00:00:00
It was rumors. It was rumors. But they do have a startup that they're working on together, I believe, officially. Is this just money laundering?
00:00:07
That's the question of the year, my friends. Another soundbite. Perfect. Yeah. [Music] What is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to the Nintendo Switch 2
00:00:19
podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Nintendo Switch. I'm Nintendo Switch 2. And I'm Andrew. It rhymed. I had to keep doing it. Yeah, that's true. It did. Sorry. I'm Marquez. Uh, and and that's Andrew.
00:00:32
David. I'm still Andrew. We have we have some Nintendo Switch uh updates. Obviously, this is a fastmoving environment where lots of things change and we're recording this a day earlier
00:00:43
than usual. So, yeah, things may change, but we have that. Things will change. They will change. They will definitely change. We will be wrong. I apologize.
00:00:49
But also, uh, nothing. CMF phone. Uh, some Google TV streaming updates and an Oppo Find X8 Ultra first look. Kind of a
00:00:57
surprise sleeper. It's a good It's a good phone. Uh, but first, don't forget to subscribe. We haven't asked you guys to subscribe in a while, but I feel like a lot of people watch the podcast and then they don't have to subscribe
00:01:08
because YouTube just serves them the next episode every time it goes up. But if you look down below the video and check and realize you haven't subscribed
00:01:14
yet, this is your chance to get that shiny fun animation and hit the subscribe button. Now, you'll never have to say that again cuz I'm going to turn
00:01:20
it into a button that I press randomly throughout the episode. Also, if you subscribe and the number goes up, I will
00:01:28
be happier. It does make us happy. Yeah. Yeah. Like pretty can confirm. Yeah. Your parasocial relationship with us,
00:01:34
you could actually influence your parasocial relationship with us. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. So, speaking of Switch
00:01:40
2, the the situation around pre-orders with it is is a thing that's rapidly evolving and interesting, and that's what we're talking about. As of right now, the pre-order is delayed in the US.
00:01:53
It's still set to launch on June 5th, but pre-orders are now going to be pushed back a bit potentially to still
00:02:00
start shipping immediately. Uh, and that's because tariffs, lots of fun things happening with uh the state of
00:02:07
the economy. We figured we might as well at least acknowledge tariffs and what they are and what that means because I
00:02:13
think during this entire calendar year and probably beyond. We're going to have many more conversations about the price
00:02:19
of the gadgets that we're talking about and how they are affected by tariffs and
00:02:24
many other things with the environment. So here's what a tariff is, at least how I understand it, and then we can go
00:02:31
straight to the prices of things. A tariff is a specific lever that can be pulled by a politician that will essentially be a tax on a good that is
00:02:42
imported into the country. So for the United States for example, lots of things that we buy are manufactured
00:02:48
outside of the United States. And so if you were a politician here and you want to encourage more US uh manufacturing or
00:02:55
you want to encourage more people to buy from US suppliers, then what you'll actually do is add a certain percentage
00:03:02
of a penalty for buying from someone outside the US. So let's say US supplier costs $10, China supplier costs $5. I
00:03:11
add large tariff to China so that when you buy China product, it's actually more expensive than the US. Now I'll switch to US supplier. That's the goal of a tariff. It's way more complicated
00:03:23
than that. Building manufacturing facilities in the US. You pretty much nailed it. Extremely complicated.
00:03:28
There's a lot more to it than that. But that's basically what is happening in the world of electronics where now if
00:03:34
you look at say the iPhone, you might have seen some articles about the iPhone's price potentially going up. It
00:03:39
won't be $3,000 by the way. But that is fear-mongering. Yeah. But the but the idea is lots of parts and and assembly
00:03:47
happen overseas and so lots of those things will cost more and since there is no readily available US equivalent manufacturing the only choice is the price will have to go up or maybe they
00:03:59
eat into their margins etc etc. So the switch 2 is affected by this. I think the headline that I saw is that the price of the Switch 2 as it exists does not account for tariffs, but we don't
00:04:11
expect the price to change. We're not sure yet. I think that the reason that So Doug Bowser, the CEO of Nintendo of
00:04:18
America, incredible name. I know. Does it does not have anything to do? It's just pure coincidence. It doesn't pure
00:04:24
coincidence. It's like my name is Adam Podcast. So it's kind of like a bad coincidence
00:04:31
because he's the villain. It's like Tiger Woods being a golfer. Like you don't want to be in the woods in golf,
00:04:37
but like his name is Woods. Like there's lots of great last names and lots of good opposite. There's a disc golfer with the first name Eagle and in golf
00:04:44
scoring it's great, but I feel like that's a lot of pressure. That's true. Yeah. Eagle gets an eagle. Anyway,
00:04:49
Bowser the villain, but also the CEO who is maybe the villain, but probably not.
00:04:54
I don't know. I have no opinion on Doug Bowser, the CEO. Regardless, he went on uh on a bunch of podcast stuff and some
00:05:02
interviews and he basically said the price of the Switch 2 that is $450 is what we thought it was worth. Mhm. That did not account for tariffs. Yeah. And
00:05:12
so while we are, you know, we are assessing the situation in the United States and that is why we are delaying
00:05:19
the pre-orders. They did not say the they didn't say the price won't change. And I think that's the reason they're
00:05:25
delaying the pre-orders is because they need to assess if they need to change the price. And the timeline of this is
00:05:32
April 2nd the announcement happens, right? They announced the price. That night is when we see the numbers of tariffs and then within that week we got
00:05:42
the delay for the April 9th US pre-orders. Yeah, it was within two I think it was in two days from then. So
00:05:48
the problem is that uh a lot of the regions where Nintendo manufactures the Switch are being hit very very hard with
00:05:56
tariffs. Uh they manufacture a lot of them in Vietnam and also in China. Vietnam's getting hit with like a very
00:06:04
large uh 46% tariff. China's getting hit with a 34% tariff at the time of recording. These are at the time of recording because because uh later in the episode we'll talk about Tik Tok. um
00:06:18
that sort of changed things and then they pull out of a Tik Tok deal and that made the government say maybe we'll add
00:06:24
an additional 50% to China. So Nintendo really doesn't know what they can do right now. Yeah. Nintendo is just in
00:06:31
this very nebulous space where they're like we literally have no because they don't they they might lose a ton of
00:06:36
money on the Switch 2 if they sell it for that price. Yeah. Uh Doug Bowser had also mentioned in this interview that I
00:06:42
watched, I believe with CNBC, that they already have a lot of Switch Twos in the
00:06:47
United States. So luckily, it seems like they probably could release it at the normal price. But the problem would be once they start eating more in the United States, that could be a problem.
