Samsung Fans Voice Their Displeasure With Galaxy AI Over Hardware Innovation

We’re back with the sick-day edition and jump straight into why Samsung’s Galaxy S26 lineup feels more complicated than it should, especially when the Plus sits too close to Ultra pricing. We also map the One UI 8.5 rollout, unpack the growing backlash to Galaxy AI, and preview a London Unpacked that could bring new foldables, watches, and smarter glasses. 

• the Galaxy S26 base model feeling great in hand but sacrificing camera quality 
• the Galaxy S26 Plus pricing problem and why the monthly payment math pushes people to Ultra 
• battery life versus charging speed differences across 25W, 45W, and 60W tiers 
• signs Samsung could drop the Plus model and shift to a Pro tier 
• One UI 8.5 stable dates, staggered regional rollout expectations, and beta expansion to older devices 
• feature exclusives that may stay on newer hardware, including camera and audio tools 
• Reddit AMA reactions and why Galaxy AI messaging is wearing people out 
• AI-driven component costs and why phones, laptops, and consoles are getting more expensive 
• Unpacked London rumors including Z Fold 8, Z Flip 8, the Wide Fold, Trifold 2, and Watch Ultra 2 
• why XR smart glasses could be more practical than bulky headsets 
• Samsung and Google’s cross-platform airdrop performance for everyday sharing 

make sure that not only are you curating your favorite tunes from pop music from the early 2000s, but also keep expanding your musical galaxy. 

S26 Ultra Mystery Box Sign up: https://laylo.com/springer/8g0gnSvT
Video Podcast on Youtube: https://bit.ly/3yBw3Ro

Follow Jeff on X (Twitter): https://x.com/jspring86az
Follow Torrey on X:  https://x.com/T_Martin_23
Check out our website: https://sammyguru.com

Transcript

Intro

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome back, everybody. This is episode number 58 of the Sami Guru Podcast. My name is Jeff Springer. With me as always, my co-host Tori. Tori, say hi. Hey, how's it going? And uh we're both sick today. We are. This is the sick episode of the Sammy Guru Podcast. But we we took a week off, so we're like, we gotta come back, but we both got a cold here. Uh we got some great Samsung news, including we now have some information about where the next unpacked event potentially could be landing. So we're talking about that today. A lot of other news about the next round of devices that will be at that event. But uh, Tori, how's your week going? All aside from the cold anyway.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Um yeah, it's mostly just been centered around the cold. Um, try and get over it. Um, I'm kind of like on the tail end. Um I'm look I'm really looking forward to this weekend just relaxing though. And um, I gotta watch. Still, I don't know if you watch it. Well, you probably don't have time to watch any television, but The Pit, I need to finish the last episode. Oh, it's a good show, yeah. Of The Pit. Um, really been looking forward to it. Um and yeah, just I got a lot of greeting and catching up to do, but yeah, overall, the week has been good. I think there's only like twenty three days left of work. So almost there.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Oh, I just realized something too. Remember you said that you had the road was closed? Yes. Isn't the president here? I think he is. Oh, I bet that's the reason for you having trouble getting here.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Probably so. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

I just saw on X someone was saying that they need to take the freeway and they can't get anywhere because the president's causing a slowdown. I just realized. That could be it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

I think Trump is in Phoenix, so probably he has for a turning point of it. Turning point of it.

Beverly Hills Smart Tech Detour

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Yeah, isn't it at GCU? Or maybe it's downtown. I don't know. I don't know. Somewhere. But that's probably why you had a trouble getting here. Yeah. Otherwise, yeah, I've been sick this week, so I've been working, trying to work through it, but you know, there's always work to be done, even when you're sick. Yes, that's true. Especially at the Sammy Gru offices. I've been cranking out the videos in my personal channel, been cranking out the content, yeah. Um, including the um review of the S26 Plus, which our guy Josh dropped his review of the S26 Plus. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that today, right? I talk about both the base S26 and S26 Plus, because last time we talked about the Ultra. We didn't really have much time to talk about the other two phones. I'm gonna briefly talk about them, even though I mean, you know, there's a lot less to say about them because they're they're way less popular. And Josh kind of articulated that in his review. We'll talk a little bit about his review because I think it's a really nice review and kind of sums up the situation that we're facing. Um yeah, we also know the next unpacked 1UI8.5 beta is expanded to like every device that Samsung makes. This is the craziest beta ever. Samsung usually only does betas for like two phones, like the last year's S and the and then the last year's foldables. This year they expanded it to like the last four years of S phones. Oh wow. Basically, anybody can get the beta except if you have a Galaxy Trifold. My Trifold is not eligible. The most expensive phone they sell cannot get the 8.5 beta. So if you want the 8.5 beta, you can get it. As long as you didn't spend 3,000 plus on your phone, then you're entitled to go out and get the beta. Um I was in Beverly Hills last week. I went out there for an event sponsored by Dreamy and Mova, which, if you guys know much about SmartTech, they're really big in the smart tech space. They like do robot vacuums and robot mops, and they've been doing them for years. They're one of the top companies, but now they're expanding into like uh outdoor um smart devices like robotic mowers, uh outdoor TVs, like super bright outdoor TVs that are waterproof and dustproof and um pool cleaners. So they invited me to look at their new outdoor lineup, their TVs, pool cleaners, and the robotic mowers. So I went out there, I did a video on my personal channel. They got some cool stuff. Uh honestly, I mean, I've I've had a chance to review the mower and the pool bot at my house here in Phoenix, and they both work pretty well, actually. Especially the pool bot. I mean, if you have someone cleaning your pool weekly and you pay them, I don't know how much, uh I don't know, fifty to a hundred dollars. This pool bot's, I mean, this the top bottle's like 2K, but eventually it's gonna pay for itself.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Yeah, eventually, yeah.

S26 Base Versus Ultra Reality

SPEAKER_02 4:29

Over the course of you know a year, even if you're paying someone 50 bucks a week, 52 weeks in a year, if so facto multiplication, that's$2,600 a year. So, you know, it does a pretty good job. So, you know, I think it's pretty pretty solid. Um, and I I think overall the products are cool. I I the outdoor TVs as well is something where Samsung doesn't really dominate the market as much as they do with other TVs. There's a couple of different brands that dominate them, so it's interesting to see Dreamy and Mova break into that space. I'm gonna be reviewing some outdoor TVs on my channel coming up soon from another brand. So if you guys are interested in outdoor TVs, stay tuned. Outdoor TVs are a lot different than indoor because they need to withstand the elements. Obviously, and Phoenix is a great place to test that because it's 120 degrees and extreme heat is one thing that you know outdoor TVs struggle with because obviously that also heats up the internal components. Indoor TVs are not made to run 120 degree heat, but most outdoor TVs are rated for up to 130 degrees. So Phoenix is really like putting that close to the border there. And then like waterproof, because a lot of people put the TVs by their pool, and so the one that I'm reviewing, I'm gonna put out by my pool. They like a rollable stand. That way, if you do a cannonball, cannonball it goes all over the TV, it's not supposed to hurt it. So we'll see. Anyway, that was kind of fun. Going out to Beverly Hills. I've never been to Beverly, I've been to LA, but I've never been to Beverly Hills specifically. You know, very posh, posh area. You know, I was only there for about six hours in Beverly Hills itself, but it was very fun, very short trip. Uh let's get to the Samsung stuff. So we'll start with, I guess, uh well, let's start with the S26 and the S26 Plus, and then we can talk about the unpack stuff. So I I have the base S26 right here. Here it is. I've got silver shadow. I know it looks really nice. Which the silver shadow is very nice color, um, and it does look really nice, especially in the light. Like it's a beautiful phone, very reflective, definitely shines. Um I I really do like this phone. It I there's something about having a compact phone if you carry around like the ultra, which I have the ultra right here as well. If you carry around the ultra as your main phone and you switch to something like the base S26, there really is something refreshing about having a phone that isn't a giant brick. You know, you can see the difference between them. This is it's a massive size difference.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Ultra looks very giant compared to it.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

