The Phone of the Year is...

32:11Dude, I don't know. No, that's the dog food version. Yeah, I thought that was alpha. And then beta was like external testing. Like then you release it to users and like check. I just think that literally everything is in beta now. Because everything is constantly being developed. alphas are the ones that need to get paired with omegas in order to anyone so there's a point i'm making is true though like the more i think about dia this browser it's like clearly not finished there's tons of features that they're obviously planning on adding but they shipped it super early because people wanted the core of it allegedly and it's like kind of always in beta like they're always adding tons of stuff yeah so does it feel significantly better now by the way dia yeah yeah i can pin tabs now i have all these like i can double tap to rename tabs there's all these features that they're added from dia or from arc yeah so yes i know it's getting closer to arc but i keep wondering when the point is when i can actually switch because i just love arcs i think it crossed that threshold for me with like two updates ago okay because of the pin tabs i still wish i had mobile sync i still wish i had like two spaces to swap back and forth between sync tabs but as of right now it is good enough for me i don't think they're doing spaces I mean Chrome added split view so it has me back now.

33:24I'm back on Chrome. Oh yeah split view is nice. Anyway let's duck duck go to the polls and take it to an ad break. 6-7

33:33Oh no Guys exciting news Waveform Trivia is allegedly in Minecraft partnering with Netflix with DraftKings You listening at home Can I bet It's a joke, it's a joke, it's a joke, it's a joke. Who is going to get this question? I'm just kidding. It's a joke, it's a joke, it's a joke. Guys, welcome back to Waveform Trivia. Android XR is here. And we all know this is not Google's first foray into ARXR. We all remember Google Glass. But between Google Glass... And Cardboard. Don't forget Cardboard. That's the answer, right? How did none of you guys see those? None of these are the answers. Okay. Okay.

34:19I knew that. project daydream also also everybody remember daydream cardboard that is vr that is vr true yeah so maybe let me finish the question none of you are rupaul on family feud if anyone gets that reference famous clip not at all thank you marquez between google glass and yesterday's event google had a secret arxr project that was canceled in 2023 what was the code name of this project what was the secret so it should be really hard for us to know the verge reported on it uh about i think it was a few months after it got canceled and then a bunch of google employees were like yeah this existed and they were really mad and it got if i remember this what happened correctly is vision pro came out then it came out that google was working on this and had canceled it and a bunch of Google employees were like, you know, we could have been competing with Vision Pro.

35:17Which is what every company is trying to do. Yeah. Why we're not sure. I don't think they're sure either. I agree. I don't think Apple is sure either. Well, we'll think about this one. Answers will be at the end, like usual. We'll be right back.

36:00We'll be right back. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies, right, Mrs. Claus? I'm Mrs. Claus's much younger sister. And at T-Mobile, there's no trade-in needed when you switch, so you can keep your old phone. Or give it as a gift. And the best part, you can make the switch to T-Mobile from your phone in just 15 minutes. Nice, my side of the tree is slipping. Get back! The holidays are better at T-Mobile. Switch in just 15 minutes and get iPhone 17 on us with no trade-in needed. with 24 monthly bill credits for well-qualified customers plus tax and$35 device connection charge credits end and balance due if you pay off earlier cancel finance agreement 256 gigs 830 eligible port in a new line$100 plus a month plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees required check out in 15 minutes or less per line visit t-mobile.com support for the show comes from framer you need a website step one you devote hours of your time to learn how to code scratch that actually step one you find a site builder you can go with one of those basic builders that gets you a cookie cutter site or you can go with framer and get a full feature design tool to design the exact website you want for your business.

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38:07That's framer.com slash design and use promo code WAVE. Framer.com slash design promo code WAVE. Rules and restrictions may apply. Support for this show comes from LinkedIn. When you're running a small business, it's hard to find the time to hire the perfect candidate, especially when you've got so much else going on on your plate. That's why LinkedIn Jobs is taking hiring to the next level with their new AI assistant so you can feel confident you're finding the top talent you can't find anywhere else. The best part? These are great candidates that are already on LinkedIn. In fact, according to LinkedIn data, employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor.

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39:16All right, welcome back. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the biggest tech online argument of the year. It's time. I took that directly from a Reddit comment about the smartphone awards, but it is super accurate. So shout out to iron underscore quirk. Smartphone awards are out. I gave my favorite and best and worst and most notable smartphones from 2025. I'm gonna go through them all. And maybe if you guys have alternate opinions or thoughts on my awards, obviously some of you guys helped chip in and we discussed these all kind of as a group. So some of you probably already got your thoughts in, but for the pod, we can go over each of the awards, which one won and some thoughts and some arguments that happened online about them.

39:59Yeah, afterwards I took some of the most common comments and arguments I saw. I'm glad you did that. Let's go through the list first. All right. Let's start. Let's just go in the order of the show. For the beginning best big phone, Xiaomi 17 Pro Max. Huge 6.9-inch display. When are we going to get a 7-inch screen on a phone? We're probably pretty close to that. But 6.9 inches is like as good as it gets without being a tablet. And it had everything. It had the Snapdragon 8 Elite. It had the 7 ,500 mAh silicon carbon battery. It had all the specs. It had the triple 15 megapixel cameras. And then around the back, it also had a three-inch full brightness, 120 hertz corner-to-corner screen on the camera bump.

40:37And it was actually very useful. Crazy. Super fast charging, 22.5-watt wireless charging, reverse wireless charging. Hilarious. Just a complete use of space. No argument. Everyone agrees. Just like their car. They just went way too hard. That's actually kind of true. Wait, was this the one that had the reverse wireless charging at 22? Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's so funny. faster than many phones charge with the wire faster than some battery banks yeah yeah very valid i don't think there's any anything close my crazy i gave a i runner up to i mentioned the oppo find x9 pro because it also had a lot of this stuff just the screen on the back was what separated the show me so right because technically if you count the total screen real estate it's basically seven that's what i was thinking like fair enough screen to body ratio if we were going back to those days.

41:26120%. Like, what did we start adding this to? 120%. Well, it's funny, actually. When we had that, remember the concept phone that had the screen and it wrapped around the back? It was Xiaomi, right? Yeah, it was Xiaomi. It probably was Xiaomi. It was the Mi Mix. Ultra, I think it was called. Mi Mix Alpha? Alpha. Alpha, I think. Alpha. Yeah, I think they did quote a number for the screen-to-body ratio for that phone. Really? And I don't remember what it was, but it was definitely over 100%. Oh, my gosh. It was hilarious. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, that was best big phone of the year. Now, best small phone of the year is where it gets interesting.

41:53Yeah. Because, well, we used to give this award to like a 5.8-inch screen-sized phone. And then that was the Zen phone that went extinct. So then we started giving it to like 6.1-inch phones. Last year it was an iPhone 16, I think. 6.1-inch phone. This year it's like all the small phones are not like incredible anymore and they're all getting bigger. and there's just one type of phone that maintains, that preserves like some element of small phoneness and that is the flip phones. Yeah. And specifically the Z Flip 7 this year with its like full corner to corner four inch cover screen was more usable than ever as like a take it out my pocket, use it, put it back in and never open the phone.

42:37And I was like, you know what? I think I'm gonna reward that as like the best of a compact phone experience because you can still open it and use it as a 6.9 flagship, fine, but it was more usable than ever as a closed phone, and that's why it's a small phone in the air. That's what this should have been this whole time. I've been fighting for this for a long time, but I'll agree, I think this is the most deserving since. It has gotten runner-ups before and honorable mentions. I think considering they finally added basically the full screen to the front, and in a year specifically where people are doing anything to not use their phone, like using Apple Watches, as their phone in a little case, or just finding other ways to be able to be in communication with people while not looking at their phone.

43:20I think a phone that you do not have to open if you don't want to is a very good small phone awardee. The reason I always felt like this one should have won small phone is because if you ask people why they got that phone, it's because it folds into something smaller. Like yes, it unfolds into a bigger screen, but that's not why they got it. They got it smaller, you know? I always mention that because it was like, Yes, it folds smaller, but that's not while you're using it. So I didn't reward it for that. I was like, yeah, you're using a huge phone, and then you fold it up smaller and put it away.

