Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold hands-on thoughts | Engadget Podcast

[Music] [Music] what's up everybody welcome back to another live broadcast of the engag podcast I'm senior editor dender hardwar this morning joined by senior writer Sam Rutherford hey Sam hey how's it going going okay happy to have you board and podcast producer Ben Elman hey Ben ghost we did not fall asleep what we did not fall asleep oh G yeah there was a person who's saying oh they must have fallen asleep because they're not streaming imediately too early um I thought people were used to just like a little a few minutes of chill time for a stream but I've heard conflicting rules but anyway hello everybody who's here joining us on the stream I saw people here uh well before our time Z here at 1011 a. hello CH Tom Janson everybody Eduardo everybody really thank you for being there early because it's just nice to see that people are excited every everyone's uh excited to talk pixel I suppose talk pixel uh upfront we don't have any hardware nobody has the hardware right now but Sam did get a lot of Hands-On time with it um at the you know pre-launch event so we're gonna talk to Sam about his feelings um yeah and charlin may have some phones but she's on her way back from California so uh obviously that's why she's not here for sure and also we can't talk about pre-released Hardware so who knows who knows uh check out Sam's Hands-On video with the pixel nine Pro fold I hate that name so much I do too I've talked about I I think anytime I talk about I mention how stupid I think the name is such a Google mistake but we will dive into all that how's every that thing where you're going over multiple speed bumps multiple small speed bumps at once sure I don't want to describe that thing so much that's a that's a good way to Market your device a good way to get the public excited for people to like trip over the name a bunch of times I'm I'm just calling it The profold because that's EAS profold I mean everybody was expecting a pixel full too and that's my main argument is that you yeah it's very confusing when you're going this through Google okay so hello to Dom Larry hello to K-pop loving Asian who said it's their first time catching the podcast thank you for watching hi to Sammy uh hi to Juan hi to uh Amir Tech live hi to e3v L1 hi to DMD D Savage and cud and Sean comry and Jeff row man there's actually a lot of names here L and new names hey yeah thank you thank you folks for joining countries I don't I haven't I don't remember seeing Holland very often yeah there are so many people saying what time it is in their current area no tell us what country you're coming to us from country what time zone that's all fun thank you all for joining us for the new folks uh we are basically going to live stream our recording of the podcast but the final version of the podcast go to our audio feed that's going to be cleaner a little touched up and uh you know more edited but here you can he uh we'll do some Q&A in between sections we won't always get to talk to chat while we're recording yep I don't want audio people to be left out you know if you're listening especially um we've got someone from India right now tuning in but let's say you're um you know too busy with life stuff and also living in in India I don't want them to download the end Gadget podcast tomorrow morning and just be like why am I listening to like people talk directly to chat like I wasn't able to be there it's a thing we we may mention you guys and we may pull in good questions but yeah this is uh the recording will not have that uh let's see here yeah so uh hi to so John Robinson says that it's uh he's coming to us from the UK we got someone from lindbrook NY um deep pack Murthy is in Italy and it's almost 5:00 p.m there Quinn Thompson in Canada cud is it's almost 1 am in there Australia wowe London South Africa wow that's really cool that's cool I see a question Daryl Hester what are we doing if we don't have the device hey this is called Hands-On uh thoughts Hands-On thoughts we have we have used of device we just physically have them in hand yes uh it's a very clear title but I'm sorry if you feel misguided we will have devices soon and we'll have more pictures and photos and videos of it soon there's still a lot to talk about even though gon say we're gonna go into sort of why we don't have devices right now because there there there's a reason for that there's a reason for that all right are we good to go oh yes hi to in Malaysia and Puerto Rico that's really hi Daniel Diaz all right so if you've been on the stream before you know what we're about to do but for other people like uh K-pop loving Asian who is this is their first time watching the stream what we do is we countd down from three we do like a sync and then like a little bit of Silence then we actually get into the podcast so if you want to put a clap or a snap fingers in the chat after the countdown you can definitely do that it's always fun to see everybody put emojis in the chat always love it is everybody recording just double checking and hello hello let me turn on the backup to the Backup backup to the backup okay got the backup to the backup going uh someone is watching from a Burger King in Canada tell us more about I love the dedication I love it love the dedication um listen I know I know true podcasters can podcast from airports you know you gotta dedic certain true podcasters can podcast from airports yes so counting down from three two one and some silence I'll let you know when the silence is over okay silence over thank you for being patient with that and let's get into talking about the pixel yeah we use the silence for noise cancelling stuff noise reduction stuff yep I feed all this stuff into a very expensive audio program and it makes everything sound better definitely all right let's kick it off in three two one what's up internet and welcome back to the gadget podcast I'm senior editor Dinger hardwar this week I'm joined by scene Rider Sam Rutherford hey Sam hey how you doing doing okay and we got you here to talk more about uh the Google devices but specifically the new pixel 9 Pro fold a name that I hate I know you hate it too we'll talk about why that's kind of messy and also some of your like you know further thoughts from the Google event Sam uh charlin and I did do like a post event chat that went for an hour that there's a live stream there's an episode on the podcast feed about that too so if you want to hear broader thoughts about the the pixel9 event the made by Google event go check it out there how do you think it went overall Sam um I I think you know Google is not already really great about protecting its leaks uh and you know they even got to the point where like you know we're just going to tease the the new stuff you know months ahead of time because hey if we release it then it's not a leak right um so I mean I think you know you kind of see that like continual steady Evolution and I you know I think a lot of people may be getting a little tired of this at this point but like obviously the big Focus again was on AI so we got you know some new AI features um some new AI camera features and some other stuff and on one hand like I can see the fatigue setting in but on the other hand and it's like hey Google is like you know the more every every time they have one of these events they add new AI features they're really kind of filling out that like sweet of AI powered software features tools and it's like okay and it's like after a while it's like wow there's just so many things and obviously it can be difficult because there's a lot of things for the consumer or you know new buyers to like sort through but at the same time there's just there's a lot of different you know versatility there to talk about it's a it was a pretty big event um um we'll talk about like what worked and what didn't I will say up front folks be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or podcast of choice leave us a review on iTunes drop us email at podcast engadget.com I want to hear your feedback and join us Thursdays typically around 10:45 a.m. eastern on our YouTube channel where we do the live stream uh sometimes we'll have devices but we'll always do Q&A with people so if you want to chat directly with us and if You' got questions about the latest news that's a good thing to join in for um it was kind of a wild event Sam but I think one thing that was interesting is that it was actually a live event right it was not just a pre-recorded video um like apple does or yeah that like apple does Samsung is still doing Live Events now too but Samsung doesn't typically do like onstage demos of new software and that's something Google tried to do and it didn't work out all the time there there's good bad to that right like the the first demo we saw which was something of uh you know capturing information comparing it to your calendar basically somebody took a photo of something at was asking the um you know Gemini uh am I free for this can you add this to my calendar it failed three times it took like 60 seconds what did you think about just that demo because it seem like a big failure of the whole idea of AI assistance yeah I mean there there's the pros and cons obviously you know anytime it's like the curse of live demos right that that that struck Google again this kind of always happens anytime someone gets bold enough to try to do a live demo but at the same time after that initial flub they did a lot more live demos throughout the live stream and they all ran pretty smooth except for one issue with uh the reimagine feature which kind of you know uses prompts to replace backgrounds or foregrounds and subjects and then you know they had one one one example that looked kind of wonky but you know because they had multiple choices multiple results for that feature they were just able to swipe to the next one it's was like oh hey that looks pretty good yeah um and so I think you know once again you're seeing the fallibility of AI just he sometimes it doesn't work sometimes it times out I mean it's also hard to know it's like you know was that a you know a pre-production software thing was that just a simple bug was it a connection issue so it's hard to tell um but at the same time I think once they kind of you know got on board with everything it did show you that like hey a lot of these things are happening on device and they're pretty fast it just sucks that like I for I guess for them that it was kind of marred by the initial flub of you know the live bug demo yeah there was like a multiple attempt