Pop music and heavy metal may seem like unlikely bedfellows, but the UK band Sleep Token has stormed the charts with their unique blend of metal, hip-hop, reggaeton, and EDM. The masked and entirely anonymous quartet are getting millions of listens. and a plethora of haters who say they're ruining the genre. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan, co-host of Switched On Pop, Vulture's music podcast. And in this week's episode, we're asking...
Is metal the new pop? And if so, what happens when a niche genre goes mainstream? Listen to Switch on Pop anywhere you get podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Nealai Patel, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge and host of Decoder, my show about big ideas and other problems. We have a special exclusive episode for you that we're really excited about. It's an interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
I sat down with Sundart during the Google I.O. developer conference this year to talk about all of the company's major AI news, as well as the state of the industry, the future of the web, and Google's ongoing antitrust trials. There's a lot going on in this one. I think you're really going to like it. Check out Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.
Can I do a quick double, double check, sound check type beat? Nintendo Switch 2. As well. Nintendo Switch 2 OLED. Nintendo Switch 2 OLED Pro XL. All right. I'm going to say that's good. Andrew, you one more time. Nintendo Switch to Lite. Nintendo Switch to A. Nintendo Switch to Pro. Nintendo switch to three. Can you pretend I said something really funny, please? No, I've never imagined that in my life.
Yo, what is up people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew. And I am the Nintendo Switch 2. Finally. Only video viewers will appreciate what just happened. Audio listeners think we are just exhausting this joke, but I swear David's holding a Switch 2. I am. In my hands. His name's actually David, but there is a Switch 2 right there. Yeah, wow. In today's...
episode we got some uh predictions for wwdc because that's next week so we can check about chat about that a little bit but also switch to in the hand first slash second impressions looking at it again alongside my switch one and your switch oled
And also we're going to have a fun little game slash activity where we're going to go through our smartphone chronology. Every smartphone we've owned. It's going to be different slash difficult for some of us, but you'll see. You'll see what we mean. But first... The great distraction of 2026, which is that to distract the world from its perhaps slightly lackluster WWDC announcements, Apple is going to rename. all of their software operating systems to 26.
to match next year's year 2026 so where we would ordinarily have gotten i actually wrote i took a screenshot of this to make sure i could remember where we ordinarily would have gotten ios 19 ipad os 19 tv os 19 mac os 16 watch os 12 and vision os 3 2 i thought Instead, we will get iOS 26, iPadOS 26, tvOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, and visionOS 26. Thank you, Mark Gurman, for that write-up. Can I give you a hot take? Yeah.
i'm like all for this in general but also i never really understood the car thing like i know that it is oh you know car model years are always just the name yeah but do cars always come out at the end of the year yeah So to go on that, it's all matching the year, except that this comes out in 2025. But it's because it's like the end of 2025. So I guess the majority year is the default.
It's not really the end of 2025. But it sounds way closer to the end. Think about this. It's software. You want to sound futuristic. Imagine using 2025 software in January 2026. It already feels out of date, right? That's true. So you might as well just name it 2026 so that all of next year it feels right. Yeah. You know? Yeah, I get it. Software. Yeah, I think this is fine. It's going to make it easier to remember. When I make my video, I won't accidentally say watchOS.
it's nine or ten instead of the wrong number it's just gonna be easy everything's 26 cool this is what samsung did with their phones not too long ago i think starting in 2020 we got the galaxy s20 just to match the year Cool. Well, I'm at least still glad that they're putting the place names on the macOS versions at the end. So it should be macOS 26 Tahoe. Yeah. Is it Lake Tahoe or just Tahoe? Which is my hometown. Oh, cool. Yeah, it's cool.
Wow. Yeah. Didn't they have like a picture of some place you recognize or something? It's a rattlesnip then. It's a picture of Chuck Yeager. Please no. That's a deep cut, Ellis. But no, I think what we're actually expecting to see, the main, maybe most exciting thing, if we don't get many in the way of AI updates, is this new visual refresh of iOS, which has...
We're expecting glass. We're expecting vision OS-like, crystal-like, foggy, glass-looking type UI across the board. Half skeuomorphic, realistic. I think it qualifies as skeuomorphic because it's material design, if you will. if you will. It's material. But any other name. Yeah, things will feel transparent and it will change the looks and shapes and aesthetics of the entire OS. Yeah.
I think it'll be fun. Are they going to do this with the watch OS too or is it just a film? I imagine it should be everything. Oh, everything. Mac OS, watch OS, TV OS, Vision, everything is going to be classic. Yeah. That's cool. I'm like, I'm very curious in how this ends up feeling.
But any big difference is kind of nice because the last big update on the iPhone, at least, was iOS 7. So it's kind of cool seeing, you know, a big visual refresh. Tech just goes in circles, though, doesn't it? Remember Windows 7? Oh, yeah. The whole thing was aero. Uh-huh. Which is just glass. I feel like that's not that new. Also, if you watch any of Microsoft's ads, they all have, like, that aero glassy design. Aero glass, yeah. So.
I like that they're putting them all more similar together, like the names. Their whole thing is that they're trying to make this easier to switch between everything. which i think mac for so long has been the iphone or the back is the easier thing to use for like non-tech people but at the same time
I'm so interested to see what all of our like family thinks about this big update. Cause I still know like change is very scary to people who aren't in our world. I know people who still haven't switched to iOS. 18 because the gallery change yeah and like that one's totally fair though the new photos app is dramatically worse it is but like that also means none of them have rcs which means we did a bad job converting them but there's someone in our office who hasn't switched because of
of the gallery. I shamed him the other day. Oh, you can name him. Tim. Tim. Tim. Tim. RCS, man. You're missing out. Yeah, wow. That's crazy. I messaged him on Telegram, so it's fine.
But like, yeah, I'm, this is supposed to be easier. Yeah. I think a lot of people are going to be scared of it outside of our world. Well, we'll see. Cause I mean, there's a lot of like weird natural elements and um sebastian dewith who makes halide and lux and all this stuff he did a really good write-up about what he imagines that it will probably end up looking like and he was mentioning in this write-up that
a lot of the stuff that it's probably going to look similar to apple's been kind of quietly adding to the iphone for the last few years if you'll remember the shortcuts section of the iphone on the shortcut button oh yeah looks nothing like the rest of the u.s i talk about that a lot and it's weird because
a lot of other phones have copied that since then like the action button looks like they just like bolted on this weird ui that doesn't match the rest of the phone yes and then look at oneplus's like new thing it looks exactly the same it just looks totally different from the rest of the phone yeah but you're saying this is gonna
to become like I think that that will sort of set the standard for what a lot of the rest of UI will look like you've also got things like the dynamic island and how it's sort of like fluid but also kind of like skeuomorphic in a way very wavy uh it's a very good blog you should go read it and uh we'll see how close it is the actual announcement yeah he does some like mock-ups and they yeah they look really nice i mean i think it
It would be a good UI update. They look so good that I saw people that were reporting on them as leaks. And everyone was like, these are not leaks. This is one of those things, though, are people going to make these really beautiful mock-ups and then we're going to see the real thing and be like... I wish it was the mock-up. It'll be fun to compare this to Material 3 Expressive. Horrible name. But they're very different directions.
So it's kind of nice to have two very distinct styles instead of just having all technology that just converges. True, because there was a while there where everything was like flat white, lots of blank spaces, super minimal. Like you could not tell the difference. between the setting screen of the Pixel and the iPhone for quite a while. Yeah. They look the same.
Yeah, so I like that they're diverging a little bit. I do think Material 3 Expressive, despite its horrible name, is actually really nice. Yeah, for sure. Just been using it on my Pixel 9, so yeah, we'll see. Okay. Okay, well, some other smaller WWDC... Rumors slash predictions. You mentioned AI already. Mark Gurman does not seem to think.
we're gonna get a lot of ai from uh yeah this one he says first of all he says he does he just doesn't think new series ready yet and he claimed he doesn't think ai will be the headliner yeah despite apple needing a comeback very stark contrasted google io barely two weeks ago it was like this will be an hour and a half straight of ai advancements yeah go which is why they did the android show separately yeah exactly yeah now google apple's gonna get on stage and go
new designs new names yeah don't worry about the it's like what wwc used to be before they got forced to do a bunch of ai stuff by the investors and now they're like
We're not ready, so we're just going to go back to what we know. But there have been a few little sprinkles of AI that a lot of rumors have been speculating on. Apparently, the Shortcuts app is set to get... apple intelligence which allows you to create shortcuts with natural language which i think is very cool because even though the shortcut the shortcuts app is not that used by normal people because it has a very if this then that kind of structure which for people that haven't taken
It might be a little bit confusing to use. If you could just say, hey, when I get home, I want you to blah, blah, blah. I want you to open my blinds and turn on my lights. And it creates a shortcut that does that. I think that could be very powerful. Is this vibe coding?
