Ecosystem Lock-in and Final Thoughts

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AI on, risk O Svanta. com slash tPRM Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Titanium All kinds of titanium, veryy thin titanium, very thick titanium, titanium technology Lots of titium I'm your friend Davidierce Neil Abel is here close.'s good. We just got finished watching Samsung's unpacked event on There's a lot to talk about here. We got some new phones, we got foldables, we got flippables, we got watches, we got all kinds of stuff. I'm This I just want to preface, Neili was maybe the most impressive product introduction I have seen in twenty twenty six. And I'm very excited to tell you why U'm But first I want to know. wait was it 'cause Spider Man was there? It was favorite part of the whole thing. There was a brief moment where I thought, oh good. We're not going to get that deeply awkward moment at every Samsung something weird happens and no one knows what to do about it. Honestly, the reason I agreed to do this this last stream with you was because Samsung can't help itself. Like I know Samsung can't help itself and watching you go through it is very important to me I really appreciate that Yeah, one of the great moments was that they brought on U What's his name? Jacob somebody. No no. Yes, Jacob Batlon, who plays Ned in the Spider Man movies. He did what I would call like a reasonably normal product integration. He explained why his character would use a galaxy device, which, sure, fine.. And then for like to eight seconds, just there was Spider Man And then they went right back to it. We were gonna play the clip, but no one needs to live through that ever again Do I do want to talk about these phones, Nili because I think the reason I am so compelled by this particular event is that I think Samsung did a thing I have been waiting for it to do for years, which is explain why you would want any of these devices. Wh you would want a device that folds, why you would want a device that's a different size that folds. why you would want a phone that flips. It actually like did to make a case for these kinds of devices And I want to talk about it, but first, sure, I need you to do something very important for me I need you to rank deffolding types. We have we have wide, we have tall and we have flip Those are the three phones. We're going to get into them. but I want to do them in the order in which you are excited about the size and shape So we have tall foldable, the TV remote, we have wide foldable, the passport, and we have flip phone which turnady first? I'm going. ranking best to worst. Yes, my personal best to worst. Everyone else can make up their minds. I got to go wide And there's probably a novelty bias here because wide is the newest and maybe it will make my heart sing in new and exciting ways. Although Dom Preston from our team wrote up. He saw it. He's held it in person. he's used it. Obviously, he's used some of the Chinese wide foldables that came out first. And he's like, this thing is way better in person than in any of the photos. And I get it And I'm kind of excited about the squatter form factor when it's folded when you use it that way And then like the big decision to open it up. You know, and be like, I'm going to I'm going to watch a video sideways, whatever that thing is. Yeahah, that's my ranking, butm I'm assuming there's some novelty bias here My ranking is the same. I also think it's possible that there is some novelty bias, but that thing that Dom described in his piece for us which is Looking at the thing, it feels kind of short and kind of fat And you think, well, this probably won't be as comfortable to hold in my hand as a longer, skinnier phone might be. and then you pick it up and it feels normal and natural, that reaction seems to have been everyone's reaction I've been reading stories. I've been watching some of the videos. like this is a phone that was made available to a lot of people in the last couple of weeks. Almost everybody seems to have had the reaction of picking it up and being like, oh, this is actually may be the exact right shape for this. Because it's a little shorter I can reach it with I can reach most of the screen with my thumb, which turns out kind of important on a phone U It makes it ats sixteen ten on the outside. So it's a little squter than normal and it opens up to a four by three screen on the inside bothoth of those in a way. if you're just going to say, I have one screen for everything, right that feels roughly correct to me. And this is the thing Samsung spent a long time trying to make the case for that you open it up and you can watch movies with less letter boxing, you can play Giant Fortnite, which they really like held for an applause moment that did not come, which I thought was very funny. But there's this sense of I think everybody has spent the last several years trying to figure out the right middle ground for foldables. You want something that is Phone ish onn the outside, A properly usable phone on the inside as well And this this just seems like the right or at least the most right answer we have had so far. Even though again, like looking at a picture right now does look a little squat and a little fat. But I am trusting everyone who has used it. Neither of us have used it But I am trusting everyone who has who says this thing seems to feel right in your hand very quickly. It is a remarkable consensus vibes. R. Obviously, everyone's got to get the phone, we' got to review them. We're going to do all that. the early vibes are, oh, this was the right size and shape I will give credit to Samsung. for retonning its way into an explanation for why it's the right size and shape The Chinese makers have been doing this. There's lots of rumors that Apple's about to do this Samsung's like, haveave you ever thought about making it a little little shorter and then opening it up to four by three? And it's like you could have done this anytime in the past several years You waited uil the market told you what to do any day in classic Samsung fashion Yes, very much so. So actually I wrote down the sequence of events that they imagine will transpire on this phone Samsung is very determined to tell you how you use your phone in these events, which I always get a kick out of. But again genuine kudos for going way out of their way to be like, here is the purpose of this device in this specific way U And the wide fold, this, which is the Z