Samesung no more

So, foldables. I don't know how I feel about foldables. I don't know if you guys have any different opinions to me, but I feel like... i'm a slab phone guy i'd rather have two slab phones tied together than i would a foldable phone at this point in time i see the utility people get out of it but like very like galaxy level i wonder if we're if it was a waste of engineering resources for everybody to do this to like commit spend so much time on getting this foldable screen tech down right um

like fundamentally like my knee-jerk reaction is still every time you're folding the phone you're breaking you're we are wearing it out you're breaking it a little bit and that still feels uncomfortable to me yeah i feel like i since the first time i held a foldable which i guess was like a i guess was three years ago I don't think I'd used one before 2022, which which feels late in the foldable cycle, but isn't there's only three years in. But.

yeah it's always one of those things where it's like this is so cool like I love holding this and using this for like the first week and then eventually it's just a phone and like it's a phone with a bigger screen but I've always struggled to like find reasons to justify that bigger screen which I think is I don't think is like a you know unique position I think plenty of people have found that it's difficult to

to figure out what you're going to use that big screen for on an Android phone. And I think making them larger, which is the direction foldables are going in, is probably the right move because it just... It makes it feel more like an actual tablet in your pocket than than I think the earlier generation folds were. But but yeah, I think my I've always struggled, especially especially with the pricing. It's like, you know.

Damien, you joke about you'd rather have two phones get together. It's like when you're talking about $2,000, you can get a really, really, really good laptop for $2,000. And it's at that point that, and I know they're different products, but you start to struggle with. What am I actually getting out of this thing for the money I'm putting into it? On that, I genuinely agree with you wholeheartedly. I think for the price of affordable. I mean, if you don't, if you get one off plan.

I guess most people don't do that, right? I get the impression that, let's just say $2,000 is an arbitrary figure that we're going to use. You could probably get a used laptop of pretty high acclaim, a pretty good phone, smartphone. Yeah. Maybe you could probably get a tablet and a watch. Maybe not great ones, but for that kind of money, you can get, and I hate the term ecosystem because it kind of is, but you would get an ecosystem, right?

I want to know if anybody out there has ever replaced all of their devices or a multitude of devices, be that tablet, laptop, with a foldable phone. I used a Pixel 9 Pro folder earlier this year. And don't get me wrong, it's fantastic. What it does, it's very, very good. But there's so many little things I'm like, well, am I using the inner screen enough? The apps and the services that you use on the inner screen, I don't.

necessarily like a square layout. It's almost like it's wasted space. I sometimes wonder whether it's an issue of the UI isn't light yet. Nobody has solved the multitasking UI. I agree. I think it should be phone apps. Always side-by-side phone apps. um a bit like one plus is tablet ui i feel like that's the closest we've had versus like tablet optimizations um widescreen

which is the direction that Google has been pushing. I just wonder whether they should have played to their strengths or rather embrace the weakness that it's all just phone apps phone apps are the most optimized thing that everybody has so i do wonder if it's a question of nobody getting the ui right and

Yeah, it's tablets. I feel like everybody can use a tablet, but the most common behavior is getting a full desktop browsing experience or... bigger video and that square aspect ratio i i'm still on the original um pixel fold i intend to uh upgrade with the pixel 10 series but

I'm not looking forward to that squarish aspect ratio. Do you think that two phone apps side by side, though? I've never thought that that's multitasking. When people say it's multitasking, it's just... instagram one side and whatsapp on the other or like google messages one side and youtube on the other like am i multitasking or am i just doing have i just got two phone apps open i'm not actually producing anything do you know what i mean like it's familiar like

I can see that actually, but I think it's just more familiar and it reduces the overhead for developers to have to optimize their apps. So that's a high level on foldables. What do we think of Samsungs? Have any of you guys had the opportunity to try them yet? Because I had about two out. Okay, so let me just give you some initial thoughts.

The phone is typically Samsung. I don't know what they've been doing over the past two to three years. They've always made pretty good hardware, but the last 18 months... Samsung has gone to a different level. They are smoking everyone in terms of how good their devices feel. The S24 Ultra is fantastic. I don't know what... I mean, the S25 is really sharp, but damn, it's like... I don't know.

It's almost like, I don't know if you guys know about tennis, but it's almost like Novak Djokovic. He had that phase where it's like, why is this guy suddenly really, really good? I don't know. Obviously, I'm not accusing Samsung of doing anything untoward, like I maybe would be right there at Novak Djokovic, but I definitely feel like Samsung have just hit a plane where they're like...

