The Nintendo Switch 2 is Finally Here!

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30:48Read, watch, and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com. All right, welcome back. I'm holding a switch too. Ideally, you've already seen our unboxing by the time you're watching this pod or listening to this pod. Is it ideally because you're not sure if you've gotten the edit done yet or ideally because maybe they haven't watched it and they're listening to this? A little bit of both. We're pretty unsure about when that's actually. Yeah, I'm going to try. Anyway, but yeah, we have it now. It's out the box. It's here in the studio. We get to do whatever we want. It's not tethered to something and you can only play like one game on repeat.

31:21We can actually jump around the settings and compare them to our other Switches, which is I have my Switch 1, which was color-weared. I've had this forever. You've had a Switch OLED. OLED. And so we were curious if we'd notice more differences there. Yeah, we can just jump right in. So if you watch that impressions video, there are some things that we noted. My main two things about the Switch 2, it's just bigger and it's more comfortable because it's bigger. The Joy-Cons are bigger. The buttons are bigger. The screen is bigger. The battery is also bigger but probably doesn't last much longer.

31:54But the whole thing is just bigger, which is nice. You have much bigger hands than me. yeah i mean i think people all generally like the bigger joy cons and bigger buttons yeah is that when i help when i hold that yeah i feel like this is a better size to just hold like that feels very large huh when i just hold that the joy cons are great are better when you're like using them sideways but yeah it is pretty big yeah and then i guess my slightly more nuanced take is like in this the same thing as the world of smartphones where people uh in our world will have a lot more to say about the fidelity and the sharpness and the contrast ratio and the pitch black blacks of the oled yeah i think a regular person just sees bigger brighter higher refresh rate and that looks better yeah and so if you are in the more nuanced crowd i think the switch to oled that eventually comes out will speak to you more yeah um but for most people i think just this being bigger is it just feels like an upgrade yeah to all the switches that came before it feels a a lot like a Steam Deck, to be honest.

32:56That size, yeah. Size-wise, I almost wonder if there were like, oh, well, we can make it bigger because look at how well the Steam Deck did. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure there were, it was probably well into development by then, but... Yeah, fair. And also just like, how do we make this console where we've kind of nailed the form factor of it already different than the Switch before, so like, bigger is the most obvious choice of that. Yeah. We did this off the pod, but Marques, can we compare the unlocking sounds? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to do a magnet sound. I just want to feel the magnet, it so bad that's all i care about so you unlock the switch oled yeah this is gonna be switch oled right it's pretty iconic so good now here's a switch too

33:41no what the heck is that let's reverse it's so wet it's so like staccato no it's goopy it's cleaner it's like goopy and wet and resin it's like but it shouldn't be clean it should be like wait on the home screen flipping between apps what does that sound on yours a little high pitch this is the switch too what the heck is that it's clickier like that that almost sounds more like the unlocking of that yeah yes click here

34:14switch asmr part The thing that really matters, okay, the thing that really matters, remove and reattach a Joy-Con. Whoa! Was that from the speaker? That was from the speaker. Oh, I didn't realize that added sound. It's really good. That's pretty cool. Oh, because your screen is on probably. Okay, hold on, let me see. Let me do the same thing on the Switch 2 now with the magnet. Yeah, it is. Ooh. That's kind of nice. I like the, like... Sorry. sorry i messed it up that's so funny i like the momentum that that sound had dude can you do it one more time yeah and there's a there's a little uh just watch the display as well yeah yeah oh there's an animation yeah oh it like and i bet and the right side's orange i'm assuming the left side's blue because of the joy cons are orange or blue that's kind of nice and it kind of mirrors the the sound the sound mirrors the sound of taking it off because it's like push the button pull it out click yeah it's nice yeah i also think the despite that sounding really good david from the yeah og switch the process of that is like the worst ever i hate sliding it on yeah this has a little animation i want to try this so bad i just want to try the magnets this is andrew this is your first time actually hold i watched you unbox it but i tried not to like really hold it so this is someone who's seen the videos but is now holding a switch too yeah Yeah, so there's definitely going to be a much, much, much, much, much bigger difference between Switch 1 and Switch 2.

35:52There had been rumors that the Switch OLED was originally going to be like a Switch Pro or some sort of Switch Pro, but they couldn't get an NVIDIA part in time or something, so they ended up just keeping the same internals but changing it slightly. That is funny branding because only enthusiasts are going to care deeply about OLED display. yeah funny enough all three of these switches have very different kickstands so the original switch has a horrible kickstand which is just like a tiny little nub it's bad that comes out the back yeah that breaks off really easily i don't like it at all um wow yeah it's horrible yeah they made the switch oleds way better it's a big piece of metal and it like swivels really far back kind of like a surface pro and allows you to do it at like all different angles with the switch two they sort of did a in between where they still have the the angled uh kickstand but it is now sort of like hollow it's full width but it's uh here i'll hold it up also is that plastic or metal metal it is metal okay this is also metal this is obviously much like wider and thicker and fuller so i'm probably more sturdy so i'm wondering if the OLED's more sturdy.

37:02I don't know. Okay, the Joy-Cons are so good. This magnet aspect is just and it's so interesting that it literally is just magnets and then like one little physical lever that basically is physically pushing it away, but it snaps in so nice. What do we call this thing? The grip case. Yeah, the grip to make two Joy-Cons into a singular controller. It sucked on the first one. It was so bad and this is so nice and this mouse thing is actually kind of nice does it give you hand pain a lot of people are talking about uh i mean i haven't used it long it's pretty good though yeah but like yeah i love these these magnets are the best part about the switch to remember when we got all excited because we were thinking that the button like reversed the polarity yeah it turned out though this is like a very elegant solution like it's just the perfect strength magnet and just the exact far enough push off of the switch that it will separate.

