Samsung’s Next Foldables Could Get Wider And Thinner Than Anyone Expected

We bounce from headline tech drama to the details that actually change what you buy and when you buy it. We dig into Apple’s leadership shift, Samsung’s upcoming foldable leaks, and the One UI 8.5 features that feel genuinely useful day to day.

• Tim Cook stepping down and what an executive chairman role signals 
• John Ternus as CEO and the case for more Apple risk-taking 
• rumor: Apple moving to two iPhone launches per year and why Samsung should worry 
• Wide Fold leaked dimensions, thinness, and the one-hand usability problem 
• why a foldable must feel good when closed 
• Z Fold 8 smaller camera cutout and limited upgrade expectations 
• Tab S12 Ultra testing and the “boring upgrade” concern 
• Qualcomm Snapdragon partnership chatter vs Exynos fears 
• Google Android Show, Android XR frustration, and the NBA courtside crash 
• One UI 8.5 rollout timing and what features matter most 
• Google call screening vs Bixby screening and why automation helps 
• Japan FeliCa and Suica support coming to global Galaxy phones 
• new AR glasses rumors plus Galaxy Buds Able bone conduction leak 
• Galaxy Ring battery degradation and the e-waste reality 
• S26 Ultra review highlights and who should actually upgrade 
• Galaxy Book 6 Edge leak, Snapdragon laptops, and storage limits for creators 
• listener growth update, next week apps and routines plan, and video channel help

Don't forget, mystery box program is now available. 
If you guys have questions if you want us to answer um next week.

S26 Ultra Mystery Box Sign up: https://laylo.com/springer/8g0gnSvT
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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

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back, everybody. This is episode number 59 of the Sammy 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 back. We actually did it a week apart. While people are gonna be like, oh my god, these guys back on the weekly schedule. Don't get you know, don't get too used to it. We we might do it, we might keep it up, we might not. You never know. But we're trying. It's like the mystery box program. Yeah, it's like what's inside the mystery podcast? Will it be every week or will there be like a seven-week gap in the middle? Probably not gonna be that big of a gap for a while because Tori's gonna be here for two months in office. I will be. So I'm I'm thinking we might put together a run of like three months of solid week, you know, weekly podcasts. And then we'll probably have a couple gap when the mystery boxes are getting shipped because I never have a lot of time around the shipping. You know, I always want to do podcasts, but the you know, it's a priority to get the boxes out. Yeah, because the office turns into a shipping fulfillment. It does, yeah. Yeah, uh, it turns into like a warehouse. So at some point we're gonna have to get like a separate space for that. But you know, everyone's trying to save money these days because these prices are crazy out here. You know, today I paid six dollars a gallon for some premium gas because of course in my car. Oh, yeah. The Range Rover takes three minutes to put in there. Very expensive. Oh, yeah.$120 to fill up my tanks, and I can't be affording extra space here just yet. How's your week going, Tori?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Uh it's gone, it's going pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

We're both over our cold, well, mostly anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 95%. I I I think this is the best I've sound in the last two weeks. Yeah, testing, testing. We sound better than the last week, that's for sure. Oh yeah. No, uh, I had a joke for you. Um, one of the the teachers uh uh I teach with, uh he was leaving, and I was like, hey, um, you know, why are you leaving? I thought all teachers sleep at sleep at the school. And he said, Oh no. But then he was like, Hey, I uh there's a student I never see, and I just happen to be driving away one day, and the student sees me and he says, Hey, and then and my first fear was dang, now he now he knows I don't actually drive a Range Rover. Uh oh. I was like, No, you're even telling the kids you drive a Range Rover. Oh yeah. Yeah, you can't be doing that, you know, if you don't, because then they'll find out. Yeah, yeah, then they'll find out. But we'll find out. No, it's just a Toyota Corolla. Yeah, well, yeah, it's a nice solid car though. It is, it is.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

I had a Honda Accord for a long time, you know. You gotta you gotta drive something, you know.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

No, I mean they're just reliable, they're just so good.

Intro

SPEAKER_00 2:23

They're very good. I had a Honda Accord for quite a while. I had a black, uh black one and then a white one, actually. I had a Honda Accord for about five years from 2012 to 2017. Yeah. That's when I got my first Audi, I think, when me and Nicole got married. But I had the Accord for a long time when I first started at GCU. The car I had was a black accord, and then I had the white uh cord touring that I bought after that, and then I got the Audi. Um, you know, I I I had a pretty good week. Um, you know, a little bit of speed bumps here and there with some projects, but I keep thinking to myself, hey, could be worse. I could be Mike Vrabel, you know. I don't know if you've seen what happened with Mike Vrabel. Yeah, I don't know if you guys keep it up, but uh apparently, you know, he uh got photographed with uh NFL reporter Diana Roussini at a hotel here in Phoenix during the NFL uh meetings, where they have like their meetings like a month ago, the marches at the Biltmore, and then at a hotel in Sedona. The problem is they're both married to other people and have kids with other people. Uh uh. And uh they both denied it and said that they were just friends, and then uh the last few days, some more pictures have been surfacing, going all the way back to six years ago of them kissing in a New York bar, uh-uh, holding hands, playing blackjack in Vegas at some casinos, and various other photos. So now he's come out and said that he's gonna be taking some time away. He's actually gonna not be able to be with the Patriots for their whole entire draft. He's going to counseling on Saturday.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Yes, actually, you know what? I did I did see that. I did see that.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

It's a very deep rabbit hole. Yeah, yeah. That's like a football coach, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Yeah, yeah. For the Patriots, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the the crazy thing is that her oldest son, she named Michael. Oh no. And she had her oldest son nine months after the photos were captured of her and Vrabel in that bar in New York City. So I don't know, you guys can put that together. Yeah. And then she also tweeted out You can do the match. She also tweeted out four days after her son was born, just looking at my four-day old son Michael, and thinking about all the great Michaels who've both played and coached in the NFL. That's wild.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

That is wild.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

And then yesterday, after people dug up all these tweets that she had, she deleted her Twitter yesterday at 4 p.m. Oh wow. Because people deleted, they they people, you know, people like to do their investigations when things like this happen. Yeah. And so she deleted her ex.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Getting dicey and spicy.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Yeah. So, you know, it could be worse. It could be it could be worse. It could be Mike Vabel. It's not looking good for him. It's not looking good. I don't know if he's gonna survive. I mean, he might not get fired, but that's because Robert Kraft also had a similar scandal where he was going to some massage parlors, the owner of the Patriots. Yes. So he can't really say that he's worried about morality from his head coach. That'd be a little hypocritical. Yeah, that would be so I'm not sure. He might he might be saved by that. Yeah. But I think if he was the head coach anywhere else, and an owner who didn't have that scandal, he probably would have be fired by now because it's a big distraction for the team. It's one of the biggest stories in the NFL. Yeah. Another huge story, we'll just transition to this because normally we don't talk a lot about Apple on this podcast because it's not the Apple Group.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Was it yesterday or today? I think it was yesterday. It was a couple days ago. Oh, it was a couple days ago.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

It's not the Apple Group podcast, but sometimes an Apple story is so big that we have to talk about it. And uh Tim Cook has stepped down as the CEO of Apple. So Tim, he cooked. He did cook. And now he he's been cooked. Yeah. Now he's done. So he's out of the kitchen. Tim is out of the kitchen. Well, in September, he officially steps down September 1st. Um he's not leaving Apple, though. He's gonna move into like an executive chairman role. Let me always do that. I mean, but that means basically he's for operation purposes, he's not gonna be doing anywhere near what he was doing before. He'll be in an advisory role, symbolic role. I think basically what they really mean is he has a pretty good relationship with our president and they want him to still be doing some lobbying.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