And uh, you know, especially there's a lot of people out there who don't want a giant phone. Uh, for instance, you know, especially the ladies in general, older people want a massive phone, maybe because they don't want to be carrying that around their pocket. Um, and you know, just if you're someone who wants to be able to type with one hand, if you have smaller hands and you don't want to have to two-hand your phone because it's harder to walk and talk and also type. And a lot of people do that these days, whether you should or not, it's a debate, you know. It's a debate. But you know, people do it anyway. So obviously it's a lot easier if I've got this little phone, I could easily swipe type, you know, emails and bust them out. Even for me, I have pretty big hands, so I can do it on the other one too. But I certainly see like if you have smaller hands, why that would be a problem. And so I enjoy having this phone, but the only problem is even when I'm in the scenario where I feel like, oh, I would love to take the S26 instead of the ultra, like for instance, if I'm going outside with the boys and I want to do some like, you know, some sort of active event, you know, like something that's like an activity that's you know, where you're doing like sports, like if I'm throwing a baseball with Jonathan, or we're, you know, or we're getting you know out in the pool area, or we're like running around, playing tag, riding his bike, whatever, it's nice to have this phone. But then I always hesitate when I'm like in the house and I'm like, oh, I'll just put this one in my pocket, the base, but then I'm like, uh, but if I want to take good photos of the boys, yeah, right, kind of those the camera is far inferior, and so that's the problem, which I've talked about in this podcast before, is that if you care about the camera at all, and anybody who has kids or pets, or just in general, almost anybody is taking pictures of something these days, maybe taking pictures of yourself, you know, you don't have kids or pets, whatever. But you probably care about the camera on some level, and so it's just hard if you're making this choice, even if you do like the smaller phone, Samsung makes it so hard to choose it because you're giving up a lot of stuff. Yeah, it's not like you're just it's not like you're just getting the same phone and this one's smaller, even if it was just the same phone and this one's smaller and didn't have the S pen, that would be great. Because then all you'll be losing is the S Pen. And I wish you would go to that. Exactly. That would be fine if it's just the S Pen's gone, because S Pen can't really fit in this phone anyway. There's not enough internal space. Nah, the battery like it, the battery wouldn't would be too small. They could probably cram it in here, but the battery would be too small and the battery would last, wouldn't last at all. Um, but otherwise, this phone is great. Honestly, it it's a shame. By all intents and purposes, the base model is actually selling pretty well. The numbers have come out from the US and Korea. Um, obviously it's not selling as well as the ultra, but I think I'm just I don't have them in front of me right now.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

I'm just like is it selling like better than the plus? Oh, way better.

Why S26 Plus Feels Pointless

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Way better. I'm just spitballing off the top of my head from the numbers I saw when we did the story, but it's something like the ultra is like something like the ultra is like 70% of all the sales. The base is like 25%, and the plus is like 5%. So this is selling like five times better, which it makes sense, right? Because I don't have a plus because I send it to Josh, and we'll talk about his review in a second, because I send it him, I sent him my plus and and gave it to him so he can make a review. Because I can't do every review, and Sumit Nobnov can't do all of them, so somebody else has to do some. Yeah. Um, and he did a great review. I don't have it, but obviously, if you if you look, the plus, if you remember, you saw my S25 Plus last year, the ultra and the plus are really close in size, right? Whereas this one is way far away from the ultra. And also they raised the price on the plus and the base this year. So if I'm someone who's looking at the plus, I'm like, well, it's basically the same size as the ultra, and now it's only like a hundred dollars less than the ultra or a couple hundred. Why the hell am I gonna buy the the plus? It's almost what am I really what am I even doing? Like it's only like 0.2 inches smaller. So it's really hard to choose the plus because as Josh said in his review, I think his title was uh, what was the title? That it's the awkward middle child. Uh, that is what he said in the review.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

So it kind of seems like every year it's awkward.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

The S26 quick review, the awkward middle child, which it is, it absolutely is the awkward middle child between these two devices because the base model makes sense because it's like, oh, I want a small phone. And if the smallness is important enough to me that I'm okay with losing other features, then I choose it. It's an open and shut case. If that's the most important thing, then I buy it. But with the plus, it's like, well, it's not really that small. So the only real question comes, do I want to pay a little bit more? And as we've talked about many times on the podcast, in the US, it's not really that big of a number because people are not looking at the$200 difference of the buy it now price. Yeah, they're looking at the monthly payment price.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

And the difference between the plus and the ultra and the monthly payments over 60 months or whatever it is now, is like$2. Yeah. So it's like, ah, do I want to pay$30 a month or$32 a month? And I get better camera, S-Pen, better battery, privacy display. And it's just obvious. It's like, why would I buy the plus? It doesn't make any sense. There's none of these features. So I get like 10 more features. I pay$2 more a month, I have a much better experience. Yeah. And so it's not, it's just the size difference isn't there. So there's no differentiator. The the base at least has a differentiator. It's the size. If you really care about it being a lot smaller, this is the only choice. And you just have to understand what you're giving up and be okay with it. Um, which really makes the plus like the question, and and going into Josh's review and just kind of reading his review, which you know, he did a great job of doing this from an average user's perspective. The problem is, you know, is like it actually is a pretty good size, and the display is pretty good, and the cameras are pretty good, but it's like a lot of pretty good, but they raised the price$100. It's$1,100 now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

So, like, why would you want to buy sound that pretty good?

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Why do you want to buy a pretty good phone that's really almost the same price as an amazingly good phone? By all intents and purposes, the S26 Ultra has review received rave reviews from everybody, and we're about to publish our full review after two months. You know, we've all had a chance to use it. Myself, Obnov, and some meet, we all have one, and we've all been tag teaming the review. We we have almost nothing but positive things to say about it either. So it's like, why would I buy one that's like uh it's just good enough, but it's only$200 less. Um, and everything that Josh says in the in the video, I think uh in his review is is true. Like the display is good, the size is actually good. Um, obviously, 1U8.5 runs just you know very well on the S26 Plus. It's a nice looking phone, um, but it comes into a problem of the value proposition of the cameras are not nearly as good as the Ultra. It doesn't have the S Pen, doesn't have the privacy display, and I'm not really paying that much more, especially in the US, yeah, where it's like it's just the monthly number and no one cares about the overall number.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Because isn't the ultra the only one that has the privacy display?

SPEAKER_02 14:12

None of the other ones have the privacy display. Interesting. So that's the thing. Now, some people ask me about battery life. Is battery life really a distinguisher? To be honest with you, the base S26 gives good battery life. I ran this phone at least for almost a week as my main phone over the ultra in the last week. I've been using it just to kind of get a feel. Not a big difference. The ultra, I mean, given privacy display probably eats some battery. And I probably use the S Pen. I probably use a few more features on the Ultra because it has more features than the base. So that drains some battery. But I get about five hours screen on time, five and a half on the ultra. I got about four and a half to five on this. It's roughly 30 to 30 minutes to an hour less. But considering how much smaller this phone is and the battery inside of it's smaller, yeah. I'm not really that disappointed. Now, the really disappointing thing is these this phone only gets 25 watt charging.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

What?

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Oh yeah, whereas the ultra gets 60 watts. So that's where you really feel like kind of bad. Like if you do need to top it up in the afternoon for your S shower and shave situation, you're gonna have to be taking a really long S, a really long shower and a really long shave for this one to charge. Because you can plug it in, it's like, ah, an hour and 30 minutes till full, and you're like, oh man, I gotta get going soon. It's not gonna charge too much. So that's the real big differentiator, is not necessarily the battery life, but if you are someone who's a heavy user and you need to top it up before you go out in the night after work or something, it's it's just too slow. 60 watts way faster. Yeah, no, yeah, that'd be way too slow. So that's the other thing. If Samsung does that, that's also, I think, to keep it Samsung is still paranoid about the Note 7 situation. They don't want anything to catch on fire, but the the charging speeds are proportional to the the phone sizes, too. 25 watts on the base, 45 watts on the plus, 60 watts on the ultra. So the boom, boom, boom. So that's another thing to consider. Um but overall, it really feels like Samsung should have just released the S26 Edge too. Yeah, right. Because the Plus isn't selling any units anyway. And at least the edge was a differentiator. Yeah. So if we'd had the base, the edge, and the ultra, at least then you have a differentiator. It's like, oh, the edge is similar in size to the ultra, but it's a lot thinner and lighter.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Yeah. And so I think that'd be a good guy.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

I at least understand that, okay, I'm paying a little less. I'm not getting the same camera experience and the S-Pen and stuff, but I am getting a phone that's a heck of a lot lighter. So if that's something that matters to me, and some people do care about that, at least it gives you some reason to buy it. I feel like the plus gives you way less reason to buy it than even the edge did or would have. So I don't know. I feel like the base, the edge, and the ultra would have made more sense. Uh, I feel like the plus, I feel like this is the last year of the plus. I'll I'll come out and say that right now. Really? Yeah, we've heard some other analysts say this too. I would be willing to put my, you know, put my money there. If someone wants to put that up on Calchi, you know, prediction market, I'm throwing all my money on it. Is this the is there gonna be an S27 Plus? No. I'm putting 100,000 on it tonight if it goes up on Calchi. Um, I'm feeling it. No S27 Plus, man. Yeah, it's not happening. No, I think the light up next year, we've heard some rumors that it's gonna be S27, S27 Pro, and S27 Ultra.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

So it's kind of like this is like this is what we heard last year.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

Apple. Yeah, but this is what we heard last year is that there would be this pro model. Last year was that it was gonna replace the base model, but so far no one really knows what the pro model is going to be or what the rumors suppose it's going to be next year. Um is it gonna be a revamp of the edge? Because the thing is, what can the pro model be if it's slotted below the ultra?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

