SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
SammyGuru with Jeff Springer
Galaxy Z Trifold One Week Impressions + Exynos 2600 Official Unveiling
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We map out Samsung’s near-term roadmap and pressure test three big bets: Exynos 2600 performance, Expert RAW inside the Camera app, and whether the Galaxy Z Trifold finally delivers a true phone-plus-tablet experience. Hands-on time cuts through hype with weight, hinge, and software realities.
• S26 launch window sliding to late February and why spacing matters
• Galaxy Store “top apps” list and the role of push notifications
• Expert RAW features moving into the stock Camera app
• Exynos 2600 specs, thermal goals, and regional strategy
• CES preview across TVs, audio, PCs, and mobile demos
• Z Fold 8 camera rumors and One UI 8.5 quality-of-life updates
• Galaxy Z Trifold review: ergonomics, creases, durability, and balance
• On-device DeX, multitasking use cases, and portrait tablet workflows
• Battery life, 45 W charging, and camera trade-offs
• Value check: when a trifold earns its premium
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Check out our website: https://sammyguru.com
Hosts Check In And Holiday Break Vibes
SPEAKER_01Welcome back, everybody. This is episode number 51 of the Sammy Guru Podcast. My name is Jeff Springer. With me as always, my co-host Tori. Tori, say hi. Yeah, how's it going? And uh we're Colin list today. So Colin joined again permanently for one episode, but just not this episode because Tori and I are recording early because the Alabama game is on tonight. Oh, yeah. And Colin couldn't make it this early. Um, we're gonna try to figure out a way that we can all record at least every other week, maybe by trying to see if we can get Tori a home set up so we could do it like sometimes at night. Because I think what be really convenient is Colin stays up late, I stay up late, you stay up late. Why couldn't we just do it at night one night when we all have time? We can all figure it out. It's a little bit easier. Yeah. Because at like 10 o'clock at night, nine o'clock at night, no one's gotta go work. And I don't have anything to do with the kids because they're asleep. So we can try to figure that out. And then at least Colin will be able to join us more regularly. It's just tricky because they're also in different time zones. Yep. How are you, Tori? How are you doing?
SPEAKER_02Uh I mean, overall, doing good. I'm on uh break now. And uh Tori's officially on the break. Yeah. Um, I'm here to uh help turn the Sammy Guru office into a distribution center.
SPEAKER_01That's right. We got about two months until the S26 launch. Um yeah, so the if we'll talk about this a little bit later, but it looks like the official S26 launch is gonna be February 25th. I don't know anything. I really don't this time. Sometimes when I say that, I'm just lying. Like later in the show, I might say that again, and I might be lying that time. I might tell you who knows. You know, I might even tell you the price of the Galaxy Z trifold, and you don't know if you should believe me or not. Because maybe I know, maybe I don't. Yeah, it's hard to say. Yeah, but when I tell you it's February 25th for the S26 launch, that's based on a lot of leaks evidence, not guaranteed. We'll talk about it later. Uh, how are you feeling about the break so far? It's it's only like the only day into it. It's just the first day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It always feels good on the first day, you know. It does. As it goes on, you know, and I remember when I used to work in academia, it's like your dread gets higher, you know? Yeah. Your enjoyment of the break is a decreasing exponential curve. I know. And your dread is an increasing exponential curve as the days left in the break goes down.
SPEAKER_02Oh, for sure. Yeah. I I I would say the first day is like the peak. It goes like because your day has you have so much potential to your break.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it does. You could do anything. The world is your oyster. Yeah, it is. You could see a movie every day. You could sleep all day. Yeah. And you could then sleep all day and wake up at four o'clock and see a movie. Yep. You could, you know, go do whatever activities you want. You could get so much extra work done that you'll never do. Yeah. But you'll tell yourself that you're going to do it. Oh, 100%. And you have so much potential on the first day. Like, I'm going to get all the work done and see a movie every day and sleep 12 hours. And I'm going to have some great holiday food and enjoy some time with my friends and family. And I'm going to find time to do those hobbies that I haven't had time to do. Yep. All that stuff's going to get done. Yep. Yeah. But then by like the middle of the break, you're like, oh, I haven't done any of that stuff yet. Yeah, I haven't. Yeah. Like I haven't done any work.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I only saw one movie.
SPEAKER_02And it's been a whole week. I know. Yeah. Because you're you're trying to get caught up on everything you've been procrastinating.
SPEAKER_01Oh, and because of the holidays, I've been doing stuff with my family, but then I've only slept five hours a night still. Yeah. Like, what the hell happened to this break? There's so much potential last week when I was my first day. Yep. That's why the first day is the best. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Because you can train yourself to believe that something great's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's kind of like as soon as you submit the grades, you're like, oh, all right. Like, and it's just like the rising action. You know, and then that first day is the is the climax. And then every day after that, it just gradually gets lower and lower and lower. Yep. And then as as getting lower and lower, it's kind of it's kind of like the uh kind of like the uh binomial theorem. The binomial theorem. Yeah, we're uh uh the distribution of binomials. And then as that's going on, my dread and despair of like, oh crap, gotta go back, gotta go back. That's that's rising. Um but yeah, no. Uh it's uh yeah, so far it's been it's been pretty pretty good so far. Got to kick it with Jeff so far. We got some pot belly.
SPEAKER_01You know, we're having a good time over here. Yeah, yeah. The Samu Guru office. That's what I like about it over here at the Sam Miguel office, is we have a good time here. Yeah. Um, we do what we do. It's we gotta we gotta see a movie though. We are gonna see a movie. Not every day, probably, but we will see a movie. I don't wanna I don't wanna go down that road that I just told myself that I always go down where I'm like, I'm gonna see a movie every day.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I know.
S26 Launch Timing And Leak Reality Check
SPEAKER_01But I'm gonna, you know, it's a lot of potential though, you know, when you're in academia because you're working nine to five every day. You're like, yeah, we gotta see that movie more because you got a great one. You're like, we gotta see that movie every dang day. Yeah. Um but yeah, so I mean I feel pretty good. We got some Samsung stuff to get into, though. And for those of you who've been waiting, and I know a lot of you have been waiting, in my hand, well, not physically in my hand yet, but I'm picking it up now, is the Galaxy Z Trifold. And it is a beast. It looks like a beast. If you guys follow me over on X uh or on YouTube or on the website, you know, I mean I post we post a lot of content about it already. This thing is incredibly fun. Um it has a few issues here and there, for sure. Um, but in general, it's super fun. And I'm gonna have the second half of the show, or whatever it ends up being, the second third, you know, we're gonna go as long as we can until I can make sure I can comfortably get home for kickoff because you know Alabama's probably gonna lose tonight, but I want to be there to see them lose, you know. Because it's the final game of the season. Yep. So if they're gonna lose, they're gonna lose with me watching. And so I've gotta check it out. Yep. Um, but whatever. Uh in the second half, I'll go through and talk about the trifold because I never wants to hear the impressions. Yeah. And I do have more to say since my video. So if you guys caught my video, uh, I do have a little bit of things to add because I've had a few more days with it. So I have a few more things I can tell you guys about the trifold. So you'll definitely want to stick around and get all of that great insight. But let's kick off the show with some news. And uh one piece of news that caught my eye, I was just scrolling through today's stories over at the Sammy Guru, and we covered this story that got sent to us by Samsung PR. The most downloaded apps from the Galaxy store in the US uh this year. It's a top eight. I don't know why it's not a top ten, but I guess they're just like, uh those last two spots. Yeah. Just couldn't make the cut. Couldn't make the cut. Anyway, the funny thing about this is if you read it, I'll first I'll give you guys the list. Because you know, you know, you want to know. You're on the edge of your seat. You're like, what is the list? It's uh Sirius XM, Glance AI, TikTok, Perplexity, Crunchyroll, Chime, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and ABC Mouse 2. Interesting. Now you guys probably know what a lot of these are. If you don't know what ABC Mouse 2 is, that means you don't have children. Yeah. Because it's a child, it's a program for little children that helps them learn to read and do various reasoning activities. We purchased it, that program for my five-year-old when he was like two, and my younger son will probably start it soon. And they can do it on the iPad and stuff, and they really like it, and actually helps them. Actually, it's a good program. I recommend it. It's it's pretty good for helping the kids learn various skills. But the funny thing, you know what's you know what's you know, all these apps have in commentary. Right. Suspiciously, all of these apps are apps that Samsung promotes in push notification ads for the Galaxy store. Really? So that would explain why they're top eight, because Samsung's bombarding all of their users with notifications that say, ding, would you like to download Sirius XM? Ding, would you like to download Perplexity? Ding, would you like to download Chime? I get like at least I leave these on because you can turn them off and I know how. But the average user usually doesn't turn these off. So I leave them on so I can see how much Samsung is bombarding people with ads just so we we can criticize them for it at Sammy Guru. And uh I get at least one of these on this top eight every week. Probably two or three notifications from these. Sirius XM, TikTok, Perplexity, and Chime are definitely the top four that I get. I'm sure you've seen some of these before.
