Nothing’s gadget renaissance, and our favorite TV remotes

24:34Airdrop, right? Because trying to send pictures between devices is awful when you're on different platforms. So what do you guys do now? Email or? She just texts me everything. Links. And the videos come in like tiny little postage stamps. I mean, it's bad. It's a crappy system. We have shared Google photos, albums that kind of work. It's just not good is the point. And so I think for me, it's like, okay, if I go out and buy us the same thing, if I'm buying two nothing phones, should that be better than if she has a Pixel and I have a nothing phone? Today, it's probably the same. Android is also building interoperability between Android devices.

25:09So instead of Airdrop, Android has something called Nearby Share. It works in a similar way. I don't think it's the right time yet to make the experience between nothing devices way better than nothing in other Android devices. Okay, that's fair. I think that's probably right. And it does seem like Android has at least gotten better enough in that regard that you're not missing too, too much. The iOS to Android interplay sucks really bad. But with things like RCS and Nearby Share and that kind of stuff, it seems like the blue bubbles of Android at least are coming along a little bit. I don't think it's enough.

25:39It's not stopping the market share increase or the market share decrease, right? So it's something that's kind of worrying, but hopefully something good happens. What do you make of that? Looking at the fact that, especially in the US, the iPhone is just dominant? What's the takeaway there? Is it just that Apple is better at marketing this than everybody? I think Apple had the best product. And now that they built the moats, they can focus less on innovating on the product. They can just keep defending their pie. So that's my take. So if we want innovation to speed up again, somebody has to do something about all these moats.

26:13Because messaging is almost like infrastructure. How can you give monopoly to one company? File sharing is kind of like basic infrastructure. Would you give water system or like water plumbing and electricity to one company? I don't know, but that's kind of what's happening. Yeah. Do you buy that hardware can kind of lead that? Because I think a lot of it also is, I think the app ecosystem on iOS is pretty definitively better than on Android. But I think, like, I remember talking to the Pixel team years ago when they were starting the Pixel. And one of the things that they said is we need to make what we believe is like a truly terrific Android device to make developers excited to build stuff for this device.

26:51And I think to some extent that has worked. And that's what they've tried to do with Chromebooks. That's what they've tried to do with tablets and kind of to, you know, mixed effect on some of those. But you've been in this business a long time. Do you buy the idea that like if you make really great hardware, you can get people to kind of want to be part of it? I guess the same question goes for like the Glyph interface. I think with scale. Okay. Great hardware and a lot of scale because the app developers, a lot of them are also businesses. So they have to figure out the ROI. If I invest engineering resource, am I going to make the money back or not?

27:21So it's easier when you have scale. I think we're lucky because we're quite small. So we have a very enthusiastic community. They're very technical. So there'll be a lot of kind of hacking going on once we release the SDK. Maybe something interesting comes out of that. But I don't expect the metas or the largest tech companies in the world to use our Glyph SDK. is the only way to do that to just eventually get so big they can't ignore you that's the only that's the only way i think you don't think you can like sneak one into into adam masseri's office and be like hey here's a here's a cool thing that might work for instagram just i think he might really love the product but it still doesn't make sense for him to commit resources to doing anything at this moment unless it can really benefit his product somehow that's fair i can understand that adam build it if you're listening i don't know what it would do but every time you get an Instagram, just glyphs everywhere.

28:11All right, we're going to take a break, but we have lots more to talk about, including what comes after phones. We'll be right back.

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29:32Support for this show comes from LinkedIn. When you're a small business owner, your business is on your mind 24-7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. LinkedIn's new features can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. Either post your job for free or pay to promote.

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30:46All right, we're back with Carl Pei, the CEO of Nothing. Talk to me about price, because I think this is something you've been through now at a couple of different companies trying to figure out how do I sell good stuff at the lowest possible price? And you're kind of doing the same thing you did at OnePlus, which is like one of the things that most impressed people about the phone one was how cheap it was. And I think with this next one, the phone is seems to be significantly better, but also significantly more expensive. It's gone from$399 to$599. How do you balance making a phone at the cheapest possible price with trying to do all this other stuff you're trying to do?

31:20It's quite complicated. We can't just think about what consumers are going to think, although consumers are the most important ones. We also have to think about the suppliers because our industry doesn't really support small companies. It just costs like 30 to 50 million dollars for each new product we develop. Wow. So if we sell one unit, it's still that amount of money. If we sell a million units, it's still that amount of money. So we just have to reach scale. And also it's quite costly for our factories and our suppliers to work with us. So unless they feel like we can become a big company one day, it doesn't make sense to collaborate.

31:56So in the beginning with the phone one, we had to sacrifice and make it a loss leader just to get to some level of volume that's enticing for a supply chain to want to work with us. So at that point, it's actually more useful to be sort of cool and zeitgeisty than it is to be per unit profitable in that first run. We need to get the volumes up. Sure. That's like the key. Okay. So, but as a company, we can't keep making a loss on everything we sell. So over time, we have to become profitable. And we should have just made the phone 50 bucks. You would have sold a ton of them. Exactly. And would have been bankrupt by now.

32:31So it's about finding the right balance. So with the phone too, we're not losing money on every device sold. We're making a small margin. But after all the costs this year, we're still going to lose quite a bit of money. But we have to make that step so that eventually, maybe next year or the year after, we can break even. The economy right now is not the best. So funding, although it's available, it's much harder than before. So we've got to try and run a more, get to profitability quicker than before. Okay. I have no evidence for this, and it's possible I'm totally wrong, and I hope you tell me if I am.

33:03But it seems to me that especially in the U.S.,$600 is kind of an awkward price for a phone. Like I almost think it's easier in some ways to make the case for like an$800 or$900 phone than it is for a$600 phone. Because especially in the US where people are paying it off over the course of a couple of years, it's a couple of dollars a month people don't really notice. But then if you say, okay, I can buy the iPhone for$1 ,000, right? That is just sort of the assumed price of a very good phone. You come in and say, no, we've made a very good phone for$600. And there's just a thing that lodges in people's brains that's like, well, what's the catch?

33:35And I think, right, if it's like, if it's$200, I understand that I'm making trade-offs and I'm clearly a cost-conscious person. But you get to this middle ground. And I think lots of companies have found this in the U.S., that the price sensitivity is really different here. And so it's like at some point, if you're going to charge$600, you might as well just charge$900. The market is like a barbell shaped. Yeah. So you got a lot of volume at the low end and a lot of volume at the high end. But I think that's like when you're looking at the market as a whole, like the general market in the U.S.