This is vibe coding for if this, then that. For everyone. Yeah. For everybody. It's essentially, you just tell your phone what you want it to do and it figures out what you said and makes the Siri shortcut command to do it. Yeah. I think that's smart. Yeah. Yeah.
They also had announced last year that Gemini was going to be an option instead of ChatGPT to use on the iPhone when it needed to check stuff. I would do that. And I think that this year might be the year where they actually introduce it. I would love that. Yeah. I use Gemini all the time.
time yeah a couple other things charging estimates on the lock screen that was something i read and as an iphone user i was like this is the typical like wait it doesn't have that yeah i think everyone i've tested for the last decade other than the iphone has had this it's wild as soon as you plug it in it's like yeah it'll be four hours 34 minutes before your phone's full it's like yeah
And you put on a slow charger, it tells you a longer time. You put on a fast charger, you're like, oh, this is better. It'll take less time. They're not burning that under Apple intelligence, are they? I think they might. I think they might. I hope so. Because that was one of the things I read was they're supposed to be doing battery optimizations. Yeah.
apple intelligence so this could easily be looped in under this where it's like oh we can tell you how long your phone's gonna take to charge what if they are just like we are expanding apple intelligence and they just announce a bunch of stuff that's not using AI at all. And then they're like, forget all the things that we said we were going to announce. They can up their we shipped it percentage. Yeah, exactly. Do we think?
How little do they mention Siri in WWDC? Since it's not new Siri we were supposed to have. I mean, unless it is ready. It could be ready. That would be the surprise of DubDub. They would have to say it is shipping in the developer beta today if they're going to mention it at all.
Do you guys want to bet on an over under how many times they say Siri? Could you imagine a dub dub with no Siri? I think they'll say it once. They have to say it. I'm taking the over if it's one, but I think it's going to be a few. They have to say Siri Shortcuts, right? Because Shortcuts is a Siri Shortcuts.
oh is it called siri shortcuts i think so it's just a shortcuts app but i think they're called siri shortcuts that's dumb so maybe they'll say siri like four times because they don't that the thing that we're hoping happened is they learned their lesson a little bit yeah and they won't go announcing a bunch of features that aren't ready and might not ship for months years yeah
But that also means that there's probably way less for them to talk about because a lot of the stuff they're working on is not ready and won't be for months slash years. So if they're going to talk about Siri, which last time they said they were having this huge update for.
it better be ready yeah like it is funny apple i think needs to they worry so much more about when they ship something it working flawlessly continuously like most of the time because all of these other ai companies you know they'll show a demo and it'll work in the demo or it doesn't work in the demo like google's done and then they actually ship it and it basically doesn't work and it's like unusable yeah but apple
I don't think that they want to do that because they're just afraid of all the bad press they're going to get. And on top of it, it sounds like not only was it not perfect, it sounds like it wasn't even remotely close and so messed up that they couldn't even fix it. So they're in a...
rough spot. I feel like there was some engineer at Apple that was just so terrified to like tell their manager that they weren't done with their project yet. And they're just like, Oh, it's too late at this point. Your thing's in the presentation. It's good to go. Right. Yeah, it's ready. And then he takes a flight somewhere and never comes back. So my favorite rumor was Mark Gurman said they might be bringing live translation to AirPods, which I think Ellis has somehow...
created 2025 as the year of live translation. Again. Like finally snapping at the end of last year. You're welcome, Silicon Valley investors. I did this for you. Yeah. So that sounds like you would be wearing it. AirPods, at least one person's wearing AirPods and you speak your language. They can't understand you. But if they speak, if I'm wearing them, you speak to me in Spanish. It sends that to my iPhone. My iPhone translates it.
And then it plays out of the iPhone, I think is what Mark Gurman said. By the way, if that's the case, why don't you just do it from the phone? I have always done this where you have Google Translate. You can just speak into it in your language. It comes out in the other language and it goes back and forth. What's the big deal with on the headphone? Totally true. But just think about think about you saw her.
Right? Think about the... I said this last episode. I said this last episode. Have you seen her, Marquez? Yes, but the platonic ideal of... AI live translation is humans just walk around speaking their language and everyone understands them and you understand everyone. So I don't want to have to have a device out. I don't want to have to whatever. I just got this little ear pod in my ear and boom, I have the superpower. But you do because it plays. It has to play out the iPhone.
Well, if I want to talk back to them. Yeah, if you want to talk. So you either are both wearing AirPods, which is Apple's perfect world. That's the Apple perfect world magic moment. Matter of fact, they might have a commercial or some ad where both people are wearing AirPods doing live translation. each other speaking totally different languages and understanding each other because that's what that's the visual they want i hate this which is like a magic
I don't know what language you're speaking, but I understand you, the human. They want that moment. It's just so rare that you're going to be hearing another language where you don't need to communicate back. Yeah, exactly. Which is funny. And maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but this is also this is a rumor, so I don't even know. But like you said, if the phone is out, you just speak into the phone and turn and it speaks back in this scenario.
you speak back to me in another language into my phone and then I listen to it on a delay, but you just watch me sit there like, I don't hear if it's talking or know when it's done. Yeah. Cause I don't get the audio cue that he's actually listening to it. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm just listening to Creed in my headphones while you're talking to my phone. Maybe one person has the AirPods with the live translation.
And the other person is like, let's say I'm a. So here's the situation. This is going to work, right? All right. I'm a tourist. I go to a country that. people speak a different language. I have the AirPods in. So I'm glad I have my AirPods because when I walk up to someone and go, hey, where is this street? They have no idea what I said. Right.
Nevermind. Okay. They have something to tell me, but I don't have anything to say to them. That's when it works. So they walk up to me and say something and I go, I understand. And then I walk away. That's it. That's what you get. Cause I can't communicate back.
please ask me a question about my city the most magical technology can be amazing moment I ever had was when I was in like the remote mountains of Japan and the taxi driver had no idea where to take me and I was able to just speak into my phone and it it came out in Japanese and he spoke back in and it came out in English. That helped him understand that we were having communication. Yeah, you're right. Now you can lean over and put your AirPods in his ears. No, the better scenario...
The better story is you take one of your waxy earbuds out of your ear and you stick it in the stranger's ear. Oh, no. That cannot be that. I just... That can't be that. I really wonder how they... Because the original Pixel Buds had this. The ones with the wire. Yes.
tried to have this well yeah but it was practically the same thing right yeah unless apple is actually able to do something special that we're some scenario that we're not thinking of i can't wait to see this i feel like we're either missing something or this is gonna be so funny yeah i think the ad has to be
I have my AirPods in and also I have my phone out to read something in a different language. Yeah. So I go to a place. Nobody speaks the same language as me. I say it to my phone. They hear something. They reply back. And I just hear it on my earbuds. Yeah. And then that's how we're talking. But that sucks. Which is not as good because they're not really fully.
seeing that I'm hearing what they're saying right if I just want to say if we get to dub dub and we see this commercial and at the end little text at the bottom of the screen says coming 2026 I am gonna laugh so hard well according to the OS number it's already 2026 Coming in iOS 2026. How about that? Uh-oh. There you go. Got him. Got him. Okay. Some other existing app features that may be updated according to Mac rumors. Messages may get automatic translations and support for calls.
which I don't really know what support for calls means, like VOIP, but you can already do that via FaceTime, so I'm not really sure. FaceTime audio. I don't know. Maybe they'll change FaceTime audio to not be called FaceTime audio because that already is a... Horrible name. Music may get full screen animated lock screen art. Cool. That's like an Android-y thing. Yeah, exactly. Apple Notes may get markdown support.
which is a lot of years in the run in here. Let's go. Also, a very nice one. You may only need to log into a captive Wi-Fi portal once, and all of your devices will already be logged in. So you know how when you, like...
go on your computer and you're at a hotel Wi-Fi and it's like enter your room key number and all that and you have to do it on every single device you have. You have to do it on your phone and your laptop. Apparently, you only have to do it on one device. Would this work on airplanes where they want you to only be online with one device at a time?
doubt it because you wouldn't even get I don't know. It's an airplane. It's account based on the airplane though and it knows how many devices you're on. I just figured it was all the portals. It might. I don't know. Good question.