And so they want him officially to still be a part of Apple.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Oh, they don't get some tariffs.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah, you don't want any extra tariffs from those Chinese factories for the iPhone. So, like, we'll just keep Tim cooking over there at the White House for a little bit longer. Uh, but anyway, John Turnus is replacing him, who is the guy who, I mean, by all accounts, is the right guy for the job. Everyone kind of figured he would be the guy who knows a lot about Apple. He's the guy who made the Apple Silicon Max. He he's the one who basically helped our Apple develop their own chips. Those have been wildly successful. The MacBook Pro is by far, in my opinion, the best laptop in the world. It gets like crazy battery. My MacBook Pro gets 20 hours of battery life and still can chew through you know several hours of 4K editing and still, I mean, Windows laptops in terms of efficiency, they don't they don't come close. So, I mean, this guy had some huge wins in his time leading the hardware team. So I think he's the right guy. Uh he's a much different guy than Tim Cook from everyone's accounts of him, so we might see a little more adventurous uh innovation from Apple potentially. Um Tim Cook is a lot less decisive and adventurous. You know, Steve Jobs was more of that way, so a lot of people have said John Turnus is closer to Steve Jobs than Tim Cook in that he likes to be very decisive. He's okay with like pushing the envelope, maybe taking some risks a little bit more than Tim Cook. So we might see a little more innovation and interesting things from Apple. Yeah. Um, but I have to say, you know, you know, even though they're obviously the competition for Samsung and we're a Samsung website. Uh I mean, in general, I mean I use obviously I use the MacBook Pro as my main machine. I I don't like the iPhone, I just don't. I don't there's a lot of things I don't like about iOS and the iPhone that I still just don't like. Um I have one, but I I I just can't use it as my main phone. I've actually tried many times, just it just can't do it. But um they they've made a lot of great products, and Tim Cook took over in a really tough situation. And you know, you have to applaud the effort that he had because you know he took off for Steve Jobs, who is iconic, this iconic figure, larger than life guy, who no one I don't think would have been able to take over for him and do the job that Tim Cook did. I mean, he guided Apple through the launch of AirPods, Apple Watch, those are all things that came out during his tenure, not Steve Jobs. He's kept pushing Apple forward, the Apple Silicon Max, uh, Apple Music, all this stuff, making money off of services and not just hardware. Um, he's helped them become more profitable. You know, they're a much bigger company now than when Steve Jobs left 15 years ago. Um, and to do that, taking over someone that's you know such a big figure, that's a hard thing to do. It's kind of like how we talked about, you know, when Nick Saban left Alabama. Yeah. Uh Calen Daybore taking over for him. That's a that's a tough job taking over for an icon. Like that. And speaking of which, hey, yeah, Calen Daybore also re-signed a contract this this uh week for a huge amount. He's not the highest paid coach, but like the third highest paid coach in college football now. Signs them him through 2033. So a seven-year total extension for seven uh total years. I I think he deserved it. I mean, to be honest with you. I mean, he he took us to the playoff last year. Couldn't expect the guy to win the national championship in the second season. Yeah, no. He didn't even have a chance to get any of his recruits really in the door. These are still all the guys that were at the tail end of Saban's recruiting. So you can't really judge him fully in the fact that he took those guys to the playoff in his second year and they won a game against Oklahoma. You know, this year we're finally going to get start to get to see the guys that he recruited are actually gonna get a lot of playing time. So the real question will be can he win with his own recruits? And that'll be an interesting test. But from everything I've seen, there's nobody else that we could go get who's a lot better than him.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Yeah, yeah, I think he's a really good cover.

Tim Cook Steps Down At Apple

SPEAKER_00 10:01

He's starting to understand the Alabama culture, and the fans are starting to like him. I mean, you know, he's not Nick Saban yet, obviously, but Nick Saban won that seven national titles. You can't win seven national titles in two years. Like, you got to give the guy a reasonable expectation. I mean, I think I think we have a better chance of winning another title in the next five years under him than we do if we replaced him with somebody else. Yeah. I think we have a decent chance in the next five years of still making it back to a national title game with him. So uh very happy to have him back as well. But yeah, I want to give a shout out to Tim Cook, you know. I hope he enjoys his uh his retirement. I I think he did a really good job with Apple. I think it'll be very interesting seeing what Turnus does. I think if he does start pushing more innovation, well then Samsung's really got to push the innovation. Because if Apple starts becoming the innovator, which you know they're always under Tim Cook, they've been very slow. Tim Cook has decided to sit on foldables for like eight years while let Samsung just do their thing. If Turnus decides to not do that and start cranking up stuff, you know, before Samsung can get there right in the beginning, that's gonna make it tricky. It will make it quite tricky. And let's talk about another thing that came up. It's not the Apple podcast, but this is actually very important to Samsung in terms of competition. Another rumor, which it looks like is now gaining steam, and a bunch of credible Apple and general tech leakers have said that Apple is planning to go to a twice-a-year phone launches, kind of like Samsung does, and they're planning to break it up in the following way their premium devices like the fold, the iPhone fold and the iPhone Pro, Pro Max, and potentially they might be launching an iPhone Ultra this year. Those super premium ones will release in the fall when they normally release their phones in September. Yeah. And then in the spring, they will release their base model, so the base iPhone 18. So which means that we won't get an iPhone 18 in September like we normally would. The iPhone 17 will stay the most current base iPhone until April, maybe. But that has big implications for Samsung because guess what? They usually release the S series in late February, early March. So now anybody who's thinking about buying a phone in that time period and they're not 100% loyal with Samsung, they're also gonna have in the back of their mind maybe I should wait. Instead of getting a base Galaxy S27, maybe I should wait and see what Apple's gonna do with the iPhone 18. True. That was not something you have to have in the back of your mind before because Apple's already released their stuff and you already know what they have. So now you have extra competition. Yeah, because then you'd have to wait all the way till September, which is longer. What if for whatever reason people are impatient when they want to get a new phone? Like once you make up your mind that I want a new phone, like I want it now, that's just the way it is. I don't know why that is, but um, people are that way. They they want to, if they need a new phone or they want it, like I'm gonna buy it in the next month or so. But if it comes, if they're gonna release it in April, that's not too long, that's a month. Like if you're thinking about buying in February, well, now the Galaxy S27's out, but I know the iPhone 18's coming out. Maybe I could just wait a month and take a peek at what they got. True. And considering that Apple just did a really good job with the 17 last year in September, they upgraded almost everything. By all intents and purposes, it's a better phone than the base S26. That Samsung needs to bring their game on the base models. We've already talked about this. Yeah, they do. Um we talked about this last week. You know, the base model and the plus model are just kind of chilling there, they're just kind of there. They're not like anything nothing super special. We talked last week about Josh's S26 Plus review on the site. You know, it's a good phone, but a good phone for$1,100 isn't that good. It needs to be better than good for$1,100. It does. It doesn't even because it's not that much cheaper than the ultra. It's like why what distinguishes it from the ultra? Just buy the ultra because it's already the$1,100 is already so a lot of money, man. Yep. Like it's crazy. So that could really change some things about Samsung's general you know, strategy because they might have to now compete with Apple on a spring launch. They've never really had to do this before because Apple doesn't ever release anything except in the fall. That's it. They just, you know, 100% fall and and that's all. Fall and that's all. That rhymes. I didn't even mean to rhyme it, but sometimes you gotta rhyme it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Oh no, I I think is it'll if they actually do that, it'd be a good thing in the sense of like just driving that competition for, you know, um, just based off of this most recent unpacked, you know, um, people were not as happy with the uh physical features of the phone.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Yeah, we talked about that last week. It's all about the AI. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

If you have that competition around that same time frame of when they do that, uh, you know, the January, February launch. Um, you know, that's really gonna put some pressure on them to be like, ooh, you know, we can't just do like whatever. You know, we kind of have to like think about and try to anticipate what Apple's gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

You can't just say whatever's clever, whatever's clever. Anyway, we talked last week about the July Unpacked.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Yeah.