34:03looks like that. However, we're not catering to the general market today. We're not even available for sale inside of the carrier stores. I think the first step to our entrance into the U.S. is we got a target to the tech enthusiasts. Who are even less price sensitive. These are the people who are out there buying$1 ,800 crappy foldable phones. I think a lot of them actually look at what you get and what you pay and can be really smart about that. So at least that group of people are going to be, I think this phone is going to speak to them. I think US is really, really complicated as a market.

34:36We got to take a step-by-step approach, start by building a loyal fan base, people really knowledgeable with people really knowledgeable about technology, have their endorsement first, you know, collaborate with them to make the product really, really good before we go to the next step. You know, US is like one of the freest economies in the world, but actually our industry in the US, it's one of the most difficult ones to break into. Like the barrier to entry is so high. There's basically only three sales channels, right? The three carriers, the three big carriers. And it just makes it a lot more complicated than compared to other markets where everything is unlocked.

35:09When everything is unlocked, you can just speak to the consumer. And as long as you have a great product and a brand that consumers love, that's all you need to worry about. But here, it's way more complicated. Yeah, I mean, that sort of mid-range phone graveyard is littered with phones who thought they could crack unlocked phones in the U.S. And they just were all wrong. It's really hard to do. And then you see the market share for iPhone keep increasing as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, people like walk into stores and say, what should I buy? And they say, here's the new version of your old phone.

35:39And that's in the US especially, that just is what happens. So like I had a Samsung phone or I had an iPhone and you use your phone until it dies. Then you upgrade to whatever the newest one of those things is. And breaking that chain strikes me as maybe the hardest challenge of breaking into the US. Yeah, I've spoken to carriers in the US. It's not that we can't be arranged, but I think it's just not the right timing. But something that came out of those conversations was that they're also really worried about the situation because they're seeing, you know, after these big launches, they would measure the footfall into their stores.

36:14And now the footfall is getting less and less after the launches because there's not much new to go and check out in person anymore. Yeah, I mean, that tracks. I mean, we even see that covering these things, like the sort of day of enthusiasm for one of these new devices is definitely not what it once was. Yeah. So hopefully we can do something about it, but it'll take a bit of time. Yeah, that's fair. So, and speaking of that, actually, one of the things I've heard you talk a bunch about is thinking about how to do all this stuff over time, right? You clearly have a long roadmap. You didn't answer my question about glasses.

36:44So I'm going to make you answer my question about glasses here at some point. But you also are in a position of you don't have unlimited money. You're not a trillion dollar company that can just pour money into the metaverse until it becomes a thing. You have a small number of shots at this in a pretty real way. Like I've talked to a lot of companies over the year who are like, we got one hardware order wrong because it didn't launch to as much excitement as we hoped. And it bankrupted the company. And that was it. We ended up with a warehouse full of phones and no company. How do you square those two things?

37:15You're like, okay, this is the thing that gets us to the thing. We want to be big. We have this long roadmap, but we also have to keep being an ongoing concern to get there. Yeah, you kind of have to have a dream, but you have to be very practical in reaching it. I think this business is one of the most challenging ones to build because there's just so many things you got to think about. You got to think about everything from supply chain to manufacturing to hardware engineering, software engineering, hardware design, software design, sales, marketing, distribution around the world. It's different in every country.

37:48Marketing is different in every country than supporting the products, software updates, and repairing the products when they're broken. So the chain, the value chain is just so long compared to if we're just making an app, it'll be much simpler. Or the reverse. One of the companies that I know you've thought about in building this company is Tesla. And I think the smart thing Tesla did was say our first car is going to cost$250 ,000. We're not going to sell very many of them, but we're going to make a bunch of money on the ones that we do sell. And that's going to start to pay as we kind of trickle down.

38:21So for you, I don't know, you could have started with like a foldable phone that cost$2 ,000. And some people would have bought it. Some people would have not bought it. And then you can sort of slowly scale up. But you tried to do kind of a small version of the mainstream thing from the very beginning. I thought about the Tesla model, but I think Tesla was so ahead of its time against their competitors. That's fair. To make an electric vehicle. A foldable phone does not have the same head start as what... That's fair. You would have had to launch that in like 2012 and then you would have had it.

38:51And also the utility of electric cars is so easy to understand versus a foldable phone, I think. That's fair. So maybe when we go to our iPod moment, that's where we start from the high end. I don't know. Yeah. No, that's fair. And I just think that pace is really interesting. And we've seen so many companies, like Snap has been going through this in a big way, where they started with spectacles. They're like, here's the road to true augmented reality. We think we're going to get there. And that road has gotten weirder and longer than anybody expected and has been really hard for that company.

39:21And Meta's going through the same thing with Oculus. Like, that's getting better, but not as quickly as we would hope. Apple's having trouble with Division Pro. It's like these roads are long and complicated, and those are companies, those are like public companies with billions of dollars to lose on this problem. It's a cliche, but I mean, timing is key. So we're trying to do the right thing at the right time. Yeah. And have a more patient approach. So speaking of that, what do you look at right now? It feels like we're in this crazy moment of change. All anybody talks about is AI. Wearables are like kind of a thing.

39:50Glasses are becoming the thing. Like what do you make of the transition we're in right now? I think for us, like at where we are, what's really important is to get to profitability. If we don't, then there's a risk. You're talking like a big company here. You're like, we have to be fiscally responsible. Because if we are not profitable, then we don't have the opportunity to build the next thing. And that's a reality. A lot of these big companies, they have a lot of free cash flow. Like Google and Meta, they make a lot of money on ads. So they can use that business to kind of subsidize or take larger risks elsewhere.

40:22We don't have that. So we need to make sure we're at least safe and we survive. And then we can figure out the really interesting products. Is that hard for you as the CEO to move sort of deliberately in that sense? Because I would think also if you're sitting there thinking like, okay, here is the thing that is going to make us the company we want to be, to not just pour everything into racing there as quickly as you possibly could and actually be sort of methodical on the way, seems like it would be a really hard thing to stay disciplined about over time. There's no other option. I mean, it's like a game with no other path.

40:56So I think it's quite easy to be on this path. Apart from reaching profitability, I think it's really important to build a really solid team and really solid processes so we can run like clockwork. For when that opportunity comes, it'll be much easier for us to capture the opportunity. It's like during winter, let's train our body to be really strong so that when summer comes, when spring comes, we can run really quickly. So do you think the phone keeps being the thing for a long time, both for you and kind of for the world? I think so. Like if you fast forward out five years from now, is the phone still the primary thing that everybody has with them all the time?