They're in their stride. They're not making huge leaps every single time. But as soon as I picked up the Galaxy Fold 7, if I can remember the name, I was genuinely wowed. And I haven't been like that with a Samsung foldable since the first one. Like I thought it was cool as a concept, but this genuinely, it's incredible. It's so good.

I can't, I feel like I'm glazing them a little bit. They're so good. Where would you place it with the other, like with the oppo? Where do you put it in the landscape? Okay, so the magic... five one of the honor phones that was ridiculously thin that came out last year that is that to me was probably the best in terms of the overall hardware the software and all that kind of stuff yeah probably a little bit

far down the league table but this is right up there this is toe to toe don't get me wrong you're making you're going to make compromises but I think this might be, like, the kind of people who've been complaining, foldables aren't thin enough. Foldables aren't thin enough. You now have choices to make. Like, it is, I think it's almost as thin, or if not thinner than the S25, which is just...

That boggles the mind. Like, I mean, does that mean it's going to be less durable? Probably you're going to make those compromises there, but. I do wonder how the market's going to react, the people out there who complain that fallibles are too, oh, it's like having two phones in your pocket side by side. I personally would prefer that still for utility purposes and all that kind of stuff, and battery as well.

But yeah, I cannot fault them on the hardware. It genuinely is a gorgeous piece of technology. And I guess that's what we kind of want at this bleeding edge. Is it technically the bleeding edge? We've, what, folded us for five years or so?

I mean, there isn't really much I can say beyond that, that the hardware is really good. The software, I love one UI this year. How's the screen? How's the crease? Because to me, that's still a hang up for me because it... it it feels the crease it feels like plastic when it's when it once it starts getting a noticeable crease and i don't that's not premium it's in general it's still not pre it's not cold glass i don't think

I think once you notice it, it's going to be in your mind all the time. I feel like it's less pronounced now than it ever has been, and it feels like they've done that bit by bit. It's still not as good as some of the OnePlus and the Oppos. Yeah. But I mean, when we look at it, this is going to be the market leading foldable, right? This is going to be the big dog. This is going to be the one that everybody is trying to emulate.

I wouldn't say they're leading from the front as much because they've definitely been affected by what Oppo and Xiaomi and Honor are doing. Because before they had no inclination that they were going to make the device exponentially thinner.

I'm excited to see what they do with the next few anyway. That's what I'm going to say. I think if they can keep making it thinner, it's going to be ridiculous. I think they're going to reach a point where it's diminishing returns. But even tiny things like the screen feels...

It feels different. I don't know how to quantify it. It doesn't feel plastic. It doesn't feel glass. It feels like this hybrid still, which all foldables do. Do you think this new thickness or rather thinness... inherently puts a disadvantage on the pixel 10 pro fold which is looking to be the exact same chassis with maybe a bigger screen inside do you think that thickness is going to be like

Samsung announcing just before, is that going to be a big knock on the pro fold? I think if you put that pricing into perspective, like that $2,000, like I say, if you're buying it off plan. Off contract or sell plan, whatever. Yes, 100%. I can't remember the actual update plan for this. Is it seven years? If it's seven years, then I think bank...

Bang for your buck, you probably might be better off going with the Galaxy. But at the end of the day, I think the kind of people who are going to buy Pixel are going to buy Pixel anyway, right? I think the software is what they're buying it for. That's the thing I have to say that's surprising about foldables.

i see so many ios people go to android for the first time to get affordable um that is genuinely interesting and uh i guess that counters any cynicism one might have about the form factor it is genuinely a thing that has allowed android to lead and maybe they'll be able to do that for another year or two before apple gets into the game so that has been surprising the only space you can get this experience

right it's like you know if if we're being honest like switching between like a pixel and an iPhone you know there are obviously differences but they are slimmer than ever at the moment in terms of software like you know it's it ios is more android-esque than ever um and you know especially if you're looking at a pixel like google does lock down

uh certain elements of its launcher for example that you know you couldn't have dreamed of on android 10 years ago um and i think you know even if just from a hardware perspective like the only space that is really exciting beyond like nothing's you know design language is are they're foldables and and i think the you know large but whether you're going to like a large screen foldable like the fold seven or you're you're won over by the idea of like

a more pocketable smartphone experience with like the flips i i i totally see why you know diehard iphone fans feeling a little bored with the phone in their pocket are like, well, all right, I'll finally check out Android and I'm going to do so through an experience I could not have with Apple. This definitely feels though, as you alluded to there, like that large screen experience is...