flub to it took a while and it was a little awkward so that's not the best way to kick off a live event de air is just you know it's hard to deal with when you're just sitting there waiting for something to happen and it kind of cles out night it's a nightmare I felt I felt embarrassed for that person but also like listen it would have been also pretty easy if you just looked at your calendar and like used your brain to match the information on that picture um yeah they're trying to sell us ways that AI could make our lives easier and it still seems like in some ways just doing look looking at your calendar doing something manually could be easier and faster so I guess we'll we'll see where all this goes I really want to talk about the pixel 9 Pro fold Sam so you did the Hands-On um go check out Sam's coverage of that and the video of that I really got stuck like held up just with the name of this thing because we were all expecting a pixel full 2 or something like that clean simple a sequel to the pixel fold um I think it's not a great name for a device like this it may not matter the long run but what do you think Sam no I I completely agree it's not a great name but at least from Google's perspective here's the rationale the rationale is that uh they just announced a whole bunch of pixel9 phones we got the pixel9 the pixel9 pro which is a new size it's the smaller version of the pro but you still get that you know optical zoom camera and then you have the pixel 9 Pro XL which is the big Flagship that we've had before but just kind of get his tweaked Excel name on that and so they really wanted the pixel9 pro fold for people to know that it's part of the rest of the pixel family so it still has the same tensor G4 chip all the same AI features uh you know very similar display specs similar design language um and so really that's the whole from their rational they want people to know that the profold is part of the pixel9 family and that's why you kind of get that convoluted name I totally get it but it also seems like Google brain stuff too and we're seeing responses in the chat like hey just get over the name yeah ultimately probably doesn't matter but we're ask asking you to think a little deeper here and it does seem endemic of the way Google handles consumer products in general it's not a clean name um I don't think it really matters if people know if it's part of the pixel9 family or not because it is a foldable it's the newest foldable a lot of people would assume they'll have the latest Hardware um calling it pixel and then you can't just call it the pixel 9 fold because it's more than the pixel 9 it's Pro so then you're just adding all these things it feels like big engineer brain to be like we got to make sure it all fits into the product family rather than the way human may want it's one of those things where I think someone could have just been at Google be like hey let's just keep it simple and you know land on something a little cleaner but I think this is actually maybe an overcorrection from last year because if you remember last year the pixel fold came out before the pixel 8 family and it had a worse chip you know had the tensor G2 um and so I think that's it I think it's really kind of an overcorrection on that kind of unforced error from the previous year um and so I guess that's where we're at I'm you know for me I'm just going to call it the pro fold maybe hopefully we get like you know a profold 10 and then maybe they kind of rearrange that uh next year we'll see but yeah that that's kind of where we're at that's the whole thing so what is new this year uh you had a really great ride up Sam where it basically looks like this thing is a lot more polished the screens are bigger it seems like they solved a lot of the problems from the original pixel fold right yeah I mean I I kind of love the shape of the original pixel fold just because it's it's so unique it has that like you know almost P passport shaped Dimensions but for the pro fold Google actually did something really clever is like their whole goal with the original pixel fold was to make the outside screen more usable and they did that by making it a little bit wider a little bit shorter a little kind of a little bit squater but this year what they did is basically took an outside screen that's almost exactly the same size as the standard pixel 9 and pixel look like exactly the same screen which would make it easier to build too in in the video I hold it up and you can see it's almost exactly the same size and so if you're talking about an outside screen that's usable well there you go you can't like no one's ever going to say that the pixel 9 screen is not usable and that's exactly pretty much what you're getting on the pro fold and then that also com steps another issue small issue that you had on the original pixel fold is that because when you opened it up the flexible main screen was a uh in landscape mode there were some sites and some apps that just they kind of free out because they don't understand a phone that's default landscape mode because everything else is portrait mode and so you would sometimes have to rotate the phone into portrait mode and then you get a landscape View and it was just a weird experience it didn't happen very often but when it did you're like well that's just un unusual and so you have to get over that so by having that main display now in the profold in portrait mode by default it's pretty much like all the other foldables on the so it's from a developer perspect perspective it's a lot easier for you know compatibility thing developers hate awkward or different screen sizes right yeah they they do not like updating their apps for a single device so yeah so it's like more in line now what is interesting about the pixel 9 Pro fold is that yeah that outside screen you could just live on that all the time and then occasionally pop it open and do the big screen whereas I think the argument for a lot of foldables before was you've got basic information on the front screen but you really want to always be open most of the time I feel like Google has stru an interesting balance here yeah it's sort of a subtle design shift where they're kind of acknowledging that I think people it's more of a 5050 scenario where like you're using the outside screen 50% of the time and you're using that main screen 50% of the time or some somewhere in that ballpark and so both the screen sizes and aspect ratios of both displays are super important yeah and then kind of uh some other small design changes is that Google is claiming that it's the thinnest uh foldable on the market at about 5.1 mm that's not actually true um because both the xiaomi mix fold 4 and the honor magic V3 are slightly thinner like less than a millimeter thinner so you're you're really hedging I think you know that they me US market right yeah in the US market that claim still holds true and then the main display is now also 8 inches uh from corner to corner which is up from about 7.6 is um so it's bigger than the zold 6 um and bigger than um you know the OnePlus open and stuff like that although I think there is a maybe one Chinese foldable or two that is slightly bigger so once again they're kind of just talking about us uh availability in terms of like biggest screen thinness foldable um and whatnot an 8 inch internal screen is pretty massive like that's just yeah you are fully a tablet at that point I think how is the screen crease because that is the thing that always gets me about foldable ESP I'm watching it's still there no no company has completely gotten rid of it um there there's some arguments on the laptop side where you know maybe they have done it but it's to me especially like I'm I'm you know I'm a little biased because I've been using foldables for so long it's like the whole Matrix thing I do not even see the crease there it does not exist to me um so I guess that's where it's at if you are the kind of person it's it's one of those things like you have to try it and then you realize oh the crease does not actually matter at all but you know from an outside perspective if that thing bugs you it's going to still bug you now because it is visible technically I've got actually when it comes to like video watching I'm I imagine if I'm full screening a video on that it's it's going right to the middle of the screen like with the screen with the crease in between but I guess you could conceivably have the video running at the top of the screen and half setu at the bottom and maybe avoid you honestly only really notice it when you're viewing it from a really acute angle anything close to like head on where like you're holding the phone in front of your face like you normally would you won't won't really see it and it's even less noticeable in like darker environment like inside like you know if you're outside doors you know you're going to use that but you're probably using the exterior screen when you're Outdoors walking around anyways yeah I imagine it's more like I think about how I use devices with kids now right and having something like that like juggling a a thicker device like I will if I'm running around with the kids outside I could never open that phone and use as a tablet but I want it to be durable I want it to feel like a typical phone how is the design otherwise because I feel like the pixel 9 design this year for Google is a big step up like the camera bar is less ugly it's less prominent it's almost like a pill shap the opinions on that are are so divided because it's like some people really love the camera bar and they kind of got rid of that now now it's just pill shaped module and yeah you know I kind of likened it to the like you know and now it really looks like an Among Us character but hey there's you know that's whatever um but you know Google is saying that it's twice as durable as before um you're getting Gorilla Glass victus 2 front and back um you know and you could AR almost argue that like they're kind of borrowing a little bit of apples styling because it has you know kind of flat boxy sides less you know it doesn't have the tapered rounded edges like we've gotten on the you know past uh pixel pro versions at least um and so I I think I personally I kind of like it um but you know beauty is in the AI Beholder as always I I I think there's some objective things you could point to be like well this is a little more polished than before even if you even if you love the camera bar um I was calling the pixel 9 because I end up writing up that news it does seem like the sleekest pixel ever made like Google has finally figured out some