Gadget tips for your next upgrade | Vergecast Hotline

23:29Like if the battery's holding up, just keep an eye out for the deals. Hold on to it as long as you can. I think the deal I got on the 13 through Verizon was like halfway through this year. They just sort of were like, wow, we have these phones. You guys might as well have a free one. So hold on. Yeah, I like it. All right, Allison, thank you. Let's take a break and then we're going to get to some more questions.

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26:31All right, we're back. More hotline questions. We have a couple on threads, because everyone is talking about threads. Neal, I have to tell us here to talk about threads. Hi, Neal. Hey, I love talking about threads. You're my threads guy. This is what we do. so we we got two emails that are both about threads and i want to talk about them so the first one is from steven it says the honeymoon phase of threads will be over soon enough and ads are inevitable so i ask do you think threads would do a plus subscription where we pay two to three dollars a month to go ad free to sweeten the deal threads plus could also give us extended time to edit more pins and the ability to schedule threads and mass delete slash archive them your thoughts please basically the question here is like threads blue question mark oh twitter blue has ads, right?

27:13True. A huge part of the problem for all these companies is they make so much money on ads that paying money to go ad-free almost never makes economic sense, but paying money to see slightly fewer ads makes a lot of sense. Right. I do think you'd have to pay more than you think, generally speaking, to not see ads on the internet. Well, it's a weird problem. So the answer to your question, Stephen, is yes, but not ad-free. Meta is already doing paid verification on Instagram. You can see how they might just extend it and put some features behind a paywall. I think all these companies are interested in revenue, and if they can actually make Thread successful, I think Meta is better at saying, hey, pay us money for features than Elon Musk and Twitter are at this moment in time.

27:53But there's just a weird problem in the business model where ad targeting works if you can target someone who's likely to buy something, and they're hard to reach, right? That's what sets your ad price. So if you have ads for everybody, that's great. You have a lot of people you're likely to hit who you want to reach. If you let some people turn off ads, you're letting the people with the most money turn off ads because that's who's going to pay the money. So you reduce the pool of your ads. If you let the people pay money to see slightly fewer ads, you've reduced supply and the price of those ads goes up.

28:26So there's just a weird problem in the pricing curve where getting to ad free doesn't make any sense, but getting to ad light makes a lot of sense. And I bet one of these social networks is going to figure that out soon. That's really interesting. It also seems like I feel like there's a weird thing that happens when you get rid of ads or let people pay to get rid of ads where you're sort of tacitly acknowledging that ads are worse than no ads. And I think Meta in particular goes way out of its way to never acknowledge that ads are bad. Right. Like it is it is a foundational belief of that company that ads are good.

28:57And so I think even the idea of letting you do that and sort of pay for the privilege sends messages that company does not want to send. Also, truly, given how Threads is right now, what doesn't have free Threads even mean? It's like the brands are there, man. That's true. The commercial messaging is happening there. It's down to whether you can pay money to target it better, not whether it's there at all. Can the Nugget account pay money to have even more posts in my feed? Exactly. All right, next one. This email is from Dewey. Dewey says, I find it endlessly fascinating that Threads is a project helmed by a subsection of the Instagram team, Maseri, rather than having it be overseen by any other team at Meta or their own product team?

29:37Any ideas why it's a product overseen by Instagram and not Facebook or Messenger? I assume it can't be its own team yet because it's still unproven. Do you think that would change if it actually does become a Twitter killer, or will it always be under threat of being absorbed in Instagram? That's a lot. That's like a good decoder question. It's just an org chart question. Yeah. You can also ask, why isn't it part of Facebook? The combination of Instagram and threads right now is the Facebook newsfeed. Yeah, it really is. And it's just kind of funny that they've split it apart and made two products instead of Instagram that recapitulates the original product.

30:09Yeah. Here's what I'll say. It's part of Instagram because the code base of Threads itself is Instagram. Right. So if you look at the version number of the Threads app, I think it's like 291 or something, and Instagram is at 290. It's some number like that. The exact number might be wrong, but it's some increment of the Instagram version number because the underlying code base is Instagram. Then I think it's a small team inside of Instagram because that's where you can insulate it. If you made it its own team, it would have to sink or swim without the resources of the larger thing. And I think Instagram is where the kids are.