Also, there is apparently going to be a lot of big Apple Home updates. So... there is this rumor that there may they may actually finally announce the home pad which is sort of just i don't know if that's actually going to be the name with the screen but it's yeah it's basically the the home pod with the screen which is their response to the nest hub mini that launched a bazillion years ago but twice the price maybe yeah but at least twice the price i mean but this
potentially could be the robotic one that they were talking about because remember they were working on one with a robotic arm that would like turn and move with you yeah which would be quite cool I just don't see them ever doing that it
It does seem not very Apple-like to me. It's like the least Apple-like sounding product I've ever heard. They would use software. They'd be like, our continuity camera is... two millimeter has a two millimeter focal length and it just zooms in on anywhere in your home can i tell a funny home pad story that i realized i've never told on the podcast before oh wow sure i am so i have this family friend who is a
Home automation consultant professionally like you are really rich and have a giant home and want it Automated throughout the entire thing you call him and he like we'll make sure it's set up properly That's a great job and I was in his really beautiful home one time and there is this amazing He obviously had set it up for himself, too
And he had this beautiful screen in the wall. And he like it was the software that I think he had wrote himself to like control all of his own things. And what was so beautiful was that the screen was completely bezel-less. It was just like wall. to pixel and it had the most perfect sort of like bulge like it was sort of like rounded and just barely protruding out of the wall in this like really beautiful way and I was like where did you find
This beautiful display. It's an iPad. He was like, oh, bro, that's a second generation iPad and the battery is just swelling really bad. Oh, beautiful bulge. Oh, he's like, I just mounted it in the wall really well. Nice. Oh, yeah. Putting iPads. in walls. Putting a bulging battery in your wall is
Yeah, that's not very smart. Don't do that at home. I mean, I'm sure he had it figured out. You know, he's a really smart guy. But yeah, that was a funny. Anyway. Yeah. Nine to five Mac was like, this may happen. And the only reason it may happen is that they are planning a pretty big.
of the home system and so they it would be nice to have hardware that actually like runs Apple home because they don't really have dedicated Apple home hardware right now I think Mark Gurman was pretty strong on saying he didn't think any hardware was gonna be here but
I don't even use any Apple Home stuff, but like an iMac G4 as the home pad with that like rotating arm would be the sickest thing ever. There are a lot. Remember we used to shoot in breathers or like random studios? Like there's a lot of iPads on walls.
And I feel like if they just wanted to make a dedicated product, that was... super premium and designed for that environment they can do something easily easily yeah i mean everybody has been making third-party software to basically control your apple home anyway so it would be smart of them to sherlock everybody else like they always do
HomeOS 26. Also, they could just move forward a bunch of projects that are kind of ready just because Apple Intelligence is still not ready. I was going to say, that's what most of this feels like. This feels like everyone else who's got something going on, we're shipping it this way.
Can we ship it? Because the AI thing isn't here yet. Can we move that up by six months, please? Yeah. So, yeah. No, we'll see. This is going to be next week. So if you're listening to this on Friday, literally in a three-day span, we'll be listening to them on stage on Monday hearing what they have to say. Which is correct. Crazy. It's happening quick. And then the last thing we talked about it last week, but just the dedicated Apple gaming app that replaces the Game Center.
Games. Games. You got games on your phone? I got games on my phone. Elatro. Not gambling. Certified. Well, speaking of games, we have some... Certified by who? Certified by me. We have some gaming stuff to talk about. We'll hear that, Kreek. Oh, my gosh. We got some gaming stuff to talk about pretty soon. Does that creak? Not at all. See? I mean, that's eight years old. We got a lot more to talk about there. So we're going to do that after the break. But first.
Trivia. Ooh, it's quieter. That sounds very quiet. It looks like there was a delay, too, between hitting it and... Wow guys, just tell me what else I did wrong. I think that your brand new system is kind of trash. The people watching the video podcast. May have, with an eagle eye, noticed that a few things are different on the producer table. We have switched off of the Rodecaster.
Switch. And we are now controlling the lights with a stream deck. So yes, you may see a few kinks that need to get ironed out over the next few days. But so far, I'm pretty stoked. I can do this now. I could do it before, but there was a delay. One quick question. Speaking of kinks that need to be ironed out, this is a question that I was asked in a group setting last weekend, and I now need to ask all of you. Do you own an iron? Raise your hand if you do.
What? Wow, that felt... Now, raise your hand if you use it regularly. Guys. What do you consider regularly? Every week. You all own irons? I use it every time I wear a dress shirt. Yeah, there are shirts I won't wear without ironing them. Okay, question. Do you own a shower?
I know where you're getting, but that's a far less efficient way. My answer, by the way, was no. I don't use an iron ever. I have a steamer. Anytime I need something that I was going to iron, I have a steamer for that. The steamer for most stuff is easier, but there are a few things you can't get done with a steamer. I probably don't own those things. Like the collar on a...
colored shirt. Yeah. Steamer's kind of tough to like get that. Or pleated pants are often better. Well, I just put it in the shower. Anyway, sorry to distract. Sorry to distract. That was just a random question. David just wasted 50 gallons of water to steam his shirt. Trivia, yes. Or I could make one AI clear. It's the same amount. Yeah, exactly. Guys, it is obviously the day of Switch 2. And I wanted to ask a trivia question about my favorite thing Nintendo has ever made, which is...
The Mii. I think the Mii is a genius idea. I think every part of every piece of Mii software ever released has been perfect. Mii software. Mii-topia. Mii-topia. All the Japanese ones I can't remember the name of. The OG. me creator the the the street pass was that street pass i think i just think me's are terrific um anyway so this is like what is a me talking about the nintendo
It came out on the Wii. It's a portmanteau of Wii and Mii. Okay, yeah. That's right. And you can play as the Mii sword fighter or the Mii archer on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. This is true. This is true. Everyone, but especially Marques. Marques, you're not getting any of these. Starting in 2007, Nintendo would occasionally release what they called Special Me's. These were famous Japanese entertainers.
haters and celebrities, as well as the occasional Nintendo executive. And these Miis were not editable. You would get them on your console and they would just live on your console. Other than being uneditable, what visually... made a special me distinct from a normal me. They were ungovernable too. It's like when you hit the button on the Wii to make them all like stand in formation, the one of them would just like roll through. Wow, I...
I know almost nothing about these other than if you swung your arm back in bowling and looked back, they would all jump in and spin. Do you know about the other Wii bowling little Easter egg?
So there was like a practice, like I loved Weevil. It was like, but yes, there's like a practice mode where you would start with like a 10 pin thing and move up to a 100 pin thing, right? On the 100 pin... go go around yeah if you moved all the way to the side through your ball and got the ball to ride on the rail because there were no gutters there were rails if you got it to ride on the rail all the way to the end
Like you'd hear a muffled explosion sound and all 100 pins would knock down. I got that. I think I did that because my friend my friend had Nintendo Wii and I didn't. So anytime I went over to his house, it was like. We got to do the bowling thing. We got to do the golf thing. Yeah, I spent a lot of time in Wii Sports. Wii was amazing. Good times. Generational. Well, we'll think about that. Answers will be at the end of the podcast, like usual. We'll be right back.
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koda.io slash wave and get six months of the team plan for free koda.io slash wave all right welcome back uh i'm holding a switch too Ideally, you've already seen our unboxing by the time you're watching this pod or listening to this pod. Is it ideally because you're not sure if you've gotten the edit done yet or ideally because maybe they haven't watched it and they're listening to this? A little bit of both.
pretty unsure about what yeah i'm gonna try uh anyway but yeah we have it now it's out the box it's here in the studio we get to do whatever we want it's not tethered to something and you can only play like one game on repeat we can actually jump around the settings and compare them yeah to our other switches which is
I have my Switch 1, which was color-weared. I've had this forever. You've had a Switch OLED. And so you're curious if we'd notice more differences there. Yeah, we can just jump right in. So if you watch that impressions video, there are some things that we noted.
my main two things about the switch 2 it's just bigger and it's it's more comfortable because it's bigger the joy cons are bigger the buttons are bigger the screen is bigger the battery is also bigger but probably doesn't last much longer but the whole thing is just
which is nice. You have much bigger hands than me. Yeah, I mean, I think people all generally like the bigger Joy-Cons and bigger buttons. Yeah. When I hold that... yeah i feel like this is a better size to just hold like that feels very large huh when i just hold that the joy cons are great are better when you're like using them sideways but yeah it is pretty big Yeah. And then I guess my slightly more nuanced take is like in this, the same thing.
as the world of smartphones where people uh in our world will have a lot more to say about the fidelity and the sharpness and the contrast ratio and the pitch black blacks of the oled yeah i think a regular person just sees bigger brighter higher refresh rate and that looks better yeah and so if you are in the more
nuanced crowd i think the switch to olib that eventually comes out will speak to you more yeah um but for most people i think just this being bigger is it just feels like an upgrade yeah to all the switches that came before it feels a lot like a steam deck to be honest it's that size
Size-wise, I almost wonder if they were like, oh, well, we can make it bigger because look at how well this team did. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure it was probably well into development by then, but... Yeah, fair. And also just like... How do we make this console where we've kind of nailed the form factor of it already different than the Switch before? So like...
Bigger is the most obvious choice of that. We did this off the pod, but Marques, can we compare the unlocking sounds? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to do a magnet sound. I just want to feel the magnet so bad. That's all I care about. So you unlock the Switch OLED? Yeah, this is going to be Switch OLED, right? It's pretty iconic. So good. Now here's the Switch 2. No. What the heck is that? It's so wet. It's so like...