material issues and some like Design Elements to make something that looks a lot more modern than the old pixel 6 design which we've kind of been iterating on for the past several years just yeah I think I think this is a good evolution of right of the pixel 6 design which they have been kind of iterating on for three generations now we're kind of getting something new so I think this is a nice kind of bridge in between those two kind of directions yeah and you play with a lot of foldable Sam you use a lot of foldes or don't you meain uh the latest Galaxy fold um or I I so I just wrote um a kind of one-ear durability on the pixel fold so if you know go check out the the site for that yeah how does this compare you know what is it that much better does it feel better does it look better because that screen looks great too yeah and one of those like like I said I I originally I was like really like I really like the shape of the pixel fold but the new um design of the profold is definitely growing on me the one thing that I'm still trying to figure out nail down confirm for sure is that it doesn't look like they changed the sensors the camera sensors on yeah from the pixel fold to the profold um and I I just really wish they didn't that because even though like you know when I recently reviewed the zold 6 the pixel fold is already a better camera offers better image quality than Samsung's foldable but I really don't you know I don't want Google to do the thing where like they're kind of uh passing the buck between Generations on the foldable because it's like oh we don't want to update the sensors we did it last year and then you're waiting two years between you know sensor upgrad has Google confirmed that because I know you guys reached out to them about we're still you know we're still waiting on review devices and the confirmation on that so you know by the time our review is out we'll know for sure it's one of those things I feel like Google has been really Cy about this release in general right um these devices aren't shipping with Android 15 that feels like a pretty big big thing right I guess they're just coming too early for the release of Android 15 and this this event is basically two months earlier than when they typically do it we typically get pixel stuff in October right so feels like they want to preamp Apple but how do you feel about running older Android at this point I I think that might also be uh a kind of like correction from previous ERS because yeah uh last year and the year before we there was kind of some like software bugginess that you know popped up around you know at the roll out of previous Android versions um especially on the pixel and then like know we saw in like last year around November December and into the new year like they had to release some extra patches to kind of short the bugs and so if this means that we're going to get less buggy releases of Android especially when they come to the pixel I'm kind of okay with it and especially for this year where like there weren't any like groundbreaking overhauls to Android itself um I'm you know I'm not I'm not too upset I I feel like they're also more interested in the upgrades coming through Gemini and a lot of that will be on Android 14 and eventually Android 15 but you don't need Android 15 to get a lot of the AI stuff they're hyping up so it's almost like a weird separation between the AI software and the base software and the base software will matter less and less I guess moving forward yeah and I I think all the mobile os's are so mature at this point that you're you're looking for better stability and you know can you get new feature drops you know Google's been really good about doing regular feature drops and so I think that isn't going to change and so that I think it they're kind of striking maybe a better balance and in some ways this puts more of the focus on the hardware and the new features on the phones and so if you're really interested in that that's great and then hey you get kind of like a second present later when Android 15 arrives yeah definitely U we saw the news about um ATD is not going to be carrying the pixel 9 Pro fold is that do you feel like that's surprising or just think it just kind of makes sense for like a big carrier where many people won't be buying a super a $ 17.99 foldable yeah I think when we're talking about foldables I think it makes sense because no AT&T doesn't release you know sales numbers uh per device but I can't imagine they were selling through that many and when you you know talking about you know a company that has thousands of retail locations and suddenly they have to train their you know their salespeople and their technicians on you know how to educate the customer about these phones and they have to get you know bu display units to put in a certain number of stores I think it kind of makes sense that like for foldable most foldable people at least me in the past you know if I'm going to buy a foldable I'm going to buy it directly from the manufacturer and so I think a lot of foldable people are like that and so it's it's not really a huge loss and they you know AT&T might actually be saving money by not carrying the fold that one thing is that like this also sort of suggests that you know overall market share of foldables isn't super hot and that's a little disappointing but like you said that kind of goes back to the pricing issue where yeah you know the profold cost the same as the last one uh $1,800 it is $100 less than the zold six I'm not sure how much that is going to matter ultimately because they're both really expensive yeah yeah um but we'll we'll see I I'm actually you know a little bit more positive on how you know the pixel uh 9 profold Stacks up against the zold 6 um even though the zold does have a few features like stylus support and Dex mode that aren't really available on you you know I've I've spent a lot of money on smartphones like I I ended up getting the 15 Pro Max with a decent amount of storage but I still like close to $2,000 for foldable is like a killer thing and you know when Apple does it too it's not going to be they're going to look at the competition may even be more expensive than everybody else um we've talked about the Z flip and how the sort of like portrait style foldables that flip down like the razor as well those are getting more in expensive you know those are a th under ,000 now and seem like approachable like a typical smartphone do you think that style of foldable is just catching on better because of the price I I definitely think there's a way more Runway just simply because like you said the price and I think it also Taps into a slightly different kind of maybe less techy audience because both Samsung and Motorola are you know kind of making more stylist fashionable plays with both of those phones Motorola even has a thing where you can hold the phone up to like your your shirt or your pants or whatever and it will take a picture and then it'll make the background of your phone match the pattern on your clothes which is just like completely unnecessary but hey if you're really into like styling out and like doing full matchy match full matchy matchy that's kind of cool and like you said in especially on Motorola's case you can get the lower tier uh new razor for I think $800 that's crazy wild and then you get a thousand for the razor plus and then the Z flip 6 is at I think 1100 um so yeah those are a lot more affordable but like you said I really wish that we would get kind of a similar price reduction on the big foldables because $1,800 is just Out Of Reach For A lot of people and I think I've been noticing more people like out in the world using foldables and so I think there there's is an untapped Market but not until they get the prices down at probably at least under 1500 because yeah apple basically helped push smartphon prices Beyond $1,000 with the their max phones like I think we were all like oh man are we getting to that point cuz for a while it felt like we were at a really good spot where $500 phones could be pretty good and do everything you want then Apple just had to push the price up and OnePlus was kind of scratching that itch with the open last year where it was $1,800 but the you could trade in any phone like even broken ones and bring the price down to $1,500 and so that is like it's not the true retail price but at least it's a little bit more affordable approachable because at this point you know most people or not most people a lot of people might have you know an old like Buster sitting in a drawer somewhere that they can get rid of and then hey that's a free $300 discount what's the magic price you think for the bigger foldables like if getting under 1500 like $1,500 retail price and then if you have incentives on that and maybe the incentives aren't quite as steep as what's available because there are some a fair amount of pre-order bonuses that Samsung and Google are doing for their foldables but you got to get like base retail price at least down to $1,500 before there's going to be any sort of like major attaction do you ever think this is going to be like a major category for smartphones or will it always just be the elites the super like the people who have more money to spend because functionally it gets you a tablet and a phone which is nice but that premium is rough especially when you could get a typical smartphone plus a separate tablet that has separate battery you know like you you have to worry less about your main device losing charge throughout the day for a lot of people I feel like that's still the better option and probably will be for a very long time do you I don't know you've been using this like could you live without a big foldable at this point Sam uh I would have a hard time switching away permanently because I'm sort of on the opposite end I like the fact that a foldable com combines a smartphone and a tablet into one device which means there's one less device that I need to worry about keeping charged up keeping updated whatever um and then uh but in terms of like overall like future market share I kind of equate this to like how you have convertible cars right convertible cars are never going to be the mainstream car you know you're always going to have your car tops and your you know regular coups with you know glass roofs or whatever but for a certain sector of the market that really loves convertibles I think it's just kind of the same situation for smartphone people where there's going to be a certain section who really love that flexibility or like off car is something more more than