip somewhere where it's it's also like I was hiking yesterday.

eight hours a day and like I wasn't plugging in at all. It was crazy. So battery. I mean, clearly the screen is not as good, but still like we're talking about this. The watch for is like 450 by 450. It's not anything wild and it is getting crazy.

a fifth or a sixth of the battery life. - So the screen is always, the screen and processor are always gonna be the biggest draws of power. And I haven't used this eight day watch battery life, but when I picture a one and a half day battery life watch having a 60 FPS OLED display that gets bright outdoors and is like very responsive and feels like a tiny smartphone on your wrist,

I picture an eight day smartphone battery life being like on the Kindle end of the spectrum where you don't really spend any time interacting with it. It just shows you stuff and that's good enough. Is that accurate? I don't think I use, I don't think I use my watches, both of them that much differently though. Uh,

I don't know. Then that's better for you. Then it's better for me, but the thing is I still use the Watch 4 the same way and don't use it as much and mostly use it to just check the time and some notifications and it's still only getting a day and a half. It's like not as efficient. I'm sure there's some things. I think what you're talking about, you mentioned it the other day when we were talking about it, is probably Android Wear OS versus whatever the Garmin stuff is. They're probably doing far, far less, but that's still a huge gap that

baffles me a little bit. Well, when you're based on Android, though, it's like there's it's so complex. Like here's an analogy, right?

The entire reason that ARM devices have such insane battery life comparatively is that you had x86 for this long period of time that had to do all of these functions. And the more that PCs could do over time, the more that architecture had to be able to be built out to handle. But that also made it have more processes going on at the same time, and it just made it such a battery hog.

So ARM, which is Advanced Risk Machines, it's a reduced architecture. And risk is reduced...

Risk is another acronym? Yeah. Inside of R? Yes. It's an acronym inside of an acronym? So A-R-M is an acronym and R is risk and risk is another acronym. Yes. Risk is reduced instruction set chip. Right. And chip is an acronym for what? And that's an acronym. Just keep your head down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So reduced instruction set, right? So you reduce the instruction set to like only the core things that you have to do and then they built out from there. So that's why...

armed devices have so much better battery life. So it's kind of the same thing. If you build something on Android that's supposed to be on your watch,

You know it's gonna be like an Android phone and all all Android phones run ARM processors already These are ARM processors just in watches It's like you already have is the most efficiency that you can kind of have but when you build an OS that is only made to be like a Very simple smartwatch and you only target it to these specific things Then you can make the battery life way better. I I was It's reduced instruction set computer. All right, so

And what does computer stand for? Anyway. Oh, it's R-I-S-C? Yeah, risk. Oh, got it. Which would still be the case with chip, but I got the C wrong. Right. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, yeah. To go back to the question,

for me to not consider it to be a bad battery life and like good, not great. Eight days is great. That is what I would go for. For every, once you, you, once you use that for a month, you don't want to use everything else feels terrible. Right. But if I could leave work on Friday and go out for the weekend, say like I'm going on a trip and it's still alive on Sunday when I get back to charge it, to go to bed, that would be two full days, two full days.

good full date maybe even two and I would call it I would call it two and a half to where some days it might go a little under but okay I would be very happy with like leaving for a weekend and being able to make maybe track a hike forget your charger and not have to worry about it the whole weekend that would be really that's that's ideal

I'm going to guess that would be the absolute limit of this watch 5 pro. 60% is big. 590 million bars. Is that what it is? Right. Yeah. 590. That's pretty big. It's big, but I'm just saying like, okay, it's 60% bigger. So, okay. 60% more battery versus the one and a half we already get out of the watch for. And you're looking at 1.9 days, maybe. Maybe. So, which is close to what you want. It's close.

Yeah. Quick math. Yeah. I always agree, though, like all these watches are adding sleep tracking and everyone keeps talking about how amazing sleep tracking is. But if I have to charge my watch every night, then I can't use the sleep tracking. And a lot of people say, oh, charge it while you're showering. I just Googled it real quick. 1.6 times 1.5.

Because you had one and a half days, 60% more. So 1.6 times. It's actually 2.4. So let's say 2.4 days. It seems promising. That sounds pretty good. It seems promising. Okay. All right. Promising. 2.4. Yeah. I mean, that's like one of my biggest gripes about it. The other one is that challenges app.