True.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

Because the ultra already has the best cameras. Is the pro model potentially could be maybe a base model but with ultra cameras? Then that would be interesting. That would be interesting. Yeah, that would be. Yeah. If they had maybe two sizes of it. Yeah. Why don't they just do that? I don't know. I mean, if it's gonna be interesting to see what happens with the S27. I mean, I really hope Samsung does something because right now, essentially, we're caught in a world where in terms of the media certainly treats us this way. Obviously, we review all we reviewed all phones separately. So Meet has the Vase S26, and he and I are working on a review of this one, so there will be a full review of this. Um, like I said, most of the things I have, nothing positive. I have a lot of positive things to say about it. The only thing is, for me personally, since I do have an ultra and I do have other camera, I have other Chinese camera phones that have much better cameras, it's just harder for me to say that I always want to take it with me because the camera is is quite inferior to these other like flagship cameras. Yeah. So I hope Samsung will do something next year to where the media doesn't just ignore every phone in the lineup except the ultra, because that's what happens right now. The average blog. The average tech blogs don't really cover the S26 or the Plus. We are because we're a Samsung Pacific site. We're Sammy Guru, so we're reviewing all of them because that's what we do. But if you're just like uh Joe Tech Blog, like Tech Radar or one of those, I don't even some of them didn't even publish reviews of the base or the plus. They just forgot about it. It existed. There's like, let's just review the ultra. We don't want to waste time paying writers to write about these other phones that no one's gonna buy, no one's buying those through our affiliate link. So we'll just skip it.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Yeah, skip it.

One UI 8.5 Stable Rollout

SPEAKER_02 19:41

I thought about it. I'm like, where's Samsung's site? We got to give people some, you know, some people still want to buy these phones. That's true. That's what we're here for. So I still paid people to write these reviews. You guys are welcome. Cost me a lot of money to buy these phones too to do them because Samsung didn't give us review units of the plus and the base. I had to buy those for the writers. Yeah, yeah, that's true. So that's an extra$2,500 out of my pocket, out of the company's pocket, because I didn't get review units of those. I got review units of the ultra, but not not of the plus or the base. So that was that decision probably lost me money because we definitely won't. I don't think we'll make back we gonna make$2,500 back off the reviews. There's not enough people buying these um after the pre-order period. So um totally agree with everything Josh said though. In general, 1U8.5 is great, which is the thing I said last time uh last podcast about the ultra. Arguably 1U8.5 is one of the best things about the S26 series. Um, and that's a good segue into 1U8.5 um is coming to older Galaxy phones, including your phone, Tori, the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Okay, and Samsung has said that 1U8.5 will start rolling out to the S25 series in stable on April 30th. All right, so that is less than two weeks away. Yeah, um, of course, usually when they say that they mean Korea. So probably the next week after that it'll come to the US. Probably, let's say, by May 6th, you'll see it probably in the US. Um, which still seems like a long time because that's like, what is that? It's uh it's two, two and a half months after the S26 launch event. That's a long time still to be. That's a very long time. Um, it still kind of lends Samsung still lends a lot of credence to what people say about the fact that they don't release the update right away, giving people a chance to use software as a reason to upgrade to the new phone. That still feeds into that whole conspiracy theory. I don't know if it's true, but uh leaving 10 weeks between those, especially since the S25 has been had a 1U8.5 beta for like seven months. It's like, why the hell does it need a seven month long beta? I'm sure it could have been released two months ago. Yeah. So I mean it kind of does feed into that conspiracy theory a little bit. No, I agree. I'm kind of starting to believe it a little bit. Um but and like I said, all the other phones. We we keep getting the same question that we get every year. You remember last year, it's like when's my phone getting one UI8? Not only do we get it on videos and articles and on X and people email us. We don't know exactly until Samsung says, I mean, I could guess we know now the S25, and I would assume the Z Fold 7 is going to get it like around the same time. Probably the Fold 7 and the Flip 7 are going to get it at the end of this month. But I don't know. The other ones probably kind of like last time. It's going to be each year older that your phone is, just add another week or two to how long you'll get it. I would guess that like by the end of June, they'll have rolled out to all of them. Oh, yeah. So probably so too. Probably S25 series in the US will get it by May 6th. Probably the S24 series will get it the pre-next week, like May 13th. And then S23, S22, maybe like May 20th. And then any older phones that are like mid-range will then start getting it the next week. And somewhere along that way, the tablets will start getting them. Last time they surprised me by releasing the tablet uh one UI 8, like really early, like to the flagship tablets, which they almost never do. That's a good thing because if you spend$1,500 on a Tab S11 Ultra, you deserve to get the update quickly. I agree. So hopefully they'll do that and release that close to around the flagship phone window. But I mean, we don't know until Samsung says they kind of do weird stuff. In the past, they they've also taken like three weeks between releasing the previous year's S uh update and then the one before that. So like they could go S25 on May 6th and they could wait till the end of May to release the S24. And they might say, Oh, well, the reason is because the S25 had been in beta for seven months, and the S24 just got the beta like last month. So like maybe we need to test it some more. They might say that it's possible. Um, but like I said, almost every single phone that Samsung makes now, uh, in the S series for the last four years, the A series, the foldable series, all those phones now have a 18.5 beta except my trifold, which I paid$3,000 for. And the funny thing about it is much money. And the funny thing about it is I actually have the Trifold from Korea, if you guys remember. Yes. Right? So I don't have the US trifold, which we're gonna talk about that a little bit later. Samsung bait and switched some people on the US trifold a couple of times, and now it's finally sold out. But I didn't wait to get the US model. I bought mine day one, it was available in Korea on December 11th. I bought mine directly from the source, and yet I still have no beta. That's kind of messed up, man, honestly. And you know what else is messed up? You know, I bought, I don't know if you saw mine, I bought the Olympic edition Z Flip 7, the one that they gave to the Olympic athletes. I bought one off an Olympic athlete on eBay just to have it, because you know, Sammy Groove, that's what we do here. We got some cool Samsung phones. Um, and I posted on X, and people were like, How did you get that? I was like, Well, I want a gold I want a gold medal in Milan. I forgot to tell I forgot to tell you guys. Um I wanted to tell you a bronze and a silver as well. Um but anyway, you swept all of it. I swept all of it, cross-country skiing, actually. You know, you guys weren't up on that. Uh, but anyway, I bought one and I was like, oh, the flip seven got the beta because they pushed a beta to the flip seven for one eight. I was like, I'm gonna go ahead and grab it for my flip seven. They did not make the Olympic edition eligible for the beta, they excluded the Olympic edition, has a different skew than all the other flip sevens. So I guess if you are an Olympic athlete, Samsung says you can't participate in our beta programs. They don't like why they're discriminating against the Olympic athletes. What's up with that?

SPEAKER_00 25:39

That just makes no sense.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

That doesn't seem right to me at all. Seems wrong. Yeah, seems wrong. Support our American athletes, Olympic heroes, you know? Agreed. USA. USA. USA. So anyway, I don't know what's up with that. Probably no no one else has really talked about this because I doubt there's anybody else who has an Olympic one who tried to join the beta. True. Because most of the Olympic athletes who have it probably either sold it on eBay to someone like me, or they put it in their drawer and put their sim back in their iPhone once they left and they were no longer contractually obligated to, you know, sponsor to show off sponsor Samsung. They'll probably put their iPhone right back in their pocket.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

And so they probably don't know anything about the beta, but you know, there you go. Interesting data point. So anyway, 1U8.5 should be coming soon. Uh it should be said that there's a lot of features on the S26 Ultra, which we talked about in the S26 that probably aren't coming to the older phones. Um, some of them are, like the new call screening features and stuff. But some of the stuff like the new audio eraser, which lets you use audio eraser in third-party apps like YouTube and Netflix, which is one of my favorite features, that's probably not coming to the old phones. I don't think Sam. That's probably one that's gonna stay exclusive. Uh, and then the new Horizon lock, which we talked about last time, where you can flip the phone upside down and it still keeps the video steady and locked in. So that is probably not coming to anything else because that's probably something they're gonna reserve for the S26 Ultra. Check my C.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Yeah. I I got an update um Wednesday or Tuesday. Security update, yeah.

Reddit Revolt Against Galaxy AI

SPEAKER_02 27:14

Yeah, it hasn't got the security update. So your next one should hopefully be 188.5. So, you know, make sure you make sure you go through and spend some time to do that one because it's probably gonna be a big update. Oh I don't know how probably five gigabytes or something like that, you know. Massive update. It's got a lot of stuff in it, a lot of Galaxy AI. Oh, speaking of which, too, uh Samsung hosted a Reddit Ask Me Anything, you know, where people they're like, Ask me anything. Um XYZ from XYZ Company. I'm Emily from XYZ Company, Ask Me Anything. So there was a Samsung employee, I forgot who she was, it was a group, it was a lady, and she's like, I'm Emily from Samsung, ask me anything. And it didn't really work out the way they wanted. I think she was one of their marketing people, uh, like one of their top marketing people in the US. I don't know her personally from my PR contacts, but she wanted obviously when you do these as a brand, you want people to say nice things about your product. It did not work out that way. Everybody in the comments is like, Why are you guys pushing Galaxy AI so much? We hate Galaxy AI. When are you gonna give us the option to turn off Galaxy AI? When is Samsung gonna start giving hardware upgrades and not Galaxy AI upgrades? You know, people are like, we don't like now nudge, can we turn it off?