the mainstream I guess and maybe if it's only five or 10% of the market I think that's okay mhm um but we're going to yeah we're still kind of in that kind of finding out period yeah definitely um everyone's asking I see in the chat people are being like well at least Google has you know foldable where's Apple in all this do you think Apple even cares about the idea of a foldable smartphone or to me the rumors of like the foldable iPad Mini because the iPad Mini is this really interesting device right now where it's expensive but still pretty powerful as powerful as the iPad Air basically and not a huge price difference so I almost almost wonder if Apple's like what if we push that forget about the mini what if we had a thing that cost the same as the iPad Air but it folded in half to be smaller when you needed to I feel like functionally that's what Apple would lean on rather than the smartphone itself but what what's your thinking yeah I mean there's been rumors about Apple has been working on you know at least been testing it in the background of like what a foldable iPhone would look like and I think you know there's maybe a chance we see that probably not next year maybe 2026 MH um but you know apple with most things is really so hesitant that they want to make sure that it's like quote unquote perfect nothing's ever perfect but it's you know it has that Apple polish on it before you it's it's not perfect but better than everybody else which is what I think like even the Vision Pro like for all of its fault it is a better headset than so many others like they have solved a lot of like functional issues so no I don't know anything special I see people in the chat saying I don't know anything special about Apple's plans but I do look at the iPad mini and I'm like that is a really interesting device and I just can't justify the cost and also I think I would want a bigger screen most of the time but what if that mini could be folded in half what if that mini had GPS you know had cellular access to what if you just didn't call it a phone but maybe some people would buy it and actually end up using it as a big phone I don't know um I could see that being a thing Apple would try to pursue but then it wouldn't be the same price I'm sure the mini will still stick around but that thing would be how do you get the iPad Mini to cost uh5 00 tur it into a foldable I guess yeah yeah I I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Apple goes the other way and they come out with a flip style foldable first and they don't even do like a z-fold competitor um just because I think it would kind of fit in with Apple's design shops and you know they would be able to kind of flex on like hey we made this really cool pocket friendly thing that you can just throw around and it's super Compact and cute um and I think yeah apple hasn't had a cute phone in a while the the SE is like they kind of languished and so I think you know going back to you know remember the the colorful iPhone 5c like people love that thing and so maybe this could be like a modern kind of replacement to that I think the latest German rumor is what the is the next SE will probably be more like it will have the home button and everything like it'll be a little more modern so right maybe that'll be a thing but yeah now that you bring it up Sam I do think an apple flip style foldable could be good but we've also seen the rumors of Apple also wants to be like let's go imp possibly thin like they did with the the latest iPad Pros yep if you combine the impossibly thin that could also fold like I feel like that's that would be the mindblowing part for a lot that you know like we we've seen that like you know flip style foldables are getting really thin like you know 4.2 4.3 millimeters and so hey maybe maybe there's some truth into like you know combination of those those rumors but who knows yeah cool well anything else you want to mention about the Galaxy the Galaxy not the Galaxy the pixel 9 Pro fold anything else you want to mention about this or Google's event Sam yeah I I think the kind of the last kind of followup is that like like you said before uh Google moved its you know annual fall lunch up to August but if we look at the actual rollouts of the various devices we can see that like it almost is like they weren't fully committed to that because right um you know to kind of explain that why we don't have devices in hand yet is that uh the pixel9 family um pixel9 pixel9 pro pixel9 pro XL those are officially on sale on August 22nd so coming up pretty soon however the pixel 99 Pro fold isn't going to be available till September 4th then the pixel watch 3 which is now available in two sizes finally thank goodness um is coming out September 10th and then September 10th is right around when Apple normally has their big you know annual iPhone event and then all the way in September 26 we get the pixelbuds Pro 2 and so this like staggered launch thing is like if you're going to have the event this early you should have all the events ready to go right after the event it's it feels like it's all like it's all fud against apple right you have the event early you then trickle out the devices so people are oh yeah we're totally think about Google and not whatever Apple's cooking next and that may be a little presumptuous like remember when somebody found a uh an early what was it an early pixel phone in a bar like almost replicating the iPhone thing and nobody cared yeah I think that was the like Testament to like how excited people are for Pixel Hardware in general so that's just funny anything else you want to mention about the other devices like we got the pixel watch 3 any of the AI features um I think one really positive thing for the pixel watch 3 is that Google is moving more features out of the Fitbit subscription that you need to get like you know daily Readiness scores and uh Fitness metrics and some of the coaching and like personal you know they're really leaning into the running and training aspect especially because of like you know planning your roots and stuff like that and so this is something that like charlin has definitely been on that bandwagon about like you need to provide all the features that Apple and Samsung offer without the fit subscription and then if you want to have like you know really specialized coaching or stuff like that that's what the Fitbit subscription is for but all the base like Health metrics and like you know the new loss of pulse feature which is like you know can is a really good emergency service you got to have that Baseline and then if you want to have subscription you have to make that subscription really compelling but without kind of canonizing the you know standard feature set of the device but like I said really happy to see the pixel watch 3 get a new 45 millimeter version um I think I've been in you know yeah yeah especially if you want you know people larger people men primarily I think to get on board with that design you just kind of need to offer a bigger version um and then quickly on the pixel buds Pro 2 I was so happy to see them decrease the size they're I think about 20% smaller and lighter than the previous pixel buds Pro versus you know if you go back and look at what Samsung did to the Galaxy buds uh three line they just kind of got rid of like the small compactness and went for more of a you know airpods design with the big St and so I'm really happy to see at least Google kind of double down on that like hey we want it to be super light super comfortable and not very obtrusive so at least we have one of the big earbud manufacturers kind of sticking to that Mantra um so I'm very happy to see that I will say this about the pixel watch 3 it looks really cool like it looks very Sleek this does seem like the year where Google's like out there pumping Sleek modern looking Hardware I almost I kind of sort of wish like I had an option of of a smartwatch like that for iPhone um I'll probably like I have a Apple Watch series 4 so I'll probably upgrade to whatever they do this year but the round design can look good it looks it can look good and I don't mind sacrificing a bit of screen space for that stuff so anyway we will be looking at all these devices soon keep an eye out for more coverage on our reviews over the next few weeks let's move on to some other news and you know what the something similarly related to Google by the way is Eric Schmidt former Google CEO had a talk at Stanford where he said a lot of things I don't think people really wanted to publicize or at least he didn't want to publicize uh there was a chat at Stanford the video of that has been pulled down right now but all the news reports about it is out there um he basically he essentially blamed remote work and work life balance as one reason Google's lagging behind on AI compared to other companies so okay like yeah people aren't grinding enough to him uh also the really the really thing where he was basically like um AI STS can totally just steal IP does matter when you're successful you can hire lawyers to just clean up that mess um really just saying the quiet part out loud I think that a lot of people assume about AI you have any thoughts on this Sam um I I I don't I'm not I'm not going to give him credit for this because to to blame you like your lunch getting eaten by chat gbt on work from home yeah it's like come on now like that was a deliberate Choice Google held it back because they felt it wasn't prod productized from all theing we've seen yeah and then we we had that whole situation where Bard came out and then oh was like oh wait Bard's not quite there yet and then they kind of pulled back on that and then Gemini showed up a little bit after and it's like do not you cannot blame this on work from home this was if anything this was people at the top not prioritizing or not having the correct vision on seeing where AI technology was going which just feels really weird for Google because of you know how how much time they've invested into the Google assistant and you know they've been crowing about AI for longer than pretty much any company out there and to blame that on the workers and work from home just seems kind of toned deaf to me just absolutely um I've never liked Eric Smith as a businessman like he was sort of like just the adult in room for Google for the longest time uh when uh you know posts Larry Page and sirj Brin but still this is how a lot of the business people think right like they they will be the Sharks about this uh IP cares legal issues we will deal with that when we have billions of dollars so just funny to see somebody