fold eight, and we're going to get into the names because as ever, Samsung's naming systems make me angry and they don't make any sense. But here we are. So this is the Z foold eight and the way that they described it is basasically purely as a content device And the beginning of the flow is you're on the outside screen and you're watching Instagram reels or YouTube shorts. That was like, this is what everyone does on their phone all of the time. We're just going to start there So you watch it and you watch it normally, it looks more or less like a normal phone. That's actually a little bit complicated because these companies are going to have to do a little bit of work to adapt to this screen in a way that makes They did immediately announce Instagram has partnered with them in adapting the Instagram app, which is not a thing Apple will be able to do a few months time. I think that is correct So that that's great and that's fine. That's going work. And then the idea is you open it up to Dive in further is essentially the idea. And on the one hand, you can see it big On the other hand, you can see video on the left, comments on the right. and she said something along the lines of because half the fun of the video is seeing if everyone agrees with your reaction Sure, fine. sure. You can then expand it to fill more of the screen And then you can start to dive in and make stuff yourself. And then they go through the whole creation flow, right? And that's side by side editing. so you can see the changes you're making in real time as you make them Like again, this this is a real argument about how a person might actually use their phone. makes some sense to me. I don't know if this is the one user flow that justifies buying a ninet neen hundred dollars phone, which is what this costs But it's like kind of get it I get why this is appealing and why it would be useful to have more screen available to me when I open the phone Bically the same argument as the tall foldable So yes and no. Well, and this is what I mean by Samsung doing a good job explaining the difference. The way Samsung seems to see it is that the tall foldable is for using two apps side by side Foundationally, that is the thing. It is a productivity device I think that's fine, right? And they explain well why this might be useful, what you might use it for that all of the things were like related. They imagine the tall foldable as extremely productivity focused And then the wide foldable is the more casual content based one and again, all of this is like made up nonsense about phones and the reality is everything is everyone is to all the time. att least they're starting to draw a distinction that makes a little bit of sense to me. You would not want to use two apps side by side on the Z foold eight because they would both be squat and there's not quite enough space But the idea of being able to sort of move in and out of this like sideide by side experience into there's a little more screen. It's a little more immersive There's something here for me. I don't know I like that you're so taken with there's a little more screen to watch video and whath bigger Right? Like there's something to that. It's a very normal use case. I was more struck by how they, you know, in the way that everybody has to do it now, they talked a lot about AI. And then at the end of the event, you know, Rick Osler was out to talk about to Gemini Task automation, which is yet another horrible name. and my becausecause it's launching for realal nowap Right On these phones you can just say, Hey J I'm going do thing and pop around your phone and do stuff for you. However slowly or quickly it can actually do those things Um And it just struck me. The smaller screen, the more squat size of the Z foold eight might be the AI device everyone wants Like you have a little phone It's a littleler And you can just Tell it what to do And maybe it will do that stuff. And then when you want A phone, you open it up then it's a phone And like there's something about that that particular size and shape where I'm like, oh, maybe it would drive me to just ask the phone to do things And it's not really about opening it up to see the comments on TikTok. although I will certainly end up doing that. because I think they're right that I do want to see the comments on Tikok. But that's their argument for the flip. And this is where It's possible they're solving a two device problem with three devices that actually what we need is two form factors and not three the big part of the argument for the flip is This is a phone you can put away, right? Like they spent a lot of time talking about it as a way to Just your agents to go do stuff on your behalf and go about your life. That's a lot of trust in natents. L I'm not I need a little more screen. You know what I mean Yeah. I also think it was very funny. One of the notes I wrote down in the middle of this is Samsung has developed a very good argument for the hardware here and why you need these different things and what they might accomplish in your life No one knows what AI is for. And even still it's like they ran the same two tropes that everybody runs out every time, right? It's for planning trips and buying tickets to things, which is A, not a like particularly complicated multi step activity to buy concert tickets. like you just buy the concert tickets? Well, it depends. if you're like, robot, go fight with the scalpper or something it's fun and the cues. like sure. like maybe that's the future But I think, but even in general, you know, Ricostolo gets up and he's like, we have forty new apps making all of your AI stuff work. And then he I think the list was retail, reservations, travel, event tickets, which if you think about it, is buying stuff, buying stuff, buying stuff and buying stuff. E Google demo ends in a transaction. You cannot do it. They point out The only deal of that data center investment is going to pay off because they will take tiny slices of your transaction. We will automate your shopping cart process is essentially the the limit of agentic AI at this point. Right. But that's what it is Ticket master Uber, doorash rese Exedia. Expedia. Right? And it's like, All right, well those I'm sure those apps are going to have something to say Fine, if that's the limit of what enticK I can do today, fine. But I don't think I don't trust it on a flip phone. Like every time I use a flip, I'm like, this is so cool. If only I had the disiscipline