00:06:58
And they don't want to like release a bunch at 450 and then increase the price later. So it's just it's forever
00:07:05
changing and by the time this comes out on Friday, Yeah. we might have more information. So, it's it's like the
00:07:10
first reaction we saw because of the timing, right? In the tech world, it feels like the first it's not a price
00:07:16
change yet, but it's a direct reaction to what happened because of the timing. Um, and yeah, we don't really know
00:07:23
what that's going to be. Yeah, we were talking about this before like if you're like this is going to happen way more during the year. Lots of gadgets are
00:07:30
going to come out and we'll have to I think we're going to have to speculate about if tariffs were included in
00:07:37
pricing. He said they were not he in this but in the future now that like we know there's some vi volatility here
00:07:44
like I don't know I I think in general we don't we never hear like from the company about why they chose a price for
00:07:50
something. So there are lots of economic conditions and suppliers and margins and
00:07:57
things that they keep in mind when setting a price for something. And this tar tariff stuff is another one of those
00:08:03
variables. But we never hear from the company about why they picked the price. So I think that's going to continue to
00:08:08
be true. I don't imagine any company's going to go here's our new price. It's higher because of tariffs. I don't think
00:08:15
they're going to be able to say that because they never want to change their price. They just want to hopefully predict the future enough to factor in
00:08:22
enough margin to be okay if the tariffs change. I feel like they could say that because they are not the government of the country. But I thought about that like it kind of takes it off your shoulders, but then if tariffs go away,
00:08:34
you're expected to lower the price. That's also true, which is tough. Never happened. Yeah. Have to do that. Yeah,
00:08:40
that's pretty much what happened with Yeah. And and I'm not going to get into Okay. So anyway, uh yeah. Uh well,
00:08:46
speaking of the price of things and them not saying generally why they picked the price they did, in the same interview
00:08:53
that I watched, uh they asked why Mario Kart was $80. So, this is something that
00:08:58
we didn't cover. Actually, I think last week I was like a $60 game because we didn't know. A lot of these games are
00:09:04
now $80. Mario Kart World is $80. Uh the new Donkey Kong game is going to be $70.
00:09:10
And the interviewer asked, "Why is this game $80 and Donkey Kong $70? how are you thinking about this? And Doug said,
00:09:17
it depends on the value of the game and how much value we think the user is going to get out of the game. Um, translation, I think we can get away
00:09:27
with charging this much. Yeah. I mean, I think that they know that Mario Kart is like the console seller and it's going
00:09:34
to be a pack-in game. So, it's I mean, it's $50 extra for Mario Kart if you buy the bundle.
00:09:39
So, it does seem like there's going to be there's been a lot of controversy around these game prices. Yeah. Well,
00:09:46
yeah, he called it variable pricing and that games with like extra depth and replayability will be more expensive and that they'll judge it game by game, which I can guarantee you whatever Zelda
00:09:59
game comes out next will be $80. Oh, yeah. Um Oh, yeah. They also So, one thing we did do an insert in last week
00:10:05
because there was this story that came out about digital games being $80 and then a physical copy being
00:10:12
$90. It seems like no one knows where that came from and it seems like I don't think there's going to be a price difference between physical, but we also want to talk about the difference in what physical games are now. Yeah.
00:10:24
Because they're not really what they're physical games. Yeah. So physical cards is still kind of up in the air because
00:10:31
some games the physical card isn't the physical card that we all know. It's actually a like digital key. So when you
00:10:38
plug it into your Switch, it actually downloads the game online. And then in order to play the game, the key or cartridge must be put in the Switch.
00:10:48
Yeah, there's This is weird. It's different. There are some benefits to it though
00:10:55
that I didn't account for and there's definitely some drawbacks to this. Um I think the obvious drawback is what do we own anymore? Um this is
00:11:05
not a physical thing anymore if I want to play my Switch 2 in 15 years when the servers are offline. This is the thing I
00:11:10
see your face Marquez and I see why you're like I don't understand what this matters. Uh in 15 to 20 years 30 years
00:11:17
when Nintendo decides to turn these servers off all of a sudden you can't sell this. You can't like give this to
00:11:23
someone and have them put it in a Switch, too. I have a couple logical questions, then. So, you're buying a
00:11:28
cartridge, which is a key that you plug into the Switch and then you download. Does that mean some of the game is on
00:11:35
the cartridge or none of it and you still download the entire game? The ones where it's just the key, it's not on the
00:11:41
cartridge. So, you have you put the key card in the Switch and then download the entire game. Yes. And then is that a one
00:11:47
time download? So then you don't have to be online. You can plug in the key and play cuz you're you have downloaded.
00:11:53
Okay. And then so transferring it if I wanted to unplug that key and plug it into a different like I get a new switch then it wouldn't work if the servers were down. If the servers are down. But
00:12:05
what's interesting about this is if you let's say you buy NBA 2K cuz that's a game you would buy. um and you're like done playing it or your friend wants to
00:12:17
play it, you can give them that key, they'll have to download the game, but now they can play it for a while. Or you
00:12:23
can sell your cards. Like if you play a game, finish it, you can sell the game on Facebook Marketplace where if you
00:12:28
only do the digital download, you can't do that cuz it's connected to But then Marquez can no longer play. But you
00:12:34
can't play it anymore even though it's downloaded to your device because you don't have the cartridge. Because I don't have the cartridge. So it acts
00:12:40
exactly like a physical key then. Yes. Unless like a physical game far in the future until Yeah. Until someday maybe they shut everything down. The other super niche thing would be like if
00:12:51
you're on a road trip or on an airplane and David's got the new Zelta game and he's not playing it. I'm like, "Oh yo,
00:12:57
can I play that?" And I grab it. I'm offline. Offline install is the hit. Yeah, that that parts. That makes sense.