37:59Yeah. Which I'm sure took a lot of development time, but ends up feeling really satisfying to attach and detach. And then, yeah, I honestly think that's the two hugest things, no pun intended, about the Switch 2 upgrade are the way bigger display and the Joy-Cons just being awesome. I will say these bezels are way bigger than I thought they would be on the left and right side. Yeah, they're still pretty big. I don't mind as much. I kind of feel like they're leaving room for... Are the OLED bezels smaller? yeah uh yeah it's got a bigger outer bezel but a smaller sub bezel by a lot yeah but i'm thinking this switch to oled is gonna be pretty sick yeah and expensive i like how this has gone from since we first talked about switch two like they will probably make a switch oled and then like throughout this day of having it you're basically like when the switch to oled comes out in 2027.

38:51i mean the switch to oled is way contrastier way better viewing angles yeah it looks sorry yeah switch oled it looks way better it looks yeah fidelity wise it looks much better yeah it does so i feel like there's no doubt they got to do an oled version of the switch 2 but the other thing though is uh what was i about to say the switch 2 oled like i'm not going to cancel my pre-order oh that's for the price but yeah the price uh 449 for the switch which means an oled version is going to be even more that is gamers can't afford this that's true if you're a gamer you cannot afford this i'm sorry to be clear i was talking about like a gaming chair or something but yeah that's uh yeah and then you got to buy the you got to buy the micro sd express cards yes but look at these speakers they are very large speakers are big and nice and loud and the second that's the first thing i noticed when i started playing with it is oh these speakers are quite loud yeah so they announced a bunch of updates uh i think even today they announced additional updates and they showed some reporters new games the updated version of the new games and apparently the newer pokemon games scarlet and violet run like exceptionally better on switch 2 and apparently they don't lag like at all it's like a stable 60 the whole time nice which you know kind of probably should have been the norm but here we are yeah there are a bunch of things a bunch of games i want to run and test for a full review the other interesting headline that we saw remember um um there is a built-in screen protector on the switch too right and if you look right on the very corner you can actually kind of see it it's not as bad as like i was having flashbacks to the original galaxy fold which is like it's it looks like someone installed one in the store after you bought it and it's like i should just peel this off yeah uh it's not that bad so it is a pre-installed screen protector and you're apparently not supposed to remove it so i did i removed it I'm just kidding.

40:42Don't remove it. We left it on. If you want to install a screen protector over the top, you would literally install it over the top of the screen. I would never know there's a screen protector on that if you didn't tell me. It is really close to the edge. The article I read said that the instruction manual says not to open it because it will prevent glass shattering from going all over the place, which to me just feels like it's not a laminate layer. It feels like, yeah, it's like a windshield, But also, I mean, that's nice that glass shards wouldn't go anywhere if I broke it, but I'm probably more upset that my screen is broken.

41:18Yeah, it's broken. That it's not broken on the floor now. Yeah, that's a pretty big bezel though, is it not? It's a big bezel. It's bigger than I thought it would be. It's a bigger screen and a bigger body and everything is bigger. The thickness, the Z-axis thickness is the only thing that's roughly the same as the previous switches. otherwise you just feel like you're holding like a switch that someone just like stretched right in every other dimension interesting yeah yeah i'm pretty excited to be able to use these joy cons and not have my hands cramp like crazy especially because i'm now 30 and um have pain everywhere that's when it starts yeah yeah so but these are made of what steel i think the buttons so the the yeah let's see the buttons on the left and right in the inside of the joy cons are steel because the magnets inside the Switch are magnetizing to the steel.

42:09They're so much bigger. It's so much better than the old Switch. I don't know if you can zoom in on this, Adam, but here's Switch OLED buttons and here's Switch 2 buttons. Look at the size difference. The old Joy-Con... Keep it closer to you. Closer to me because it's in focus. The old Joy-Con, the bumper you would put on with the wrist strap would give you a bigger button. It was literally just a piece of plastic that pushed down on the really small button. These new bumpers now are just even out the, I'm putting the wrong one on, just even out the top part of it and gives you some feet for the mouse features, but you're still using the buttons because they're actually good buttons.

42:47Yeah, yeah, yeah. The SR and SL. Yeah. It has this nice matte finish too that's like a sprayed matte. So I'm curious how long that's going to last. My Colorware Switch one, I also have matte paint on it. And let me just say, it's a choice. Whenever I get something color-weared, I have to think about how it's going to wear. And if I use my Switch a lot more, it would be more obvious. But there's like shiny spots. Same thing on a laptop with like a matte keyboard. You get shiny spots. So we'll see how this ages. It's obviously currently in pristine condition. Yeah. I'm not very careful with my Switch OLED.

43:22See, it's not just me. I'm not very careful with my Switch OLED, and it's definitely got a lot of scars and like scuffs all over it. So yeah, we'll see how it goes. But yeah, very exciting. I'm pretty excited to replay Breath of the Wild because I never actually finished it I just got close to finishing it but I didn't want to finish it because I didn't want to have to start over and then I never played Tears of the Kingdom so I want to play that as well I'm currently still stuck in a temple in Breath of the Wild it like glitched in a weird way that like I can't revert out or get out of it I'm just like completely stuck so I have to just start completely over well maybe the Switch 2 update will fix that bug yeah throw it on the Switch 2 it'll like find you a way out or something sick update the big questions i'm going to have are battery life yes how is battery life that's going to be a big question uh also i would like to know how mario kart world is because i was told by many people that this game i have a lot of friends who have played this already and they've said that this game is like much bigger than just racing around in mario kart it is like the open world aspect is actually there's something to it there here's did i heard this about the open world part that sounds like kind of a bummer but you still have you still get the same uh like slowness on non-tracks which in free roam sounds like such a pain in the neck like in your race when you go off the track on the grass you go slower because you're racing but if you have i saw that you get the same slowness when you're like wandering around which when you're doing that you're only not on the track so you're just driving maybe when you're not like in a race it would tear in that off.