SPEAKER_00 28:26

And then they're gonna be like, well, we have entered the realm of AI phones.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

Yeah. And so then she is like, it's actually an AMAA. Ask me almost anything. Yeah, almost anything. Galaxy eye is off limits. Yeah. Anything that doesn't have Galaxy Eye in the in the title of your comment, that could be asked. Yeah. But anyway, she did a nice job. She actually answered the questions with some class. Um, it was a lot of people complaining about how they didn't see the usefulness of AI. And she's like, well, we we believe, you know, that AI is is generally useful, and maybe right now you don't see the potential, but eventually, you know, AI will be do be able to do things in the background without you necessarily thinking about it. And some of these steps are kind of along the way or necessary to get to that place. And she pointed to some of the things like I talked about on the podcast last time about DoorDash or uh Jim and I being able to place your DoorDash order all the way. Like you just say, hey, order me my favorite, my usual from Panera Bread, and just does it all. You don't have to do anything with the app. And then you can just go about doing your work and your lunch will just show up. Like that kind of stuff is cool. Right now it doesn't work that way because one, the AI is not very good at the overlays and takes like 12 minutes to place your order for a cup of soup. Oh, wow. I could do that in 30 seconds. So 100%. So I'm not going to be using it to place my order because it'll take me 12 extra minutes to get my order 12 minutes longer than it would have because I would have already placed the order 12 minutes ago. My soup would be on the way. But, you know, in the future, if it takes 10 seconds, same amount of time or less that I could do it, then that would probably be very useful to me. So she made some good points. And you know, at least you didn't like the problem is some companies they're like, oh yeah, well, blah, blah, blah, blah. We know better than you. At least you didn't do that because people don't like that. True. That never goes well. Because then you escalate it to the next level. And then you got people yelling at you, and you're yelling at them. It's a big giant. It's not ask me anything, it's a it's a championship wrestling match at that point. Everyone's just hitting chairs over the head, yeah, barbed wire bat to the face, getting aggressive. But anyway, apparently the average Samsung consumer, or at least the ones that are on Reddit, don't like Galaxy AI, which you actually uh kind of have have a data point with too, because you were saying that when you guys did the stream on Unpacked Day, I wasn't I wasn't there because I was at the event, but you were saying that a lot of people were uh voicing their displeasure with Galaxy AI in our comments of the stream, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:54

Uh uh yeah, they were. Like um, you know, uh once the keynote started and they started doing like AI AI, and then they actually said, you know, this is an AI phone. Uh not a smartphone. Not a smartphone. Um, you know, in the comments, like people were first already, you know, upset about like the the no-free storage upgrade. Um but they were not happy with just the AI part of it. Like, you know, I think overall we're we are still just wanting like phones, and obviously AI is kind of like trickling in. But you know, like where's my spark is trying to make a statement and this is an AI phone? This is an AI phone. Look, look at what it can do. Um, I don't I just don't think it really resonated with people and sold, like, you know, I think probably as a base, like general consumers. People were a lot people were a lot more excited about the privacy this way than they were. Yeah, yeah, I'll say that. But even then, like not a lot of people seemed to be even like that much into that part. Uh a lot of it was kind of like I I call it like almost like an iPhone cycle of I want what I had previously just better like physical features. I don't want my new features to be AI. Like like I wanna I want the I want what I had last year or two years ago just up the specs.

How AI Pushes Prices Higher

SPEAKER_02 32:29

Well, the unfortunate thing is I think the days of those are over, you know.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

It's sad. So, like, do you kind of anticipate that like next year essentially we're gonna get an S26, but more AI features?

SPEAKER_02 32:42

There are a lot of rumors about the S27 that showed it could get some big hardware upgrades, including UFS 5.0 storage, which means much faster storage, which would make the phone a lot snappier in general. That means the internal storage would be super fast, the write and read speeds, that means faster app openings and a lot of things. Yeah. Um, that'd be a huge upgrade. That's a hardware upgrade, not AI. But a lot of that is probably to do with some AI things because it wants to be able to read the right stuff.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

And like I just I kind of wonder.

SPEAKER_02 33:10

AI is causing a lot of problems for the phone industry because also, you know, all these AI companies are building all these data centers because they need all this RAM to run it their models.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

And they're picking up places like Arizona where it's hot as heck already. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

We don't have the not only raising the temperatures locally, but also raising the prices of everything. Yeah. Phones are gonna go up for sure this year. Um, because RAM just costs more. I mean, luckily, Samsung is in a great position because they don't only just make consumer electronics, they own their own foundry, they make RAM. Yeah, they are in the memory business. Samsung just had their most profitable quarter ever. They're they had like they were up like 800% in profits because of AI. They're selling that RAM to OpenAI, Anthropic, and all these other Google for their data centers. So they don't really they don't need mobile to do that well right now. So, I mean, they still want mobile to do well because obviously phones are great because smartphones and commodity is never gonna go away, and they have a lot of strategic partnerships that make them money. So I'm not saying it's negligible, but if they make a little less profit or even take a loss for a little while, it's not gonna be a big deal because in the grand scheme of their business, AI is helping them so much that if it eats into their profits, their margins for smartphones for a little while, not a huge deal. Because, you know, it they're gonna raise the prices of these homes. They already raised prices on tons of items over the last week. The Galaxy Book 6 Pro that I bought a month ago now costs$500 more.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

And um, you know, uh I finally ripped the band-aid off and bought a Nintendo Switch 2. Um, but I was kind of like in a panic of I uh was I think it was Sony had uh announced that they were gonna up the price of their PlayStation 5 Pro, even though it's already out you know for months now, and now they're gonna just up the price because of storage components and stuff. And then there was talks of Microsoft also doing the same thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then there's talks of uh Nintendo, every company is raising prices.

SPEAKER_02 35:15

This laptop right here that I have, the Azus Zenbook A16, which has the brand new Snapdragon chip in it that I'm reviewing right now for YouTube, this launched like a week or two ago at Best Buy for$15.99. At like 9 a.m. it went on sale. And five hours later, Azus realized that they had listed it too cheaply because of the 48 gigs of RAM in here. They raised the price to$16.99 only four hours after it had been on sale. So if you bought one the first four hours it's on sale, you got it for$15.99, and by$1.30 it was$16.99. That's how much AI is influencing anything that has RAM in it. So video game systems, cameras, smartphones, tablets, computers, all that stuff's gonna get more expensive. Um, Samsung has already raised the price of the Z Fold 7, they raised the price of their tablets. Uh Tab S11 Ultra and uh S10 Ultra both cost$100 more now than they did last week. Like I said, the book six lineup went up to$500 more. I bought one last month, it's now five hundred dollars more. I bought it for$1,700 and something, it's now$2,200 and something for the same exact model and SKU that I bought. That's 32 eggs of RAM. So you know the question is, are people gonna continue to buy these phones? Well, um we're gonna see. I guess we're gonna find out.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

I'm kind of like we talked about this a few times on the show where like we kind of feel like, or at least since last year, we kind of feel like we're in this weird phase of essentially we were just kind of getting the same phone, you know, every year. And you know, uh, I would say probably from like 2005 till 2000, probably, yeah, probably like up to COVID. Um the main drive was like this innovative, innovation, innovation, you know, with just the physical phones. And you know, since COVID, you know, we kind of haven't had that, and that some people, at least for me, like, you know, I've been kind of searching for that nostalgia. And actually, it probably is a lot of people because when we're when we were doing the live stream, that's what people were excited for. But now that we're kind of entering this AI era, um you know, like it's gonna have to be a shift focus. So there's probably gonna be like some turbulence as these cell phone companies like Samsung, uh Apple, and uh Google, you know, as um, and obviously, you know, outside of the US, as they try to figure out what do people want and also pushing this AI, you know, and like so I think the consumer um it's kind of like in the infancy stage of how much do we want AI in our actual lives and to ask because you know there's some resistance you know in certain age groups and demographics, but you know, like the the consumers' taste for these are gonna have to change and kind of catch up to also kind of justify these price increases that kind of have to happen because it's so expensive to make this stuff.