say out loud and then immediately his response was he asked Stanford to take down the video and he's saying uh he misspoke he's saying um yeah he he did not actually mean the things he's saying uh just hilarious stuff don't trust the the businessmen don't trust the rich folks similarly related to this too um there are reports that because of uh the whole Google Monopoly ruling us judge ruled that Google is official a search Monopoly um there are reports that the US government could force Google to break up and we don't know what that means yet but it could mean hey maybe Chrome becomes a separate company maybe Android becomes a separate company this has been done before uh the whole AT&T breakup from mobell to all several different subsidiaries and this this is similar to what Microsoft was facing as well and it didn't ultimately happen but even the threat of breaking up the company um it if you go and read past um you know or go go look at documentary on Bill Gates yeah they said that when that ruling came down and they didn't weren't forced to break up but they had to have Regulators come in and read all their emails it really you know took a lot of the you know wind out of Microsoft sales at that point in the company's development and so it's right you know to be clear the goj is they're just mulling this they have not even proposed this they have not you know put in any legal filings it's just something they're considering but yeah the the issue the core issue to me is that uh the ISS that for Google the big thing is search right they kind of have a monopoly on search but the thing is is that it's not because there's you know they're hurting competition people just don't want to use Bing and you know there are other competitors like Duck Duck Go and whatnot but it's like you know it's hard to say that like Google's Android business or Google's Hardware business is thriving because of search like and so that seems like a very interesting like kind of dilemma every Android device does make money for Google because they all have Google search by default right like that's they're all vessels for Google ads and I believe there there was a story that recently came out it's like you know what could Microsoft do for apple to make them put Bing as the default search thing there and apple was just like nope no no amount of money would would like uh cause us to do this and so think that statement right there it's like it's not Google's fault um and then it's then just breaking up the company is like say you break out the Android business and then you or you break out the hardware business I know that like apple doesn't have a their own you know search alternative but it seems really weird to me that especially in the US where apple has a lead in market share on on iOS uh and smartphones in general that you're GNA have to force Google to break up when Apple has a lot of the similar issues just maybe not related to search specifically well not not like Monopoly dominance is the thing like that's that's where really where it comes down to we're definitely going to be talking to like legal experts about this particular story uh especially as we we hear more the thing about like what the US government is saying is that Google search yes it is it may be technically the best search it may be the one people go to but by paying competitors to make Google the default it also just kills any it basically like kills a tadpole or kills like a competitor before they can even even break out and be really useful because there's just no chance of anybody really getting Market Shar so it's sort of like market market share manipulation almost I think that's what they're really raing against and the thing about Microsoft is that you know way back in the 90s the M the Microsoft antitrust stuff was about Internet Explorer being a part of Windows and people being forced to choose Internet Explorer interet explor was not like dominating the browser Market back then it was still like mostly Netscape for a while it was just that internet explorer was like Rising very quickly and the thing about Google is like you can look and see like oh no like Google owns search nobody else wants to use anything but Google search being search is still a joke even with chat GPT like there there are alternatives you could pay for a slightly better search engine but Google is just such a dominating force that nobody can really compete I guess the question is like what will you do to help what can you do to help I mean if you want to put in a law to ban Google from paying other companies to use search I'm I'm okay with that and it's not like even on iPhone you can choose a different search provider if you want but no one does uh for a good reason so I don't know it's a it's a messy situation it's also going to be the legal arguments is GNA be like people love Google Google is the best search engine what's the problem and I think a lot of that is a little specious because it's like yeah well yes you are you're not fully addressing the issue exactly exactly also another news scary news that hackers may have leaked the social Security numbers of every single American uh basically according to be bleeping computer there's a data dump of 2.7 billion records of personal info for people in the US that includes names through Social Security numbers aliases and physical addressive uh that people are known to have live that from what I've seen like some people have confirmed like it does have their information uh you there's no like you can't go to have I been pwned to be to like look up this database yet because it's not that fully open um some people have said that the social security numbers in the databases are incorrect in terms of who they're linking to but still there's a lot of data out there um so I would say go check out our post on this whole thing there's a lot of um tips on what you could do if you're worried about this data being out there check your credit reports that's a big thing uh there are multiple services that can clean up your information uh is it delete me there are a bunch that can clean up your information online you have to pay for it but if you're worried and you start to notice weird stuff it may be worth it and watch your passwords everybody like use the password manager we've got a guide on that um I was going to say this sort of reminds me um like how back in the 2000s everyone was like everybody has to have an antivirus software and so it was kind of an extra tax that you had to just deal with to you know exist on their internet and make yourself a little bit safer and now security breaches have become so commonplace that it feels like you're almost required just as a human to have some sort of like you know service like ID watchu or delete me or whatever just constantly monitoring your you know credentials or your you know credit history and stuff like that and it really sucks um and this kind of you know tags on to like a bigger issue of like I said security breaches are so commonplace and then now we're getting into the point where there are entire like hacker protocols where their whole goal is to gather a bunch of leaked data or breaches uh and then decrypt it later once Quantum Computing becomes more available and some like a lot of the current security practices are just that's a whole other scary thing we have to worry about too like what Quantum Computing will enable right and so uh nist has just released a postquantum encryption standard to kind of sidestep this in the future it's still very early right now but this is you know something that we gonna have to follow you know as as things develop it's uh that's we we've talked a bit about Quantum Computing before but we it's like we're just getting around to the idea of what an AI system can do and what an npu does and how that works compared to CPU and GPU and Quantum is just like a whole another level where like you can't even you can't even understand the data that's coming out of it it's just it's just kind of wild um let me see here also chrisel edin Gadget wrote a really good piece about meta shutting down crowd tangle we've reported on this before that that was the research tool that they acquired I think around 2016 um that gave people a lot of data about what was happening on Facebook and all their services uh they killed it they have offered an alternative service that is not as good um missed the name of that here but it is the thing about crowd tangle is that everybody could have used it journalists academics researchers everybody the data was just out there there's a new thing that Facebook is doing that uh that meta is doing that people have to apply for and from what we've seen um it's just not nearly as good so check out Chris's report and think about this like when everybody's talking about Mark Zuckerberg's glow up like oh man like his hair is kind of he's trendier he seems Chiller he's wearing cool necklaces he's more like a bro rather than a nerd trying to mimic a Roman Emperor almost more like a human almost more like a human and I can't help but think like how much of a distraction a lot of that stuff is like what what life coaching is he getting to be like don't worry about the global consequences of your actions from your companies just be chill Mark Zuckerberg right and the timing of this seems a little bit weird because Zuckerberg himself has been talking about we want to be more transparent and you know be give people more insight into how metal works but then you go and shut this down granted there is a replacement but like you said it's not quite as good so it's like could have just kept that thing going there's a lot of criticism that they're also doing this before like months before an election when we really need a good service to help people figure out like where where is the spam data where is the bad stuff where are the bad operators what's trending on your social network just to have this gone at this key moment is ridiculous so yeah and the only data we we're going to have stuff coming from whatever the new meta program is now which people have to apply for um journalists can't apply for that by the way so only researchers at some institutions not yeah little little weird they almost don't want journalists to have all the info uh all we have to rely on is the info then that meta is releasing on itself and that is always a recipe for failure so check out Chris's report I think it's worth reading worth thinking about and maybe don't give Mark Zuckerberg too much credit for having a cooler hairo and more style and more human interactions now because I think a lot