Staccato. No, it's goopy. It's cleaner. It's like goopy and wet and resonant. But it shouldn't be clean. It should be like... Wait, on the home screen? Flipping between apps? What does that sound on yours? A little high-pitched. This is the Switch 2. What the heck is that? It's clickier. I think I like that. That almost sounds more like the unlocking of that. Yeah. It's clickier.
Switch ASMR part. The thing that really matters, okay, the thing that really matters, remove and reattach a Joy-Con. Whoa. Was that from the speaker? That was from the speaker. Oh, I didn't realize that. That's really good. That's pretty cool. Oh, because your screen is on probably. Okay, hold on. Let me see. Let me do the same thing on the Switch 2 now with the magnet. Yeah, it doesn't. Ooh.
That was kind of nice. I like the like... Sorry, sorry. I messed it up. That's so funny. I like the momentum that that sound had. Can you do it one more time? Yeah, and there's a little... Just watch the display as well. Yeah, yeah. Oh, there's an animation, yeah. Oh. Oh, it like...
And the right side's orange. I'm assuming the left side's blue because of the Joy-Cons are orange or blue. That's kind of nice. And it kind of mirrors the sound. The sound mirrors the sound of taking it off because it's like push the button, pull it out, click. It's nice. I also think despite that sounding really good, David, from the OG Switch, the process of that is like... The worst ever. I hate sliding it on.
Yeah. This has a little animation. I want to try this so bad. I just want to try the magnets. This is your first time actually holding a Switch. I watched you unbox it, but I tried not to really hold it. So this is someone who's seen the videos, but is now holding a Switch, too.
Yeah, so there's definitely going to be a much, much, much, much, much bigger difference between Switch 1 and Switch 2. There had been rumors that the Switch OLED was originally going to be... like a switch pro or switched some sort of switch pro but they like couldn't get a uh nvidia part in time or something so they ended up just keeping the same internals but changing it slightly that is funny branding because only like
enthusiasts are going to care deeply about yeah OLED display yeah funny enough all three of these switches have very different kickstands So the original Switch has a horrible kickstand, which is just like a tiny little nub. It's bad. That comes out the back. Yeah. That breaks off really easily. Yeah, I don't like it at all.
um wow yeah it's horrible yeah they made the switch oleds way better it's a big piece of metal and it like swivels really far back kind of like a surface pro and allows you to do it at like all different angles with the switch 2 they sort of did a in between where they still have the angled uh kickstand but it is now sort of like hollow it's full width but it's uh here I'll hold it up also is that plastic or metal metal
It is metal? Okay, this is also metal. This is obviously much wider and thicker and fuller. It's probably more sturdy. So I'm wondering if the OLED's more sturdy. I don't know. Okay, the Joy-Cons are so good. This magnet aspect is... And it's so interesting that it literally is just magnets and then like one little physical lever that basically is physically pushing it away, but it snaps in so nice. What do we call this thing? The grip.
Yeah, the grip to make two Joy-Cons into a singular controller. It sucked on the first one. It was so bad. And this is so nice. And this mouse thing is actually kind of nice. Does it give you hand pain?
A lot of people are talking about it. I mean, I haven't used it long enough. I haven't done it for very long. It's pretty good, though. Yeah. But, like, I love these magnets. These magnets are the best part about... the switch to remember when we got all excited because we were thinking that the button like reversed the polarity yeah it turned out though this is like a very elegant solution like it's just the perfect strength magnet and just the exact far enough push off of this
that it will separate. Yeah. Which I'm sure took a lot of development time, but ends up feeling really satisfying to attach and detach. Yeah. And then, yeah, I honestly think that's...
The two hugest things, no pun intended, about the Switch 2 upgrade are the way bigger display and the Joy-Cons just being awesome. I will say these... bezels are way bigger than i thought they would be on the left and right side yeah they're still pretty big i don't mind as much i kind of feel like they're leaving room for are the oled bezels smaller yeah uh yeah it's got a bigger outer bezel but a smaller sub bezel by a lot yeah
I'm thinking the Switch 2 OLED's going to be pretty sick. Yeah. And expensive. I like how this has gotten from, since we first talked about Switch 2, they will probably make a Switch OLED, and then throughout this day of having it, you're basically like, when the Switch 2 OLED comes out,
Look at them next to each other. I mean, the Switch 2 OLED is way contrastier, way better viewing angles. It looks, sorry, yeah, Switch OLED, it looks way better. It kind of looks better. Fidelity-wise, it's just smaller. It looks much better. Yeah, it does. So I feel like there's... There's no doubt they got to do an OLED version of the Switch 2. But the other thing, though, is... What was I about to say? The Switch 2 OLED. Like, I'm not going to cancel my pre-order? Oh, for the price.
But, yeah. The price. $449 for the Switch, which means an OLED version is going to be even more. That is... Gamers can't afford this. That's true. If you're a gamer, you cannot afford this. I'm sorry.
To be clear, I was talking about like a gaming chair or something. But yeah, that's a, yeah. And then you got to buy the, you got to buy the micro SD express cards. But look at these speakers. They are very large. Speakers are big and nice and loud. And the second, that's the first thing I noticed when I started playing with it is, oh, these. speakers are quite loud. Yeah.
So they announced a bunch of updates. I think even today they announced additional updates and they showed some reporters new games, the updated version of the new games. And apparently the newer Pokemon games, Scarlet and Violet, run like exceptionally better on Switch 2.
and apparently they don't lag like at all it's like a stable 60 the whole time nice which you know kind of probably should have been the norm but here we are yeah there are a bunch of things a bunch of games i want to run and test for a full review the other interesting headline that we saw remember um
there is a built-in screen protector on the switch too right and if you look right on the very corner you can actually kind of see it it's not as bad as like i was having flashbacks to the original galaxy fold which is like it's it looks like someone installed one in the store after you bought it and it's like i should just peel this off yeah uh it's not that bad so it is a pre-installed screen protector and you're apparently not supposed to remove it
So I did. I removed it. I'm just kidding. Don't remove it. We left it on. If you want to install screen protector over the top, you would literally install it over the top of the screen. I would never know there's a screen protector on that if you didn't tell me. It is really close to the edge. The article I read said that the instruction manual says not to open it because it will prevent glass shattering from...
going all over the place, which to me just feels like... Yo, it's a Cybertruck. It's a laminate layer. It feels like, yeah, it's like a windshield. But also, I mean, that's nice that glass shards wouldn't go anywhere if I broke it, but I'm... Probably more upset that my screen is broken. Yeah, it's broken already. That it's not broken on the floor now. Yeah, that's a pretty big bezel though, is it not? It's a big bezel. Yeah.
It's bigger than I thought it would be. It's a bigger screen and a bigger body. Everything is bigger. The thickness, the Z-axis thickness is the only thing that's roughly the same as the previous switches. Otherwise, you just feel like you're holding a switch that someone just stretched.
in every other dimension. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty excited to be able to use these Joy-Cons and not have my hands cramp like crazy, especially because I'm now 30 and have... pain everywhere that's when it starts yeah yeah so but these are made of what steel the buttons so the the yeah let's see the buttons on the left and right in the inside of the joy cons are steel because the magnets inside the switch are
magnetizing to the steel. They're so much bigger. Like, look at this. It's so much better than the old Switch. I don't know if you can zoom in on this, Adam, but like, here's Switch OLED buttons and here's Switch 2 buttons. Look at the size difference. The old Joy-Cons? Keep it closer to you. Closer to me because it's in focus. The old Joy-Con...
The bumper you would put on with the wrist strap would give you a bigger button. It was literally just a piece of plastic that pushed down on the really small button. These new bumpers now are just even out the... I'm putting the wrong one on. just even out the top part of it and gives you some feet for the mouse features. But you're still using the buttons because they're actually good buttons. Yeah, yeah, yeah. SR and SL. Yeah. It has this nice matte.
finish too that's like a sprayed matte so i'm curious how long that's going to last my colorware switch one i also have matte paint on it and uh let me just say it's a choice whenever i get something color weird i think about how it's going to wear right and if you if i use my switch a lot more it would be more obvious but there's like shiny spots same thing on a laptop with like a mac keyboard like you get shiny spots so we'll see how this
ages it's obviously currently pristine condition yeah i'm not very careful with my switch oled see some just me i'm not very careful with my switch oled and it's definitely got a lot of scars and like scuffs all over it so yeah we'll see how it goes but um
Yeah, very exciting. I'm pretty excited to replay Breath of the Wild because I never actually finished it. I just got close to finishing it, but I didn't want to finish it because I didn't want to have to start over. And then I never played Tears of the Kingdom, so I want to play that as well.
I'm currently still stuck in a temple in breath of the wild it like glitched in a weird way that like I can't revert out or get out of it I'm just like completely stuck so I have to just start completely over well maybe the switch to update will fix that bug
Yeah, throw it on the Switch, too. It'll, like, find you a way out or something. Sick update. The big questions I'm going to have are battery life. Yes. How is battery life? That's going to be a big question. Also, I would like to know how Mario Kart...
