Unpacking Galaxy Unpacked 2024!

37:49Yeah. Speaking of things that start with the letter T. Bro. Trivia. That was a good one. How have we done? Trivia. So this question is inspired by CMF not including NFC on their phone. And we all know about Nearby Share. Hilarious name. Quick Share now is what it's called. Really? Yeah. I guess I don't know. Officially. That's funny. Yeah. it's Google's answer to AirDrop. La-di-da. But prior to QuickShare, there was NearbyShare. And prior to NearbyShare, there was a wireless data transfer protocol that actually did use NFC. You had to take two phones and make a kiss. Yep, I loved it. What was it called?

38:37I know this. You remember this. Nexus 4. Can you tell me a Nexus 4? Nexus 4. Yeah. Good call, David. that was it Nexus 4 I'm picturing Nexus 4 with the like squares on the back Nexus 4 had the like the stars on the back like sparkly back oh that was the one that we bought later and it was like melting yeah wow okay what was it called I don't want to think about that one answers will be at the end like usual and we'll be right back after this break

39:27support for this show comes from shopify when you're starting a new business there's so much to do sometimes it can feel like you're playing in a super bowl but you're the only one on your team shopify says they can help shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world offering tools to help your one-man band play like a champion shopify says they can help your business grow with sales, design, marketing, and more. Can't design a website? No problem. Shopify offers beautiful, ready-to-use templates that fit your brand's style. Need extra support? Their AI-powered commerce tools can assist with everyday tasks like enhancing product photos, writing product descriptions, or generating discount codes.

40:02And if you get stuck, Shopify is always around to share advice with their award-winning 24-7 customer support. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. You can turn your big business idea into with Shopify on your side. You can sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash waveform. So just go to shopify.com slash waveform, shopify.com slash waveform. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you.

40:41Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

40:55Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EPCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EPCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EbGliss, LibriKizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies.

41:31EbGliss can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EpGliss. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EpGliss. Before starting EpGliss, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about EpGliss and visit epgliss.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. All right, welcome back. We've got to unpack some announcements and an event that Samsung held this week.

42:02Today. That's called Samsung. Yeah, it was actually the day that we're recording. An hour ago. Samsung Unpacked. So I made a video with my first impressions of all the products. So the Z Flip, the Z Fold, the Watch, the Watch Ultra, the Buds 3, the Buds 3 Pro, and the Ring. So if you want to check out impressions and first hands-on and looks at any of those things, check out that video. But the event itself was also like, we were watching it this morning and it was, it struck me as just having so many generic quotes and weird, awkward moments and forced applause that I don't know what's happening with events anymore.

42:39It just feels kind of unnecessary. Investors. I feel like it turned on. It had their montage in the beginning, which was like this kid skateboarding and with really bad acting all around where he keeps going to different types of sports and activities and asking them to play through the translator on his flip. Every scene of them playing sports felt like the Catwoman basketball scene of just really brutal acting and up close. You have to get really close to make it look like they're actually playing the sport. where neither the actors or the directors have ever played the sport. Exactly, yeah.

43:13Like the basketball scene was the first, was like two people dribbling basketballs while like dancing. And then this like up close version of him like hanging on the rim and dunking a basketball. Or that scene in Camp Rock when the person goes on and plays the DJ set and it's really, really bad. And everyone goes, she's really good. Yeah. But then after that, we had 25 minutes of just cruising through products, which I love. In 25 minutes, they covered the ring, both of the watches, and like half of the fold. And I was like, oh, we're cruising. This is going to be a short, short event. And then it was an hour and 15 minutes.

43:49And then the Gemini comes up and just all the air gets sucked out of the room. And I just basically fell asleep. So yeah, they had to do that Galaxy AI section. They showed us the new section at the top of the settings with all the different features, which had some useful stuff. Like in Samsung Notes, you can draw a bunch of stuff and then it'll turn it into real drawings or real art. It'll summarize stuff in the browser if you use Samsung's browser, things like that. I like the generative feel around your image. If you change the horizon line, you get more around what you shot. And it seemed to work pretty well.

44:22But yeah, they just kind of have to do the Apple thing, which is we put all of the AI in one place so you know where to find it. And it's at the top and you don't forget that it exists. We're an AI company, we swear. I'm gonna look this up now to make sure that I'm right but in that section they talked about circle to search and I swear in the background they had someone using an S Pen on the front side of a fold and I haven't seen anything about that but we talked about this last week so you guys can keep talking about Gemini and let me try and find this in the stream pack in the stream but yeah then we got Gemini so was the ring also before Gemini Yes, the ring and the watch and half of the Fold, and then that's how they got into Gemini.

45:07So I guess we can go through each of the products one by one and just give our reactions to those. Because I've got hands on time. You've seen the specs and the announcements. So phones, we'll just start with that. Z Fold 6, Z Flip 6. Very much similar looking to the last year of the Fold 5 and Flip 5. They're both$100 more expensive, though. So it's$10.99 for the Flip and$18.99 for the Fold. And with that, you get a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. You get better cooling, bigger vapor chamber. You get a new ultra-wide camera. And I think it's a slightly larger battery in the flip as well. So you go from 3 ,700 to 4 ,000 mAh, and you get basically all the baseline, like 12 gigs of RAM, and the cameras from the S24.