Apple’s Two-Launch Phone Strategy

SPEAKER_00 15:08

And I wasn't really planning on talking about it a whole lot today, but there's so much stuff going on. We had so many leaks in the last week, we gotta talk about some of it. The Z Widefold just got a massive leak today, and we now know the confirmed dimensions, and these dimensions are insane. The dimensions of the widefold, according to our buddy Ice Universe. We love Ice Universe. We do. Shout out to him. Although some of the stuff he's doing on his ex now is a little sketch, I'll tell you. He's fallen into the whole AI slop. He generates some AI images of women with the large chests and puts those on his wallpapers to try to get some more views. I'm not sure we should be doing that in the industry, you know. I'm not trying to get to that level, but hey, you I guess you do you Ice. I don't know. We'll we'll still read the leaks, but I'm not looking for those wallpapers. That's really not what I come to your account for. You know, it is what it is, but you know, yeah, that's what the people are doing. Anyway, the dimensions are supposedly, according to him, 123.9 millimeters in height, 161.4 millimeters in width when folded, which is giantly huge when folded. We talked about this last week. It's gotta be too hard to hold this with one hand. Yeah, no, and here's the craziest spec with an impressively slim thickness of 4.3 millimeters when it's unfolded. That's even thinner than the trifold. And you remember how thin the trifold was when it's unfolded. This is even a lot thinner than that. Now, if you fold it shut, it is 9.8 millimeters thick, which is getting close back to that Galaxy G Fold 6. It's not that's not really that close. You know, that's not really that it's going trending the opposite way of what we know from the Fold 7. But they do closely match another other leaks that we've seen before. So this one is slimmer and narrower uh than the Huawei. Huawei was the first Huawei is a Chinese brand. They used to sell phones with Android, but now they got banned by the government, not just by Trump. This is nine years ago. They got banned in 2017. I used to cover stuff for them on my personal channel back when I covered lots of different phones, yeah. But they don't run Android anymore, they have their own operating system. But they released a wide fold like two weeks ago in China. They were the first they wanted to beat Samsung and Apple to the punch. Yeah. Called the Pura X Max. And this one is supposedly going to be slimmer and narrower than that one. Um, but the Galaxy Z Fold 7, on the other hand, is a lot taller, um, but also a lot more narrow, which of course we already know. That's kind of the thing, is that Samsung is basically saying, okay, we heard some people say, I mean, I think this is the wrong approach, honestly. We talk about more in a second, but they heard some people say, Oh, we want a wider cover screen than the fold seven. And some people are like, well, we like the tall aspect ratio when it's unfolded. They're like, okay, well, we'll just make a really wide one and then we keep the taller one. But people want a balance between the two. Like, if you were gonna make another one, if you're gonna make a book style foldable, why don't you just make it like this one? Look at the find in six. What's wrong with this? Yeah, yeah. Actually, like I have the Oppo Find N6 right here, which is one of the best foldables I've used. This is the one from Oppo. This is the global model. This thing is amazing. If it launched in the US, it would, it would get it would get mad purchases. And look how look how nice it is, too. It's got almost no crease. You can barely see the crease on that one. Yeah, yeah. You can barely see the freeze. The crease on that one's a lot less visible than the fold seven. And if you fold it, it's wider, but it's not so like wide that you can't hold it with one hand. It's closer to your S25 Ultra, S26 Ultra. You know what I mean? Like it's pretty. I mean, to me, it's actually pretty thin. It's yeah, it's thin. It's kind of close to the Z Fold 7 in terms of like its thinness when it's folded, and it's got a really a wider cover screen, kind of like your S25 or S26 Ultra. Yeah, no, no. But it's not so wide that it's like I can't hold it with one hand, because you don't want that. No, yeah. What is the I don't understand? What is we talked about this last week? What is the benefit of that though? I just don't get it. The the the width when it's folded is or sorry, that was unfolded. Unfolded, 161.44 millimeters and 82.2 millimeters wide when it's folded. That's insane. Let me look this up. Hold on. I have to know what is the width of the Oppo Findin 6 when it's folded? Let's find out. The width of it when it's folded is 74.12 millimeters. So the wide fold is almost nine millimeters wider when it's folded. That's a lot, that's actually that's substantial. That means it's gonna go out like this much more. So I'm gonna be gripping it like this. It's not gonna be as comfortable to type. No, even for me, I'm gonna be gripping it like this. And or like this, if I if I'm doing like that, if I'm doing it with this hand, it's gonna be a little uncomfortable to type, I feel like. I mean, I have to get it in hand, but it just doesn't seem like I don't see the purpose of it.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yeah, no, I don't I don't see the appeal. And I mean, um I would rather them keep it as close to like a regular standard like slab phone in terms of like the dimensions of like how of how wide it is, you know, just to keep that that one hand.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

I mean, I guess they're saying that when it's when it's unfolded, it has a four-three aspect ratio, which is closer to a tablet. I guess that's the benefit. But as I talked about last week, and and you know, I don't go back, we talked about it last week, but since there's this new leak, we have more context. You're gonna use the foldable shut most of the time. Yeah, yeah, you are. So if the foldable, if the dimensions when it's folded are awful, the benefit of it being unfolded is not gonna matter as much to you because you're gonna be thinking about how uncomfortable it is or useless it is when it's actually folded. Because trust me, most people are not using their foldable unfolded most of the time. Yeah. Some people are using it unfolded, but they're not using it, not using it the majority of the time. So I I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Well well then uh I kind of have a question or just you know, your perspective then. Um is can't do you think we might be going too far in the sense of like trying to combine tablet and phone? Like, you know, are we trying to like is the needle moving too far?

Wide Fold Leak And Usability Debate

SPEAKER_00 21:14

I mean tablet for for the on-the-go average. I mean, I guess they're just trying to find different ways to go about doing it. I mean, there's nothing wrong with having options. I just don't think this one's going to Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think this one's going too far into the I mean, as a data point though, which is very strange to me, uh, I was looking at our mystery box data for the signups so far, and we have like a close to a thousand signups so far. I put the sign-up form up like a month ago. About half in terms we have three devices though, on this one. So it's a little charter to do the breakdown. In in January, we just have like well, I guess we still have three because we have three different sizes, but everyone's getting the ultra for the for the S launch. It's not really it's not really it's not really a competition. But we have the flip, the fold eight, and then the wide fold. And I thought. I just looked at the day-to-day. I haven't looked in a while. I was like, I figured most people would be on the fold eight. The flip is always small because for whatever reason, our enthusiast audience, they just don't like the flip. It's just not their deal. That doesn't mean the flip doesn't sell well. It just means that we don't have a lot of people in our audience that buy it. There's a lot of ladies who like the flip, but uh they don't read Sammy Guru, I guess. That's sad. Um, but yeah, so our audience doesn't really buy it. So right now, of the thousand people roughly, is like 50 flips, and then like the other one is almost 50-50. Like the fold eight has like 500 and the white fold has 450. I thought it would be like 800 fold eight and like 150 or 200 white folds. That's what I would have thought. I thought it would be like maybe 20. So the question is that factor how many of these people will actually end up buying it is the other question. I mean, putting your name on the mystery box list is one thing, but actually going out and purchasing the device is obviously quite another thing.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

And that place order button.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Yeah, because it's gonna be probably as expensive as the full date. Spending$2,000 is a lot different than putting your name on our new on our email list. Um, it's a little harder to put the two thousand dollars out of your bank account. So we'll see. But I mean, at least the interest people are interested in, I mean, that does mean something. Yeah, it's not meaningless.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

So there could be more stuff that comes up. Yeah, so we'll see.