World is because I was told by many people that this game I have a lot of friends who have played this already and they've said that this game is like much bigger than just racing around in mario kart it is like the open world aspect is actually there's something to it there here's did i heard this about the open world part that sounds like kind of a bummer but you still have
You still get the same slowness on non-tracks, which in free roam sounds like such a pain in the neck. In your race, when you go off the track on the grass, you go slower because you're racing. You have the same slowness.
I saw that you get the same slowness when you're like wandering around, which when you're doing that, you're only not on the track. So you're just driving slower. Maybe when you're not like in a race, it would tear that off. I heard it was in the free room. I'll try. Also, Nintendo. What? the crab sidestepper nintendo please make an update for super smash bros ultimate on switch 2 because i don't think they've announced that yet and that's crazy there's a lot of there's a lot of mario games
That's not a Mario game. That's coming with the OLED. It's coming with the OLED. Considering it's going to be another eight years until Switch... How long was it between Switch 1 and Switch 1? I think you were right. I think it's eight years. it's been eight years since the original one oled release date i think that was only like three years ago oh 2021.
four years side note i've been getting into forza lately and ellis had to explain to me the difference between the games and your whole super mario thing going off world and being slower that's kind of how it also works in forza in like horizon worlds. You can like drive off the road and then you're just like
Going slower. Yeah, but is there like a free roam area? Yeah, like the horizon world. I just learned this like two days ago. Ellis had to explain this all to me. But there's like a free roam part of the game. And when you drive off road, it's just slower. It's also a crazy realistic game. And this is... An Italian plumber driving a go-kart. Which makes it better. Which is realistic. This was the conversation we were having in the car. Forza Motorsport is a fairly realistic game. Yeah.
I would argue Horizon is like one step above Mario Kart as far as Horizon goes. Like there may as well be a drift. You can be Pokey as a character. I didn't even know that was its name. But the like the tall guys from the... desert levels in Super Mario 64 you guys ever play two different racing games in the same day with drastically different levels of realism I don't really like racing games so no
anybody just me what are the two so if you go from like forza to need for speed or back to forza like you play on forza and you get like one tire on the gravel and you're like you feel it in the controller and you're like no i gotta get back on my line and it's like it it affects your speed
And then you do Need for Speed and you literally just drive in a straight line. It doesn't matter. Yeah, it's a really funny dichotomy. But anyway, yeah, Switch 2. I'll be testing this. I'll be gaming. I'm on a couple flights soon.
Big flight to Europe. Maybe I'll have just a switch. You're going to Europe? Yeah, the whole thing. You're going to the whole of Europe? Yes. You're going to Europe? No, just kidding. But the whole flight. European tour, baby. Hopefully it can last the entire flight. It probably won't, though. It probably won't. That's...
That's what I'm most nervous about because I use the Switch 2 mostly not in docked mode. Yeah. So it's going to be interesting. I've been playing Majora's Mask on my OLED, which is a Nintendo 64 online thing. And it's fine. It doesn't lag. So if this is not significantly, you know, if the battery life on this is significantly worse, I don't know. Yeah. There are a lot of characters in Mario Kart World. A lot of them you have to unlock. Yeah, there's 8 billion.
That's why it's called World. Yeah. Nice. There are a lot of them. And a lot of them are just like kind of... You can be like the penguin. Hell yeah. The penguin from what? They added the cow. The penguin that you raced at, like you luge against it in Mario 64. 64, yeah. No, I wasn't born yet. Ha! You weren't born in 64? It's year-based. Just like the OS versions. That would be wild.
yeah um all right before we before i just literally start playing this game instead of talking do you want to talk about the fediverse oh yeah okay i forgot do you do i indeed okay we got a little fediverse corner for you guys today It's exciting. If you didn't hear, which you probably didn't, because it's really niche, Feta Forum happened. What? No way. The FedoraCon?
No, Fediverse Forum. It's an online conference that has happened. When we did our Fediverse episode, which you should go back and watch if you did not watch it back when we released it. We talked a little bit about something called BridgyFed, which was this little project by a guy named Ryan Barrett. And the whole point of BridgyFed was being able to bridge an account from one. platform to another where they did not support the same protocol
So a few months ago, Bridgie Fed expanded and turned into this project called A New Social, which is sort of this extension of Bridgie Fed. But they're getting more funding. They're getting more people and community involvement to try to actually be able to. you know, bridge accounts between social media platforms with non-native protocols so that people never have to be tied to any social media platform. Okay. So, at Fetty Forum, they...
Come on, guys. It's cool. I promise. It's a great name. Feddy Forum. They announced a new feature called Bounce. And the idea of Bounce is this platform that allows you to... jump bounce between one network to another so the demo that they showed off was from basically if you have a blue sky account and you decide you want to make a mastodon account and and basically not have to like you know just start from scratch move all your followers the problem with this obviously is because like
the dream of blue sky or the dream of activity pub is when you're moving to a different platform it uses the same protocol but because blue sky and mastodon did not use the same protocol this bounce feature effectively creates a mastodon account for you
based on your Blue Sky account, but it creates it within this, like, area in between that feeds information between the two. So... when you are when you have a blue sky account you create the mastodon account yeah all of your followers sort of stay on blue sky you know they're all following you but you automatically like follow all the same people with bridged accounts on mastodon right now there's still very early stages obviously and the the demos that they're showing off are like
kind of useful they're really useful if other people have bridged accounts if you can get all of your friends to bridge their accounts then it's amazing but that's obviously not very possible right now uh so it was just a little exciting demo that they showed me that kind of like shows the future of the Fediverse, which I think was cool. And I just wanted to call that out because we're on team Fediverse over here. I can't even get Ellis on Blue Sky.
I am on Blue Sky. I'm literally on Blue Sky. Right now. I'm Blue Sky right now. No, I'm not on Blue Sky. I'm at work right now. That's true. Anyway. That probably didn't make a lot of sense, but I hope that they succeed. It's still the wildest. That's all I wanted to say. I think we should take it to trivia. I think we should bridge to trivia. Another word for a segue is a... Bridge. Take it to the bridge. Take it to the bridge. So. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just going to hold it like this. Why not?
There are no rules anymore. Is that an extra bike port on the back of that mixer? Don't worry about it. No, it's not happening. It's not happening. What was the first Super Mario game where Mario would take a nap when the player was idle? Was it A? Super Mario Odyssey. B. Super Mario 64. C. Super Mario World. Or D. Super Mario Karts. Marquez, you're welcome for the multiple choice.
You have 25% chance. It's literally exactly 25% chance because I'm going to throw a dart at a board and it's just going to hit one of them. And maybe you'll get it. And then the story would be great. Remember what I was like. There's a 25% chance. And you're like, why? Because there's four options. Well, we'll think about this one. Answers at the end. We'll be right back.
All right, welcome back. I asked all of you to do me a favor because we had a post on our subreddit who someone made an infographic of just the chronological list of all of the phones they've ever owned.
Period. And there were like 100 plus comments of people just listing all of their phones. So I asked all of us to list our phones chronologically and we're going to go through them. And I guess... rate them or you guys can tell us how stupid we are by the phones that we've had or ask questions about specific ones wouldn't own it if it was an absolute banger come on
Wait, I have a question before we start, which is what are we going to do about this guy to my left who literally switches phones every six days? I asked everybody to pick. Marquez is right there. You are worse than him. I asked everyone to pick the phone that they use the most for that year. So one phone.
per year max. Yeah. Okay. Pro max. But yes, because between Adam, Marquez, and David, we would be here for three hours. Yeah. If that was the case. Name all the phones. Oh, you're into phones? Oh, you like phones? Name all of them. Name every phone. I think I changed phones every week. week for like five years so yeah yeah i have a feeling else and i have the smallest lists oh yeah you want to start
Sure. I mean, do you want me to start? I feel like I have kind of the most boring one, too. Ellis was born with an iPhone 13 mini in his hand. Yeah, yeah. Let's hear it. And then I downgraded the 12 mini. No, okay. Gentlemen. My first phone is something is a phone. I loved so so dearly I Saved up. I think I've told the story before. Yeah, I my parents did not want me to have a cell phone So I saved up for like years and it
In the beginning of eighth grade, I finally had enough money for the phone and for a year of service. Commit crimes. Do it. Don't know if it's a crime, but... Maybe it was. Who knows? It was a Samsung Intercept. It was specifically the Virgin Mobile version of the Samsung Intercept, which did not support EVDO Revision Zero, which means it was slower than the Sprint one. I believe a three megapixel camera Which was perfect because the screen was only 240 by 400 pixels
And I believe it ran Android 2. I had that for a few years. And then in 10th grade, no. A few years later, I dropped it so many times that the slide-out keyboard hinge stopped working. Nice. So that's when I switched to the Kyocera Rise, another phone I loved to death. Amazing. I was a slide-out keyboard person.