41:34A computing device made up of a large screen with some camera capability, I think is going to be the dominating form factor for a long time. People have said voice might be taking over or kind of immersion into virtual reality. But I think those are more like in addition to the main form factor. You can't get the same level of utility through just audio or it doesn't feel that good to always be in a virtual environment. So I think this form factor will be really key. But I think maybe what happens on the OS side and the software side could change with all the improvements we're seeing in AI today.

42:10Yeah, what does that look like, do you think, as you cast out a few years? I think the thing I keep hearing is basically like, how do we take your phone out of being kind of an app machine, right? All your device does is provide a bunch of icons that you tap on to go into sort of individual worlds that are apps. And how do we kind of stitch it all back together in a way that makes more sense? And that's what like Alexa and Google Assistant were supposed to be. That's what everybody's talking about with the AI chatbots. Is that where you think we're headed or do you see something else? I think so.

42:39I think there's not a lot of dumb people. I think everybody sees a similar kind of long-term vision, but everybody might have a different solution or hypothesis on how to get there. If we take one step back and just think about what it means to be a tech company, I think we need to either, not just our company, but the tech company community, we either have to enable consumers to do something they weren't able to do before, or we need to enable them to do it something they can already do, but much faster or much cheaper. So I think those are the guiding principles for how we evolve the OS as well.

43:13Like, okay, it's an app machine right now. It's an app launcher. That actually hasn't changed since the Symbian days, right? Symbian was also home screen or lock screen with a bunch of apps that you open. It took up the entire screen. You went back to the home screen and launched something else. So I think if you want to remove that metaphor, you need to create a new metaphor that's way more efficient than before and easy to understand and easy to use. Do you have a theory about what that metaphor looks like? Is it just a text box? Like is the chat GPT bot? I think some text, not all text probably.

43:46some buttons because writing is still slower than just pressing something and some augmentation via voice. I think it needs to slowly augment away the apps. Like today we're using some really simple apps, like mindless scrolling apps. What if we wanted to accomplish more complicated tasks like 3D modeling or photo editing or I don't know what other use case there might be. It's actually quite difficult to learn how to use these new apps. Maybe we can just tell the phone what we need to do and it would use those apps for us without the apps even being visible in the foreground. I think that could be like enough utility to transition to a new metaphor.

44:27Yeah. I mean, that is like my favorite sort of UI game to play. It's the plane ticket example, right? Like I need to go to San Francisco and I would like to buy a plane ticket to get to San Francisco. It turns out that doing like a back and forth with a voice assistant to do that is terrible. Doing a back and forth with the chat bot is terrible. But also the way we have it now where I'm in six apps, I'm comparing a bunch of different things, like also terrible. So this question of like, what is actually a better structure for doing something like that feels like sort of the next big question of the next, you know, five years.

44:59And there's a million versions of that, right? Where it's like, I just want to, I want to find something to watch on my TV or I want to book a reservation to go to dinner. These things that we've all learned how to do in these really specific, not that good ways, we have to invent something better for. And like the underlying tech is getting there, but the products don't seem to have quite solved it yet. Yeah, I think everybody sees what the future needs to be, but I think the really tricky part is finding the right user interface that's easy to understand and can get adoption from consumers. You know, as we scale these products into the hands of millions of consumers, we also have a shot at implementing our version to see if it sticks or not, but who knows, right?

45:37because I don't think it's the underlying technology that's going to be the most challenging part because it's maturing. It's going to be the right user interface. I have two more questions, then I'm going to let you go. The first is one of the things that has happened is that this sort of transparent design that you guys have bet really big on is starting to percolate out. They're like Beats has a pair of headphones that looks suspiciously like somebody at Apple got a hold of the nothing headphones and made those but for Beats. the transparent look is you guys didn't invent it, but I think it restarted a bit as nothing started to come out.

46:12You're going to be in a position where like any good startup, there are these big companies that have infinite resources and are going to copy every cool thing you do really fast. How do you stay out in front of that? I think Apple won't, I mean, big companies won't really copy us because they already have a much more mass market consumer base. By copying us, they actually limit the amount of users that they can potentially talk to because our design is more niche. But on the flip side, they have 100 ,000 engineers and they can just throw a thousand of them at any specific problem for us monomer people.

46:46And they can use their sub-brands like what you just mentioned to do something more niche. But actually also committing to creating something transparent is actually, it's a lot of work. I don't know if you've seen some of my tweets on how we accomplished this design. I mean, it's very easy to make the glue look very ugly because everything is visible now. It's very easy in the manufacturing process for there to be dust. So it actually adds a lot to our costs of making the product transparent. I don't think it's something that like these big companies with a lot of resource, of course they can do it, but I don't know if the economics makes sense for them to increase the cost of all their products just to make it look a little bit different.

47:25I think it's a good strategy for us because we need to find our niche and wedge ourselves into the market. So I'm not that worried about other people copying. Also, if our vision is to make tech fun again, if we can inspire other people to do more interesting things, that it's still okay. However, if they go straight for some of the user interfaces that we create, like for me, I see the Glyph interface as a UI that we're trying to create. I think that's when we're going to start defending ourselves. Okay. So do you think about it that ruthlessly in thinking about products? Like is one of the sort of check boxes for new products, is this something that these big companies can or won't do?

48:04I don't think we're that, we weren't that kind of structured about this. It just happened. But we realized throughout the process how difficult it was to actually make these products, which kind of alleviated our worry that people would aggressively go after this. Okay. All right. So last thing, and then I'll let you go. The phone two is, I think, in a lot of ways, a much better phone one. Is that the right path to be on in this space where you're trying to sort of build something like just keep getting a little better every year? Or do you think there is room for you in this industry to try something wildly different and new?

48:38I think both. I think if you keep getting a little bit better every half a year or every year, it really compounds, right? So you end up like maybe— I don't know. I think Apple would say that's what they've been doing for the last decade. and then you show up saying everybody's super boring because they all just get 10 % better every year. I don't know. I feel like the changes between the Phone 1 and Phone 2 and how different it is, is a lot bigger than some of these bigger companies. Okay, like give me an example. What on there feels... I think the software looks completely different as an example.

49:10So when we launched the Phone 1, we were only able to make stock Android stable. That's the extent of our engineering resource. Now we can start experimenting with our own ideas, our own widgets, our own monochrome UI, et cetera. So I think at least that looks very different. And we have a very exciting roadmap for where to take that in the future. So at least the next few generations or next couple of years, there'll be a lot of exciting stuff happening on the software side. What about on the hardware front? Is there a, I know you've said somewhat controversially, I read a thing this morning that said like, Carl Paye's reality distortion field puts Steve Jobs to shame.