SPEAKER_02Crunchyroll.
SPEAKER_01Crunch, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And so like Hulu or something plus would be.
SPEAKER_01So it feels like to me, offering my you know, expert industry analysis here, it seems like these are not apps that uh were the most organically downloaded. It seems like these were the apps that paid Samsung the most money to line their pockets and promote their apps on the Galaxy store.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I mean I told Abnov we should go ahead and write it anyway. Yeah. But I also told him when he put the story in Slack, I was like, I don't think these are just apps that people are downloading on their own. Because if it's the number one most downloaded app, is Sirius XM really gonna be the number one most downloaded app? I mean, I have Sirius XM because I like sports, but how many people do you know that really pay for Sirius XM? Probably not.
SPEAKER_02I don't I don't think I mean since you you are the only person I think I know that most people have Spotify and very little have YouTube premium. Exactly.
Galaxy Store “Top Apps” And Push Ad Critique
SPEAKER_01So I mean I like Sirius XM, but I don't even know anybody else who pays for it other than me. Me and Nicole have it because you know we're out with the kids a lot driving sometimes on the weekends, and we want to still be able to listen to our games. And the thing is, you know, if the game's not on regular radio, which usually there's only like one game, yeah. If the Steelers are playing we want to get their home broadcast, and Nicole wants to listen to that. I want to listen to the Alabama home broadcast. I used to love to listen to Eli Gold on the Alabama Sports Radio Network. Uh, of course, you know, he's done now, but he I love listening to him. You know, you can't do that unless you have something like serious in the car anyway. Online, you can just find you can find the radio stream and stream it, but if you're on the desktop. So anyway, I thought that was kind of interesting. It's kind of funny that Samsung promoted this as being like the list of most organically downloaded apps of the year. And I'm like, eh, I don't know. Is it? I don't think it is. Yeah, I'm not so sure about that. I think they might be smoking the old ha shish, as we say in the industry. You know what I mean? Yeah, smoking in the industry. They're like, we're smoking good ha shish. You know what I'm saying? Oh, here's a big story. Expert Raw might be making its way into the stock camera app. There's a story that says that for 108.5, in one of the most recent test builds, Samsung looks like they might be bringing expert raw uh pro controls to the stock camera app. Now, this would be a huge win because, as a lot of you guys know, I've said before on the show that I use expert raw as my main camera. And I think that a lot more people should use it, but no one else, including Tori, he probably had no idea what it was until I told him. Yep. Not because it's a completely separate app that you have to download, and no other regular person's gonna do that unless, you know, this is like unless you're reading Sammy Guru or Sam Mobile or 9.5 Google, you would never know that this is even exist, right? So this could be a good thing because if they bring some of this computational photography stuff to the stock camera app, this could potentially improve the camera quality on the S26 without actually improving the hardware. Because God knows we've already been through the story and we'll talk more about today. Samsung has absolutely no intention of giving you improved hardware. They're like, they're like F your improved hardware. Like, we got some improved hardware for you right here. You know what I mean? And you know, they're showing you their their ass, basically. They say that's where the improved hardware is. It's right there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right there. Boom, right there. We got some for you. Right there.
SPEAKER_01Um, and so yeah, I know, you know, I'm not a huge fan of that. But um, you know, I mean, it it's it's great that they're gonna try to bring software improvements. I just think it's a shame that they also don't want to go with the hardware because it's what we need, you know. Um what else? Galaxy S26 Plus uh joined the S26 and the S26 Ultra with BIS battery certification. So for those of you guys who don't know what the BIS battery certification is about, that is about um basically it's a regulatory agency in India, like the uh it's kind of like the FCC is for the US, yeah, certifies devices before they get sold. So once a device goes through the BIS certification, you know that it's probably gonna be sold in the next like month or two. And so that's what happened. The S26 and the S26 Ultra, they both got certified, and uh now we have the S26 Plus.
unknownOh yeah.
Expert RAW Inside Stock Camera Possibility
SPEAKER_01So that's pretty exciting. I mean, we kind of know that these are not coming in January, which we're gonna talk about in a story in a little bit. In fact, that story right now. Uh another report claimed that the uh we already had one report saying that the S26 series would be pushed to February. And the previous uh uh date that was floated was February 25th. And now another Korean outlet who is a very good track record with Samsung stuff, they are also saying that it's going to be February now. So this is Yon Hap News Agency um saying that it'll also be delayed till February four to five weeks later than usual, which is you know, I mean, that's it is what it is. Yeah, you know, it is what it is. I mean, it's not terrible. I think if they delayed it all the way to March, that'd be really bad. Um, just because you know, they obviously want to keep some spacing between the fold and the S series for obvious reasons, you know, to cannibalize sales of one phone, and also there's some crazy MFers out there like me who just buy every single phone. There are people who don't even do this as a living, and they do, it's just what they their hobby. Um, you don't want to, you know, stop those people from doing that because you know, if you put them too close together, they might be like, oh, well, maybe I'll just give the fold. But if you do it six months apart, at some point, the voice in the back of their head will be like, buy the S26 Ultra. Oh, yeah. And eventually they'll buy it in that six month time frame. That way, then they'll purchase the fold as well. You know, you don't want to you don't want to stop those people from doing that because you want to collect you gotta collect that money. Yeah, you do. That's the industry. Uh perhaps the biggest story that broke overnight was the Xynos 2600 Samsung's flagship processor is now official. They made an official launch video. They posted a teaser before, but they've now posted the official launch video, and there's some really crazy specs here on offer. Uh, it drops traditional low-power efficiency cores entirely and uses a 10-core tri-cluster CPU based on the ARM V9.3 architecture, optimized for consistent high performance. The chip has one C1 Ultra Prime core clocked at 3.8 gigahertz, three C1 Pro mid-cores at 3.2 gigahertz, and six more C1 Pro cores at a lower 2.75 gigahertz. Now, what does that mean in plain English? Flagship flagship flagship specs, bro. Flagship specs. That's what Flossie Carter says. Oh, yeah. Um, but what