Samsung CES 2026 Recap + All Aboard Galaxy S26 Unpacked Hype Train!

We dig into Samsung’s biggest CES reveals and map what really matters ahead of Unpacked on 25 February. From giant micro RGB TVs and smarter fridges to Galaxy Book 6 hands-on and the S26 Ultra’s privacy display, we cut through specs to what’s useful.

• highlights from Samsung’s CES booth and media sessions
• micro RGB TV strengths and real-world limits
• Vision AI TVs and SmartThings integrations
• fridge cameras boosted by Gemini for better food recognition
• Galaxy Book 6 design changes, brighter screens and battery gains
• trade-offs: ports, 360 model uncertainty, ARM timing
• Wi‑Fi speakers designed to challenge Sonos
• Freestyle Plus projector’s AI smoothing and brightness upgrade
• Z Trifold buzz and availability hints
• S26 Ultra design tweaks, 65W charging and privacy display
• upgrade advice by device and use case
• timelines for laptops, phones and accessories

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Check out our website: https://sammyguru.com

Transcript

Catching Up And Setting The Agenda

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back, everybody. This is episode number fifty-two of the Sammy Guru Podcast. My name is Jeff Springer. With me as always, my co-host Tori. Tori, say hi. How's it going? And we're back. We are back. You know, we were like, maybe we'll be back before the end of the year. We psyched you out. We're like, psyched. We got lazy. That's what we do. But not just lazy because we were slapping together. Because Tori went back to work and I had to go to CES right after the new year. You know, every year it's like, Happy New Year, Jeff. Time to drive your ASS to Vegas and get to work. Yep. You know, time to celebrate your birthday while you're driving back to Arizona. Because every year my birthday is like the last day of CS, and I'm always in a car driving back here. Yep. Never celebrating my birthday on my birthday. So today's show, we're going to talk about uh CES mostly. And of course, because we are only six weeks away, slightly less. Um, you guys, everybody pretty much knows by now it's February 25th, the unpacked event. I mean, Samsung hasn't confirmed that, but every other source that we have at Sammy Grue and every other source in the entire world is confirmed. So basically, you might as well pencil it in. And we'll talk a little bit about that because there's a lot of S26 news going on. But Tori, uh, how was your I mean, I spent a lot of the holiday portion with you because you were here in the office for Tori and I had a great time.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Yeah, it was a really good time, actually.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

We hung out. Um, yeah, Tori put together, I don't know, maybe 700, 800 cleaning kits. We are surrounded by like a wall of boxes now because all the mystery box inventory has started matriculating into the office. So we got like four pallets of cases over here. We got the new USB-C earbuds and I think temper glass screen protectors on the other side. Ooh, we're in like a fortress of boxes over here. It's only gonna get worse because we still have the new 65-watt chargers to come. I got like another 1,500 stands to come because we're expecting about 2,500 boxes this time, which will be by far a thousand more than we've ever done. Because last year we did 1,500, and uh this is gonna be our biggest launch for sure because a lot of people are signed up. Um, it's gonna be pretty big. Um, but how was your holiday otherwise? You you kind of told me, but you can tell tell the people how was your holiday? How was your new year's? How was everything for you?

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Oh, yeah, no, it's just uh pre pre-relaxing. Uh uh, I'll say overall, um for some reason, you know, whenever I I get a chance to like just relax, I either watch a lot of TV or do math and physics. So I was doing a lot of that. Um, but yeah, no, um, yeah, just chilled, nothing, nothing too crazy. Uh soft few movies. That ping pong movie we saw was. Yeah, no, that's uh I was actually thinking about that last night and this morning. I really like that. Now I know a lot of people were upset, you know, about Michael B. Jordan and Timothy Chalamet, you know, whether like who should get um, you know, an Oscar. Um, but I I say that Marty Supreme, you did really good. Yeah, yeah. I was surprised.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

We decided to see that uh the last night before the New Year, because Tory that was the last night Tori was really wasn't after New Year's. It was the Friday, it was the day after New Year's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The afternoon yeah. That was the last day that I was really here before I packed and drove to CES for uh to Vegas. Uh we saw Marty Supreme after we finished working that day, and we kind of just saw it because there wasn't a lot of other options really. Yeah. That you know, the Friday after New Year's is not a lot of not really prime, like it's not like the middle of July movie weekend where there's a lot of busbusters. So we saw it, but a lot of a lot of people are saying positive things about it, and I was surprised. Like it one, it's a very long movie. I think it is, it was two and a half hours long. And when you think about it, like two and a half hours long about ping pong, it seems like it's gonna be long, but it's not actually went by pretty quick because there's a great storyline. Yeah, it is, and a lot more action than I thought. I was thinking like ping pong, how much action could there be in a ping pong movie? Like people aren't gonna be doing crazy things, like you know, murdering each other and and and doing all kinds of drugs and stuff. But if they are, it's basically it's basically like pulp fiction with people.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

No, well, actually, it reminded me more of Uncut Gems by Adam Sandler. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yeah, yeah. It was very surprising in terms of the ping pong, doesn't seem like it's gonna be an action movie, but it definitely was like a sports hand. I think the label on Rotten Tomatoes said sports, action, comedy. It's like how can it be all three? Yeah, you did see that. And it was, it was all three. It's surprisingly delivered, even though I I couldn't believe that it would be able to deliver, but it did. Yeah. So we did that. Um, Tori and I hung out. Probably the next time Tori's on, whenever his spring break is, we're gonna have to clean the office again. Yes, we it looks like a tornado right now, and it's only gonna get worse because between now and whenever we pack out the mystery boxes, I ain't gonna have a lot of time.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

It should be convenient. My spring break is uh the second week of March. Yeah, just about.