49:44After you said you're not into foldable phones as an idea, I'm very bullish on flip phones personally, and I'm happy to give you a long speech about why I love flip phones, if you'd like. But you have not seemed all that interested in that. You're still on this kind of like most people's experience of a smartphone. What else can we add to it? Do you think there's big new ideas to be had there? The thing for us is every product needs to be profitable and every product needs to be a hit because we don't have infinite resource. So foldables and flip phones are not that exciting yet. Over time, as the category matures, as the crease starts really disappearing, as apps are being tailored to this new form factor.

50:21I think it's something we could consider. We're not saying no. But I don't think it's the thing that's going to really change the paradigm. I don't think it's the thing that's going to make Android win over iOS. I don't think it's what's going to make us go from a niche smartphone maker to the next big tech company. So it's okay. We just got to build a really solid base of products and we keep getting better. Hopefully we build up some cash to try and invent the next thing. Fair enough. All right. Well, when either the next thing happens or the phone three like flips and folds and you've just been lying to me this whole time, you're going to come back and we're going to talk about it.

50:58Okay. Thank you, Carl. Really appreciate it. Thank you. All right. One more break and then we are going to get deep into our feelings about TV robots.

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53:49Welcome back. Andrew Marino is here. Andrew, you have told me very little about what's about to happen to me and to us in the universe, except you told me you want to talk about TV remotes. Yeah. Yeah, we have a lot of opinions about TV remotes in this Vergecast producers club here. And I wanted to share that discussion with the audience because I think it's worth talking about. I should say in preparation for this, I went around my house and found every single remote that I have. It turns out there were seven. Three of them, I could not tell you what they go to, but I have four functioning remotes and three others in my house.

54:25Liam James is also here. Liam, who usually refuses to be on the podcast, demanded to be on the podcast. Well, someone has to counter your terrible opinions on remote control. So I mean, that's fair. We've been talking about this segment and this issue for a very long time. This might be six or seven hours long. So buckle up, everybody. Andrew, you you have been talking to some people and doing some research. Where would you like to start here? OK, I want to start with one of the most frustrating remotes I've ever used, which kind of started this conversation about how remote design is kind of an afterthought so i have this remote and it is one of the novelty remotes because i needed a universal remote for my tv okay and it's shaped like a fishing reel what it looks like a fishing reel has a little like crank on the side oh boy so it actually works with the remote and i'll get to that you know what this looks like to me is like an old timey like nintendo video game controller like you know the the gun that you had for duck hunt on like the old nintendo there's a uh dreamcast fishing remote that is a like that yeah exactly it's shaped like a fishing reel there's a skinny handle and there's like a bulbous spool shaped end to it the first problem is there's absolutely no way to lay this flat on the table because there's a little trigger on the back and if you lay it on the table it just kind it goes to the side also there's a gigantic button on the side of the remote that makes this very loud noise oh no like it sounds like a fishing reel being yanked pressing this button also turns on the sounds for the remote so i can be like i'm reeling it right now is this marketed to children it's this is marketed just to you andrew like this i'm not convinced this is a real product this is something someone made and conned you into buying on the internet it's probably like a father's day present kind of thing so obviously you don't want annoying sound every time you use the remote so you can turn it off by pressing the button again but if you put it on the couch it's going to hit that button again it's really annoying and then all the other buttons are so tiny and hard to find the volume up button is like two little triangles on the left the thing you're holding up looks like a slightly bigger like calculator watch where all the buttons are the same and tiny and like god help you trying to figure out what any of them are so obviously this is like a dramatic version of a bad remote design but there are similar kind of problems with remotes like my least favorite is that comcast silver remote this one oh yeah david has it here this is one of the seven that i have in my house i don't have a comcast box anymore but i have this remote which means there's like a 60 chance i'm paying comcast ten dollars a month for this remote at some point.

57:13But I agree. This is one of the all time worst remotes. And it has the same problem that you were just showing. It has a million buttons. They're all basically the same. You can't find anything just like with your fingers. I agree. This is like one of the worst remotes of all time. Yeah, this is one of the remotes that's like notorious for being taped off for certain areas. So like you give to your grandparents, it's like, here are the three buttons you need to know how to use. Do not touch the input button. This remote, I'm sorry. I'm just now obsessed with this remote. I'm looking at this remote now.

57:43It has five buttons just to control picture in picture mode, which no one ever uses on their Comcast box. And overwhelmingly their Comcast box probably doesn't support. It has buttons marked guide, info, menu, exit, help, and last. There's an A, B, and C. Like, what are we, what are we doing? This is, there are five buttons that you use to turn things on at the top of this. This is, yeah, This just makes me angry to look at. Right. So I wanted to know, how did we get to this point? Why are remotes so poorly designed? So the first person I talked to was Steve Terbeck. He's a designer in Brooklyn.

58:19One of the biggest things I've worked on is how to explain to people, normal people, what design is. He wrote this really great blog about the design of remote controls and the different levels of simplicity. he pointed out the obvious reason why a lot of remotes are quote-unquote bad. The key thing about remotes is that even though they're the most important thing to the user, they're the last thing that the company thinks about making. And generally speaking, they're trying to make them as cheaply as possible. And so that often means using a bunch of stock remotes that are kind of manufactured in a hundred different places.

58:53And yet, like the actual, the thing that you hold in your hand for a good five to ten years, it doesn't seem to be that important. So I think it's more of a cultural thing rather than an engineering problem. I guess that's true. That also explains right why like your cable box looks like crap. It's just not the thing people ultimately at the end of the day care about. Yeah. But it's the least satisfying answer. It really is. But it's probably right. That makes sense. But also, yeah, requires me to accept that people don't care about things that they should. Yeah, exactly. So I talked to someone else who actually has designed remotes.

59:26His name is Sajid. He worked on the Philips UX design. The whole effort was called One UX, which is basically one user experience across all of Philips products. Not only doing the digital interface designs, remote controls are an integral part of using a product like a television. So naturally it became part of the process to take a look at the remote controls and make that entire experience, end-to-end experience, more pleasant for our users. Something immediately when I asked, like, why can't we just have like a simple remote design? He alluded to the obstacles and red tape and a lot of this kind of stuff.

1:00:05When you try to do something totally divergent and let's say, OK, let's remove the buttons, let's introduce a trackpad. And then there will be a lot of pushback because that demands new engineering, new product in industrial design, new testing. And there is skepticism around whether this will work or not. So you have to convince a lot of stakeholders to be able to adopt anything that's diverging from the traditional way of doing things. And this is kind of like an overall tech design problem, not specific to TV remotes. That's a reason why a lot of TVs look exactly the same and a lot of laptops and mice and all that.