Fold 8 Punch-Hole Change

SPEAKER_00 23:19

I mean, maybe someone more excitement. Maybe someone really does want this, and we just we just don't know. You never know. Uh well, like I said, the leaks kept coming for the these phones this week. The fold eight, we got some leaks on that too. The fold eight is apparently getting a smaller cover screen camera hole. So, you know, the camera punch out on the front, yeah, it's apparently getting quite a bit smaller. So the camera uh punch out's gonna go um to 2.5 millimeters down from 3.7 millimeters, which is uh almost not quite 50%, but I guess that's like a 30% reduction. That's pretty good. You can see the difference in the images that we put in the article here. This is the Z Fold 7, and that's the Z Fold 8. And it does make a difference in terms of the immersion of like the content on the screen, and especially since the cover screen is a little smaller on the Z Fold, um, having that extra screen real estate is nice. Um, that means, of course, the selfie camera is also smaller. Um what do we um you know what do we think though about what it means about the camera quality? Well, Ice Universe also leaked this, and he says that Samsung may have found a way to reduce the cutout size um in a way that doesn't reduce the actual quality of the selfie camera. So he's still got the same sensor. Because obviously people would not like it if you reduce the punch hole, but that means you got a much worse sensor, yeah, and that's how you were able to reduce it. That means you get worse worse selfies because people still want to be able to have a decent selfie cam. Obviously, even if you're not an avid selfie enthusiast, if you use your phone for business, the selfie camera is what you use to take video calls. So if you need to take a video call for your work, um, and the inner one on the fold is awful, the one that's uh on the inside display. So you're gonna use the one that's on the cover screen. You don't want that to get worse. That would not be good. Um but so far, unfortunately, this is really the only thing we've heard um about we haven't really heard anything else about huge upgrades coming to the fold eight, potentially a slightly larger battery, maybe the faster charging that the S26 Ultra got, so 60 watts instead of 45 watts, but that's not really that big of an upgrade. And then this is the only real design change we've heard so far, or massive design change, is that you're gonna get the smaller selfie camera on the front, which doesn't make it look more aesthetically pleasing, but not gonna be a groundbreaking change. I mean, from everything I've seen so far, I would say if you have a Z Fold 7, your pocketbook's probably safe this year. You're probably not gonna feel like you need to upgrade to the Z Fold 8. There's probably not gonna be much temptation to upgrade. You know, maybe that's why everyone's so excited about the wide fold. They're like, maybe I'll take a peek over to the wide fold side, just because it's something new and different and novel. People like that. But if you're someone who likes that taller aspect ratio fold, which I I mean, I don't haven't had a wide fold in my hands yet, but I have a feeling I'm gonna end up being in the camp where I like prefer the wider. I don't know, like again, why don't they just make one like why don't they just make one like the Find N6? It's like this one's like perfect. It feels like a real phone when you're you know, when you're doing this, you know, it feels like a real phone when you've actually got it on the cover screen, and when you unfold it, you get like a miniature dablet. It's like the perfect balance between the two, in my opinion. So I mean, I guess Samsung doesn't want to admit that their original form factor was not the perfect one. So they're like, we'll just make another one that's on the opposite extreme. I don't know if that's the best idea. But no, the fold but the fold seven is great. I mean, I I don't have a problem with the way it is now. The one the N6 is just a little better because I prefer to have a little bit wider cover, but it's not it's not bad. The fold seven is still something I use all the time, and it's great for reading because it's taller. Um Samsung started internal testing for the Tab S12 Ultra. So we we uncovered some firmware that shows they're testing some stuff on the Tab S11 Ultra or S12 Ultra, but for all intents and purposes, it looks like it's gonna be the same kind of boring upgrades as before. It looks like this time they're going to they're they're still doing this weird thing where every other year they don't upgrade one of the models. So, like with the S10, there was S10 Plus and the S10 Ultra, there was no S10 base. With the L S11, there's an S11 and an S11 Ultra and no Plus. And so this year there'll be the S12 Plus and the S12 Ultra and no base S12. And it's still rumored to cost around$1,200 for the Plus,$1,300 for the Ultra, and probably still sell that ridiculous$400 keyboard, which they released nine months late for the S11 series. And right now we're in the middle of working on a review on that. Um, Fidel, who's our writer, he made a nice little article giving his first impressions. I sent him one. I bought one, like I said, my own money and sent it. Samsung didn't send it to us. Probably because they don't want any media to cover that, because they don't want any of the media to remind people that they released it nine months too late. So they're like, guys, we're not gonna we're not gonna send any review units about that. We don't want people posting too much about it because then they'll remind people that it was supposed to come out last, you know, in December, and we released it in April or late March.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Slacking.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Yeah, probably a good idea not to send media review units on that one. I mean, we would have appreciated it, but you know, you know, we we would have appreciated that.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

We give it, we give it.

Tablets Chips And Android Roadmap

SPEAKER_00 28:51

You know, I understand why you wouldn't want to do that. Um, what else we got? Uh oh, Qualcomm put out a post where they said that they are looking forward to working with Samsung on a lot more phones. I don't know why this will surprise anyone, but it's always a story because people are always thinking that Samsung's gonna move to Exynos processors in the US with the S27 Ultra. Every Ultra, it's like, oh, this is the year they finally do it. It's not gonna happen. They're not gonna leave Snapdragon, at least in the US. They might do it in some other regions, but Snapdragon is just too much. Qualcomm is a big US company and has too much name recognition in the US. You know, putting made by Snapdragon or you know, Snapdragon inside, that that actually gives some name rec. Even regular people know what Snapdragon is now. So I think taking that out and just saying, oh, it's just uh no one knows what Exynos is outside of super fans, so that would not be, I don't think that would be smart. I don't think they'll do that. But that that was supposed they put that out on Twitter, just saying that you know they're looking forward to working with Samsung again, which could mean nothing. Yeah, it just you know, it's just people have to we we that's our job. We overanalyze everything that these companies put out, but they're just saying that they're going to work doesn't mean anything about the S27 in particular. Um, Google's going to host the Android show again before Google I.O. Google I.O. is very soon, it's in like two weeks, whereas where uh Google releases and all their information about uh Android and all their other products for the upcoming year. May 12th at 10 a.m., we're gonna have Google talking about the Android show. They said this is gonna be one of the biggest years for Android in a long, long time. Okay. I don't know. I mean, they also said it was gonna be a big year, a big event that have a lot to say about Android XR. But as we talked about last week, I feel like right now the state of Android XR is pretty bad because Galaxy XR, I mean, you really didn't heard anything about it.

SPEAKER_02 30:52

It's nothing.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

I mean, I bought mine and it collected dust for a while, and then I sold it. I sold it like a month ago. Yeah. Because I just didn't use it. And then this last week, uh like five days ago or something, I saw a bunch of people posting about Galaxy XR, and so I was on on X and I was like, well, what are they posting about? Because we wanted to cover it, obviously, if something big was going on, and it was because everybody was upset because they were trying to like watch the NBA playoffs on their XR, and it was crashing. There was a critical bug, I guess, that Samsung and Google pushed in the latest update that caused it to crash when they were watching because it does have a cool feature if you love watching basketball, yeah, where you can basically feel like you're sitting in a courtside seat, so you can use the XR, and it actually you actually the players actually look like they're you know, like you're at the game. I did try it, it's a cool feature. If you're a really huge basketball fan, that could be a good reason to buy an XR, I guess. But then that was crashing, so everyone was pissed because a lot of people, some of the only people who do use their XR a lot, were people who bought it for this, and they were mad because then they couldn't watch the playoffs. The NBA playoffs just started, and these people weren't able to watch it using the NBA courtside thing that Google and Samsung built, so they were mad about that. So it's Google and uh Google said they're gonna have a lot more to share about Android XR, but that could also mean um that could also mean potentially that we might hear more about the glasses, which again we talked about we want to hear more about that.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

But they'll they'll sell over well.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