CES Overview And Samsung Focus

130-Inch Micro RGB TV Breakdown

SPEAKER_00 4:43

So we're gonna probably have to do some office cleaning at that point because it's alright, it's gonna be a disaster. That's probably when we're gonna be shipping uh the last set of boxes will be around there. I actually did finalize the mystery box shipping waves for people who are interested. First wave will ship March 10th, the second wave by March 13th, and the last wave by March 20th. So uh the first two waves, you know, probably do a thousand boxes per wave is the goal. Um I left the last wave a week after the second one just because in case we somehow get a crazy number of orders that I don't expect, I may need to order some additional product. So I always like to leave myself a little opportunity to get some product because you can't get it here like overnight. You gotta order it, it takes a little time. I've ordered enough product for$2,500, so that's kind of those are ready to go. So if you're if you end up getting in wave three, they probably will ship maybe before March 20th. But if we end up getting like 4,000 orders, then they may ship closer to then because I'm gonna have to order more cases and stuff. Uh I got a lot of stands, I got a lot of overflow of the other stuff, but I have to get more cases if we get a lot of orders. So that's what's going with that. So um, well, let's talk about CES first, then we'll talk about there's a lot of S26 news to talk about that we've we've the S26 has been a wild ride. I mean last year we basically knew everything about the S25 series at this time. No one was asking any questions, and no one thought there could be any surprises. This might be the fine the first Samsung event in a while where people are like, wow, this has got some few surprises. So we'll talk about that in like the second half. There's they they keep coming out with people like you would think that all the stuff would be set now, but seems like a lot of people don't know for sure. Like Samsung seems to have guarded what's actually inside the cameras. We know the design now, pretty much know the dimensions. At least I hope so, because otherwise these 2500 cases sitting right here could be complete garbage. Because the people who made these cases, our supplier, they were assuming that they knew the dimensions. If they didn't know the dimensions, then we're in big trouble. Yeah, but at least they look right. I looked at them today. So let's talk about CS first, though, because I obviously was at CS and Samsung had a lot of stuff to show. So let me pull up first my post that I wrote called Samsung Had Plenty to Show at CS, and these stood out. This is a list of all the things that I thought Samsung showed at CS that were the most interesting things. And so I'll kind of just go down the list and we can talk about them and you can kind of tell me if you think they're interesting or not. I took a lot of pictures. So the first thing is they showed off their 130-inch micro RGB TV. This was one of their biggest uh expositions. This is massive, obviously. You're not just gonna put this into uh an apartment, you need a massive living room to put to put this into. I mean, I have an 85-inch TV, and you know, I've thought about getting Samsung's 98-inch, but even that is like a little borderline, and I have a pretty big house. You need like a really, really large, like size, mansion-sized living room to have 130-inch TV. But if you do, they've got the brand new tech in here, which is the micro RGB tech. Uh, it's not micro LED, it's LED backlit L C D panel. But instead of white or blue LEDs uh filtered into color, they're using individual RGB, red, green, and blue LEDs in the backlight. Uh, and so what Samsung said at the keynote is this gives them tighter control over like the color banding in different parts of the display and the brightness, because now since they're individual RGB, you can turn on any one of those individual colors to get you more dynamic color and brighter color in each individual spot of the display. So micro LED was already like the next level, but now micro RGB is like the level beyond that. Um now, of course, Samsung didn't say anything about the price, but you can certainly assume that uh that it's gonna be a lot of money. Their 98-inch TV, which is like the regular 8k uh Q LED, is like 20,000. Um I would guess if I had to guess, this TV's gonna push 100k, most likely. They have a hundred thousand dollar TV already. I for it's one of their other previous ones from last year. That's around this size. So not random people are gonna buy this uh unless you are a celebrity or like a NFL MVP like Patrick Mahomes, who who's spending a hundred thousand dollars on a TV. I mean, I would love one, but unless Samsung gives me one, I'm not spending 100k on a TV. That's for sure. That's a lot of money. You can get a TV that's almost as good, like it's approaching, you wouldn't notice the difference for 90,000 less. And so I'd probably just do that. I mean, if I'm their 8k kulids are really good. I I looked at this one and then I looked, they also had the culids and the micro-AD and the Olives, and from like 15 feet away. I mean, if you hadn't told me that there's a difference on certain things, I wouldn't be able to tell. Now, if you're watching certain content where there's a lot of different colors in it, like you notice this one with the orange, it's got a lot of orange, obviously it's got an orange slice, it's got a lot of orange blocking. You can clearly see a difference with this TV where it goes from the blue to the orange. The orange stands out a lot more. Oh, yeah. But are you gonna pay$92,000 extra dollars for that? I mean, unless you just have so much money they know, unless you're like someone like that has so much money that you don't you don't even know how much money you have because you don't have to worry about it, then you're not gonna do that, probably. So it's a really cool, obviously CS is a place to see a lot of cool demos. Um could you fit 130-inch TV in your apartment, Tori? In your in your house? No. No, you know, take a lot of space. Yeah, you know, it's a little, you know, plus to actually properly enjoy 130-inch TV, you need to sit like 20 feet. Yeah, that's a way to leave.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

I forgot what the viewing distance is, but I have to sit outside to see it.

Vision AI TVs And SmartThings Tie-Ins

AI In The Kitchen: Smarter Fridges

SPEAKER_00 10:42

But most people don't even have a living room that's wide enough or long enough to sit that far away from the TV to properly enjoy it with the right viewing angles. That's that's why you really need like this. Is not really the peasant TV. This is the non-peasant television. But they had a lot of other great TVs from their regular lineup, which will be releasing this year, and they added a ton of great features to their other TVs, like their standard Q LED lineup, the micro LED, all those other ones. They're still very expensive TVs. It's not like you're not a peasant buying one of those. They're still 5,000 plus TV sets, they're showing off most of their flagship lines. They're not like this is not like Black Friday, you know, bargain bin basement deals. Oh, yeah. You're still spending 5k plus if you buy one of these new Vision AI TVs and has a lot of new features. Gemini is now getting baked into your TV, so you can use Google Gemini in there as well. Um, there's a lot more integration with Smart Things where now if you have like Samsung's appliances and stuff, you can get a direct video feed on your TV of the cake that's cooking in your oven. So you'll be able to see if the cake looks like it's done. Oh, wow. So you can just say, hey, show me my pound cake that I'm making, and then you don't have to get up. Maximum laziness. Yes, maximum laziness. You don't ever need to exercise or walk because Samsung and AI are replacing your need to walk. Yeah. Except for when you die of heart disease. Then you won't be able to use those tools anymore. No. And you won't be valuable to them. You'll have died way too early from not ever exercising. So I think that's pretty cool. What do you think about that? The Vision AI features. I mean, some of these AI features are useful. I think that's kind of useful. The only problem is you have to have all of the Samsung Smart Things stuff to get the maximum benefit. Which would be a pretty penny. Yeah. I mean, that's once you got it. Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of this stuff. I'm one of the few people who probably has a lot of the things. The only thing I think we don't have at my house, uh, I just ordered actually, I talk about this later. Um, because I'm gonna do a review, but also Nicole wanted a second fridge. I just ordered one of the Samsung fridges with a display with a family home, one of the new ones. Um because I got a good deal. They did unveil new versions of those too. I kind of wish that I had waited until those come available in March. Yeah. So maybe I should cancel that order and be like, Nicole, we're not gonna have a second fridge until you're out, but trust me, it's worth it. You're just gonna have to wait. Yeah. Because they actually added Gemini to the fridges, too. And so now last year with Bixby and their Bixby's AI capabilities, Bixby, you know, never been that smart, you know. It's like in Tropical Thunder, he says, you never go full, but Bixby sometimes does. You know what I mean? Sometimes Bixby goes full. And so they added Gemini on top of Bixby. So instead of being able to recognize 40 foods with the cameras inside the AI fridges, can now recognize over 3,000.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Oh my.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

So Gemini's just a little smarter than Bixby. Um, and so using that algorithm now can like identify a bunch of different condiments and stuff. Before, you know, Bixby could tell you if it if there's an apple, milk. Yeah. And that's about it.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

All the generics.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

A few fruits, milk, orange juice. That's about it. Yeah. But if you got some A1 steak sauce in there, Bixby was like, I have no idea what the hell that is. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Can't I guess you have to get up to go see? Can I be with that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

You need to know if you have any A1 steak sauce left. You'll have to get up, get some exercise, and come over here and take a look in the fridge. But now you won't need to necessarily because you can recognize all these different things using Gemini. So there was that. A lot of the other TVs, like I said, getting cool features. Of course, they're always improving the brightness, the local dimming, the black levels. Samsung makes some of the best TVs on the market. I think between Samsung and LG basically are always neck and neck for having the best TVs, and you know, of all the TVs I saw there. Uh, I think LG, our TCL actually had the biggest one though. So 130 was not the biggest. I think there was a 160-inch. What are you gonna do with that? TCL TV? It was like it's almost the whole entire width of their booth. It's like you would have to have a separate theater room just now.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Like I can see that, like, you know, like maybe like if a you know a college or university has like one of those like student unions and they can have like a big, you know, screen.