of it just means he's not as concerned about the problems from his own companies uh final story for us is that apple is opening up NFC oper like NFC functionality to thirdparty developers in iOS 18.1 uh this was a thing that was going to be coming to the EU but now it's coming to everybody looks like and people can use it to do tapto pay functions um functions that rely on the secure element Sam like you're the mobile guy what do you think about this like are you excited about more NFC stuff happening on iPhones I'm more just like it's about time I mean definitely because like for in like if you look at it this is how Apple grew Apple pay by Apple pay uses NFC but it was the only app that was allowed to use NFC on the iPhone and so you know we were just talking about monopolistic practices it's like well that is right there a very clear sign and I don't think it's a coincidence that after the EU was forcing Apple to open it up uh in in Europe that now they're kind of opening it up globally to maybe sign kind of sidestep some scrutiny now that like they notice oh doj is kind of giv a hard look at Google let's kind of like get out of the spotlight for a second so Google can step in and take the hit um I think it's more it I could almost see it being more of an apple secure thing because it's like digital payments is tough you don't want to have like any app getting access to the secure element and everything so now developers can apply to be a part of it there may be additional fees to use the secure element of course because it's Apple but also we took so long to get tapto pay stuff like other countries have had I think even pre- smartphones like Japan has had like tap elements for a while um or at least tap NFC sort of like tapping functionality it's going to be like a bigger security risk for Apple to do this but yeah it's it's a good thing um I I love tapping NFC stuff like I feel like I'm in the future when I can just tap my phone on something and just pay for grocery yeah we we finally got tapped to pay at the like in the subway New York City and like so it's like oh hey this is kind of nice that said like you know I want just want to point out some of the sort of similarities is that the security risk is the same kind of uh argument that Apple used for not opening up the app store to third party uh programs and so it's like it is always like you know a core thing that like apple can point back to it's like oh we're making ourselves more vulnerable but at the same time like it's also kind of a monopolistic practice so you know you how do you I guess the trick is you know how do you balance that in terms of like yeah it it kind of goes back to what Schmidt was talking to Eric Schmidt basically like do the thing that may be bad until you know somebody yells at you for and then you deal with the repercussions I cannot blame Apple for being like listen we built this thing for our products and like this is what we're going to start with um you look at the Android App Store and like what a the Google Store is a is a disaster like a mess of like really messy software not like always polished apps and like a lot of malware just floating around the App Store so it is like a balance that we definitely have to think about I'm glad people are yelling at Apple about this stuff too um also kind of semi- related to this apple is finally allowing uh Spotify to display pricing in the EU Spotify is not going to be direct linking to its website you still have to go to the website on a different device just to you know sign up for your subscription but now at least at least Spotify can show their pricing in the EU within their app without making apple mad so that's to me this is the more this is just Petty you know this whole thing is so petty in terms of Apple also making people pay if you click through an app link to buy something in a website Apple will still take a cut because Apple's saying like hey we we enabled that you know our our platform no I don't know about that so these are the things I'm more annoyed that Apple does in when it just seems Petty when it's not really about security is just about you like almost punishing Developers for going outside your ecosystem I think that's a big problem but yeah we'll be following all these stories folks so keep an eye out okay we take a break uh sorry I meant to do a break after pixel but I just want to keep going yeah what's up everybody in the chat hola hola Ola everybody here too okay yeah so I got a lot of stuff to talk about so uh while we were talking about the silliness of the name the full name is what pixel 9 Pro fold George Moran was like they took some people from the Sony naming Department no the Sony naming Department would be like code letters it would be letters it would pixel xcf although that said Sony finally got rid of that uh for the like the lot of their own entertainment stuff after years of us begging it's like Sony we do not understand EX V 1343 9B it's like you got to do better than that and there were reports that their their own Executives would have trouble with the like when your people can't get it straight that is a problem I would love a camera on the Google campus just seeing people trying to say pixel9 Pro fold or at least the camera in that times fast yeah and I mean that's only applying to certain Sony things because just yesterday I recommended a pair of Sony MDR 7506 headphones the old ones man yeah the old products are not getting their names changed but you know yeah how that's like a 40-year-old headphone at this point uh it's a very old headphone but you still see it on the heads of most people working on Films still get replacement parts for it that's working at like NPR or like other radio stations it's just like a very solid pair of headphones and they I imagine they still sell so many oh every year that there's no reason to the price has not even really Fallen that much it's still like yeah that's the crazy thing like yeah it's sits between like 75 and $100 yeah anyway cud said that they really should have dropped the name pro at least there were actually a number of people who mentioned this including dude named Charlie who's like I hate the name Pro nothing Pro about phones other than just being phones pixel 9 fold would have been just fine true yeah and the entire concept of pro kind of came from Apple I think yeah and it was Apple just trying to do Apple marketing saying like hey you know that guy who shot a movie on an iPhone now everybody can shoot movies on iPhones because you can shoot 4K video it's for pros if we if we talk about and here people seem to be annoyed about even think about ding philosophy in chat Pro is simple Pro is direct Pro Apple has been doing it since the MacBook Pro and what does pro mean it means better than normal and they have consistently at least delivered that so I'm not mad about Pro I am mad about pixel 9 Pro fold I I would have also other stuff around bro also been completely okay if they just skipped a bunch of numbers and go called it the pixel fold 9 I think that would have been fine too I don't I don't care that then the numbers are confusing but sure sure I don't know pixel full to it's easy it's easy we just had a pixel and then other people were saying like why don't you go to what Samsung did recently which is just like put the last two numbers of the year on it no no the easiest thing actually would have been just like the new pixel fold the old one's gone we're not selling it anymore this is pixel full so maybe it's too early to do that okay but that's I I will point out that for the secondhand Market because yeah they might not be selling the old Apple does that all the time iPad gen one gen two then then in the second Market you put like parentheses your name whatever gen one gen two yeah I get it I I will say that Samsung did also kind of contrive that naming scheme because they skipped a bunch of numbers in the teens um to get to the 20 uh so that happened that happened a few years ago so it's not obviously not a big deal but you know you got you gota you gotta break some of your naming confessions if you want everything to line up nicely I think these companies are all insane they're all insane how about that and Google Google's just like the most annoying of them so throughout the entire like pixel chat uh we had Dom Larry in the chat talking about just like being a hater just being an apple hater which is fine you are allowed to be an hater in there are many reasons to hate Apple you are definitely allowed to be a hater in the end Gadget podcast live stream chat as long as bothering anyone else yes and if you're not being mean you can be a hater as much as you want I would say this be a hater but be useful that's my that's my thing online like what can you contribute with your hater philosophy to what apple is doing here the idea that Apple doesn't have a foldable I don't know it's sure the they're behind I don't think they really care just like they didn't have a VR headset for 10 years you know MH they'll get to it when they get to it yeah yeah and I mean they were probably slowly working on the headset for a while but that's what we've heard yeah yeah and the but the entire idea of like spinning up a headset or spinning up a foldable phone on top of just doing the kind of like Hardware engineering research you have to spend so much money actually manufacturing the stuff you have to spend so much money uh doing promotion and um advertising why not just like quietly watch and wait and like see where the good things come out and see where the bad things come out tful be thoughtful thoughtful about it I mean I was saying to Dom Larry like no one is going to argue with you that iPhones are for normies they are for people who don't really want to think too much about their phone and if you do a lot of innovation in the Apple ecosystem that is forcing a large swath of people who don't want to think about their phone to think about their phone and people are going to be mad about that people are gonna be mad and also it's normies want stable devices and you cannot argue that Android is any more stable than iOS like it's those sorts of things like the instability not everybody wants to do full customization although Apple's covering you know copying over a lot of that now for me it's sort of like an aesthetic thing if you if you want to talk about like apple Monopoly Sam it is the whole the way where you buy one Apple device and it kind of encourages you to buy another one then you're kind of like locked in because they work too well together and that is the point where it's like okay well this is this