00:13:03
And it just takes memory away from your internal storage because the reg if it's the regular
00:13:09
fully developed card, you're not taking away storage on your which it's more storage, but I'm sure everyone will hate that storage. Yeah, I read that they did this because there are some games that
00:13:21
are just too big for the storage of the cartridge and they wanted to allow more third parties that had bigger, harder
00:13:27
core games with more assets to fit on there, especially because it's higher fidelity. It's a much faster processor
00:13:32
and console like PC games are like huge now. This is part of my speculation cuz I I have a Switch One and Switch One games were small enough that I could fit a few games on the local memory before
00:13:43
needing an external card. And my biggest game was 16 gigs. And now we're seeing like Switch 2 with high resolution and
00:13:49
more textures and bigger assets is probably going to be like 64 gigs plus for a single game. So, I could see that
00:13:55
actually happening. Great point. Thank you. I thought about it for a while. Nice. Those I think those are the bigger updates, but we also have like 10 quick
00:14:08
hit updates that also came out. You want to go through them with me, David? Yeah, let's do it. Rapid fire. Okay. So,
00:14:16
remember the pack-in game? Switch to what is it called? Switch to the tutorial. It's the tutorial. It's the tutorial game. The main world.
00:14:26
It's anyway, it's the tutorial game that teaches you about the Switch 2 and you get to walk around it and whatever. Um,
00:14:32
we were we we found out it was a it was a paid game which we did comment on last week and said that's ridiculous. We
00:14:38
didn't know how much it was. It has been verified. It is $10. Welcome tour. Welcome to our Switch 2. Welcome tour.
00:14:44
$10. Yes. What's stupid? We also found out most of the upgrade packs to upgrade things from Switch One to Switch 2 editions are 10 bucks. Yeah. Would you decide if that's worth
00:14:54
it or not yet? Cuz I haven't seen a Switch one game and Switch 2 game on the same Switch 2 to decide if there's a big
00:14:59
enough difference. It's also not always about fidelity. Like The Legend of Zelda
00:15:05
games, they are mostly fidelity and then you get this app where you can do other stuff in the app and there's, you know,
00:15:12
whatever. Oh, wait. I have a stupid question about this. What the update thing? The app is free though, I
00:15:17
believe. Does that mean that I can't play my original game if I have No, you can. You can. It's just not made for Switch. It's lower resolution. That's fine. Yeah. So, it depends. So, so the
00:15:29
Zelda game is mostly about fidelity. You're paying $10 to make it more pretty, which is kind of ridiculous. I
00:15:35
don't know. Uh the Kirby game that's being updated, they're adding an additional like big level to it. So,
00:15:42
they did add content to it. So, it's DLC. So, that's arguably valuable. Sure. There's so many things about this launch that are like, "Oh, this, but in this
00:15:57
case it's this." And there's just no throughine for anything regarding pricing, regarding like what the updates
00:16:02
do, regarding any of this. That's why we're doing like a half an hour update an episode later. Give them a break.
00:16:08
They only had eight years to work on it. Yeah. Uh the new JoyCons are not Hall effect JoyCons. We were really hoping
00:16:14
they would be because that would have fixed all the Drift issues. They said that they re-engineered them from the
00:16:20
ground up. Um, and I'm imagining that Nintendo definitely knows that the Drift was a problem. Whether or not they cared because they could just sell new Joy-Cons for $60, I'm not sure. These
00:16:31
now cost $80. So, you know, I don't know, but we'll see. Okay. Okay. So, it says the port on the top cannot transfer data, only charge the console. Yeah. So, they added an additional USBC port to
00:16:42
the console, which I was extremely excited about, specifically for charging, to be fair. But apparently people were excited because they were
00:16:48
like, "Oh, people could just make new docs that can make the Switch go in sideways and it'll take up less
00:16:53
horizontal space and it could be interesting." But no, it doesn't output video, so it can only charge it from
00:17:00
that. But the camera still connects to it though, correct? So, it can I have not seen that yet. Well, they show it in
00:17:06
all the videos. In the launch. In the launch, they showed that. So, it does transfer data. I guess it does, but I
00:17:11
guess but it doesn't do in some cases dock data or I guess it doesn't do like you can't dock it from you can't do
00:17:17
video output only video in video in interesting which seems like a thing that they did on purpose. Wow, but anyway. Okay. Okay, cool. Uh there. Did
00:17:28
you see this? Yeah. Yeah. Wait, what? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Read it. I know. It's so funny. I didn't want to say it this morning. Okay. Um you probably saw that there is the Switch camera that's
00:17:39
coming out. That's in the shape of a piranha plant. Awesome. Uh, it only does 480p versus the Nintendo edition camera
00:17:47
that does 1080p. Yep. So, that really sick piranha plant camera. It's like I think actually what's cool about it is
00:17:53
the plant is USBC. So, I'm assuming you can plug it into the switch by itself or it has the little stand that's like the
00:18:00
the tunnel 480, but it's 480 and not 1080 like the normal camera. Nostalgia must eventually come to an end. I bet people will buy that camera, put it next
00:18:11
to their Switch, and then also buy the real camera to have 1080. Okay. But also, I did read you can use any USBC
00:18:17
webcam as well. Really? Mhm. Okay. Yeah. So, everything about this is like, wow.
00:18:24
Yay. Wow. Oh, what? Yay. Oh, it's everything. It's everything. Um, they did Nintendo did respond about the choppy playback for shared screens that we saw and I appreciated their honesty
00:18:38
um in the sense of them they basically said like listen we'd much rather the majority of resources go to gaming like
00:18:45
not only does it help with the games that are being played but like more games are going to come out in the future and they're going to be more
00:18:51
resource intensive. So, let's just make sure we're using the minimal amount for the actual game share or not game share,
00:18:57
the like gameplay footage social aspect of it, which I agree with. That's more of a social thing. It's to kind of see
00:19:04
what's going on. I do think like they showed some scenes where they were watching another person play the game and sort of helping them go through it.