Let Android people count more than just steps. Count calories for Android watches or Google Fit or some connection in there. And the Challenges app would be the best app ever. We would recommend it all the time to everybody. You will get free shout-outs from us if you count calories for Android. They're already going. They promise. Wait for them to shout out. They're not cheap. They're not. Yeah. So there you go. Oh, wait, wait. Can I say one more thing about the Galaxy Watch though? Yes. Since...

Does this look familiar to you? Yes. Okay. Yes, it does. I have an argument here, though. Okay, so... No, this is Samsung's rings. But it's in a heart instead. So it's pretty much like Apple rings. I think this is better than Apple rings. Oh, why is it better? You know why? Because the third ring...

is not stand hours, which is the dumbest metric in the world. It just adds steps to it. It just shows you your steps along with it and gives it as a third. So it's activity ring as the first ring? It's calories, time, exercise, and steps. Oh, nice. Because...

I like that. Standing for one minute every hour is the dumbest metric ever. I agree. And no one cares. But I think the reason they chose it is because if you are sedentary and you sit for long extended periods of time, that's bad for your muscles. I want to ask David a question here. I just saw your app say you wanted to stand up. Did you want to stand up and walk around or did you want to stand up and get the notification away and sit your ass back down? But that's the point though. It's gamifying it.

But it's not accomplishing anything. Sometimes I'm working in a cafe. I think it does. I think just not being seated is

What is the whole argument for like standing desks? It's like you spend so much time sitting and if you sit all day, isn't sitting down bad for you? Yeah. I think that if you don't stand up and move around a little bit, then you need to get the blood like flowing around all the time. Yeah, stand up once in a while. Standing for one minute doesn't accomplish that. But it's better than standing for zero minutes. Sure. Yeah.

I'm not advocating for either. I'm not going to get involved, but I do think that it's sort of like when you're like, oh, I'm going to do five push-ups, that's it, and then you end up doing 50. Well, I could obviously do that. I don't know where we're going anymore. I don't know.

I guess the point is like the point is that it's getting you moving and then you will probably do more than one minute if you do the one minute. Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully. Whereas I just wave my arm around. What if what if it did? You had to do a hundred steps every hour. That'd be kind of hard. That'd be really hard. So the thing is, when you get to like 50 minutes on the hour, the app, the watch tells you you got to stand up. Well, it would give you a better a better time.

That would be nice. I'm trying to, I don't know how many steps, a hundred steps. Is that like walk around the room once? I bet, I bet from your desk, I bet from your desk to the bathroom back to your desk would be about a hundred steps. A hundred? Yeah.

Actually, maybe it is 100. That's a long way. I would say going up the steps in my house, it's like 12 steps or whatever. Now I'm like, oh yeah, so maybe it's 10 times that amount of distance. Maybe that's 100 steps. I would say going from your desk to the bathroom back would be 100 steps. I'm going to try it after this podcast, but we do need to take a break. And do trivia. Yeah, let's do trivia real quick and then come back. Perfect.

Pricing for everything really quick since we didn't say any of that. It starts at $279 for the Bluetooth-only Watch 5 and $329 for the LTE Watch 5. And the Watch 5 Pro only comes in 45 millimeters, so it's a little bigger. But that starts at, remind me, $350? $449. $450. Pretty expensive. $450 for Bluetooth. $450. And $499 for LTE. $499 for LTE Watch 5 Pro. There you go. Damn.

Ellis hit us with the trivia. All right. Back for Ellis's reign of trivia terror. How many bites are in a kibbe bite? Also pronounced kibba bite. Send it to break.

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All right, we're back. I have a little game I want to play at the end of this episode before we figure out our trivia answers and how wrong we were because Ellis' questions are way too hard. Okay, so we're... Like we mentioned, we're getting into, like, the start of smartphone season, kind of the start of our busy season. So...