43:53So it wasn't until you really could use it small that I flipped that switch. Get it? Flip. But also honorable mention to OnePlus 13S, which had a 6.3-inch screen, but they called it the 13S because it's the small one, and it was a pretty good phone. All right. There you go. that's ellis's next phone the 13s yeah is it small enough ellis will never move ellis loves one plus i know but i would never use a one plus phone again as much as i like the open but i will say the one plus 13s intro we did i think was my favorite video really good one of my top three this year yeah it was a fun one all right next one straight into the ones that people had alternate opinions about but best camera oppo find x9 pro absolutely took the win this year correct so good it was this is a triple 50 mega sorry a triple camera system 50 megapixel main 50 megapixel ultra wide 200 megapixel telephoto and you know i took a lot of sample shots i was debating this i was we we literally i think we had we had like alternate trophies like we were ready to give this to like two or three different phones and i was testing the vivo x 300 pro i was testing this testing the iphone and i just found that this one was the most versatile and the most capable at the same time yeah and it had the fun yeah so great primary camera really consistent awesome colors great detail great dynamic range and all that ultrawide was really good then the telephoto thanks to having 200 megapixels was very very croppable we'll talk more about megapixels in that upcoming bonus episode but uh that there's also the Hasselblad like zoom lens you could attach to it which I had a lot of fun with it's not the best thing in the world but it was super cool and fun it also had really good portrait mode good night mode pretty good video too you could shoot log it was 4k yeah i like that complete package i think my favorite thing about this phone's camera was how natural the bokeh looked that was important for me over the vivo yeah so the vivo very similar set of hardware uh but just had like this weird over processing going on with it and i was doing a lot of side by sides because i was like really happy with the detail in the vivo shots but the i think because of how much processing and a lot of those ai processing was going on the bokeh started to look weird even on regular shots of just like a single subject uh and it wasn't consistent enough for me to give it the win so that was important i felt that the color the skin texture was like perfect it wasn't overly smooth and it wasn't overly sharpened and then the the naturalness of the bokeh especially on the telephoto but like on any of the lenses but especially on the telephoto with the Hasselblad attachment when you get that long um 10x yeah that long look with like the natural sort of fall off i thought it was like i could not distinguish this between this and an actual dedicated camera whoa yeah it's crazy good yeah the shots from the Hasselblad attachment lens were kind of insane yeah uh so it was a lot of fun does Hasselblad now partner with Oppo in the same way they used to partner with OnePlus they are partnered yeah and i think they will probably continue that longer i think Oppo and OnePlus shared that partnership or something yeah i don't even know how to describe the partnership but yeah one plus dropped they're all under bbk that was my fault yeah i mean when you said like i was thinking about giving it to vivo but i give to oppo i just imagine that picture of obama giving himself the medal the bbk trilogy yeah they they're all part of the same giant group but yes this is like the first time there was a lens attachment that you seemed excited to use not excited to use you've been excited to use ones but you use it and you're like wait this is actually like yeah good and fun and also the build quality of that lens is crazy yo Hasselblad's got a reputation they can't just put their name on any sorry DJI's got a reputation fair enough uh yeah honorable mention still goes to the iPhone 17 Pro the video is still undisputed this is the reason the the iPhone was winning so much almost every camera award before this is because the video is a head and shoulders and a head and more shoulders above every other smartphone that I use.

48:01Ask anyone who shoots stuff on social media and uses phones to shoot them. We have an entire channel that we run just on phones. And guess which one is the most reliable that we shoot the most with? It's the iPhone 17 Pro. That's because of the ease of shooting. That's because of the quality of the footage, the flexibility, the log, the dynamic range, the look. It looks better than ever this year. And all I did was like add Genlock. Like they don't even shoot. There's no 8K. They don't really do much to it every year but it's just great every year i kind of want them to add to it i want them to get rid of some of the the point light problems at night in the low lights i kind of want them to get 8k and improve the mics but it's just it's just the best video i want them to add true raw because right now they only have pro raw and you have to use all these apps and there's all these apps that are blowing up like the moment pro camera 2 app got really big and then highlight and if apple just like sherlocked all of those by next year just announcing all right, we're just allowing true raw out of this camera in this like pro mode setting.

48:57I always wonder about that. So that and 8K I always wonder about because it seems like a storage problem. And I don't know if it's not even a problem. It's just that they don't want to give people the ability to fill up their entire phone storage with an hour of video. I think that Apple is more afraid of people taking photos that they don't like. But they let us shoot log, which is like they give us pro features and people who know what they're doing can shoot, quote, ugly videos and then make them look great because like 4K log looks, quote, bad and then you make it look great. So I figure they shouldn't be afraid of that so much.

49:32I guess so. I think that they're definitely leaning more into it finally and I think they're getting a little less afraid of it. And honestly, like every single year they have to release some new camera feature, right? Because they know that the camera is the main selling point of a lot of these phones. That's why they had announced Genlock because it's a pointless feature for literally like 99.999 % of people, even most people on these sets. Yeah. But, you know, it's a new thing that they can say, like, look how even more pro this is now. So notably, friend of the show, Mr. Mobile Michael Fisher, who hates iPhones with a seething passion.

50:05Wow. Still carries the newest iPhone on him just for like B-cam footage to put in his videos. Says a lot. He could carry anything. But for videos, you know what it is. So yeah, that was my runner up and my winner. And I also mentioned the X300 Pro, but any other camera thoughts before I move on? Have you not tried the 8K uploading from Pixel up to the cloud so that it takes 24 hours? I actually remember having really high hopes for that. What did they call it? It was like post-processing in Google Photos. Like you could shoot a certain mode and your photos or videos, I think mostly videos, would get like this massive quality boost.

50:41Number one, the quality boost turned out to not be that big for most of the stuff that I tested. And number two, is that even a phone feature? I know. It's uploading it for post-processing. It's technically pixel only but that was tough. It's good in low light because it gets rid of a lot of the low light artifacting and noise but it takes like 20 hours. Yeah. So it's not. It's tough. It is tough. I like the idea of offloading super high processing stuff to cloud. That's not a new concept but that just wasn't it. That just wasn't it. Wasn't it. Yeah. Yeah. All right, next up, best value. This is one that gets a lot of chatter every year because there's a thousand definitions of best value.

51:24Most phone for the least money, best phone under X dollars, however you want to phrase it. I went with the CMF Phone 2 Pro. It's under$300. It's the best phone under$300. But it's also the, I feel like it was really close to flagship feeling. It's like a big smooth screen. The software is super smooth. It's got great battery life and all these things. It's got multiple useful cameras. and it was just like a very good usable phone in the price range. And I thought that deserved. It also had like the fun orange color and the modular accessories and all that. So that was a nice cherry on top. But I did give a runner up or a mention to the Moto G Play, the Pixel 9a and the base iPhone 17.

52:00All good values in very different price categories. I'll throw something out there to just another reason why I think this CMF Phone 2 Pro, the nothing phone 3A Lite is the exact same phone. And it's$10 more and one less camera. And has ads on it. And has ads on it. I forgot about that. Which makes this phone look awesome. Yeah. Very good strategy for winning an award. Put out another phone. Sabotage your own sister company. That looks like a way worse deal. Being able to buy any phone in 2025 under$300 is pretty awesome. Moto G is under$200. That's crazy. That's insane. It's funny because Moto excels in this category a lot every year and never quite breaks into like true flagships and it's almost like they're destined to have like a cap of like you shouldn't buy a Motorola phone over$400 yeah you probably just shouldn't like get the razor or anything under it don't get the big the edge phone it's just not a good buy yeah edge for a thousand it's like why it's crazy yeah okay best battery this one I also feel really good about one plus 15 ridiculously long battery life I went I tweeted about this I went three straight days I went Friday Saturday and Sunday without charging the phone all day for all three days three hours of screen on time all of those days so I ended up with like ten and a half hours of screen on time and the phone was still going now do this to smartwatches challenge Garmin accepted it's pretty it's pretty incredible that we're about to get a bunch of phones with 7 ,000 milliampire batteries next year with Chinese phones Silicon Carbon yeah so like Samsung doesn't Motorola doesn't Apple doesn't the ones that are big here are not doing it Pixel doesn't so they're all like kind of capped and if they did that's the thing is a lot of these phones would be awesome if they were silicon carbon batteries like iphone air would be way better s25 uh edge would be way better yeah silicon carbon battery these folding phones their thinness they'd be way better anyway the point is this slab phone was just as thin and light as the previous one it added a thousand milliamp hours and it still charges at a bazillion watts so when it finally did die i plugged it in for two seconds and it was back to 100 so it was like this is no clear that's how it feels yeah so it was great uh it also has super fast wireless charging i gave runner-up to this the xiaomi 17 pro max and i did also mention the dugey s11 ultra i want to make it's probably not even the right name but it had an 11 000 milliamp hour battery s200 ultra i think is what it was called they still doing that it was the biggest capacity battery of any phone in the studio this year dang when when can you not go on a plane with it anymore it's pretty close to that right oh it's up is that it's 110 watt hours or 100 watt hours 100 watt hours so i don't know how that translates because there's there's voltage and comparisons anyway great battery life in this phone no regrets i think that one deserved the award yeah can i say this sandstone in this trophy shot looks so good it looks so good it's so pretty i want to be able to use a phone that color i just I just don't like that the bezels around the outside, I can see them all the time.