44:57I heard it was in the free room. Also, Nintendo... What? Side stepper? Nintendo, please make an update for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on Switch 2, because I don't think they've announced that yet, and that's crazy. There's a lot of Mario games. That's not a Mario game. It's coming with the OLED. It's coming with the OLED. Yeah. Considering it's going to be another eight years until Switch... How long was it between Switch 1 and Switch 1? I think you were right. I think it's eight years. It's been eight years since the original one. OLED release date. I think that was only like three years ago.

45:36Oh, 2021. Four years. Side note, I've been getting into Forza lately, and Ellis had to explain to me the difference between the games and your whole Super Mario thing going off-road and being slower. That's kind of how it also works in Forza, in like Horizon Worlds. So in Forza, you can also go off - Forza's like road. You can like drive off the road and then you're just like going slower. Yeah, but is there like a free roam area? Yeah, like the Horizon world. I just learned this like two days ago. Ellis had to explain this all to me. But there's like a free roam part of the game. And when you drive off the road, it's just slower.

46:08It's also a crazy realistic game. And this is an Italian plumber driving a go-kart. Which makes it better. Which is realistic. This was the conversation we were having in the car. Forza Motorsport is a fairly realistic game. Yeah. I would argue Horizon is like one step above Mario Kart as far as realism goes. Like there may as well be a drift button. You can be Pokey as a character. I didn't even know that was its name. But the tall guys from the desert levels in Super Mario 64. Or not Super Mario, Mario 64. You guys ever play two different racing games in the same day with drastically different levels of realism?

46:45I don't really like racing games. So no. Just me? What are the two? So if you go from like Forza to Need for Speed or back to Forza, like you play on Forza and you get like one tire on the gravel and you feel it in the controller and you're like, no, I got to get back on my line. And it's like it affects your speed. And then you do Need for Speed. Just driving a straight line. It doesn't matter. Yeah, it's a really funny dichotomy. But anyway, yeah, Switch 2. I'll be testing this. I'll be gaming. I'm on a couple flights soon. Big flight to Europe. Maybe I'll have just a Switch 2. You're going to Europe?

47:19Yeah, the whole thing. you're going to the whole of europe yes you're going to europe no just kidding but the whole european tour baby hopefully it can last the entire flight it probably won't it probably won't that's that's what i'm most nervous about because i use the switch to mostly not in docked mode yeah so it's going to be interesting i i've been playing uh majora's mask on my oled which is a nintendo 64 online thing and uh it's fine it doesn't lag so if this is not significantly you know if the battery life on this is significantly worse I don't know yeah there are a lot of characters in Mario Kart world a lot of them you have to unlock because they are billion there that's why it's called world yeah nice there are a lot of them and a lot of them are just like kind of there you can be like the penguin the penguin from what they added the penguin that you race that like you luge against it in Mario 64.

48:1364, yeah. I wasn't born yet. You weren't born in 64? It's year based. Yeah. Just like the OS versions. That would be wild. Yeah. All right. Before we before I just literally start playing this game instead of talking, do you want to talk about the Fediverse? Oh, yeah. OK. I forgot. Do you? Do I? Indeed. OK. We got a little Fediverse corner for you guys today. It's exciting. If you didn't hear, which you probably didn't because it's really niche, Feta Forum happened. What? Yeah, Feti Forum. Without me? The Fedora Forum? No, Feti. No, Feti. Fetaverse Forum. So much cheese. It's an online conference that has happened.

48:55When we did our Fetaverse episode, which you should go back and watch if you did not watch it back when we released it, we talked a little bit about something called Bridgy Fed, which was this little project by a guy named Ryan Barrett. And the whole point of Bridgy Fed was being able to bridge an account from one platform to another where they did not support the same protocol. So a few months ago, Bridgy Fed expanded and turned into this project called A New Social, which is sort of this extension of Bridgy Fed, but they're getting more funding. They're getting more people and community involvement to try to actually be able to, bridge accounts between social media platforms with non-native protocols so that people never have to be tied to any social media platform.

49:39So at Fetty Forum they come on guys it's cool I promise. It's a great name. Fetty Forum. They announced a new feature called Bounce and the idea of Bounce is this platform that allows you to jump bounce between one network to another. so the demo that they showed off was from basically if you have a blue sky account and you decide you want to make a mastodon account and and basically not have to like you know just start from scratch move all your followers the problem with this obviously is because like the dream of blue sky or the dream of activity pub is when you're moving to a different platform it uses the same protocol but because blue sky and mastodon did not use the same protocol this bounce feature effectively creates a Mastodon account for you based on your Blue Sky account, but it creates it within this area in between that feeds information between the two.

50:38So when you have a Blue Sky account and you create the Mastodon account, all of your followers sort of stay on Blue Sky. They're all following you. But you automatically follow all the same people with bridged accounts on Mastodon. right now, there's still very early stages, obviously, and the demos that they're showing off are like kind of useful, they're really useful if other people have bridged accounts if you can get all of your friends to bridge their accounts then it's amazing, but that's obviously not very possible right now so it was just a little exciting demo that they showed me that kind of like shows the future of the Fediverse which I think was cool and I just wanted to call that out because we're on team Fediverse over here I can't even get Ellis on Blue Sky I am on Blue Sky I'm literally on Blue Sky right now I'm Blue Sky I'm at work right now that's true anyway that probably didn't make a lot of sense but I hope that they succeed it's all I wanted to say I think we should take it to trivia I think we should bridge to trivia another word for a segue is a bridge take it to the bridge take it to the bridge so I'm just going to hold it like this.