Media Buzz Around The Z Trifold

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Or even if you were like an NFL team or a team like Alabama, you could have it for watching footage in your locker room. Those teams got tons of money. Oh, for sure. For them, 100, 150,000. It lets all the players watch game, you know, game footage when they're doing their film study at the same time, and everybody can see from all around the room, that's good. So that might actually be a good use case. But yeah, I mean, putting this in a regular house, you're gonna have to have like a 10,000 plus square foot house because you're gonna need one room that's like the size of most people's regular house just to put the TV. Yeah, you're gonna need a regular house within your house to put the television. Most people's houses like 2,000, 2,500 square feet. You're gonna need that size, like room, auditorium-size room to put the television in that case. But it was very impressive. CS is always about TVs, and there's always a lot of cool TVs, and these TVs are very cool. Samsung keeps making them thinner, you know, they're getting razor thin. I mean, some of the TVs uh you know are getting not quite as thin as my Z trifold, but like only a couple millimeters thicker. Really? So, like this is like 5.5 millimeters. There was one that was seven millimeters, I think. Oh, that's pretty thin for the TV. Yeah, that's that's crazy thin. But I'd be worried, like, it's so big and also so thin, you know. What if one of my kids goes up to the TV and like touches it, it might crack the whole entire screen. Yep. And especially if I just bought a hundred thousand dollar TV, I would not. I'm gonna be pretty upset about that. But I guess the point is that if you bought that TV, you're not the kind of person who would be upset about losing the hundred thousand. Yeah. Because usually if you buy a hundred thousand dollar TV, the hundred thousand is probably not that important to you. Yeah. Whereas for me, hundred thousand dollars is still a lot of money, and I'd be pretty upset if I lost it. Uh, the next thing is definitely way more related to our wheelhouse. I mean, we cover TVs at Sammy Guru, but we definitely cover more mobile, and uh they did have the brand new Galaxy Book PCs on display as we so expected that they would. And uh, we got to take a look at the Galaxy Book 6, 6 Pro, and 6 Ultra. I got hands-on time in a session. These were not on display in the regular exhibition hall, they were only for media to come and play with them. So I got invited to a private session where I got to take some photos and you know, just kind of play around with them a little bit. And uh you can see right here that um the Galaxy Book 6 Pro and 6 Ultra in my article. A couple of things I really liked about them. They rounded the corners on the frame. You're not gonna look they're not quite as, you know, you know, just like the S25 Ultra, they're rounding that off, going to the S26 Ultra this year. They took the lid and the frame of the S20, uh, sorry, the Book 5 Ultra or the Book 5 Pro, and they rounded that off. And it honestly looks a little bit more like a MacBook, if I'm being honest with you. But the MacBook does, but the MacBook does look good, so I can't really take anything away from them.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

And I mean, even looking at this picture, I mean it it actually looks really good.

New Galaxy Book 6 Line: Design And Battery

SPEAKER_00 18:14

It does look nice, and the other thing they did that you might notice if you're a fan of the 16-inch version, and some people were mad about this when I originally did my little post about it, they got rid of the dedicated numkey on the 16-inch. Some people like that. Nicole's a big fan of the num key because when she used to do spreadsheets, she liked to have it, but it also takes up a lot of space and it makes it bulkier, it makes the keyboard not symmetrical. Yeah. And so now they're able to make the keyboard and the speakers perfectly symmetric. They were able to make it a little more compact while still having a bigger trackpad than they did before. So I think the trade-off personally is worth it because most people probably don't use the numpad. Obviously, Samsung did the research here. They went out and collected usage data, and they know, like obviously, most people were not using the numpad, and that's why they got rid of it, and that's what they told us in the media briefing, is that most people weren't, and that's why they got rid of it. And they also wanted to make it symmetric, and they also wanted to make it so that the trackpad could be larger, while not making the device itself larger. These are also thinner and lighter than the previous generation, on top of all that, yeah. Um, which is certainly nice. They also are brighter, now going up to a thousand knits. I actually took a comparison shot. Well, actually, this one is just the you can see the black levels from the lightning. Oh yeah. If I took a comparison shot of my of the Galaxy Book 5 Pro and the Book 6 Pro, I have the Book 5 Pro with me at CS. It's way brighter at peak brightness. So if you use your laptop outdoors, then you're gonna get much better brightness and better viewing angles. So uh the other thing is they did increase the battery life uh on the Galaxy Bull. Book 6 Pro and 6 Ultra. Both of them have better battery life than they did before. Of course, the Book 5 lineup didn't have an Ultra. It was only the Pro and the regular. The last Ultra was the Book 4 Ultra, but it has better battery life than the Book 4 Ultra. Significantly longer battery life. That's the other thing they did. They put a bigger battery in there with higher energy density. There's a couple of things. Hey, what's up with that? I do not want a Norton scan. No. One of the things that they did that I definitely liked was that they did increase the battery life without making it heavier, which is nice. It also has a better heatsink in there, which gives you obviously better cooling, so you get better cooling efficiency. So better battery life, better design, which rounded off corners.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

I like that.

Ports, Haptics, And 360 Rumors

SPEAKER_00 20:57

The better cooling efficiency, symmetrical design now on the keyboard with a larger trackpad. Also has haptic feedback now, just like the MacBook. So the trackpad is haptic feedback, which is really firm, and I really liked it. I always liked haptic feedback on my MacBook, and that was something I did not like about the Galaxy book when I use it, is I just like having that haptic feedback when I'm clicking around. And so that is now included as well, which is great. The only thing I don't like, just a couple of things that I don't like. One is that they did not put USB-C ports on both sides. This one right here that I have hooked up right now, this is the Galaxy Book 5 Pro. And it does not have a USB-C port on that side. So if I want to charge it and my charger is on the right side, I have to wrap it around, which sometimes, if the cable isn't long enough, you have to do some, you know, cable gymnastics. Yes, you do. No one likes to do cable gymnastics. You know what I mean, Tori? No, yeah. You know, you just have to like do a little a wad ear of the cable. No one wants to do that. Um, so they didn't put the USB-C port on both sides, and I asked the engineer, since obviously I was at the media briefing and I had a chance, the guy who worked on the project, I asked him why not put USB-C on both sides, because that's one of my main complaints about using my Book 5 Pro. And he said, well, in order to get the battery size and the components and the new cooling and all that, the vapor chamber and all that, um, they couldn't because it's space and the way things have to be. Because I obviously need the USB controller in that spot. So that's what he said. That's why. Still a bummer. I mean, obviously, I I get it as someone who covers tech for a living. I obviously understand that there's engineering constraints that are important to any product. You can't just, you know, get rid of physics and the law of matter. Yeah, right. But it's still disappointing as a consumer. And then the other thing, which a lot of people were also frustrated about when I posted this, is for the last few generations of the book 5 Pro Series, they've had the 360 series, which is the one that had the rotatable screen where you could flip it upside down and make it into a tablet. They did not announce that for the book six series, and it's possible that it may be discontinued. Oh, yeah. Which I think would be very disappointing. Yeah, now they didn't give me any confirmation that it's discontinued. I actually asked them as well because I kind of knew people were gonna wonder about this, being the great journalist that I am. Oh, yes, of course. You know, a lot of people have said that I'm not a real journalist, but that's false. Real 100% journalist. Yeah, I know. I said, Are you guys gonna release the 360 models? And they said there's no plans to do it at this time, but we may introduce later models of the book six in the second half of 2026, which is basically just marketing speak for, we have no idea what we're doing, or we don't want to tell you what we're doing. Um, you know, you'll find out when when you see it. I deal with these people all the time. That just means either we're not sure yet what we're doing, or we do know and we don't want to tell you. It's one of those two things. Yeah. It doesn't really mean you know, there's no other possible option. You know, it means they probably don't either have don't have a plan or they know exactly what they're gonna do, but they have some nefarious reason for not telling you. They my guess is that maybe they didn't release it because maybe they wanted to see how these do, and also they want to see how fast the price of RAM and storage goes up because those are going up exponentially before they build those models. Okay, because they also are working, probably they didn't confirm this either, the book six edge, which will use the Snapdragon chip, the Qualcomm chips, that probably will also come. Almost certainly there'll be a book six edge. I tried to press them on that, and I said, Well, what about the book six edge? Can you at least confirm? And they're like, No. That that's gonna have to come in the next month or so. So they have to at least so I would say almost for sure, because Qualcomm is making a big push that all the Snapdragon laptops with their new Snapdragon laptop chips will be out in the next month or two. Uh-huh. And there was a lot of them showed off at CS by Azus and others. It's kind of weird Samsung didn't, to be honest, which is why I was giving them a chance. I was like, why don't you guys give me a big scoop here? Yeah, hit me with it. Yeah, come on. I'm a journalist.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

I'm the guru. I am the guru.