55:02Same with the orange iPhone. Being able to see the orange from the front. Yeah. It's a little picky thing of mine. Anyway. Yeah. If there was no cap for real for real on American phone batteries or like Western phone batteries, that would be nice. Because we're just locked and loaded down to like 4200 or whatever. All day. I have it all. The OnePlus 15 is available for pre-order on AT &T. I still haven't been able to switch my eSIM to it because the whole government shutdown, FCC didn't approve any new phones for a while thing. So I still haven't been able to get my AT &T SIM in it, but it's coming to AT &T.

55:39Are you going to mainline it? Yeah. Really? Yep. Even with the bad cameras? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because I'm going to have the iPhone in my other pocket and the Hasselblad in my back pocket. Back pocket? Is that a Hasselblad in your pocket? It's a big pocket. Yeah. Yeah. Metaphorically. Okay. Design award is next. yeah there's some comments about this one um are you doing comments at the end am i doing yeah i'll do comments if one particular pops out but yeah i'll do most of the comments at the end so design award i gave it to the iphone air and there's probably six phones i could have given this this to but i the iphone air yeah was so uniquely like i this this is not a good phone for me but i want to be the type of person who could use this phone because when i was testing this phone I was loving it.

56:26I was like, dang, this battery sucks. Dang, this lack of an ultra wide sucks. But, oh man, holding this phone, using this phone, it's so ridiculously light and thin. Using any other phone directly after it feels shockingly bad. Yeah. Weird. You know, Quinn Snazzy Labs on YouTube was posting online. He has been posting about how much he loves the iPhone Air and how much it just is an awesome phone that feels amazing. Because it's awesome. And then he posted either yesterday or the day before, like oh no the iPhone Air just feels like a regular phone now and everything else feels insane yeah yeah you get to this point ruins you so like I tested it I think I used it for like a week and a half for my review but continuing to try to use it after you do get to this point where it feels it starts to feel normal and you're like oh it's finally worn off maybe I'll switch back and then I use this iPhone 17 Pro and it was like this is heavy this is a thick phone it's not even that big of a phone but it was like it changed it just warps your perspective of phones yeah um yeah but new york is not a real place because i keep seeing the air everywhere like yesterday i saw five yeah and it's what like a failure by sales standards yeah it sold 10 of what they thought it would sell yeah oh but it is but it is out there and it is really clever they rearrange the internals you got to think on apple scale that's still a lot of phones it's a lot of I'm surprised you're seeing that many.

57:49Yeah. And they were all in New York and San Francisco. Yeah. The highest density of iPhone Airs and Z Folds. I will say one comment I liked about the thin phones is, and this goes for the S25 Edge as well, a phone is only as thin as its largest part, which I thought was interesting, and the way they described it the best was - Socrates said that actually. If you had, so what is this again? 5.6 i think it's 5 point something yeah so like if you had a 5.7 millimeter hole to slide this phone through it wouldn't make it all the way through because of the camera bump right and same with s25 edge i think the thing with that is is like yes i agree that it still doesn't fully mean something but also i just don't think there was a ton of other design things this year maybe the xiaomi 17 pro max yeah yeah i'll give you others because i had some other mentions um i I will say the thickest part of the phone thing...

59:17I, battery so it was like it felt closer to usable every day but wasn't as like shockingly awesome to use still very cool overall battery life was probably still worse though right because worse than the big phones yeah yes no worse than the air um i don't know if i've compared them directly but they're both not great yeah and then holding both i think the iphone air feels better yeah which is like buying this is like a hand feel thing and kind of but like yeah because you can emphasize yeah you can emphasize thinness with like the curves and the the chamfering and the they just did it very well yeah i also mentioned fairphone 6 which has obviously the most repairable most sustainable phone design maybe ever and actually kind of feels pretty close to a regular phone it's still a little thick but it's it feels very close to a regular phone this year a nice accent color power button you loved the switch too yeah so shout out to the switch on the side Switch 2?

1:00:13Wait, how are we going to talk about a phone design award and not talk about the Nothing Phone 3? Because I like to award good design. No, no, no, no, no. That design, it was brave. You love spinning the bottle. Play spinning the bottle every day. The phone, yeah, the weirdness of it never quite wore off to me, of the Nothing Phone 3. There are a lot of comments about Nothing Phone 3. We'll get to that later. I thought that design aged like fine wine. The more I looked at it, the more I was like, that is a good looking phone. I thought the prettiest phone of the year was the OnePlus 15, personally.

1:00:56If we're just going off pure aesthetics, which I know is different than design. Interesting. I think the Nothing Phone 3 aged like wine, similar to that bottle of Snoop Dogg wine that's been laying outside the parking lot for like six months. No, that thing is cool, man. That thing is cool. Is there still wine in it? I think it finally exploded. There might be vinegar in it. Yeah. That's an interesting take, the OnePlus 15. Would you, the Sandstone one, you think, is the best looking one? Yeah, that one looked so nice. They had this, like, purple-violet one that was interesting to look at. Yeah, and, like, the way the light comes off of the ceramic back, too, is, like, really pretty.

1:01:29I know it's, like, sort of a matte, not matte, but, like, it's not, it doesn't exactly have a texture, but the light does come off of it in a really cool way. I like the matte black one. It is... Yeah, you would say that. Well, it is the darkest matte black phone I've ever seen. Oh, that's a good point. So I thought that was nice. That's a good point. Yeah. Can I throw a design award out? Yeah. Actually, I almost have two, but that TCL Next Paper. Next Paper. Bro, that switch that switches it from like color E-ink to regular E-ink. I think it's one of the most jaw-dropping things a phone has done in a long time.

1:02:06I want to rewind that. It was like when the sermon in church hits a really good bar. Everyone goes, Yeah, preach, Andrew. Yes. I feel like we barely showed that thing off. Just the animation. I know we barely showed that thing off. I still get tweets that are like, What are you going to talk about the TCL next paper? All right, make sure we show a clip of B-roll in this. But it has this switch that goes between colored e-ink to black and white e-ink. And the animation is chef's kiss. I think when I first saw it, my jaw literally dropped. It kind of looks like the Harry Potter, whatever the magazines are called in Harry Potter.

1:02:44Oh, like the Quibbler? Is that what it's called? Where the images move on the paper and you're like, this seems crazy. Yeah, it's like magic. It's pretty cool. I have to throw that in there. That's valid. Okay. Yeah, you know, ultimately, I gave it to the iPhone Air. I don't regret it. And I just need them to give it a silicon carbon battery and dual cameras next year. I know they're not going to do it, but I need to put that out there. Wait. I have a suggestion. for next year okay what if we remove the best small phone award award since there really are none anymore go on and then we add uh-huh like a best technical achievement award because we had the screen on the back of the phone this year that you can actually use that's good i like that's cool that's interesting because there's a lot of stuff that comes out that qualifies for that.

1:03:37You could say the screen on the back. You could also say one of those super thin foldables with no crease. Could be interesting. You could also say the e-ink. Valid. Okay. Best gimmick. I love the idea of it, Adam, but you have to put yourself in the perspective of these tech companies. Boardrooms across the world are saying, look, market research shows people don't want small phones. The things people do want in their phones will not fit in a small phone. But we have to win the MKBHD BHD small phone of the year award. This is the only thing keeping the category alive. It's why the OnePlus 13S exists.

1:04:12But all they did was make a not small phone and put an S next to it. The only reason that's small is because they said it was small. I'll take it, man. Slightly smaller. I'm open to bringing the award back if they actually released small phones. We should hold the award hostage until someone brings it. I know this phone had some issues, but shout out to the minimal phone that was a small phone i'd say the light phone was the light phone was even smaller i never used that the light phone was like a like a little box little box yeah i was gonna say the light phone design looks so cool that i want to use it except it has literally i couldn't survive i couldn't work or do anything on it you know i thought the design was nice eric micikovsky the pebble guy owns the website small android phone.com because he wants there to be another small Android phone.