51:54Why not? There are no rules anymore. Is that an extra bike port on the back of that? Don't worry about it. It's not happening. What was the first Super Mario game where Mario would take a nap when the player was idle? Was it A. Super Mario Odyssey? B. Super Mario 64? C. Super Mario World? Or D. Super Mario Karts? Marquez you're welcome for the multiple choice you have 25 % chance it's literally exactly 25 % chance because I'm going to throw a dart at a board and it's just going to hit one of them and maybe you'll get it and then the story would be great I remember when I was like it was a 25 % chance and you're like why and I was like because there's four options well we'll think about this one answers at the end we'll be right back

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54:44all right welcome back i asked all of you to do me a favor because we had a sub a post on our subreddit who someone made an infographic of just the chronological list of all the phones they have ever owned period and there were like a hundred plus comments of people just listing all of their phones so i asked all of us to list our phones chronologically and we're gonna go through them and I guess rate them or you guys can tell us how stupid we are by the phones that we've had or ask questions about specific ones. Wouldn't own it if it was an absolute banger. Come on. Do you want to go first? Wait, I have a question before we start, which is...

55:26What are we gonna do about this guy to my left who literally switches phones every six days? I asked everybody to pick Marquez is right there you are worse than him I asked everyone to pick the phone that they used the most for that year so one phone per year max yeah okay pro max but yes because between Adam, Marquez and David we would be here for three hours if that was the case name all the reviews oh you're into phones oh you like phones name all of them name every phone I think I changed my house every week for like five years so yeah yeah I have a feeling Ellis and I have the smallest lists.

56:05Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You want to start? Sure. I mean, do you want me to start? I feel like I have kind of the most boring one, too. Ellis was born with an iPhone 13 mini in his hand. Yeah, yeah. Let's hear it. And then I downgraded the 12 mini. No, okay. Gentlemen, my first phone is a phone I loved so, so dearly. I saved up. I think I've told this story before. Yeah, my parents did not want me to have a cell phone, so I saved up for, like, years. And in the beginning of eighth grade, I finally had enough money for the phone and for a year of service. Commit crimes. Do it. Don't know if it's a crime, but maybe it was.

56:42Who knows? It was a Samsung Intercept. It was specifically the Virgin Mobile version of the Samsung Intercept, which did not support EVDO Revision Zero, which means it was slower than the Sprint one. um it had a i believe a three megapixel camera which was perfect because the screen was only 240 by 400 pixels and i believe it ran android 2 i had android i had that for a few years and then in 10th grade no a few years later i dropped it so many times that the slide out keyboard hinge stopped working. Nice. So that's when I switched to the Kyocera Rise, another phone I loved to death. Amazing. I was a slide-out keyboard person.

57:28Like that was the only thing I needed on my phones, was a slide-out keyboard. Kyocera Rise had pretty similar specs. I don't think it's even worth going through them, but it did, I think by the time I left that, I was running Android 4. So I was a real trailblazer, played a lot of Pokemon in trigonometry class. I'm sorry, Mr. True. And then after that, I began my journey on the iPhone starting with the iPhone 4s and we all know about these phones so instead of talking about them I'm going to tell you uh the back I was I was a real music guy I still am but like in my teenage years it was like my whole personality and so my uh iPhone 4s my first iPhone had a flying lotus case on it with the art the um the artwork for his album Cosmogramma.

58:13Then I had a iPhone 5 with an Earl sweatshirt phone case that I loved super dearly. Then I moved to an iPhone 8, which no one in here knows what this is, but there's a plugin called Antares Auto-Tune. And I took the picture for that plugin and then slapped that on a Red Bubble phone case. So I had an Auto-Tune phone. That was also the only phone I ever bought refurbished and it did not last a year before literally bricking itself it lasted about nine months before it was bricked um and i have not bought a refurbished electronics since then which i know is an outdated and bad opinion but after spending six hundred dollars on an iphone with no warranty that was a brick i was like all right well that was stupid of me uh after that jumped a few years ahead got the 10s which i always called the xs because it was in gold and But I thought the idea of having a gold phone that had the word XS in it was really funny.

59:11Definitely. A lot of reviews did that too. Yeah. I thought that phone was fantastic. And I thought the camera in it was my favorite iPhone camera I've ever had. Which I know it's like not as good as my 12 minis camera. I think the 7 camera on the iPhone. The iPhone 7. It was just so good. Then I went to, I think I told the story in the pod, so I'll make it really quick. But iPhone XS, loving that thing, was living in Philly. there was a hurricane scheduled to come through and my friends and i all the great idea to drive two hours to a theme park called dorney park which is in pennsylvania and our we called dorney park like you guys open they were like we're open but the first lightning strike or thunder the whole park is closed and like you're not getting a refund and so we were like bet let's try so we drove two hours we get there the park's still open it's pouring rain no no thunder no lightning we You spend the whole day at amusement park with literally being the only people there.

1:00:06Like it was the kind of thing where like you'd finish a roller coaster. There'd be no one in line and you could just be like again. But because it was pouring rain all day, every ride was a water ride, regardless of whether water was involved. And so that phone, the iPhone XS did not survive. Oh, really? did not survive which was funny because that's when i went on my uh boost mobile pain arc where it was like completely brutal few weeks where i uh my bank locked me out of my accounts and needed me to confirm my identity which you could only do on your phone and i didn't have a phone because it was broken and i couldn't buy a new phone because i didn't have access to my bank accounts.

1:00:53And also Boost Mobile only lets you buy phones with a credit card already associated with your account. So I couldn't start a new card or ask my parents to help me out. So for like a month and a half, like six weeks, I had no money and no phone and was just trying to figure out how to go. Eventually, I took the SIM card out of the XS and put it back in the Kyocera Rise because 3G towers were still operational at that point. And so I was rocking the Kyocera Rise for like the last like three weeks of that experiment and freaking loved it it was like my first dumb phone foray and even though it was running android 4 i keep this thing on my keys that is a um it's a it's a dummy 3.5 millimeter plug uh so that um if you have like a dongle like a splitter dongle or any kind of dongle you can just plug it into there and it like stays on your keys and But the key Sarah rise was so light that you could just plug the phone's headphone jack into this and wear the phone on your belt like an accessory Then I eventually got the 12 I've the famous purple 12 mini which I now split my time between the 12 mini We see the key Sarah rise until the iPhone 12 mini Well, no, there were lots of phones between those but then I came back to the key Sarah rise because I had no money in the phone nice then And, oh, my gosh, sorry.