1:00:43Well, and I think I wonder if that also explains these kinds of, you know, every imaginable button and idea thing. Like this just made me think of, for some reason, I was talking to somebody years ago who was making an email app and they were like, pull up gmail.com. And I'd like to tell you about the product manager for every single pixel on this website. And it's like, there's a reason that there's something in this corner and there's a reason that there's something in this corner and on this sidebar and up here. And there's a person who is in charge of all of this. And they are sitting in meetings demanding that their thing be front and center.

1:01:14So ultimately they make everything front and center, which makes everything a total nightmare. And I'm sitting here looking at both this Comcast remote with a billion buttons and my old Vizio remote, which has a million buttons on one side and then a full keyboard on the back. Oh, I love that one. I actually, to be honest, there's like something very good about this particular remote, but you can just see it too, right? There's a million different products inside of this one remote and they all just shove it all together because it seems easier than like having opinions about things. Yeah. Both designers talked about this.

1:01:45Like over time, there's been so many iterations of the TV remote controlling the DVD player, the home theater system, the VCR, your music devices, your computer. All of these interfaces that you are trying to control kind of are hidden behind something that you need to access. And to access those is the remote control. And that makes it you need to expose all of those functions and features on the remote control so that you can have a one click access to them. Right. So then you add up adding buttons and functions. So you can tell when there's not a lot of research and development being put into a remote.

1:02:22So how would you test a good design is what I asked them. Steve had a lot of ideas on how we can get to that place. You have every designer who has a way that they think about doing it. But it turns out a lot of our ideas are not that great. And so I'm more of a kind of user experience designer where you design stuff and then you test it. And if your ego is strong enough to sit through like hundreds of people going through your device, you end up in a much better place. And that is what Sajid's team ended up doing was testing out this stuff in people's homes versus them coming to a lab. That's the best way to kind of understand what you are designing is getting used in the real world.

1:03:01Like it could be somebody in their home trying to use a TV while attending a kid and something they are doing on the side. Like, how do you juggle your day-to-day life around the products that you are, because your product is going and sitting inside their home. It's becoming a part of their life. Well, my question on that is how do they test this? Because I think part of the challenge here is that everybody is used to a giant slab full of buttons and there's something awful, but something sort of familiar about that. So if you do have this like big divergent idea, how do you test to see if it's working?

1:03:34Like, what are they looking for? What is, what does a better remote even look like? So the best scenario that people want, which I think kind of is a flaw in TV remotes, is everyone wants something to be like one click away. We have wanted to understand what are some of those priorities for the users. Most of them don't want to be looking down at the remote control while trying to experience the content they're trying to enjoy. One of the big insights was make this a non-interruptive process. Remote control should not be interrupted to the experience of enjoying the content. And at the same time, things should be one click away.

1:04:14Can I tell you my crazy theory? I wonder if the problem is that we conflate those two things that I can do it easily without looking down and I have to be able to do it in one click are the same thing because they're not the same thing. Like for me, it's all every time I have to look down at my remote, we have failed. But I'm happy to like do two or three things as long as I kind of understand how to get there quickly and don't have to look down. I am much more in favor of like, if I had to like do the Konami code every time to do something, but I like knew it and didn't have to look it up every single time, that still feels like a victory to me.

1:04:49But maybe I'm not all people. Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty satisfied with like the Netflix button and the Hulu button. It's like multiple streaming service buttons and on one remote. That's, I mean, that works for me. But what Sajid's team ended up going with is kind of more, I don't want to say minimalist, but like a smaller design with just like focusing on a trackpad? Which is like a smaller in size. The trackpad was like the major portion of the design and the interface. So trackpad can be just a trackpad, but then trackpad can be with clickable areas. So we had like top, right, top, bottom, left and right edges of the trackpad as clickable.

1:05:26So you could do multiple interactions. And then we also, because we had to do incorporate so much into one trackpad. So we said, OK, how can we increase more functions within a trackpad? So you have a single click, you have a long press, you have a long press and a slide. So we kind of use all those gestures to increase the amount of things that you can do with just a square surface. I saw Liam really shaking his head. This is my biggest frustration with modern remotes. You know, I completely agree with what Steve said, right? Most of our ideas are bad. I think Johnny Ives' worst contribution to technology design in his entire career was putting a touch surface on a remote control.

1:06:08It's a terrible experience. I've never seen anybody do it, right? If anyone should be able to do it, it's Apple, and their remote is a joke. Yes, I could not agree more with this. The, like, true torturousness of trying to figure out how to even hold that Siri remote in your hand was such a gigantic disaster. to me it's like liam listening to you talk about it just made me think of the the keyboard that used to be in the apple tv where you had to swipe from letter to letter and it was so fine in order to make it quick to swipe between things that actually landing on the letter you wanted to click on was like borderline impossible it was awful i will say the things that sajid is talking about about having these kind of different interactions built into the same thing the single press the long press whatever i like that in theory i just have never seen anyone do it well i don't think even the second version of this this improved version of this remote still has a touch surface on it that's prone to like spurious inputs like you just accidentally do things while you're watching a movie that takes you out of the moment and sorry who thought putting this fucking siri button on the side of the remote was a good idea it's just like every time you try to take a screenshot on your iphone you accidentally turn it off or do some weird thing it's like it's like the screech on the fishing reel it's like they're trolling us it's like let's just see how crazy we can drive people i would get more use out of the reel spinning thing than i do with the siri button because at least that's like a fidget spinner i can play with while i'm watching tv what you can do is um you can hold the trigger on the back of the remote and then use the reel oh my god and it will put the volume up on the that incredible remote that should be marketed as guaranteed divorce just pop this out next to your spouse and give it a go so we we're talking a lot about what bad remote design is but i want to talk about what everyone thinks is good tv remote design okay liam you go first so this isn't the remote i use every day unfortunately but my favorite remote of all time is the xbox One media remote.

1:08:21Of all time? Of all time. This is what you want to, really? This is the sword I'm going to die on. I'm ready, willing, and able. Hear me out. The Xbox One was a terrible product, but from it came a great input device. And if you've ever used a Microsoft input device, like go back to the Intelli Explorer mouse from the 90s to their ergonomic keyboards, Microsoft knows how to make a good input device. And I think this is just like peak remote design. It's not made out of a slab of aluminum or any sort of fancy material. It's just a plastic remote with buttons on it. But what I like about it is the way it feels in my hand because it has a rounded back.

1:09:05However, even though it has a rounded back, when you put it on your coffee table, it still stands up straight, which is just kind of like a cool gimmicky bit. But I just, it makes me smile every time I see it. It has backlit buttons, which are necessary only because all the buttons are black and it is a black remote, which I admit. Right. It needs backlit buttons because it's a bad remote that you can't use without having to look down at it and blind yourself in the dark. This is, this is great. This is what I was hoping for too. I hard disagree. It is definitely a concession of the design to have it all black, but every design has compromises, right?