1:05:0075 million bad faith. If you're gonna make a ring, I feel like you could make a small Android phone, Eric. Don't let your dreams be dreams. Yeah, come on. This could be awesome. This could be real. Yeah, bring it back. There's a whole award waiting for it. Bring it back with a six pack. Yeah, no, I like, we'll play with this. I think this small category award will be really interesting next year. What would be the design category? The best gimmick of the year for you. Okay, the screen on the back. I think it's the screen on the back. I'm trying to think on the actually good phone. On the Xiaomi, right?

1:05:29Yeah, the Xiaomi 17 Pro. So we've got that. We've got the Nothing Phone 3, which is a bad gimmick. That sucks. What about the Hasselblad camera attachment? I think that's a cool gimmick. That's really cool. That's a good gimmick. Yeah. Trillions of dollars spent on AI assistants and not one mention in this conversation. Apple intelligence. I will say I shot the Xiaomi car review on the Xiaomi 17 Pro, and I've always been doing this thing where I use the primary cameras and I flip the camera around. Oh, now you can see yourself. And I've gotten really good at that with not being able to see myself, but I could see myself on that phone.

1:06:01That was like super useful. That's pretty cool. I think it's got to go to the Xiaomi 17. I think best gimmick would be great because there's all these Chinese phones that we can't use consistently, but they all have awesome weird gimmicks. Yeah. 1 ,000 watt charging. Yeah. What? Not actually 1 ,000. Gimmicks used to be bad. And now I think there are actually useful gimmicks on phones. On good phones. There's a spectrum. Yeah. There's definitely good gimmicks. there's definitely still bad gimmicks the lg g7 thin q with its uh blood blood sensor palm it was the glucose sensor you could do this and it never worked that is that's a good candidate that's a gimmick year's award that's a gimmick all right all right we had one more interesting one best foldable is maybe the last boring one uh samsung z fold 7 any questions uh no yeah it's the safest it's like the only one that i could really daily and be like happy that i want to point out like the pixel 10 pro fold i liked it no i'm not saying that i want to point it out to win to win because no that's the thing but this is the thing is because the the original pixel 10 pro fold to the pixel 9 pro fold was so astronomical this is why businesses every year with their year-over-year growth only want to have like 1%.

1:07:21Because if they have 50 % in one year and then the next year they don't have another 50%, their stock goes down. So Google did too much of a good thing in one year. And then all they did was add MagSafe or Qi2. Which is big. Which is big. Pixel drops. But it kind of sags a little bit. Pixel snap. Pixel snap. And then they made it waterproof. That's important. That's pretty cool. It's important and good. That's super cool. But like in a year when the Galaxy Z Fold 7 came out and was super thin and had a really good screen to body ratio and was just like a great foldable phone. Same size of battery as the thicker version.

1:07:56Exactly. And then you got the Pixel, which is just like it's better than it was, but now it's, you know, now they feel really behind. So I feel like next year Google is really going to have to try to make it thin otherwise. New strategy, go way backwards next year. Way worse. Make it small again. And then step up again. the 12 will be great we're back baby the window strategy just get worse better worse better exactly yeah yeah i gave a mention to the z flip 7 and the pixel 10 pro fold but it was the samsung to lose this year and uh becca recently just put out a video about it was the best old seven she said it was the best one of the year and she said sorry mqbhd there's two categories left there's the let's do bus last no we got to do the bus now all right because there's interesting chatter about this one all right it's bust the bust of the year for 2025 is the iphone 16e and i think that was pretty clear a lot of people actually said they forgot it existed by the end of the year because it was that forgettable proves the point yeah um because number one if you actually had 500 to spend on a new iphone you should just get the 16 or the 15 pro or something there was no reason to buy a new 16e and get a 60 hertz screen and no mag safe and one camera yeah it was just silly It just didn't have any reason to exist for regular people.

1:09:07Then I got the comments about like, oh, it's a B2B phone. It's really just like the fleet phone for all the, you know, the old e-phones that are all getting replaced at once, which is valid. But you still, that's not, that doesn't make it good. Yeah. That doesn't make it a good deal or a good phone. And so the cherry on top is the one I reviewed was a 512 gig 16E, which was$900. So there was just no reason for this one to exist at this price. doesn't mean it's a bad phone. It's just a bad price. If it was$450, it would be just like the other iPhone SEs. $375. Take it or leave it. Dang. Single camera, no mag save, 60 hertz notch.

1:09:48What are we talking about? It's 2025. Why does it still have 60 hertz, to be honest? Well, they just added 120 to the new ones. The Moto G Play is$180, and it has 120 hertz display. But it doesn't have a little Apple on the back of it. that's actually true yeah that is true yeah um yeah anyway yeah bad regular phone bad price so that one bust of the year bad phone bad price pretty bad yeah don't buy that one this i think this may have gotten the most chatter comments on go on my favorite thing about this was the nothing community hates the nothing phone 3 so much i mentioned they were almost they almost seem mad that an iphone won bust because they think the nothing phone 3 should have won bust of the year they hate that phone so much yeah that phone's fine i mean it was too expensive nothing's strategy with phones is just all kind of all over the place this year like the 3a and the 3a pro were pretty interesting and then they they got rid of the glyphs with the 3 and then 3a light and then 3a and then community edition there's just a whole lot it's a whole lot i don't it was a seven that was 799 that phone when it launched okay that's actually a lot so it was not good for the price either and i think people expected a very different direction with like making the glyphs on the back more functional and instead it was like here's a little screen with 25 pixels spin the bottle and we're like what are you doing yeah um so yeah that actually did get a mention in uh bus of the year i think like it got posted as this is the runner up and everyone's like it should have won yeah wow i don't know the e is worse sorry the right the nothing fun three is a fine phone it's just that they went with the worst possible gimmick and tried to make it seem good that's really the problem and it was too expensive those are the the main problems otherwise the os is fantastic it was a usable ui it's a fine phone i think the nothing 3a light is a worse phone because of the cmf phone 2 pro pro 2 oh like i think the light is a just as a there's no reason to ever buy that phone when the cmf phone 2 pro yeah the budget companies budget lines budget ProPhone is better than the I'm not even going to do this.

1:12:02Because you forgot already. Can I throw one more in here? Maybe this is self-loathing. Interesting. Pixel? Pixel 10, man. I thought you said phone of the year earlier. I heard some of these takes. Did I say that? I have a hot take later. I think this segues into phone of the year very well, but like... Wait a sec. Pixel 10 base being it was$800 right? Yeah$800 it got triple cameras but they're downgraded cameras compared to the Pixel 9 the Pixel 9a sensors or whatever the 128 gigabyte base storage now watching if you told me in the Pixel 7 days that the iPhone base would be the better deal and have more features and stuff, I would never believe you.

1:12:54But we're in a place right now where even though it has one more camera, the base iPhone has more base storage for the same price and has 120 hertz. It has all the other things now. I feel like I got scammed. I still love the phone. Don't get me wrong. It's a fine phone. I am enjoying it. But I can't believe they're up at$800 and we're finding an iPhone has a better deal. That just feels so unpixel-like. They just dropped the price. I mean, it's on sale, but it's$5.99 now. It's been on sale for like a month now. Which should be proof that it's not due. Which, yeah. Which is proof that that's what it should have been at.

1:13:29Which is what they used to be at. Which is what the 16E is. Ooh. Did you guys all just agree with me? Well, I'm saying like, that phone for$7.99 is a bad deal. Yeah. But you could see it being a pretty good deal at$5.99. Yeah. The 16e is$599 and is a horrible deal. So that's why it got the award. But I agree that it was a bit of a disappointing year for Pixel. I've used Pixel 10 Pro for a lot of this year as well. It's not great. The camera has been fine. The battery is not that great. We were kind of hoping a lot would come from this Tensor refresh, and it didn't. It didn't, yeah. Yeah. I have a question that you guys probably don't know the answer to.

1:14:15in japan no idea do are they also on like a carrier system where people just pay monthly for their phones and then they get into carrier contracts i assume that was just here because i have a big question that's going to lead into the phone of the year that we're about to talk about okay and that is that my friend from college just bought a regular iphone 17 and we you know we named it phone of the well i guess i'm jumping the gun we named it one of the and we talk about how like they made all these upgrades and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah i have literally never seen one in the wild um so my question they're all in cases probably so my question becomes like in america where or in the west where everything's a carrier contract and i see so many pros and i'm for some reason i think that's just in america in europe i don't think you're locked into carrier contracts like that yeah very american but the reason i say japan is because the iPhone is also incredibly popular in Japan.