does it mean compared to like Qualcomm? Well, Samsung claims 39% overall CPU performance uplift compared to the 2500. Uh, and the move to all performance focused cores suggest they're going to prioritize responsiveness, multitasking, and sustained workloads uh instead of just better battery life here. Um the nine middle cores are optimized separately for performance and efficiency, providing stable operation across efficiency tasks and broader performance workloads. Um, the new AMD-powered Eclipse 960 GPU also delivers two times higher compute performance, 50% better ray tracing for games, and uh that's compared to the Xclipse uh Eclipse 950. Uh it introduces Exynos Neural Super Sampling, an AI powered frame generation and upscaling system. It enables smoother higher frame rate gaming and keeping power consumption in check. Support up to 4K screens at 120 Hz, HDR 10 Plus playback and HDR gaming, and also LP DDR5X RAM and UFS 4.1 storage support. Uh and there's no integrated connectivity modem, though, with Samsung relying on external modems. Uh the NPU and ISP both get massive upgrades, which means better photos. Um, and the heat path blocks target Exynos' biggest weakness, which was thermal performance. We've always had concerns about that. So the question is um, what does this mean compared to the Snapdragon? Because of course, as Tori knows, it's always the Snapdragon versus the Exynos. And every year, Snapdragon. Yeah, Tori likes the Snapdragon. I do, because he's an American, and people just like the name. They're like, would you like to snap your dragon? And like, whoa, hey, calm down now. Also, yes. Also, yes. Um, so basically, Samsung is trying to make a strong case for Exynos, and it seems like their plan is to continue to improve the thermal efficiency while also slowly ramping up the power. Because the main thing that Qualcomm has that Samsung doesn't have with their processors and Exynos is they've always had a problem with bringing the power for things like gaming while also keeping the temperature down.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
Certifications, Delays, And February Unpacked Window
SPEAKER_01Because while you're gaming, you don't want your hands to be burning off. Sure. You don't have to use oven mitts to play your games. No, not at all. No one wants that. No one wants that. Uh you don't have to be going to the kitchen and be like, honey, can I use your oven mitts? I need to play some Call of Duty mobile. Yep. Like, whoa, I gotta get your own. I need these for cooking. Yep. Um, so I mean, I really want to see Exynos succeed. And we've wrote a few articles about this at Sammy Guru. The main reason it would be good if Exynos could succeed eventually is if Exynos succeeds, then Samsung's making their own chips and they're writing the software, and you can optimize hardware and software a lot more. You know what I mean? That's what that's Apple's big advantage, right? That's Apple's secret sauce. They make the hardware, they make all the hardware, the processors and everything, and the software. And when you make both, you can optimize everything. Now, of course, there's still the counter-argument to that that Samsung doesn't fully make the software because Samsung's using Android and Google makes Android, and then they just build stuff on top with one UI. But if they made their own processor, there would be a lot of opportunities for you know kind of optimizing the stack of how the phones integrate with the software. Um do I think this is gonna come to any of the ultras? I don't. I don't think it's gonna come even in Korea. I think it's gonna come to the S26 and the S26 Plus in select regions, not in the US, probably not in Europe, probably in Korea. Um maybe, maybe somewhere in Europe, but I don't know. Maybe in the UK. Our buddy Josh, who writes for the site, he might not be too happy about that. I don't know if he wants the Exynos. I I'm gonna get an Exynos version no matter what. Like if they don't sell it in the US, I'm gonna purchase it. You know what I mean? Um I mean, so let's let's do that. That's what that's how I'm gonna roll right now. I'm very excited about it. Um it's very exciting. So uh the next thing in terms of the Exynos processor is would you give Exynos a chance if they slapped it in the S26 Ultra? Say if you didn't know me and you weren't an employee of Sammy Guru and you didn't really know much about this. Obviously you don't follow as closely as me, but you know a lot more about this now than you did 15, 17 months ago when we started the podcast. Oh, yeah. So if you didn't know much, you know, and you saw that, would that concern you about purchasing upgrading an S25 Ultra, which has the Snapdragon to the S26 Ultra? Not thinking about the spectrum, thinking about the name recognition.
SPEAKER_02Okay, okay, just the name recognition.
unknownIt's okay.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, a little, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The the lady was trying to get the trash because she she she thinks I think she figured everybody else is left for the holiday already. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. We work hard here at Sammy Guru. You know, everybody else in this office, they're all lawyers and accountants. They already took off for the holiday break on the 19th. They're like, We're not coming back until January 4th, but not me. No.
SPEAKER_02No, not us.
SPEAKER_01We keep it hard. I'm gonna leave that in there just so people know how hard we work here. Yeah. There's nobody else in this building right now. Yeah. That's why I should have to get the trash. We're here.
SPEAKER_02Uh but I don't know. Let me see. Uh, because like because even like when I when I met you, you know, um, I would watch your YouTube channel quite a lot. And then also I that's where I found uh Flossie Carter. And uh on there, they even talk a lot about the Exynos and also um uh Snapdragon and it just from even like what I gathered like years ago, that the Snapdragon was better performing than uh Exynos. And so um I I think even if I were to work with just some of the information that I have um from like you know several years ago, like I think Snapdragon's obviously it's a cool name, um, but given that I would and also I'm in Phoenix, I would never want a phone that would has the potential have any thermal issues? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't want thermal issues here. Yeah, no, no, we don't. Uh I I think I would still have to go with the Snapdragon. Um because the Phoenix heat will give you thermal issues of its own.
SPEAKER_01Yes, you don't need to have a hot phone that already runs hot. Yeah, no. Because if it's out in the sunlight, if it's in the sunlight here for a good five minutes, it's already gonna be cooked. Oh, yeah, for sure. By the way, I'll have to tell Flossie Carter that one person in the entire world discovered him through my channel. Yes. Because there's probably I've probably gotten 20,000 subscribers from Vloss sending people to me. So it's nice that I sent someone to his channel. So you hear that, Floss? I sent you one subscriber in exchange for the 20,000 plus that you've told about my channel. So now we're even, buddy.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, when I see him at the Unpacked Event, I'll be sure to tell him. Yeah, it's floss and white shoes.
SPEAKER_02Come on, you can't.