45:50So basically S24 interior. And, yeah, squared off sides, slightly different camera housing, like slight design changes, a little bit of an update to the hinge. apparently the coating on the folding screen is is slightly different it's like a little bit thicker which allowed them or it's more durable which allowed them to remove some layers i don't know how that's going to work over time but yeah basically they look very similar to last year's phones aesthetically anyway yeah any thoughts i kind of think that at this point the razor is a lot cooler than the flip in my professional opinion is this aesthetically or in general like overall um both because the flip still isn't like a full full screen display true it's like kind of got that weird like cut out it i didn't notice it as much until they like had the up on the screen and then a bunch of screens behind what it all could do and it looks like the folder as like a mac icon yeah yeah yeah it does yeah i don't know i like that the razor the new razor especially is like full screen and uh the new razor also has this really cool feature where if you this is just silly but if you open it halfway it opens up the camera and it enables like this camcorder mode yeah and then you can like zoom in and out by moving samsung did exactly the same thing did they really i think so yeah i might have to double check that but i think that they also did that that's hilarious yeah okay well anyway i think that a razor is cooler than the flip because the flip kind of just feels at this point like it's the absolute default version of a clamshell foldable phone.

47:27That's probably their goal. Yeah, I mean, every Samsung phone at this point is the most boring, default, safest version of an Android phone in any given form factor. Same with the Fold. Like, the OnePlus Open is a cooler phone. But I guess the Razer is interesting because it costs less. Yeah. Like, the Razer Plus, I think, is$1 ,000, and then the Razer is$650. Yeah. This is now$1 ,100. Yeah. So that's interesting. It is Samsung, and, you know, the build quality is really good, and everything about it is good. it's just kind of boring. Yeah. Can I interrupt real quick? Mm-hmm. I found the part I was talking about.

48:01Does this, I can't tell what phone this is, but does that not look like using an S Pen on the front of a Galaxy Fold? It does to me. It looks like it's pretty narrow. I saw nothing about it. And they didn't say anything about it. No, this was just in the background of when they were starting to talk about Circle to Search. Interesting. I can't tell. I haven't, we'll have to test it. It would be awesome if they added this, because we just talked about this last week, about how nice this would be. Yeah. But that might be, can you use the S Pen on the Flip interior screen? No. No. I don't think so.

48:32I don't think so. Is that an S24 Ultra? It's cropped in so weird. I can't totally tell. It's hard to see. And it's like with a person with gloves on. So they're covering over. I guess we'll test it. We'll test it and see. We'll find that out. Yeah. So what are the interesting updates this year to the foldables? That's basically it. I mean, so the Flip has that battery bump, I think, is probably the most substantial hardware change for people. 47 to 5 ,000? 37 to 4 ,000. 37 to 4 ,000. And obviously the new chip and, like, the NPU, which does all the AI stuff. And then the Fold, it's like, yeah, a lot of subtle improvements with that one.

49:09But there are new AI features. AI stuff is, right? Yeah, the AI features is most of the new stuff. So, yeah, if you plan on using summarization or having it write emails for you or sketch things for you. favorite it can do all the stuff now and it's all at the top but you can just play with that settings toolbox the um video like creator segment they did for the like sketching and ai image generating thing was painful it was you missed this so i'm gonna explain it to you because you are going to i was driving to work you're going to hate this oh no it's a creator who i'm not exactly sure who he was is basically parked out on this like mountainside in the dark looking at the Milky Way galaxy and like the stars.

49:53And so he's using that as inspiration for what he's going to draw. So he takes a photo of the stars and he draws a constellation. And then that constellation kind of looks like the Eiffel Tower. So then he decides to enter in the Eiffel Tower into a like AI image generation studio and creates like an AI image of the Eiffel Tower. And that was the inspiration from the beautiful Milky Way galaxy in the dark, beautiful outdoors. So he never drew anything? No, he did though later cut himself out with AI and drag a photo of himself into the fake AI image Eiffel Tower. Wow. This is going to be so popular.

50:38Everyone's going to use this. It's not a Samsung event without a pretty brutal creator getting thrown to the dogs in the middle of the event. Yeah, they got paid a lot of money. so you can't really feel that sorry for them. That other creator, too, that they had there, Sydney Sweeney. Who's that? Sorry. Who is she again? She's an actress, right? She's an extremely popular actress right now. She's created some things. What's she in? She was on Hot Ones. Euphoria? Yeah. Hot Ones. Is Euphoria still happening? Either way, she's in a lot of different things. She's extremely popular. They made an image of her or something.

51:16And then we're like, what do you think? And she was like, neat. That's so cool. Yeah, that happened as well. She was in Madam Web. Weird event now. I haven't seen it. What was the boardroom meeting like when they decided we're going to have her sit in the front row and then we're just going to cut to a camera reaction of her going, cool. And then the crowd's going to clap. It was no more than 20 seconds, I feel like. I really hope they paid her a lot of money. Can I say one AI thing that I did like? Okay. there was and this is like so simple but it was like instant slow-mo on videos where if you take a video and you're watching it back you just hold the screen and it'll slow-mo where you're holding the screen because right now the current slow-mo mode on everything is so annoying when it like decides where the slow-mo wants to be itself yeah most of the time gives it way too much time so you're trying to do something like a golf form check and it will start slow-moing before you make any movement for like 20 seconds wait i think you might have that feature on your phone really because i think i already have that feature let's go yeah i did not know an article instant slow-mo is one of my favorite galaxy s24 features it's i remember when this came out on the s24 and i think some people were testing it and it kind of makes weird like artifacts yeah that's from january because it's adding frames and it's making up frames so i remember seeing some stuff about there being weird artifacting and like morphing in some instances.

52:43So I guess that's the issue is it's not doing the slow-mo video. It's doing it to regular video. Yeah. That's annoying. I'd wish just it, I took the high frame rate video and I got to do that later because dragging the little things is so annoying every time. Yeah. Okay, what other AI features can we dunk on? Honestly, that's kind of most of the AI stuff. I mean, Circle of Search is the one that by far most people use. The best one. And it's the best one and it's still really good. Yeah. There was like translation stuff and how you can use it with the flip screen. So like you can see it on one side and they can see it on the other side.