Yeah, I I think there's a good I think there's a good chance that Google talks more about the galaxy glasses or and Android XR glasses at I.O. in May. And then I think there's a really good chance that if they don't release them for sale, which I think is is a possibility, yeah, but if they don't, they're gonna preview them at the end of Unpacked. Okay so like TM Row will be like, we got one more thing, one more thing and the lights come back on at the end, it goes and then the glasses come on the string. And then he like puts them on and they puts them on and then it goes black again. Yeah, and just like the S25 Edge, they might have them like in a box where media could take a picture, but you can't touch them. That's what they did with the S25 Edge when they had the one more thing. They could do that. So I I could see that happening. I mean, if they don't release in retail, it could they could release in retail because these have been teased now forever. Yeah, it's only seven months since they've first took the wraps off of to say, hey, we're working on them. So, you know, it's still not been as long as when they said, Hey, that keyboard's coming out, but I know, you know, hey, at least at least it's been a while, so it could potentially release. I think I think it's possibility. Um what else we got? Supposedly one UI8.5, I told you this last week, is supposedly coming to your phone. To your point, your phone uh April 30th, which is next Thursday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So supposedly, I mean again, usually that probably means it's coming to Korea next Thursday, and then maybe it'll come to the US the following Monday, which is so maybe you should plan on May 4th. But they're saying that it's gonna start rolling out on the 30th in stable, which is like I said, still a long time because the S26 series launched on February 25th, so people have been waiting for over two months after the S26 launch. Yeah, for something that already has had now 12 or 11 different beta releases, that's that's a little sus, you know, as the kids say. Yeah, it's a little it's a little sus, suspect. Um there's also another report um that came out from a couple different outlets that the industry as a whole, not just Samsung, but the industry as a whole, and um Digital Chat Station is the outlet that reported this, that smartphone makers are looking to abandon six and six point one inch models starting in twenty twenty-seven or twenty twenty-eight and shift the smallest size models up to six point five inches. So no more small phones. So if you like small phones, you got small hands, it might be the end for you. Which uh I mean we don't, you know, we're not gonna be surprised by this. The S26 this year, the base model, it went up 0.1 inches. The S25 was a 6.2, and now the S26 is S 6.3. Maybe next year they'll bump it up to 6.4, and then in 2028, 6.5, and then there you go. There's also this rumor that uh which we were gonna I was gonna talk about and mention that Apple might release an iPhone Ultra for the first time ever in September this year, which could potentially feature for the first time ever on a smartphone, like a mainstream phone, a seven inch screen. Six point nine inches is what the S26 Ultra and the iPhone 17 Pro Max are. I mean, it's kind of it's people have their people have a hang-up on the seven inches number. They're like, we don't want a seven inch phone. It's not that much bigger. Six point nine inches is you know pretty pretty close. It's 0.1 inches, you know.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

Yeah, it's like it's right there.

SPEAKER_00 35:56

You know, that's what I usually like to round up, you know. Oh six inches to seven inches, just say, oh six seven. It's not six inches, it's seven inches. Yeah, seven inches, you know. Yeah, yeah. Talk about phones, of course. As always, that's what we do on this podcast. Um, but I'm just saying people are always hung up on that. It's like eventually someone's gonna make the seven-inch phone because they're already at six point nine point one inches right there. You know, it's like you get extra reach. It's the next logical step forward, it's just a push through. You know, there we go. Um we also did get some details on what's coming in the 188.5 update for you. What do we expect? In particular, you're gonna get the call screening with Google. Um, you're gonna get some of the uh other features from the uh roll it back.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

What is this call screening?

One UI 8.5 Features Worth Caring About

SPEAKER_00 36:47

Oh, so you know how like on the current Galaxy um phone app, you can use Bixby to screen your calls. Oh but with Bixby call screening, you have to actually tap like prompts to ask the person, like it'll show you the conversation. So if someone's calling, Bixby will be like, I'm uh automated assistant, I'm taking the call for the person, say your name and who you are, and they say their name. And then if you want to answer that with Bixby, you have to tap or type a prompt for Bixby to say. Well, now it does all that automated, so it uses Google's call screening, which they've had on the Pixel for a long time, and doesn't require any interaction from you. So it can use AI to adapt. So if the person says, you know, I'm Bob, and I'm calling about you know your appointment at the dentist next week on Friday at five o'clock or whatever, then they can patch you through or they can take a message that's contextual. Uh but if they say, you know, you just won seven million dollars from Prince Ali, his excellency, Ali Ababwah, then they can just say no, thank you, and hang up. Yeah. You know, hopefully Aladdin's not trying to give me seven million dollars, but it does happen sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 37:58

It does happen sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

It does happen. People call you.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

He's a nice guy.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Yeah, people call you and they say, Hey, I just wanted to let you know that you won seven million, you inherited seven million dollars from your uncle that you don't know from Saudi Arabia.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Uh-huh. And can we get your social security number? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

And a certified check for$400.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

And I'm like, but why do I have to pay$400? But they're like, it's$400 to get seven million. Such a good deal.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

Yeah. You don't understand. And then you send it to them, and then you're like, hello. Hello? Hello? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

They're like, go down to the uh corner store. Yeah, Western Union. Buy$400 worth of gift cards, scratch and put the codes in an email, and then you send them, and they're like, you're like, hello? Did you guys get the codes? Yeah, yeah. Hello. Where's my seven million? And it never happens.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

Never happens.

Galaxy Phones Finally Work Better In Japan

SPEAKER_00 38:47

Anyway, though, a lot of interesting features that are coming for you, Tori. There's some big, some big features. Um, you're gonna get the auto adjusting wallpapers, customizable lock styles, which are absolutely beautiful. Um, you're gonna get storage share, auto hotspot, family device sharing. Um, quickshare now supports Apple devices. Once you get 8.5, you'll finally have that feature as well. Um, it's a lot of good stuff. There's a lot of good stuff. There are some things, obviously, that are not coming, which like the horizon lock. And then some people are upset because one thing that's not in the change log is it looks like at least right now, the S25 users are not getting the priority notifications and the notification summaries. Uh, I don't really know why. I don't know why, it doesn't make any sense because I'm pretty sure the S25's processor can handle doing that level of you know of processing. I'm pretty sure it can handle that. But I I guess for whatever reason, you know, I guess greed, they're not gonna include it. They say, hey, you gotta upgrade to the S26 series to get those. Now I can tell you from using it, and I talked about this last week because we talked about how useful I thought some of the AI features are. The notification summary is not that useful because it only works in like a couple apps. Yeah, in terms of apps that I use, it only works in Facebook Messenger. I mean, WhatsApp, it does work in WhatsApp, but I don't really use it because WhatsApp's not that popular in the US. At least I don't use it to talk to very many people. The only reason I have it is for business because a lot of people overseas use WhatsApp. Yeah. And so I use it to communicate with like some brand reps from like Asia and people who do fulfillment for the mystery boxes and you know, some of that stuff, but I don't really use it for any of my personal contacts. So um, I wouldn't be that upset that you're not getting the summaries, it's not that useful. Priority notifications, though, that's a pretty useful feature. I don't know why they're not including that. That would be the one that I'd be like, I really wish I could get that. You know, I want that feature. So I think I hope they bring that one to the S25 series, because I think you guys deserve that's a quality feature that you want. Um talked about this last week. Potentially Samsung could lose money for the first time in their mobile division, first time ever in 2026, which would be pretty unfortunate. It would be. Another report came out corroborating that, so it's looking more likely that they might lose they might lose money for the first time, which would, you know, obviously not good for us since we cover them, but I have a feeling they'll come back and be fine. Obviously, Samsung as a whole, you know, isn't um dying because they obviously have their memory businesses booming because of the AI boom. So they're making record profits, it's just not mobile is not doing that. Uh the S27 Snapdragon tip could sub uh chip could support UFS 5.0. I think I briefly mentioned this last week as well. Basically, what that means, huh? Basically, what that means is you're gonna get a lot faster read and write speeds on your phone, which is pretty pretty massive. Um trying to go through all the other stories. What else we got? Um Samsung. Oh, Galaxy phones sold outside Japan. Finally, oh support Suika and Felicia. You know, do you know what those are, Tori? I do not. Suika and Felicia. Like bye Felicia? No, I'm just gonna. Bye Felicia. That's not what it is. Um but basically NFC payments are right, they're used around the world, but Japan has always been an exception. The country relies on it's not actually Felicia, it's called Felicia. It's there's not an eye at the end, but I always say that when I see it because like bye Felicia, a different contactless standard developed by Sony, and until then, all until now, global Android phones haven't supported it, even though iPhones have offered it for years. So that's finally changing. And starting in 2027, uh, Galaxy phones will also support Felica, uh, allowing them to work with services like Welcome Suica Mobile. Uh, that means travelers can tap their phones for trains, buses, and retail payments. So this is important. Like if you want to go if you want to take a trap uh trip to Japan, which actually do I actually do want to take a trip to Japan? Yeah, he's on my list. Um Nicole's brother is a big you know Japanese fan. He's he studied there for three years. Um he actually have a master's degree in Japanese, yeah. Really? Yeah, he does. He studied there, he got his master's degree uh in Japanese in Japan. He went there and did a Japanese language program in to in uh not Tokyo, but I forgot Osaka. And so we want to go there. Uh he wants to go back for a trip because he loves Japanese culture and we would like to go take the boys. I'd like to too. So I might have to go and do that. But now, if you think about it, previously, if you went there with your Galaxy phone, because they had a different NFC standard, if you went to your, you know, you wanted to pay something or you wanted to use like um buy a Japanese like bus or train ticket, you wouldn't be able to tap your phone to use your digital tickets because they did have a different NFC standard. So now if you're travel for business or pleasure to Japan, you'd be able to use your phone that's from the US or Europe with their standard. Previously you'd have to you'd have no no way of using any digital not only cards, but also any kind of like digital passes, transit passes, uh if you had a phone that was not from Japan itself. Only Japanese phones uh Previously supported that standard. Which is pretty interesting, you know. No, no, no. That that kind of dichotomy exists, you know. You wouldn't think that something like that would exist. Because Japan is such an important country, you know. I agree. We love we love the Japanese people, you know. Um, let's see. What else is popping over here in the world of Samsung? We got so much stuff that's popping off. Um pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Um, the galaxies. Oh, that one we already talked about that one. Oh, we uncovered a couple of very interesting leaks ourselves. Got a couple of exclusives. Um, first of all, we uncovered uh this was actually one that Android Authority covered, I guess, and we recovered, but Samsung is apparently working on a second pair of AR glasses that are gonna be not the XR style, which is like the ones that look more like regular ones. Yeah, but the thicker ones that are like that let you not only get directions, but you can also game and connect to your computer. So like we have a more versatile pair. Very cool. Um I mean it's nice to have the versatility, you know. I probably would be lean more towards the XR style, but I think having all these options is a good thing, you know? You always like to have options. Why not? Why not? I mean, it all depends on the pricing, you know. Like the XR is just way overpriced at$17. I I mean I hate to say that because Apples is so expensive and it's cheaper than Apples, but I I mean it's it's just not it's just it's$17.99 is just an outrageous amount of money considering most people are gonna buy this and then they're never gonna use it except for a couple of like niche cases. They're not gonna use it all the time. And if you're not gonna use it all the time, then it doesn't really make a lot of sense to spend eighteen hundred dollars plus tax on it.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