I mean, Apple fans will always look over and be... I'm sure they'll be wowed by it until Apple eventually does it. I think they will join the party. But I do wonder if this is that first step towards... Samsung have... teased the trifold making it thinner and making this almost viable at this thinness is probably that first step of like hey we can do this on a trifold I think that personally is where the real

let's call it in air quotes, the real foldable systems are going to start to really ramp up and take off. Because we talked about it a little bit at the start, that square aspect ratio, it just doesn't work for me.

exactly it just doesn't work because you're always trying to do that thing of like two side by side and then one floating window and you're constantly dragging this little floating window around and we don't we're not it's not a desktop is it so yeah yeah so I do wonder if I do get the impression that they've added decks now

to the... Is it the flip as well? I think it's both, right? So it was already on... Dex was on the fold. It's now on the flip. Right, okay. Well, I'm going to rescind what I'm about to say then. I think... If they can therefore implement DeX as basically the unfolded experience and make it a desktop experience, that makes the most sense. That is going to be the future of what Samsung do with these devices. On a trifold.

Yeah, on the trifold. And having seen the, I think Huawei, the Huawei have one, they have a trifold. What little I've seen of that is that's the form factor. If you're going to do foldables, that's the way to go. Durability, well... We're going to find out, aren't we? We're going to have 18 to 24 months of finding out how durable these are. And I do genuinely think that it's going to be a wild ride. I agree.

I'm glad we circled back to this because I've been thinking a lot about this, which is like, you know, as much as I don't fully hate the square aspect ratio or square ish aspect ratio that every company is centered on, you know, we've seen.

you know basically in the wake of the oneplus open everybody was like oh yeah i guess it is just square mostly square screens is what we should be doing and it it doesn't you know if if i'm struggling to find ways to multitask that fit around my life because i agree it usually just does feel like it's like well okay i'm i'm browsing the web and i'll i guess i'll just have my music app open over here because i can because why not um you know it's

It's like, okay, well, what are the other benefits of this larger screen format? It's like, well, you could watch video. You could take it on a plane and watch a movie. Okay, but because it's square, it's actually only a little bit larger than if I were to bring like a Galaxy S25 Ultra. It's a little larger, but it's not... that much larger especially considering the price difference so i think you know a trifold fixes that in a lot of ways because it allows you to open up this much wider

um you know where the rumor is 10 inch on on samsung's trifle this 10 inch display that is wider that will feel like you're holding you know a slightly smaller galaxy tab in your hand not a smartphone and you know i i think that will fit into my life a lot better

It's also probably going to cost $3,000, which circles back to the whole like, think about how much else you could buy with this. You know, if we're at $2,000 and we're making shopping lists of... the products you could buy with this thing and this has been i've been saying this i feel like all of 2025 but it's like you know the smartphone pricing thing you know has completely caved in on itself where it's like

If you don't want a foldable, like the Pixel 9a is probably all you need. And you can spend whatever money you didn't spend on a smartphone on any. assorted right let's say let's say you had two thousand dollars and you were like i'm gonna buy the fold seven and then you you didn't like it you don't like that there's no s pen support whatever

That $1,500 goes a long way. And that's going to be even stronger for trifolds if they're $3,000. As much as I'm excited to try one, hopefully, you know, in the next year or two, it's... It seems like one of those products that is going to like that price is just going to be a hurdle for the majority of consumers, even those who would want it. I get the impression as well, though, with with.

And I don't want to be that person who is saying that these companies are running out of ideas. I actually don't think they're running out of ideas. I think what's happened is there is not as much runway for these things because consumers have said, we just want a slab. Just give us a slab with a camera on the back.

all I want to do I don't even care how good the selfie camera is because it's fine for me I think the average and I hate the term average consumer I think it's a bit disrespectful but I'm going to use it anyway so Prepare to be offended, average consumers. Most of the people out there just don't care. They literally don't care. And they'll see these and they'll see that price tag and be like, nah.

I'm not paying $100, $200, $300 a month for whatever it is because it can be that expensive, right? And if, say, Samsung had their way and the market... evolve the way they expected it to evolve. Nobody would be using a laptop right now. Every single person would be using a foldable phone and it's capable of doing all those things. But the laptop form factor has been around since what, like the late 80s?