53:16Yeah. Cool. One way live translate. What's that? You're just like eavesdropping on people speaking another language, basically. Nice. Sweet. It's pretty cool. Pretty cool, right? Marquez, is the fold still narrow? The fold outside screen is about two millimeters wider than before. It is definitely still narrow. I thought they said it was taller. I'm also after the dinner head last night. I think all of the bezels are smaller. And so, yeah, it probably is a tiny bit taller. But I think they told me, like, oh, yeah, two millimeters wider. Like, we're trying to make it more usable. But I typed on it.

53:49It's very much still a narrow screen. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, that's the phones. Nice. What do you want to do, watches? I'm way more interested in the watches. I've heard. Okay, so Watch 7, Watch 7 Ultra both come out or get announced. Watch 7 is looking very similar. It's got the thin bezels. it's still a circular display it's still got two sizes and all that watch 7 ultra is very much a one-to-one recreation of the same place in apple's ecosystem that the watch ultra lives same name actually watch ultra uh it's 650 but for that here's what you get the same 1.5 inch size screen but yeah it's sapphire crystal as the bigger one as the 47 as the 44 44 the bigger one yeah are you sure it's not 47 yeah it's 44 yeah uh it is water resistant to 100 meters it is made of titanium and it's got this much bigger body behind that circular face so we've talked about this in the pod before it's like a circular watch face and underneath it is just like a kind of a squircle type shape with a larger battery i think it's a bummer that the screen size of the ultra is the same as the 44 i would like a bigger it's not biggest yeah yeah yeah Yeah.

55:06Would have been nice. It's still a circle. You also get dual frequency GPS, which I think is also in the new Watch 7. And you also get this big orange action button. I mean, quick button. Quick button is what it's called. It's not an action button. It does actions, though. But when you press it, it says select an action. So I'm... Select a quick. Yeah. I thought that was a knob dial. It's just a button. It really makes it look like it's a dial. And I'm a little upset about it. like a neural, I guess, like a dial would be, but it's just a button. And if you hold that button, you can also get this like loud siren, like an 85 dB siren.

55:43When we were shooting hands-on, people kept pressing it and activating the siren every couple of seconds, which was really great. Thanks, guys. Keep doing that. That's awesome. Yeah, it's like a$650 watch that looks and feels like it's matching up head to head in the Samsung ecosystem the same way this Ultra Watch does in Apple's ecosystem, except you can only use it with a Samsung phone. All right. Sorry to interrupt future Andrew here. We mentioned and are going to keep mentioning how the Samsung watch and ring only work with Samsung phones. It's only Thursday. A bunch of people just got their review units and there's been a lot of conflicting stuff where the reviewers guides all say only available on Samsung phones and people are testing it and it seems like they work on some of their Android phones but you're missing a bunch of features so either way it seems like the sentiment is still kind of true of there's some limits here um so we're gonna keep that stuff in but just know it seems like it does work with some phones we will be testing it more everyone will be testing it more but we're not 100 sure what is and is not available between these accessories and other android phones okay back to the show that's rough why because a lot of android what google android wear what why am i used to be android wear wear a lot of wear os watches you can use with any android phone it's also android wear perpetually in my head although you know the pixel watch is only on pixels right uh or can you use the pixel watch with any android phone I thought you wait sorry did I miss something Pixel Watch works with any Android yeah so like it's kind of rough oh this only works with I just missed you saying that I'm sorry that is rough it only works with Galaxy phones that's stupid I agree glad I have a Galaxy phone because I think this is sick yeah same boy now Samsung should get the same amount of scrutiny that Apple gets for they should that's stupid Samsung you should feel ashamed you've got all the stuff in the Samsung Health app then just like make the Samsung Health app the app that you connect the watch through yeah you can just put that on an Android phone.

57:47I've had it on there accidentally before because I just transferred from a Samsung phone to a Pixel phone and it was there. Yeah, I don't know. 48 hour battery life in exercise power saving mode and 100 hour battery life in power saving mode. Can I, I found something on their website that I thought was interesting here. Sure. Okay, so we were trying to figure out what exercise power saving mode means. And we thought it just meant normal use of like exercising. but on the Samsung website and David and I looked at this, it's hilarious because under this there are so many asterisks like a wild amount but one of them says in normal battery mode when power saving mode or exercise power saving mode is off, battery life is up to 60 hours with always on display enabled and up to 80 hours with always on display disabled.

58:37So I still don't know what exercise power saving mode means I'm assuming it's when you're in In an exercise activity, it turns on some sort of power saving mode to not do other background apps and only focus on health metrics? I think it's less samples. So in a regular exercise mode, it's sampling all the time and updating like every one or two seconds. And in exercise power saving mode, maybe you're doing an ultra marathon or something. You don't need every two seconds to be measured. It spreads out the measurements and samples way less. So it's an equivalent power saving mode for exercising.

59:07but the cool thing here is if you are just using this as a watch and you know through two to three days of no different activities 60 hours of battery life with always on display on and then if it's off so you're just doing raise to wake 80 hours that's pretty good that seems like great numbers that they just seem to not talk about at all that's pretty much equivalent to the apple watch i would say from my experience 60 hours being let's say two and a half days i think that's what i'd get out of my apple watch ultra if i just use it like a regular watch with the way you're saying 60 hours is what they say and you get closer to two and a half days not no 60 hours oh yeah i guess that is two and a half days yeah it's about what i'm getting so but i've been using raised awake so three days essentially with 80 hours that would be great yeah that seems like solid battery life though i'm oh my other question is so the watch band connection point on this looks different from the regular Galaxy watches, which used to be, or still are, in the just regular Watch 7.

1:00:08Essentially, the metal piece that contracts inwards goes in and then has two pins. This looks almost more similar to the Apple Watch, where it slides in, if you look at the photos of it. my question well first of all that sucks that you can't use the bands because i love all these bands even though they are pretty much one-to-one ripoffs of the Apple Watch bands because I love the Apple Watch bands. I know Mark has his answer to this already. What are the chances you think you can slide an Apple Watch band into this Galaxy Watch Ultra? It's probably not the same size. See how it goes through? It looks like it's a similar...