is now a problem I mean yeah I know it's sort of changing with the addition of RCs but iMessage was like the number one example of that where it's like you can use this on all your Apple devices but if you want to try to Port it over to anything else well we're going to come after you hard uh AKA you know what happened to beeper yeah but they the way they implemented it was not great for sure that that had that had lots of issues as well but it's just like they were only doing that because that was the only way to make it work and it's like you Apple could just open it up I think like especially now that everybody's coming into Apple for like antitrust stuff it's like okay go the opposite route do do some taichi action here Apple's like okay you want me to be open okay I'm open here's here's iMessage on Android here's Apple watch functionality on Android and watch as they like uh take over a lot of the wearable Market there too there's no reason not to do it other than exclusivity you know yeah we have some questions from a couple of people so blue coat 7 asks is the screen of the pixels stylus safe it does not support stylus's uh stylus input so no go Samsung there's no reason to use a stylist with the pixel fold because it doesn't support it I mean people like using sty sty I mean if you have one of those like like pencil eraser styluses that like acts like your finger that will still work and that should be an issue but I don't I don't handwriting yeah right I don't I don't see a huge reason to get one of those aside from maybe accessibility might go stylus might be an accessibility thing that's all it it could be like Samsung was big on styluses with the you know with their stuff for such a long time uh does the Galaxy fold support styluses yes uh it doesn't come with the stylus but it does support stylus integration Samsung has all their s pens that said I'm I'm kind of unsure the like future of like stylus support on phones because I feel like maybe the the push for that in terms of like consumer demand maybe petering out because I think touch generally just works so well for most things and the stylus has become a really sort of Niche bonus which is like for people who love it they really really love it but I'm not sure like the overall population is enough to like continue development because you still get style support unlik you know the s24 ultra and you get a built-in stylus but they haven't added a ton of new features to the SP pen itself that's true so I'm I'm I'm kind of curious to see how that continues in the long term the not line is essentially dead too right yeah I mean they they converted the s24 ultra into the not line and kind of got rid of the the one that had the stylus that was the stylus it was so big you needed a stylus yeah okay but the the s24 U uh hasn't built stylist okay yeah they they kind of killed that too yeah okay then we have a question from Simon B who asks uh about the future of Android updates and like how many AI features are going to be on older pixel devices he says he has a pixel 6 Pro yeah so a a lot of that is Hardware based this is why Google spends so much time every uh every event talking about the new npu capabilities of their latest tensor chip so sometimes the npu is just not powerful enough especially if you're going back multiple generations to support some of the new features that said Google has been doing uh I would say a decent job of porting back features when they can even stuff like some of the magic editor features They just added that to Google photos so you can just do that um and so uh you know and you know features like call screener and the pixel recorder and live transcribe are available on more devices than they were when they first launched it's just Google and anytime any anytime we ask Google it's like hey is this feature G to get ported back to older devices they're always like we got to wait and see we got to check with the hardware team we got to check with the engineering teams to see what older devices can actually support and make sure that it's like you still get a good experience doing it and so it's not great that they don't know a print it's not great that there's no clear answers cuz there there's a whole sense of AI that everybody's just flying by the Sea of their pants right there like I don't know where this is going uh we're going to implement AI here and uh we hope it's good we hope it doesn't introduce errors and you look at the we this isn't in the news thing but there's the the new X you know AI thing which basically has no Safeguard so yeah um so it's really it's unfortunately it's a case-by casee basis and then the older phone you are the the npus on some of the you know the original tensor and even before that are just so limited that like they don't necessarily apply in the same way and you know Google also talks about hey these large language models are getting bigger and bigger and bigger every day and so you have to be able to really support those in order to have you know better natural language convers you need a beefy phone do you need a beefy phone but also a lot of this stuff is happening in the cloud too so I wish Google was more clear about okay this is definitely Cloud feature will come down to everybody or not or like what part of it is local what part of it is not yeah it'd be easier if you could sus that out just like right away yeah that said you know it seems like they are pushing for more and more on device which is why you know they're kind of leveraging the tensor tensor chips to that nature and we even you know this year uh the pixel buds Pro 2 even has a tensor based chip for the earbuds and so I liked seeing more on device support for AI stuff just because it means you don't have to send your data somewhere else and it's just generally faster than pinging the cloud for a lot stuff is happening instantly that's great you know a lot of features like the pixel screenshots app which is new for this year and uh pixel Studio are are on device and so that's I believe pixel studio is on device and so that that's nice to see where you still have stuff like video boost has to go to the cloud um and so there there are some differences all right we should finish up the episode a few more question let me run through another couple of questions so buddy 305 love said that when Sam said pass the one of the pixel phones had kind of a passport feeling it triggered my love for passport Blackberry Passport does anybody have love for that thing wow uh there is one person and they're in the current chat uh and then we were also talking about how expensive the pro9 fold is and I was surprised by $77.99 how expensive that was but then buddy 305 love mentioned again that the original Samsung fold price was $1,980 yep people bought it those po suckers the the Galaxy fold was 2,000 then they brought it alas bought it right I forget I foret bought and then it's been $1,800 for several generations and then this year they moved it up 100 because everything got moved up 100 similar to what happened to the new Google pixels really good laptop too yeah it's a MacBook Pro yeah that's like a MacBook Pro in your pocket that gets me to the other thing the dude named Charlie said which is 500 USD phones are perfect for 99% of the population yes agreed I mean we even saying that you know the the the pixel AA was you know I think is currently one of our you know best mid-range phones so I totally agree when I was covering mobile more and that was like maybe a decade ago but we were like hitting like $300 smartphones that were really good really capable like the stuff yeah inflation like the Moto G is still around and that the early iterations of that were really good even the Moto X like was something trying to be cheaper but nobody remembers that anymore we're all about $11,000 plus phones now and foldables and things expensive for no reason times all right let's go on with the rest of the episode with chat all right folks we're just gonna finish up right here let's move on to what we're working on on my end i' I'm still like in the process of testing a few new co-pilot PCS um and things with AI chip so there were a bunch of movie reviews up uh and you know I reviewed Borderlands I reviewed the movie I'm G be talking about soon and also industry season 3 so check out all that coverage on the site Sam what are you working on Borderland still makes me sad anyways uh obviously a lot of Google stuff coming uh coming up shortly uh we're also starting to prep for epha which is you know the big European consumer Tech show um and then recently uh I just published a review for the uh Asus Rog allyx which is their kind of big refresh to their handheld gaming PC it's really good it's you know you go go read the review but it's kind of what I wanted the original Ally to be from the start and so I think just real quickly if you are looking for a handheld gaming PC your two choices are the Alli X or the steam deck OLED and so yeah those are the kind of the two definite Front Runners uh there are some rumors that Lenovo might have an answer to that but not immediately maybe closer to CES I would also never hold your breath for Lenovo Hardware how about that just like as a rule don't get too excited see let's see how that turns out yeah anything else Sam uh no I mean I'm I should probably say that uh I'm going to be out starting for a few months um just because uh I have a new addition to the family coming soon I I'm planning to be on paternity for a few months uh obviously depends when the baby actually arrives but we'll see yeah congrats Sam uh two babies two kids is is yeah this this is our second one you yeah one is tough one was tough for us but two is just like okay you feel like you've got it but then like new things arise so good luck enter the chaos Zone enter the chaos Zone everybody send Sam your well wishes and everything let's move on to some uh some pop culture picks for the week Sam what do you want to shout out um there's a new TFT set team fight tactics um this is the game that I've been playing a long time I play the double up the two person mode with my wife we actually recently hit Emerald which is like the highest we've done in terms of like you know uh Duo gameplay and then there's all Riot is also releasing a new experimental PVE mode for TFT which is like like seems really weird because the whole uh idea of the game is to like beat the other people that are in your lobby um so they you know RI has very been very clear about this like there this is kind of a test it's very experimental but I'm kind of excited for it and it comes out in a couple