1:02:18The funniest part of this Boost Mobile thing is, like, there was a Bank of America who, at the time, I was banking with. And there was a Boost Mobile store. And they were, like, four blocks from each other in Center City, Philadelphia. And so, while I spent so much time, but going to one, they'd be like, you need to figure this stuff out at your bank. Go to the bank. They'd be like, you need to do this on your phone. Go back to the Boost Mobile store. They'd be like, we can't do anything, like, without your cards. So, one day, I went to the Boost Mobile. Like, this whole thing exploded. The Boost Mobile store was like, you got to come back tomorrow.

1:02:43I went back to the Boost Mobile door the next day and it had closed. They had literally shut down that location, which is the most Boost Mobile thing in the whole world. I know I'm making this story take way too much time. Anyway, this is all to say now I'm like 75, 25, iPhone 25, minimal phone 75. And I'm so happy to be back on a physical keyboard. And that's my phone journey. Aren't you glad I went first? But you're not going to stay on the minimal phone, right? It doesn't have to be on it now. The reason I'm not going to stay on the minimal phone is because my really kind, nice, generous boss, Marques Brownlee, is actually paying for my separate phone line on that phone, which is only going to be another two months.

1:03:27But what if you just put your phone line on it? Visible is not a supported carrier for the minimal phone. Otherwise, I would. Otherwise, I would. Or I wouldn't have opened up a Boost mobile line anyway. But yeah, so back on the physical keyboard, back on the dumb phone. Back on the boost. Yeah, back on the boost, baby. Anyway, yes, I feel like this was not very interesting. But thank you for listening. And someone, I'm just going to do this. Shut up, man! Nice. Okay. David, you want to go? Yeah, I'll go. Okay. I had originally this really, it was a knockoff razor because, I don't know, The Razer was expensive or something.

1:04:12I don't remember. I remember going to the Verizon store and they had the Razer and it was really cool, but it couldn't afford it. So they gave me the like really cheap, like knockoff, like Samsung one or something. And it was, but the battery life was amazing. It was thick. It was a thick boy. Very nice. Uh, it lasted, it lasted about two weeks, I think on a charge. Yeah. And used mini USB. The iPhone came out. Um, the famous, famous plug that I make that I was in the audience there. Okay. and I was like it's cool but it was only on AT &T and also it was really expensive or I guess it was singular at the time and I couldn't afford it so I was like well boohoo then Android came out and I was like and so when the HTC Thunderbolt got announced which was the first 4G phone in America I was like oh my god there's finally an Android phone on Verizon worst battery life I've ever tested on a phone oh my god not only okay so i had it for about a week and it was amazing it was sort of a precursor to the like the hgc1 m6 m7 m8 m9 stuff uh so the build quality was amazing it was like made of metal it was super nice had a really good screen but not only was the build quality like horrible i mean not build quality the battery life horrible it literally burned my hand because i was trying to do Skype and one other thing at the same time.

1:05:35So it burned my... It was so cool. Look how cool it looks. The old clock widgets on Android are... They're peak. Perfect. They're just amazing. And it looks so cool. It had front-facing speakers, had a kickstand built into it. It was dope as hell, but unfortunately, it burned my hand, and so I had to return it. So I switched it out for a Samsung Droid Charge, and the build quality of Samsung Droid Charge was doo-doo water. Much worse. it was made of plastic it was flimsy it was crappy i reviewed that yeah the droid charge it was pretty bad i don't i honestly should have just dealt with the pain um but then the samsung galaxy s3 got announced and that was like a big deal in the phone world everyone was super super hyped for that phone i think it was like one of the first one gigahertz processor phones i think it was the first one gigahertz processor phone it's a big deal i was really excited for that i pre-ordered it was the first phone i pre-ordered and that was amazing galaxy s3 that was the first one to introduce the like touch whiz like water droplet sounds when every time you unlock it it go like you know htc very nice uh lgg3 was the next phone it was the first 1440p phone and it came with all these demo videos on it that was like look at 1440p resolution and it was like all those YouTube videos that you watch where it's like sweeping through vistas and it was like bright and it was like show this to your friends and buy more LG stuff and that was great because like that was an awesome LG phone it had the volume markers were on the back underneath and the power button was right in between it was so dope I love that it was super cool it had a huge screen so I really liked that uh next so Nexus 6P gets announced sorry Nexus 6 gets announced Shamu shammu previously i had wanted to have nexus phones because they were all so cool and so affordable like the lg like the nexus 4 was the sparkly back and it was like 300 it was so awesome but it wasn't available everywhere not available everywhere definitely not on verizon most of the nexus's were not on verizon and i was on my family's plan and i could not get off and it sucked but the nexus 6 got announced and it came out and it got announced at 650 which was unbelievably expensive at the time there was all this outrage on droid life the comment section were going crazy and i was just like wow i can't believe they do this and then the next day i bought one and um yeah i really got convinced because google fi got announced with the nexus 6 it was like now it's called google project fi or project oh no google fi wireless now is what it's called the name has changed a few times but because it got announced i was like you know what i'm finally a freshman in college i should get off my mom's phone plan gonna be totally independent so i got a nexus 6 that phone was awesome it was basically a moto x uh 2013 but way bigger because the rumor was that they were going to work with huawei on that phone and huawei pulled out at the last minute and moto was like we could just make a bigger moto x and have a dimple on the back yeah and so that's what they did for that nexus 6p was the next one that's when huawei came back so winging it was basically the build quality of the hdc thunderbolt but even better many people revere the nexus 6p as the like nicest designed smartphone ever made and i still think that it's like really high up there i would argue the current pixels look the way they do because of the 6p yeah well sort of yeah yeah it had the visor and visor had the visor sure that's true It was pretty sweet.