Snapdragon Laptops And What’s Next

SPEAKER_00 25:14

I am a journalist here. Go ahead and hit me with a scoop. Uh and then the funny thing was, I'll scroll to the end real quick of my list because the last thing on my list here is the Galaxy Z trifle because they actually did show it off at the event. Nice, but only for the media briefing. So they let other media play with it. For me, that wasn't very exciting because I was like, Well, I have one in my pocket. Yeah. And actually, the lady at the briefing, she was talking to some other person, and she was like, Yeah, some of the other journalists, I thought he was gonna take it in his pocket and walk out of the room with it because he liked it so much. And I was like, Well, don't try to take this one. I bought this one. And she's like, Oh, how did you get that? Where did you get it from? I was like, Well, I bought it with money, imported it from Korea. It's not that hard to do, but yeah, that's like, don't try to confiscate mine. Yeah, no, I did not steal this from the display. No, I didn't even go over to the display because I didn't want to create any confusion from someone that I might have taken one of them. Because it seemed like the lady was concerned about that. So I was like, I don't really need to go over there because I already have one. I can take as many pictures as I want when I leave. Why do I need to do any photo capture of this device? I already have it in my pocket. So I just stayed over where the laptops were. They were the trifold display was in the back of the briefing room. I just stayed over and took pictures of laptops. I was like, we can, we already got a lot of content on this. I've already posted stuff about it and we've made videos. So yeah. But yeah, a lot of the other media were super excited. And other people were excited all throughout CS. I was using this device, and people would come up to me and be like, Where did you get that from? How do you have it already? Can I take a look at it? I want to see how it actually works. Because of course, all the demo devices that Samsung had, they don't have real apps on them.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Yeah, yeah.

Wireless Speakers Taking On Sonos

SPEAKER_00 27:02

They're not necessarily obviously they're not going to show any of the shortcomings. So they're like, What can you tell me about it? You know, they're not gonna put X on it, which doesn't run properly, by the way. It's one of the big shortcomings of this. I talked about that, I think, in our last podcast. It runs right in the middle here.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Yeah, I know. It looks awful. So much worse. It looks really terrible.

Freestyle Plus Projector And Real AI Use

SPEAKER_00 27:19

And they haven't fixed it. The Trifold got an update like a few days ago, and I thought they might fix it, and they didn't. So shame on you, Samsung. Yeah, sure. Expensive phone. Um, the Trifold, however, is incredibly popular in Korea. It's now sold out four times. Samsung has made four batches every time it's sold out in less than five minutes on Samsung's website. And uh the bad news for people who want the trifold here in the US is I also tried to get Samsung to tell us if they have a definitive date for the US availability, and they had nothing to tell me about that either. So I tried because I know everybody wanted to know, and I thought they were gonna announce it at CES. I was like, can you guys give us a definitive like date or range? Maybe just say by the end of Q1 February or maybe you want to tell me anything the specific day, give me something I can publish. Yeah, and they're like, ah, we don't have any information at this time. Uh so there's no information at this time. But I did speak with a couple of the engineers, because you know, but this is off the record. We're not publishing it. This is just you know, only like 500 people listen to this podcast. Oh yeah, so no one's gonna. Sami Guru. Off the record. Hopefully the Samsung people don't they'll probably listen to this one. I'll get unlucky. One of the engineers told me that he is expecting it to launch in the US in February, so I'm gonna say who, you know. Yeah, it could be. It could be Sergeant Slaughter. It's off the record. It could be Sergeant Slaughter. Could be. You know? He was an engineer of chaos in the WWE. Why he passed away though, but you know, rest in peace. It could be anybody, but really cares. But I think it's probably coming in February, um, which is very strange, because that means Samsung has a lot of devices leasing in February. A lot. Because of course the S26 series is also coming in February. It's gonna create an interesting release window. So that's the Trifold. That was at the bottom of my list because it did Strifold won a ton of awards at CS. It won like best smartphone product, best mobile. Oh, yeah. Samsung cleaned up with the phone that folds three times. Yeah, they cleaned up with the Trifold, so they got a lot of CS awards. But I didn't feel the need to spend a lot of time at the capture event because I've already got a lot to say about it. I've already said a lot about it. Um, and I do like it still. A lot of people keep asking me, do you like it still? Have you been using it? Yes, it is right now my secondary phone. Um, I still split time between the Z Fold 7 and the S25 Ultra as my main phone, depending on what I'm doing. The main reason is because I can't put my main sim in this phone. Yeah. My main SIM is a Verizon sim. It doesn't work in this phone because it's Korean. So I can't really use it as my main device, but it is my main second, I carry it everywhere. Um, the next thing that they released that was very interesting is the new Music 5 and 7 studio. So they're trying to jump into the wireless streaming speaker game and take on Sonos. They're trying to they're trying to beat Sonos here in their wireless speaker game. Sonos has obviously been doing it for a long time. Uh but I think Samsung has a decent opportunity for a couple of reasons. One, Sonos's app is kind of terrible. They got some bad press for this like a year ago. Their app is just not very good, the UI and everything. It's hard to use. Their Android and their iOS app. Samsung obviously has an advantage there because one UI, they make software, and so obviously these speakers they run through smart things, and smart things is quite good and it's very organized. Uh and also they obviously make TVs, and then you can use these Wi-Fi speakers with your TVs to create sounds surround sound systems very easily, and they're going to integrate first party because Samsung makes the whole kit in caboodle, so that's good. So the Wi-Fi 7 has a four-inch uh woofer, two tweeters, uh, with AI dynamic base control to fine-tune the sound on the fly. Yeah, everybody has to put AI in just about everything. You can't have a product that doesn't have AI in it. Yeah, no, no. You're like, what makes it AI dynamic base control? You know, like 10 years ago, someone they would just call it base control. No one would have told you that it's AI, even though it was even it was still using an algorithm back then. Maybe not as finely tuned or informed by data, but still a pretty similar algorithm. Now everything has to be AI. Everything, even if it doesn't necessarily use a training algorithm, it's still gonna they're still gonna put AI in there. But anyway, it's supposed to set fine-tune the sound based on what it's playing. So um it podcasts, like it'll change the audio, the sound profile depending on if you listen to like spoken word, like if you're listening to the Sammy Guru podcast, it'll change it a little bit, or if you're listening to your music, the different genres, hip-hop, whatever. And the design of these looks cool. I'll show you this one. Like this one's a very cool looking one. Yeah, that's the one I was eyeing. It has a 311 channel setup here, which also plays 24-bit, 96 kilohertz audio. I want to pause it so you can see it. Um, now I will tell you, this orange color that you're looking here that I took a photo of, Samsung did tell me. I spoke to the rep that was at the uh booth where these these uh Music Studio 5 and 7 were displayed. They did tell me, it's very strange, they had all these colors on display, and I was like, I really like those colors, but at the press event, you guys only had the black and the white. So, like, are the colors releasing? And they're like, Well, we tested a lot of the colors, but we don't know if we're gonna produce them. I was like, Well, why did you put them at the exhibition? I'm taking all these pictures. I put this in here because it just I like the orange color. I like this orange color is nice. I would get that. I told them I was like, these colors like pop. They had some greens, some yellows. Yeah, we could. I was like, people wouldn't mind that because depending on your space, you might have a uh it could be a focal piece, and maybe that's the color you want. Yeah, I'd buy an orange one because that's our accent color for Samiguru. They didn't have a blue, but I would buy an orange. Yeah, I know. So why didn't they have a blue? Because Samsung's logo color is blue too, but the orange looks nice.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

I'm telling you, you know, we uh the color game, like I just I feel like you know, when it comes to items like music, especially, or um speakers and stuff like is the colors is what draws people in.