to use this tiny cover screen R to check stuff because that's kind of their vibe, right? is there's the new AI power summary and the cards and the like The little widget that tells you to drink more water. Yeah, because they're doing a lot of work to get you sort of in and out of your phone more quickly Yeah, but the whole app ecosystem has to participate or you have to fully participate in the galaxy health ecosystem, which I just don't want to do.' sorry, I just don't want to do that I'm and All of that is It's gesturing in a future that isn't here yet where all the AI can read all the databases and present you with these neat and tidy summaries on a tiny little screen. And I just I don't think that's here y I think that might be a vision of the future. that might come one day, but it's not here yet. And so this middle size where it's A phone, but like an uncomfortable phone to use.. Right. Well like Uher some of that discipline in while the rest of it comes up. And then when you need a phone You can open it and just like use a phone. And there's something about that size and shape that I wish the industry had coalesced on earlier. Yeah. And I'm quite excited to see what happens, both with the Z fold bait, which we should point out is very expensive at nineteen hundred dollars. And obviously in a few months, Apple's going to attack the same form factor and whether or not this is the form factor lets AI become more of a primary interface, I think is a good and interesting open question because certainly, this will be the form factor most people at the high end of the Android ecosystem encounter Gemini. And certainly it will be the form factor that most people behind in the Apple ecosystem encounter whatever Siri AI, and that looks like the battle to me Yeah, I think that's right. And I think we're also likely to see Google make its own move in this space. I think It would almost be more enticing. I would almost be more optimistic if Samsung had more aggressively picked a single form factveor, right? Be the eternal problem with Android is that everybody is supporting Too many phones with too many chips sets, with too many versions of Android and too many ideas about how everything is supposed to work And so if you're a developer, you end up either having to pick and choose your spots or you just say, screw it. I'm going to make one app plug into you know the built in ideas about how to scale it and move on. And I think what Samsung showed here is that if you make real effort to make this stuff make sense on specific devices and specific form factors, you can do some really interesting stuff. The problem is almost no one is incentivized to do that other than Samsung. until we agree on a foreign factor, right? And I think The Candy bar phone has been the phone for a very long time in part because I think it was the right middle ground for a very long time, but also in part because it was just it was just one thing. It just became easier to have one idea about phones for everyone for a very long time and I sort of wish Samsung had come out more aggressively and said We think The Z foldate is the thing. This is the new shape of foldables and really pushed after it. You think they should have killed the Zfold ultra. I date Ultra I do. I think I think the eight Ultra is actually sort of a fascinating device in that It is finally The thing we have been waiting for Samsung to do, which is make a foldable phone without very many compromises, right? This thing has It has the camera setu you'd want. It has three cameras, including a two hundred megapixel, main camera the tellell of the ten megapixel telephoto, I think. and the fifty megapixel ultra wide. It has big battery life, it has a lot of the camera features that you want. It has the new silicon carbon battery stuff, which I think is very cool. We actually talked about that at length by the way. Let's get to that one second. But I think this is this is the first David Mill wrote for us that this is the first A ultra feeling Samsung foldable, whichich is a big deal. It is Samsung's most expensive phone and every timee Samsung has shipped one of these, we've been like, isn't it weird it doesn't have all of the best features that Samsung is actually able to ship of these phones. And to take that and say, okay this thing is two thousand dollars and you have to make a bunch of compromises in the name of less durability and more screen isn't worth it. this one, still vastly more expensive, but at least makes you make many fewer sacrifices. So in that sense, I'm very excited about it. I still think it's just the wrong shape for a phone Yeah, and I think Samsung agrees. likeike I really do think Samsung agrees. Well, I mean, they're hiding some price increases here, right in the same way that everyone is going to have to hide price increases. They're calling this one ultra becausecause it is twenty thousand one hundred dollars this one is bananas. like ye And so you can't have compromises at twenty. They're calling it Ultra in order to make it less obvious that it is less or that it's more expensive than the last model So that now that they have the one that's less expensive than the last model, which they're calling the successor to the last model, even though it's not it's all very shady. And again, the names don't make any sense. even even several people O stage from Samsung could not properly say the names of these sices. And if you, an executive at the company, can't remember the name every time, you have a naming problem But anyway, should we talk about this battery? talk It might be the most interesting thing about these phones in a real way makeake the case I think we all know that lithium ion batteries have Pretty intense ceilings Right? We've made them slightly better, but there hasn't been a big jump in battery chemistry that would unlock more u more battery life faster charging speeds, like We've done a lot around the edges to make Lithium ion chemistry work. We haven't really seen new chemistries at scale These arent silicon carbon batteries. We have seen some of them in China, but this is the big new chemistry. Samsung spent a lot of time talking about how they are managing this chemistry and making it safe because if you will recall, Samsung has had pretty enormous problems with theirir phoness lighting on fire. Yeah. One of the funniest things going in our comments of the stories we've been doing about this has been there's one set of people who's like, I'm