We've seen quite a few phones get released already, and we're about to see the rest of them to the point where we've probably seen a rumor about everyone, right? Like we've seen a Pixel rumors. Well, we've seen Pixel 7 pretty much. We're seeing iPhone rumors. So I thought it'd be fun. You and I did a... We guessed the Smartphone Awards, the first episode of this year. I brought those guesses up. I think we're... Let's just...

look at them really quick to remind ourselves and then let's see if we change your mind at all. And you can make some predictions with us now from what we've seen and what we're about to see and, and maybe, uh,

See if we get any right. We'll check them again in December. See how right we think we are. Okay. Real quick. And if you guys want to hop in and make any comments about any of these guesses here, I'll just go through them real quick though. Okay. So for best big phone, Marquez guessed the S22 Ultra. I guessed the ROG Phone 6. For small phone, we both picked the Z Flip. For camera, we both picked the iPhone. Budget value, we both picked the Zenfone 9. Okay.

Wow. Best battery. Sorry. Sorry. Okay. Best battery iPhone pro max for you. I said the Legion duo three, just because I made up to a joke that it would have three charging tables, which I heard that back. And I was like, I used to be funny. That was pretty cool design. I had the Find X four. You had the pixel seven. Oh, most improved. We both for it ended up being a five.

They don't do four. That's our fault. That's on you. That's on me. That's on me. Pick the non-existent phone. All right. Most improved, we both picked the Pixel 7 Pro. Oh. Okay. This is bust of the year. You picked the S21 FE and I forgot. Wait, wait. S21 F22? No, no. It's right. Oh, no. That's exactly what I did. You're going to win. You might win that. You're probably going to win.

It was out by the time that we recorded that episode, actually, because it came out right in the beginning. How much of a downfall would that be from...

From MVP to best of the year. There is no least improved award, but that was... I picked the Razer 3, which doesn't look like it's coming out this year. And then MVP, you picked S7 Pro. Pixel 7 Pro. Pixel 7 Pro, sorry. And I picked the S22 Plus. Wow. Which seems like a terrible guess. But yeah, that is a very boring guess. I get a lot of thoughts about this. You want to start from the top then? Yeah, do you want to go over... You want to...

pick what we are thinking are coming up? Should I pick apart your thoughts? You can pick apart thoughts. You can pick what you think is going to come up now that what we see. Dissect it. Best big phone. I mean, so I had S22 Ultra. Andrew had ROG Phone 6. I think we now have both of those phones are out. Between those, I mean, they're pretty close. The cameras, you give the edge to Samsung. The performance, you give the edge to the 165 hertz ROG phone.

I listened and I specifically picked the ROG 6 thinking like cameras are the last thing they really need to prove and they would and...

They improved, but they didn't do it like I was hoping. It's a step down in camera, but it's also the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1. They always wait to have the higher-end chip in this. So the S22 Ultra still has the 8 Gen 1, right? I forgot. So that, I think, also leans ROG. I feel like there's going to be more big phones coming out this year, too. Oh, definitely. We're still going to get the big iPhone, the big Fold. The big regular iPhone could really be...

a good big phone because it's going to be a cheaper version, but big and has a lot of benefits from it. So that's something we were not thinking would happen. Yeah. I think that'll be really interesting. For small, you guys both put the Z Flip, but I think it's going to be the Zenfone 9. Yeah, I think, was that the thing in the beginning of this episode? You said there's something we'll all agree on? I think I'll say now that I think Zenfone 9 is the best small phone and it's not particularly close right now. We could get a great

No, because we're not getting a mini iPhone and we have the Z Flip and we see what it is already. I think it's a clear best small phone of the year. For sure. Zenfone 9. Camera is probably going to swap to the Xiaomi 12 Ultra. 12S Ultra? 12S Ultra. Interesting. You know, well, we'll see what the iPhone comes out with. The thing about the camera award and people always like to dissect my camera award is it is a versatility award too because you take photos and videos. And when I looked at photos from the 12S,

the ceiling of the best photos it could take was clearly higher than any other smartphone I've ever used. But as far as consistency, it would also constantly churn out photos that were worse than the iPhone. So if you're ping-ponging back and forth between best and worst...

It's kind of a preference thing. Like, do you pick the consistent A or do you pick the one that's an A plus sometimes and clearly has a better higher ceiling, but sometimes it's a B plus. And then on video time, like iPhone is so consistent. It's so consistently an A to an A plus as far as smartphone cameras. Yeah, the video is really good.