Exynos 2600 Deep Dive: Cores, GPU, Thermals
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I love my white shoes. I love my white shoes. Yeah, sure. I love that. Love that song. White shoes, calm down. Yeah. All right. Um we gotta get floss on the show. He agreed to come, but we're both so we're both so busy that it's so hard to schedule. But I'm gonna try to reach out back to him again. Um please. It's not that he didn't respond to me, it's just that I forgot about it. He agreed to come and then I forgot to swallow up with him. Um, so I gotta get that done. Um what else we got? So that's the Exynos 2600. Suffice to say, I'm excited about it to try it as an enthusiast. And someone was asked me, what do I think is the strategy? I was gonna say this to the end, but might as well answer it now because who knows how long we'll actually be able to go. Exynos 2600, what's the strategy? Well, I think they're gonna keep it they're globally, they're gonna keep it in the flip. So we've seen some rumors the flip seven, remember, has the Exynos, 2500. That's the only global phone, flagship, that has Exynos. And by all media accounts, ours included, I've used that phone given. I don't use it as my daily driver. I'm not a flip guy. You know, I don't flip out every day. It's not my favorite type of phone, but I've used it enough. I used it for like three or four weeks. It performs really well. I was impressed with it. So I think they're gonna put it in the flip eight and see how that goes. And then if that reception's pretty warm, people like it. Maybe next year we see it creep in. They're like, so I creep. Yeah. It's Sing Along Friday at Sammy Groove. I can't put this on YouTube because it'll take my video down now because we've got all these songs in it. Oh, yeah. But luckily with our wonderful voices. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I know TLC wishes that I could do a cover of their song, but I can't do the whole thing because that would cost them a lot of money. Yeah. I don't know if they can afford it. No. For me to do a cover is very expensive. Um, but it might creep into the S27 Ultra globally next year. That's a prediction. Yeah. I don't think there's any chance that it makes it into the fold eight. Because the fold eight is just too important for Samsung in the US. And it's also too late, I think, for them to sneak it in there. But expect the Flip 8 to see the Exynos 2600. It's coming. Um what else we got? We got, oh, the Rivian got Samsung wallet digital car key support. I'm about to slap that on my Rivian tonight. I forgot about it. But so now you can use your phone, your Samsung phone, as a car key for your Rivian. Interesting. On its own without having the app. I mean, of course, I have the Rivian app, which will let you go in there and manually unlock it. You know, you can press a button in the app, but that's a lot of work because you've got to open the app, tap the button, and then there's a little delay. With the Samsung Digital Car key, you just have your Samsung wallet app and you just tap it to your thing, your Rivian, it's like boom. And just driving your Rivian on out down the road. So I haven't tried it yet, but I just saw, we just what wrote this story yesterday, and I will try it tomorrow. Um, 1UI9 software update header, our writer, Josh, he found the 1UI9 software update header inside a 1UI 8.5 test build. So we already have the software update wallpaper for 1UI9. I was like, what the hell, man? 1U8.5 is not even out yet. Now we're talking about 1UI9. It's like, what the hell are you guys doing out here? Making it hard. You guys smoking the crack cocaine? I know. Like, what the heck? Don't be cracked cocaine in my ass. Um, but anyway, it's pretty cool. It's basically a little blob that's got like a geometric, like a circle that looks like it's going up an incline. Yeah. It looks like a nine. It's like a it's got an orange and blue color grade. It looks like they kind of stole our site color theme. Did you notice that, Tori? I didn't know. I think they've been reading the Sami Gruber side a little too much.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's kind of they're probably avid listeners of the Sami Gruber podcast.
SPEAKER_01I really do think a lot of people from Samsung read our site now because I noticed the other day in our Google Analytics breakdown, our percentage of readership from South Korea has like tenfold in like the last two months. Really? So I think some like Samsung employees must read our site now. No, no, probably so. Before they probably didn't, but it looks like they might they might legitimately read our site now. And it looks like they were like, wow, that site uh layout is nice, the orange with the blue. Yeah, they're like, let's go ahead and steal that for our one UI9 software advantage.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, just gonna go ahead and cop that. They're like, let's go ahead and just pill for that from Jeff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was like, you guys, well, you can't mind. I'm gonna let you have it for now. Yeah, but I can't guarantee for how long. Because you know, you know, we're out here making money. Yeah, that's what we do. Making money with you gotta pay a licensing fee for that. Yep. For sure. Quite expensive. Faux show. Faux show. Uh the Z Fold 8 camera upgrades have been revealed. And it was quite the reveal. Oh no, what happened to the site? Oh no. It's like stuck in a weird situation. Oh no. Yeah. That's a weird one. So earlier, for those of you guys who don't know, I've been working on like fixing some theme layout issues with the site. And now I'm finding that some of the things I did for some of the site uh layout stuff is like messed up. This is the only post so far that I've seen that's messed up, though.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, all the other ones have been working on the biggest.
SPEAKER_01The other ones are like super nice. It would I would guess that this image is maybe too large.
SPEAKER_02Could be.
SPEAKER_01That's crazy. I'm gonna have to go through and fix that. Well, you know, there's always gonna be some growing pains in this industry when you're trying to fix things. When you fix things, you're gonna break other things. I'm gonna take a picture of this though, because I'm gonna want to have to visit this later. Sorry guys. I'm gonna have to fix this later because it looks bad. It looks like the image size is probably too large and not being optimized, which is not good. Yeah. Okay, so even though the fold 8 is a little ways away, the key camera specs have been revealed by Galaxy Club, and it looks like it could get upgraded telephoto and ultra wide cameras. Uh, it looks like the Z Fold 8 will retain the same 3x optical zoom. However, the resolution will increase from 10 megapixels to 12 megapixels, and it may also get a bump to a 15 megapixel ultra wide. Um I mean, damn, it seems like Samsung really is like going all in on like, well, we're gonna make the uh the fold like the the thing that you should get because we're not gonna do any upgrades for the yeah, for the slabs. We're not gonna do any upgrades for the slabs at all.
SPEAKER_02Sorry. Jeez. I mean, which is like you know, we we were having an earlier conversation. Um, you know, now with the trifold entering the chat. Um, you know, trifold enters the chat. Yeah, enters the chat. The chat is being entered. Uh, you know, will the fold um go down in price? And obviously, you know, we don't it's probably not gonna be like anytime soon, but um, you know, I do think um that uh if the price point is right, and obviously we do have you know leasing and financial plans that can definitely make it easier for the average um if the price is right, like Bob Barker. Yep. Uh, you know, for people to get in. Um, you know, but like I I I truly think, like, you know, when you think about Samsung, and at least when I started using Samsung, like just for innovation, like I still think this is very innovative. I think it's very cool. Um, you know, if they can change the that original picture that they first had, like when the full first launch of like this is a luxury phone, if they can now just make the trifold be the luxury option and bring scale back that price a little bit on the fold. Uh, I think there'll be an increase of people migrating to the fold um if they kind of make it like the common achievable price point. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01They'll be like, come on down, the price is right. Yeah, yeah, come on, come on down, the prices right. Come on down. Do do do do. Do do do do to do do to do do do do to do price. Was her host Jeff Springer? Sue me for that one. Hopefully not. Hopefully not. Um, so that's what's going with the Z Fold 8. Uh, one UI 8.5 may also bring Google's call screening directly to Samsung devices, uh, which is kind of crazy because Samsung already has a version of this called Bixby Call uh text call. Yeah, but call screening is uh undisputably better. It is Google's version, and it's a heck of a lot better than the version Samsung has. It's just it's just better. Google's better at a lot of AI things, and this is one of them. It's been around for a long time. You just press a button, or you can have it set up automatically, and Jim and I will screen your call. We'll ask who it is. It's perfect because you get so many spam calls these days. I yeah, every call I get is basically a spam call.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, yeah. I get like 10 a day, just all throughout. Just spam, spam, spam, spam, spam. It's so ridiculous.