SPEAKER_02 38:27

Yeah, I mean, because honestly, if you keep raising the price, which the companies unfortunately don't have a choice because the RAM keeps going up. It's the consumer. But then it's really a it's it's a it's an effect that the average consumer doesn't really see because AI is really growing in in popularity and its usefulness, but it's not really in the consumer, it's not really in the user-consumer facing, it's the business side of AI that's so important. Yeah, I using it way more now I've ever had for my business. I just showed you some stuff I built with Cloud Code. I mean, I'm not a web developer, but I can now completely build anything for Sammy Gru that I want that would have cost me$10,000 to pay a web developer even six months ago, I wouldn't have been able to do. But Cloud Code has gotten so good that I can basically save 10k on a development project. And because I know some basic object-oriented programming like in Python from my math background, I don't know any web language, I don't know PHP, CSS, or any of that. But because I at least know basic syntax, I can work with Cloud Code and implement the stuff from my site and actually get something that works, saving me a lot of money. That's the upside of AI, and that's not gonna go away because it's super valuable to businesses. Businesses are willing to pay for that kind of you can cut$10,000 worth of overhead somewhere. That's uh that's a pretty big selling point. And it doesn't cost that much money. My Claude Max subscription costs me$100 a month. I could replace several tens of thousands of dollars of work with two or three hundred dollars worth of an AI plan and some tokens to have Claude do it for me. But the average user who's not using it for business, if I'm just, you know, someone like you who's a teacher, it's useful as it for that, but not as useful because you're not scaling it and using it for all these things. Like I use it for automation now to post stuff to our socials. You know, my Claude is doing things all the time. It's going out and researching new articles or new stories that we could bring in Sammy Gruw and it automatically posts them to our Slack so we don't have to go out and find them. It cross-references that with various other sources and automatically puts them in there for the writers. Claude does a lot of stuff for me that I couldn't do myself. But if you're in a in a place where that's not really useful to you, you're like, well, what does AI do for my life necessarily? Not that much. Maybe it can help me plan a trip, or it could, I can basically use it like a search engine. I could type it into Google, like what is the best toothbrush? But you could already do that in Google, it just is a little more personable. So the average person doesn't really see the benefit because, like, well, this just seems like Google, but maybe it's a little more personable because I can talk to it. It's not really doing anything I couldn't do with Google. So I people use it that way, don't really see the value. So I think Samsung and Apple are gonna have to show people the value by putting it in the background, they put the AI in people's face right now.

SPEAKER_00 41:13

And I don't know. Maybe they don't label it AI anymore.

SPEAKER_02 41:16

I think that's really the key is like just say here's some software features that does stuff, and even though it's AI doing the stuff, people are just AI fatigued.

SPEAKER_00 41:24

Yes, and I think that would so bad. I mean, and this is just a general consumer perspective. I think if um during that uh unpacked event, if they just said like software, software, software.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Yeah, if they just said these are the new features in One UI 9, yeah, people and they didn't say these are Galaxy I features, they're just like, here's a new thing that your phone can do in One UI 9. Yeah, people were always okay with that. They're just tired of everything has to be about AI because everyone puts AI in anything. In fact, I just saw a story that at the upcoming Computex uh trade show, which is a trade show for like more for computers and not phones, we're gonna try to send Abnov because Samsung's gonna be there um showing off their latest Galaxy Book 6 series, which is now super expensive. Yeah. Um, but the people who organized Computex put out a memo to all the companies that had tables exhibits at the show floor. It's kind of like CS, but for computers specifically, and it's smaller than CS. CS is about for everything, not just for computers. It's in Taipei, it's in Taiwan. And they put out a memo to everybody who is exhibiting there. It says if you don't have AI somewhere in your presentation or product, you can no longer be in the main exhibit hall. You're being moved to the secondary hall, which is not on the main show floor. So even people who sell things like cooling fans for your laptop, they want them to put AI into the marketing for their cooling fan. Guys, my cooling fan, buy it. It has AI, it uses AI to make things colder. Yes, it uses AI agents to figure out how to optimize the cooling efficiency. And so, yeah, they told all these accessory companies and other people like you don't have AI, so are sorry, AI is the theme of this year's show. You can't be in the main hall.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Oh, yeah. I I think AI, like, you know, the first introduction, really just like chat GBT um and stuff like that, but like the general like consensus, I think, with people is AI is something that I put something in and I get something out. Uh that serves some usefulness, but again, people are still more inclined to just go to Google.

Unpacked London And Foldables Roadmap

SPEAKER_02 43:38

Yeah, it really depends on. I mean, I think that'll change over time. I'm sure I'm sure over time it will people will start using uh AI agents more than Google, which is maybe not good for websites like mine, because then you have to worry about not necessarily search engine optimization in Google. You've got to worry about what's now called AI optimization, which is a completely different Different algorithm. That's one of the reasons why a lot of websites are struggling. Because if your website is now being surfaced more in Chat GPT and Claude and Gemini than Google search, well, you got to figure out how do these how does the AI figure out which websites to put in its outputs? And you got to figure out make sure that you're being put out there because search results are going to matter less over time and what gets put out in the chats of your AI agents is going to matter more. But right now, Google search is still a lot more than in terms of overall like people querying for certain things, like what's the best toothbrush. Most people are not, you know, even though AI is catching on, like I said, I think it's it's the problem of uh all the companies understand how big the potential is and they're making tons of money because they're selling it business to business. And it the potential for business, I can't underestimate. It's huge. I mean, you can save companies tons of money. You know, if it's a really huge company, you can save them millions, tens of millions of dollars by automating their workflow with certain AI tools depending on the business. I can't underestimate that impact, but you also then have the average person who's seeing like, why are we building all these data centers and and also using all this electricity and also raising the prices of literally every other electronic just for this thing that I don't care about? They're like, Chad GPT doesn't seem that useful to me, Cloud doesn't seem that useful because they're not using it for the business purpose. So there's a lot of, I think, you know, layers to the AI thing. The average person doesn't necessarily see how useful it is, but it definitely isn't going to go away. But maybe the consumer-facing companies that are making smartphones try to tuck it back a little bit behind the curtain. I always say that would be a good move. And then go back to focusing on hardware features. You can still have the AI algorithms that are doing stuff behind the scenes on your camera software and stuff. Uh, but maybe go back to some of that hardware innovation. There's still a lot of hardware innovation to be done. Yeah. Especially on things like batteries. Hopefully, we're going to see silicon carbide next year. Um, there's a lot of cool new display tech coming out in terms of different form factors. We're going to have rollable phones soon. Uh MKBHD and Jerry Rig Everything. They got their hands on LG's rollable phone that never released, and they made a video on it. Interesting. You just press a button and it rolls out. Samsung has had this tech for a long time. They just haven't released one yet. That's going to be the next evolution of foldables. Where instead of having to fold it, you just press a button and it rolls out into a big tablet uh with a flexible display. Okay. So those will be coming soon. You know, there's lots of interesting form factors. Um, keyboard phones are kind of making a comeback, like the Blackberry. This company called Unihertz who's basically building an Android version of the BlackBerry this year, which will be interesting to see that release. Can someone please bring back sidekicks? Yeah, see? Yeah, so there's a lot of interesting hardware that's coming out for phones. Um, so hopefully Samsung will continue to do something there because I do think there's still a lot of interesting to do. And if they don't do anything else, just upgrade the damn camera next year, the hardware, because I'm tired of having the same sensor. Yeah. I mean, the camera actually they did good on the software processing, but five years with the same sensor is too long. We cannot just get by on software for five years. I agree. Telling people to go buy the camera or to buy the phone, and the camera's five years old. There's a sensor, I feel bad doing that. So I really wish they would just go and upgrade that. So uh okay, so that's kind of that. Um what else? Uh unpacked. So we can turn our attention to the next unpacked. Um so we kind of know now where the next unpacked's going to be. This was leaked by several various outlets, um, not just Korea outlets, but US outlets as well. We were thinking Samsung would return um to the um To the Big Apple. To the Big Apple, to New York, which is where they were last year. And so we kind of figured that that would be what you know we would do. But no, they are not. Uh, we talked about this a couple weeks ago when we were last on the podcast, and I said if they do international, it probably could be Korea, but I was wrong. Yeah, no, you were way wrong. I was wrong, because I mean they only they've only ever held an international one in Korea outside of the US, because of course that's their home country, which makes sense why they would hold it there. But for the first time ever, Samsung is rumored to be hosting Unpacked on July 22nd, 2026, in London, England, United Kingdom. Uh, and we will be there. Uh, Sammy Grew will be there in a big way. Potentially potentially multiple of us will be there. Josh, who's our writer, lives in England. He lives about two hours southeast of London. So he'll be coming up, obviously, because he's so close. Uh, and then Tori and I are planning to make our way out to Jolly Old England and uh check out the event. So we will be there as well. Um, lots of big stuff planned to be unveiled uh at this event. We have the Z Flip 8, of course, and the Z Fold 8. Those are the returning stars that have been iterated on for a while. Um, both of those phones are rumored to get fairly minor upgrades because if you remember, both of them got pretty big upgrades last year. Uh the Fold 8, you know, got a massive facelift from the Fold 6. It got like half as thick and got all got a wider cover display, better cameras. It got a lot of stuff last year.