never ever going to trust Samsung with a battery again Do remember the note seven Another set of people who are like, yeah, you know who else remembers the note seven is Samsung. And you know who definitely has built a hell of a lot of infrastructure to make sure that never happens again? Samsung We'll see. I had we I have a friend who at the time of the notesone was like this phone rules, I'm never sending it back. Can't stop me I respect that, actually. This is, you know, the first sort of mainstream U S phone with a new battery chemistry And if it is the vanguard of Longer life, lower power, more efficient, smaller size. That is incredible. straightforwardly incredible. And we I would like to see more battery chemistry development for enormous number of reasons, such as phones, like EBs like there's a bunch of stuff where new battery chemistries are maybe the most exciting thing that will happen in tech Here we have some phones that are using new battery chemistries. I think in a very conservative way, ye, right? They're not going all the way in. It is a pretty conservative application of the new technology But it is fascinating to see that Samsung has decided to make the leap I agree and I think I think they're actually doing this in roughly the right way for exactly the reason users described, right? There are other silicon carbon batteries out there with more capacity in roughly the same size or even smaller devices And Samsung has been very straightforward about like we could have pushed this harder. We could have then more aggressive in how we wanted to think about the actual stated battery capacity on this thing It is also true that silicon is more volatile, It expands more. it can wear more over time. and I think Samsung is right to say this is still relatively new technology. we should do this more carefully. It'll be really interesting to me to see whether this comes to the next set of Galaxy S devices, which is very much the mainstream phone, right? These are not phones. none of the phones today are phones most people will buy or even consider buying. I think a lot of people should buy the flip. We can get to that, Yay flip phones Like the the Z Fold eight ultra is a twenty thousand one hundred dollars phone. Like you said, most people are not going to buy this. So it is a useful science project for Samsung Aual confidence will come when it puts it in the Galaxy S device. How do you feel about a twenty thousand one hundred dollars phone two thousand dollars phone battery might wear down faster than a traditional battery. Bad, Ni. Well, real, real, real bad I don't know. if you buy like a Ferrari, you're like, if I run it real hard it'll explode. Like I mean this is a thing, right? Like there is no case for someone who is price shopping a phone to price shop your way up to this, right? Like in the way Apple is very good at sort of talking you up the chain of its phones There is no way that chain this in the same way that that chain never gets you to, I should spend the money for the it. Med from Spidererman Vibe coded an app Did she see that They literally introduced him as the actor who plays Ned from Spider M. I know, which is not guy I mean, money solves all problems. but I'm just pointing it out. I mean, that that was like one of those moments where, you know, they're trying to make the argument for the four factors. and I can vibe code and app or my fictional character can vibe code an app I think these marketing departments get themselves so twisted. To your point, like people are gonna do everything all the time. And a neat little narrative about these phones It just doesn't exist. Like everyone just sort of opens the phones and does whatever they want The only thing anyone really cares about is longer battery life and they were able to address that at quite a bit length with silicon carbon But I think the other dimension of battery life is Will you be down to eighty percent capacity in two years on your twenty one hundred dollarars phone And if we don' pay off this bet on silicon carbon? Will there be replacement parts that fit into this case onnce that happens And like all of that is wide open. I think it's like worth noting if you spend the money, you're at the bleeding edge of technology here in a very specific way But it is true that this is generally believe to be a huge leap forward in consumer electronic batteries. And I think like almost everyone is betting on this idea in some way. So I'm very confident will work. I do think you're taking a You're taking a risk on the first version of it I mean, I'll like the the comparison It's different. It's definitely different and the risks were different. But But when all the charging blocks shifted from silicon to Gan, Gall M I tried. We actually ran a big story on this back in the day. Like Anchor was the first they had an exclusive on it and everything got smaller at first And then everything got a little overpowered and then a bunch of sort of like irresponsible alphabet suit Amazon vendors started making ones that would light on fire. But now everything iss gan and everything is small, right? And that was a big shift in sort of material science and charging technology and power density, all this stuff. And it just took a while for it to become the standard in a real way I think we're on the same kind of journey here. It's just Will it light on fire on an airplane is a different question Mm. I mean, yeah, who knows? That's one of our review tests will be to take it on an airplane and just just see just Go on several planes. Who knows? We're going rent to Cessna and then like panic for an hour U Can I ask you how you feel about the word knitography whichich I feel about n hography for years. Okay It's just every time I see that word, it really, it just gives me like a visceral yuck face I will say Samsung spent less time in this event doing weird camera things than it has in the past There was a really bizarre ad with obviously AI generated derbs. I think they were derbs that I didn't super love. time whether it was just this event or not, there was much less focus on here's all the weird creepy uncanny valley stuff you can do with your phone But they did say the phrase foocus on the moment and let Galaxy take care of capturing it. And I was just like, oh, this is when Neili just throws his computer into the sea what if the future of photograph is, you don't even take pictures. You just tell me you think around you. You think gosh, it would