00:19:10
I think what they should do is whatever is the primary screen, they should devote most of the bandwidth to. I think
00:19:15
that's fair. Yeah, but they didn't do that, which was weird. So, oh, I wanted to say one more thing, which is just I
00:19:22
found this really interesting, but uh so like the old Joy-Con bumper, when you split the the JoyCons, the old bumper was like literally the worst thing in the world. It was like really rattly and
00:19:34
you could put it on backwards and get it stuck and it sucked. The new Joy-Con, it still has a bumper because it wants to
00:19:40
add the wrist strap. Um, but since they made the buttons so much better, it actually now the buttons still like
00:19:46
press through the new bumper. And it's just this really simple like I think there's a small uh hook on the bottom of
00:19:53
it, but Marquez has some footage we can put it on the the video here. I don't think we included it in the first
00:19:58
impressions. Um, okay. I thought that was awesome though. Seems better. And it also puts like little tiny mouse pad
00:20:03
feet on it. So when you do the mouse thing that's also on the bumper. Oh, you probably can't do the mouse without
00:20:09
that. Yeah, cuz it wouldn't really be as flat of a surface. It creates a flat bottom for it. Yeah. Cool. So, yeah, I
00:20:14
have a bit of a hot take. Um, this is also stolen from David Pierce on the Vergecast. Basically, I I think that this this console was developed during CO because
00:20:27
everything about it is like the social features are such a core part of it. The camera, the cutouts, the like trying to
00:20:33
make it feel like you're more in a room. Like Switch One, all of the advertising was like teens hanging out on a roof
00:20:40
playing Switch together. Yeah. I think that I've said this about a lot of phones in the past, but it's also
00:20:45
probably true of this. The second generation of a product is always the most interesting because it teaches you everything that company learned from the
00:20:51
first generation. So like when we we got the first generation Apple Watch or the first generation iPad, they kind of
00:20:57
thought it would be one thing and then they saw they put it out into the world. They saw how people used it and they went, "Ah, okay, we can capitalize and
00:21:04
make things for this exact group of people." So, obviously the first Twitch came out in I think 2017 pre-COVID and
00:21:10
they saw they had a lot of ideas about how people people would use it. Now, they have the data and they've seen how
00:21:17
people have used it and co happened during that time. So now a lot of the switch use is probably different from
00:21:23
what they imagined in those first ads and they are adjusting to the usage numbers or they had 3 years of
00:21:29
development during co where they thought this is what we should prioritize. I think it's a good point too cuz so many
00:21:35
people saw that and they're like why is anyone excited? We've had Discord forever but I don't compare this to
00:21:40
Discord. I compare this specifically to being on Zoom calls with friends playing Mario Kart like it's a lot different. I
00:21:47
get to see my friends which is different than Discord. I mean, you can do that and you can share screens with Discord's
00:21:52
way more of just voice. So, this is voice and seeing. It's so much more casual. It's And don't get me wrong,
00:21:58
like, I am super glad they added these features regardless, but the battery life is also notably worse than the OLED
00:22:05
model. They I think the quoted battery life was 2 and 12 to 6 hours where OLED was the OLED model was like 4 and a half to eight or something like that. So, I
00:22:16
don't know. I mean, playing it handheld obviously is better better with the bigger screen. That's cool. I kind of
00:22:21
wonder like the percentage like it is a switch. It the whole point is to be able to use it handheld or in a dock. I kind
00:22:26
of wonder like what fraction of people have a Switch mostly docked versus mostly handheld. I play almost
00:22:32
exclusively handheld. So that's Yeah, I travel with it. I I use it. That's the only thing I use it for. Yeah. I think
00:22:38
if you're doing it in the like social camera scenario though, you're probably playing it docked because you probably
00:22:43
need the camera. That big focus makes me believe that most people use a Switch docked if I only watch or at least they
00:22:50
did through 2020 through 2023. Maybe that's I don't know. It's interesting. So yeah, I think that is all we have so far for Switch updates. Breaking news,
00:23:02
Switch 2 cancelled. Wow. This is the Switch 2 podcast after all. So, we will be back with your rapid fire updates
00:23:08
every week until June 5th. Obviously, that's just how this is going to go. And probably after we still won't have it
00:23:13
then. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I think that's a perfect place to take a quick break. We got much more to talk about and
00:23:19
so trivia. All right, this one's a little bit of a Where's the whiteboard? Little explaining. So, let me let me get into
00:23:31
it. So earlier we mentioned Doug Bowser uh whose name is an example of this hypothesis called nominative determinism. Wait wait wait his name his
00:23:43
name Doug D. Oh yeah yeah yeah. Okay sorry which is it's a it's a it's a hypothesis sociological hypothesis that
00:23:48
people choose careers that fit well with their name. Obviously not proven or disproven but these names that fit well
00:23:55
are called acronyms. Um, Doug Bowser, according to Wikipedia, is actually an inapt inapronym because he's the villain of the Mario thing. But I have before me
00:24:06
four acronyms, and I need you to tell me which one I made up. Uh, I can already tell this is probably your favorite question you created. Are you ready? I love this. All
00:24:19
right, number one. Emmeritus professor of psychiatry at Zurich University. Jules Angst B. American ornithologist and
00:24:31
program manager for feather identification in the division of birds at the National Museum of Natural
00:24:36
History. Carla Dove. Yo. C. 1984 Olympic gold medalist swimmer Jeff Float. D. Current host of the show, The
00:24:50
View, Sunny Host or Eve. These are all real, baby. Wow. Wow. When I was when I took drum lessons in in high school, my drum
00:25:03
teacher was named John Bassa, like bass drum bas. There's so many good examples of this. I I pulled these best ones from
00:25:11
a ginormous list. Really? Yeah. This this really does happen. I mean, Usain Bolt is probably the top of the list. Usain Bolt. I found a composer named David W. Music. No way. That's too easy.