Like that was the only thing I needed on my phones was a slide-out keyboard. The Key Sierra Rise had pretty similar specs. I don't think it's even worth going through them. But it did, I think by the time I left that, I was running Android 4. So I was a real trailblazer. Played a lot of Pokemon. on in trigonometry class i'm sorry mr true um and then after that i began my journey
on the iPhone, starting with the iPhone 4S. And we all know about these phones. So instead of talking about them, I'm going to tell you the back. I was I was a real music guy. I still am. But like in my teenage years, it was like my whole personality. So my iPhone 4S, my first iPhone, had a Flying Lotus case on it with the artwork for his album Cosmogramma. Oh, my goodness. Then I had an iPhone 5 with an Earl Sweatshirt phone case that I loved.
super dearly. Then I moved to an iPhone 8, which no one in here knows what this is, but there's a plug-in called Antares Autotune. And I took the... the picture for that plug-in and then slap that on a red bubble phone case so i had an auto-tune thumb that was also the only phone i ever bought refurbished And it did not last a year before literally bricking itself. It lasted about nine months before it was bricked. And I have not...
bought a refurbished electronics since then, which I know is an outdated and bad opinion. But after spending $600 on an iPhone with no warranty, that was a brick. I was like, all right, well, that was stupid of me. After that. Jumped a few years ahead, got the XS, which I always called the XS because it was in gold. And I thought the idea of having a gold phone that had the word XS in it was really funny. Definitely.
A lot of reviews did that, too. I thought that phone was fantastic, and I thought the camera in it was... My favorite iPhone camera I've ever had, which I know it's like not as good as my 12 minis camera. I think the 7 camera on the iPhone. The iPhone 7. It was just so good. Then I went to, I think I told the story in the pod, so I'll make it really quick. But iPhone XS, loving that thing.
was living in Philly, there was a hurricane scheduled to come through. And my friends and I all had the great idea to drive two hours to a theme park called Dorney Park, which is in Pennsylvania. And we called Dorney Park and we were like, you guys open? They were like, we're open. But the first lightning strike or thunder, the whole park is closed. And you're not getting a refund.
And so we were like, bet, let's try it. So we drove two hours. We get there. The park's still open. It's pouring rain. No, no thunder, no lightning. We spend the whole day at amusement park with literally being the only people there. Like it was the kind of thing where like you'd finish a roller coaster.
no one in line and you could just be like, again. But because it was pouring rain all day, every ride was a water ride, regardless of whether water was involved. And so that phone, the iPhone XS, did not. survive oh really did not survive which was funny because that's when I went on my uh boost mobile pain arc where it was this like completely brutal few weeks where I uh
My bank locked me out of my accounts and needed me to confirm my identity, which you could only do on your phone. And I didn't have a phone because it was broken and I couldn't buy a new phone. because I didn't have access to my bank accounts. And also Boost Mobile only lets you buy phones with a credit card already associated with your account. So I couldn't start a new card or like ask my parents to help me out. So for like a month and a half, like six weeks.
I had no money and no phone and was just like trying to figure out how to go. Eventually I took the SIM card.
out of the XS and put it back in the Kyocera Rise because 3G towers were still operational at that point. And so I was rocking the Kyocera Rise for like... the last like three weeks of that experiment and freaking loved it it was like my first dumb phone foray and even though it was running android 4 i keep this thing on my keys that is a um It's a it's a dummy 3.5 millimeter plug So that if you have like a dongle like a splitter dongle or any kind of dongle you can just
plug it into there and it like stays on your keys and stuff but the key Sarah rise was so light that you could just plug the phone's headphone jack into this and wear the phone on your belt like an accessory that sounds dangerous that sounds like you're never gonna find that phone then I eventually
got the 12, the famous purple 12 mini, which I now split my time between the 12 mini. We see the Kyocera rise until the iPhone 12 mini. Well, no, there were lots of phones between those, but then I came back to the Kyocera rise because. I had no money and no phone. Nice. Then, oh my gosh, sorry. The funniest part of this Boost Mobile thing is...
Like there was a Bank of America who at the time I was banking with and there was a boost mobile store And they were like four blocks from each other in Center City, Philadelphia And so while I spent so much time But going to one they'd be like you need to figure this stuff out at your bank go to the bank Like you need to do this on your phone go back to the boost mobile Like we can't do anything like without your cards
So one day I went to the Boost Mobile, like this whole thing exploded. The Boost Mobile store was like, you got to come back tomorrow. I went back to the Boost Mobile door the next day and it had closed. They had literally shut down that location, which is the most Boost Mobile thing in the whole world. I know I'm making this story take way too much time. Anyway, this is all to say, now I'm like 75-25.
iPhone 25, minimal phone 75, and I'm so happy to be back on a physical keyboard. And that's my phone journey. Aren't you glad I went first? But you're not going to stay on the microphone, right? It doesn't have to be on it now. The reason I'm not going to stay on the minimal phone is because my really kind, nice, generous boss, Marquez Brownlee, is actually...
paying for my separate phone line on that phone, which is only going to be another two months. But what if you just put your phone line on it? Visible is not a supported carrier for the minimal phone. Otherwise, Otherwise I would. Otherwise I would. Or I wouldn't have opened up a boost mobile line. Anyway, but yeah, so back on the physical keyboard, back on the dumb phone. Back on the boost. Yeah, back on the boost, maybe. Anyway, yes, I feel like.
this was not very interesting, but, uh, thank you. Thank you for listening. And, uh, someone, I'm just going to do this. Nice. Okay. Yeah, I'll go. Okay. uh i had originally this really it was a knockoff razor because i don't know the razor was expensive or something i don't remember i remember going to the verizon store and they had the razor and it was really cool but
it couldn't afford it so they gave me the like really cheap like knockoff like samsung one or something and it was but the battery life was amazing it was thick it was a thick boy very nice uh it lasted it lasted about two weeks i think on a charge yeah and used mini usb the iphone came out um the famous, famous plug that I make that I was in the audience there. Okay. And I was like, it's cool, but it was only on AT&T and also it's really expensive.
Or I guess it was singular at the time. And I couldn't afford it. So I was like, well, boohoo. Then Android came out and I was like, hmm. And so when the HTC Thunderbolt got announced, which was the first 4G phone in America. I was like, oh my god, there's finally an Android phone on Verizon. Worst battery life I've ever tested on a phone. Dude, oh my god. Not only, okay, so I had it for about a week, and...
It was sort of a precursor to the HTC One M6, M7, M8, M9 stuff. So the build quality was amazing. It was made of metal. It was super nice. It had a really good screen. But not only was the build quality... horrible i mean not build quality the battery life horrible it literally burned my hand because i was trying to do skype and one other thing at the same time
So it burned my, it was so cool. Look how cool it looks. The old clock widgets on Android are perfect. They're just amazing. And it looks so cool. It had front facing speakers, had a kickstand built into it. It was dope.
but unfortunately it burned my hand and so I had to return it so I switched it out for a Samsung Droid Charge and the build quality of Samsung Droid Charge was doo-doo water much worse it was made of plastic it was flimsy it was crappy yeah the droid charge it was pretty bad i don't i honestly should have just dealt with the pain um But then the Samsung Galaxy S3 got announced and that was like...
a big deal in the phone world everyone was super super hyped for that phone i think it was like one of the first one gigahertz processor phones i think it was the first one gigahertz processor phone it's a big deal i was really excited for that i pre-ordered it was the first phone i pre-ordered and that was amazing galaxy s3 that was the first one to introduce the like touch whiz like water droplet sounds when every time you unlock it it would go like you know htc very nice
uh lgg3 was the next phone it was the first 1440p phone and it came with all these demo videos on it that was like look at 1440p resolution and it was like all those YouTube videos that you watch where it's like sweeping through vistas and it was like bright and it was like, show this to your friends and buy more LG stuff.
And that was great because, like, that was an osmology phone. It had the volume markers were on the back underneath, and the power button was right in between. It was so dope. I love that. It was super cool. It had a huge screen, so I really liked that. So Nexus 6P gets announced. Sorry, Nexus 6 gets announced. Shamu. Shamu. Previously, I had wanted to have Nexus phones because they were all so cool and so affordable. Like the Nexus 4 was...
the sparkly back and it was like $300. It was so awesome. But it wasn't available everywhere. It was not available everywhere. Definitely not on Verizon. Most of the Nexuses were not on Verizon and I was on my family's plan and I could not get off and it sucked but the Nexus 6 got announced and it came out and it got announced at $650 which was unbelievably expensive at the time there was all this outrage on droid life the comment section were going crazy
And I was just like, wow, I can't believe they do this. And then the next day I bought one. And yeah, I really got convinced because Google Fi got announced with the Nexus six. It was like, now it's called. Google Project Fi or Project... Oh, no. Google Fi Wireless now is what it's called. The name has changed a few times. But because it got announced, I was like, you know what? I'm finally a freshman in college. I should...