30:43Instagram doesn't already have it. Tech's posting feature in this way. If you made it part of Facebook, people would be like, I can already post to Facebook. You make it part of Instagram, you get the cooler, younger brand, and you're adding what feels like a new feature to celebrities who are already using that product in that way. And I think fundamentally, you want that team to be as focused on the product itself and not, is this a business? Do we have to add all these other features to make it a business? You're just take what you need from Instagram and start from there is a much smarter decision.

31:14I also think if you're going to pick a meta social graph to start with, Instagram is the right one. And we've talked about this on the show, right? But I think my Facebook account is just like a morass of people I haven't talked to in a decade because that's kind of when I stopped using Facebook. But people still sort of actively engage with their Instagram graph in a way that I think a lot of people don't on Facebook. And I don't have data to back this up, but it certainly feels true that if you just wanted to pick a list of people and things and brands I'm likely to find interesting, betting on Instagram as that sort of startup moment is much smarter than betting on Facebook.

31:52And I suspect that's true for most of the people Instagram and Meta would like to have on threads at this moment. Yeah. Instagram and Twitter, for that matter, are one to many broadcasts, right? You are LeBron James and people follow you. That's true. And that's it. There's no reciprocal following. And Facebook is supposed to be all about your friends. Right. And so, yeah, you already have that graph and you already have that user behavior that's like, here is where celebrities and brands will talk to me, which is what happens on Instagram. I will say if it hits, you know, a billion users, this team will get much bigger and it will probably separate from Instagram in some meaningful way.

32:28But I suspect that's an org chart thing more than anything like most people will notice over time. Yeah, I don't know. You know, it's their first from the ground up social network that is successful in quite some time. Yeah. And since Facebook. And I think the fact that it's part of Instagram means that Instagram stays relevant, which is very important to Facebook. What you don't want to do is let billion user social networks quietly die over time. You want to keep them live and keep them relevant. And Instagram is the one that has been the most relevant for the longest time next to YouTube. So reels are coming to threads sometime soon.

33:07I think they'll get closer together rather than farther apart. Yeah, fair enough. All right, Neelai, thank you. Let's get some more questions. Our next question is an email and it comes from, I believe it's pronounced Tade. I'm sorry if I get this wrong. Jen Tui, back from vacation. Welcome back to the Vergecast. Hello. Always happy to be here. Best way to restart my working week. There you go. Let me read you this email because I actually think this is a really interesting one and matches a question you and I have talked a little bit about on this show before, but let's just get into it. So the email says, I'm in the process of buying a few indoor security cameras for my home.

33:42Nothing too fancy, mostly just for when I'm on holiday or have the cleaning lady come by. Which I actually argue, by the way, is like the perfect way to describe what an in-home security camera should be for. Anyway, as you can imagine, this feels a lot like inviting someone into your home, so choosing a brand can be difficult. I have to mention I'm from Europe, so some of the US brands, albeit with seemingly good offers, sadly lack the app support here. Do you have any clear suggestions? I'm mostly concerned on the privacy slash security front. then Tade has a bunch more questions about Yuffie and Xiaomi in particular but I think the big question here is like if I'm coming at the camera question from security first what should I do what do you think yeah well and I can relate to this question because having just come back from vacation I did set up a few cameras before I left because normally my recommendation is not to put security cameras inside your house personally I feel like they're great on the outside but inside can get a bit dubious unless you follow a few practices and be concerned here about privacy and security.

34:44So the good thing is there are a lot of solutions to this particular problem. The straightforward answer about security, and remember, so there's two sides here. There's the privacy and there's the security. Now the security very much focused on which company you buy from. Do you trust their security practices? You know, high profile, well-known companies, the ones that are under a lot of scrutiny. So generally, I think you can feel quite comfortable buying from a well-known company. So are you talking about like the Apples and Rings and Googles of the world, like the SimpliSafe kind of folks?

35:21Right. You know, and for Europe in particular, you've got, I think most, it's interesting that he said that there were a few that he couldn't go for from America because he's in Europe. A lot of the big security companies, camera companies, you can get in both countries. So Ring's available in both. TP-Link's brands, Tapo and Casa are available in both. Arlo, Google Nest. So you've got a pretty broad option. And then you've got Eufy. And there's also Acara, which is one of the Xiaomi brands. So there are a lot of good options here. And I would say any of these that are from well-known companies, Do not go and buy a no-name brand of Amazon for$20 or 20 pounds or 20 euros and stick it in your house.