00:25:25
That's too easy. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Okay. I I will be thinking I don't know any of those people you named. So, I Wait, wait. I Sorry. This one is real. It's not part of it, but one of the guys who worked on the transcontinental railroad
00:25:38
as an engineer, and this is not a joke, was named George Francis Train. Perfect. Perfect. Well, I Yeah, I don't I'm going to have to think about those. I hope I hope
00:25:51
they're all real. Secretly answers will be at the end like usual. We'll be right
00:25:56
[Music] back. Support for Waveform comes from KOD. Picture this. You're starting a new project at work and your vision is
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00:27:03
am holding a Nintendo Switch 2. And by Nintendo Switch 2, I mean an Oppo Find X8 Ultra. What's the difference? Yeah, audio listeners really just got excited.
00:27:15
Yeah, sorry for the jump scare audio listeners. Uh, no, this is a So, this one came out or was announced this week, uh, I dropped my by the time the podcast
00:27:22
goes out, my first impressions video of this phone is also out, but it kind of came out of left field because we've had
00:27:28
the X8 series going for a while and the X8 Pro is already a really good phone. This phone comes out, I didn't really
00:27:33
have plans for it. It shows up. The spec sheet blows my mind. Unbelievable spec sheet from top to bottom. Literally the
00:27:40
best available spec uh Android phone other than I think refresh rate because it has 120 Hz LTPO. Maybe it could have
00:27:47
been the 165 Hz from the ROG phone. But everything else about it, Snapdragon 8 Elite, uh 6,100 mAh silicon carbon battery, uh great haptics, IP68, IP69, a
00:28:00
terabyte of storage, 16 gigs of RAM. Like you name a stat, it's got it. 1440p, super bright, and then the camera
00:28:07
sensors, which are kind of the main draw of these phones. 1 in type sensor for the primary camera, 50 megapixels. And
00:28:15
then it has a 3x camera, which is a absolutely massive sensor and is basically the same size as a primary
00:28:21
camera on a lot of phones. Then there is a 6x telephoto. There's an ultra wide. There's a chroma sensor for white
00:28:27
balance. It is loaded. This camera is ungodly good. This is possibly the best phone camera. Marquez, is this everything that you mentioned that every phone is going to
00:28:37
have this year? So, the big hits, yes, it hits all the three, the big three of phones having the thing that we thought
00:28:43
they were going to have this year. One, Snapdragon 8 Elite. Two, really, really bright display. Three, silicon carbon
00:28:48
battery. It has all of those. And it has like maxed out everything else. Oh, that picture you just took is fire. That's
00:28:55
tough. That's a tough look for me. Uh, but it it's really impressive. And uh I think so I I ended up like making a video on it not expecting to until we got it in hand, but I'm
00:29:07
impressed. Can I ask the least interesting question possible? Yes. Okay. I've seen this with a couple other
00:29:12
phones and I I remember bringing it up when we were facteing a video once, but why are phones now saying like it's IP68
00:29:19
and IP69? I don't know. I thought it was pretty intuitive that if a phone would pass
00:29:25
IP68 then it would also pass everything below it. But technically they don't have to test everything below it. So if
00:29:33
you'd pay for the IP68 and the IP69 test, maybe you feel obligated to say both. Both of them. But I, you know, yeah, IP69 is not just submersion, but
00:29:44
like high pressure, high or low temperature water jets. It'll survive that too. Something I want to note here,
00:29:51
um, they copy camera control. Oh, yeah. They Okay, it's a it's a whole section in this video. Yeah.
00:29:58
And maybe I haven't said it on the podcast before, but Oppo with Color OS is so shameless about copying many, many
00:30:07
things from the iPhone. From dynamic island to Open the Settings app and tell me that's not just the iPhone settings.
00:30:13
The dynamic island is so good, though. The dynamic island, they've copied live activities. They've copied. Hit that.
00:30:18
See that button on the side on the top left of the phone? Okay. Oh, hold that down. It's It's exactly the action
00:30:24
button from the iPhone. And it has the Yeah, the button. Now, on the right side of the phone, you see that little flat
00:30:30
area? It's literally camera control. So, if you open the camera and slide your finger along that area or Yeah. double
00:30:36
tap opens the camera, slide up and down, it zooms in and out. They've copied camera control. It literally looks the
00:30:41
same, right? You holded it. Oh my god. Yeah. So, yeah, they've obviously taken a lot of inspiration. The settings app,
00:30:47
the the settings for that action button or I mean quick button, right? It looks exactly the same as the iPhone. I ended
00:30:54
up kind of remembering that obviously all the all other markets that aren't the US where people just buy the phone
00:31:01
based on whatever has the best specs and seems like the best value, it kind of works for them to just just embrace the other features of other phones that work well. And if you have all the features,
00:31:13
then people are more likely to buy your thing. Like if I like dynamic island on the iPhone, okay, now here's another
00:31:19
phone with dynamic island. Yeah. You know, something I want to note about the camera. Uh, usually when you zoom in like a ton, what happens is it looks
00:31:26
really soft and then you click the shutter button and then a few seconds of processing goes by and then it looks really oversharpened just because they
00:31:33
want to like bring out all the detail. But on this phone, even when you use like an insane like 30x, it looks soft.