be great to have a picture and it takes and it does it, that'd be so fun I mean, that is where the camera companies have wanted to go for some time. Y Right is you just push this shutter button and it will decide what the best photo is and it will make that photo for you. And they've gotten there. I think my argument is like what's left for Samsung to do inside of their camera app right we're already just rendering the moon out of nothing We're already moving people around on park benches. Like weve we've announced all the AI stuff short of there isn't a lens on this camera that you can reasonably announce And so I kind of get why they're backing it off. Also, the backlash is real. It's just real everywhere, the idea that you know, AI pictures of food and restaurant windows are a thing that you should vandalize. is just a thing that is on the local news now. This is a real story in San Francisco. And I don't know if Samson wants to run right into it while they're also promoting agentic AI and they're wide foldable Sanger So I think like it's a good camera is like all they really need to say at this point. And the this sort of G Z gen Y camera culture is about point shoe cameras with flashes right now. So what are you going do Like you can't compete with that Yes, That's very true. There was one of them I think it was the regular fold, the wide fold where they said when you when you hold it up to take a photo, it will feel nostalgic, like you're shooting with an old digital camera And I was just like, no, it won't. Like what on earth are you talking about? It's gonna feel like a phone. It's fine. I watched three different TikTok videos over the past week of people adjusting the set settings on their canon point and shoots by like rotating the dials and going through those men because they're incomprehensible. And I was like, something is happening here that one I love and two All of these companies should pay more attention to, like They don't people don't want this other thing. They're chasing this other look, which is good. Yes. And yeah, and I think To some extent, there was evidence in this event that Samsung gets that. And I think that's part of why they talked so much about the hardware and about the way that you use it and about playing games and consuming content and You get the sense it's like there's a there's an investor mandated number of times you have to say agentic AI in a ninety minute presentation or else your stock price just starts to tank In general, they spent a lot more time talking about, here's why this is a good phone that you will like in your life and much less. on hereere is all the wacky LLM stuff we've enabled you to do. And I think that's the right thing to do, right? Like in this particular case, especially for Samsung to say, here is our bleeding edge set of phones, here is the stuff that we are demonstrably better at than all of our competitors in this space they made a big meal out of how they're winning at foldables and they are. like it's true Question is, is this going to continue to be the sort of mainstreaming moment for these foldables. and if it is Can Samsung still win? rightight now it's winning a game no one else is really playing in the same way? At least in this country. Yeah. right. But to say, here is what we think this is for and why we think you should use it just felt me, right? Like they just they make a case for what you are supposed to do with your phone and a few times, made the case that actually what you should do is not look at your phone, which is not a thing we hear from phone companies very often. But you start to see these companies are starting to understand the way the winds are changing, right? that there is real energy for people to not want to use their phone so much and to want it to fit more naturally into their life and not be completely subsumed by it all the time. Is this the thing they're actually after? Of course not. They all want you to use their phones more and ruin your life. But They see the cultural change happening. And that's the thing that convinces me increasingly that that cultural change is happening is that these companies are now having to respond to it in a real way. We've spent fifteen years watching everybody just power through the idea that people are mad about privacy and mad about the incursion on their lives and mad about the algorithmic stuff. and like E We're not using the scre timee controls in your phone they would just they would they would throw you a bone every once in a while, but mostly would just assume that eventually They'll win and you'll give in And they are now starting to And I think that to me is the clearest sign that there is real change happening. But you don't agree with me. You're making. I agree with you in the sense that There's a lot of cultural pushback in the dominance of phones and particularly social media. and we see it all over the place. They're ag gating laws all over the interet in variousries and states sure We see the pushback ins on our data centers. I'm much to balance it out AIs a technology that is really good at summarizing things. And a lot of what you're describing is like, what if the cover screen summarized more things for you Sure You know what I mean? likeike And so it's they're using the technology they have to make a feature that connects to a cultural thing, which is what they should do I'm not even disagreeing with you I just don't think that I think they're backing into an answer as opposed to being like, we see the cultural winds are changing. We ought to make a product We have a summarization machine canan we point it at this problem? And like, well, you know the next turn is like the aentic stuff, which will maybe point at the problem even more. And that I don't know that they've connected the AI will make you use your phone less to there's backlash against technology as directly as maybe you would hope Maybe not That's it's very possible that that is the case. Also, I would point out that it's not called the cover screen. It's called the Flex window And that's that's two words c or it's one word camel casted. and it's very important to me and to them. You can the hinge is called the arrmor hinge. Yes And it's very again, it's all part of one UI nine on the Samsung Galaxy Z fllip Aate I hate these names. It's too many words. I can't do it anymore. There's a little more to say, but I feel like I have to ask this now because you mentioned Samsung making inace for one. Actually before you do We have an ad to play. Oh my God. So brief cliffhanger We have an ad before I forget to do this and we get to the end of the show, and I get yelled at Here's an ad, we'll be back in sixty seconds Support for the show comes from Mongo DB AI assisted and agentic codating can help you build faster than ever. 