1:00:48It's very similar. It looks extremely similar, but I bet you they're like slightly different sizes. I agree. Yeah. But I'm holding out optimism for it. You're trying to use an Apple Watch band with the Galaxy Watch Ultra. I want the trail band from the Apple Watch, which there is a trail band for the Galaxy Watch Ultra, but it is more similar to the Alpine Loop from the Apple Watch Ultra. Literally same name, different band, which I also think is cool. But I love all the Apple Watch Ultra bands. I feel like that's true for musical bands too. Similar, but... Same name, different band. Yeah. Sorry.

1:01:24Andrew, I would say hold out hope for clones of the Apple Watch bands. I'm not. seven dollar amazon bands yeah right that's this is a year and a half old and was eight dollars and it came with two and it looks brand new it's because it's green so yeah it's only can morph into the more nasty version i have a question yeah is there anything between the two watches that differentiates the ultra other than just pressing a button the battery the battery the battery's a lot bigger okay that's it oh yeah no there's a bunch it's a hundred meter water resistance versus is normal ip68 it's titanium it's got the bigger battery and bigger chassis obviously um dual frequency is all it's on both okay um yeah so it's a couple things and the bands only work with that one like they're literally different bands that won't work with each other right i'm very interested i want this 100 samsung can you send us a couple of these it's weird that they did different bands it is weird that yeah i think that's odd yeah um but i think this looks so sick i like my garmin but i'd be super interested in using this and um i think i'm okay with that i want this what color do you want adam trail band in the white color i already have it picked in white color thank you oh the trail band's the white color i think i like um titanium i like titanium silver because i like only the orange on the button versus the orange because when you do titanium gray you get the orange on all the notches yeah that's what i want that looks good when you have the orange band i think the other one would look better if i change the band out to other things but i want titanium silver with orange trail band fair i wonder if i will ever wear a smart watch again i get stuck in this situation because garmin the thing that i like about it is that it's cross-platform yeah you know you get every notification yeah but this keeps getting more specific like now it's only on galaxy devices not even just android devices That's messed up.

1:03:22Welcome to the galaxy, my friend. Let's do it. Let's join the ecosystem, Adam. Just you and me, baby. You're already Dex every day. Yeah, right? That's true. Dex and daily. Speaking of the next thing, if I was going to do this, might as well try the Buds Pro 3. Yeah. The industrial AirPods Pro. The Buds are redesigned, and I think they look really good, to be honest. Even though they have that big stem, they have like a triangular stem instead of a circular one, and then the blade lights on the pros look kind of cool. Not that I need lights on earbuds. I don't understand indicator lights on earbuds.

1:03:56Yeah, we talked about this last time. You can't see it. Are you a fish? You look in the mirror. Wait, one thing they told me it was maybe useful for, finding them when you lose them. You can light them up. Find them in the dark. Yeah, in the pure dark. Yeah, it's not nothing. Only when you're already half asleep, you're like, where are my earbuds? Do you know if it in active noise canceling was like glowed red, so then maybe less people would try and talk to you when you have them in. I feel like that would be fantastic for all the people who are like, I just wear AirPods so nobody talks to me.

1:04:26Or strangers would come up to you and be like, hey, your earbuds are about to die. By the way, what's going on? My name's it. Yeah. You know what's interesting about the Buds 3 versus the Buds 3 Pro is they both have ANC, but only the Pro has ambient mode. And usually it's the other way around. Really? Maybe. i feel like anc that's true and the pros also have adaptive anc which is if it picks up on like you're having a conversation it will lower the noise cancellation or if there's some siren you need to hear it can block that out so it's a little bit smarter than just pure regular anc so if i'm the regular ones don't have it if i'm setting off the siren on my galaxy watch ultra you'll be able to hear me even if you have anc on i mean if i'm biking down the street i don't really want my my music to go away so i can hear the ambulance that's going to pierce my ears Wait, no, yes you do, so you don't get hit by the ambulance.

1:05:21That's the exact reason. Let's be real. The ANC is not, I mean, yeah, the ANC is not that good that I'm just not going to hear the ambulance. That's true. I'm going to hear the ambulance. I feel like you described the one scenario on which you need that exact feature. If I'm biking out in the middle of the afternoon, I don't want to hear the ambulance behind me. I don't want to hear the guy honking at me. Go around me. But yeah, that's the buds. And then we finally got details on the ring. They have a galaxy ring. Sorry. Oh, yeah, that's cool, too. Yeah. Oh, and they're$179 and$249, so like the same as Apple's prices.

1:05:53Again. All right. Yeah. But yeah, so the ring. Okay. So there is no ring in everybody's ecosystem, but they added a ring to theirs, and it will have all the features you'd expect from a smart ring. It's got a couple sensors. It measures your heart rate. It has a skin temperature sensor, and it will do the same feeding back to your smartphone and feeding into the information for your energy score in the health app, so you've got an energy score the same that the watch would give you. I just want to point out Garmin was really a trailblazer. Got it. Nice. On this feature. Their body battery thing they've had for a long time.