1:09:17And then from there on out, because I was on Project Fi, I was able to live that Google goodness life. They announced the Pixel 1, and I bought that, and I bought the Pixel 2, and then I bought the Pixel 3 XL with the Omega bathtub notch. That was pretty sweet. Then I had the Pixel 4 XL with the radar that would destroy the battery and never work. And then the Pixel 4a came out, and I still hold that I think the Pixel 4a was one of the best smartphones ever made. Correct. Because it was back to like$350. It just had a really, really seamless UI. Like the Pixel UI was really maturing. It had Google Assistant was really amazing at that time.

1:09:56It was really light. It had one camera. It was really small. It was a small phone. SmallAndroidPhone.com. 5.81 inch. Yeah, it was awesome. Rear fingerprint reader. Yeah. Accent power button. The accent. That's what I'm telling you. Yeah. Yeah, I think my title for my review of that phone was like, a phone so good you won't even have to use it. Because you just use Google Assistant for everything. And then the screen was really good when you did actually use it. SmallAndroidPhone.com is a real website. I know. And that's a petition to make small. It's run by Eric Michikowski, which is the Pebble guy.

1:10:31Oh, really? Yeah. He actually was really excited about the minimal phone getting the Android layer unlocked because it's a small phone. So or is the Light Phone 3? Light Phone 3. Sorry. Yeah. Minimal phone is huge. Yeah. Anyway, Pixel 5, also small. Really awesome. It was that it was a little bit cheaper and a little bit like it was made of plastic again, but it was that cool like they had it was made of metal, but also plastic. And they were able to get the wireless charging through the metal because they like carved a hole in the metal in the center. That was really awesome. Pixel 6, super exciting because it was the big redesign of the Pixel.

1:11:10They added Material U to the Pixel 6. Super awesome. Then I became depressed and bought an iPhone 14 Pro. And the reason I bought it, if we're going to be honest, is because it was square. And I just, that really won me over. But then I moved to the Pixel Fold because that was dope. and then the iphone 15 pro came out and it had usbc and it was also square so it brought me back i was back on the iphone 15 pro max uh then the pixel fold 2 came out and i was on that for a while because it was cool it was pretty cool and then the iphone 16 pro came out and it looked exactly the same i love how the the pixel needs to add a whole second screen and the iphone's like usbc and david's like damn it yeah anyway that's pretty much where i'm at um i will say i reviewed probably like 200 phones in between there and i liked a lot of them didn't like a lot of them but probably my favorite phone that i reviewed in between there was the oppo find x2 pro yeah i want to say that that phone rocked god a lot of throwbacks here yeah so that's my chronology this is gonna be a long podcast episode mine's not that long i can go quick mine is mostly like look he's old i i looked at yours and i i was i realized where i miss miss remember the samsung flip phone thing but you have one samsung flip phone in here that when i was in elementary school was like if you had that thing you were the coolest kid oh really i generally well my first my first phone so 2003 i put time stamps for this the audio vox cdm 9100 god damn you are old this thing was a I'm just this phone I had the worst phone out of all of my friends but this thing was indestructible I have a question it looks like it when you owned it were the buttons that color of yellow or is that because of time no that is that was a design choice I mean it was also like the backlight kind of had this like greenish hue to it greenish yellow hue to it so you could see it in the dark I believe it's a greenish yellow do if you will wait I might have had this phone this thing no my my friends used to be like oh this phone sucks and they would take it and throw it against the wall the battery would pop out and then I just pop the battery back in and it was totally fine RIP batteries yeah you really had to learn like T9 on that thing yeah type at any sort of speed for the young people that listen to us T9 is when you have a number pad and each of them have three letters on them and you learn how to like touch type words underneath the table.

1:13:58Well, it's a little weird because you could either do ABC, which was like if the two key has ABC, A is one touch, B is two touch. But T9 was like predictive. So you would just type all the letters that were in the word. And then, so if you press, if it was dog, you would press three, six, what's G, four. And it would either say dog or you would press the arrow buttons to pick other words that have those amount of letters in it. I used to T9 under the table so fast. It's a pro. You really on this phone had to learn about, it was called like button lock or, cause like if you just stuck this in your pocket, it would just press buttons and call people and you would just leave voicemails to random people when you're like on your bike.

1:14:43So that was a fun time. Then I got my first flip phone, the Samsung SCH-A67, A670, whatever. It's a silver Samsung flip phone. Had a camera on it. first time I had a camera in 2005. I was Verizon for everything. Oh, okay. Which also, you getting your own phone line in high school is very mature. I think I was living with Claire before I got my own phone line. Yeah, it was a thing that I had to beg for because I was never around. I think college is when I got my own phone line. Your own phone line? Yeah. Wait, your own line? Yeah, I was on my family plan with Verizon until college. Oh, you mean your own plan?

1:15:25Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's what I was talking about. Got it, yeah. Then I did get an LG Voyager. This is when I was like, I like phones. I want this. This thing's sick. Screw the iPhone and all the iPhone lovers. Oh, my God, that's right, because this is 2007. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is, who needs an iPhone? I mean, I was also someone who didn't have an iPod. I had a creative zen. And so I didn't like, I don't know why I didn't like Apple stuff back then. So I got the Voyager. It was us versus them. It was us versus them. Back then though, Apple was the nerdy thing. Kind of, yeah. Yeah.