Availability Windows And Likely Timelines

Unpacked Date And S26 Ultra Shape

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Yeah, because this is gonna be something that you're gonna put in your house that's gonna have to go with the rest of your decor. Yeah. And that's why I I told the I mean, obviously, I don't know why I was telling this to the person just standing there because they hire those people only for CS. Usually they're not even Samsung employees, they just brief them on the product. I don't know if you know this. Oh no, but usually at like CS exhibitions, there's so many different exhibits that all the big companies need to staff and at their booth. They can't staff it all with like engineers and employees of Samsung. So they hire people locally in Vegas and they like brief them up like the week before, and so they're supposed to know. And then if they don't know something, usually there's an engineer that's like assigned to like five or six of the stations, like one per five or six stations. They can go and ask the engineer. Oh, if you want to talk to the engineer, then sometimes you have to wait because the person who's like the attendant, the booth attendant, may not know. One thing I will say too, actually, I don't want to go too long on this because I want to get through these other products and I want to come back to the speaker because I actually really like these. I'm gonna buy some of these, you know. I buy everything, Samsung, but I mean, except for that 130-inch micro RGB TV. Don't don't expect a rude, don't look for the review of that on Sammy Guru. Unless Samsung drops that$100,000 TV off at my doorstep, you won't be seeing a review of that because I'm not by guys. But most of the other stuff that's within reason. I mean, come on, I bought a trifold for you guys, you know. That was my own money. Nobody sent me that, you know. You don't see other outlets doing that. I won't name them, but you won't see them doing it, spending their own money to go out and get stuff. They only review the stuff they're told or sent. Yeah, not me. Um, but anyway, the other thing that's interesting about CS is 10 years ago, I've been going uh 12 years ago. I went to my first CS about 12 years ago. Back then, I was like brand new to all of this. And so this is like a side. People like the stories. People love stories. We love stories in this industry. 12 years ago, I was brand new to doing YouTube and tech pretty much in general. I'd started my channel like a year before that, and I had only made like a few videos, including my first video where I literally shot into the sun. I turned, I sat in front of my window in my Tempi apartment, and the Arizona sun is bleeding through the window, and I pointed the camera at it and sat in front of it, so I look like a black shadow man. You can barely can't see any of my facial features. Go check it out on my YouTube channel. It's the very first video, or one of the first videos I ever made. It's uh awful. But I was going to see yes because I was writing for high onandroid.com, which was founded by YouTube Android, Android YouTube legend Max Lee, who actually gave me my start. He's the one who helped me promote my channel in the beginning as well. Huge thanks to him and everything he did to help me get started doing this. But he hired me to write for him. That's also how I learned a lot about blogging and the tech blog scene, which obviously eventually I go on to found Sammy Guru, but I learned a lot about writing for a blog with him. So he has CES credentials. Obviously, I only had like a thousand subscribers at the time. You can't get a CES credential with a thousand subscribers, and no one giving you a trust credential with that. So I couldn't go myself, but he's like, Well, if someone writes for you, you can always get them credentials. So he's like, I'll give you one. You know, I'll submit the analytics for our site that shows we meet the site, site visits, page visits to get a press pass. So I got one and I went CS. And the one thing I remember about CS 10 years ago or 12 years ago, that's way different than now, is they used to have like, I didn't see any this time. Maybe there were some. They used to have these girls that were like in super low-cut shirts, basically like they're working at a Hooters or a strip club. And that would be like I feel like 80% of the booth attendants were these attractive girls that were probably in their early 20s. And I think it was a strategy back then, like obviously there's mostly men come to CS because tech is unfortunately, whether you like it or not, still male dominated. Yeah. There's a heck of a lot more women now than there used to be in terms of media, industry attendees, and all that. Yeah. But still, probably if I had to guess, I would say 70% men maybe at CS. You know, for every like seven men, you probably see three women. That's probably just a guess. Don't quote me on that. Don't put it in the New York Times. But yeah, so this time I didn't see that at all. So it seems like just how society has evolved, like I guess that's now frowned upon. I think I remember someone writing an article about it a few, like maybe five years ago, maybe The Verge or someone wrote an article saying that they thought it was sexist or something. Maybe that put an end to it. But there's like there's like none this time. I mean, not that I care. I'm married, but I'm just saying I think it's interesting social commentary that like 12 years ago, that was totally cool. They were like, Yeah, let's go, let's go get the strippers down the road and we'll have them show off our robots and our TVs.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

And I mean, at the time it was like that was a good marketing, I think.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

I mean, it definitely got a lot of the media and and coverage, got people stopped by your booth.

Privacy Display: How It Works And Why It Matters

SPEAKER_01 38:08

That was the goal. Yeah, I remember seeing stuff like that on like uh when I don't know if you know this show, uh it was G4, but yeah, yeah, you know, they would go to uh those in their people there, and and there'll be like stuff like that. So that's what I kind of picture. I've never been, but that that's that's the best I got.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

Well, you know, the bad news is now that I think about it in the back of my mind, I just realized I gotta make a little change to my 2026 marketing strategy. I need to call all the sorority girls at ASU and tell them the Sammy Guru Bikini calendar is canceled. Because I was planning it, but now that I think about it, they might cancel me. Yeah, me too, the site. I don't want that. Yeah, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

So dang, and it was gonna be the first year of it.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

That was gonna be the first year. Oh man. I was planning to that was a good idea. I was planning to I was planning to put an addition in every single mystery box for the fold launch, but I guess we can't do it. No, that sucks.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

But the candy's gonna be in there.