SPEAKER_00 49:28

Yeah, the fold the fold seven looked beautiful. Yeah, yeah, it's a course one. I still use it all the time.

SPEAKER_02 49:33

It's a beautiful phone. So that one is gonna get minor upgrades, but there's gonna be some cool stuff, you know, display upgrades, some camera tweaks. It could get uh some shallower crease, so the crease doesn't show as much on the inside, potentially a bigger battery, faster charging, just like the S26 Ultra has, but nothing major. It's not gonna be as big as last year. The flip eight, the same thing, a lot of smaller tweaks, because last year it got the bigger cover display. It's basically all screen on the cover display of the flip now. They finally did that starting with the seven. So the eight is basically just going to iterate on the flip's you know kind of design as well. So we don't expect any big changes on the flip or the fold eight, but we have an entirely new phone that we'll be releasing, and that is the Galaxy Z wide fold. Samsung is going to be releasing a wide fold because, of course, as we know, whenever Samsung knows that Apple is going to do something, two months before Apple does it, they go, boom, we beat you to it. And just like last year, when they released the S25 Edge, four months before Apple released the iPhone Air, which turned out to be a terrible mistake because the edge and the air were both giant, massive bombs. Yeah, Samsung said, hmm, we read all those rumors that Apple's going to be releasing the first ever iPhone fold in September of this year. And we also saw all the leaks that show that Apple is working on a wide version, which is called a passport foldable. You know, like the the Pixel 10 Pro that I have.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:05

Kind of like that, but even wider on the cover display. Like the covers be really wide. Yeah, that's what Apple's doing. So Samsung's like, well, hey, we can't be left out of the fun. We've been doing folds for a while. We can make a fold in any shape. Yeah, we'll just go ahead and make a wide fold and release it in July, two months before you guys release yours. So that's the plan. They're gonna be releasing a wide version along with the regular fold eight. It's gonna be a passport style foldable, um, which will basically be, you know, like just like the Pixel 10 Pro fold, where it opens, it has a really wide cover display, and it opens even wider into like a more tablet-like experience. You know what I mean? Um, I don't know, Tori, what do you think about that? In terms of your preferences for foldables, just your personal preference for foldables, how do you feel in terms of like let's say, you know, let's say you've got the option of the standard Z Fold 8, which looks like the fold seven, the wide fold, which is gonna basically have a big wide cover screen, even wider when you unfold it, or the trifold, which you've seen my trifold. Okay. What are your what are your thoughts on like those three form factors? Okay, so for me, um I'm excluding the flip here because the flip only has one form factor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is no form factor for the flip other than just one. These ones are all like, you know, they open book style, yeah, but they all have different you know, benefits and use cases.

SPEAKER_00 52:34

Yeah, so I would say like the fold seven, I think is like the sweet spot. I think that if we could just you know, at some point if they can just which they'll never be but you know, affordable. But um, I think that is the sweet spot in the sense of you're getting that fold factor uh based off of the the seven, it was very thin, sleek, nice to hold, very good, well designed. I really liked it.

SPEAKER_02 53:10

It feels so good in the hand, ladies. You know the procedures.

SPEAKER_00 53:14

I I really enjoyed it. Um I would say the trifold, like, yeah, when Samsung says the fold is luxury, I the new standard is that trifold. I think the trifold is luxury. Uh I think that is the type of phone for not for like the on the go, but maybe like if you want to like, you know, impress you know, some people. Yeah, you know, like if you're like stunt stunting is a habit, stunt stunting is a habit, put it in the unfold once, unfold again.

SPEAKER_02 53:48

Get like me, stunt stunting is a habit. That's what I did at CES with my trifold. I was just stunting on everybody. Yeah, you wouldn't be able to do it. The casino floor. I was like, boom. Unfold. I was like, look, folding once, I'll fold it twice. Yeah. Your phone can be like$1,000 on black, and then I lost, and I was like, oh, time to not stunt anymore. I just lost$1,000.

SPEAKER_00 54:08

But then you're like, hey, I say I'm like, I still got my phone, though. It's right here.

SPEAKER_02 54:11

I think I got trifold.

SPEAKER_00 54:12

So stunting is still a habit. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I think the trifold is like I I don't think that's for the on on the go everyday thing, but I I really do feel like the Fold 7 was a phone that I could really see be everyday on the go. Different needs. I I thought it was great. Now let me show you this wide fold.

SPEAKER_02 54:38

Let me show you the picture.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Show me the wide fold.

SPEAKER_02 54:40

This is what the app this is what the Apple iPhone is gonna look like. Like, look how wide the screen is. And like look how let me see if I can find the let me see if I can show you. Oh, here it is, right here. This is what it's gonna look like. Okay. Um, these are the official renders that Android headlines and uh you scroll it like just a little bit. Yeah, I clicked on the article, it's loading. The problem is I'm on the back end, so it's kind of slow because I'm logged into the administrator panel. And whenever you're logged into a WordPress site on the admin panel, the front end loads super slow. So this is what it looks like. It's gonna have a super wide front screen that kind of looks like a passport. That's why they call them passport style.

SPEAKER_00 55:18

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Like it it looks like a little smaller, like in terms of the height.

SPEAKER_02 55:24

Yeah, it is. Um, you know and also it's gonna be almost as wide as the trifold when you unfold it, but it only folds once. I see. But the thing is, look how wide it is and short on the front. Like it's really awkward. Yeah, I don't know. What are you doing on the front cover? Because remember, I don't like the design. You know, yeah, a lot of a lot of people forget. Like, if you haven't used a foldable, I always try to remind people of this. There's there's exceptions, but for the most part, if you go from a slab phone to a foldable, you're gonna find that the reality is that you don't use the inside screen of the book foldable the majority of the time. Bingo. So whatever the outer screen is, you need to understand you're gonna live with that greater than 50% of the time. For me, it depends on which foldable I'm using. But as the wider screen, as the cover screens have got wider, it actually just went up. I would say on the fold seven and my Pixel 10 Pro, which both have reasonably good outer cover screens I can use. I probably use them about 70% of the time.

SPEAKER_00 56:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:24

And I would not want to use this cover screen 70% of the time because it's very awkward. It's it's really thick. Like, I don't even know. It looks like I it would, it's way thicker, it's way like wider than the S26 Ultra. So like I had to be like holding it like this, it's gonna be weird, kind of weird to type, I feel like, without two hands.

SPEAKER_00 56:42

Yeah, and and again, we are mostly accustomed to using one hand, or at least we try to, you know, so that's why I think yeah. So let's look at the dimensions here.

SPEAKER_02 56:52

So you've got 161.4. That's gonna be the unfolded. When folded, it's 82.2 millimeters. Um, so that's gonna be the width. So let's see. Um S26 Ultra Dimensions. The S26 Ultra Dimensions, uh, okay, so I guess it's not too crazy. The S26 Ultra is 78.1 millimeters wide, so the wide fold is gonna be about four millimeters wider. So it's gonna bring it out to like right here. So yeah, it's gonna be like right like there. I'm gonna have to grip it like that. It's still it's still I I still feel like if I widen it my hand a little bit more, this phone's already wide. Yeah, like if I widen my hand a little more, it's gonna make typing with my thumb a little bit awkward, I feel like.

SPEAKER_00 57:43

And I mean, even with the ultra, I mean uh yeah, I can't hit everything, but like uh, and I'm right-handed. So even like there's some stuff if it's like in the bottom left corner, yeah, like really far to the left.