1:09:39You want something that doesn't look ugly on your coffee table that has like a giant Netflix logo and an Amazon logo and whatever else on it, right? This is a really nice looking design, but it's also really ergonomic. It feels really nice to use. Even though the buttons are covered with a layer of like soft touch plastic over the top to make it water resistant, they feel really nice when you click them. Up, down, left, right are very easy, even though they're set inside a circle, they're very easy to distinguish with your thumb without looking at the remote. And then this is for me the most important thing, and this is what makes this remote stand out to me.

1:10:17So most of our like media streamer remotes nowadays have about like 12 or 13 buttons on them, right? This new Siri remote or whatever it's called has I think 12 buttons if you count up, down, left, right as separate buttons. This has those same 13 buttons that you would normally have. But then it has, for serious video watchers, some dedicated video control buttons at the bottom. So you can scrub forward, back, play, pause. Or let's say you're inside of a video playlist. This one in particular I love. You can skip to the next track. There isn't a button on most media streamer. Actually, I can't think of another one that has that button.

1:10:56So if I'm queuing up a playlist of my favorite must-see TV sitcoms from the 90s on shuffle. And, you know, I've seen a couple too many episodes of Frasier. I can click the next track button and get there. So I just love it. It feels nice. It's not too heavy. It's not too small. It doesn't get lost in a couch, regardless of what David might say. And yeah, I just love it. It's a good remote. Best of all time is a truly wild take. All right. What do you got? What's better than this remote? I just mostly feel like the thing you're controlling with it is your Xbox One, which immediately removes it from all contention forever and ever and ever.

1:11:36Okay, that's a really good point. This remote is really good for operating a device that makes me want to throw it out the window 450 times a day. Totally fair. Totally fair. I should have started this whole thing with the Xbox One media remote is using standard like media streamer IR codes. codes and you can get this to work on i i've had it work on an nvidia shield i've had it work on an apple tv i've had it work on an xbox series x which it's supposed to not work with that's it's fair i will say this is the kind of remote that i think like if logitech made it and sold it as like a use it for all of your other kinds of devices remote it would have done very well my answer i have two and ultimately i'm just going to pick one but i want to quickly honorable mention to the only remote that I have ever paid money for on purpose, which is the Roku.

1:12:29I have four Roku remotes on my desk right now. This is the life I lead. I believe this is the Roku Voice Remote Pro. Yeah. This is a very good remote. And it's very good for two reasons. One is because it's a little bigger and sort of heftier than the other Roku remotes. It feels better to hold. It feels like a thing instead of the plastic nonsense that Roku mostly ships. But it has two things that are very good. One, it has integrated voice search. So you just press the microphone button, hold it up to your face and voice search. And two, it has a headphone jack. And private listening on the Roku is like the single greatest streaming box innovation of the last decade, as far as I'm concerned.

1:13:07I love it very much. And Roku deserves huge credit. So feature wise, I think this is my favorite remote ever. But in terms of like just the thing to hold in my hand and use, it's the Nvidia Shield remote. Oh, the Toblerone. It's a Toblerone. It's a weird shape, which is weird because it doesn't sit sort of pleasingly flat on my coffee table. But I can pick it out from all the other remotes that I have. So it's like unique. It feels really good to hold, which I think is important. Are you guys, when you're sitting on the couch watching something, are you holding the remote or is the remote on the couch next to you or is the remote on the coffee table?

1:13:4150-50. Yeah, as an audio engineer, I am constantly moving the volume up and down on the TV. so i i love the roku rumo also so i'm constantly like moving the buttons on the side of the roku rumo up and down side volume controls also a good innovation of agrees yeah well done on that but i will stop with the shield shortly here but it is another one that has nice buttons kind of like you're talking about liam where they're not super separated but you can kind of feel the difference between all of them and nvidia did a thing that i really like where it has a customizable button that you can like aggressively customize it can do almost anything it can launch almost anything it can get to menus and you can have it do different things for one press two presses three presses so it becomes the thing that's like i can hand this remote to somebody and they're going to be able to figure out how to use it but if i have it i'm better at it and i actually feel like that's sort of the sweet spot where like most of these kind of macroeve remotes like sadja just talking about are going to have a huge learning curve but i like these ones where it's like most people could just sit down and figure it out, but I have these like power tools on top of it.

1:14:49And for that reason, I feel like NVIDIA really got this right. Okay. So the NVIDIA Shield Toblerone is a great remote. I have to agree. It's actually my half daily driver. So I watch movies using the NVIDIA Shield and everything else on my Apple TV. For the nerds, it's just because I want pass-through audio and Plex can do pass-through audio on the NVIDIA Shield. But I do have a couple comments about this remote one you just knocked my baby for having black on black buttons same thing also that remote's backlit you can turn the backlight off you can turn the backlight off but then it's really hard to see at night my one other knock on that remote and maybe this maybe i just got a bad one but uh i find the up down left right to be like i just it doesn't feel like it's gonna last forever do you know what i mean like i've had it since the nvidia shield pro came out what is that couple of years?

1:15:43It just feels like it's not the way it was when I got it. And it's starting to get a little less satisfying to click. That's fair. A lot of these, like I have a couple of fire TV ones too, that have the same kind of all one piece wheel and they all feel a little bit like they're one grain of dust away from just totally breaking, but I've been using the shield one for a long time and it's still fine. So I have high hopes. Uh, Andrew, I want to know, I want to know what yours is. Is it is it the fishing rod? Please tell me it's the fishing. It is not the fishing rod. I have to agree that like I love the Roku remote and there's different reasons, I think, than what you said.

1:16:22Really like the play state. The way we watch TV now is not like dialing numbers and we don't go up and down usually on channels. So what this prioritizes is is the play and pause. So like right where you're, when you're holding the remote, right where your thumb is, is the play and pause button. And that is the most important thing to do while you're watching TV, right? Yep. And it's a little like concave too. So your thumb just kind of nestles on it. It's, they did it. It's very nice. And then there is a home button and a back button. And those are right at the top of the remote. And you know, if you need to go back, just put your thumbs up to the back.

1:17:02And it's just like a really flexible remote. That's a product of like us being in the streaming world. And they started to get it right during the TiVo days. I have this TiVo remote here. And if you see this yellow button in the center of the remote is a pause button. And it is like they clearly understood that this was the most important part of the remote. And it's like right where your thumb would be when you hold it. Anything that prioritizes the play and pause, that's where we should be going towards right now. I had never thought about this until you said this, but now I'm looking at all these other remotes and almost none of them do.