Snapdragon vs Exynos: Trust, Regions, Strategy
CES Preview: TVs, Audio, PCs, Trifold Hands-On
SPEAKER_01They're on that BS with that, I'll tell you that right now. It's crazy, man. Crazy stuff. Um Samsung has a lot of stuff going on at CES. I can't talk about everything because I did get briefed on some of it. You know how that goes. But I can talk about what they've already announced. They announced the new micro RGB TVs. They've announced some new AI smart appliances. Uh I'll be on hand for the press events for all of these because I'll be at CS starting on uh the 3rd of January, right after the new year. I'll be having a few drinks and relaxing. Drive not driving, not driving after I drive after I don't have a few drinks on New Year's Eve, and then on the third, I'll drive to Vegas. You know, plenty of time for the alcohol to subside. But I'll be there uh actually attending like four or five different Samsung press conferences, one for TVs and displays and audio, yeah, one for PCs and mobile. They have confirmed. I'm pretty sure I can say this because they've already said it in their press announcements that are public. The trifold will be on hand at CES. Media will have time with the trifold, which likely means that the Trifold US availability announcement will be made at CES. Uh, perhaps on Sunday, their first look event, Sunday night, the fourth. I'll be there. Obviously, I already have a trifold, so for me, it won't be that exciting getting hands-on time with it, as it will for everybody else. But um, I'll be like, guys, I'll just use my trifold for the content capture. Thank you. Yeah. They'll be like, Thanks. Thank you, but no, thank you. Um I already have one to take some pictures of. Um, but I will be at the event. That probably does mean if you want to buy one in the US, probably the announcement and the pricing. You know, if I had to take a guess at the price, I should like to throw out some numbers out there. I would say somewhere between$2,899 and$2,901. Somewhere in that range, is my guess. And you could probably guess which one it is. I'm just saying I have to throw out a range. Right, Tori? Yep. Yeah. It could be$2,900 and$1. You don't know. It could be. It could be. I mean, I've never seen you never know. I've never seen Samsung do the$1 pricing, but hey, there's a first time for everything. There's a first time. Uh should be great, cool stuff for PCs. Galaxy Book 6 Pro should be coming. Um, that's just based off of leaks. I don't know. Maybe I do know something, but that that's based on the leaks, too. There have been plenty of leaks that suggest that's coming. Yeah. Um, so tons of TVs, tons of display stuff. Uh, I guarantee you there's some surprises, because like I said, I already been briefed. There's some surprises for audio and monitors. So if you like monitors and audio stuff, Samsung has a couple cool new product categories coming. Crazy TV stuff, always. The TVs are like always the oh yeah. The T CS is like the TV show. If you're like consumer electronics, it's all about TVs. Um, but a lot of other stuff too. So they've got some fun stuff there. Uh semiconductor, I'll be going to the Exynos briefing. We just talked about Exynos 2600. Their Exynos team will be uh briefing us. They're having a press conference, they're having a media reception for people who cover mobile stuff. So there's not gonna be any S26 news at CS. Samsung just doesn't do like Galaxy S stuff at CS anymore. They used to like 10 years ago, but Samsung, you know, they do their own event for Galaxy S. They're too big for CES. We have to have our own event for that. Plus, we already know uh the Galaxy S series is not coming until February, and CS is like right at the beginning of January. So don't expect any S26 news, but expect plenty of TVs, appliances, audio, PCs, and a few surprises. And then the trifold, of course. That's the only that's the only mobile news you're gonna get. You're not gonna get Galaxy S stuff. So um what else we got? Samsung may bring back variable aperture to compete with iPhones. This is a rumor that we keep hearing, but I don't believe this, you know. Sometimes you gotta, you know, sometimes you gotta, you know, be like a little skeptical of what you're hearing, and I'm not sure about this, you know. So we gotta think about it and just kind of process it. Um and the rumor is that Samsung may bring back the variable aperture uh to compete with the iPhone. Uh Samsung was thinking about doing this a while ago. Oh wow, look at this one. The thing, the title isn't even there. Ah no. Oh no, everything is breaking. But we love it, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes things have to be broken. In order for you to be get better, you have to break some things, you know? Oh, 100%. That's unfortunately just the way it is. If you want to be great in this industry, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet. Yeah, you do. That's what I always say. So Samsung may bring back vertical aperture tech, which would be huge. That would let you go from 1.5 to f2.4, uh capture brighter shots in low light and reduce overexposure, uh, get higher dynamic range in brighter outdoor shots. Um, Samsung removed it, starting with the S20. It was a great, it was really great. I don't know why they ever did it. But Apple's gonna bring this back with the iPhone 18 Pro. And of course, as you know, once Apple does something, Samsung's like, well, we gotta do that too. Yeah, we gotta do it too. Because we can't let Apple just the only one doing it. No, we can't. So they could bring it back um with the Galaxy S27 series next year. There's no chance it's coming back with the S26 series because we already know everything about the S26 series. Uh, and Samsung is not a magician, so you know, they can't pull a rabbit out of a hat, you know. No, you know, that would be crazy if they could, but you can't pull a rabbit out of a hat. It looks like what's happening is these images are too big for the sizing, they're beyond the container size, and so what's happening is uh I don't know exactly how to fix that. So it's gonna be a late night for me. I'm gonna be like, Jeff, how the heck are we gonna fix this stuff? But that does seem to reveal some of the issues we were having before, though, with the site. Sometimes you gotta look yourself squarely in the mouth and say, hey, how can we solve our problems, you know? Yep. If you want to be a real winner in this industry, that's what you've got to do. And I I feel like we are real winners in this industry, Tori. I don't know about you. I know. We are, man. Um, what else is going on? Theme part got a huge update with new embossed icons, which is really cool. I love that. Uh embossed, embossed. How do you say it, Tori? Do you know? Uh embossed. Imbossed. There it is. It's embossed. Imbossed. The Z Trifold actually sold out twice in Korea, by the way. People love this phone in Korea. They're like, I gotta get me some of that trifold action. Uh, it sold out once at the 2400, it's basically$2,400 equivalent uh in South Korea. It sold out once and they put it on sale on Friday last week. They put it on sale again yesterday or Wednesday, it sold out again in like two minutes. Uh luckily I got one of the first ones. Um, but yeah, that that phone has been selling like hotcakes. In fact, it might even be selling better than hotcakes because I went to McDonald's the other day and the hotcakes weren't really selling that well. Not as compared to this. I mean, yeah. Plus, they don't sell the hotcakes for$2,400. No, they don't. Um Samsung also uh may have hinted at a price hike for the S26 series. Um Samsung plans to raise Galaxy A Series prices uh in India by about$20, but that's still a big amount because the A series is a much cheaper phone. Yeah, so that could suggest proportionally that the S series could get raised around$100. So we had talked about price increases possibly happening for this year's launch, and it might. We might see some price increases. Um, I don't know if it's gonna hurt. I mean, it's a double-edged sword for me because like I don't want Samsung to cut their marketing budget because I need them so I can make some money and keep the site alive and pay the employees. Yeah, we don't want our Ryder's families to starve.
SPEAKER_02No, not at all.
SPEAKER_01But also, I don't want people to have to pay higher prices. So I don't know exactly what is the way to go with that, but we gotta figure out kind of how you know the balance of those two things. That's what Samsung is working on is how can we balance those two pieces, you know? Yeah. Like six seven. Yeah, six seven.
SPEAKER_02No, they're always a feels like they're weighing the scales. Six seven, six, seven.
SPEAKER_01So, you know, how much are they gonna raise the prices? Probably six or seven dollars. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, probably not. Could be, could be. You know, hopefully that's gonna die soon because you know the six.
SPEAKER_02No, no, I think the the kids are starting to move on from that. Now it's uh can I get a free bag of chips? Or uh I wish I had a free bag of chips.
SPEAKER_01I wish I had a free bag of chips too. Yeah, you know, everybody wants a free launch store, you know? Oh, yeah. Oh, chat GPT has its own app store now. So if you're a chat GPT user, it's pretty cool. Yeah, it can integrate with various apps natively, like Canva, um, Apple Music, Adobe Photoshop, all this various stuff um can be integrated directly, right, from Chat GPT. Um, and then you'll be good to go. So you'll be able to get in there, go to ChatGPT, fire up your Canva, fire up your booking.com, fire up your uh Adobe Photoshop, and it'll be able to interface. So like you could tell it to uh edit an image for you, and it'll be able to go into Photoshop, and ChatGPT will be able to work with Photoshop.
SPEAKER_00Ooh.