You know, ProRes already like 4K. I wish it shot 8K, but even without shooting 8K, it's great videos. And so the Xiaomi also shoots really good videos, but it's not as consistent. So I'm just like, it's hard to not pick the iPhone as the favorite for an incoming video or camera winner, just based on what I've seen from Apple. They could screw it up, but what are the odds? Yeah.

That Mi 12S Ultra, though. What about the Pixel 7? Some of those photos were pretty fire. Pixel 7 could be if they freaking fix the processing. I will beat the drum on this until the day I freaking die because they got a big old sensor and they're still processing it like it's a tiny one. They did their magic for like five years in a row with that small sensor. Yeah.

Yeah. And now that we give them much more capable hardware, they're sort of just leaning back on what they've been doing with the smaller hardware. Pixel 6 Pro photos look almost exactly the same as Pixel 6a photos. And I feel like that's just a big problem. They've got the field. Almost reminds me of how we always talk about how Toyota started making like EVs and batteries and now they're so far behind in the EV game.

It feels like that's what Pixel's doing. They were so good for so long and they just are sticking with what they're doing and now we're behind. The Prius, the smartphone camera. Don't you guys love this Sony sensor that we've used for five years? Yes, in your budget phone. Please.

Yeah. We have best value and budget also as Zenfone 9. This phone came out at $699. Can it be a budget value phone at that price? The comment section says no. Yeah, comment section, if I gave it that award, I could immediately see the entire comment section blowing up and saying $699 cannot be a good best budget award. But I think it's a value award.

I think we tried to make that award both ends of that. It's like budget or bang for your buck. Bang for your buck. Pound for pound. It does have the best processor out there for, and it has a really nice 120 Hertz display. Very fast. Pretty cool cameras. The gimbal camera. Excellent battery. Really good battery. I mean,

Yeah. Value wise, I could see it inching into there, but I definitely know that people will disagree with if if that phone was five ninety nine, I'd hand it to them right now. Yeah. But six ninety nine dollars more than it was last year. Right. So there is that. Right. So we're going to get some other phones that are like very extra budget. You know, we have the six a we have the SC. We have phones that are hanging around three, four, five hundred dollars that are always going to be options there. So I don't know if it's a clear winner yet. I don't think we can say we have a winner for best budget.

But I do love the Zenfone 9 at the price anyway. It is what it is.

That's kind of funny that we saw into the future for the Zen phone. Yeah. This is a January prediction. That's kind of sad. This is the first week in January. I'm kind of happy with that prediction. They've been pretty solid devices for the last few years. I think that's what we figured. It's like every year they surprise us. We're like, oh, wow, Asus is good. Oh, wait, we said the same thing last year. In the bracket every year, I think they go to at least quarters, possibly semis. Yes. iPhone has never won in the first round. Zen phone has never lost in the first round. No, I think iPhone won.

first run. Finally in the last one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the Zen phone always goes deep. It's always gone really well. Okay. So we did have most improved. We both picked Pixel 7 Pro I think is interesting. We have yet to technically hold and use that phone but we kind of see what's coming which is...

similar to the reason though it's most improved is because how bad the experience was on the six pros so like that's what they need to work on it's hard to tell that from the design things we're seeing i mean the fit and finish would be nice too because it would it did sort of feel like they just glued parts together with the six pro you know what i really liked about the 6a is that the lip was not as protruded it's because of the smaller sensor i liked that

I wish somehow they could get that into it. Yeah, they can't physically do it. They can't physically do it. Here's another way of phrasing that. Is there something else you would pick as most improved right now over the Pixel 7 or 7 Pro?

Like I'm like Zen phone, but then the eight was actually pretty good too. It was good. But like the nine was, that's the first thing I thought of as well. The Zen phone is like, it really killed it this year. Obviously the Legion duo too. In terms of, if you want to take one step, we didn't talk about design.

Zen phone could possibly be in design. And I think the biggest thing taking away from it is how messed up the paint gets on the back. I can't give it. Yeah, it gets pretty beat up. I think that's a big issue. You had that for like four days and it looked like you had it for four years. Dude, two weeks into using the phone, it looked like I had it for literally like a lifetime. Yeah. It's very easily scuffed. A friend of mine had the black one and...

all the logos and like Asus lettering were gone after four days. They literally wiped off his finger oil. Dude, it's going to look crazy in a year. Yeah. Which maybe that's cool. I like the design. If it doesn't fall apart, it's a patina. I would like to keep an eye on in a year, like what people using the Zen phone every day, what those phones look like. Yeah.