1:06:25Everyone is copying it now. Yeah. Does Whoop do that too? Yeah. Yeah, they do. They definitely have some sort of recovery. It's not called body battery, but yeah, it's just recovery scores. Recovery scores, yeah. Yeah. Scores are fun. I like that the 8th sleeve gives me a number every day. Yeah. I'm trying to hit a high score, kind of. Yeah. So yeah, I'm into it. But yeah, there's three colors. Black, silver, gold. it's a little bit concave so that it's less likely to scratch if you like knock it against something well there's two there's oh no i'm thinking sorry i'm thinking of the aura ring the aura ring has two models that look different right yeah yeah and so the aura ring funny you bring that up has a six dollar a month subscription yeah this one has no subscription so it's$399 no subscription but it's$100 but it's$100 more than the base aura ring i'm so interested in this so there you go i'm gonna try it i'm gonna test it i'm very curious i mean i use this samsung phone anyway so i think you also need a samsung phone to use this really just yeah it doesn't make sense if you can put samsung health on just let it they're trying to keep people in the ecosystem yeah it makes sense i just hate it like uh we're getting the ecosystem we wanted so bad and they're doing it exactly like the ecosystem we all hate so much like apple's getting so much like criticism and scrutiny and then all the other companies are like we're gonna do it anyway I mean we should have all seen this coming I guess but like I would take it as a warning sign if I was a bigger company well that's why the companies are doing it because it's working out for Apple and they haven't actually gotten in real trouble for it yet I just wish I can take the best Samsung features or products that I want and use it with any Android phone which I feel like you used to be able to do all the time that would be 2012 yeah that would be 2012 yeah good times the Mayan calendar and everything the ring to me oh sorry you just answered your phone so i was no i'm converting it into a someone randomly called me and i'm i'm answering it with bixby oh cool well why you do that rings i totally get why a lot of people like them i just feel like if you're like adam when you're gonna go lift are you gonna wear the ring when you're lifting yeah i do and it has marks and scratches all over it oh that feels so uncomfortable it is uncomfortable especially like doing pull-ups and stuff like that i get like you do pull-ups yeah terrible blisters but eventually you uh you just get used to only you had like a wrist to put something on yes and you're a watch guy yeah i'm a regular watch like i said i get the ring i don't think i could ever use it because of climbing or uh like lifting i don't like that and also like lifting is fine climbing is a specific use case so you would have to do it.

1:09:04You know, it's funny. I always see, I never notice rings on people's fingers, but I'm always afraid to wear one because I think you have to be like a ring guy to wear a ring. You know? I don't think you have to. I think they're way more popular now. It does take a minute to get used to. My wedding ring took me a very long time to get used to. I used to go home and just take it off immediately because I just was not used to it. And then that's when I started wearing a smart watch so having a ring and a watch all of a sudden made my hand feel like heavier well i didn't like it well my eight sleep already gives me all this information and helps me sleep better but not while you run your workout yeah that's yeah do you play sports with a ring on uh like you climb you can't climb with a ring no i take that off i used to not even play video games with my ring on yeah i take my watch out to play you can't you can't throw with it i guess i don't know i wear my ring when i'm playing disc golf but it's on my left hand so it doesn't matter if i was catching i was golfing no when i when i did play a little ultimate after i was married i used like a silicon ring instead which isn't as big of a issue and smart rings are way thicker than a regular like yeah that's what i'm thinking like this is supposed to be a fitness tracker and like a health tracker but i don't want to wear it while i'm doing any of the fitness things that i'm that's but yeah that's my that's my concern yeah okay well it has a seven day battery life so i can track sleeping and track all kinds of other things you're supposed to be able to swim with it Yep.

1:10:24100 meters again. So you can go real deep. You can go scuba diving with it on if you wanted to. So that's cool. It's, yeah,$399. That's out there. That's kind of it. It has a cool case, by the way. If you put it on the case, it's got this like pin system for charging. And then it like lights up a ring around the ring showing how much battery you have. Oh, cool. Which is kind of neat. And we have a shot of that in the video if you want to see what that looks like. That is really cool. That's about it. I was wondering what that case was. Yeah. It's a charging case. Clear cases are back. Yeah, but you don't need a charging case for it.

1:10:54You don't? No. The other ones just have like a little stand that you just plop it onto. Oh. But don't you want to charge on the go? Well, yeah. Now this is what that's for. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I think last thing is it starts at$399. Did we say that already? We did. We did say that already. That seems kind of expensive to me. No subscription. How much is your superhuman ring? Wait. Is that what it's called? No, that's the trash can. Ultrahuman. No, that's the email app. Yeah. Email app is superhuman. Simplehuman is the trash can. Glad we got that. You're ultrahuman? You're ultrahuman? $2.99 no subscription.

1:11:25Your Ultra here. Oh, wow. That's pretty good. So it's the price of the Aura with no subscription. Let me just fact check that, but yeah. Is there anything that your ring does or doesn't do that's like very different from the Samsung ring? Can connect to other phones. Android phones. That's probably the main thing. Low key, yeah. That's what I was thinking about when we were going over all this. I can still connect to whatever I want. But it seems like the... Is it good? The Galaxy ring... Yeah, it's pretty good. The Galaxy ring does more active... What's the word? Noise cancellation? No. Sensing?

1:11:52censoring I guess like if I want to do a workout I have to go into yeah thank you if I want to I have to go into the app and start workout the galaxy ring will automatically do that which is nice workout section yeah I actually think that's huge because I hated on my whoop band when I wore it for a while that you had to I had to go get my phone start the workout because there's no auto detection on things and that's a pain in the neck when you want to just like put your phone away and go do something so the ultra human ring is 349 so it's right in the middle oh okay interesting six days of battery life pretty similar so yeah i feel like a lot of these are comparable i'm gonna jump into the rings testing market so if anyone has any other things i should look out for when testing them feel free to leave a comment let me know if you use an aura ring let me know what you like about it so when i test this i know what to look for yeah uh anyway yeah i know my ring size now so that's cool uh i think that's it oh it's the Samsung.