Fold 8 Camera Rumors And One UI 8.5 Perks
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. You know, so basically it'll just gonna replace everybody's job if you're a graphic designer. So if you're a graphic designer, you gotta start, you know, be doing your resume. Yep. Chat GPT is trying to take everybody's job. They're already trying to take, already trying to take my job because uh basically, you know, they're already trying to take my job for sure. Because they're like, Jeff, we're just gonna steal all your content and put it in an AI summary, and then we'll let Google monetize your content for free. Yep. So that's how we're gonna roll on that. And I'm like, hey, bro, it's not very nice, bro. We don't appreciate you. Nope. They said, Jeff, do you appreciate that? And I'm like, hell no. Hell no, hell no. Anyway, um most of the stories I wanted to go over. I'm gonna think and see if there's anything else I missed in the break. But since we do have to pay our employees and I need to get another bite of this Queen's Corn, kettle corn. Yeah, it's very good. Gotta have a quick bite. Tori's been staring at it the whole first half. So we're gonna take a quick break and have a little Queen's corn. And I'll be right back. I'm probably gonna wax poetic about this for about 25-30 minutes when we get back. I'll be right back after the sponsor of today's podcast to tell you about the Galaxy Z Trifold. Stay tuned. This episode of the Sammy Guru Podcast is brought to you by our partners at US Mobile. US Mobile has wireless service on all three of the major carriers in the United States. You can get service on their Darkstar, their warp, and light speed networks, and you can even switch between those on your plan at any time that you like. They have various different promos running right now, including their yearly promotions. They have a 30-day free trial if you bring your number to US Mobile, as well as three months of service for$45, which is$15 a month, on their unlimited starter plan. And you can do that with porting your number in or getting a new number with US Mobile as well. They have some really amazing deals, and the fact that you can actually switch between the three major US carriers is quite a great deal for a prepaid carrier and something that I really like about US Mobile. If you guys are looking for a great new wireless service, check out our friends at US Mobile. We appreciate them for sponsoring this episode of the Sammy Guru Podcast. Alright, guys, we're back in, and it is Galaxy Z Trifold Time. So I'm gonna go with him and give you guys a little story and tell you guys about the phone. Tori can ask any of his questions, and uh I'll let Tori tell you kind of his thoughts on it too. Um so first let me say what I have to say. I I made an unboxing video of it, and just for people who didn't watch that, I'll say what I said in that video about it. First of all, it is pretty thick, you know, but I like it thick, you know what I mean? I like me a thicky, you know what I'm saying? But aside from that, which you know is important information, it it is a little di difficult to hold uh while it's folded, just because if you notice story, because you have these two different folds, this edge on the very back of the phone, whoa, that's like a crazy like boop. It's like boop. My speakers are up loud here on this display. Yeah, that's why you gotta turn those down. Um if you look here on the back side, you see the very back of the phone, it like sticks out a little more than the other parts because this is where the other hinge, because you see the other hinge is right there. Because this one has two hinges, right? It's got this hinge and it's got this hinge, because there's two different folds when you unfold it, right? Which makes you think like trifold, is that really a correct name? Because it doesn't fold three times. It folds really twice, but you know, just have three screens. Well, whatever. I mean, it doesn't, it really, because the only there's only one screen on the inside, which is this big one and the one on the back. Oh, true. And you can't use the back screen while the screen while the big screen is open. This is a question that Tori asked me as well. See that? If you have it open, you can't use the back screen. But again, honestly, I mean I'm just talking semantics, but you only fold it once, yeah, twice. Not three folds. But hey, I mean, whatever. It has it looks like three folds because it's got the two creases and it looks like it's three screens put together. But I digress. Thing that makes it kind of hard to hold when it's folded is you can see this back part kind of juts out more than the other piece because this other hand just kind of smooth there. Yeah. And so it does kind of dig into your hand. I know someone's probably gonna comment, like, oh, you're crying, you don't have big enough hands. People always comment that kind of stupid stuff uh over on YouTube in my videos when I talk about this kind of stuff. But it it is one little thing to be aware of. Like it is it is thick and it is a little bit like this part does point into your hand. So like if you group it like this, this little piece right here, it does dig into your hand a little bit. If you hold it this way and you're texting for a little while, you can see like that point, it will leave an imprint in your hand. Is that like a deal breaker? No, I'm just telling you because you guys don't have the phone and it's a new form factor, and I thought you might like to know. If you want to call me a little girl because I complained about it, then feel free. Go to the show notes. Actually, go go to um YouTube or Samiguru or Twitter so we can get some free engagement from it. But you can comment and tell me that I'm a little girl for saying that. It's fine. Um but otherwise, aside from that, when it is folded, the form factor is great. It's really basically the same as the Z Fold 7 in terms of the size, but the bezels are a little bit chunkier. You know, everything's thick about this phone. This is a very thick phone in every sense of the word. The bezels are a little thicker, the hinges are a little thicker, you know, there's a lot of thickness going on. But they don't bother me. It's just that you can clearly see like the border around the phone. Oh, yeah. The black bezels. On the fold seven, you can barely notice them because they're so thin. Samsung made them so thin. So obviously, they weren't able to do that yet on the trifold.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Why? Give it some years and they will.
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Galaxy Z Trifold Hands-On: Design And Ergonomics
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they will. I mean, it doesn't look bad. Yeah, no. I mean, it doesn't look like the original Z Fold. The original Z Fold had like a two-inch screen on a massive tall display, and you could barely read anything that was on the screen. And I paid like$3,000 for it, and I was really upset about that back then because it's like, man, this thing is a piece of crap. But hey, you know, when you want to jump on the cutting edge bandwagon. But this is nothing like that, it's not nearly as bad as that. Um, so talk about durability because a lot of people were like, oh, does it feel like you might break it? Well, no, this thing is super solid, man. Like, I have no inclination that this thing is gonna break. You know, I I'm firstly happy. I mean, I'm not gonna toss it on the ground, but I'll like throw it on my couch and stuff at night when I'm sitting there, you know, browsing, throw it on my bed when I come in, unfold it. I don't, I it's not worried about it. Like Samsung is very durable. Now, obviously, if you want to be like a complete, you know, douchebag and try to like snap it in half while it's unfolded, it might have a little give to it. I'm sure our guy, uh Zach from Jerry Viggs Everything, he'll do his torture bend test on it and see if it snaps, but it doesn't feel like it's gonna snap. Like, I don't feel like in daily use this thing has any problems. Kind of just like the Fold 7, it's super, super sturdy. So I have no problem about that. I mean, I I fold it, you know, however I want, and you know, it's not bothering me. Um, I haven't had any issues with the smoothness of the hinge. Doesn't look like there's any real dust like ingress points that seem to be causing any problems. Uh, it is super wobbly if you put it on a table, but so is the fold seven because the camera module sticks out. So if you want to tap, you guys can hear it on the podcast table. If you want to type while you have this on a table, it's just a little noisy. Well, you know, I mean that's the case with a lot of phones, but the foldables just a little bit more so because obviously the module sticks out, but then also this is a really heavy phone, so when you tap it, it kind of rocks back and forth, vibrates a lot just because it's pretty heavy. Um, that was another question someone had. What about the weight? It's pretty heavy. I mean, I'm not a lie to you. It's heavier than a S25 Volt drawer and iPhone 17 Pro Max. It's it's over 300 grams. That's heavy for phone. But keep in mind, yeah, what other phone that you have can unfold into a 10-inch tablet, not in no other phone. So you essentially have a 10-inch tablet and a phone in your pocket. Yeah, all in one. Could you put a 10-inch tablet and a phone in your pocket separately and weigh only around 300 grams? No, you couldn't. Together, they would be over five or six hundred grams if you put both of them in your pocket. If you had an S1011 Ultra and an S25 Ultra combined, the weight is substantial. And so, you know, it's not really that big of a deal to me. Uh, what about the creases? Well, yeah, there's two creases on this phone, and you can see them when the screen is off. Yeah. But if you look at it head on, if you look at it head on when the screen is on, yeah, no, you can't even tell at all. I mean, in in use, you really have to put it way off axis. But even if you do it at an angle, as long as you have the screen on, it's not completely black, you can barely notice them even at even at an angle, they're not going to bother you. In fact, I think having a larger screen as compared to the fold seven actually makes it so that the creases are less noticeable because there's a biggest bigger canvas. And I think these creases are actually a little more shallow than on the fold seven, even because there's two of them. So it lets you kind of spread it out. Now, one thing I will say too, if you take a look, Tori, the phone does not completely fold open 100% flat. If you look at these two hinges, yeah, I can tell this one's kind of like not perfectly aligned to this one. Yep.