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Book a virtual visit with a menopause specialist at MIDI. Visit joinmidi. com to schedule with an expert who gets it Specialist led care, virtual visits, insurance eligible. Midlife needs MIDI. Results may vary. medications prescribed only if clinically appropriate based on a consultation with a clinician. Insurance coverage varies. cheheck with your plan for coverage All right, we're Neili, you Here's my rap up questions on the phones hidden You got to we got to talk about the watches and everything. Yeah. All All right, we talked a lot about how Samsung has made its case. for foldables We've avoided it thus far. Pumably in September, Apple's going to put out an iPhone that folds in exactly the same way I'm going to ask you a question that my friend Casey Newton asks us all the time U, did Samsung show anything here that would make one person buy a Samsung phone instead of the iPhone that they already have fun A, they showed that you can scan a QR code to switch from your iPhone to a Samsung phone, which as somebody who has switched a lot of phones in the last year Boy is that exciting Yeah, Qick shhare coming across devices, big exciting thing. Everybody seems to have just acked airdrop and Apple seems to have just waved the white flag and is like, whatever. Right Apple's like We need to fight with the EU about AI. you can have stupid airdrops But I think in general I Gemini is vastly better than Siri, even what we've seen from Siri AI so far Um The the what do they call it now nudge? all of these little things that appear uh, in in sort of in the course of using your phone where you're like, we need to put that on the calendar and it'll just pop up a thing, being like, add the calendar. U Again, SiriAI is trying to do the same thing. That's going to be a big part of the competitive landscape over the next couple of years the actual sort of minute to minute proactive experience using your phone Gemini is just a mile ahead at this moment in time if you think that that is a core part of how you use your phone This is a big part of it. I also think there's a shot that the iPhone ultra, or whatever it ends up being called is going to be even more expensive than these. I mean and this is really the thing it all boils down to, right? Like I look at all of these and I think Samsung got a lot of things right here, and I will almost certainly never recommend any of these phones to anybody because they're just too expensive. L fundamentally these things are just science projects and until they are cheaper They they don't ret what they need to in order. I have a hard time imagining what it would take for me to tell you to spend twice as much on your next phone I don't think the iPhone Ultra is going to get there. I don't think these phones get there. I'm a little more compelled by the Z flip just because it's only tw thousand twove hundred dollars. it is someome of this stuff in a vastly cheaper form factor So that's all very exciting too me, thing that they have where in a strange way, Google has allowed Samsung to be the bleeding edge of its own AI stuff odd but is really good for Samsung in the sense that it gets a lot of that stuff actually going on. They're starting to build better other devices. If you're a believer in smart glasses, there's going to be a real reason to use Android phones H I think Samsung is getting there. I think The switching costs between iOS and Android might just be prohibitively high for everybody. I think at the very least Samsung has made it much harder for people to leave and go to the iPhone Right, which is that, that's the thing Samsung needs more than anything is to not lose whatever market share this is T iPhone people. people who want because are the foldable the best and wildest technology. The fact that I think a bunch of people will look at these and be happy with it and not feel like they have to go immediately buy the iPhone because it's so obviously the best aldable. Samsung did a relatively good job of that today. I mean, that my prediction I was basically wrong about was that foldables would be a form factor shift that led to people switching I don't think that happened in any meaningful way. It's just the price man. Like it I think you would have been right if they had figured out a way to stop selling them for eight hundred dollars and more Yeah. And the iPhone also is going to cost that too and It turns out price matters, right? Like Not a lot of people bought the Vision Pro because it's three thousand five hundred dollars. Most people, especially with this device are not looking for the wildest thing at all possible costs. like even even the iPhone aerir, which I think has had a funny sort of resurgence in a lot of people's minds that like there are a lot of people who thought it was dumb and they use it for a while and they're like, oh, this one's actually kind of lovely It doesn't matter, right? L People are price sensitive. peopleeople are going to buy the things that are more stable and more familiar and in many cases cheaper These things are just going to lose until they can compete on price. And you can maybe talk me into like a hundred or two hundred dollars more Like if you had The the Base it eight hundred pro at one thousand and the foldable at twelve hundred You start to be somewhere, but doubling the price, you're nowhere. I just don't think it's ever going to happen at that price I'm very curious see how Apple prices its phones, but I think that The idea that Samsung made a big case for how people use these phones just a few months before Apple puts out similar phones and makes a similar case with their ability to market It It's going frustrate a lot of people who know that Samsung has been shipping folding phones for a long time. Apple is going to pretend that it invented foldable phones. and I just want everyone watching and listening to know that we know it didn't. We know, we believe you. We're here. We've talked about it. I also really like this comment that just says if I could replace the screen if they break for less than the price of a mid range phone, then I'd consider