36:03That's just not a good idea. But, you know, there's a few key things you should look for. You want to always look for a camera that has two-factor authentication so that if there is any social engineering or hacking or anything going on that, you know, someone's trying to get into your camera feed, you're going to get an alert or a warning. So that's, you know, key. But then the other thing is end-to-end encryption, especially if you're concerned about the potential for a company to view your videos. Obviously, this is one of the big issues that has been around Ring and also Google with the police partnerships and the potential for your footage to be subpoenaed.

36:42If that's something that concerns you, end-to-end encryption is something else you definitely want to look for. Security as a whole, though, I mean, these big companies have security researchers, you know, banging on their doors, trying to figure out holes and they should, you know, and fix and patch. And that's why if you do get a security camera, always update your firmware, you know, whenever there's an option. And most cameras nowadays will have the option to turn on automatic updates. So you don't even have to worry about it. It'll just keep updating in the background. But from a European perspective, and if you want a smart security camera that is entirely private and local, doesn't go to the cloud, because the cloud is where you start to enter that attack vector because your data is being streamed outside of your home.

37:27There is one really good company that I would recommend, which is Netatmo. Their kind of focus is entirely on privacy and security. There is no cloud involved whatsoever. It's all done locally. It's all processed locally on the device. It does not have as many of the bells and whistles as some of the other cameras might have and it's not as high resolution. It's a slightly older camera. But if all you're interested in is checking on your cleaning lady and the potential of someone coming into your house when you're not there, it's got a great feature. It has facial recognition and you can set it so that it will only record if it sees someone it doesn't know.

38:04So it's on all the time, but it will only record when it sees someone it doesn't know. Or you can set it to only record if it sees your cleaning lady so that it does record your cleaning lady. Although So if you want to record your cleaning lady, you might need to have a conversation with her. Yes. Tell your cleaning lady. Yes. So, I mean, and you can also use your own, you can use cloud with Netatmo, but it's your own cloud. So you can upload to Dropbox or an FTP server or iCloud. It does support HomeKit Secure Video, which would be my next suggestion here. HomeKit Secure Video is one option that gives you a cloud, gives you some of the features of cloud video recording, but is end-to-end encrypted because all of the device, all of the data that needs to be processed in the cloud, that's why a lot of camera companies send their data to the cloud.

38:51So for people recognition or to tell you whether it's a dog or a plastic bag that's caused a motion alert on your camera. With Apple HomeKit Secure Video, that's all processed on your Apple Home Hub. So it's all processed in your home, not in the cloud. But you need an iPhone for that. So if you don't have an iPhone, HomeKit Secure Video is not going to work for you. But HomeKit Secure Video does work with a number of different manufacturers, including Logitech has a camera, Eufy has some cameras that HomeKit Secure Video, and also Acara, which is the Xiaomi brand, Eve and Netatmo. So there's quite a few options there.

39:28Overall, though, I think if you're really concerned about security and privacy, you want to record locally. That's the thing to look for. So if none of those brands kind of float your boat, there are a lot of brands that you can just record to a micro SD card on the camera. And Acara is one that has that option. Tapo and Casa also you can do that. Google Nest and Ring, there is some local element to those, but not as straightforward as just a little micro SD card. Wyze has that option. Not sure you can, I don't think you can get Wyze cameras in Europe though. But in terms of a smart home security camera for indoor, as I mentioned, I'm not a big fan of them.

40:05But one thing I would recommend strongly if you are going to do that is get one, he mentioned getting lots. I feel like that's, you know, it's a little weird just to have cameras all around your house. A good solution is a pan and tilt cam. So that, you know, you put it in a central place and it can pan and tilt around. So a Kara again has a good option there. Yuffie has one too. A Kara one is really cute. It looks like a little cat. And you have the option in the app and there's a number of cameras that have this option to just turn off the camera remotely and it just its little eyes close and the camera rolls away so that's another good option to look for if for an indoor camera one that you can shut off remotely and automatically have it turn off say when you come home and then turn on when you leave so that way you're not going to end up with random pictures of you walking around in your underwear so if there was the concern about security.