No, I agree.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

I don't want to spend eighteen hundred dollars plus tax on a niche thing. Uh, and then we uncovered uh signs of the Galaxy Buds Able, which are gonna be new pairs of buds. Buds. Uh we uncovered them. This is actually what they're gonna look like right here. They're gonna have a little band, they're gonna be bone conduction earbuds.

SPEAKER_01 46:08

Well, what does that mean?

New AR Glasses And Buds Able

SPEAKER_00 46:09

Bone conduction means that it actually plays the sound by vibrations. It's for people who can't, for people who can't hear who have hearing impediments. Uh-huh. So that's why they're called Galaxy Buds Able. Well, that's the code name. You know, because they want to help people have hearing issues. Um, but a lot of people do like these as well. Um, and this is what they look like right there. Um, and yeah, basically it works by instead of pushing air, they push vibrations through your cheekbones, which then run down into your inner ear, so you can still hear the music. Um and the primary path is through those vibrations and not the air, which would be through traditional, you know, headphones or earbuds that you would use for drivers. Yeah, so these could be very compelling. It seems like these are probably on um oh, look, and they even put a little line in this article. Yeah, that's pretty funny. Josh put that in there. He said, uh, he said, so people nearby could still hear you blasting Jeff and Tori on the Sammy Guru podcast at higher volumes. Josh gave us a little shout-out in this article. Thanks, Josh. Yeah, so there is there is still uh leakage, it's not completely eliminated when you have uh bone conduction, so you can still have that. But these do look like they're on track now based on this leak, because this was found in the 1UI9 code base, which by the way, we haven't talked much about it yet because 1UI 8.5 still isn't out for most people. And people get mad when we start talking about the next one before the current one's out.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

Yeah, they're like, hold on, wait up, guys.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

But some people do have test builds of 1UI9, although it hasn't been very prevalent because Samsung started cracking down on that. Previously, everyone had a test build, everyone and their mother could get their hands on it. Um, but a couple of sites have it. Josh, I believe, has has access to it, but we haven't really put it out there publicly how anyone gets these because Samsung really kind of shut down a lot of people who gain access, and they shut down a lot of the ways that people were gaining access to these early builds. Um, but we've had a look, you know, other blogs, Sam Mobile Android Authority, have looked at some of the APKs, and that's where Josh found this uh screenshot hiding of the Galaxy Buds Able. But because they're in there, that makes me think because OneUI9 is gonna release with the foldables at the July unpact, these will probably release with a July unpack. So as it turns out, what we said last podcast may not actually be true. I said there's probably no buds going to be released because we just had buds, but that looks like that could be false. You might actually have some headphones release, it's just not gonna be in the traditional bud series. It might be these buds able bone conduction earbuds. Uh, some people like these even if they don't have a hearing issue, because they, you know, you can use it for like running and stuff if you want to have a little more awareness or something like that. You can use bone conduction. Um, and so yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see though, and Josh speculated about this a little bit, what the pricing would be for these, because I don't know, they're probably gonna land between the Buds 4 and the Buds 4 Pro. So maybe they're gonna land around 200 because the Buds 250 and one I think 179. Maybe they land around$200 for these. Um, but yeah, so we might actually have some headphones.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

So we could be a good a good entry price.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

We could have an all-around, we could have a a all kind of all categories event. We could potentially have three phones released, buds able, the watch ultra two, uh the galaxy glasses, and the real dark horse, I think, which still I thought this one for sure would be released, but we've seen zero leaks yet. The galaxy ring two. Oh, that's a mystery. Oh, yeah, we took it down to last. That's a mystery shrouded in you know, very mystique, it's very mysterious because where where is it?

SPEAKER_01 49:46

I mean, yeah, and we're almost into May. Yeah, you would think something.

SPEAKER_00 49:50

Yeah, you would think like they have to go through all kinds of testing, not just FCC, but FDA too. Although, you know, with the current administration, they're like, you know, do we really need to test it? I know, you know. Just natural selection, let people try it. You know, if it cuts their yeah, yeah, yeah. If it cuts their finger, if it cuts their finger off, you know, it is what it is, you know. You shouldn't have bought it. That's your personal problem, not the government. Anyway, um, but I'm just saying, like, those should have shown up in some of these filings, and they haven't shown up in these filings yet. So like that's how are you feeling?

SPEAKER_01 50:22

Do you feel like the ring might make an appearance or no?

SPEAKER_00 50:26

But just based off of I mean, I mean, I think so far. I think it's unlikely at this point. Yeah, because I think something would have had to have shown up by now. If something doesn't show up, if something doesn't show up in the next few weeks, I think it's unlikely because these things have to be certified by the US agencies, I think, six weeks before they go on sale. And also, it's kind of weird because it would be in production. I mean, it's a little easier to hide the ring because it only has it only has integration in certain areas of the code base. But, you know, we've been looking for it because Josh found the Galaxy Buds Able. He's been looking for references to all the new devices in 1UI9. He's trying to find some uh images buried in the code base for the Watch Ultra 2 because we'd love to see those as well. We'd love to see some preview of if there's any changes to the Watch Ultra 2 design. I don't think there's going to be very many changes to the Watch Ultra 2 design. Doesn't seem super likely, but um, but it's certainly possible that there could be a couple of interesting changes. We're trying to uncover more stuff from 1UI9, so we'll see. I would love the ring 2 to come out though, because I will say, and actually this is kind of uh you know important data point because people worry about with the smart rings is the battery. We talked about this before. Like a lot of people we talked about when it first came out that one company said that you know these batteries can't be replaced on these rings, so they end up being e-waste in a few years. Well, guess what? My galaxy ring battery is basically dead now. It doesn't hold a charge for more than like a day, which originally was like eight days.