They can't kill that form factor. We've settled into these things and they are the done thing. Like even touchscreens on laptops, that hasn't really taken off. No one wants to do it because it just doesn't work. We have these little touchscreens in our phones that work perfectly for that.

The Trifold is probably good. It might be a Hail Mary shot, but I do think that is probably going to be the future of it. If it turns out that Samsung who, and I have a bit of a theory about this. I have a theory that the fold, the first level fold was. A little bit of a, how would I describe it? A concept, proof of concept. Because Samsung makes some of the best displays, right? I get the impression that they made this flexible display. I think it's flexible OLED, right?

They can put that in anywhere. They can put that on car dashboards. They can put that on varying form factors where they're going to make the real money. Because there's not going to be, I don't know, 100 million folds sold every year. They're going to sell that to...

car manufacturers even like you might even get it on your fridge you like that's where they're going to make the real money for this flexible oled tech everything else that comes as a result of that is like bonuses so if we get a nice tri-fold foldable device whatever it is it's just a bonus so they

The market will dictate, I think, and I genuinely think it's shrinking. It's clearly shrinking because there are more players than ever, but how often do you see affordable phone out there? I don't think you do. I think initially I've seen less and less as the years have gone by, but the flip... yes actually before jumping to the flip yeah you had a post about how samsung is really targeting note uh users yep yeah it's um if you if you go through the trade-in deals on samsung's website

They all make sense except for the notes. So essentially. You'll scroll through and you'll find the five-year-old Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. Keep in mind that most of the devices on Samsung's trade-in list are... newer than five years old the five-year-old galaxy note 20 ultra Gets you $600 in trade-in value if you're buying Fold 7, which is the same as the S23 Ultra, the S23 Plus, and the Z Flip 5, which are all two-year-old devices.

you know that that means it's worth more to samsung to get a note 20 ultra buyer to buy into the fold 7 then an S22 Ultra user. It's someone who bought an S25, a regular S25 this year. That gets you less trade-in. And then in addition to that, if you go through, there's... Every Note device back to 2017's Note 8 is on this trade-in list for $300. And that's just not true for any other, like, you know.

I don't think the S20 is on there at all. The S21 gets you... you know a couple hundred bucks otherwise you have to turn in for the the hundred dollar other android smartphone i call it a consolation prize in the in the article a hundred dollar consolation prize it's it's very obvious to me that samsung wants note holdouts of which there are you know there is a sizable audience of people who are like i will take my note nine to the grave uh to to buy this phone

I would probably would have been one of those five or six years ago, a hundred percent. I was a big note nine guy, but sadly mine has gone to the big spicy pillow in the sky. Um, opened it up and it's, yeah, it's in two pieces basically, but. I wonder how much of this is effectively Samsung saying, well, we would love to have you on this device, but... When you don't have the one thing that note owners want, which is massive expense support, it's a bit of a confusing message.

a few things i tried to ask samsung employees and and higher-ups whilst i was at the session earlier this week nobody really wants to outright say that

potentially the S Pen is on the chopping block. And I do think that the days of the S Pen being a core component in any Samsung device are probably slowly, slowly coming to a close. I think it's going to be a sad day when the S Pen is... is um effectively treated as an optional extra i can definitely foresee it happening sooner rather than later because well when you have the a notebook style device which doesn't have the ability to to take handwritten notes

I think that probably speaks volumes, really. Yeah, I have to imagine that this change, you know, if you were to get Samsung on record about it, probably, you know, spawns from the same place that the... removal of bluetooth in the the s25 ultras s pen spawned from right they're probably like well you know of of the of the folds that supported the s pen which i believe were the three through the six you know, only, you know, 1% or less than 1% of fold users actually.

use the s pen which you know is a silly would be would be a silly thing to say because it's an optional accessory like it was never in the box you had to buy A case that had it built in that was, you know, even at its at its best, which was I would say last year's S Pen case was still bulky and clumsy. And the S Pen experience, it was this flat S Pen that was not.

nearly as comfortable as the one that is included with the S25 Ultra, for example. I really think that this is... them being like well you know we we offered it for a few years and not enough people bought it and the digitizer takes up space in this chassis and we can really drop you know we can we can save a lot of internal space by getting rid of it so

Let's just do that and we'll ride the controversy wave and it will pass and, you know, we'll move on. And I think that's true. But again, it does clash with the idea that they're like, by the way, Galaxy Note. owners come get your new phone just get ready to get rid of the s pen like it's it is silly Yeah, get rid of the one thing you are obsessed with and you don't want to give up on all those functionalities. For years, I kind of thought, naively, I thought they would kind of, I guess...