1:15:17It is, yeah. Where in Europe, like, it's a mix. It's a grab bag. So that's kind of my question. I just, like, it's crazy that the iPhone 17 both is, like, the best value phone this year. And also, I haven't really seen that many because everyone keeps using the carriers. This could be the same exact reason why you see so many errors and folds is because the masses that are using the 17s are like slowly trickling out and getting them in a way that people who just snap up the air probably aren't. So I think it's kind of like the Camry where you don't realize how many you see, but they're everywhere.

1:15:53That's true. And the fact that it looks like the last iPhone. It looks just like the last iPhone. So it's hard to know. If you got the silver one or whatever, you'll never know. I think also part of it is like phone of the year doesn't necessarily mean most popular. Yeah. Mostly because consumerism and so many people are okay with spending way more than they really need to but like sure i see this is like the people watching our videos who are going to try and find like enthusiasts yeah like it's not just bang for your buck but there's so many things about this phone that just nailed it this year that i think our audience would be more inclined to be like impressed by it yeah well i guess we'll just get right into it the phone of the year is the iphone 17 it is yeah and uh it also won most improved which we skipped over but that's basically hand in hand here so iphone 17 they finally did the thing 120 hertz much brighter better display thank god it's way overdue uh the other thing is the much improved selfie camera which is across the entire lineup which is sneaky great upgrade and i'm expecting to see a lot of people copy that the big square sensor where you can do horizontal or vertical portrait selfies that's awesome yeah and then doubling the base storage to 256 gigs also didn't have to do that, but kept the price the same.

1:17:07So now it's a better deal at 256 gigs than pixels base, than S25 is based and a lot of other phones. And it's just become the easiest phone to recommend. I had a couple of people ask me like this year, Oh, I'm due for an upgrade. Like which phone should I recommend? And you'd look at the lineup and you go, Oh, you're staying with the iPhone. Okay. I think, yeah, you could probably go with like an old 15 pro or 16 pro, or maybe you should get like a, I don't want to recommend the base though. You have a 60 Hertz phone for five more years now it's just like oh yeah get the 17 yeah that's the one that's super easier yeah so yeah iphone 17 won it and my runner-up was the xiaomi 17 pro i've talked a lot about it this podcast already in the review i loved it the screen on the back is awesome it's a super complete phone it's never going to be on sale here in the u.s but the fact that i got to test it uh it impressed me a lot and it was definitely deserving and i always mention the phones that have spent the most time in my pocket in between reviews.

1:18:02So at least do that again, which is it started off S25 Ultra for like the first half of the year. Then it went to a whole lot of Pixel 10 Pro and then OnePlus 15. So that's me. I was going to say how Samsung has fallen. Next year, like no, we've had the S Ultra phones in the like lineup of this for like ever since the S21 Ultra basically. Yeah, they're really good ones. Because S20 Ultra was horrible. I think that was bust of the year that year. But like, yeah, the fact that they're not in the lineup at all is kind of crazy. It kind of just shows how they just totally went super boring. Until we get the trifold in the beginning of next year.

1:18:41Yeah. That's crazy that the same company is doing like incremental baby steps on their biggest, best phone. And is also like, by the way, here's one that folds twice. And like, what do we, that's the same company. Next year's going to be crazy because we're going to have that trifold. And we're going to also have the iPhone foldable, allegedly. Seems like it's going to be next year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. would you go from a mini to a fold that's why i'm not buying a pro really yeah i'm waiting for the fold wow two areas glued together yeah to the fold could be awesome rumor has it it's 2026 so yeah we shall see wait didn't adam have a hot take i do that's around this category it was pixel related my hot take was that pixel 10 was phone of the year can you press that button for me i'm surprised you actually did it i have the pro yeah and i feel like i spent too much like i should have just gotten the 10 because the 10 does everything the pro does it's super on sale almost immediately if you don't get it at launch like if you just wait a couple weeks it's on sale and besides that the ai i hate to say it but the ai stuff that the pixel has been doing compared to something like the iPhone, which is just another iPhone, it's actually been very useful.

1:19:56And thinking about switching phones, even Android to Android, I'm like, I'm going to miss some of those AI features, though. I really enjoy them. I mean, I could go to Samsung because Samsung just has all the Gemini features anyway. That's exactly how I would pick it apart. If I were giving an AI of the year award, it would go straight to Google. And then my proxy, also Samsung, because they use all the same stuff. And then I would also say, to your point of the pixel 10 pro feeling like a ripoff i think it's because it was a worse deal than ever this year yeah and it doesn't mean that 10 is phone of the year good it just means it's a way better deal and feature set because it has all the same software features and it has the same tensor chip and triple cameras i just feel like and the pro just like if you take i mean i know this is a hard ask but if you take someone out of the like apple versus android world like a fresh person coming into the world who's just looking for their first smartphone and they have no no horse in any race and they're like give me a phone i'd probably give them a pixel because it's doing more interesting where in the world do they live it doesn't matter you're giving them the phone or they have to they don't have to pay for the phone yeah yeah no i'm giving them the phone you're giving them a pixel like the best phone i'm giving you a phone here's a pixel 10 that's interesting i that's an interesting question i would probably give that person a xiaomi s20 no i would give I'm an S25 Ultra probably.

1:21:17Just like the most beefiest, crazy phone. Just the most stable. It's the most boring, the most stable. It doesn't improve that much year to year, but it always has good battery, good cameras, good software updates, good screen every time. You want to give someone fresh to the universe a boring phone? Yeah. Well, I don't want to give them a phone that, like if I give them a Xiaomi 17 Pro, next year there's going to be like a totally different design and no screen on the back, but this other crazy feature, and they're going to have gotten used to one thing and have to switch around. People just want stability.

1:21:45That's exactly what we went through in the early 2010s, okay? That's fair. Every single year was fresh as hell. Yeah. Yeah. Consistency was not a thing. I don't know her. As the only Pixel 10 owner here, Andrew, what do you think of my take? I think you're wrong. Well, it's funny because you keep thinking, I feel like I should go down. I keep feeling, I feel like I should have spent another$100 and went up because then I would have gotten 256-based storage and better cameras and a better, I mostly wanted the yellow, which was my ultimate downfall. The only reason I got the pro was because I wanted the porcelain.

1:22:19Who thought the piss color would be so bad?

1:22:24I think one thing you did mention though, which is kind of a comment I wanted to address, is there's so many people, we judge everything on MSRP at launch, which is like a lot of people keep saying, well, this was actually a great phone once it went on sale, blah, blah, blah. It's like, that can be true, but it's so hard for us to ever base that off of i know we've said this a thousand times but like i can't we can't base things off of carrier deals and two for one deals and like on sale the pixel will go it's great to know it's great it's great to say like hey this kind of sucks at 800 but if you're willing to wait three months or black friday the pixel will be way cheaper msrp stands for manufacturer's suggested retail price and that means that that's what they think that that device is worth so if that's their judgment of it then that's probably what we should be basing it on yeah and i could also you could probably make the argument that things that constantly go on sale means that a suggested price probably wasn't the best uh idea in the first place and it's correcting pretty quickly well google should figure that out because they do the same thing every single year just make it cheaper to begin with and you'll sell way more they had that they had it for a while i know they did they almost did it remember when like they could have had it all We were saying that like Pixel 7 was too good of a deal to not even look at the Pro and people on the Google team were like, I guess we should just make it more expensive.

1:23:43Ha ha ha. I can solve that. You should enough. You really screwed the pooch on that one, man. Well, they shouldn't have made it$300 more for the Pro before. Like that was insane. Overall, though, I'm pretty happy with the awards. I think that people picked up on some trends of like this. I don't know. When's the last time Samsung or when's the last time Google won zero awards and Samsung S series won zero awards. Yeah. Probably never. First time in a while. iPhone winning bust and winner in the same year is hilarious. I think that's also happened before. Didn't HTC pull that off? No, they did most improved and bust.

1:24:20Oof. And they asked for the most improved trophies. so we sent them the toilet bowl trophy also. That is hilarious, yeah. Anyway, so let us know in the comments if you agree, disagree. We enjoy reading all the comments. Let me speedrun a couple of the comments. All right. The most comment was, wearing a blazer and a hoodie is diabolical. Hey, last year I got the comment. I thought it looked sweet, but I have no fashion sense at all, so maybe not tracks. I loved it. All right, next comment. Good Lord. This one recently has been nagging at me a little bit, but there's so many people who love to say, you're in a bubble, you don't get to experience all the other phones, but like, we're all in our own bubbles.