SPEAKER_01 51:57

So then what are you gonna do?

Galaxy Ring Battery Reality Check

SPEAKER_00 51:59

I guess I'm just gonna wait till the ring two comes out and get another one. I don't know. I have this really cool new gadget which I reviewed on my personal channel, which is called the SleepPal lamp, which tracks my sleep without wearing anything. So I've been using that and it gets my sleep data, so I don't feel the need. But if I I do like having the Samsung ring because it integrates with my Samsung ecosystem, and then I can also wear that during the day, whereas I can't wear a lamp during the day because that'd be awkward. It would be if I had a highly awkward if I had a lamp tied to my shoulders or my head. People would be like, What is this what's this guy doing right here? Um and also probably get stopped by the police. You would get stopped by the page. Which is not good since I already got that speeding ticket in Paradise Valley a few weeks ago. So you know, I forgot about that. Yeah, well, you know, I don't have to do anything for that, I just have to pay them the money. So I I paid them their money and they said, Hey, all right, why not? Keep going. Um, I figure we'd also quickly mention I I gave some of my review of the S26 Ultra last week, but Sumit published his big long review last week of it on Friday, and it is about 5,000 words. This is one of the most comprehensive reviews we've ever done. So I thought I'd briefly talk about some of his thoughts, to summarize his thoughts from the review. Um, he had a lot of things to say that were very similar to what you know I had to say. Um he basically said, you know, it's not a revolutionary phone, but it is incredibly well polished that Samsung has basically taken the idea that they started with the S22 Ultra and they've iterated on it so many times that you know it's kind of like if you take something like a piece of metal and you start polishing it, if you polish it long enough, it's gonna look real shiny. And now the S26 Ultra looks like a shined up like a new penny because they really have iterated on it so well. Um I mean it is certainly true that uh and I I do agree with Sumit is that the one thing about it that makes it hard to recommend to people who are upgrading over the last few years is that it has one big hero feature, which is the privacy display. Like that is the that is the one thing that they put in every piece of marketing in terms of hardware upgrades. But that feature is also highly polarizing and has drawbacks, namely when you turn it on, the screen looks like I mean, for lack of a better word, it looks like absolute SHIT. It looks awful, terrible, it's not good. So you can't turn it on all the time. And so it's kind of polarizing because some people are like, well, if my screen looks a lot worse when it's on and I want to run it a lot, well then that's not that dissuades me from buying the phone. Yeah, and it's it's like it's a sexy feature in demos because when you show it in like in their marketing stuff and their commercials they run, they're just showing it from the side, like, oh well, no one else can see it. But what about what it looks like when you're looking at it? It doesn't look good. They don't show that in the commercials, they don't show it how it looks when you're looking at the screen.

SPEAKER_02 54:59

Not at all.

SPEAKER_00 55:00

That's what the media is kind of shown, what I've shown in some of my videos when I was in San Francisco for Unpacked, and what we've shown what Sumit talked about in his his review. Uh, and and that's kind of the the problem. But it it does, I mean it it does the the feature works. That's the thing. It's like if you really care about having a feature that gives you privacy when you're in public scenarios, it does what it says it does. It just has very specific drawbacks. Yeah. Um and I think also still there's some people who still have the S24 Ultra who are holding out hope, and Samit talked about this, that they'll bring back the Bluetooth and the S Pen eventually. Yeah, because obviously the S25 Ultra ditched it and it didn't come back this year. So some of those people have the S24 Ultra are like, well, it's only been two years, I don't need to upgrade. Maybe next year they'll decide to bring back the Bluetooth. I don't think so. I think it's more likely that I think it's more likely that next year there's no S Pen at all. But hey, don't say things like that.

SPEAKER_01 56:01

You never know. Don't say things like that.

SPEAKER_00 56:04

Supposedly T. M. Rowe said that they're not getting rid of the S Pen next year, but you know, people lie all the time.

SPEAKER_01 56:09

That is true.

SPEAKER_00 56:10

Just ask Mike Frabel's wife.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 56:13

She'll tell you.

SPEAKER_01 56:14

Well, like, um, so like if you probably do cover this in the review. Um, who should update or should we get it? Yeah, yeah. So he talked about this later.

S26 Ultra Review And Upgrade Advice

SPEAKER_00 56:25

Yeah, he talked about this at the end. So I'll read you. His review is very good, by the way. You should read it. I'll put it in the show notes. Um, very comprehensive review with hundreds of camera samples and just absolutely fantastic overall, you know, kind of kind of piece. Um, he said, who should buy it? Any and and I agree with most of these. Uh, anybody coming from an S23 Ultra or older? So he said, if you have an S24 Ultra or S25 Ultra, don't upgrade. Uh, you see meaningful improvements on the camera, I entirely agree. The 5x camera, way better, massively improved. The processing is is much better. Battery life, much better, charging faster. And he said, keep in mind the S Pin is a downgrade, because yes, you lose the Bluetooth. So if you care about that, you have to keep that in mind. But you also have to make peace with the fact that at least in the foreseeable next few cycles, Samsung is probably not bringing back the Bluetooth S-Pen. And if you have an S23 Ultra, probably your battery life is starting to degrade because you've had the phone for over three years, so it might be time to think about upgrading anyway. Um, he said power users and creators, so people like me or YouTubers, I entirely agree because the camera system is a lot better. People who value polished software, uh, one UI feels very fluid. The only thing I would say about that in this particular case is obviously depending on to the degree of how old the phone is that you have, if you have an S25 Ultra, software is not really a good reason to upgrade because you're going to get 95% of the features just a little bit later, probably next week, maybe. Maybe we'll see. Maybe maybe we'll see. And then anyone frustrated with super slow charging on older Samsung's, well, if you have a really old phone, it could have 25 watts, and then the 60 watts is a big upgrade. So I do agree. That'd be a big upgrade. Yeah, I agree. So overall, yeah, I mean, I agree with most of Sumit's review. It's very good. You can look at the camera samples. Um, I mean, obviously, I was really hard on Samsung for not having any really many true hardware upgrades to the camera, and I still think those criticisms are fair because if they don't put out new sensors in the primary camera next year, I'm gonna be absolutely pissed because it's ridiculous. But the processing that they did and the stuff they did with the software side for the camera, it made big upgrades. You know, you can't dispute the fact that the pictures do look better. At the end of the day, most people don't really care about you know how the pictures look better, they just care that they look better. Sure. So the the general fan or person buying the phone isn't going to be like, oh well, it's only an upgrade in software and not hardware. They don't care, they just care that they just care that they got better pictures, and they do. So that's a positive, I think. So I think we can kind of close the book on that. Uh, I think the S26 Ultra is kind of a known quantity. We've talked about it a lot, but yeah. Um I I feel pretty good about Samsung's overall launch. The Buds 4 Pro definitely were the best product they launched. I agree. There's from the unpacked as we talked about last week. And uh yeah, we can kind of turn our attention to the fold launch, which we've kind of done a little bit. Um, don't forget, mystery box program is now available. Uh, we are gonna have a brand new landing page for the mystery boxes. We're doing some upgrades to the site. I've been working a lot. Well, Claude Code's been working a lot, and I've been directing the work, but hey, that's what you do in 2026. You put those AI tools to work for you.

SPEAKER_01 59:48

You gotta work if they're not working right, you're gonna pink slip them.

SPEAKER_00 59:50

Yeah, you gotta work smarter, not harder in 2026. Yeah. That's the way we do it. We always work harder. We don't work wait. Wait, wait, reverse that. We work smarter, not harder, not harder. That's what they say. We definitely don't want to work harder.

Mystery Box Program And Site Upgrades

SPEAKER_01 1:00:04

No magusta.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:05

No magusta harder work. Um, what else did I talk about? There was one other thing. Oh, the Galaxy Book Six Edge leaked um today. It was earlier today. That's why I forgot about it, because it was so so soon. Yeah. Um, and these look these winters look beautiful. Let me see. Uh, they didn't release the Galaxy Book Six Edge with the Pro. I have the Pro right here on the table. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the Edge is the thinner one that runs the Snapdragon laptops. It looks like it's still I can't tell if it's the gray or if this is gonna be the icy blue. It looks like the gray, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:38

I don't know if they'll have it's kind of hard to tell, but yeah, I would say it probably looks more good. It looks similar to the one I have here.