Because I mean, maybe they'll put a case on it. Like I don't, I use my phone out of a case. Yes, I'm a psycho. I get it. But hey, some people are going to do that. What's that phone going to look like in a year? Yeah. I want to know. Maybe you can just scrub it off with a toothbrush.

That's actually, I didn't try cleaning it. I mean, I got the microfiber. I tried like getting the scuff off of it or whatever, but maybe there's some crazy hack out there. Do you remember that? Well, there's a pixel that everyone said got messed up on the back and everyone's like, oh no, you can just scrub it off with the toothbrush and it's fine. And it worked. It worked, but it was also like the dumbest thing to tell somebody. It was kind of insane. Like you have an extra toothbrush, right? Yeah.

It's always sacrifice it for your phone. Your Pixel toothbrush. Man. Well, design, I think we're both going to find our answers are incorrect there. Find X4 doesn't exist because they skip straight to the X5. Sorry, Andrew. The X5 is a really pretty phone. The X5 is a nice phone. We've got one. I think I like the X3 better, though. Really? I do, too, actually. The look of it, yeah. I think I like the X3 better. But I picked Pixel 7, and I almost guarantee that doesn't win the design award. What about Oppo Find N?

I like that. I think that design a lot. I think there's a lot of design award candidates as there usually are. Yeah. It's sort of an, that's one of the more subjective awards. Yeah, definitely. I like the Zen phone design, but I can't give it a design award. Yeah. So it is what it is. Yeah. Bust of the year.

Yeah, you picked the Razr 3. That's kind of a funny one because it's not coming to the U.S. And it could be a super bust. Also, the OnePlus, what is it? 10T. Kind of flopped. When I wrote this out, I was like, I'm pretty sure everyone's going to say 10T. 10T is a pretty popular bust pick. I'm pretty sure that would get a lot of votes if we put it to fan vote. A lot of disappointment in that phone.

S21 FE being my pick for bust of the year. That's a good pick. It's a pretty good pick. It's a really good pick. It's a pretty good pick. Big brain pick right there. Yeah. And then MVP. My MVP. Wow, I was really high on Pixels. Okay, Pixel 7 Pro was my MVP pick and S22 Plus was your MVP pick. Do you remember your logic behind S22 Plus as MVP? No.

sort of an all-around champ at a good price. I want to say it was similar to that and being worried about what was going to happen to the Ultra with the impending note disappearing and like

Not being exactly sure what was going to happen with it. And if they tried to do like too much similar to like, remember when S20 Ultra first came out and that was terrible because they tried to do a million things with it. Then they refined it. Then I was worried I was going to go back on the route of doing a million things with it by adding S Pen and everything. And it didn't really.

It's definitely not that great. Like it's not anything incredible. You could argue the S22 Plus has a better design than the S22 Ultra and therefore is the better of those. I think I'll say two things. One, I think it's probably going to go to an 8 Plus Gen 1 phone because of how good that chip is. But the other thing I'm going to say is, and this is never going to happen, but if it did, it would be great if Apple put 120 hertz pro motion display in the big cheap iPhone.

That could be an MVP. That could be really cool. In the 14 max or whatever it ends up being. And what pricing is on that will be very interesting. But they're probably not doing that, which sucks. Yeah, if it's not a pro phone, they're not going to put promotion. I think they're keeping all the pro names to the pro device. What if they just do nice motion and do 90 hertz? That means that Apple's nice motion...

Pretty good motion. I feel like Apple's going to keep 60 hertz on the cheaper iPhones until the day. It's brutal because cheaper is still $700 for a 60 hertz phone. Yeah. That's insane. The budget iPhone. The budget. Just get the SE at that point. Actually, just get the SE. Yeah, just get the SE at that point. Yeah. I have to say, I went to a Pink Floyd tribute band concert the other night.