Get off my mom's phone plan. Going to be totally independent. So I got a Nexus 6. That phone was awesome. It was basically a Moto X. 2013 but way bigger because the rumor was that they were going to work with Huawei on that phone and Huawei pulled out at the last minute and Moto was like
We could just make a bigger Moto X. And have a dimple on the back. Yeah. And so that's what they did for that. Nexus 6P was the next one. That's when Huawei came back swinging. It was basically the build quality of the... HTC Thunderbolt, but even better. Many people revere the Nexus 6P as the nicest designed smartphone ever made, and I still think that it's really high up there. I would argue the current pixels look the way they do because of the 6P. Yeah.
Well, sort of. Yeah. Yeah. It had the visor. It had the visor. Sure. That's true. Yeah. It was pretty sweet. And then from there on out, because I was on Project Fi, I was able to live that Google goodness life. They announced the Pixel 1 and I bought that and I bought the Pixel 2 and then I bought the Pixel 3 XL with the Omega bathtub notch. That was pretty sweet. Then I had the Pixel 4 XL with the radar that would destroy the battery and never work. And then the Pixel 4a came out.
And I still hold that I think the Pixel 4a was one of the best smartphones ever made. Correct. Because it was back to like $350. uh it just had a really really seamless ui like the pixel ui was really maturing had google assistant was really amazing at that time it was really light had one camera it was really small it was a small phone smallandroidphone.com 5.81 um
Yeah, it was awesome. Rear fingerprint reader. Yeah. Accent power button. Accent power button. That's what I'm telling you. I think my title for my review of that phone was like, a phone so good you won't even have to use it. Because you just use Google Assistant for everything. Oh, yeah. And then the screen was really good when you did actually use it. SmallAndroidPhone.com is a real website. I know. And that's a petition to make small. It's run by Eric Michikowski, which is the Pebble guy.
Oh, really? Yeah. He actually was really excited about the Minimal phone getting the Android layer unlocked because it's a small phone. Or is the Light Phone 3? Light Phone 3. Minimal phone is huge. Anyway, Pixel 5. also small really awesome it was that uh it was a little bit cheaper and a little bit like it was made of plastic again but it was that cool like they had
it was made of metal but also plastic and they were able to get the wireless charging through the metal because they like carved a hole in the metal in the center that was really awesome pixel 6. Super exciting because it was the big redesign of the Pixel. They added Material U to the Pixel 6. Super awesome. Then I...
became depressed and bought an iPhone 14 Pro. And the reason I bought it, if we're going to be honest, is because it was square. And I just... that really won me over but then i went moved to the pixel fold because that was dope and then the iphone 15 pro came out and it had usbc and it was also square
So it brought me back. I was back on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Then the Pixel Fold 2 came out and I was on that for a while because it was cool. It was pretty cool. And then the iPhone 16 Pro came out. And it looked exactly the same. I love how the the pixel needs to add a whole second screen and the iPhones like USB C and David's like.
Damn it. Yeah. Anyway, that's pretty much where I'm at. I will say I reviewed probably like 200 phones in between there, and I liked a lot of them, didn't like a lot of them, but probably my favorite phone that I reviewed in between there was the Oppo Find X2 Pro. Yeah. I want to say that that phone rocked a lot of throwbacks. Yeah. So that's my chronology. This is gonna be a long podcast episode. Mine's not that long. I can go quick. Mine is mostly like, look, he's old. I looked at yours and.
I realized where I misremembered the Samsung flip phone thing, but you have one Samsung flip phone in here that when I was in elementary school was like, if you had that thing, you were the... coolest kid oh really i generally well my first my first phone So 2003. I put timestamps for this. The Audiovox CDM9100. Goddamn, you are old. This thing was a... What the... This phone, I had the worst phone out of all of my friends, but this thing.
was indestructible i have a question looks like it when you owned it were the buttons that color of yellow or is that because of time no that is that was a design choice uh i mean it was also like the backlight kind of had this like greenish hue to it um greenish yellow hue to it so you could see it in the dark i believe it's a greenish yellow dew if you will but yeah i might have had this phone um this thing no my my friends used to be like
Oh, his phone sucks, and they would take it and throw it against the wall, and the battery would pop out, and then I'd just pop the battery back in, and it was totally fine. RIP removable batteries. Yeah, you really had to learn T9 on that thing if you wanted to type.
at any sort of speed. For the young people that listen to us, T9 is when you have a number pad and each of them have three letters on them and you learn how to like touch type words underneath the table. Well, it's a little weird because you could either do ABC. which was like if the two key has ABC, A is one touch, B is two touch. But T9 was like predictive. So you would just type all the letters that were in the word and then... So if it was dog, you would press three, six, what's G, four?
And it would either say dog or you would press the arrow buttons to pick other words that have those amount of letters in it. I used to T9 under the table so fast. It's a pro. You really on this phone had to learn about...
it was called like button lock or because like if you just stuck this in your pocket it would just press buttons and call people and you would just leave voicemails to random people when you're like on your bike so that was a fun time then i got my first flip phone the samsung scha67 Ace 670. Whatever. It's a silver Samsung flip phone. Had a camera on it. First time I had a camera. Was that on Sprint? I was Verizon for everything. Oh, okay. Until I... Which also...
You getting your own phone line in high school is very mature. I think I was living with Claire before I got my own phone line. It was a thing that I had to beg for. Because I was never around. I think college is when I got my own phone line. Your own phone line? Yeah. Wait, your own line? Yeah, I was on my family plan with Verizon until college. Oh, you mean your own... plan oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah that's what i was talking about yeah yeah um then i did get an lg voyager this is when i was like
I like phones. I want this. This thing's sick. Screw the iPhone and all the iPhone lovers. Oh my God, that's right, because this is 2007. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is... who needs an iphone i mean i was also someone who didn't have an ipod i had a creative zen um and like so i didn't like I don't know why I didn't like Apple stuff back then. Because that was them. It was us versus them back then. Back then, though, Apple was the nerdy thing.
Kind of, yeah. Yeah. It wasn't the mainstream thing in 2007. iPhone was the Android of phones. Kind of feels like it. iPhone started. iPhone was the Android of iPhones. Mac beforehand was like the coder, really nerdy. I liked it a bit because I did video editing, but I really liked Windows better. Final Cut 7. um but anyways got my voyager until one day i tripped and broke both screens when it was in my pocket so then i got the samsung alias
that's the one I was talking about this phone was do you remember this phone yeah I do it's so cool for those of you who if there's not a picture on the screen you could open it like a flip up wise up ways or a fold because it had this one hinge on the top right corner so you could either have it like regular
keypad on a phone or if it was sideways then it was like a landscape uh the lg wing of 2008 no i was looking for some and there was an lg of 2008 from samsung yeah i forgot what it was called then my first real android phone The droid areas. Which, yeah. By the way, this is around when the 3D cameras and 3D screens were like, they were trying to make it a thing. And the Evo 3D came out around that time too. Do you remember this? I think it was Sprint only or something. I don't remember.
I remember at my time on Verizon, like if you were doing the Verizon upgrade plan, your two choices were this or the droid, the first droid. And you did this instead. This was cheaper. My mom got this. I got this. It had a little trackball on it. But again, old Android clock widget. It's so good. It's just nostalgic. That's the HTC Sense widget. This thing was awesome. I remember... uh like rooting this and thinking i broke it a hundred different times then i got a droid two
Then I started in the Galaxy stuff. S3, S5. This is very clearly, you can tell my plan was an upgrade every two years. So S3, S5, S7. Then I started working here. We got some... It wasn't a review unit. It was, I think you did something with Casey and they sent like a gift package that had a Note 8 in it and you didn't want it. So I was like, I'll take it. Favorite phone I've ever had. Note 8 was fire. Note 8.
Best phone I think that's ever come out. It was a peak. It wasn't fire because the Note 7 was fire. It was, yes. This was fire, though. But I think like the coolest part of this is the home button was like this button kind of under the screen. So it was just a screen button, but it had a physical press and like a feedback to it. Oh, yeah. Which is fantastic. That was awesome. Then I started my Pixel Journey, Pixel 3 XL.
bathtub pixel 4 xl solely pixel 6 pixel 7 zenphone 10 yes and now i am back on the galaxy Train with a Galaxy S24. This is a crazy way to tell the passage of time because I've known you since your 4XL days. And then I keep scrolling. I'm like, whoa, I've known him for so many phones.
I have a question for you, Andrew. Yeah. Why did you go back to the Galaxy S24? I feel like Samsung is the most boring and like boring phone right now, especially the regular one. I don't. Like you can have a pixel. I don't even remember why I was like, I kind of miss Samsung.
And went back to it. I like the size of it. The price of it is pretty solid. From a Zenfone. So you also gained an extra camera and wireless charging. Gained an extra camera from the smaller Pixel 2. But the new Zenfone has wireless charging. This one did have wireless charging. It's a thousand feet tall. Didn't they?
Didn't they add wireless charging to the last one that was cool? This is it. That's this one. The 10. Yeah, the 10. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, true. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, sorry. This did have wireless charging. That's why I switched to it. Gotcha. I beat the hell out of that phone. Yeah.