Galaxy Book 6 Edge Leak

SPEAKER_00 1:00:43

Yeah, it does here, not the but it's a lot thinner, obviously, because this runs the Snapdragon chips, but it looks good. It looks like a MacBook Air, the same trackpad as the Pro and the Ultra, um, and just has a beautiful overall design. Yeah, we don't know yet when this is gonna go live for sale, um, but reportedly is gonna come in two variants 16 gigs with a fifth five twelve uh 512 SSD and the top line version, which is just like the one I have here, the Pro is 32 gigs of RAM with one terabyte SSD. Uh, it says the price in Europe will be 2199 euros for the base model and 2800 euros for the top of the line model. Uh now, yeah, you say that's expensive, but the thing is, because of the RAM and memory crisis, every laptop now is gonna be very expensive. Um, I feel like I got an insanely good deal on this ACES laptop that I bought, the A16. Like I said, the price on that went up a hundred day uh hundred dollars four hours after it was put on Best Buy Sight. They're like, we're gonna raise the price only four hours later. So that's how crazy like the memory situation is. So the book for Edge is is it's not gonna be probably those prices in the US. I would bet it's probably gonna be similar though to like pricing with the pro. It's probably gonna be 2,000 for the base model. Yeah, probably 2700 US for$26.99 for the top model for the for the edge. Um, we don't know yet when they're gonna release, it'll be interesting to see uh when these come out. But the battery life, in my opinion, on the X2 Elite has been pretty it's been good. I mean, yeah, that chip is super powerful, it's more powerful than a lot of the Intel chips. So don't sleep on the Snapdragon X2 Elite. I've been using the Ace A16 now for like two weeks, and it it does. I mean, the battery life isn't quite as good as the previous Snapdragon generation from last year, but those were also not very powerful. You can edit videos, you can do everything. It's great for AI workflows. Yeah, so I highly recommend that if you want a laptop that's thin and looks good and and has a lot of power and still really good mix of battery life, and you want a Windows laptop, I still think the MacBook is hard to beat for most people. But if you want a Windows, if you love Windows, which some people are Windows Loyalist, the Galaxy Books uh 6 Edge could be a winner for you. The only problem I have as a creator, if you're someone who needs a laptop for business and video editing specifically, all these Windows laptops, except like the UltraBooks, they only come with maximum one terabyte. That's not enough storage for someone who does that for a living. My MacBook Pro, I have eight terabytes of storage built in. Now given I paid six thousand dollars for that laptop. But you don't even have the option on the Samsung or the ACES or a lot of these laptops. Some Windows manufacturers like Dell will give you the option. But you need if you want to sell to professional class creators, YouTubers, or people who make movies, you know, do that kind of stuff, video editing, video files are so big now, and you want to have a lot of room on your local storage, you don't have to necessarily be plugging up external storage. Of course, I have a lot of external drives which I use for scratch disks and stuff when I'm editing, but I want a lot of storage on my actual drive. A lot of my 4K videos I export on YouTube are 20 gigs, the final file. You know, if you're making 20, 20 gig videos a month, that's 420 times 20, I can multiply. It's 400, 400 gigs a month. So that's five terabytes a year of final master footage. That doesn't even count all the B-roll and stuff. You know, and obviously, all that stuff gets offloaded to my NAS, my network attached storage, which has like 30 terabytes of storage, so I can keep masters for a certain amount of time till I might not need them anymore. But yeah, you want some you want some wiggle room, at least two to four terabyte options on those laptops. So I would love to see Samsung add that. Not every person needs two to four terabytes, but for the person who does, that could be a deal breaker.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:48

That could be.

Listener Growth And Next Week Plans

SPEAKER_00 1:04:49

If that's your job, like if you might be if you make video for a living or you edit video for a living, yeah, I'm gonna say, well, I'm not gonna buy Samsung this particular laptop because I don't have the option to go there. I know that really these ultra-thin laptops aren't really aimed, I guess, at the creators, but the thing is you have to keep in mind if you want to try to compete with Apple, the MacBook Air does come in those bigger configurations, and you can you can customize and the MacBook Air is powerful enough to edit video, so and it's thin, just like these. So if you want to compare Apple's to Windows, then you have to uh be willing to do that. But this is a beautiful laptop. Uh it'd be nice if Samsung would send me one for review, because since I already have the Galaxy Book 6 Pro, I don't know if I'm gonna buy one myself. I don't know if I can justify that because I don't really need to I bought this one and replaced my Book V Pro. I usually have one Windows laptop. And since I don't use it as my main laptop, I don't need it to have four to eight terabytes. I just use this for this has actually become my AI like coding laptop. 'Cause I don't need I don't need eight terabytes for coding. Again, one terabyte's enough for storing files for my coding. running local projects, but yeah, so this is a good looking laptop. Looks really nice. The other thing I was gonna say is that Samsung right now their employees are in strike in uh overseas in Korea and that's already cutting in some of their profits. I believe it's in their factories over there. It was like 40,000 people were on strike. So I don't know if that's gonna get resolved. I think they were threatening to strike. They haven't striked yet. Okay so they were like they want some increase in wages. They're like hell no we won't go. Hell no we won't go hell no we won't go.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:32

Yeah so that's what they're saying over there.

Final Thoughts And Sign-Off

SPEAKER_00 1:06:36

Um but yeah hopefully uh we've got we've actually got a lot more people listening to the podcast now we've got had a spike the last few weeks we're going from like 150 average listeners now to like we because since we came back we took a break it always happens we take a break yeah and then we lose people and then we come back and we slightly go back up our our highest average at one point was like 500 now we're back up to 450 again. So people came back that's great. I mean that's really good for a podcast honestly it is there's only like two percent of podcasts that are in the world that have more than 100 average listeners a week so it doesn't sound like a crazy number obviously when you know Joe Rogan or Travis Kelsey and them have like five million average listeners but 500 is pretty good actually yeah yeah it is actually podcast that's actually a pretty big number that you have people actually listen every week in terms of average listeners. So yeah we appreciate you guys yeah we do so if you guys have questions if you want us to answer um next week I thought we would uh do kind of a fun show and uh run down some of the because I I it's been a while since we've done it run down some of the apps and routines and stuff that I'm using on my phone because we haven't done that in a while um we did that way back in the beginning of the show we did like the app of the week um but then we kind of got away from that but I I feel at least for part of the show next week I'll talk about some of the new apps that I've been using and some of the apps that are probably well known but kind of some ways that I use them with modes and routines. Yeah. And also how I'm using some of the new features in one dot five because some of you presumably will get it soon maybe by the time the next show is coming out you'll be or the week after next or the week after the show next show comes out I'll talk about how I use privacy display and some of the other 8.5 features with modes and routines so you guys can get some general ideas. Also people have been asking me when the Samiguru videos are coming back to the SG channel because I've really that's been neglected. Something always gets neglected because I'm trying to do so many things. I have some good news next week I'm gonna be interviewing a guy who's gonna be hopefully coming on as a videographer Tori knows him quite well used to be one of his classmates who also has his smaller tech YouTube channel himself. If everything goes right he's gonna be assisting with some videos not only my personal channel but helping out making some software tutorials again for Sammy Guru. So that would be huge because I know people want the Samsung software to come back ever since I pivoted my personal channel to doing more general tech. And I I want both back. It's just I'm only one guy. Yeah he's only one guy as much as I want to do all the things everywhere in all the world I'm also only one person and I have two little kids and it's pretty hard to keep up the pace of doing 10 different tasks and projects across work and then also making time for that you know you make it look easy. I try to oh do I I appreciate that too I try you know it is what it is it is and uh you know this week I encourage you guys to keep trying to make it look easy yourself and while you're doing that keep expanding your galaxy