41:03If there was, you know, you may have bought from a brand that you trust, but then they have a major security breach or data breach. You don't have to worry that your private footage that you care about is likely to be exposed. You've got, you know, hopefully only recorded when you weren't home. So most good security cameras these days have some feature like that that will turn off when you come home, turn on when you leave. The downside of that is if you're at home asleep and someone comes into your house, your camera's not recording. So this is why I like that Natatmo one that I mentioned at the beginning, because it's always recording.

41:37Sorry, it's always scanning. It's always looking, but it only records when it sees someone. So which is a really neat feature. You answered all of my questions. I think the one other thing I was thinking is, does it make sense if you're going to do an indoor camera to have it sort of disconnected from the rest of your smart home system? Because I'm just thinking that is like the most high stakes thing that would be in your smart home. So I almost don't want to connect it to anything else in my smart home, just as another sort of way of walling it off from everything else that if you're going to have a whole bunch of stuff on a nest system, I'm like, screw that, buy a ring for this and just run it on a completely separate version of your smart home, just to kind of air gap it as much as you can from everything else.

42:22Does that make any sense? Well, I'm not sure that it would necessarily, that the camera itself is going to do something to the rest of your smart home. I mean, I think the biggest concern about the camera really would be the footage, right? So that's what you don't want people seeing. One thing I have seen people do, especially when you use HomeKit Secure Video, is, so the way HomeKit Secure Video works with Apple is you can just put your camera into your Apple Home app and in some cases not use the company's app at all that it came from. But in the case of Eufy and Bacara, I believe you have to, or at least get most better benefit from using their app as well.

43:01But a lot of people don't want to do that. They just want it all processed locally. So what you can do and go into your router and turn off the Wi-Fi access for the camera so that it can only go through Apple's servers and there's no chance of it using a separate server. And so that's, especially if you're using local recording or some kind of NAS device or something, and you want to know that it's only in your home and it's not being sent off somewhere into someone's servers, you can, you know, disable its Wi-Fi access. That's a pretty, you know, that somewhat requires a little bit of technical expertise, but not a lot, especially if you have a mesh router that gives you the option to pause internet to certain devices.

43:44You can also get devices that monitor traffic from your smart home. So you could see if a camera was talking to its cloud. So that's a good option. Okay, we need to take one more break. And then I think we can do a few more questions before we get out of here. We'll be right back.

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46:23All right, next up, we have a laptop question. Monica Chin is here to answer laptop questions. Hi, Monica. Hey. I feel bad for just dragging you in here constantly to help people buy laptops, but the people needed to buy laptops. So we're going to keep doing this. This person did not give us their name, I don't think, but let's hear the question real fast. Hey, David. Hey, rest of the Vergecast. My question, and you probably get a lot of these, is so I have a 2019 MacBook Air. It's got an i5 processor. I got the base model, which I think was a terrible idea four years in. So I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to upgrade computer-wise.

47:00I have a basic like PC, but I'm on the fence. I like Mac, but I just feel like for my money, I want something to where it has more processing power. So as a person that's trying to like possibly go back to school, I need a little bit more computer with computational capabilities. What MacBook is it that I should go for? And my budget is probably around like, I think the max I could probably do like three grand. And then PC wise, what options do I have? Like, I know you can get a lot of PC for under$2 ,000. So like in your guys' perspective, what's a good like laptop to go for? Because I like all the bells and whistles.

47:39I do like the damn rainbow keyboards. They're so cool. But I want something to where it works with my lifestyle, to where I can do casual stuff and I can take it on the go. But it also has like good battery life as well. And if I need to do some stuff at XL, it's full transparency. I am an accountant. It can actually do what I need it to do. Anyways, that's a mouthful. I hope you guys are able to answer my question. Thanks and have a great one. This question is a lot and I love it for being a lot, but I feel like what this boils down to is kind of like everybody's computer question, which is basically like, I need a computer that's like as good at everything as possible.

48:17$3 ,000 is a pretty big budget actually. So I'm curious, like let's start on the PC side. Cause I think that's probably the trickier question to answer. Where would you send our friend here? Well, what I would actually say is this is a little bit of a tough question to answer because I don't actually have a great sense of what you're doing with it. And so if I had you in front of me, I'd be asking you, like, what exactly are you doing? What I get from what you want is Excel. That was like the main thing that you mentioned that you would need like clinical computational power for. And for that, I would honestly say, I mean, if you're already using a MacBook Air and you want to stick with you want to be under 2000.