Trifold 2 Plans And Watch 9

SPEAKER_02 57:55

I mean, four millimeters isn't like a lot, but it's not nothing either. Yeah, four millimeters is a decent amount when you're talking about the width of a phone. Yeah, um, it's not crazy, but it's like a six percent increase in the width from the S26 Ultra. I still think that's not gonna be the most comfortable thing. And also just think about like the content. Like the content is gonna look a little strange on that phone, in my opinion. Um, like if you think about the Z Fold 8, that one's perfect for like reading because when you unfold it, it actually is like the dimensions of a book. Yeah, because it's like vertical real estate where you can read. Yeah, but this one, unless you unfold it, I feel like I'm not gonna want to. I mean, maybe that's an argument you can make to yourself. You'd be like, hey, the cover screen is so weird that I'm always gonna need to unfold it. And so now I'll be using my foldable unfolded. That only sounds good though, until you like are in the situation where you're in a crowded place and you need to walk and talk and you really don't want to unfold it, and then you regret having it. I don't know, man. I just don't see, I don't see, I think the wide fold of those three that I gave you is like a distant third place for me. Yeah. Because like the trifold is still a good compromise. Is that the awkward middle child? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the the trifold is still a good compromise because I can get the ultra wide tablet when it's unfolded, but I don't have to have that super awkward passport cover screen. I can have a you know, reasonably sized cover screen, just like the the downside is it's super thick when you fold it three times, and it's also you know, you definitely feel the heft. But Samsung is rumored, and that's actually a good segue to talk about the other thing I want to talk about. Samsung is rumored to be developing the Galaxy Z Trifold 2, which is gonna have a wider market uh release. They also just sold out of all their US stock of the Trifold, it is now completely gone, so no more trifolds. Um, they sold it only four times in the US, they did four different waves. They all sold out within like three minutes on their website every time they put them up. Every time they put them up for sale, they sold out instantly. Um yeah, I mean, I'm glad I got the Korean model. I never I never bothered buying the US model because like I don't want to sell my Korean model for a loss. And since it's not gonna be my main device anyway, I'm not gonna switch from the ultra. I switch back and forth between the ultra and the fold seven as my main sim. I don't think I'm gonna put the main sim in the trifold just because right now it's great for when I'm stationary because I like having the big tablet. When I'm on the go, I don't want it to be my main phone necessarily because it still has some compromises. But the Trifold 2 is supposed to be thinner, lighter, and also potentially have a bigger screen when unfolded. Ooh. So that could be huge. Of course, they may probably still keep the price at like$2,500. That would still be a decrease of like$400, but you know, that's something. Um, what else are we expecting to see at the event? So we got the Z Fold 8, Z Flip 8, the Wide Fold. Yes, we are. We are talking about watches, yeah. That's what I was gonna talk about. So we will see brand new watches, Galaxy Watch 9, and likely Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 will be released in London. So we're seeing some nice rumors, bigger battery, um, some different case materials potentially, some new colors potentially released this time, uh, maybe three different color options potentially for the ultra, like a gunmetal, a black, and a blue this time on your ultra, um brighter screen. You know, a lot of these features are gonna be things that you know, because the ultra the ultra watches the Apple and Samsung make are really for like they're targeting like extreme sports users. Yeah, they are because it's like they all have like crazy pressure ratings and stuff, so they're probably gonna increase some of that, which most people don't care about. But the brighter display, the bigger battery and the new color options will certainly be welcome for everybody. Uh, that's what I want. Um, and so it should be a very, very fun watch uh to cover. I think a lot of people will be excited about that one.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:02

And I I I've liked the update so far with just the regular ultra. Um it it's been a is it's a great piece.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:09

Yeah, they've improved, they've improved a lot with the software time. There's also some debates about whether or not they would bring the physical bezel to the ultra too, but I do not think that's gonna happen because they want to distinguish the classic and the ultra. Yeah, and we've talked about this before, they're already so close in size that if you bring the physical bezel to the ultra, what the hell is differentiating the classic? They're basically the same watch at that point. One is 47 millimeters, one's 49. Those are both huge. Yeah. So why am I selling the same watch, only two millimeters different size?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:39

You know, now that I've had I don't even remember how long I've had it now. You know, I was a big fan of the classic with the rotating bezel. Um, I think I've kind of grown accustomed to not having for um 21 months because you got it in July of 2024. You're right. Yeah. Uh, you know, I kind of gotten accustomed to not having uh the bezel. And I mean, like, over time, like they've gotten better about just like the, you know, I'm assuming it's the software updates, but like just swiping.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:10

Yeah, the smoothness of the one UI watch updates.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:13

Yeah, yeah. That's just the fluidity. They've made one UI watch a lot more fluid on the Ultra. And then we'll see the Watch 9. Um, still no real rumors about Galaxy Ring 2, which is kind of weird. I kind of thought there would be Galaxy Ring 2 at this show, but maybe not. Maybe we're not gonna see Galaxy Ring 2. Um it's possible still, because it's still kind of early. It's not super early, but it's kinda early. Still got three and a half months till we get till we get to unpacked. So it's not like out of the realm of possibility that there could have been no leaks and there'll be some leaks and it's actually gonna show up. But you would think that we would have like some regulatory filings and stuff because you've got to get all this stuff certified. You know, this tracks a lot of health stuff, so it's gotta go through a lot of certifications. So I would think that it would have already came out on a lot of those databases that we're always tracking. We're always looking for like that's one of the things I have AI do now, is it checks all those databases, so I don't we don't have to do it manually for like the FCC and you know, like all the FDA because they have to certify the watch and the ring, like check blood pressure, heart rate, and all that. So now Claude does that for me. I don't have to check it anymore because it's a lot very time consuming. Um, we're definitely not gonna see any new buds because we just saw Buds at the S26 launch.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

I love them. Yeah, yeah. Finally took them to the gym. Yeah, great. They're amazing. Buds4 Pro. And I like uh, you know, um, sometimes I'm not keep my phone like super close to me, but it'd be like text from say the name or um email from or Gmail from like whatever, you know. So it's really cool that it actually tells me. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:51

The Buds4 Pro are the one product Samsung's released in the last few years where I can say you should absolutely buy them. Um even at their retail price, they're definitely worth it at$249.99 because that's not bad. They honestly sound better than some$300 plus buds. So, you know, they're regularly on sale for like$25 off at$225. They're definitely like, you should just just buy them if you're a Samsung user, just buy them because they're an upgrade over anything, over the previous generation, over whatever buds you have, because they integrate so well with your Galaxy ecosystem. And like Tori said, all your notifications, you got all the voice commands, they're they're just good. Anyone, anyone who's looking for buds, especially if you own a Galaxy phone, you know, it's a no-brainer to pick up those. Um what else was I gonna say? Oh, what else could we see at the Unpacked event? So obviously, we'll do a preview before we leave for London. But the only other thing I can really think of that we might see, I don't think we'll see the Tab S10 S12 series, because they will release the Tab S12 series again this year, because for whatever reason, Samsung's just like, let's release a tablet every year, even though I don't understand it, because they're not selling big volume of tablets because they can't really compete with the iPad in terms of software experience. They keep doing it anyway. It's like, let's make some more tablets. Why not sell?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:03

I'm gonna like release a keyboard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:05

When the tablet let's release a keyboard seven months later for$400. Crazy. Fidel is gonna be reviewing that for us. I sent it to him. He has it right now. He's working on his review for Sami Guru. It's actually a well-made keyboard, but$400 is ridiculous. I mean,$200 maybe. I could see it. It's really well made. It's a nice keyboard and does it does work nicely with the tablet. It's got good tactile response. The trackpad's pretty nice.$400 is insane. I mean, you could buy a whole damn laptop for$400. And if you put the$400 plus the cost of the tablet, it's like$1,800. You almost could buy, I mean, because of the huge$500 price increase, you can't buy a Book Six Pro now. But a month ago, you could have bought one. I did for$1,700. Maybe that's why they did it. They're like, hey, I don't know if you guys noticed, but our$400 keyboard plus the tablet cost as much as the Book 6 Pro. We got to do something about that. Someone's like, hey, should we lower the cost on the tablet? Absolutely not. Just raise the price on the laptop. Boom. Problem solved.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:03

Boom.