weeks so if you're into Auto Battlers maybe check that out and then uh the last season of Umbrella Academy is finally out and so I think kind of kind of I I've like it I've enjoyed it when I watched it and so I want to you know I want to see that series through um so I'll probably be checking that out real soon awesome yeah I uh I did a like last Quick catch up of the boys to watch this season and I feel like I am so many seasons behind on an umbrella Academy but I really liked the first season so yeah good luck with that Sam uh some things from my end something good and something terrible alien ramulus I think is fantastic I have a review up on the site uh this is a Fed Alvarez film set between alien one and aliens and it has the like cool retro Tech and style of the original films um it feels like very much an old school alien movie I've seen criticisms that it's trading too much on theal jabate and like it's doing things we've seen before and that's also true but I think it's also really wellmade I like f Alvarez as a uh as a director like he has a good eye he can construct set pieces really well and this is basically a setup for like maybe films that feel more traditionally alien not something like Prometheus or alien Covenant which were just like weird philosophical discourses by uh by rele Scott basically um these are just like proper tight this one is a proper tight like alien horror film kayy spany who's been in a bunch of movies this year is fantastic David Johnson who I love who is in Industry um he's also great in this so I think it's fantastic see it on the biggest screen you can I freaking loved it and a movie I did not love is Borderlands which I also reviewed on in gadget and is one of the worst movies I've seen this past decade it's just really bad it's just a complete disaster and I kind of felt that from the trailer um maybe catch it at home if you want to hate watch something but good God uh I don't think Eli Roth can make good movies I think that's where I don't spend a lot of money going to see this whatever you do don't spend any money like maybe buy a ticket for a better movie and sneak into Borderlands if you really want to see Borderlands maybe that maybe that's the thing I'm so sad because I think the look of the movie was like seemed like it was interesting but then everything else kind of they dropped the ball I mean it's not even cuz Borderland the look of Borderland the games is like cool cell-shaded stuffff and the idea was always sort of like mad maxy Vibes uh the movie is trying to be both Mad Max and something else something else similar to Mad Max metal Twisted Metal maybe um oh no Mad Max meets Guardians of the Galaxy that is kind of what the movie is going for with the rag tag group of anti-heroes and whatnot it's not good badly written one of the screenwriters took their name off of it because they didn't want to be fully embarrassed by this thing so yeah it's a complete disaster and I hate it I I should also I'm getting very worried about the upcoming Transformers one animated movie I've heard good things about that I I I hope you're right because it looks like it looks silly it looks like this looks like the Transformers people are trying to make a Marvel movie and that including the casting and I'm not very excited about that as a longtime Transformers fan but will Reserve judgment until I see yeah it is also a prequel set on uh what their robot planet but also where Optimus and Megatron were were friends so I mean so that actually that that yeah that was a thing going back to the original not necessarily friends but they have a long history yeah I I'm aware of a long history but not like Bros you know yeah it's like almost touching on like the whole buddy cop thing and then like they you know start betraying each other and it's like you guys got to do better than that I've heard good things that movie also has a good director so yeah hope to be checking it out Sam uh if you're I don't know if you're around maybe you can help us review that one okay because it sounds like you're into Transformers anyway that's what we've been watching that's the episode for this week folks as always Ary music is by game composer Dale North our outro music is by our former managing editor Terence O'Brien podcast is produced by Ben Elman you can find me online in dindra on Twitter Blue Sky madon all the fun places where can we find you Sam you can find me at Samford uh on X and then as always on gadget.com awesome email us at podcast engage.com leave us a review on iTunes and subscribe on anything that gets podcast and be sure to check out the other episodes we dropped this week uh we had uh the post Google event chat with me and charlin and I also talked with some AMD Executives about their thoughts on aipc so don't miss that thanks folks we're out all right chat do I get to do a producer pick because I found something really interesting last night like near midnight uh yeah so chat if you want to see a really interesting YouTuber who does videos about like camera equipment and kind of like Photo taking techniques go check out a YouTuber called GX Ace they started out as just a kind of direct camera like sup guys we're going to talk about new camera stuff and they morphed into a cyberpunk like weird like they have their own Universe it's uh the cinematography is now off the charts cool they have like uh um I can only imagine they put like a bunch of like wires and stuff and um they have a helmet that they now use so it's not them that's talking directly to the camera about um camera stuff it's some robot from the future talking about camera stuff I I do love it when the YouTubers go a little crazy um you should put yourself on the camera too by by the way Ben uh one of my favorite People Patrick Williams is basically making like independent movies and long running narrative jokes about like within his video essays and I love that stuff be creative folks you don't just have to make YouTube stuff you know you can have fun in the the every frame of p uh picture gu is doing his own movie right I mean that's an actual like they have actual movie projects like he was he did uh the voir documentary the thing on Netflix about people just talking about how much they love movies um like yeah those folks worked that too okay so Sam you're gonna have two kids under five in man six months I mean I I I think the the the like if you talk to parents the whole thing is two kids under two is just like kind of impossible sure I think once once your kid gets to like three-ish they're independent enough where like you don't have to be like yes you know fully like hovering over them all the time um but had a diapers and can play on their own which is basically what happened uh with my family too uh that worked out really well but to having two diaper kids at once that's a disaster good God and I can actually say I mean I don't know anything about being a parent but I do know about being a sibling uh it three years apart is I think manageable I am six years apart from my brother and that means that we had just like actually never really been able to see eye to eye there's not a ton of overlap generational difference it is like a generational difference like when he was finishing Middle School I was in college those are so different so right you're watching Breaking Bad dude your brother's watching SpongeBob and it's like yeah exactly it's like pretty much literally I started watching Breaking Bad you know like that was after season 1 or something I caught it on the college cable and he was yeah doing exactly that stuff so now my brother and I have a much better relationship oh yeah but it's you know for no other reason than that we weren't really at the same stage of life for a very long time yeah yeah yeah I mean I think like the older you get the age Gap is less of a like challenge but for siblings at least yeah yeah I'm looking at the tweets here uh oh yes I know it's Cybertron I just I'm very tired I need to get lunch dude named Charlie thank you for going and checking out G X Ace because I think his videos are really worth watching um again I really love when YouTubers just go off on cinematography also since we're talking about kind of YouTube meta stuff even though we're about to end the stream please thumbs up this Stream So other people can find it because your thumbs up probably will help it like get into the side rail sure people are watching other Tech videos and let people find us please please thumb it up and also subscribe to the show CU it's always anything helps you know folks yeah all right anything else you want to add how was how was chat doing chat is doing pretty good why says Sam you will be missed I'll be back it's only temporary buddy 305 love says I have a 10-year-old and a 5-year-old they fight that's pretty similar to the age gap between me and my brother and I was five years yeah I was so much stronger than him so it wasn't even a fair fight uh I was also five years between my brothers I was like yeah yeah it's it's I think being under five years apart three years is probably a good one everyone says two years is the best but I don't know about that well yeah I mean my dad and his brother are two years apart and I don't know they're yeah fine with each other you basically grw up together it's the whole thing well thank you chat be sure to check out all of our coverage of the Google event uh Hey if you if you like anything thumbs up those videos subscribe show some love to the channel we're not not doing a patreon or subscription thing you know just like share stuff tell everybody like it um so big Yahoo notices that people like our stuff thanks folks yeah okay so thank you everyone let me just shout a bunch of people out thanks to Buddy 305 love thanks to Daniel Diaz thanks to uh dude named Charlie Dro n the literally just the letter Y some guy's Named Sam Rutherford I don't know who that is um Dom Larry uh CF 542 DPAC Murthy um let's go and then there's like Jared the geek or something go make me some sandwich gante uh let's go all the way up to I think T3 chg y7 was the first person to say hi although I think by now the chat is uh not not logging the stuff yeah it's not it's not letting me scroll all the way up oh yeah we lost a bunch if you scroll back in the video you will see older messages yeah so how that works yeah thanks to everyone who commented stuff you remember stuff that we forget chat always makes us smarter and makes the podcast better video is done by dindra on OBS I'm doing camera switching kind of lazily but still thank you and we'll see you next week thanks folks see you next week bye