1:24:59Yeah, I said at the beginning, this is my awards. I thought you were super clear about it this year. Yeah, phones I test. Phones you test and ones like, it's within the US bubble because we live in the US. Yeah, unfortunately. We try, like, we probably get more phones than the average US reviewer gets. And you definitely try them. But I thought you were very clear this year. like these are my awards the things that i like it's i also said that specifically because other youtubers also do their own awards if you have your people were uh quote tweeting my list and giving their own set of awards which is maybe they have used some of those phones maybe they haven't but like anyone can make their own set of what they think is the blank of the year um i give mine because i think i have a unique perspective of i've been able to test all these devices so here's my perspective from what i've tested and then other people will give theirs so yeah i'm i'm sticking with mine.

1:25:48Yeah. Obviously. Okay. I went through a couple of these just in our normal thing. Okay. Here's one that made me mad. No. And it has nothing to do with our audience. It has to do with YouTube. Where's the timestamps? Okay. I added them at launch. Did you? They were there. Yeah. So they were there for a couple hours and then I saw that comment and I went back up and I was like, they're gone? So I went back to the description. They're all still sitting there. So I simply deleted a letter and added a letter and hit save again and all the timestamps came back. Why does YouTube do this? So we do this with the pod.

1:26:22We've had this struggle before. Obviously, this is a video that we should be timestamping. So I, I'm sorry, but also like not because it's not my fault. But yeah, the timestamps should be back. And if they disappear again, just ping me on Twitter again and I'll put them back. There was a comment that did the timestamps and everyone's like, you're a savior. It's like, they were in the description the whole time. But just like, yeah, YouTube. What the f***, man? Please let that. I want a public apology. Fix this. Also, this isn't like UI. This isn't like a YouTube feature where you click the timestamp button and add them.

1:26:55This is if you decide in your description to type out timestamps with titles, it auto detects it in the description of the video and adds timestamps. Everyone has sort of figured out that that's how you do that at this point. But there's never been official UI from YouTube to add timestamps to a video. Why? It's unofficial UI. It's a super useful feature. Like a hashtag. It should be the easiest. They're only like a trillion dollars in data center investment away from pulling this off. They're going to get it soon. It seems very doable. They basically have it already, right? You can pick where ads go in the middle of your video through a UI system, right?

1:27:30Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. Ads make the money, okay? It can insert dynamic ads into timestamps, but I can't just pick that timestamp and write, put this text in. Do timestamps make them money? They got rid of annotations. They got rid of all the clutter. I think it'd be super easy to add a timestamp feature. Please. I want to scream. It makes me so mad. Seems so obvious. By the way, the video we did, the Summerfront Awards, is a 2.4 by 1 aspect ratio, which meant it's not supported for end cards. So I couldn't add end cards. Really? It's an unsupported aspect ratio, which I thought was a bummer.

1:28:07What? But yeah, that's another weird quirk about this video. I saw a lot of comments about that too. Why didn't this autoplay? I think the last thing I have here is there's a lot of love for the Red Magic 11 Pro. Yeah. That was an interesting phone. Yeah. I have flirted with the idea of adding a gaming category every year, but I never really test that many gaming phones. And I'm also not even that into gaming. A lot of the gaming phones I end up testing, I end up looking at them through the lens of, are they a good phone the rest of the time that you're not gaming? Right. So like the two or three gaming phones we got this year were good phones, but this phone had like a liquid like cooling loop that was like visible through the glass back it was super interesting i'm pretty sure zach tore it down it was a really interesting interior uh like a phone on the side of the phone blowing hot air out of it like it was a cool phone yeah um but i it didn't really it wouldn't have won like my design award it wouldn't have won my best big phone so it just kind of didn't get mentioned so that's valid i just haven't like There is no gaming category.

1:29:09Did you see what it looked like in your story about the... I saw someone screenshot it. You took a story that we were shooting smartphone awards and because it's like a clear back, but it has this faded black border. And for some reason, the way the light was hitting the phone and you took it, it just looked like this almost see-through phone with black bezels and no one could figure out what it was. Oh, wow. That's funny. Yeah, it was kind of funny. It does have 80 watt wired and wireless charging. Yeah, they got wireless charging in there, which is cool. 80 watt wireless. Is that just like a space heater?

1:29:42Yeah. I mean, it's probably losing 100%. No, it's got cooling. It's kind of crazy how many phones charge at 8200 watts. Don't use that in your apartment. Especially when they don't have Qi2 and so they can't perfectly align. They're probably losing so much heat. Wait, 80 watt wireless? It has both. 80 watt wired and 80 watt wireless. Oh my God. Losing a lot of heat. You need like the perfect charger. Okay, I have one more thing I noticed. Quite a few people mentioned. Ellis, did you use the PS3 startup sound? Dude. All right. Let me, let me, I, this was a, this was, this was a healthy learning experience for me.

1:30:16You know what I mean? Cause I went into this, I was like, I want to use music to explain what makes this smartphone awards different from all the other smartphone awards we've done in the past, because that's something that we can't exactly express visually. I do think this was the most beautiful set and the most beautiful lighting we've ever had for smartphone awards. But also, we're at the top of our game right now. We are chugging out these excellent videos. And I wanted the theme of this smartphone awards orally to be prestige. And I thought very hard about that. And I said, how can we, in about eight seconds, communicate prestige and tradition and the fact that we've been doing this longer than anyone else has been doing this?

1:30:59And I thought, you know what would be great? PlayStation. No. PlayStation. For 300 years, for 300 years, before America, orchestras have been tuning the exact same way with an oboe starting, then the concertmaster, and the rest of the orchestra. I thought that because that had been happening for 300 years, everyone would know that's the case. But apparently, this little company that makes a little box called the Xperia rewrote what that sound was for everyone in the world. And I probably should have known that. But yes, apparently you cannot use the sound of an orchestra tuning without people being like, oh, that's the Uncharted machine.

1:31:47LS, LS, LS. You think too highly of us. It's an expensive. So yes, no. Almost$2 ,000. My goal was not to use the PlayStation. Actually, fun fact, that is the second original piece of music that has ever been written in a video here. Rufus and I wrote that from scratch and produced it ourselves. So no, I didn't use the PlayStation 3 startup sound in our video. It's just a great minds thinking alike situation. I guess so. And also, how dare everyone pay so much attention to that? And I didn't see one comment about the toilet flush I used in the bust of the years car. I was shocked that nobody mentioned that.

1:32:25I will say we put so many Easter eggs in videos that it's sort of trained people to look for Easter eggs, even some of which don't exist. So I am both shocked that they didn't notice the toilet flush, but also not shocked that they assigned PS3 sound to the others. To the oboe. So we'll just have to take some. Well, once I'm loose, then. To the oboe. Anyway, but thank you for listening. It's trivia time. yeah trivia dude someone yelled at me last week for not doing that so real quick Ellis what's your battery percentage right now okay so uh oh may have forgotten to charge my phone last night so we got a little juice in David's car this morning how was it even dude you could have oh no you couldn't have because you have lightning yeah so I wireless charged in David's car also it's a 12 mini which doesn't really line up with the Tesla it really does not so it mostly just gets hot anyway anyone want to guess what my battery percentage is at 27 26 marquez 34 34 you guys give me too much credit i am at the solid 18 percent right now honestly you know how phones sometimes will just die even though they have like 18 i'm sure surprise yours didn't like that's just a misreading the battery all right next trivia question so earlier we were talking about android xr they introduced a new ui toolkit called Jetpack Compose What?

1:33:53And it looks kind of like if Material You Expressive had a baby with glass, liquid glass. And I think it looks kind of dope. I hope they don't bring it to phones, but it's cool on them. I skipped this part of the keynote, and I remember, dude, I swear to God, as I was skipping this part of the keynote, I was like, Adam actually watched this video. Not because of trivia, just because I knew that you would be interested in the developer stuff. That's the part I was the most interested in. That's when he slowed down to 1x and was like, yeah. I'm not even joking. That's the first thought I had. I knew it would come to bite me in the ass.

1:34:27All right. Well, those of you who 1x that part will know the answer, but we'll think about it. We'll be right back.

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1:36:42Drewski, lift with your legs, man. Santa, Santa, did you get my letter? He's talking to you, Bridges. I'm not that. Of course he did. Right, Santa? You know, my elf Drewski here, he handles the nice list. An elf? I'm 6 '3". What everyone wants is iPhone 17. And at T-Mobile, you can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies. Right, Mrs. Claus? I'm Mrs. Claus' much younger sister. And at T-Mobile, there's no trade-in needed when you switch. So you can keep your old phone. Or give it as a gift. And the best part, you can make the switch to T-Mobile from your phone in just 15 minutes.