00:31:40
You take the photo, wait, wait a couple seconds, and then it just looks like a normal photo. Looks sharp. Like it looks
00:31:46
good. It doesn't look oversharpened. It doesn't It looks amazing. I think the photos are great on this camera. That's
00:31:52
insane. You did rich at from like across the entire office and then it starts like haloing pretty hard. So it it is
00:31:59
tough to tackle like tough lighting conditions at 50x zoom, but on like a like a sky a skyline or whatever trying
00:32:07
to zoom in on some buildings like it does a fantastic job. Anything that's sitting still, it does a great job. I
00:32:12
followed Zuri around. It does a good job of like freezing action. Zuri's uh the dog that's over there sleeping in the
00:32:18
corner of the podcast room right now, but it did a good job with that. Uh, I'm just Yeah, I the thing about it. Okay,
00:32:24
so I I've only had it for a few days. I assume the battery life is going to be just fine since it has a 6,100 millah
00:32:30
battery. It also has 100 watt fast charging, 50 watt wireless charging, reverse wireless charging. Does it have
00:32:37
G2? It does not have magnets in it. Unfortunately, G2 is fake as far as it Yeah, we don't get G2. We only get G2 ready. Yeah, just the Motorola Skyline
00:32:47
or whatever. Yeah, but everything else about this phone is basically peak 2025 smartphone. The bar has been set now. That's crazy. This is how good it gets. That's unbelievable. Yeah, it's good. I
00:33:00
might have to get one. And speaking of something almost as good, you also got to try the Light Phone 3 out, right?
00:33:05
Take the Light phone. Uh do I want to bring it in here just to I I'm gonna I'm working on a video about this light phone. Okay. And minimal phones. We talked
00:33:15
about it briefly on the last episode. I respect it. I understand it. There is obviously some desire for it. But the
00:33:23
Light Phone 3, if you pre-order, costs $600 and if you don't pre-order, costs $800. Yikes. I don't understand that value
00:33:36
proposition. Wow, that's a lot. If the entire point of the phone is to be less of a phone, right, how do you charge
00:33:43
more than a lot of phones? How much does this cost? Do we know? This one I don't have a price actually for it yet, but
00:33:49
I'm going to guess it's around $900 to $1,200. Like it's a flagship. The X8 Pro cost about 800. Okay. This is not coming to the US by the way, but that's about how much it would cost. So that's uh
00:34:01
yeah, I'm trying to square like what they're doing with the light phone because it is so expensive. Yeah, we got
00:34:07
a few minimal phones in recently. We got the light phone. There's also the minimal phone that it came in. And I
00:34:14
think for some people um like Becca Versace just made a video on the Light Phone 3 and she did a really good job on
00:34:20
that. So you should go watch that. I think it can work for some people, but she had a lot of frustrations as well.
00:34:26
So it's one of those things where it's like in order to live the life you want to live, you got to have some trade-offs. Yeah. So Tim, I think and
00:34:34
I'm not 100% sure about this. Maybe Becca said in her video, I didn't get a chance to watch it, but Tim was trying to bring it home to use it for a little
00:34:40
bit and can't transfer any of his text messages over to it. Is that only cuz he's using iMessage or is it just like I
00:34:47
haven't been able to do that either. He was trying to find some stuff and like it still has SMS messaging, but you
00:34:53
can't transfer your previous SMS messages over. There's a portal. There's an online portal that you can log into
00:34:59
and like add and remove different apps and things that I can It's not even really apps, they call them functions.
00:35:04
Um, but it Yeah, it's it's very limited. Yeah. And intentionally so. Yeah. So, all right. Yeah. Before we move on, I think I have a loose answer as to how a
00:35:15
device and why a device might be rated both IP68 and IP69. It turns out while you would think that the difference between 8 and 9 is just harder, better, faster, stronger,
00:35:27
drier, um, it turns out they're actually different. uh international standards code society whatever actually prescribes two different kinds of tests. IP68 refers to a submersion
00:35:40
survivability capability whatever. Uh so when you test for when you give it the IP68 rating you're literally submerging
00:35:46
the device. The IP69 rating demands that the device be subjected to what is akin
00:35:52
to an industrial cleaning environment where they actually blast the device with high pressure high temperature
00:35:58
water. Yeah. Oh. Um, so they are two different modes of survivability when it comes to water. I really hope that's right. I was just reading standards codes and trying to make the best sense
00:36:10
of it. But it does seem like actually it sort of describes two separate. Okay. Um, I'll reference one of our most hated
00:36:16
videos cuz I did go to see one of one of the like water the durability testing from the Apple Labs. But yeah, the IP68
00:36:23
test is literally just put the phone underwater and like close the tank. But the thing that they do to simulate depth because they don't have a 10-ft depth is they just close it, seal it, and add
00:36:34
pressure. And so IP68 does include some amount of pressure. IP69 is just way more pressure with those jets that they're hitting the phone with. Yeah. Cuz five and six are jets of water, not
00:36:45
submerging, which is under the submerging of seven and eight. And then nine is close-range high temperature
00:36:52
water jets. Yeah, I think when you say jets, it's they're like sprinkling water on the phone. The these make it what I
00:36:58
was hearing made it sound like for real IP69 you need real jets and then they also specify it needs to hit all sides
00:37:04
of the phone for at least 3 minutes. Wow. Yeah. All right. So if you are going to dishwasher your phone. Yeah. That's basically what it is. Oh. So we can try we can put that phone in the
00:37:16
dishwasher for 3 minutes. We could try it. Yeah. Or a laundry or whatever. I mean I don't know if you put your phone through a entire laundry cycle. I don't think you expect it to survive, but
00:37:28
there's a higher chance that it could if it is IP69. Did you rated that? This tweet came back. This is relevant. I promise that res resurfaced in the form of screenshot and I feel the need to
00:37:39
share. I have it pulled up right now. It's oven has a window microwave too. You can see all the way through a
00:37:46
blender, but the dishwasher. Oh no, you could never see in there. They refuse to
00:37:51
let us see what's going on in there. That is a great point. That's a good point. Maybe it's just cuz it's mostly
00:37:58
ugly. Yeah, that's I did watch a video a long time ago of someone put a GoPro in a dishwasher. So, I've seen what happens
00:38:04
in a dishwasher, but how come no one's done like a dishwasher with a window? Maybe because it looks dirty. Yeah, it looks bad. Makes your house look worse.