1:16:02It wasn't the mainstream thing in 2007. iPhone was the Android of phones. It kind of feels like it. What? iPhone started. I would say Mac. iPhone was the Android of iPhones. Mac beforehand was like the coder, really nerdy. Yeah. I liked it a bit because I did video editing and like that was, but I really liked Windows better. But anyways, got my voyager until one day i tripped and broke both screens when it was in my pocket so then i got the samsung alias have you that's the one i was talking about this phone was do you remember this phone yeah i do it's so cool for those of you who if there's not a picture on the screen you could open it like a flip upwise upways or a fold because it had this one hinge on the top right corner so you could either have it like regular keypad on a phone or if it was sideways then it was like a landscape uh this is the lg wing of 2008 no i was looking for some and there was an lg of 2008 from samsung yeah i forget what it was called then my first real android phone the droid eras which yeah by the way this is this is around when the 3d uh 3d cameras and 3d screens were like they were trying to make it a thing and the evo 3d came out around that time too do you remember this i think it was sprint only or something i don't remember i remember at my time on Verizon like if you were doing the Verizon upgrade plan your two choices were this or the droid the first droid and you did this instead this was cheaper my mom got this I got this the little it had a little trackball on it but again flames old Android clock widget it's so good it's just nostalgic that's the HTC sense yeah widget yeah this thing was awesome I remember uh like rooting this and thinking i broke it a hundred different times um then i got a droid 2 then then i started in the galaxy stuff s3 s5 this is very clearly you can tell my plan was an upgrade every two years so s3 s5 s7 then i started working here we got a some it wasn't a review unit it was i think you did something with casey and they sent like a gift package that had a note 8 in it and you didn't want it so i was like i'll take it favorite phone i've ever had no day was fire no day best phone i think that's ever come out it was peak wasn't fire because the note 7 was fire it was yes this was um fire though um but the i think like the coolest part of this is the home button was like this button kind of under the screen so it was just a screen button but it had a physical press and like a feedback to it yeah just fantastic that was awesome then i started my Pixel Journey, Pixel 3 XL, Bathtub, Pixel 4 XL solely, Pixel 6, Pixel 7, Zenfone 10, and now I am back on the Galaxy train with the Galaxy S24.

1:18:52This is a crazy way to tell the passage of time, because I've known you since your 4XL days. And then I keep scrolling, I'm like, whoa, I've known them for so many phones. I have a question for you, Andrew. Why did you go back to the Galaxy S24? I feel like Samsung is the most boring phone right now, especially the regular one. i don't like you can have a pixel i don't even remember why i was like i kind of miss samsung and went back to it i like the size of it um the price of it is pretty solid and from a zen phone so you also gained like an extra camera and wireless charging and gained an extra camera from the smaller pixel but the new zen phone has wireless charging this one did a thousand feet tall didn't they didn't they had wireless charging to the last one that was this is it that's this one the 10 yeah the 10 yeah yeah oh yeah oh true yeah oh yeah oh sorry i did this did have wireless charging that's why i switched to it gotcha i beat the hell out of that phone um oh i also really the real reason i went from zenphone to s24 and didn't stay on zenphone other than it didn't as small as they got boring i wanted a dbrand case that had the magsafe puck on it i still think magsafe is the best accessory on any phone period so it has to have a case but you could i mean the zenphone 10 doesn't definitely doesn't need a case.

1:20:08I had the sticker on the back. It's still annoying to hold with this magnetic sticker on it. I see. But no, I think mine's still at my desk. But yeah, mine's kind of a boring, except for that AudioBox CDM9100. I think you should switch to a Kyocera Rise. I might have to look for one. Also, Andrew, I just want to say, in my heart, you'll forever be a Zenfone 10. That's just the phone. I see that phone, and I'm just like, that's Andrew's phone. I like that. Yeah. You may think that you're a Zenfone 7, but you'll always be a Zenfone 10 to me, Andrew. Yeah. The man of the hour. Yeah. Here's how I did this.

1:20:45I just went year by year. Every year since 2006, I picked what I believe to be the phone that I used the most during that year. Some of these years were hard where I had two or three phones that I used a lot during the year, but I tried to just pick the one that I used the most. So, presented without nuance every year from 2006 to 2025, my daily driver. 06, Samsung flip phone. I believe it's called the U340. 2007, Motorola Droid. 2008, the same Motorola Droid. 2009, the same Motorola Droid. Overclocked. Yeah, custom ROM, the whole thing. 2010, the Droid X. These are all Verizon phones. 2011, the first and only phone I've ever waited in line for, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

1:21:33Oh, so jealous. 2012. That phone was how I found you on YouTube. Yeah, I did a bunch of videos on that phone. Yeah, that was on Verizon as well. Droid X was sick. Yeah, Droid X was sick. Droid X was a good one. Droid X was awesome. Then 2011, Galaxy Nexus. So then 2012, Galaxy Note 2. 2013, HTC One M7 Google Play Edition. What? Google. The smile on your face. reading that out loud is like that phone was perfect that phone was actually perfect 2014 one plus one 2015 galaxy note 5 2016 nexus 6p yes 2017 google pixel xl 2018 one plus six 2019 one plus 7t pro mclaren edition oh my god okay the 7 also perfect that phone is also perfect the 7t also is perfect yeah just saying 2020 iphone 12 pro max because i split my android phones too much android uh 20 sorry 2021 galaxy s21 ultra 2022 pixel 7 pro 2023 zenphone 10 2024 s24 ultra 2025 s25 ultra you put the zenphone 10 on there yeah i use that i use the zenphone 9 a lot i didn't make the cut over the pixel 7 pro but those two zen phones in a row were heavy for me yeah that's my that is my list wow and do we think that pixel 10 is going to be good enough to dethrone the s25 ultra i'm hoping honestly yeah pixel pixel 10 pro or 10 pro xl whatever and the big one ends up being that could be that could be interesting it's supposed to come out in august yeah because there hasn't been a pixel as my number one on here since pixel 7 pro that's crazy and i remember pixel 3 xl almost made my list but that i think was the same year as one of those one plus phones that i that was just amazing i tried to run the regular pixel 3 because the xl had the omega notch the regular pixel 3 had the worst battery life since like yeah since like the 3xl was good though great cameras the notch was so funny it was a ridiculous so yeah i'm just wondering who like okayed that it was character honestly you look at phones today and they all have like some visual character thing you look at the pixel 3xl it's like yep that's the phone with the notch oh my god fine yeah i wish i had more software features though with that notch anyway yeah adam uh t-mobile sidekick 3 motorola droid samsung galaxy nexus samsung galaxy s3 lg nexus 5 motorola nexus 6 shamu apple iphone 6s samsung galaxy s7 edge uh google pixel google Google Pixel 2 XL, iPhone X, Google Pixel 3, Google Pixel 4a, the perfect phone, Google Pixel 6a, Google Pixel 7, Apple iPhone 12 Pro, Apple iPhone 15 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, Google Pixel 9 Pro.