them Fabulous point That is exactly the problem. Should we talk about the washes? F should quickly talk about the washes you you are a noted Aple watchatch Ultra believer Are you wearing are you wearing yours right now? Yeah, but the Apple, you know, when in twenty seven, this thing is gone I gotta get a one. So I'm the market our ecosystem lock in is going to drive me exactly to one option Thats that is the problem. But so Samsung launched two There's the the Galaxy watchatch nine and the Galaxy Watch Ultra two. The watch nine is basically a chip bump and a battery bump fine. easy, easy upgrade from one of the other The the ultra two I think is more interesting again, in terms of what who Samsung imagined this for They made a bunch of novies about divers. It has a spec for diving accessories that it adheres to. It does nitrogen absorption monitoring. They have a partnership with a well known company that makes a diving app. Um, they they they have sort of carved out This is for divers in the way that Apple has really tried to carve out. this is for outdoor adventurers for the watchatch Ultra Um It has a bigger battery. This I actually thought was sort of fascinating. V song and our team wrote a story about this. Um It has a thirty five percent bigger battery than the last model, despite being actually a little thinner the on the ultra and they say it gets sixty hours on a charge But V got seventy hours on a charge from the last Ultra, which means there's a world in which the battery on this thing is like Rchary or days plus, three or four days. which I think would be a big deal I don't think this watch is particularly attractive It's kind of big and blocky and undesigned in a certain way to my eyes, but I don't know, what do you make of this thing I agree with you on the design piece, right? Like The idea that watches are four tasks is challenging when they are as powerful as these watches, like This watch, the Apple Watch Ultra, the sort of big smart watches are little computers that can do little computer things And then you kind of run into the fashion problem. I think there's a reason Whoop bands are really popular and everyone's making one. because they're unobtrusive I think that Google one you can just hide on like a regular watch strap on the back So people are finding ways to like hide the sensors All you want is the health tracking feature. and take the display away. And then you have these products, which are Gigantic in there it feels like they're only going to keep getting bigger in very specific ways and getting more powerful And then you're like, what What am I doing with this giant computer? A I rested? Maybe the answer is like having a great time I know a lot of people want to jow a computer in the wrist. I just keep looking at these pictures and's it's one of our commenters just described it as circle in squirrel, which I think is right. And this to me just it keeps looking like Prototype they forgot to take the outer case off of, right? Like that the thing inside should be the watch And somebody forgot to remove the outer casing before they shipped it. It just doesn't there's something about this that just doesn't look finished to me Yeah, I mean, they've they've got to handle all the ventilation. they've got to you can see it's more it's form follows function here in like a very specific way. Yeah. which is fine. The thing that gets me about all these watches is again, the thing that most people love about their smart watches is the health and fitness features And there's just a lot of competition in form factor there. Yeah There just is And there's been this recent push towards no screen at all for some of that stuff. that actually what I want is just a device that collects everything and then I will do all of the management of that on my son hereere's the whooping. there's a reason. I mean I find this thing bananas, but the CaF whoop is coming on to coder soon and we're going talk about it. But you can see that there's that, right? If If what Apple figured out in the sort of Apple Watch journey was this is a health device and they really, really focused on it. They have maybe lost that plot a little bit Right And these screenless devices are coming up to take it over. And then it's like, okay, what is this smartwatch for And we should put a big processor in it. We have all this stuff. and you just kind of get to oh, we're going to reboot this a little bit and it's going to get even bigger and even crazier. And we're going to need air pocket ventilation, like all the stuff that you need. I'm excited for it because I think it's going to be a new turn in these watches. because theirir core feature, health and fitness is going in a different direction, is going in different form factors We'll see. The thing that makes me sad about all of this is's the same with headphones Once you buy a phone, you're in an ecosystem And that ecosystem traps you into this device. So is does this thing actually compete with the Apple Watch? It Not in not in any way. It competes with keeping the money in your pocket. I mean, that's what it is. I will say, I think U Again, Samsung has spent a lot of years making a lot of noise about the overall galaxy ecosystem And I think has not really delivered a ton on that But there were some interesting demos today in that they were talking about how you might use the watch to control your glasses and the sort of interplay between those different form factors watch glasses phone. I think both of our feelings about glasses are well established and ironically Boy did they not make a compelling case for smart glasses in this entire thing that they're just like there was a whole long thing about all of these other devices and why you might want them and what they're for and why they're worth having in this particular shape. And then they're like glasses, he's just like, well, you could take pictures Well, okay, so no one knows what a smart glasses are for But they do they have this thing where it's like, okay, you can use yourour watch to control your glasses so that you don't have to be, you know, touching your face all the time. And they and there arere little again, these little pieces of the ecosystem that are starting to come together. And it's a real shame that no one else is going to be able to do these things. Apple is more locked in than anybody Android is a little more open. It will have some more hooks into this stuff. It'll be interesting to see how Google enables