00:38:11
Anyway, um breaking news. Breaking news. Uh the Switch 2 is also delayed in Canada. The pre-order is delayed in
00:38:18
Canada as well as the United States. It is literally breaking top of the timeline breaking. So anyway, we will continue with the Switch 2 podcast
00:38:29
talking about other things. Things evolve, guys. But there may be multiple breaking news stories about the Switch
00:38:34
to during this episode. Uh other interesting phone tidbits, which we haven't really had a lot of phone stuff
00:38:39
in a while. Nothing subbrand. Uh okay, I'm going to go through this. Nothing is a budget phone brand, right? Okay. Technically, they have a budget phone, the A series. Um, they also launched a
00:38:52
budget subbrand. Oh, yeah. Yeah. CMF, right? Um, now the budget brands, budget subbrand just is launching a pro phone. So, I'm not really sure where this puts
00:39:06
everything. Me neither. But, you know, so CMF is making the CMF phone 2 Pro. Uh they kind of showed a few little animated things related to it. It's
00:39:18
going to have three cameras on it, so it'll I guess have a telephoto and a wide. Is that all that pro means
00:39:24
anymore? Cuz I kind of feel like that's all it means anymore often. Cuz there's Oh my god, I can't even keep up. There's the nothing phone and then there's the budget nothing phone, which is the A,
00:39:34
but then there's also the budget as well. And then there's the A Pro that just came out. Yeah. Yeah. There's like
00:39:40
budget companies bud pro budget phone and now this is the budget companies budget company budget sub companies
00:39:47
budget pro phone pro phone yeah the only thing these pro phones all have in common is they all have triple cameras from the iPhone 16 pro all the way down to the nothing 3a pro all the way down
00:40:00
to the cmf pro all that pro means is we have a regular camera an ultraide camera
00:40:06
and a telephoto camera but they did tease that it's going to have a new finish. They said a new finish textured
00:40:14
tactile, different period, which is cool. Like I want to see that. But again, it's for metal. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, my question becomes then the whole point of the CMF1 was that it had that
00:40:27
3D printed like you could 3D print your own backs for it. Rip the plastic back off. That's what was sick about it. So
00:40:33
like if they're just making a metal or like a glass phone, then isn't it just It still has the screw here. has the
00:40:40
screw. So although that screw doesn't look like it takes that back off. This one specifically is inside its own
00:40:47
little you can see the back. Remember the screw was not to take the back off. It was just to add accessories. That was
00:40:53
like for lanyard accessories and stuff, right? But wasn't there also another one that took the back off? That was the
00:40:58
dial. Yes. Right. Yeah. And you unscrew it and take the back off. Okay. Apparently they're going to announce
00:41:04
this on Monday the 28th of April. So that's in a couple of weeks. Okay. Yeah, but they're teasing it early. They're
00:41:09
also releasing three new sets of earbuds. The CMF Buds 2, the 2A, and the 2 Plus. Shocker. Okay. So, so much. Okay. Budget brand releases a budget a
00:41:24
even budgeter subbrand which releases a budget set of earbuds, a normal whatever
00:41:31
that means because it's a budget subbrand, and then a pro set of budget earbuds. Cool. Plus a plus. I can't I
00:41:40
can't keep this straight. Is this all just there to make us realize that the term budget means basically nothing or a
00:41:48
million different things to everybody and that it is basically a curse to even say that word in any tech pro and max and pl like yeah I guess the the
00:41:59
strategy which we've seen before is we want to offer a product at every possible price tier in increments of 10 that someone might buy a product that
00:42:11
Samsung's been at this forever. They have the A series, they have the Galaxy series, they have the Galaxy S, they have the Galaxy Z, Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z
00:42:17
Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z whatever, like there's a bunch of different series and versions and so they end up having a thousand phones and if you pick a price
00:42:23
point, they've got a phone for you. And I guess that's kind of what this company's doing, but instead of everything being a nothing phone,
00:42:29
there's the Nothing series and then there's the Nothing A series and there's the CMF series and there's the CMF Pro
00:42:35
and CMF. Like they they'll get every price point sooner or later. It's just that Carl Pay always follows the exact
00:42:41
same like trajectory, which is like launch a company that has really good specs for the price, launch a pro
00:42:48
version of that that's more expensive. And then be like, but we hear you. So, we're going to launch an affordable
00:42:53
version, and then they make the pro version of the affordable version, and then they're like, you know what, this isn't even affordable anymore. Here's a
00:43:00
subbrand. It's just I also think can't wait till he reacts to this on the Nothing Channel. I also think what what
00:43:07
you realize when you are a young or small smartphone competitor is that the price points that you compete at also determine how competitive it is. And at the 800 to $1,000 price point, it is
00:43:20
super hyper ultra competitive. Like Samsung Galaxy S versus iPhone versus Vivo versus OPPO, like these companies
00:43:27
are pouring so much into bleeding edge phones. And if you're just starting up, you can't like get the suppliers and get
00:43:34
the price down to actually compete there. So they they're kind of forced into starting at we're going to have a
00:43:40
lower priced phone and try to compete there instead. Yeah. And they'll compete there with, you know, fancy software,
00:43:46
some interesting new design or whatever. Uh but I think you you'll it takes a long time and a lot of volume to get up
00:43:53
to, okay, now we're going to compete with like the Snapdragon 8 Elite like big dog $900 phones. makes people very
00:44:00
angry when your whole thing was like we do this cheaper and better. Yeah. So, definitely I have a pitch for budget phone naming schemes. Okay. Let's just the number is the price. The nothing
00:44:12
phone 3.49. [Music] That's that would actually have a sale. What happens? You have to launch variable pricing. Doug Bowser, I think you could pull that off. That's
00:44:26
my new company. Very fun. Okay. Uh, last story before we take another break. This is so stupid. Okay. Uh, you may have heard that Sam Alman and Johnny
00:44:38
IV were working on a product together. Uh, this happened quite a while ago that I'm so happy I don't know about this.
00:44:44
Oh, really? Okay. This was like a year ago that the rumors around this started. I was just going to say it's rumors. It's It was rumors. It was rumors. But
00:44:50
they do have a startup that they're working on together, I believe, officially. Is this just moneyaundering?
00:44:56
That's the question of the year, my friends. Another sound bite. Perfect. Yeah. So, report uh Sam Alman and Johnny
00:45:03
IV startup might be sold to OpenAI for 500 billion plus dollars. 500 billion. What do they don't know about this? 500 million. Oh, is Oh, sorry. Did I say billion? Yeah. No, Marquez said billion.