Cameras, Charging, And Upgrade Math

SPEAKER_00 39:05

Candy will be there, yeah. Yeah, not that kind of candy, but real candy. Yeah, yeah, real candy. Yeah, yeah. It's like, you know, real candy. Anyway, back to the music studio speakers. Just in a that was just a fun aside, because I was just thinking about that. Uh, all the booth attendants were like, they were professionally addressed and they were relatively well briefed on the products this time. And that's the thing about those girls, no disrespect to them, but they knew that they didn't really need to know anything about the products because that's not why they were hired. When I went 12 years ago, most of them knew nothing about the products. You know, you'd be like, you know, what version of Bluetooth does this uh speaker support? And they'd be like, I don't know. And then you have to wait for them to go get the engineer. Yeah, yeah. But this year the people seem well educated, so I guess that's positive. You know, I'm not saying that beautiful women can't be well educated, it's just that those girls obviously knew that that's not why they were hired, which I understand. Um apart From this, though, I really like these speakers, and they got a professional audio engineer to help them design them and tune them, and they look really, really cool. Um, they really supposedly have really great bass. I I heard some of them over at the exhibition that Samsung did, and they look cool. No, no, that orange one looks so they kind of look they kind of look like they can compete with Sonos on the design aspect too. I kind of feel like they look better than a Sonos speaker. And considering that they work with all of my different Samsung products and they're gonna work in Smart Things, and they'll automatically work with my Samsung TV out of the box. I don't have to do anything. As soon as you connect them to your Wi-Fi and add it to Smart Things, it automatically will work with your speaker, and you could use them for your speaker surround system setup. That's pretty good. Um, the pricing, I remember we did see pricing for these. Uh, I I don't want to, I gotta go look back at the other article. It wasn't in this article. I think it's$349 and$549 or$249 and$449. That's not bad. There's a couple hundred dollar difference between them. Yeah. But for a really high-end Wi-Fi speaker, I mean, if you look at like Sonos, Bang and Olson, um, you know, all of those different brands, you can end up paying up to thousands of dollars for sure. These type of high-end speakers. They're not cheap. So it's not like this is really uh a crazy price. Um, the last I already talked about the fridges. That was the next thing on the list. The last thing is the Freestyle Plus. So, you guys who are Samsung fans probably remember a couple years ago at CS. It's been a while now, actually, like maybe four or five years ago. I owned the original one. I got rid of it because I didn't use it enough. I might give the new one to review it, but I don't know if I'll keep it because it's a portable projector and you can basically project it, you know, on whatever you want. And it's really small, it's like quite small. It's like the size of I don't know, like a roll of paper towels, maybe like a half of a roll of paper towels, really. Interesting. Okay. Um and this one is called the Plus because, well, it's the next version. They upgraded some stuff. And what did they upgrade? Well, of course, since it's 2026, they put a bunch of AI features in it. Of course. They're like, hey, you know what? Put that in there. They're like, you know what? We don't really need to do any new hardware. We'll just put some cool AI features. But in this particular instance, I have to say, the AI features they put are actually useful because what it lets you do is now if you project this on weird surfaces, it'll basically smooth out the picture. Okay. So let's say you don't have to let's say you don't have like a screen that you you don't have a projector screen that you can project on. Well, back in the day, like if you would project it on this bumpy wall, or let's say you are a real genius like me, a real man of genius. Remember that commercial? Yeah. Real man of genius. That's me. Let's say for argument's sake, that's me. And I used it, my freestyle, and projected it on my shower curtain that was black. Ah. Well, with the first version, that one worked too well because the shower curtain's all wavy and wrinkled, and that makes the picture look all wavy and wrinkled, and so it kind of ruins the viewing experience. But now, with this, the freestyle plus, it will actually remove or or smooth out the picture, make those ripples and stuff blend in so the picture looks like it's flat using AI. That's actually a very useful use case of AI, I have to be honest. And I saw a demo of it, and uh, it really does work pretty well. They call it uh Keystone AI Opticreen, which is what adjusts the image based on the color and the surface. So you can actually, I mean, it's I kind of kind of mind blowing. I saw the guy showed me a demo where this the wall had wallpaper on it, and he projected the the move a movie, I forgot movie, on the on the wall with the wallpaper, and he turned on the optic screen, and it basically removed the wallpaper pattern from the picture. Wow. Somehow they like blend it in or like trick use AI to like weave in the picture so the picture looks like it's just a plain wall.

SPEAKER_01 44:13

Okay, I can dig it. Kind of crazy, man. It looks kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 44:17

Yeah, it's kind of insane. I have to be honest. So you have to check it out. It's 100 inch, 1080p, up to 100 inches, 1080p picture. Um, and it also is a lot brighter this time, up to um 430 ISO lumens, which is almost twice as bright as the original. Yeah, it actually looks good. I mean, if you want a 100-inch screen and you don't want to spend 100,000 on the TV, buy the Freestyle Plus, which is like 600 and project it on something to 100 inches. Of course, it's not gonna look quite as good as the TV, but you know, that's yeah, yeah. It's also$99,400 cheaper. So yeah. You could take that 99,000. You could take that$99,400 and put it towards something nice, and you'll forget, you'll forget about the difference in the picture quality. So those are all my favorite Samsung CS things. Those are my best of Samsung.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Yeah, I'm most interested in the speaker and the laptop.

What to expect at Unpacked for S26 Ultra

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Um definitely the laptop is is nice. I mean, I'm gonna try to get a reviewing it. Do it. Oh, I didn't talk about availability. They they release in Korea always the laptops always come in Korea first, unfortunately. They release in Korea at the end of January, they go on sale January 27th, so about I don't know, almost 12 days away from now. And then in the US, they'll be available in March. Now, they didn't say when, but Samsung always does this. Everybody knows when, because we know, and this is a great segue, they're holding an unpacked event on February 25th. Yeah, yeah. And since they're already releasing some phones, might as well slap those laptops up for pre-order at the same time, get some extra eyeballs on them. Some people are already ordering the phones, try to pack out a few of those laptops in people's carts along with the phones, drive up that average order value. Oh, yeah. They think they're tricky, but I mean, I don't even need them to tell me. They're like, it's gonna be a March. We can't tell you. I bet they'll go up for a pre-order on February 25th and be in stores around March 13th. Yeah, but you know, what can I tell you? Who knows? I've just been doing it for a little while. Yeah, just a little while. So that's probably the plan. And so now let's talk a little bit about Unpacked. So we know a lot of things about the S26 Ultra. Um, obviously, we know the release dates in February 25th. It's gonna be in San Francisco, um, which is great news for me because I'll be at the event this time, but it's still great news for me because when it's in New York, I know I have to wake up basically 7 a.m. my time. Yeah. Even when I was in New York, it still feels bad because I'm jet lagged from going there, like the fold event. Yeah. Tori's gonna be working here this summer, so he's probably gonna get to go with me to wherever the fold event is. I know. We're either gonna be a little jet lagged if it's in New York again, or we're gonna be a lot jet lagged if we're going to Korea. If we're going to Seoul, we're gonna be a lot jet lagged. A lot jet lagged. We're still going. I don't care, but we're gonna be really jet lagged because it's gonna be the event's gonna be at like seven in the morning. Oh, geez. Oh no, ten in the morning? That's gonna be like 3 a.m. Arizona time. Oh my goodness. We're gonna be like, guys, we can't stay up to tell you about the mystery boxes. We're so tired. Please order some mystery boxes before we fall asleep. Yes. So we can tell you a little more about the phones when we wake up. Order a lot of mystery boxes while we're sleeping. Yes. So February 25th, San Francisco. We, you know, there's been so much confusion about this lineup. Originally we thought it was this pro and the 26 Edge and the Ultra. And then people are like, there's no Pro, there's no Edge. Now it's the regular bass and the plus and the Ultra again. And uh basically, in terms of the Ultra, what we know is, because I know that's what most people are interested in, because I know because when I see the mystery box numbers, 95% of our audience buys the ultra, and only like five percent of people buy the other ones. Um no discrimination. I'm just doing the same thing that Samsung does, which is, you know, I basically try to make it so that we address the majority first, and then we can talk about the other stuff. But uh essentially, we know it's gonna be thinner, but not by a lot, 0.3 millimeters thinner, it's gonna be lighter by like two grams, so essentially nothing. It's gonna be slightly shorter by I think 0.5 millimeters, which isn't a lot. It's gonna be slightly less wide by like 0.4 millimeters as well. So basically, Samsung they shrunk the overall footprint because they made the bezel smaller, so it still has the same 6.9 inch screen. Um, the S pen is still there. No Bluetooth, though. They didn't bring that back.

SPEAKER_01 49:01

It's okay, as long as we still have it. They at least have it for one more year. As long as we still have it.

SPEAKER_00 49:06

Until it becomes the S27 not so ultra when they take the S Pen out. Hopefully not, but it seems like it. But um and then they also curved the S-pin slot ever so slightly. Now the S-pin itself is curved. Interesting. So instead of being like flat, like this being flat, there's a little curve how this goes into the so this like curves along into the corner. So like this S-pin slot actually does curve, and so the tip of the S-pin curves as well.