1:12:46Okay. I'll grab it in a second. I'll be in there in a minute and a half. Quick update for podcast listeners. Marquez got a call in the middle of the podcast that the Samsung devices were delivered. So we will be unboxing them. First impressions live on the pod. And we almost didn't because he just put it to call screening at first. He tried to answer with Bixby. Imagine we don't get the Samsung products because Bixby answered something. What are those? Hey guys, what are those? Oh, you got a bunch of boxes here. Oh wow Samsung Claus has arrived. Uh, yeah So you don't believe you just stopped by the phone call that I kept dismissing was actually So these are all the devices we just talked about this is the watch ultra with the orange band Is that the one that you're interested that's when you wanted but he wanted this well No, there's the one Adam wanted sort of Yes six and the fold six which I believe that would be the silver and the blue guys new little super minimal box yeah which i'm kind of into it's cool art style cool design and buzz 3 buzz 3 pro light box for the buzz 3 dark box for the buzz 3 pro because pro is dark classic and the galaxy ring this better be the matte black one this better be the matte black it's black on the front so i'm assuming it's black on the front yeah i think the ring on the front would represent the color okay i hope so yeah so the galaxy ring cool so we have so yeah nice we just finished talking about them now you can leave a comment about which ones you'd want to see a review of first i'm just going to put it out there the ring got the most comments the ring got the most uh interest in general i think what i've seen i think we should do the ring first so it's probably going to be the first thing i unbox and test yeah but let us know if you're also interested in what else are you saving the unboxing experience for video when andrew asked that what he means is can i take it out the box right now is that cool yeah go ahead yeah the watch really oh let's can Can I see the buds?

1:14:44Can I do the ring? Both. Both. Okay. There you go. And you want to unbox the ring? Yeah. I don't think we've ever unboxed something on the podcast before. All at the same time. At the same time. Oh, yeah. Hold on. I'll wait. I'll wait. Sorry. I did one pull tab. We can pull together. We can pull through this together. Pull through. I just have to say, this says don't accept the seal is broken. This definitely looks like it's got one of the double seals. I don't know. This is chaotic. I'm opening the phone as well. Is this not double sealed? like they definitely opened it and then re-put a seal on it seems like typical review unit

1:15:19Marquez has the fold I have the fold out the box it is titanium this is so much like the Apple Watch Ultra where it's got this box for the the watch and the band inside and it's a white box inside the black box with the black arrows the price is like on the box itself which is kind of weird oh this case can I get everybody to be silent for three seconds yeah

1:15:47pretty satisfying considering it's the like paper screen cover which have not been as whoa this is all bent on the inside hmm this looks like something do you see this oh my god what's wrong with this box he's okay pretty durable this is why Marquez does it We do it live. Wait, what's up? Oh, this is not... Wait, this is not the Apple Watch. They glow. You see that? See that glow? Simultaneous unboxing experience. Oh, I got you. So this is the ring case closing. Ready? It's a light plastic one. Light plastic. Now, this package is incredible. The way the lights of the device integrate with the packaging.

1:16:31Yeah, that's nice. You see the ring? Wait, can confirm now, though, the question before. this definitely does not fit with an Apple Watch because it doesn't slide, it snaps as the Apple Watch Ultra. These feel really light. Which is good. I mean, bad. No, I think it's good. They feel kind of cheap. Well, that's the thing about certain wearable tech is you want it to be light because you're wearing it, but it feels cheap because it's light. Like a VR headset. Bad. Headphones. Good. You know how Apple makes headphones that are heavier than everyone else's. They feel really premium but they're also so heavy.

1:17:07And they make a VR headset that's heavier than everyone else's so it feels really premium but it's also so heavy. So now yeah. I love this. So we just unboxed everything except this next trivia question. Well played. Damn I'm good. Alright so quick update on the score by the way. We're all tied at 13. That seems really unlucky. Yeah, well, it's going to change this episode. I hope so. I hope so. If you guys get points. So this next trivia question is an audio round. I sent Ellis an audio clip that he is going to play, and the question will come immediately out there. An audio file? Is it in 16 kilohertz?

1:17:49Today, our phones aren't just music players or web browsers. They're portals to the most important places, people, and passions in our lives. And yet they have the same screens they had 10 years ago, boxed in on all sides. until now. The **** isn't just a new smartphone, but a new kind of smartphone. It marks a new era in smartphone design. The perfect balance of form and function, art and science, design and technology. And it's my pleasure to introduce an innovation that will change the way you see your smartphone and everything on it. The Infinity Display. What phone was this? He said. It's the B.

1:18:31I love when it's bleeping sound rounds because it just sounds like they're cursing. There are so many options for this. It's not the Xiaomi one because that would have been in Chinese. No, this is a Samsung phone. Infinite display? Infinity display. Infinity display. I'm just trying to figure out which one. What was the first phone to have that? Well, there's multiple answers to that. Well, okay. I'll give you a little hint here. I know. The first Samsung phone to have that. There's also still multiple answers. I have an answer that will probably be wrong. At least I got the first one right. Well, we'll think about this one, and we'll be back after the break.

1:19:21I'm Christian McCaffrey, Pro Running Back, and Abercrombie is an official fashion partner of the NFL. I'm not kidding when I say NFL by Abercrombie broke the internet last year. And I think this season's lineup is even cooler. And so does my wife who keeps stealing all my hoodies. Stay fit for the season and Abercrombie's newest arrivals. Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online and in store.

1:19:52When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. This episode is brought to you by eBay. We all have that piece. The one that's so you, you've basically become known for it. And if you don't yet, fashionistas, you'll find it on eBay. That Miu Miu red leather bomber, the Cousteau Barcelona cowboy top, or that Patagonia fleece in the 2017 colorway.

1:20:35All these finds are all on eBay, along with millions of more main character pieces backed by authenticity guarantee. eBay is the place for pre-loved and vintage fashion. eBay, things people love. Will Komen. We are going to talk very briefly. What did you say? German. It's German. Alice, you were just speaking German a bunch to me yesterday. I know a few German expressions, but not all of the language. I don't know why I knew that that was. It just sounded German. Well, a lot of German words just sound like English words. Haus. I'm right. It's true. Anyway. True. Okay. However, butterflies. Schmetterling.