SPEAKER_02And if your OCD panel is like a little bit thinner than the other one. Exactly. So the one that has the camera modules thicker than a medium. I think that's necessary for the components. Yeah, yeah, it has to be.
SPEAKER_01But if you have OCD, I said this in my video unboxing, it might piss you off. So just warning you before you spend a lot of money, it definitely is not perfectly flat. No, and one of the folds is a little thinner than the other one. The other one's got a little more junk in the trunk, so to speak, in the industry. So to speak, in this industry. Yeah, I mean, but it doesn't bother me. It's super thin when it's unfolded. It is when it's unfolded, it's like so thin. I mean, it's way thinner than my Tab S11, my Tab S11 Ultra, even you know, my iPad. It's it's basically like basically like a S25 Edge, it's even thinner than an S25 Edge or an iPhone Air. You know, it's like half the size of that, even. So it's crazy thin.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like you could honestly like slide it in between some books on a bookshelf. I could actually chop some tomatoes with this. And like you, you would you would miss it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think. Yeah. It's so sharp. I could just chop tomatoes. Yeah, chop chop. I don't even need a knife anymore. Just replace my knife with the that's probably not a good idea because it's very expensive. I paid$3,400 for it. I don't want to use it to chop tomatoes. But you could, you know. That's the thing. You could if you wanted to. You could if you wanted to, but I don't. Um, what else? Um if I uh let's let Tori handle it and get some impressions. Go ahead. I hit the weather app. Sorry, I'm actually. You can it's got gestures on, so you can just exit out how you want on the bottom.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay. Oh.
SPEAKER_01This is nice. It's kind of sexy, huh?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it is. Yeah. And even like when you move over the where the creases are, it's not it's not that. You don't really notice it, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and again, like when you're looking at it head on, you really don't even see the creases um at all. But it feels really uh feel feels really nice, very light, um, like unfolded, like it is is very nice. Uh, I'm gonna try to fold it in.
SPEAKER_01It's the other way. That's okay. It will tell you. Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_02It does give you a thing if you try to pull it the wrong way, yeah. And then you go this way. Yeah. Oh.
SPEAKER_01It's not easy. I tried folding it the wrong way a couple times. It's not easy to like break it that way. So you don't have to worry too much about it. It'll give you a big warning.
SPEAKER_02Uh, gives you like a haptic feedback. A haptic feedback and message.
SPEAKER_01So you won't do it, but I mean it it's not like it's gonna break it even if you go like part of the way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but this definitely does feel like so when you when you have it open, it's very light, but as soon as you dense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's definitely dense. You definitely notice that.
SPEAKER_01Um, and like kind of you'll get used to it if you carry it for a while, to be honest with you. Like, I only really notice how dense it is when I'm carrying another phone in my other pocket. Yeah. When I because obviously you guys know I carry two phones, so like the last few days, I've been carrying the S25 Ultra and then the trifold in one pocket. And of course, if you carry this, you can feel you can hold this too. You have yours too, but you can compare them. Like you can tell. Obviously, the trifold's a lot heavier. Yeah, I mean I have a case too on the S25 Ultra, it's still a lot heavier, it's just denser. Um, which makes sense. Obviously, it unfolds to a 10-inch tablet. Why it does it's gonna be dense. Um, but yeah, I mean, if you're not carrying two phones, which most of you probably aren't, you won't notice over time. Like you it won't bother you, I don't think. Yeah, no.
SPEAKER_02And you can definitely feel like um because like the the overlap ledge is like yeah, you know what I'm saying, right?
SPEAKER_01Like that'll definitely dig into your hand if you use it for a long period of time. Yeah, just because it's poking out that extra part and you're gonna be gripping the bottom. So, yeah, I notice like when I hold it for a long period of time, you can see like I've got that little dimple.
SPEAKER_02And like too, like I I I don't think I would feel comfortable like walking and mostly just because like you can also feel a lot of weight where the camera is. It's not balanced perfectly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really not balanced perfectly. So I would say like be careful for sure a little bit, like if you are used to just walking and mostly just like moving on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, if you if you're a slab phone user, and even if you're a fold seven user, because it's a lot lighter now, yeah, you would have to get used to this because the fold seven is super light. Yeah, like I mean, even if you have a fold seven and compared to this, this is gonna feel a lot bulkier. And the balance in the center of like gravity is a lot different, center of mass. Um, so you have to be careful that so you don't drop it. Um yeah, what I mean, I I like it though. I mean, honestly, I saw MKBHD's uh video on it and Flossie Carter, uh, and they both kind of agreed with you know something that I said, which is that this form factor kind of shows why foldables make a lot of sense, maybe more so than the other foldables we've seen so far, because here you really get two distinctly different form factors. You get a phone and a really big tablet. With the Z Fold 7, you get a phone and kind of a bigger phone.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Because the Z Fold 7, when it's unfolded, isn't really big enough to be called a tablet, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, no.