SPEAKER_01 49:35

Okay, which makes sense. Which I can see, which because like right now, like when it's in, it it sticks out a little bit, you know? But I think it will blend in.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

Fact what she said too. That was a good one. Tori sat me up with that one. Yeah, I think that's a good one. That was one of the best ones in the history of the podcast. Um that was a good one. Uh, but that leads me to my next point, Tori, which is the reason they did that is because, as you know, I know you're not a fan of this, they rounded out the the corners. They're not as squared off anymore. However, I got the cases today, my inventory from the mystery box, and looking at the cases, they didn't round them out as much as people think. Now, they're still a lot rounder than this, but that's why they did the curved S-pin. So, since this rounds out, if you make it curved a little bit, then it kind of blends into that rounded corner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas this one, it doesn't. When this one, it's still flat enough here at the bottom that you could have a flat edge. Yeah. But since this one's gonna be a little rounder and less square, it just makes sense to blend it into the side because otherwise, if you keep this flat, it's gonna make the design a little weird. I think this little piece would stick out too much. Yeah, I think if you think about if you think about cutting part of this squared corner off and making it rounder, this piece would stick out unless you curved it into the body. Yeah. So that's why they did that. It makes a lot of sense. Um, I didn't think of it, but it does make sense. Whoever thought of it. Congratulations. It wasn't me, but you know, we don't know who they are, you know. They who they are. But who are they? Some Samsung engineer. It was it was smart. Uh, we know the biggest selling point probably in Samsung's mind. You know, Samsung has has it all thought out in their mind. Mind I we've talked about it now for a while because we've been tracking this feature, and actually, our our writer Josh, who's a massive leaker now, this guy's become a beast since I hired him. I'm killing it. So proud of my guy Josh. He found uncovered the exact way privacy display is going to work on the SMSL drive.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

Yeah, I'm actually quite interested in that.

SPEAKER_00 51:38

Yeah. So essentially with privacy display, let me actually pull up, let me pull up the screenshots because I'm gonna show you. Because he wrote a great he wrote a great article about it, and Tori probably hasn't seen this yet. No. Um there Tori's been busy, you know. There's a lot of kids badgering Tori about, you know, are we gonna have to actually do any real work? You know, and Tori's like, yes, you are. And they're like, Well, that's not fair, mister. And you're like, Well, this is a school. What do you think you do here? You know, like educate. This is a school, you have to do some work. This isn't a free ride, you know. You can't come on and take a free ride, you know. So here it is. He uncovered these screenshots by doing a little bit of spoofing. He spoofed his device to find something pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 52:24

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 52:25

Um and so if you take a what is that about? That's some weird things going on over here. Anyway, here it is. This is what's new in 1UI 8, but it's actually 8.5. Prevent others from seeing what's on your screen. Privacy display makes uh the screen less visible when viewed from a side angle. You can turn it on when you need it or set conditions for turning it on automatically. So you can set conditions for this to turn on automatically or only when you want to use it, turn it on manually. And you can see here kind of the same thing. You can kind of see how it works. Apps, pen screen, pen pattern, password, notification pop-ups. This shows you kind of what you can hide with privacy display. And so essentially you're gonna be able to get full control of like anything you want to hide using this. Essentially, as we said, this is their flex magic pixel technology that basically, when viewed from certain angles, it looks like the screen's completely black. Uh, I think this is gonna be a killer feature. I've said it from the beginning. I think this is one where like Samsung is getting better, as we've talked about, like with their marketing materials. This is one you could do a lot of cool marketing with. So I was, I mean, I mean, I don't have a marketing degree, but I could do a lot of, I could think of a lot of cool videos and stuff I could do if I was running this campaign. And uh, you know, a lot of people are you know, younger people are worried about this. People seeing what's on their phone. I'm not that worried about it, but I still like the idea of it because when I'm out in public, I might not necessarily want someone to see if I'm on a banking website or something. There might be business reasons too that you don't want, or privacy reasons that actually are less nefarious than what maybe some of the younger people want this feature for they don't want their significant others seeing what they're looking at or who they're texting, whatever. I don't care about that, but I still think it has other applications that I would be interested in.

SPEAKER_01 54:14

Well, I kind of wonder too, um, how much um what would do you think something like this will be like a major drain on the on the battery if people leave it on for extended time?

SPEAKER_00 54:25

I don't think so because it's actually turning off various pixels to make it look like it's black. It's oh, so that'd be I don't think it will drain the battery. I mean, of course we'll have to test that and see exactly how it works with the hardware, how it's optimized with 108.5. I mean, I could be wrong, but I don't think it's gonna drain the battery. We'll have to see. Um, the other big scoop that Josh got as well after he wrote this one. People were wondering well, is privacy display gonna be exclusive to the S26 Ultra? What about the S26 base and S26 Plus? I told you we'd come back to those briefly. And he did some spoofing with those devices and he found out it looks like it's not exclusive to the ultra, which is very surprising to me.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

So we kind of go what makes the ultra ultra that's the best print.

SPEAKER_00 55:08

That's that's I guess what we're gonna, I mean, the camera system still, because plus and the base are still not gonna have the same camera system. But yeah, I mean, I'm very surprised by that because this is definitely seems like from all the things we've seen from the different test builds and what Josh has found, this seems like the big feature that Samsung is gonna be pushing. And so not having it exclusive to the Ultra, that could be good from the perspective of a lot of people who were applauding Apple because they finally made their base iPhone almost as good as the pros. Maybe Samsung is trying to do something similar to that. Maybe they're trying to give more features to to those, you know, higher level, those higher level features to the base and the plus model. Now we also know that Samsung is not we I should say we know, but we don't know really. There's a lot of confusion about what what they're gonna do with the camera. There's supposedly going to be some upgrades from what we've heard to the telephoto.

SPEAKER_02 56:06

Okay.

Forums, Community, And Foldy Bird PSA

SPEAKER_00 56:07

Um but then we just heard like yesterday someone saying now that even though the main sensor is 200 megapixels, it might get an upgrade to the sensor itself, which we've heard forever is not true. But this guy actually has a bit of a trucker. I don't know. I don't really know what to tell people about the cameras. I I think the telephoto is gonna get upgraded from what we've seen. It would be a miracle if they upgraded the main sensor. I mean, I I would love that. But if they upgrade the main sensor, then this becomes a pretty big upgrade. Oh, yeah, for sure. Because then you get a truly new camera hardware. We're getting a charging upgrade finally from 45 watts to 60 or 65 watts. By the way, if you order your mystery box, we're putting 65 watt chargers in every box, so you can take use of that because Samsung's not gonna put one in the box. No, they're not. So they're gonna give you 65 watt charging compatibility on the phone, but they're not putting the charger in the box. So if you want to get a charge in the box, all you gotta do, order through our affiliate link, literally just fill out a quick form, and we ship you that and a bunch of other accessories right to your front door. We pay shipping, you do nothing, really, takes two seconds, and you're already gonna buy the phone anyway. Yeah, and if you don't buy through our link, you'll probably order through someone else's link without even knowing what they're gonna give you absolutely nothing. Yeah, so just get they're just gonna take the affiliate commission from you, yeah, and they'll never talk to you ever again. But with us, you get personalized service, free accessories, and stick around. We'll even tell you some cool stuff about Samsung over time as you keep reading the website. So it's a win-win-win. I think so too. But yeah, 65 watt charging, camera sensor, slightly slimmer design, um, and then also 1UI 8.5 with the privacy display built in. If the camera main camera sensor gets upgraded, that kind of changes the paradigm, I think, of this upgrade. I'm leaning towards saying it's a moderate upgrade right now. I don't want to say it's a small upgrade, because I think privacy display is a pretty cool feature. And I do think the 65-watt charging is actually has tangible value to people. So I don't want to say it's a tiny upgrade, but if you do somehow get an upgrade to the main sensor, then I feel like it becomes a big upgrade. So it's kind of like on the border right now between small medium, sh medium, as they say in the industry. But I think if you get a truly upgraded primary camera sensor, this definitely becomes to the larger size upgrade. And then I would recommend it uh to people. Obviously right now, if you have an S25 Ultra, I I'm leaning towards there's no camera main camera upgrade because we haven't heard but one person say it. If that happened, I would say even if you have an S25 Ultra, it's a good upgrade. But if we don't get a main camera sensor upgrade, I don't know that I would say it's a worth upgrade from the S25 Ultra. Yeah. Unless you're someone who just feels like you always need to charge your phone. And 45 watts is kind of slow. So 65 watts might be appealing to you. Oops. I bang in the mic around and this might get in my face, I'll I'll knock it out. Don't want to play with me. I know. Uh anyway, um going all the way. But right now I would lean towards, you know, if you have an S24 Ultra, I would lean towards upgrading. Um as long as you're okay with, of course, the caveat. If you're okay with losing the Bluetooth S Ban, because that was the last one with the S Bluetooth. A lot of people are going to cling to that Bluetooth S Pan with their cold dead hands. I know. They're gonna just take it from me, damn some. So if you're one of those people, then I wouldn't upgrade. But obviously, if you're if that's not like the biggest deal, then I would say it's probably worth upgrading, even if the main camera sensor doesn't get upgraded. The only way I would say it's up worth the S25 Ultra people upgrading. Upgrading is if indeed we do get a main camera sensor upgrade, then I would say, yeah, it's probably worth it. Uh, I really hope next year Samsung upgrades the actual battery sides and put size and put silicon carbide batteries in here. That's the one feature that's take you know, that and the camera sensor upgrade are like the two things that are pushing it to not being like the momentous upgrader one wants. Yeah, like I don't understand it. Like if you have to raise the price$100, who cares? People will still buy so many of them. Just do it. If you put like a 6,000 milliamp hour silicon carbide battery in here, even if it stayed just as thick as the S25 Ultra, this phone's not really that thick. Yeah, no, I I I mean I understand the appeal of slimming it down, but you don't need to. No. Just put the bigger battery in here and then upgrade the main camera sensor. They'll sell like hotcakes. No, they won't. If you throw the privacy display, the 65 watt charging on top of there, everyone will want to buy one. Even the people who have last year's phone. So, but I mean it's still an appealing upgrade to me because I really do like the idea of the privacy display. I've been running the 118.5 beta on the S25 Ultra for a while. It's it's really nice. There's a lot of nice upgrades in 1.8.5. So, I mean, obviously you're gonna get that on your old phone. So it just might take Samsung four months because they want to try to convince you to buy the new phone first, but you get it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:14