And the amount of iPhone 8s and iPhone SEs I saw was unreal because everyone was over 65. That's so funny. And it was wild. I feel like a couple years ago, it was the 6 that was everywhere, which makes sense. It's sort of a graduation of a flow of phones when people upgrade. And the 6 and 6S are the best-selling iPhones ever, I think. Yeah.

So those people finally upgraded. We got the iPhone 10, big upgrade cycle with the OLED iPhones. There's a lot of 8s out there. Yeah. I think it was just a testament to people that wanted to keep the home button. Yeah. And because the lady that was sitting next to me was like 80 years old and I saw her texting and she had like her texting size on max and everything was on max. Oh, that's such a... It's like one line max. My mom does this too where like every letter she would type would be like... Tick, tick.

Take one letter at a time. I love seeing the iPhone 8 with the massive font size. That's such a great grandma vibe. I love that. I think we'll leave it at that. We'll continue to see what phones come out this year, but like we said, it's the beginning of busy season. August, that's kind of like you hit the calendar and you go, all right, this is it. We're going to get a bunch of stuff. I can feel it this week because we're working on two long-form episodes at the same time and

We haven't had as much time to work on them. We're being rushed around to all these other things. Yeah, a lot going on. Yeah. So I say stay tuned. Stay tuned for all that because that's going to turn into more videos for you. So you're welcome. But that's all going to be fun to keep track of. So we'll see how well our predictions turn out in the very end.

Let's end it with our way too hard trivia part three. Way too hard for someone. Yeah. I don't know if I'm going to get any points this week. Ellis. All right. So the first question was, who owns Arm?

And with only two points, I believe David gets to answer first. I have my guess. If I get it right, did they not get to guess? Yeah. Should I say if you get it right? I feel like I should just keep my lips... No, I don't know. I think you answer first, but you don't tell us if he's right or not. Exactly. And then the second most can submit a guess, and then the top can submit a guess. But...

I only have one. There is the thing. David said he thinks he's right. So we could very easily just guess what he's saying. I have my guess locked in my head that I'm probably wrong. We're working with a channel partner right now on the eventual solution. The more updates. That's a great idea. That's actually a really good idea.

So this might be the last archaic version. Sorry for the chaos. Give it a couple of weeks. We'll see. We're still getting the final. Sure. Okay. Yeah. The points don't matter. All right. All right. SoftBank. Anyone else? That's not what I was going to say. I was going to just say IBM. I was going to say AMD. So what's the answer? The answer is...

SoftBank. Got him! All right. Very nice. SoftBank owns ARM. I don't even know what SoftBank is. I've never heard of it. SoftBank's a megacorp. They're mega, mega, mega. They make the robot. They're also a bank. Everyone has a robot. Yeah, but SoftBank... Yeah, I guess everyone does have a robot. Yeah, that's a good point.

The SoftBank robot has a funny name. Hyundai has a robot. Yeah. This robot looks like every robot on the CES floor. That looks like every robot on the CES. Oh, no. What hall is that at CES? Every single one. South Hall. This is South Hall, right? It looks like a bigger RoboSapien. Wait, did SoftBank make the RoboSapien? What?

Do you remember the RoboSapien? No, that one's called Now, it says. Now 6. Now that's what I call a creepy robot 6. Oh God, we've gone so sidetracked. Question number two. How many bytes are in a Kibibyte?

Go ahead. Wait, I have to guess again? I think technically you still have less points than Andrew. So yeah, Kibibyte. It sounds small. It's K-I-B-I, if that helps. Kibibyte. But it's pronounced Kibba? I've heard it said both ways. How many bytes total? Are in one Kibibyte. Not how many bits.

All right. How many bytes? Oh, God. That changes everything. I know what a gigabyte is. I know what a terabyte is. I know what a megabyte is. I know what a kilobyte is. I'm going to go under kilobyte. That's all I know. Kilobyte is 1,024 bytes, right? I just feel like it's got to be bigger than terabyte. Bigger? I would guess bigger. Because if it was...

Like we use all of these common byte variables together, these like versions of bytes multiplied, and we use them often. We use byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, megabyte.

But back in the day, very often, this is going to be a current term referring to like larger than a terabyte or old terminology referring to somewhere between a kilobyte and a couple hundred bytes. You ready for the wrench? This term was coined in 1992. I think it's like I think it's 128 bytes or something somewhere in there.