Weight, Creases, Durability, And Balance
SPEAKER_01It's not even as big as an iPad mini, really. So it's not quite the same as a tablet. Whereas this is undisputedly a phone and it is a tablet, and you can have it not only in your horizontal landscape to watch media, but you also got yourself. Let me put it on auto-rotate before I say this. You've also got yourself a portrait tablet. So, like if you want yourself an iPad, it actually looks really nice. Yeah, it looks like a portrait like tablet, like an iPad, just like a standard 10-inch iPad, you know, or Samsung Tab S11. So you basically have a tablet that works great for form factor that's in landscape for media and for portrait, like if you want to read books with it or if you want to edit documents or whatever you want to do. And Tori probably doesn't know this yet because he probably hasn't followed too much with the fold stuff. This thing runs full decks on the device, which means you don't even need a keyboard or thing. All you do is you just press the plus button over here, and this is gonna open up a brand new uh desktop mode. Let me show it to you right here. Desktop mode, and this is now decks. So now all of your windows run in like Windows style, like a PC. Yep. So now you just open and close them down here, and you can open up all your windows like this. Oh no, that's actually actually pretty good. So now you can take advantage of the large screen instead of being pigeonholed into just using it like a phone. Yeah, this can now be used kind of like a desktop experience, like you would on your laptop, which is huge. No, yeah, no, I think no, I like that. That's good. So, I mean, that really makes it even more useful that it has the on-device decks, yeah. Which Samsung brought that to the tablets earlier this year, but this is the first phone, quote unquote, if you want to call it that, yeah, that's ever ran desktop mode on device. Um, and so that's what we've got going on right here. So, overall, uh, I really do like the trifold. I think it's really a nice uh piece of tech. It is gonna come to the US. Oh, battery life. I know a lot of people are asking about battery life. Battery life's been really good, honestly. I mean, considering obviously, I mean, I will say the one bottleneck for me is like I told Tori earlier, and I also mentioned this in my post on X. That is that um, you know, I obviously find a hard time using the big tablet form factor when I'm on the go. So if you're a regular Slab phone user, you might find it difficult to find a lot of opportunities to use this, except when you're at home. Yeah. Obviously, when I'm on home sitting on the couch, it's like the perfect phone. Because when I'm at home, I want to like browse X while I'm watching a YouTube video or research something while I'm also, you know, screwing around, like looking on Amazon or eBay. And that's perfect because I have all these windows open.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But when I'm like actually working or I'm out running errands or something, it's a lot harder to find the time to unfold it and then use it because I'm not necessarily in the middle of the day, I'm like answering email quickly, answering a message quickly, pulling up some information. And in certain cases, it's useful, but I would say it's harder than even the Z Fold 7, where it's a little bit smaller to actually unfold that and utilize it in the really big form factor that it's intended for. That's the only drawback for me. But some of you guys may use that big form factor more than me, and so that wouldn't really be a huge drawback for you. It'd be fine. I'm just saying for me personally, that's kind of the bottleneck to is this really worth the price that you're gonna pay for it? Now I've tested the cameras, it's basically the same as an S25 Ultra camera. So, you know, people always ask about cameras. The Samsung didn't really change the hardware, and they didn't really seem to do much of the processing, so there's not a lot to say about this camera. I will make a video where I show some you know sample shots, but there's not a lot to say about the camera. Yeah, um, the real novelty here is obviously the tri-folding screen, how durable it is, the battery life, the usability, and so that's kind of what I wanted to talk about. Um, I do think Samsung made the right choice by going with this format over the Huawei Mate X, which you can actually fold twice, and you know, it actually folds to you can actually use it as like a fold seven and then also unfold it again. But Samsung didn't do that because they wanted to protect this inner screen, and if you do it this way, then the inner screen is fully protected, right? Because it folds up all the way inside. So I really do think that's the best decision for durability. Um, if you're an average user, you know, slab user, I would say if you like, if you like the appeal of this, just think about like what use cases during your day are going to make you open that big screen. Because you really want, you know, you really want to think to yourself, well, I do XYZ during my day where I'm gonna at least open the inner screen like at least 40% of the time. Because if you're only opening the inner screen like 20% of the time, might as well get a slab phone. Don't spend all that money for this because you're not utilizing the real advantage of this, right? Um, if you're only using the outer screen 80% of the time, well, you'd be better off with the S25 Ultra because it has a wider screen than the cover screen. Yeah, the only real advantage is if you're gonna use at least almost half the time that big inner display, and then you're good to go. It does have faster charging than any other foldable, 45 watts finally. Samsung has never bought fast charging to folds, so that's good because it has a bigger battery than any of the other folds as well. That's pretty huge. That combined with the DEX mode and the unique form factor. I mean, I give Samsung a solid A- on this as a first effort.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
Tablet-Mode Use Cases, DeX On-Device, Software Quirks
SPEAKER_01On the first as a first effort, I mean, I would say that, you know, obviously, my big concerns are eventually these two hinges have to be made symmetrically so that this doesn't stut, you know, stick out the back. I think that'll be one of the first design choices that has to be fixed. It might be kind of hard to fix it because obviously these hinges are different sizes. If you notice, this hinge is not nearly as big as this hinge. Obviously, not because of the how it folds up. One hinge has to fold inside the other. But they have to find a way to make this more flush because that is makes it not only does it feel a little bit uncomfortable, it also looks a little weird. Yeah, because it doesn't bother me, but it's something that will make this form factor better. Uh, obviously, another thing that takes away from making it A is the camera still kind of sucks because it's by four-year-old sensor, like the S25 Ultra. Um, I'm not really holding that against the grade because obviously I'm grading it against other Samsung phones, and yeah, it's still has the best camera that you can get. It's just not very good compared to other phones on the market. Um but those are really my only complaints. No durability complaints, no battery life complaints. Oh, there is so there are a couple little software quirks, which I didn't show you, Tori. I show this in my video. This, I guess, is the other thing that maybe make it an A minus or even a B plus, but it doesn't bother me that much because I found a way to fix it. If you open something like X that is supposed to display in portrait in landscape, it has these big white bars. Samsung has an option in the software to force it to go full screen, but some of the apps like X won't they They'll say no. They say nah fam. We're not doing that today. Nah, fam. But I found an easy way to fix it. I just take two apps that I use a lot together that are portrait apps, like Facebook and X, and I just put them in the multitasking mode. And now I don't have this problem because I browse Facebook and X at the same time a lot. I do the same thing for like my analytics, like YouTube Studio and my site analytics and like Slack and Beeper and Facebook and X and all these different stuff. Notion and Chat GPT. All the apps I use together, I just have multitasking added for them. But yeah, B plus A minus, I would say very good first effort. Um if you think about buying one when it comes to the US, it'll probably be here in January or February, honestly. I mean, we don't know exactly. Probably we're between$28.99 and$9.29.01 price tax for you. So if you're looking to spend it, you know, buy one, just look to spend around$28.99 to$2901, save enough money that's somewhere in that range. Plus tax, obviously. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, plus tax, which is a lot of money on that much money. Tax on$2,900 is actually substantial consideration. That's like$210 of money. It's not that cheap, but um, so probably over obviously over$3K if you're gonna buy it with tax. Um, but yeah, I mean that's a big decision. You have to think about where does the big screen fit in your daily workflow? Sure. And if it really does fit, then this is a really good phone. I mean, it's really well made, considering I've used every fold, including that first one, which was awful. Just there's no way to put it. That one was a F minus or D D minus at best, just because it was innovative. This one, I mean, is obviously something you can easily use as your daily phone. Uh you're not gonna regret it or anything like that. Um, it's just whether or not it's the best form factor, because remember, the S25 Ultra is only$1,300. You're paying over twice as much money. So you really want to make sure you're gonna use the inner screen because otherwise you're not getting the value out of this innovation. But I I could definitely see this form factor getting way better in the next two to three years. No, it's gonna get thinner, the hinges will get flush, this hinge will get thinner, they'll find a way to slim it down, probably make the charging faster. Hopefully, we get a better camera. You know, this could be a massive winner. No, I'm sorry. I think so too. It's good to see that Samsung was first there. Anyway, that's pretty much most of what I have to say. Any other questions about the Trifold Tori?
SPEAKER_02No, I mean, uh I'm excited to learn more about it uh as we kind of move through. And yeah, I think in a few years is gonna be just as good as the regular Fold.
SPEAKER_01Now we got to do is get the Trifold under$2,000. Yeah, and the Z Fold seven or eight under$1,500.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I yeah, that's probably I never think the Z Fold would be like$14 something.
SPEAKER_01I still think that's probably about three to five years away, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially because of the RAM and memory price, you know, RAM memory and storage prices going, pushing pressure up. That's the big problem, is that the these prices are going up. Like they're going up on a Tuesday. All right. Anyway, that's mostly what we have. I don't know if we'll be back. Well, we'll try to be we'll try to do one more show before I go to CES. Yeah. Now and then we'll probably be off for a couple weeks when I go to CS. Uh, we'll try to. I'm on break. I can't break, so we'll try to try to sneak in here right after Christmas, like the 27th or 28th, and bang out a quick CES preview show. Because I mentioned some of the things today, but I didn't preview every category. So we'll kind of go through product by product and do a little true preview show and uh talk about any other news that comes out before than there. Maybe Tori and I will talk about what we did for Christmas, all that kind of stuff, you know, our crazy new year plans. Oh, yeah. Stay tuned for the wild stories you can't believe. That's how you hook people in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And between now and then, you know, while you guys enjoy your holidays and your new year, keep expanding your galaxy.