48:53If you're if you're trying to go back to school, you probably want something portable. You're going to be carrying that to and from school. You want battery life, as you mentioned. That is really hard to find on the PC side. We can get into that shortly. But my honest recommendation, with the only info I have about your lifestyle being you need it for spreadsheets, I think you stick with what you know. I think you get the Air. I think the M2 Air, that can do your spreadsheets. I had actually a very similar conversation with my dad about this a couple months ago because he was like, he's into similar business.

49:22He was like, I need to do spreadsheets. I just don't know if the MacBook Air can do my spreadsheets. And I was like, dad, get the MacBook Air. It can do your spreadsheets. He got it. It can do his spreadsheets. He loves it. He has no issue. That is true. And especially if you're coming from a 2019 i5, the jump to the M2 is going to like blow your mind. Yes, that is really slow. If you like have tried, had tried the M2 before and like found that it was a limitation and you and you were wondering, like that might be a case where I'd say, OK, you might want to think about going up to the M2 Pro or M2 Max.

49:54but that is such a jump in price and it's such a loss of portability. I mean, if you're, again, if you're going to school like back and forth, you're going to classes, you're like sitting around the cafeteria. Do you really want to be carrying that like 16 inch or, I mean, that's just, it's so much heavier. It's really not that much fun to lug around. I really don't see a reason not to get the air. That is sort of what your answer is, is screaming at me. That tracks, but let's say in theory, we want to go windows here. So if you want to go Windows, it is hard to find battery life on Windows these days, especially if you're looking for what you call computing power.

50:31Like if by that you mean you want something with a discrete GPU for under 2000, my best recommendation is going to be the Zephyrus G14. That's a gaming laptop. I know you didn't say you want to play games, but in all honesty, if you're looking for battery life like that is some of the best you're going to get. It's like really ironic that that's a gaming laptop, but that's just how it is in the current landscape. The Zephyrus G14 is one of the few devices that has like real GPU power that also has all day battery life. So that is what I would be looking at. It does not have an RGB keyboard, but it does have a backlit keyboard that you can do some like fun effects with.

51:11And you probably can't get this for under$2 ,000, but if you end up going above that, you can get a lid that has some fun little lights on it that can do kind of cool stuff. So if you're looking for bells and whistles, it does have that option. It is going to be a little pricier. They did say they like the fun colors, so get some fun colors. There are a few laptops as fun as the Zephyrus G14, but again, that model is going to be a little over the budget that you gave us. But even under that budget, the keyboard is still – it's a fun keyboard. You know, it's got it's got a fun little font. It's got some fun keys on it.

51:42You can get G14s that come in different little designs. There's like an Alan Walker model that comes with a DJ deck. There's some there's some fun special editions that you can you can look at. They're a little more expensive, but I think you might be able to get some for under two grand if you do a little digging on Best Buy. so yeah i think the more we talk the more i think you're right that the the m2 air is the safest choice and i agree that there are we've definitely reached the point of like i'd like to be able to ask some follow-up questions because it's like if you want extra power it's like okay well are you more likely to want that or to want the thing to last you know eight or 12 hours but here is my last question and i think this this is important and i forgot until just now when i was trying to this thing out that this matters 13 inch or 15 inch air because now you get to choose yeah that's a good question honestly the difference in power between them is not huge um like it's there's the 15 inch is like a little did a little bit of our benchmarks i don't know if the kind of spreadsheeting you're doing is going to make a huge difference i think that's honestly it's going to come down to how big of a screen do you want for your spreadsheeting and you know there's there's there's a non-negligible weight difference between the two as well so you may want to factor in you know how much are you going to be carrying this around on campus or to other places that you go during the day.

53:00The 13-inch is certainly more portable if you're going to be on the move. The 15-inch is not portable, but it is heavier. I'm a little less happy when I have to put it in my backpack. There's a little bit of a difference. And so those are some trade-offs that are ultimately up to your preference. The one other thing, if you're looking at Windows and you don't want if the Zephyrus G14 is like too clunky for you and you want something a little bit thinner, the other thing to look at would be the Dell XPS 13. That is much more on the portability side. That's a very thin, very light one. You know, if you have like a backpack full of all your school books and whatever, it's really easy to slide that in.