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1:37:43One is the Xiaomi SU7 review is finally up. And also chats just in general about the state of Chinese electric cars and what would happen if they came here and how good they are through the lens of checking out this one EV. It's a really good car. It's nice. The conversation is basically it retails for the equivalent of$42 ,000 in China. and so if we were to get a car like that for$42 ,000 here it would be just completely ridiculously out of this league good it feels like a 75$85 ,000 car and I said that in the video lots of cool features really good drive uh self-driving great build quality all this great software and you should check out the video if you haven't seen it already any other thoughts on it I just thought it was a one of the most interesting products of the year that we reviewed it has multiple reverb engines in the karaoke system which like most karaoke systems only have one reverb so to have multiple for those confused on what the karaoke system is this car had software that was really good it also had uh modules that you could buy that would attach to the car things like an extra speedometer at the top or ambient light bars on the sides to move up and down with music or usb type c cables at the bottom and one of them is a pair of high quality karaoke microphones that will plug in and charge based on the car's battery and will work with the car's built-in karaoke mode in the software said software had multiple reverbs and lots of other features we actually demoed it briefly it was hilarious that is a feature that exists in this car just one of many i'm just so disappointed you didn't mention the mini fridge i didn't have that option i don't think oh okay yeah but yeah there is a mini fridge yours did have dooyin built into the back screen which is chinese tiktok for anyone curious which provided me with ample time to scroll chinese thirst traps and league of legends live streams it was quite fun i drove it for like 20 minutes to go get charged and as i'm like sitting there while it's charging i'm just like oh this thing's got a lot of stuff and then i was like looking under the center console thought oh miles and then left some walkie-talkies here from when they were doing rollers.

1:40:03And then I clicked them and they popped in perfectly. I was like, this car has walkie-talkies in the bottom of it. Two of them. Built in. They were better than our walkie-talkies. We were using them to do our shoots because they had a longer range and were incredibly good and had a long battery life. I have a super small gripe or something that they should add. Okay, so on the left side of the steering wheel, there was a little raised MagSafe puck for you to put your phone on that needs wireless charging on it. The YU7, it does have power. It does? Yeah. They thought of everything. They did think of it.

1:40:35Yeah, I thought the same thing. I was like, this is like a little mounting point, but you know, it would take it to the next level if it could charge my phone. The YU7, it does get power, yeah. So when did we get the YU7? Yeah, I kind of want to get the hands on the YU7. The YU7 is like the Model Y to this Model 3. Although that's not a good analogy. These are super premium. This is like the, hmm, this is like the Pirosangue. one of you guys sure here's what is that these cars are essentially stealing design from the other most popular luxury cars that you see everywhere that are successful so the the su7 just looks like a porsche yeah in a lot of ways it has lines from like lotus and mclaren headlights and like thin bezel mirrors like a pole star but essentially they just said let's make a porsche tycan but better yeah and they made a livable incredibly cheap version of a porsche tycan and it's amazing the yu7 is more of an suv it's a little taller and if you look up the ferrari purosangue and put it next to a yu7 you're like oh they just made the ferrari the ferrari is four hundred thousand dollars andrew the the purosangue is the car that almost burnt my eyebrows yeah i we were recording exhaust sounds and i was like oh i'll just sit behind the car while miles red lines and i did it and a hot exhaust literally blew his hair back like yeah yeah or maybe it's whatever um yeah one thing i found funny i couldn't get over that there was a me logo on the front there's just like something about a phone a phone logo being on a car which now makes me wonder if there was an apple car like how long would it take me to get used to seeing an apple logo like hood ornament or logo on a car yeah yeah it was kind of silly it almost made it look less expensive if that makes sense yeah i was just i don't know if i would think of that as premium yeah that was one of the things i said at the beginning uh a lot of these older car companies that you do think of as premium have this like history of premium so you assign that shape with prestige and xiaomi doesn't have any of that history so they kind of just portion yeah they just borrow prestige shapes they just borrow the porsche silhouette obviously their logos like we don't associate that with prestige but they just borrowed that a lot um and the more i think of this car the more crazy features that are just coming to my back to my mind from testing them so i'll just blurt some of them out one of them was the 50 watt wireless chargers in the center that charged the xiaomi 17 pro i was using extremely fast yeah another one is the speakers in the headrests behind me which no matter what phone and navigation i was using would separate out the navigation voice from the music that was playing from the same phone and would play it just in the speaker while the rest of the music played in the rest of the car so much better i don't i can't underestimate how awesome that was yeah like i would be using ways and spotify on the same phone at the same time and it would separate just the ways voice and play it on the headset yeah and keep the music the same that was awesome too yeah um the ambient lighting in the car at night it was brighter and more visible would pulse with the bass of the sound i was listening to in the color of the album art of the song that i was listening to ridiculous did govi work with them it was crazy i don't know but it was like it was built into the software just new um what else oh there was this full-on like rad tuner equivalent from rivian where essentially the xiaomi you could change all the driving dynamics with a custom mode you could flip it to be fully rear wheel drive if you want fully front wheel drive if you want change the brake calibration change the accelerator rate and how much it slowed down and regen all this stuff was in the software crazy you noticed that because i was flipping through the drive modes and one was called miles yeah but it was lowercase i was like huh they didn't capitalize this i was like wait they use kilometers oh this is miles our miles profile yeah um there was also stop me if i'm getting boring there's another one where you could mirror the screen of your phone in real time for some reason for some reason because it's a xiaomi phone and a xiaomi car uh carplay full screen the whole thing 16 inch car play wireless carplay why do they even have carplay i guess because people will buy it and not have iphones or and will have iphones yeah so yeah if a yeah hold on i didn't know how to carplay if a main competitor smartphone company can put the competitor's carplay inside suck it Tesla and Rivian and everyone not giving me CarPlay and Android Auto get over yourselves are they?

1:45:06I'll give them a ton of credit for doing that they should do it they said that everyone assumes that they need that to pump their sales up again but they haven't done it yet because that's what they need remember according to Apple 95 % of people wouldn't buy a car without CarPlay that was the best CarPlay experience I've had in a car yeah um anyway the list goes on shout out to uh hugo barra who uh ex google guy friend of the show had him on a show one time he was able to source this for us because he was also a big guy at xiaomi and that's how he's able to get us the car what would it take for you to want this car assuming it was sold here like you would actually like i already want it like okay it's available for sale uh-huh price aside uh-huh like what would you just buy it like no matter what I mean I already have a daily that I love but if I didn't yeah I would I would get this even if it was like the price of the daily that you love oh because what we don't know what would it would realistically cost if you brought it here you know so like I mean if I didn't have a car and I was like trying to pick a car I would pick the su7 up until about 75 80 000 okay it's really good do you like it more than the lucid air sapphire no but that car is 250 000 and I would pick that car pretty much anything over 250 but like yeah the the xiaomi is i would pick it over any tesla yeah i think i would pick it over any like the lucids that i tested with the air suspension that are not the sapphire i would probably pick this xiaomi over those i just wish i had a little more range because lucids have like 400 five or miles of range but everything else about the xiaomi was awesome so yeah really good very nice can i um there's a lot of chatter on twitter which mostly was like wow these cars are amazing i'm sad we don't have them in america there's a lot of tesla fanboys absolutely freaking out about this and being pretty mad which kind of makes it seem like it's doing really good well it's really funny i reviewed this car people on youtube went oh cool car and commented about the car people on threads went oh cool feature and commented about the feature people on threads saw it and went oh let's talk about how this compares to tesla twitter like or twitter that's how twitter is uh so i saw that too yeah crazy I thought it was very funny.