-That's my guess. -Marques puts in 128. Okay, Andrew. I'm going to go higher. I'm with you. We have all these commonly used terms and we keep having those terms because we're hitting a max where it's starting to get really confusing, so we're adding another to it. I'm going to guess whatever over a terabyte is. It would be a terabyte times 1,000, right? It's like trillions of bytes now.

I was going to say a terabyte times 10 terabytes is my guess. But this is in the 90s, though. How would they even? Because he said it was coins. So maybe there was a book where he was like, in order to have an AI that is completely susceptible, like can be just like humans, it would have to be one cubibyte.

What's your final guess? What is your final guess? 10 terabytes is my final guess. How many bytes is that? 1e to the 15th. Wait, we're so wrong, Andrew. All right, let's see. A hundred trillion bytes or something? I'm ending this right now. That's crazy. So...

Here's what a kilobyte is. Here we go. Here we go. All right. So computers work with base two all the time, right? Hard drive manufacturers, for whatever reason or another, like to measure their hard drives in base 10. Why? I don't know. You'll have to ask a hard drive manufacturer. But Marques, when you said a kilobyte,

is 1024 bytes. That's both true and not true. And until the 90s, if you asked a hard drive manufacturer, a kilobyte would be a clean 1000 bytes. And if you asked a computer manufacturer, a kilobyte would be 124 or 1024. Until the fall of the Roman Empire, the 10th month was December. So those 24 bytes don't seem like a big deal until you're working with

terabyte sized drives, right? Because now all of a sudden when you're buying what's advertised as a two terabyte drive, but it's actually you're losing 24 bytes per kilobyte. Right. You're actually losing 180 gigabytes of storage. So in 1992, some very smart people came up with the term kibibyte, which accurately refers to 1024 bytes.

saving kilobyte for the clean 1000. And nobody uses it. Oh, that's hilarious. Wow. Yeah, so it was invented to make things clearer and no one adopted it. And so now a kilobyte can still kind of mean either or. That is really cool. But that's why when you buy a two terabyte drive and it reads as 1.82 terabytes, you don't have... It's because they're not

exactly that's okay that's a fun fact yeah right i feel fun right now it's very human we're all super wrong but i feel like we learned something today yeah yeah that's a win adam will be back yeah and maybe we'll get some right we won't learn anything we won't learn anything the more spell google yeah the more andrew and i were going down that rabbit hole i was like wait no i think the minute you saw me calculating on here you're like i saw what

127 was a good guess because it's a clean 7-bit number. That's what he was going for? I was going for underneath 1024. Somewhere in the 90s where they were like, oh, your hard drive has finally reached this crazy 128 number. What are we going to call it? We need an advertising term. I thought it was going to be like a theoretical, this is what an artificial general intelligence would take up on a platter.

I don't know. They're cute sounding. They go up all the way. There's a Tebibite and a Gibibite and a Mebibite. There's all of them. Gibibite? Yeah, exactly. Next. Next. Final trivia. Oh, that was the only two. No, that's it. I'll give you a third one if you want. Considering how many zeros we just got. I think this episode's over. Yeah, I think we've reached the end of this week's episode. I feel like this happens every week.

Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening to Waveform. It's been a fun week. Welcome to smartphone season. I'll see you in the next one. Peace. You know, David, you did the call out when I was gone. Do you think you could do it again on the spot right now? Yeah. Do it. Don't mess up. Okay. I'll fix it if you don't. So when I say produced by this week, still produced by Adam? Yeah. For a little, you know. Pour one out. He was a good guy. Okay.

So it starts with Wayform and it's produced by, right? All right, ready? One take wonder. Wayform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. Our intro outro music is by, I skipped the whole thing. It was supposed to be the Vox thing at the beginning, right? I usually do it. So we are. You also don't know. I can do it too. I was just trying to put you on the spot. Wayform is. Produced by. No. Wayform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We are a partner with Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm just making sure I'm respected around here. Respect. Okay. Wait for me. Same. You sounded like Yoshi. It sounded like you just reversed the record player. Wait for me. Okay. Wait for me is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Robin. We are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro outro music is by Vane Syl. Well played. Great job.

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