1:21:19That's way cooler than butterflies. Ambulance is notably like krankenwagen. It's krankenwagen. Yeah. Because it's the crazy car. We are so far off top of the car. And crazy. Also, that's sick. It's the same thing. But David can't hear the Kronken wagon when his... Kronken wagon. He doesn't have his... Kronken wagon. His noise cancellation is on. Yeah. All right. I want to talk about Spotify adding comments to podcasts and ActivityPub. Okay. ActivityPub is not part of this. I was wondering. But I am going to make it part of it. Okay. So there's an update to Spotify recently where they're now allowing...

1:21:54comments on podcasts. The way that they're implementing this is very interesting. Effectively, listeners can leave comments on podcasts, but every single comment is held for review. So, you only show the comments that you want to show, which seems very authoritarian. Like for Waveform, we would choose? Yeah. Imagine if Yelp was like that. You only put the nice, this food sucks. That's already kind of a weird thing about this. is like you're probably only going to publish the positive comments which is strange um and then people can leave comments on the podcast itself which to me just is a review but okay yeah it's what apple podcast has done that forever you leave a comment on the podcast you rate and it has a comment yeah but that's a review yeah yeah that's yeah i'm agreeing yeah just calling it something different there's also other podcasts that are like on sub stack or something where you can do comments in there and it turns into a kind of discussion type of area so i guess that's kind know what they're going for i guess yeah it's just it's weird that every single comment is vetted but you know um they previously had a poll and q a option on podcasts in spotify that apparently got a decent amount of traction so now they're allowing for comments um and in my opinion this is just like another way for them to try to keep people in the spotify podcasting ecosystem similarly to the other day when we talked about Apple Music or Apple Podcasts allowing for subscriptions within Apple Podcasts.

1:23:26This goes against everything that podcasts were made for. The phrase, get it wherever you get your podcasts, is a very powerful phrase because podcasts based on RSS can just go through the system. And I'm consistently more frustrated at every platform that that tries to make unique features in their ecosystem that keeps people in their ecosystem when podcasts as a idea are made to be gotten anywhere. So this one feels like not as like the Apple one was like, you get bonus content for paying throughout that. This is just like, it is worse. The people on this platform are being able to comment. Yeah.

1:24:10And stuff. It's just that if you had activity pub, right. Okay. So activity pub, Podcasts can already go through ActivityPub. And so if you have a platform that can accept these federated content, pieces of content, you could just comment on a podcast through ActivityPub and then you would be able to see those comments everywhere. So you don't need to just be locked into the Spotify platform to see the Spotify comments for a podcast. You'd be able to see everyone's comments for the podcast. But see, you said those magical words there, locked in. if i'm spotify i want people locked in yeah if you have most of the people in the ecosystem because yeah we talk about standards organizations apple usually wants to lock people in as well but they embraced matter because nobody has apple home kit devices because they don't have that many home kit devices and there's way more google assistants and amazon echo devices out there so it's easier for them to do that anyway i'm just saying that uh considering podcasts were originally made to be gotten anywhere it's just very frustrating to see like more and more platforms like trying to make more features that are exclusive to platform i agree with you that that's not a huge deal in this case um i'm much more angry at apple for this but it would be cool podcasting because it's a made available anywhere also makes it really hard for us to tell downloads and listens and even see reviews.

1:25:39Before, reviews were mostly only on Apple Podcasts. Then Spotify added a star system with no comments. And then now there are comments. But that's still annoying that they're on two... Our podcast could be a three-star on Spotify and a five-star on Apple Podcasts. Should that all be federated? It would be great if it could be. Yeah, because that's just everyone in the world. Why is there a difference between the people on one platform and another platform? If there's an app on the Google Play Store and an app on the Apple App Store and they have different ratings, it's like you can do the math yourself, I guess, to get the average rating between them.

1:26:13With that one, it's tricky because they might genuinely be a different experience. That's fair enough, yeah. But if it's the same podcast in multiple places. Wait, Apple people hear our podcast differently than Android people. Oh, the subtle messaging? Oh, we were not supposed to say that out loud. Sorry, cut that, Adam, cut that. Wait. The subtle messaging. I don't know what just happened. But yeah, no, I kind of agree, David, because I feel like content should be the universal thing. Yeah. Like comments, Q &As, polls, everyone should be able to see that. I like the idea of everyone competing on features, not on content.

1:26:46So like threads, for example, under desktop mode, just put the like tweet deck kind of style thing. That's cool. But like eventually they'll eventually be federated or whatever and I can choose which one I want. The analogy is when the Twitter API was open and we had all the different Twitter apps and you downloaded a different Twitter app because it had different features. like that should be the content should be the universal thing and then the features around the content should be your thing that you compete on hypothetical should youtube be included in this i think so yeah because our podcast on youtube has hundreds of comments every week uh-huh and lots of ratings on every episode yeah it's just it's not a i mean if we put the same video everywhere it's the same content yeah no i 100 agree because like right now you can put a video on Twitter or whatever, and it's like, you're gonna get comments, so why isn't there just a comment section for everything?

1:27:44Shareholder value. That's actually the real answer. We all know that's the answer. Yeah, it would be great. It's like, imagine you have a blog, and very few people go to your blog on your website to comment on your website's blog, but you publish the blog on Twitter and tons of people talk about it. Why aren't the comment sections the same on Twitter or threads than they are on your blog? Like they could all be the same comment section. Do you remember Google Plus? Every time we talk about activity, Pub Marquez has like a golden look in his eye where he's like remembering the Google Plus days.

1:28:22Back in my day, every website had a plus one button in the corner and that was just across the whole internet. You could be the first one to plus one an article. You could be the 5 ,000th person to plus one something, and everything had some sort of a comment system. Yeah, at least ActivityPub is standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium and not Google. Fair. I wouldn't want a company to be the one that's running all comment sections around the entire internet. Especially because it was dead two years later. Yeah, especially Google. If we could hypothetically upload this podcast video everywhere, like Marquez was suggesting, would the features that bring us to YouTube be monetization?