Of course, of course.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:14

You'll get it in July, you know. They'll be like when the fold roll rolls out, fold eight. That's when we're gonna push 8.5 to the S25 Ultra. You know, we'll get it, we'll get around to it though. Don't worry. In the meantime, just come over here to Samsung.com slash shop and uh take a look at what we got for sale. Can get a brand new S26 Ultra 8.5 right out of the box. Anyway, that's kind of what we know about the high-level stuff about the unpacked event. Uh next week, we're gonna do a couple things. So, I mean, we've had a few weeks off, so I want to do a couple things next week. Next week, I want to dive into one a little more. We're gonna keep talking about unpacked until the launch. Yeah, yeah, until we're gonna do it. Because it's six weeks away. Next week, we'll probably get into the S26 and S26 Plus a little more because I want to dig in those. We kind of just gave a high-level S26 Ultra overview. Um, we did a we did a we did a show like a month or a couple months ago where we went all the way through some meets, everything in the article. I'm not gonna do that again, but I am gonna try to hit the highlights because things are always changing about what we know, especially this year. Like I said, last year we didn't really keep going over these points because everything besides. Everybody knew like what it was, and there was no point to keep talking about it except to hype up the events. We still don't know about we still don't know about the exclusive colors either. I'm curious about them.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:33

I'm really curious about those.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:34

The standard colors are very boring, and they're like silver black. I want the exclusives, silver white, silver gray, black, and then like a violet purple. Yeah, so people have said there's gonna be a crimson exclusive, that could be very interesting. Okay, I'd be okay with a dark crimson phone.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:51

Oh no, hey, roll tide, roll tide.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:54

My Alabama, the Alabama S26 Ultra will be coming home with me. So I'll be excited about that. And plus, next week I also want to talk more about the Buds 4 Pro because we actually know some more information about those. Those are coming at the launch. Uh, and then we have quite a few other uh phones and things to talk about in terms of wrapping up 2025. I was planning to do that if we did like a one more before the new year, but we didn't get to it because we were Tori and I were bagging and tagging some of the cleaning kits. But I wanted I wanted to give out like some Samsung 2025 awards, but I wanted a little time to think about it. Yeah. It should be a little bit I still want to do that. Uh I want I want to do that. I mean, next week is already gonna be the 22nd, but hey, it's only three weeks into the new year. We're gonna give, we're gonna look back at 2025 and give out some awards and some categories. So Tori and I will think about this week, come up with some good categories, and we'll talk through those. So next week, talk about S25, I'm sorry, S26, S26 Plus, some Buds4 Pro stuff, and the 2025 Samsung Awards and some various categories.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:57

Yeah, and whenever just post this, um you know, give us uh some categories too in the comments. Yeah, yeah, I'll post this.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:05

Give us some call categories for the year and awards. You guys can also always get some questions to us. Yeah, I think I'm actually gonna start putting out a post because we're gonna have four uh I may might as well just mention this now. I haven't said it anywhere else. We're working on forums for the Sammy Guru website. So you'll be able to actually go over to the website and actually have a conversation with other users and with us. And we're probably gonna have a forum specifically for the podcast, and probably once a week I'll have the guys draft a post that says, Hey, have a question for the guys on the podcast, go to this podcast sub forum and leave questions, and we'll pull them from there. It'll be a heck of a lot easier. Plus, you guys will be able to discuss things you want to ask, yeah, and we could talk about various things on the show, which will give us some more, some more pieces that we can talk about. And if also if there's other Samsung stuff that you want us to talk about, you can certainly do that. I mean, there's a lot of news every every week, and it's hard to cover all of it, but there's a story you want us to cover, certainly can. Like there's another cool thing that uh someone made a game. Remember Flappy Bird, the game where you tap on the bird? Well, someone made a version called Foldy Bird where you can just fold your Samsung foldable and it makes the bird go up and down instead of tapping. It doesn't work with a trifold, so don't try it if you have a trifold. Luckily, not many people do, but you have to have a foldable. So if you have a Galaxy Fold 7 or Fold 6, uh, you can open and close the hinge. Now, I do want to put this disclaimer out there. Lots of you probably realize this, but if you download the game and you start doing that, you're gonna be folding your phone like 100, 200 times per game. Remember, the folds are rated for a certain number of folds for the hinge over the lifetime of the device. So if you're playing this like all day, you're adding like 2,000 folds a day to your phone, and I think the fold seven is rated for 500,000 folds. So, you know, you might run your maximum folds into the ground over like a year if you do this. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend playing this all the time. It's fun, like I did it on mine like once, but I I was trying to count while I was playing for like five minutes. Uh, I literally folded my phone like over 200 times in five minutes of gameplay. Oh, yeah. So getting to the 500,000 folds in practice in an average day, very hard uh over like a year. But if you played this game every day for 30 minutes, getting to 500,000 folds in a short time, not that far fetched. No, no, no. I'd say it's a lot easier to do over the life of owning your phone. I'd say if you just use your phone regularly, no one's ever gonna reach 500,000 before you trade it in. Yeah. Because with the fold seven, I might unfold it twenty times a day. So 20 times 365, that's 7300 times a year. I could literally own the phone for well, I can't do math. 70 years? Yeah. I'm not gonna own the phone for 70 years. But if you play that game, you add 2,000 extra folds a day. Well, that definitely changes the math. It does quite a bit. So just keep that in mind. I don't want anyone to say Jeff and Tori and the Sammy Group Podcast broke my fold seven. So not at all. Anyway, check it out, play it in moderation, like all good things. Enjoy in moderation and good health. Okay. And this week, keep expanding your galaxy.