53:38That's going to be much closer to carrying around a MacBook Air than it is to be carrying around a Zephyrus, which is going to be a little bit thicker. That battery life for me is like close to all day, but not quite all day. For you, might be different depends on your workload. But that is some of the better battery life you can get as well. It is not close to the battery life they'll get from the MacBook Air. But if you're looking for like a MacBook Air size, but with Windows, that is what I would point you to. Okay, yeah, I just went in while we were talking and I specced out a 13 inch M2 MacBook Air with 16 gigs of RAM and a one terabyte SSD, 1800 bucks, way under your budget.

54:16I suspect you will be thrilled with that computer coming from an i5 2019 Air. Yeah. I think that's the one. Especially if battery life is your priority, that it's going to be really difficult to beat that combination of portability and battery life in pretty much any other line with the budget that you have. And it will crush your spreadsheets. Don't even worry about it. I have a MacBook Air. I use it for spreadsheets all the time. I wouldn't worry too much about it. But if you're worried, you could add in some extra RAM, extra stuff to make sure that that can handle it. Totally. Awesome. Monica, thank you.

54:49Appreciate it as always. Thank you. All right, let's get to our next question. Allison, welcome back. Thank you. It's good to be back. We got so many more questions. The people keep having questions about phones, Allison. I love it. I'm here. I'm literally here for it. I love it. All right. You have not heard either of these. So let me play you the first one and then we'll go from there. Okay. Hello, this is traveling from india i just do want to know that i am using a pixel 6a so is it auto upgrading to pixel 7a or i will wait for pixel 8a or 9 something thank you we love an upgrade question here on the verge cast oh i love it this is a good one right because we just spent a bunch of time saying like if you have an old phone here's when you should get a new phone but this is this is last year's phone and this year's phone worth the upgrade?

55:36I say hold on to the 6a unless you are like a wireless charging stand because that's in my mind that's the big upgrade with the 7a like there's a lot of other stuff but no I think that 6a is gonna be solid for like a couple more years at least that's my hot take don't buy a new phone. I like it and I think Google has done a pretty good job of keeping these phones updated for a while. So I think you've got at least another couple of years of solid updates and the thing will continue to work. And Google's so invested in the software anyway that it feels like the Pixels have been kind of the rare phones that do a good job of getting appreciably better over time.

56:16Yeah. And so I feel good. I'm kind of with you. Yeah. That is good. Stick with the 6A. I think it's the right call. Here's hoping Google cares about the Pixel long enough to make an 8A. Please. All right, let's get to our next one, which is substantially more philosophical than the other one.

56:59mid-2010s were really the fact that we had a ton of Chinese phones and even Indian phones. And so I assumed that with a change of administration that we'd maybe see some sort of movement on that front. But I was wondering, are we ever going to get any phones from Huawei or Xiaomi or Oppo back here in the U.S.? Or is that sort of just doomed to never come back? because I really do feel like it was providing an interesting sort of competition here. So anyways, I was just wondering if you guys had any updates or if you guys could maybe show us or talk to us about that. So I like this question in part because it references things that I said on the Vergecast.

57:42So congratulations to me. But I think this is really interesting. What I don't want to do is like make political predictions, right? Because so much of this is wrapped up in politics and things change really fast. I would say if you forced me to guess, I would say the relations with China are not going to get immediately better. But the world changes quickly. Who knows? But I do think one of the things we talk about, I think, not enough on this show is the fact that the U.S. as a phone market is so much less interesting in a lot of ways than all of the rest of the markets in the world for exactly the reason that they're describing.

58:16And I do wonder if you think about it that way. Is it a bummer that we don't get kind of the full breadth of what's out there and is available to us? And is there a chance that more American companies might try to do in this market what is happening in other markets around the world? I have so many feelings about this. Yes, it is a bummer. There are so many, especially in foldables, there's so many more options. Thinner, cheaper. We basically have two foldables here and they're expensive as all hell. So I think there's a few things going on, like obviously the relationships with China, and I don't see that changing anytime soon either.