that stuff across the ecosystem, but It is true that if you are going to buy one of these phones, you are almost certainly going to buy a galaxy watch next to it if you buy a smartwatch because you don't really have any other. Look, you tuned into a Virgecast live stream at Samsung productucts, you're going to get some literal galaxy brain takes. So here's mine All of these ideas where you're gonna buuy a Samsung watch to control the Google AI and your Samsung glasses designed by Gentle Mster, whatever, nonsense.' fine. whatever. They're all gonna run into the same problem which is the history of usser interface is more and more direct manipulation We had you held a mouse in your hand and you move the arrow and like literally click on the thing you want and there was like a very direct manipulation of what's happening. We got to touch sccreens, you're literally pushing on the pixels to change what you want. All of these devices are indirect manipulation where whatever your hand is doing off in space has almost nothing to do with what you're seeing and controlling. And that stuff is a dead end It is true on the metaglasses with the neural band. It's just like ever it just unwires people's brains in a way that's like, can I just use my phone I just use my phone, right And until you get to like literally reaching out and pointing and clicking, which runs into all kinds of other Steve Jobs used called guerilla Arms. whatever, man. like The industry is chasing the stuff and it is willfully forgetting the things it knows about user interface paradigms Yeah, I think that's right. And I mean, we're back to buttons and cars again, right Pople like buttons and knobs and I think I think direct probably do it for a lot of that. Yeah, exactly. And it turns out that is worth pushing back towards in this case too. There's so many interesting I encourage everybody to go like look up Brett Victor and all of the work that he's done on how do we make a projector see the room and react as you literally move physical things around as a computer. wild exciting stuff out there that I actually think has much more bearing on how reality should work than pingy pinch in front of my face as I use something The wasas there anything in the in the watchatch Ultra that you thought was particularly cool? Are you psyched about five thousand nits of brightness? They made a big deal out of five thousand nits of brightness No, but you know, I don't I'm not I'm not like climbing Everest two thousand more knits new. I'm good man. Like I'm turning down the brightness of my watch all the time. I have a baby, you understand? Yeah The baby's like, do you want me to sleep or do you want me to pot this watch? Like that those are our chresses Yeah, that's fair. I do think some of the U prereventative health stuff is interesting. Samsung is resolutely trying to boil everything that it collects about you into a series of scores that it can give you on your watch. which I would say I'm constitutionally against. There's nothing I hate more waking up tired in the morning and having it be like, you get a fifty nine for last night. I'm like, well, I hate you. We are not friends. You and me rightight now, it's Google Health that I'm furious at. everyvery morning I wake up and it's like, gosh You didn't sleep very well last night and I'm like pouring coffee on my face. I'm like, I'm aware. Thank you, Google Health Uh But again, they're deep down this can this be not just a Fitness device, but an actual like Capital H health device And I think that's the direction Apple is pushing to, That's the direction Samsung is going and Again, the question of how big is the total addressable market for a device like that for people who want things like that remains unclear to me, but It is interesting to see Samsung really dive after this in the same way. I mean, there is a certain amount of doing what Apple's doing here. likeike they' just a galaxy he. You know what I mean Oh wait by the way, hardart of stable coins in now. come on. That was the funniest part of the whole thing, where again, the moment where he said stable coins are now in the Samsung wallet and literally paused for applause and got Nothing. I mean, like dead air in the room. And then one person goes, woo, and he's like, Yeahah,. That's very good. Terrific. Look, I I Health and fitness wise, everyone is chasing loooo. Like I don' You can't be clear protected, like that's They have emerg as a particular kind of market leader in a particular kind of way You have a lot of feelings about that. particularly about whether or not AI is a good or stable or healthy health companion, which V talks about all the time. literally today This morning Open A I got sued for giving incorrect health advice to somebody and like that's there's going to be big lawsuit. So whether or not these metrics in gamifying your health is actually effective in the way that people want it to be effective. don't know. But I know what everyone's chasing is that number go up is a compelling thing to put on a sat sheet and in marketing materials And now Samsung can be like, Samsung health AI is going to do it for you. whether or not they are the best one or It feels irrelevant to the reality of they're all kind of the same They all tell you to go to bed at eleven PM and get nine hours of sleep And they also tell us drink so much and like eat a little bit less than you move and like I just told you that Will you pay me the subscription fee? And the fact that they're all essentially identical products at this point is completely irrelevant because of the ecosystem thing, right? Like it's not You're not actually choosing between bunch of hard to pick between products, you're picking the one that works at the phone that you have. Yeah, And that's that's the long and short of it. And so I think every one of these good features should immediately be copied by every single one of these competitors. becausecause it doesn't matter. L they're not competitors I mean, this is going to be the This is the fight that maybe AI overcomes Maybe I't know man If if Gem and I It becomes the ecosystem unto itself. we get into a really interesting place. I don't think that's happening anytime soon. It does not seem like it's happening anytime soon. All right, we should get out of here, but I will say I think the reviews for these devices are going to be really fascinating. a sort of unusual way for a phone in twenty twenty six There are a lot of ways these could go.