1:17:40Yeah. Like on this horrible Comcast remote, I couldn't even tell you what it's prioritizing. But the play pause buttons are actually up from where you naturally hold it. So you have to like shimmy it in your hand just to get to the pause button. This Vizio remote, it really wants you to launch the Vizio smart apps because that's cool. and a thing people want to do. And most of them, the volume is actually where your finger goes. And that sort of makes sense. But I think you're totally right that play pause should be like naturally as you hold the thing, that's where your thumb should sit. Yeah.

1:18:09And while you're holding the remote, you can hold pause and then do the volume up and down with your other finger at the same time. True. So you can really, it's really flexible. Yeah. And my LG remote that it comes with my TV has a Netflix button and Amazon Go button, acknowledges that streaming is important. The play and pause button are all the way tiny at the bottom. And it's so tiny, you can't even tell. Like, they're just next to each other. There's no prioritize of what is... Yeah, it's terrible. Like, how often am I going fast forwarding? You know, it's the same size as the play. And the play and the pause button are separate buttons.

1:18:45I was just about to say, we can agree that play and pause should be the same button. Yeah, absolutely. And then can I just give an honorable mention? Please. Which is the Zenith Space Command remote, which is a very old TV remote from the 60s, 70s. All it is is just a tuning fork and you press the buttons. There's four buttons. One is channel lower, volume mute, on and off, and channel higher. Can you press the buttons near your microphone? Because I suspect they make great noises. Yes. That's what I'm talking about right there. That's a button. There's a really high frequency that is chiming with this tuning fork in the remote.

1:19:28Then the TV picks it up and does that command. And I just love it because it just stays flat on the table. It is just a chocolate bar, basically. And it has four big buttons. And I just want a remote like this again. That's just a thing with four big buttons. So that doesn't use infrared. It uses sound? Correct, yeah. Incredible. It does not use any electronics. It is just you press a button and it makes an actual sound with a tuning fork that changes the TV. This would absolutely not work in 2023, but I love it. There should be an adapter that you could plug your TV into to use this thing. Andrew, this brings me to a big picture question that I've been wondering about.

1:20:11And I wonder if you talked to Steve and Sajid about it too, which is that it seems like the world should go in one of two directions. either all of these companies need to care about and design and build better remotes that work for everybody and i wonder if that's even possible especially because all this stuff is so mainstream now that like if roku radically redesigned their remote i kind of feel like it would go badly the apple tv is a perfect example right but then on the other side there have been various attempts at like making a remote industry logitech sold the harmony there was like the cavo was a thing for a minute there.

1:20:44People have tried to do universal remotes. Do you guys remember when everybody was like, oh, we're going to make a universal remote that's also a smart home controller, and that had a moment? Google was like, just screw that user smartphone. Now they have a remote that's kind of like everybody else's remote. Can we make an accessory industry out of this? Can TV makers do this, or are we just sort of stuck in this crappy world of mediocre remotes forever. What's your sense coming out of all this? Well, I talked to Sajid a little bit about the future of this. Now with virtual reality and AR and all of that coming in, maybe there's something else.

1:21:19I don't know. We won't be even looking at each other anymore. So remotes are like maybe a small part of the larger problem that the technology revolution is going to kind of bring us. And now there are like TVs you can control with your phones. So you don't even actually need a remote control. Phones, in some cases, have also become a second screen for televisions. For example, there are ways, things you can do with second screen. You're watching something on, let's say, Amazon Prime on your TV, and there is a product that you saw, your phone could tell you what that product is, and you can buy it from Amazon.

1:21:59I think the phone remote idea is horrible and I hate every phone remote because you have to look at it it's like it's the opposite of what I'm looking for in a remote which is like a thing that I can hold in my hand that doesn't light up like Liam's stupid remote and doesn't make me look at it like Liam's stupid remote and doesn't get lost in the cushions like Liam's stupid remote I just want like a little brick that I can feel this is like I just keep thinking about like Apple's vision pro where it's like the sort of look and click your fingers and I'm like that's the closest thing to a sort of virtual remote interface that I'm interested in.

1:22:31I hate the smartphone as remote thing. It's fine in a pinch when I lose Liam's stupid remote in the couch cushions, but it is not what I'm looking for like day to day at all. Yeah. I absolutely hate the reliance on a smartphone to control things. And I think it's becoming a problem in like the home theater world. Like if you buy a sound bar, a lot of times there's functionality locked behind the app. So they give you one of these cheap hack-in remotes. But if you want to change how it's processing Atmos or something like that, you got to download the app and link it up to this box. And is this company going to continue to develop this app?

1:23:11Because we know you can't just make an app and put it on the smartphone and expect it to just continue working forever, right? You have to continue to develop it to make sure it continues to work. So every time I see TV companies saying something like that or home theater companies, it's like you've already proven to us that you make terrible software. Just the worst imaginable. Only the audio industry can eclipse you in making terrible software. And you want me to use your iOS app to actually control your device? No, thank you. I don't get my iPhone out to control my TV unless I have just absolutely given up.

1:23:47because you've lost your Xbox remote in the couch cushions again. Yes. Just to be clear, back check here. David, your remote lights up, is also hard to see in the dark and is smaller than mine by thickness. So it's easier to get lost in the couch. So, you know, just pointing that out. That's outrageous. My Toblerone sticks out when it falls into the couch and I just yoink it right out. It's like the sword in the stone style. I just pull it out of the couch, get back to it. You know, something I liked, And I know you guys are going to have some feelings about the Wii U controller with the whole screen on it.

1:24:22Oh. I have a TV with a second screen controller. Ooh. What do you think about that? So basically, what if my Nintendo Switch was also my TV remote? Yeah. I love this. I'm in. That's the most impractical thing I've ever heard, and I love it already. No, absolutely. I don't want software and screens to control my viewing experience. Yeah. One more thing before we go, I want to talk about voice control and whether you think we can rely totally on that or is this an added feature or we should just not use it at all. I don't like it. I find it really handy for search when you're looking for something with like an obnoxious title to type out.

1:25:04But I very rarely use it. That's interesting. I use it a lot, but only for search. I think the idea that it's going to be easier to lift my remote to my mouth and say open Netflix than it will be to just press the Netflix button is just never going to be the case. But search on screens is awful. And, you know, going left, left, left, right, right, right, up, down, up, down to get to the letter is just sucks. And that's also a place I use my smartphone a lot. Like Roku has the thing where you can type with your phone keyboard into the text box on the screen. Love that. but I use voice pretty regularly.