58:59It's also the carriers, I think, have the manufacturers kind of under their thumb. And it's really a bummer. I feel like it just has resulted in like we get the kind of phones that Verizon and T-Mobile and AT &T think they can sell, you know, at every price point. And that's kind of all there's room for. And you've seen things like even when LG left the mobile space and they didn't have like massive market share, we were kind of like, oh, now they're chanting. Maybe Oppo will come in here. And Samsung just like shut that shit right down. and we are exactly where we were before, but with less LG.

59:43Yeah, I do think it's, I forget about the carrier thing sometimes just because like I live in the US and I'm sort of used to the way that it is, but it is so unlike the rest of the world in that basically like the way most people buy phones is they walk into their carrier store and they trade in their existing phone and they get a new phone and they leave. And that's why people, by and large, don't switch ecosystems. It's why people mostly don't change brands. And it's why a couple of companies, namely Apple and Samsung, have been able to essentially just corner off the market for themselves. Whereas other places, you can just like walk into a store, stick your SIM card in, and poof, you have a new phone.

1:00:17I wish the world worked more like that in the United States, but it really doesn't seem like there's any chance of that getting better. And we even talked about this with Carl Paye. These companies are desperate to find a way to make unlocked phones work in the U.S. and I just don't see any way that's going to happen anytime soon. Do you? No, I think it's a mess for them. And I sympathize, you know, when coming into the U.S. and trying to like sell an unlocked phone, you know, without the benefit of those carrier deals, the trade-ins that they can do, the marketing, like it is just such an uphill battle.

1:00:53And yeah, I'm rooting for more options in the U.S. and I think the carriers could do better. Like I go into a Verizon store is literally like, here's iPhones, here's a Samsung phones. There's a few other phones like over here and it stinks. I agree. Are there any, as you, as you look out across sort of the rest of the world, if you could handpick a couple of phones to bring to the U.S., does anything come to mind? Is there anything you like lust after as an American that you can't have? Yes. The Xiaomi kind of flagship phones, I think like the 13 Ultra is the latest one. They have that one inch camera sensor and just fully embrace the like camera-ness of the phone.

1:01:39I have this photography kit that you like attach all the stuff to it, like a shutter button. It's fun. I mean, is it the best idea? Is it something a lot of people are going to buy? No. So I would call out Xiaomi, but there's a ton of stuff out there. Yeah. Well, and that exact thing is kind of the thing that I think the U.S. market is missing the most, which is different ideas about phones, right? Like at this point, it's Pixels, it's Galaxies, and it's iPhones. And basically, those are all the same thing, right? They have slightly different ideas, but they are functionally the same devices doing the same things the same ways at this point.

1:02:14and I kind of wish there was somebody out there doing what like Nokia did a bunch of years ago being like what if we just made an enormous way too big camera and that was your phone like is that anything or if somebody was like what if we put a tv antenna on your phone is that anything and then LG is like what if it had wings is that anything and I just so much of that still happens in the rest of the world and we don't get any of it here because everybody is just making these kind of like lowest common denominator. How can we sell three phones to 300 million people kinds of decisions? And the smartphone market is much weirder than US people would know.

1:02:50And that kind of makes me sad. Yeah, we're missing out. So let's just all move to Europe. Yeah, we won't get to have threads, but we'll get to have cool phones. Well, that works for me. No one's talking to me on threads anyway. All right, Allison, thank you again. Appreciate you coming back. Thank you. All right, that's it for the show. Thank you to all of my Verge friends for helping answer questions. Thanks to everyone who called and emailed. And thank you, as always, for listening. If you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or devices you also want to upgrade but want to know how to do it, you can always email us at vergecastattheverge.com or keep calling the hotline.

1:03:28866-VERGE-11. We'll probably do another full hotline episode before too long because we keep getting these great voicemails and emails. but also we're trying to answer at least one question every single week on the show. So keep them coming. Also, speaking of the hotline, we're getting an episode ready all about cybersecurity, and we're going to do a full-on call-in show answering your questions. So if you have a cybersecurity thing you can't figure out, big, small, whatever, or you have some crazy mystery you can't solve, which is even more fun, call the hotline 866-VERGE11 or send us a voice memo to vergecast at theverge.com, and we'll get back to you if we think we can help.

1:04:03This show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Brooke Minters is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm out the rest of the week, but the rest of the Vergecast crew will be back on Friday to talk about all of the big news of the week, including weather threads is still going to be a thing when I get back from vacation. See you then. Rock and roll.

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