Why XR Glasses Could Hit

SPEAKER_02 1:07:03

We're not going to lower the tablet cost. We're going to raise the price on the laptop. Then people will be like, oh, see, it's not as you can't just buy a laptop for that cost. Yeah. So you need to get the tablet plus the$400 keyboard. Why not? So the only other thing I could see released, as I was saying, is Galaxy XR glasses, which I'm actually super excited for. Because I've been reviewing some Android, I mean some AR glasses and AI glasses on my channel. You you helped me make a couple Beatles. And I they're super useful, actually. I mean, now a couple of the companies forgot to send me my prescription inserts, and that made it not as useful. But I did finally get a couple pairs where I did have prescription inserts and I wore them. They're useful. Like, particularly if you go, like I took a walk just around the office here in the downtown area and use the navigation. Like it's really nice because you've got the maps just overlaid on your real world and it shows you where to turn. So like if you're in another country or in a city where you don't really know where you're going, obviously I know where I'm for the most part around here. I I've worked had this office for a while. But if I didn't know where I was going, like for instance, when I was in San Francisco from the unpacked event, I didn't know where I was going around the hotel and I wanted to like walk around, find some food, you know, find a CVS to pick up some stuff I need for you know while I'm there, it's great because then I don't have to worry about looking at my phone and then running into someone or something, or walking out in the middle of the road. I'm looking straight ahead, so I'm aware of the surroundings, and I'm getting my navigation. Like that alone, I feel like is a huge use case. Plus, with these AI glasses, like the ones I reviewed, the ones I reviewed were from Inmo. I have the reviews on my channel now, the Inmo Go3s. Um those glasses, as well as the Galaxy XR glasses, you can turn off the display just by pressing a button when you don't want to use it. Yeah. And it saves the battery. That's cool. And they just look like regular glasses. So if you're like someone like me who already wears glasses, slap your prescription in it. And then when you want to use the features, you turn it on. And so I could definitely see this being useful because I mean, I definitely see the use case of if I'm walking somewhere and I don't know where I'm going, overlay the maps in my real world. But then there's other things too, like you can send messages from your glasses. And that's actually a lot easier than your watch, because with your watch, you have to like hold it up and talk to it that way. Whereas the glasses, mic, and speakers already on your face, so it's already by your mouth, so it does a better job of picking it up. You can talk to your favorite chat assistants, and Jim and I, you can get your AI, get questions answered directly. Yeah, send messages, all that kind of stuff. Take notes directly with your glasses, uh, translate, which is a big one. Like if you are in a foreign country, uh with the inmo glasses, you can like look at a menu that's in a different language and it immediately translates it and puts it side by side so you can read the English. So that way you can just be like, I would like this, please. Because you can see that like I did an example with a Spanish, I printed out like a Spanish sample menu that you would use like for Spanish class. Yeah. And then showed how it translates it side by side. Like, I'll take the steak and eggs, please. It was pretty nice. I can definitely see the use case for these. Um, they're definitely more appealing to me than the AR glasses, where you're like, they're bulky and you gotta like plug them in, or like the AR headsets, where it's like I'm only gonna use those at home. Whereas these, like I can see like these I'm gonna use all the time, and they're always with me. And they don't have to get in my way when I don't want to use the smart side of the glasses, they could just be glasses. Yeah, Galaxy XR is not something you can just carry with you and it's like. No, too much, too bulky and not comfortable, and other AR glasses. You know, it's like I'm not just gonna bring those with me in case, but these glasses, you know, like the inmos or the upcoming Galaxy XR, just put them on your face. They're lightweight, they look good, they don't look like some crazy contraption, people wondering what the heck it is on your face. They just look like regular frames, like I have for my regular prescription. So I like that. That's a lot more chill. I think it's gonna be great because they're gonna run Android, and just like the Buds4 Pro, they're gonna have all your Galaxy stuff baked in on the and the Galaxy version to be able to get access to all the stuff that's already on your phone without having to do pulling out your pocket, your phone out of your pocket. That's the thing I like the most about the Inmo glasses, is like if I wanted a feature that's on the glasses, then I can keep my phone in my pocket.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:18

Because I I take my phone out enough, I don't need to pull it out for everything, especially a situation where like I'm walking and I want to be aware of my surroundings. I don't want to have to be looking down at my phone to get directions. So I definitely see the use case. I mean, I think a lot more people will buy the XR glasses.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:36

Oh, I agree.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:37

You can see people already using the meta glasses quite a bit. Yeah, and meta has one big problem is that their their software is all based on Facebook stuff, and people don't want to use Facebook software because they're not a software company. Yeah. Honestly, Facebook software is maybe even worse than the Invo ones that I used. And so people don't want to buy the Facebook ones just because they're baked in the Facebook like maps and messaging or whatever. You have WhatsApp, but we don't really use WhatsApp in the US. Some people use it, but not very many people use WhatsApp. In like China and other countries, like the Europe, WhatsApp's a huge deal. So I guess if you're in like maybe in Europe or China or Asia, maybe MetaGlasses are a bigger deal. But here, having all of your messaging that you use on your phone on the Galaxy XR is gonna be pretty exciting. I have a feeling these are gonna sell well. I mean, of course, the key thing is the price. Like if they're super expensive, the price, right? Yeah, like if they cost more than a thousand dollars, no one's gonna buy them. No, but if they cost like$500, yeah, a lot of people are gonna buy them. Yeah, because people are gonna be like, I can say$600. Yeah, because people are gonna be like, I can see the appeal. Like, as long as they look reasonably stylish, like that's the other thing. It's the price and whether or not they look really like techie. People don't want to put something that looks super techy on their face. That's the thing I like about the Inmo ones as well, is they don't look super techie, they just look similar to regular frames. People don't want something that screams like uh, you know, this is a contraption on my face. That was one of the big problems with Google Glass when Google released Google Glass. They were so far ahead of their time 15 years ago. Yeah, but people did not want something that looked like something from Star Wars on their face. I remember that. Uh, and a camera that's constantly recording and blinking. They want something that's a little more discreet, yeah, a little more subtle, you know, that looks like it's stylish. Like if I don't want to use the smart features, I could still wear it and I don't feel like an insane person until I turn it on, and then I can go ahead and use whatever features I want. Agree. So yeah, I'll definitely buy some. I'll I'll do a full review of those and actually wear them for a while. I feel like I didn't do a very good service on the Galaxy XR mainly because Samsung took three weeks to send me my prescription inserts after I bought it. By that point, the hype was mostly over, and then once I used it, honestly, because with the prescription inserts and the forehead pad, it wasn't very comfortable, and so I didn't really see a huge use case. I sold by Galaxy XR like a month ago because I was like, man, this is a very expensive thing, and I mean I already kind of gave my thoughts on it, and uh for all intents and purposes, I don't think they've been selling very well.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:05

No, I was like, I don't think the Galaxy XR is I think you have more of a uh consumer base around like the glasses, yeah, but even then is not like that big, you know. Like I'm I maybe know two people who have them, yeah. Um, and like, but I think there are the best at becoming the most popular.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:30

I think people obviously like me who already wear glasses are gonna be a lot more inclined as long as the prescription is easy to get, you can get your you can get your true prescription and you can get like the a lot of people. I mean, I'm pretty sure they're gonna do it because Meta does it. You can get like coating, because we I like a blue light coating on my glasses because I wear them all the time. Blue light coating makes sure that like if you work at a computer, it's not hurting your eyes as much. Yeah, you can add all these things to prescription lenses, but as long as you can get your usual lenses that you want on them, people have glasses are gonna be very inclined to do it because it's like, well, if they look just like my other frames, they're not really gonna cost that much more because a nice pair of like frames. I mean, I have pretty nice ones, these are Tom Four frames, they're pretty expensive, but you know, I like to ball out of control. But uh these these are probably cost more than honestly, than than the Galaxy XR will for the frames. So it's like a nice pair of frames is not gonna cost you too much more, even if you got ones that aren't really that nice, they're three or four hundred dollars. So if you're only paying a hundred more, might as well get you some maps and messaging and some other features. But like I said, if you could just turn those features off when you don't need them, then they're just glasses. Yeah, there's no downside. I've got the features when I want them, when I don't want them, then they just look like the glasses that I would wear anyway. Yeah, so as long as they look stylish, the price is good. I think anybody who already wears prescription glasses will be, you know, feeling pretty good about getting a pair because you're already wearing them on your face all the time. Why not? And then yeah, as long as they look stylish enough. Some people who don't have glasses will wear them, but I do think it's a harder sell for people who don't wear glasses because they're not used to wearing them. Yeah. Um, for me, it's an easy sell in that sense because I'm uh it's a part of what I do every day, is wearing my glasses. So we'll see. But I think that's an interesting product category that Samsung's gonna jump on into later this year.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:16

It'll be smart, smart for them to do.

Galaxy Airdrop With Apple Devices

SPEAKER_02 1:16:18

Yeah. And also, uh, before we go, I've been using Airdrop because we talked about last time the Airdrop on the Galaxy Swing Soldier. I've been using it with my MacBook Pro. It works great. Samsung and Google did a good job building airdrop. You know, now you can airdrop files from your Galaxy to your friends' Apple devices. Now, I will say, like I said before, it is very slow if you do big files, but most people aren't doing that. I did gigabytes and it takes a long time. It's a lot slower than Apple to Apple Airdrop. But if you're just doing like one picture, which is what most people are doing, or like three or four pictures, it takes like five seconds. Oh, okay. And it's very easy to do. I like it. Now, of course, like I said, if you're gonna drop like five gigs of files, it's gonna take 20, 30 minutes. Yeah. Whereas if you were doing it from an iPhone to an iPhone, it'd take like three minutes. So, but most people aren't dropping huge video files, they're just dropping really small videos, yeah, or a couple you know, must say a couple photos you took with your friends, and now you can do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:11

So the only thing left that they need to solve is figure out how to get iMessage natively and FaceTime natively on Android, and then everybody's switching from Apple to Android. They're gonna be like, I can just get all the Apple stuff and still come to Galaxy. Yeah, like come on over. Like that song, you know, by Christine Aguilera. Come on over, come on over, baby. Isn't that Christine Aguilera?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:34

I think so.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:34

Yeah, man, I know. What can I say? I'm an aficionado. You are, you really are early. Early 2000s pop music, you know. A little something for everybody here. Yeah, we do. I figure if someone accidentally stumbled on this podcast and they were looking for an early 2000s pop uh history podcast, well, I've got you covered. So you came to a Samsung Tech podcast, but we got you covered anyway, so no problem. Yeah, we do. And so all I want to say on that note is that uh this week, uh make sure that not only are you curating your favorite tunes from pop music from the early 2000s, but also keep expanding your musical galaxy.