1:47:25It's so weird that the website where people get paid to say nice things about Tesla, people say nice things about Tesla. Who would ever expect that? It was very obvious when all the mean comments, you'd click on their profile and dollar sign TSLA was in it every single time. A lot of them were like, well, this car doesn't have self-driving, so it's not as good. Self-driving saves lives. Yeah. That was an actual comment. I guess you could just reduce every car to does it have Tesla self-driving or not. and if that's your version of an advanced take on cars then keep shipping that but i think there's a lot of interesting things most teslas don't have teslas okay ignore that ignore that ignore that um yeah this is this is a really good complete product in a lot of ways and that was worth talking about well speaking of tesla really quick sort of where are we in the segment this link is still here wait this are we talking about have you seen this i watched this clip you watched this clip it's i can't tell do we know anything else about this clip we know what happens yes okay so where is this from i'm gonna explain something to you yeah okay so we all know the tesla optimist robot right we all know that they're remote controlled we do not everybody says it's not not everybody thinks like that well you have to phrase it like this one is remote control it's pretty clear if you leave the cookies out on christmas eve so there's this incredible clip of a tesla optimist robot who had been serving people water bottles um and you know i've been serving them you know autonomous autonomously not and then at one point uh the robot just picks its hands up takes off an invisible headset and then just falls and like just minorly bumps the table gets frustrated it's so beautiful like at first i'm like oh that's so funny it takes his headset off but then it just like freezes and just fall like comedically falls backwards through a like curtain guys guys guys but have you tried version 14 yet oh yeah true this clip is outdated as long as version 14 exists the best part about this is that this event was called the tesla autonomy visualized event oh that's where it came from this was not autonomous it's not autonomous what do you think it was that got the person who was wearing the headset so frustrating they're like somebody picked up a water bottle for themselves they're like i'm out i'm out what yeah one of the water bottles like explodes watch right here when it falls down this is brutal he hits it so hard this is a tough clip yeah it's beautiful you know this will make the headlines but none of the successful autonomy of the robot will make headlines guys all right so last thing before we go to trivia a few weeks ago uh i had mentioned that fairphone was going to finally start selling stuff in the U.S.

1:50:05They were going to sell the Fairphone 6 in the U.S. and they were going to sell the new, the all new Fairbuds XL, which are headphones that, you know, it's confusing when the Fairbuds, they're XL, but they're not buds. They're actually... There's also no regular Fairbuds. Yeah. So there's just the XL. Yeah. So anyway, I talked about that and the funny thing about that is that there's this thing called an embargo. Wait, there are Fairbuds. Oh. Are there? I was like, I'm pretty sure there's Fairbun. Okay, good, good, good. A week or so ago, Fairphone posted a teaser on their Instagram. So do me a favor.

1:50:41Click on the link that I put in the show notes, the Instagram link. Got it. Okay. So describe what this video is that they posted. Someone pulling up a box, and then it says stay tuned. So what is on the box? Braille. A QR code. And some Braille. Can you scan that QR code? Can I? let's try Marquez can you describe where it brought you it takes me to a YouTube video that just says introducing the improved Fairbuzz XL and it's a 45 second video of wait what the headphones no they changed it oh mine takes me there too okay so up until they literally announced this today it took you to the YouTube the waveform episode where I accidentally broke embargo really yeah wow that's hilarious that's are you serious I'm serious They emailed me about it.

1:51:33That's so good. They emailed me. They're like, hey, David. And then wink. And then they showed the frame. And then I went to it. And I was like, oh, my God. Well played. And in the comments of that post, people say, where does the QR code go? And then someone says, a YouTube podcast? Anyway. Incredible. These are officially. Was that Megan Fox? No. Megan Fox was Bieber. Oh, OK. OK. Shout out to Megan. Anyway. Transformers was lit. Their new headphones. They sent them to me. they're they're much better than the first fair buds xl um they have this plush material on them i forgot to bring them today i really wish i had brought them oh i have mine you have them i have them but i didn't oh i it's too late describe them all right they have this sort of a knit like 3d knit kind of material which is like much higher quality uh you can replace pretty much every aspect of them the cool thing is that if you had the fair buds xl from the last generation you can actually just buy the new drivers from that is the best thing yeah and put them in the old fairbats xl so i think that's awesome one thing is they sent me both colors something that there's a really nice green one and then there's a black one and the joystick on the one the green one was broken when i got it which sucks can you replace it i don't know oh good question in theory you should be able to right maybe i would think that like the whole thing or maybe the whole can it's like a lot of it yeah it's a lot of it uh anyway yeah they're gonna be sold in the u.s uh just like the phones so fair fair phone is like really making a u.s play now finally 229 for these headphones 229 u.s uh through amazon u.s i think they sounded pretty good um i think you're you're mostly buying the sustainable like better you know better diamond blood diamond mine stuff i think this is a good category for them like the phone obviously is hard because you try to miniaturize everything and then the ferro phone is like a little thicker and that's fine but like i imagine they can match all the specs of normal headphones there aren't like super cramped for space like they can have a 40 hour battery life and anc and microphones everywhere and all the stuff that you expect that headphones and make them comfortable and make them repairable yeah and not really sacrifice so i think that's a good that's a successful new category i think that they sounded way better than the other ones they they fold really well the other ones were just too stiff and like they had like this leather i don't know it's it's a lot better now so that's good anyway those are officially out um i apologize to absolutely no absolutely it's funny that they lean into it it's like kind of when i've told the samsung story before on this the ssds yeah oh yeah it's kind of reminds me of that i did a what's in my bag video like many years ago back when I was about to go to CES and I had the Samsung X5 SSD in my, and I've been using it for like weeks.

1:54:22And I was like, this thing is awesome. I definitely need to shout it out. And I shouted it out. And then I was, as I was adding links to the description for all the stuff in my bag, I couldn't find a link for it. So I just went, oh, well. And then I got a email from them after the video published saying, we're really glad you like the drive. Embargo's tomorrow. So just, I'll have a link for you when you want to add that to the description. The funny thing too is that that SSD was like, went on to become like, one of the best SSDs for the next like five years and they discontinued it and there wasn't anything better than it for another like few years.

1:54:55Yeah. It was awesome. Yeah. They were selling like secondhand, which is crazy for a Samsung SSD. I know. But anyway, but anyway, you don't ever be discontinued trivia. Good answer. Until this podcast crumbles. You haven't seen my 2026 plans yet? Oh my god. No more trivia. What was the name of the cancelled Google ARXR project? F***.

1:55:29Damn it.

1:55:36I don't have the right answer but I do have a good answer. I'll give you a hint. No I won't. Wait. Sounds like we all need the hint. Yeah, this one's a little difficult. How much time do we have? That's the hint. I wanted to ask a different question, but I realized I spoiled it by putting the answer in memes because I got an email from some PR agent this week about asking me to come check out a product that they claimed was the world's smartest toilet. We made a joke about that. Let's go to Japan. This one was genius, bro. I want the wrapped from that toilet. No, but that was what made it so smart is it would like analyze your pee and make health recommendations and then also if you bought it for old people and no one used it for 12 hours, it would notify your loved ones, which actually is kind of cool.

1:56:27I mean, I don't use my bathroom for 12 hours. Okay, we're not going to get into that. We're not going to... Do you want the hint? Well, we can't change it. I really bungled this one, guys. Alright, flip them. oh boy okay all right who wants to go first i'm wrong i'll just say i wrote google beam because it can beam you to a new location i think that is a thing but it's not this thing no it was in android 4 i wrote project boo hon it's not halloween anymore i said project glass what an idiot wait oh i should have said air it was air the answer was project iris project that makes way too much sense for a google project i know right that's why i got canceled all right yeah yeah score time marquez has 10 still andrew with 13 i feel like i've had 10 for like i know it's been a minute david with nine all right here's your chance this is it you guys can all get a point why don't you meet me in the middle with the new android xr stuff they introduced a new toolkit called jetpack compose what and because we didn't have enough time for else to give you a hint i will give you guys a hint it rhymes with shimmer

1:57:50jetpack joyride that doesn't ride with shimmer jetpack joyrider joyrider Jetpack Veritas. It'd be really funny if it was just Shimmer.

1:58:05It would actually be hilarious. I would feel really dumb Flip them and read Flip them and read Do we all like the same thing now?

1:58:17Marquez, what did you write?

1:58:23Jetpack composed dimmer Dinner Andrew, what did you write? I wrote glimmer David? I wrote glimmer Correct

1:58:35We're finally tied, Marquez Don't you like being tight with me? I've had 10 points since 2022. It's been so long since I got a point. We're in the same club now. 10-point club. Carry the one. We're all carrying the one. That's good. 10-point club. Wow. Remember that? Well, hey. We learned something new. That's the point of trivia. We either get it right or we learned something new. And today I learned two new facts. I thought the point of trivia was to win. It's about the friends you make along your way. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. I assume you've already subscribed so thanks to getting us to 500 ,000 subscribers this is a huge year for Waveform we still got more coming up we got regular scheduled episodes we got bonus episodes December don't stop so I guess we call it Tech-cember no catch you in the next one we don't say that see you later bye bye some people say Waveform was produced by Adam Molina and Ellis River we're partnering with the Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro to our music was created by Vane Sil bingo bingo bingo bingo bingo bingo bingo bingo bingo bingo bingo They spent hundreds of hours in sleepless nights prompting this.

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