What sort of engineer a situation where the S Pen could go in that, like, you know, the cleave of the fold in the middle bit? I kind of thought, I don't know. Yeah. In hindsight, it's very, very naive that... I could even think this would happen, but I thought, oh, they'll increase the length of the mechanism so that the S Pen can go in there and make it like a proper, I guess some notebooks have it where you'll have like a pen slot at the back of it.

it's not to be I think clearly everyone's like they want it thinner but they want to have all these features as well obviously the The man on the street clearly doesn't know how much of an engineering feat it is to do all of these things simultaneously. Right. And you've got to make compromises, right? But... It's an interesting product. I think the Z Fold 7 or the Z Fold 7 will be fairly...

I think it'll go down well so far. My initial impressions are it's a big step forward of the last year's version because it just felt like nothing changed for like three or four years. And I think Samsung kind of even were... Not outright saying it last year, but it definitely felt like, oh, we've made some thermal improvements and we have a new chip, but not much is new. But it is what it is. I think the flip is pretty interesting. Make your case.

Make the case for the flip. I think Samsung's definitely looked at what Moto are doing and said, we're going to have a bit of that cover screen action. It's very weird to pick it up and not think, oh, this looks very much like a Moto Razr. Yeah. I've never really been a massive flip person. I do think, contrary to what I've just been saying about foldable devices, the flip feels like a little bit of a... Too many compromises on the camera, I think, a lot of the ways, but...

I do think the clam shell is going to be perfect for a lot of people. And that bigger screen is, I mean, it's a typical Samsung screen. It's absolutely gorgeous to look at like any Samsung panel. But I don't know. Have you guys ever thought that...

you've wanted the outside cameras to be in the way when you're using the phone? Because there's going to be a lot of UI portions that are really badly implemented now. So I've used the Flip 6 for the past year. I've had that on my desk for the past year. And... The positioning of the cameras inherently means that you don't get to use the space to the left, which is why Samsung is using it for the now bar, which I think is a pretty clever UI affordance.

but at the same time i the the opposition to putting full apps compared to moto is i thought i thought we were going to have like a golden age of widgets of like large cover screen widgets pushed by google that hasn't really panned out um i think I think a small phone is the biggest form factor. I mean, it's the biggest appeal rather than being able to use a phone on a small screen as needed.

Have you tried to use the outer screen as the main experience? Because I've seen a few people try that, but I just found it, I tried to do it, and I haven't really done this before anyway. The last one I used was the one that was like a half display at the front. I think this... The idea is cool. And I think for me, my first thought was, oh, this would be great for like emulating classic 3DS and DS titles. This is the perfect DS emulator.

And I don't know, I didn't at any point think this is going to be a great phone. But I feel like if they can make some cool, if... developers anyway, I don't think developers will do this because I don't think it's a big enough market share, but if anything can get implemented and enhanced for this outer display, this square form factor, it might actually, like...

inadvertently benefit the square display of the inner display of the folds. So, I don't know. I'm just spitballing here. That's a very good point. I don't think there's enough. demand market share whatever to get Google to start encouraging developers to like optimize their apps for a cover screen I don't think that is there again i think widgets would have been the right situation but still that it's it's not you're what you're targeting one specific form factor that's not

as mass market, as slab. So it's the UI issues there. Okay, I'm going to jump in and say, what would you pick if you had to pick between the two? Because I... Between what? If you had to pick between the fold and a flip, which do you think is the one that's going to be catching most people's attention and their wallets? Oh, that's a hard one.

i i think i think the flip remains cooler for a lot of people i think i think the promise of like a productivity machine like oh man you're gonna be doing so much work on the go i think or even movies Yeah, or movies. The movies thing is good, but I feel like the flip is a difficult sell. Yeah, it's not enough. And then I think the flip has this baked-in nostalgia.