1:25:39If I know what I want to watch, that's almost always the fastest way for me to get there. But I don't, if that was my only remote, it would drive me and everyone else in my home crazy. I mean, I just think about all the times that like Siri activates because of something it hears on my television. And like, good God, if it could control the TV in the process, I'd be screwed. Yeah, the only time that has worked really well for me is in like 2018 when I asked my Google Home, play Stranger Things in my living room. And that has only the only time it's ever worked is specifically watching Stranger Things on Netflix.

1:26:16But it probably felt like magic. Yeah, it felt like magic. I felt like the future. And ever since then, nothing has really worked as well with voice for me. That sounds about right. So, okay, I know, I know we have to go here, but did you ask them about the grandparent thing where you have to cover 80 % of the buttons and then hand it to them. It's like the babysitter test was always the one that I think of too, right? Because these are like social objects, right? Lots of people use them. Do they look at this and think, okay, the fact that you have to like sharpie an arrow to the play button and the guide button, because those are the only ones that people should touch.

1:26:50Is that like a miserable design failure of anyone who has ever tried to make remotes? Yeah. Steve in particular called this out. Most designers, especially remote control designers, We're in a funny position where we have, I think, a certain responsibility to try and push the state of the art to be a little bit better, even if that means you're just putting a little bit more work into your on-screen menu design or whatever it is, or advocating in that critical meeting to spend another 10 cents per unit or something like that. Because I think a lot of people, they're given the remote and they have no choice.

1:27:23And I feel like we have a little bit of responsibility to kind of tip the balance to them. And if you see these little photographs of people, say, like taking their grandparents' remotes and covering over all the buttons except for the volume and the PBS button or something like that, that's a little bit of failure in it. I feel like we could do a little better there. Yeah. Like, I would like fewer buttons on remotes in general, but I also think, like, clarity above all things, right? Even if you're going to hand me a remote full of buttons, most people are relatively smart. They should be able to figure out what is going on.

1:27:55I was looking while you were talking and speaking of the back button on the Roku remote, I'm back on my Silver Xfinity remote. And there are six things on here that you could plausibly think are the back button. Like if I just want to go back one, there are literally six things that I think I could plausibly argue are the right one. I'm pretty sure I know what the right one is, but I genuinely don't know for sure. And it's like, let's fix that problem. And then we can worry about having a million buttons for a million streaming services. Like just teach me where back is and then we can go from there.

1:28:26Exactly. Can you, can you play us out with the fishing rod? We should take a break, but I just want to hear from the fishing rod one more time before we go.

1:28:39And with that, he launches Hulu. All right. Thank you both. You listening should email us all of your thoughts about your favorite remotes ever. Vergecastattheverge.com. Send us your favorite remote ever, ideally with a picture. And we'll talk about as many of them as we can. on the show. This is delightful. Andrew, Liam, thank you both again. Let's do the hotline. Wrap the show up.

1:29:04As a reminder, the hotline number is 866-VERGE-11. Call and ask us all your deepest, darkest, weirdest tech questions. We love them all. Before we get into this week's question, let me just play you a voicemail we got from Sean, who called in to respond to last week's question about how to keep your battery healthy for longer. Hey, hey, this is Sean from Clearwater, Florida, talking about phone batteries. I drive for a living, so I have apps that track me and take up a bunch of my battery life. So I found out that it overheats really bad doing that. So what I've done is clip my phone to an air conditioner vent in my truck, and that will keep that phone battery nice and cool, not using as much electricity.

1:29:49Okay, hope it helps. Bye. I love this. These are our people. Thank you, VergeCast listeners, for being as weird about technology as we are. All right, this week's question, more on TV. It comes from Rahul. Hi, David and Verge team. My name is Rahul. I'm in San Antonio, Texas. I'm calling to ask you guys about TVs, particularly devices for TVs, because I'm tired of the crappy software on my LG OLED TV, and I refuse to get an Apple TV. That seems to be the only decent option out there. What does Google have nowadays? I had an Android TV years ago. I had other products. I know the Shield exists, but it's old now.

1:30:31So is there anything newer, anything updated since the Shield TV for an Android user to watch some streaming on their TV. I appreciate the answer this. Thanks. All right. First of all, I love this question because Rahul, you feel the pain that I feel with set-top boxes, which is that they're mostly all very bad. The Apple TV has some stuff going for it. The Shield, like you said, has some stuff going for it. But I want there to just be one that is like the one you should get, and there just really isn't. But I think there are really two answers to your question. One is the Nvidia Shield, which just from a pure raw power perspective is still probably the best Android thing on the market.

1:31:12It's a little overkill for a lot of things and some people aren't going to love the way that you have to kind of maintain the interface and all that stuff, but it's still very good. It's pretty expensive, but it's very good. But I would say for my money at this moment, Google's latest Chromecast, the one with Google TV, is probably the one to get. You can get the new Chromecast for as little as$30. It comes with a remote now, which is great because you don't have to just use your phone, but it's still just a dongle that plugs into your TV. The$30 one is just 1080p, and the$50 one does 4K and HDR and all the rest of that stuff.

1:31:48I would direct you to the$50 one for all those reasons, but also because it comes in more colors. The$30 Chromecast just comes in white. And I don't care for the dongle. But that white remote is going to get gross really, really fast. Maybe you're less gross about like eating Cheetos and then using your TV remote than I am. But that's just what happens. My remote would be truly disgusting if I had that white one around. But the new Chromecast is good. It has Google TV, which does a really good job aggregating content and recommendations and finding all that stuff. the remote works pretty well it's not my favorite but it's like eight buttons in a d-pad it's pretty simple and straightforward you'll figure it out the chromecast has all of the apps you probably want including apple tv which was a late addition to the google tv stuff but it's there now it just does a good job of being content first in the way that some others aren't so that's where i would start you it's not terribly expensive works pretty well it's a boring answer but just buy a chromecast I think that's the one.

1:32:48All right, that's it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to everyone who came on the show today. And especially as always, thank you for listening. There's lots more on all of this at theverge.com. If you want to see all the remotes we talked about, you should watch this episode on YouTube. We'll also put some links in the show notes, but also, you know, read theverge.com. It's a cool website. If you have thoughts, feelings, questions, or TV remotes you desperately want to talk about, please email us, vergecast at theverge.com. Tell us everything. or keep calling the hotline 866-VERGE-11. We're trying to answer at least one question on the show every week, but I think we're going to do a whole hotline episode soon.

1:33:23Keep sending all your thoughts and feelings. It's super fun to hear from you. We really love it. Thank you to everyone who has called in so far. This show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Brooke Minters is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neelai, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk about Reddit, Threads, Barbie, Oppenheimer, everything else going on this week. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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