1:24:28Big, big pixel history for this guy. Yeah. Wow. Well, there you have it. Loves his pixels. I think it's about time for our final trivia break. Trivia. Trivia, dude. I think we like phones. Nah. Not anymore. Now we just like Switching TV. I feel like... That was me back then. I'm all in on AI now. Not anymore, bro. I just have a pin over it. I feel like that just made all of us realize, like, five years ago, we loved phones. Yeah. Because, like, everything we said from, like, 2015 to 2020, we were like, oh, my God, that was awesome. When you look at the pictures of these things, they're so cool looking.

1:25:07And now they just look the freaking same. The grin on my face when I got to say HTC One, and then it slowly faded away. Like, the light left my eyes. I said, S24, S25. Practically, the only thing that differentiates these things now is how the freaking camera looks. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. That's it. And whether or not it comes in gray or... I gotta say, power ranking. If I were to power ranking, like, phones that I could go back to and use today, the top two, by a head and shoulders, are the HTC One M7 Play Edition. and the OnePlus 7T Pro McLaren edition. Those two phones were flawless. No notes.

1:25:45I'm surprised. Bring them back. Okay, but the OnePlus 7T Pro McLaren edition had like an issue where like it, because they had the curved, no, the curved sides. Mm-hmm. It would like have ghost touches all the time. I just got used to it. It was incredible software, fast charging, great cameras for a OnePlus phone. That's true. Oh, I love that. And it was good value. I had like 12 gigs of RAM. Yeah, extra RAM. Extra RAM. That's true. I did have 12 gigs of RAM. Sorry, I interrupted. Okay, trivia time. So, starting in 2007, ending at, I couldn't find a clear end date for this, but it seems like Miis are slowly getting phased out anyway.

1:26:20But for a while, starting in 2007, Nintendo would occasionally release what they called special Miis. These were Japanese celebrities and mostly Nintendo executives. And they were not editable. But there was one other distinguishing visual feature that signaled that your me was a special me. What was that distinguishing feature? Hit it. That the special ones were special, right? Like the ones they distributed. What? Not the ones you made, the ones they distributed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The celebrity me's? Yeah, yes, yes. Yes. Hey. Ungovernable. Ungovernable.

1:27:03Yeah. For those, actually, even video viewers wouldn't know this, it's like 100 degrees in this room right now. It's so hot. I don't think it's that bad. Wrong. We're getting, tomorrow's gonna be worse. Yeah, there you go. Really? All right. Who wants to read their answer first? I put little stars above their head. But it seems like you wrote a pun that I'm pretty stoked for. I wrote Reggie fills a me. I kind of want to give him a point just for that. I'll talk about it with my host. but yeah that is wrong there were no stars. I just wrote they sparkle they do not sparkle. I said there would be some object floating over their head unfortunately that is also wrong the correct answer is they had gold pants very nice cool and no one else could have gold pants?

1:27:47no Mii's had grey pants or if a Mii was favorited on your Wii console it received red pants more enough alright quick update on the score Marques with 25 Andrew with 15 David 29 potentially 30 no? if you were losing I would have given it to you but I can't but it could match my age that would be ridiculous you gotta earn that point it would be cool but still at 29 alright next question what was the first Super Mario game where Mario would take a nap when the player was idle A. Super Mario Odyssey B. Super Mario 64 C. Super Mario World or D. Super Mario Karts Marquez is just straight up guessing.

1:28:41I'll hold it and throw the marker point at it. They're actually doing it. Oh my god. Hurry up. The time's almost out. What did you just do? I think it hit the middle. For audio listeners, Marquez drew like a dartboard and he threw a marker at it and picked A which is wrong David what'd you say? I said B. Andrew what'd you say? I said 64. Which was B? I don't remember. No it was correct either way two points for both of you. Let's go. Two points for both of us? No. Two collectively shared amongst both of you. I get both. Hey I'm 30 okay? I told you it'd be cool if my score matched my age. Wow. Because now I have 30 points.

1:29:29That was a good try. I thought your birthday was like was two months ago. Wait, what letter was it? Yeah, it's still the same age from two months. Well, why are you talking? This is old news. You've been 30 for a minute. I know, but I'm just saying if my score became the same age as me, my grandmother had wheels should be a bike. What what letter was the right answer? B as in boy. I'd be the first time. All right. My plan worked. Well, this has been a long podcast. thanks for watching thanks for listening with us and thanks for doing trivia with us and all of our rambling check out the Switch unboxing slash impressions video let us know what you want to see in the full review and also let us know what you think is going to happen at WWDC see you there bye thank you to the Nintendo Switch too waveform was produced by Adam waveform was produced by Adam Molina and Alice Irvin we're partners with Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro to our music was created by Vane Silk bingo bingo let's go

1:30:40The Nintendo Switch 2 is the hash swinging slash blinging Nash tinging prash tinging. Nah. All right. We should be good to go. Hash slinging slasher. Thanks to Smartsheet for their support.

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