Factor that the full just doesn't have. Right. Like, I think a lot of people have, you know, my first phone was a was a motor razor, not the. android phone but like the razor v3 and uh and i'll always have nostalgia for this form factor because the because i had like two or three flip phones before i had anything else and um

I think it's cool that these exist. And, you know, from a hardware perspective, the Flip 7 in particular delivers kind of what I've been asking for from both Samsung and Motorola, which is... they're finally starting to slim down this chassis. 13.7 millimeters is still pretty bulky compared to other phones, right? But I'm... Glad to see we are finally starting to to pay attention to slimming down this as well, because I've never daily drove a Samsung clamshell device, but I have.

reviewed multiple razors and my the thing that always stops me from sticking on them other than some some quirk or some complaints about Motorola software is It just feels so thick in your pocket. It takes up less space, but then it protrudes so far from your leg. Ironically, it feels so much more blocky than a fold.

type thing especially like the the more recent you know even just down to like the the oneplus uh open or the or the pixel 9 pro fold which are both like I think the open is like 12 millimeters and the Pixel 9 Pro fold was like 10 point something. Like compared to the 14 to 15 millimeter clamshells from Samsung and Motorola we've seen in recent years, like those did feel they're heavier, but they felt a little more comfortable in my pocket because they just weren't so thick.

I think this is such a first world problem as a former game by advanced SP carrier. I think. I have my Amber Nick knockoff here on my desk. I get it. This thing is a... but i have not tried to carry it in my pocket all that often i will be honest with you it usually gets thrown in a backpack You've not lived. You need to carry it in your back pocket. Cargo pants. On the school bus? I was there. I was there with the SPS. Well, yeah, like I think making those...

these incremental strides. I do wonder how much of this is derived from the fact that Samsung has really got flat... I think the wider industry has been pretty critical of Samsung's foldable efforts over the last few years. But I think... What's interesting is how they still receive this criticism, and obviously they clearly are the biggest player in this space, bar no other company out there. And I guess that ties into a little bit with regards to the software.

Everything now feels, I mean, they have these partnerships with Google and we saw Rick was on stage during the keynote, which is very interesting to see him at another product launch on stage talking about Google apps and services. it definitely feels like everything now is is so everything related to foldables even in some respects with regards to the pixel folds samsung gets first dibs and we saw some cool stuff

I think the optimization for that outer screen with Gemini and stuff is going to be interesting. How that benefits everybody else, I'm not really sure. But yeah, there was some interesting updates to Circle to Search. I'm endlessly fascinated by because I use it multiple times a day because I'm so lazy at copying text and searching for things. I'm really excited to see how this pans out. I know that the best part of this is, and we talk Pixel here anyway, is that...

Google has just said, hey, you're going to get some of this cool stuff that Samsung's announced on stage that they're getting with their devices. So Pixel users, we're not left out. So we might be talking unpacked, but Circle2Search is getting some updates. We've been confirmed Wear OS 6, which is...

Some, sorry, Gemini, which is technically, I was told anyway, and I think it was maybe passed on incorrectly to me, was related to Wear OS 6. But we're not left in the dark if you use a Pixel in any form. You're going to get some cool stuff off the back of this. I mean, I'm a gamer, so...

I like the fact that there's a throwback here to Stadia and being able to search for boss help or puzzle help in your games. Don't get me wrong, I want to test this out now with some of the, in air quotes, emulated and legally obtained ROMs that I have on some of the games that I have. play on mobile but um yeah let's see i guess let's see how that pans out because these are rolling out right now and it seems to be pretty decent yeah gemini on watch i want to get into this because

Hey, I'm a Gemini on dock kind of guy, so you know where I stand on Gemini. This, I was so impressed. Have you guys ever used Google Assistant on your wearables? Barely. Yeah, that answers my question, right? Like I don't because I have, if that makes sense. Yeah, okay. So that experience, we will shelve what we think about that. Gemini on the wearable.

completely different in terms of speed, in terms of accuracy, in terms of, I was, I mean, don't get me wrong, I was testing it on a Galaxy Watch 8. Might have been the classic. I can't remember which one was which. The speed at which it activated and took the voice commands, night and day difference between that and the assistant. I am so excited to see how this pans out because...

You can, at least in theory, you can do every single thing that you can do on your phone or your desktop. The screen limits some things. Like I tried to do some image generation and it did it, but you then had to...