1:29:04On YouTube. Discoverability. Discoverability. I think it's numero uno. Yeah. How do you say that in German? Unz. Unz is... That's a total guess. Eins. Eins, yeah. But what's number? I think it's nummer. Just erase all the vowels. Pretty much. all the Germans are gonna yell at you I'm German I'm 50 % German use a vowel A-E-I-O-U sometimes Y Y? sometimes it's most of the time Claire and I just had this discussion it's A-E-I-O-U and pretty much all of the time Y is the Y in sync a vowel? how often is Y? Y is more often a vowel you don't know what you're talking about Is a Y at the end a vowel? Yeah.

1:29:53I think what you're saying is yucky. Damn. That was one example. He had two. What? You! Yeah. Lil Jon was right all along. That's Soulja Boy! Yeah, it is Soulja Boy! I didn't mean that. I didn't mean that. That's my age demographic, too. It is Numa Einz, by the way. I was right. Numer Einz. I'm going to get canceled for vowels. That's how I'm leaving this podcast is vowels. Numerize. America. We need to end this podcast right now. It's a great time to do trivia answers. Let's do trivia. Get in the Fetaverse. I gotta start testing these devices too. Thank you very much. All right. Question number one.

1:30:40What do they call it? Quick share? Numerize. After nearby share, they called it. Quick share. Quick share. Okay. There was QuickShare, and before that, there was NearbyShare, and before that, it used NFC. What was Google's NFC Wireless Data Transfer Protocol called?

1:31:06For anyone in the audience, I read on the internet that NFC has a standard distance limitation of four centimeters, and I could not find a single citation for that fact, despite Googling and Googling and Googling. So if you're an engineer, and you happen to know where I can find the official citation for four centimeters, being the maximum distance for NFC communication, podcast at mkbhd.com is where to send it. Flip them and read, boys. Android Beam. Android Beam is correct. What else do we have? We both are tapped to share. Debuted on the Nexus 4. I remember that. Damn. I remember that. Android Beam is such a good name.

1:31:52If this was multiple choice. Wait. Android Beam is definitely something they would call it back then in the Android days where they were really embracing the alien vibe. And now they're like, no, we need to be Google boring. Well, it's really funny because I feel like Beam implies distance. but your phones literally had to be touching to use this. It only touched to get the handshake. No. They had to be four centimeters away. Oh yeah, you had to. During the entire transfer? Yes. If I was four centimeters away from Adam, he'd be like, you're touching me right now. Yeah, but now you can transfer heat, which is what the phones are doing.

1:32:34And data. And payment information. And contact information. Question number two. I'm going to play you. Or, well, more accurately, Ellis is going to play you an audio clip from a Samsung Unpacked event. Phones aren't just music players or web browsers. They're portals to the most important places, people, and passions in our lives. And yet they have the same screens they had 10 years ago. Curious. Boxed in on all sides. until now the g*** isn't just a new smartphone but a new kind of smartphone it marks a new era in smartphone design the perfect balance of form and function, art and science design and technology and it's my pleasure to introduce an innovation that will change the way you see your smartphone and everything on it the infinity display what phone was announced with infinity display?

1:33:32that year there were multiple phones with infinity display but this was specifically for a single phone when they first announced it oh really yes shoot like which one were they talking about during this part must be wrong all right flip him and read multiple phones with infinity display what do you got wait david oh i put galaxy fold one well galaxy fold oh andrew i put the galaxy Note Edge. Nope. Marquez? The real answer is the Galaxy Note Edge, but that's not the answer you want. You want me to say Galaxy S8. Damn! Oh, I remember. Spot on. Oh, wow. But the Note Edge did it before that. Yeah, but also only on one side.

1:34:20Exactly. They didn't call it the Infinity Display. It only wrapped around the right side of the phone. Why would a device called the Edge have something called the Infinity Display? It was just that only one edge of it It had the folding over play. But only on one side. No, both. So this was back in the obsession over screen-to-body ratios, where phone manufacturers would quote, like, we have an 89 % screen-to-body ratio, and then someone would go, we've got 90, and they'd go, oh my god, 92. And this was when Samsung was just like, we curved the screen over the edges, and it basically looks like it's an infinite screen-to-body ratio.

1:34:59I totally knew that. What's confusing about that soundbite, though, is they're like screens haven't changed in 10 years. Well, except for ours like a year ago, the Galaxy Note Edge that we're basically taking this away from. Yeah, I remember that being called Infinity Display now. I was just confused. Like if you were going to call something Infinity Display, I don't know why you'd call attention to an edge. Yeah, when you're looking at it from the front, it basically looks infinite. No, I get it. They should have called it the F, whatever. Let's just... I'll take the point though. Cool. Wow. Wow.

1:35:28All right. Well, that was fun. Well, we've got a bunch of testing now to do as you can tell by the video version of the podcast, we've just got boxes scattered everywhere and we've got them in our hands. So let us know what you want to see in the reviews. I'm going to be wearing all kinds of stuff and holding things and testing. So we'll be reading your comments. One smart ring for each finger. Are you going to double watch, Marcos? I may have to have one earbud in one ear and the other in the other. You should have one phone in each pocket and have like, yeah, a bunch of rings on it. It's going to be a good time.

1:35:58I think that would be a sick short. Yeah. Just starting it like this. Catch you guys in the next podcast with all the wearables on at the same time. Thanks for watching. See you guys later. Peace. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Rovin. We are a partner with the Vox Media Podcast Network and our interaction music was created by VainSill. Bingo!

1:36:30Love you, Microsoft. Do you? No! Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just$5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Prices and participation may vary.