Oh, I also really... The real reason I went from Zenfone to S24 and didn't stay on Zenfone other than it didn't know it was small is... They got boring. I wanted a dbrand case that had the MagSafe puck on it. I still think MagSafe is the best. accessory on any phone period so it has to have a case but you could i mean the zenphone 10 doesn't definitely doesn't need a case i i had the sticker on the back it's still annoying to like hold with like this magnetic sticker on it
Let's see. But no, I think mine's still at my desk. But yeah, mine's kind of a boring, except for that AudioVox CDM9100. I think you should switch to a Kyocera Rise. I might have to look for one. Also, Andrew, I just want to say... In my heart, you'll forever be a Zenfone 10. That's just the phone. I see that phone, and I'm just like, that's Andrew's phone. I like that. You may think that you're a Zenfone 7, but you'll always be a Zenfone 10 to me, Andrew. Yeah. The man of the hour. Uh, yeah.
Here's how I did this. I just went year by year. Every year since 2006, I picked what I believe to be the phone that I used the most during that year. Some of these years were hard where I had two or three phones that I used a lot during the year, but I tried to just pick the one that I used the most. So, presented without nuance every year from 2006 to 2025, my daily driver. 06, Samsung flip phone. I believe it's called the U340. 2007, Motorola Droid. 2008.
The same Motorola Droid. 2009. The same Motorola Droid. Overclocked. Yeah, custom ROM, the whole thing. 2010, the Droid X. These are all Verizon phones. Droid. 2011, the first and only phone I've ever waited in line for, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. So jealous. 2012. That phone was how I found you on YouTube. Yeah, I did a bunch of videos on that phone. Yeah, that was on Verizon as well. Droid X was sick. Yeah, Droid X was sick. Droid X was a good one. Droid X was awesome.
Then 2011, Galaxy Nexus. So then 2012, Galaxy Note 2. 2013. HTC One M7 Google Play Edition. The smile on your face of reading that out loud is like... That phone was perfect. That phone was actually perfect. 2014, OnePlus One. 2015, Galaxy Note 5. 2016, Nexus 6P. 2017, Google Pixel XL. 2018, OnePlus 6. 2019, OnePlus 7T Pro McLaren Edition. Oh, my God. Okay, the 7T. Also perfect. That phone is also perfect. The 7T also is perfect. Yeah. Just saying.
2020 iPhone 12 Pro Max, because I split my Android phones too much. Android 20, sorry, 2021 Galaxy S21 Ultra. 2022 Pixel 7 Pro. 2023, Zenfone 10, 2024, S24 Ultra, 2025, S25 Ultra. You put the Zenfone 10 on there? Yeah. I use the Zenfone 9 a lot. I didn't make the cut over the Pixel 7 Pro, but those two Zenfones in a row were heavy for me. Yeah, that is my list.
wow and do we think that pixel 10 is going to be good enough to dethrone the s25 ultra i'm hoping honestly yeah pixel pixel 10 pro or 10 pro xl whatever and the big one ends up being That could be interesting. It's supposed to come out in August. Yeah, because there hasn't been a Pixel as my number one on here since Pixel 7 Pro. That's crazy. And I remember Pixel 3 XL.
almost made my list but that i think was the same year as one of those oneplus phones that i that was just amazing i tried to run the regular pixel 3 because the xl had the omega notch the regular pixel 3 had the worst battery life since like yeah since like the 3xl was good
the great cameras the notch was so funny it was a ridiculous so yeah i'm just wondering who like okayed that it was character honestly you look at phones today and they all have like some visual character thing you look at the pixel 3 excel it's like yep that's the fun with the notch oh my god fine yeah I wish I had more software features though with that notch
Anyway. Yeah. Adam. T-Mobile Sidekick 3, Motorola Droid, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Samsung Galaxy S3, LG Nexus 5, Motorola Nexus 6, Shamu, Apple iPhone 6S, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, Google Pixel. Google Pixel 2 XL, iPhone X, Google Pixel 3, Google Pixel 4a, the perfect phone, Google Pixel 6a, Google Pixel 7, Apple iPhone 12 Pro, Apple iPhone 15 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, Google Pixel 9 Pro.
Big pixel history for this guy. Wow. Well, there you have it. Loves his pixels. I think it's about time for our final trivia break. Trivia. Trivia dude I think we like phones Not anymore
Now we just like... I feel like... That was me back then. I'm all in on AI now. Not anymore, bro. I just have a pin over it. I feel like that just made all of us realize, like, five years ago, we loved folks. Yeah. Because, like, everything we said from, like, 2015... to 2020 we're like oh my god that was awesome when you look at the pictures of these things they're so cool looking
And now they just look the freaking same. The grin on my face when I got to say HTC One, and then it slowly faded away. Like the light left my eyes. I said, S24, S25. Practically the only thing that differentiates these things now. is how the freaking camera looks yeah that's it and whether or not it comes in gray or I gotta say or like power ranking if I were to power ranking like phones that I could go back to and use today the top two
by a head and shoulders are the HTC One M7 Play Edition and the OnePlus 7T Pro McLaren Edition. Those two phones were... Flawless. No notes. I'm surprised. Bring him back. Okay, but the OnePlus 7T Pro McLaren edition had, like, an issue where, like, it, because they had the curved, no, the curved sides. Mm-hmm. It would, like...
have ghost touches all the time. I just got used to it. It was incredible software, fast charging, great cameras for a OnePlus phone. Oh, I love that. And it was good value. I had like 12 gigs of RAM. Yeah, extra RAM. Extra RAM. I did have 12 gigs of RAM. Sorry, I interrupted. Okay, trivia. So, starting in 2007, ending...
I couldn't find a clear end date for this, but it seems like Miis are slowly getting phased out anyway. But for a while, starting in 2007, Nintendo would occasionally release what they called special Miis. These were Japanese celebrities and most... fleet Nintendo executives and they were not editable but there was one other distinguishing visual feature that signal that your me was a special me what was that distinguishing feature hit it that the
The special ones were special, right? Like the ones they distributed. What? Not the ones you made, the ones they distributed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The celebrity me's? Yeah, yes, yes. Yes. Hey. For those, actually even video viewers would know this, it's like 100 degrees in this room right now. It's so hot. I don't think it's that bad.
Wrong. Tomorrow's going to be worse. Yeah, there you go. All right. Who wants to read their answer first? I put little stars above their head. But it seems like you wrote a pun that I'm pretty stoked for. I wrote.
Reggie fills a me. I kind of want to give him a point just for that. I'll talk about it with my host. But yeah, that is wrong. There were no stars. I just wrote they sparkle. They do not sparkle. I said there would be some object floating over their head. Unfortunately, that is also wrong. The correct... answer is they had gold pants. Very nice. Cool. And no one else could have gold pants? No. Mii's had gray pants or if a Mii was favorited on your Wii console it received red pants.
All right, quick update on the score. Marquez with 25. Andrew with 15. David, 29. Potentially 30. No? If you were losing, I would have given it to you, but I can't. But it could match my age. That would be ridiculous. That'd be cool. You gotta earn that point. It would be cool, but still at 29. Alright, next question. What was the first Super Mario game where Mario would take a nap when the player was idle? A Super Mario Odyssey B Super Mario 64
C. Super Mario World. Or D. Super Mario Karts. Marquez is just straight up guessing. I'll hold it and throw the marker point at it. They're actually doing it. Oh, my God. Hurry up. The time's almost out. What did you just do? I think it hit the middle. For audio listeners, Marquez drew like a dartboard, and he threw a marker at it.
Picked A, which is wrong. David, what'd you say? I said B. Andrew, what'd you say? I said 64. Which was B? I don't remember. It was correct either way. Two points for both of you. Let's go. Two points for both of us? No. Two collectively shared amongst both of you. I get both. Hey, I'm 30, okay? I told you it'd be cool if my score matched my age. Wow. Because now I have 30 points.
It was a good track. I thought your birthday was like was two months ago. Wait, what letter was it? Yeah, it's still the same age from two months. Well, why are you talking? This is old news. You've been 30 for a minute. I know, but I'm just saying if my score became the same age as me. My grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bike. What letter was the right answer? B, as in boy. I hit B the first one. I know. All right. My plan worked. Well.
this has been a long podcast thanks for watching thanks for listening with us and thanks for uh doing trivia with us and all of our rambling check out the switch unboxing slash impressions video let us know what you want to see in the full review and also let us know what you think is going to happen at wwdc See you there. Bye. Thank you to the Nintendo Switch too. Wait for Mr. Bruce Pat.
Waveformer is produced by Adam Molina and Alice Orvin. We're partners with Vox Media Podcast Network. And our intro to outro music was created by Vane Silk. Bingo! The Nintendo Switch 2 is the hash, swinging, slash, blinging, nash, tinging, prash, tinging, nah. All right, we should be good to go. Um...