I had to get one of the demo people to show me the Gemini log to show me the images because it wouldn't display on the phone. So sadly, sorry, on the watch face. But yeah, this feels like a big move. Whether people use it or not, I'm not really sure because I... i would love to see the usage statistics for google assistant on wearables because i imagine it's in the very very low digits and and they stopped improving it forever ago so it's just sat there feeling so

ancient and slow i i truly like the thing that has excited me the most about gemini is is is very little of what they've like for example shown on stage at io it has been You know, the improvements to language processing over something like Assistant is the real reason to be excited about Gemini, in my opinion, because... of spaces like the watch or or android auto for example but where gemini is also coming it's like those those spaces like need you know i either

If you're asking your watch something, you're doing it because you want a very quick, succinct answer that you don't want to pull your phone out for. That that was like the biggest problem with the system on where is that you just look at it loading and then it would fail 50 percent of the time and you'd be frustrated and have to pull your phone out.

um and then in the car it's it's you know even more specific where it's like well i can't use my phone right now i i need to be able to get to this i need it to do this thing and half the time maybe not half the time it's a little better in the car but sometimes it is not understanding me or i misspeak halfway through and i need to start over um

And that's, I think, looking through some of the examples of what you can ask Gemini on your watch. I think it's like, if the speed's there and the flexibility is there and the language processing is there, this becomes... It goes from something I would never use on my wrist to the thing I'm going to use the most on my wrist. You know what I mean? Yeah, what's so promising here is Gemini as a control method, as an actual voice interaction.

the truest sense of the word where you can access various functions you can check out your health stats you can start playing music it's unawareable where the screen is exactly will always be a limited limiting factor on your wrist and in future glasses and whatnot it's going to be a very there's a lot of well-wanted well-deserved hype around this and

the the language the marketing google has been pushing as it's it's like it's going to be a game changer or along those lines it's very um it's really it could be really promising and i can't wait to get uh start using it it's actively rolling out for people as of taping as of this week so fingers crossed that's coming to everybody whereas for and above um the other

well i guess we can talk about the hardware now about the galaxy watch 8 and i have to say the base one it looks much less it looked really clunky in renders and weeks going in but Seeing our live shots looks pretty slim. Do you know what? It is the better of the two. I think... I don't want to say... I'm going to say, I think Samsung fumbled the classic. I think the classic looks horrendous. I agree.

It looks really bad. How does it, in the, in the, I think it's like a white titanium color or white, white and silver. It looks like a toy. It looks like a cheap toy. You get in a gacha pod. I was, when I picked it up, I was like. I kind of looked around and I'm sure the staff were looking at me like, what's wrong with this guy here? And I genuinely wanted to say to someone,

Is this the real thing or is this a pre-release sample? It was horrendous. And don't get me wrong, the lighting doesn't help sometimes at these hands-on events, but I was shocked at how bad it looked. Don't get me wrong, I mean...

I can talk about Samsung hardware all day in terms of how well it's made, and it feels amazing. I'm not going to deny that, but it looks horrendous. It's almost like, do you think... just yeah so out of place that's it that's what i was trying to quantify do you think okay

Let's get into a weird conspiracy theory here. I wonder if Samsung don't want to make the classic note anymore because the scroll wheel doesn't really have much utility, right? What can you do? I wonder if they're genuinely thinking, we just don't want to make the wheel.

model anymore it looks crunky it looks weird and i think the future is i feel like there's an apple watch boomer ages ago that you would use the side of the watch as the controls instead of a physical dial you would slide up and down on just the side of the watch so that's basically you add a touchpad an integrated touchpad and i think that

the the precedent that the classic was going with was uh watch diving watches especially they have rotating dials but i don't but it just looks clunky on this latest generation and yeah i know like people love the utility but it's just it just adds onto the display that you actively need to interact with all the time i i i i think we're on that's on the way out

Yeah, I just think, like you say, the idea that you would scroll for one thing and touch the screen for another feels a little bit... It's not unintuitive, that's wrong. That's a really wrong way of thinking about it. But I think the shape of the watch... almost and i guess that that lends itself to holistic design and design principles that

You design something so that it's very immediately obvious where you go with your interactions. And it's like, there's all these like, where the bezel sits. I'm looking at my wrist for some reason, like a weirdo. I'm looking at my wrist trying to visage it.

When you see a normal watch, like you hit that edge of the casing and then it goes into the strap. Well, it's almost like there's this edge, plinth, platform, step, whatever you want to call it. And then there's the rotating bezel and it's like...

Do I go there or do I go into the screen? And it makes the watch look wider and thicker and more. Well, it is thicker, but I'm getting annoyed now thinking about it. So someone else, please tell me that it's a good idea and then we can argue about it. I can't do that.

To me, it's such a bizarre decision to take the watch that was most specifically designed to look not like a smartwatch, to look like... a standard watch that was the entire idea of the classic line that's why it has that rotating bezel it's why it's got the large bezel in general and to combine it with the ultras like look and feel It very clearly works, you know, again, I think it works much better, as we've said, in pictures than it did in renders. But I, largely speaking, like...

the watch just looks old it just looks old like like a serious regression to the ties in the year of hardware it does it oh my god you're right it looks like a smart watch from 2014. it looks like something like you know lg would have been like we've got our we've got our enthusiast watch it's huge and it's got a big dial on it and like some people would like it but i just as a successor to like previous classic models like i am

stuck here being a little bit like i don't i i feel like people are gonna look at this design and like most people will either be like i don't too big i don't need all that i'll just go to the cheaper watch 8 or be like well if i like this size and design the ultra is actually doing it better so i might as well yeah the ultra feels more native i'm

We have a shot on the side of the Watch 8 Classic and the Pixel Watch. And again, while I do... think that the watch eight looks better than it ended and previously expected it there's a clunkiness to it an unnecessary clunkiness to it in dropping the circ the full circular embrace and you can obviously see why like it's probably it's probably easier to fit stuff into this squircle-ish thing rather than the rather than pure circular uh something like the pixel watch but it

I don't think we're seeing enough benefit, hardware benefit from it to justify this, I don't know, in-between design. Yeah. It's a strange one because if... Samsung have done some good things at this launch and then some Watch 8 classics, as we'll call them. It's a bit of a...

It's a bit of a drop ball at the moment. It's like, oh yeah, we're doing so well. And then, oh, why did you do that? That's also how I feel about the Flip 7 FE, which we don't need to talk about. Yeah, okay. I mean, that definitely feels like, I mean, let's think of it from an environment.

environmental perspective they're reusing some chassis that are lying around get them out there and i would do want i do wonder if that sets precedent now we're going to get fe's of every single model for the entirety of samsung's existence now i i would have rather them just kept the flip

six around at like a slightly lower price it's not like the fe is that cheap like nine hundred dollars is expensive for what i think you're getting there especially when you consider that What you really need to compare is the 256 gigabyte FE, which is only $100 cheaper than the 256.

gigabyte flip seven like if you that hundred dollar difference gets you a lot of upgrades compared to the fe i just don't like i i it is good that they're using that they're reusing that chassis but you know compared to the razor like the which which i think the the regular razor this year is the one to buy i cannot recommend anybody look at the fe like i i would rather like go shop for a flip six like

Yeah. They're still around. So that's what I would say. Yeah. I think that ties in as well kind of nicely to the fact that if you are looking at the watch eight and you don't like the look of it. Yeah. At least most of the core internals. are pretty much the same as a seven yeah so you don't you don't necessarily need to spend a bundle now to to and it's so cheap yeah the price has come down so yeah yeah where os i think

It's kind of nice as well to see that Wear OS is in a strong space, even though there were less players. We still have options. You don't need to upgrade every single year to get that latest chip. I kind of like the idea that they keep a chip set around for a little while.

Yeah, I think we're kind of in a decent little place. And I think that all of these updates and stuff make sense. I think for Pixel users out there, you're going to get some cool stuff. I'm really pleased that Google's not just let Samsung have...

major exclusivity for a long period of time. But yeah, it's a funny launch, but it's a nice launch. And I think we'll see some fallout in the next few weeks. I don't know if you guys are going to pre-order any. I don't know if you pre-ordered any. I didn't.

you didn't oh well that kind of i think that sums up sums up where we are in terms of this is to end this on a pixel note like the pixel event is feels so close like i don't i wouldn't advise any same with the nothing phone three that just that's about to launch it's so close to what the pixel is doing and a month a few weeks later the iphone it's such a tight gap that honestly if you're buying for the year just wait wait a bit and see how things land

well yeah 100 wait till the end of the year you're gonna get those black friday discounts even if they're slim there will be something there so it's not even like you know i don't even think you're really losing out like not rushing to to pre-order necessarily like wait for all your options to be on the table i don't think there's anything wrong with that

Yeah. Well, we've been saying this for a long time. When you're listening to us, patience is a virtue. And I think that's a perfect note to end on. So thank you guys for joining me today. It's always fun talking new things. And we always like... getting into the nitty gritty and yeah airing a few airing a few of our own complaints so yeah cheers guys bye bye