00:45:19
This one right here says 500 million. 500 million. The doc guy wrote billion. I was wrong. I should have Yeah. Okay.
00:45:26
one more Samman and Johnny IV startup maybe sold to OpenAI for $500 million plus dollars. What? Um, so I've I don't know what the startup does, but $500
00:45:38
million. Yeah. Implies they do something. Well, implies what do they do? Okay. Well, so very big, you know, XAI purchases X energy here. Uh, they
00:45:50
have reportedly been working on a phoneike product without a screen. I've heard this before which we have heard
00:45:56
many times before. Go on. Uh it could be a little bit different considering No, don't do that. Yes, it could be a little bit different considering you know OpenAI actually has a working voice mode
00:46:07
model that is good. It's not like the human AI pin or the rabbit. Um as for it actually being like aentic and taking action for you, I'm not sure about that. Uh they are also reportedly working on
00:46:19
AI enabled household devices which is also kind of interesting. I was thinking about this yesterday and I'm like well surprisingly Google has not added Gemini to any of its Google Home products.
00:46:32
Yeah, I feel like they have this year. Siri is nowhere to be found. Alexa Plus was announced and it was supposed to already be out in early access and yet I have not heard of anyone having it. Mhm.
00:46:45
So, weirdly enough, there is this gap in the market for like home enabled smart AI devices that are gen um generative
00:46:54
that nobody is doing yet, but of course, you know, this isn't available yet, but
00:47:00
you know, I don't know. So, yeah, I don't know. It's uh I could see there being something there and OpenAI does have a lot of cache right now, but it's
00:47:11
just sort of I wish I had Sam Alman's superpower to just like raise infinite money. He just like gets money. Bro is so good at getting money. He can literally pay himself and get Microsoft
00:47:24
to be the person that gives him the money to pay himself. Like what the He's acquiring his own company for $500
00:47:30
billion with Daddy Satia's money. It's Satia's money. This is the most um uh Silicon Valley bubble thing I've seen in a long time. Here's what I watch a lot of Shark Tank. I don't know if you guys
00:47:42
watch Shark Tank. Have you ever watched a good amount of Shark Tank? You know how there's at the beginning of every pitch they're like, "Hi, my name is
00:47:48
Blank and I would like to offer you a shark the opportunity to buy 10% of my company for $100,000. Here's what I do."
00:47:55
And then they go through the pitch and then they get to the end of the pitch and then Mr. wonderful goes, "Well, with this valuation, you must have a lot of
00:48:02
sales, my friend. Why are you worth a million dollars?" And then they have to justify themselves. It's easier to I'm
00:48:08
trying to put this on Shark Tank of Sam Alman going, "Hi, my name is Sam and I'd
00:48:14
like to offer you the opportunity for $100 million to buy 20% of my company and here's what we do." And then Mr. Runner goes, "Wow, a $500 million valuation. You must have amazing sales."
00:48:27
And then they go, "No, we actually don't have any products or sales or anything happening yet, but we just got this good
00:48:32
idea. There's a spot in the market that seems like it's open right now, and Google and Apple and Amazon haven't done
00:48:38
it yet. So, we have a chance. You know what? They have Johnny I Well, but but this Shark Tank is Sam Alman comes out
00:48:44
and says, "I have this. What would you like to see?" And then the camera turns and Sam Alman's sitting at the Shark Tank chair and says, "You got I'm in all
00:48:52
in." Yeah, that's exactly what that is. That is literally what this is. Um, and then and then he goes, "But why does everyone hate me?" Whoops. Well, yeah. Anyway, that we'll
00:49:06
keep an eye on that cuz if it happens, it happens. Whatever. I don't think that affects us in any way. There's no products to talk about here and no one
00:49:11
can buy anything any of these people are making. So, like, good for them. Congrats. Keep keep it up. Mom's proud
00:49:17
of you. But yeah, I don't know what's going on. I'm sorry. Or congratulations. I'm not reading all that. Yeah. All
00:49:22
right. Well, we'll we'll have a little bit more to talk about after the break. Tik Tok getting banned, maybe or maybe not. And also some streaming stuff. But
00:49:28
before that, trivia. Trivia, dude. So, we spoke about the Oppo Find X8 Ultra. We're going to just keep adding words to the end of phones. Plus,
00:49:44
but their first phone ever had a much better name, the A103, aka the smiley face. There's multiple choice. Why was it called that? A. The phone itself had a
00:49:57
smiley face on the back. That's cool. B. The person who designed it, Tony Chen, is nicknamed Smiley, so it was in his
00:50:04
honor. C. It was originally only sold in a store that translates to Smiley Shop, so it was a partnership. Or D, none of
00:50:11
these are true. The first ever phone or the first their first ever Apple Oppo's first. Yeah,
00:50:18
Apple's first phone. Yeah. Uh, what about it was the first phone in China to be able to Alexander Grabbell like I've invented the first phone. It's called the smiley face.
00:50:33
I would call it that. Okay. All right. Emoji has it did the could do emoji. This is you. We're so good at podcast. That's my guess. We'll be right back. Great
00:50:47
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vanta.com/wwayform. That's v a n ta.com/waveform for $1,000 off. All right, welcome back. That's how I feel right now because Tik Tok is on the clock once
00:53:29
again. Uh yeah, we made an episode called Tik Tok on the clock when it was banned and then delayed and then banned again and then there was a clock where
00:53:40
it took 75 days for it to be banned unless a deal was reached. That 75 days was set to be up this weekend uh and
00:53:47
reportedly well last weekend at the time of the listener viewing this. Oh. Oh, right. Yeah. Oh, April 5th, which was
00:53:55
three days ago at the time. True. Okay. Uh and reportedly there was a deal that was going to be reached and then the
00:54:02
tariffs happened on April 2nd and uh apparently China was like we're not going to do this. We're not going to
00:54:12
sell the company unless in the US unless you pull back on the tariffs. And then they didn't and then now they're fighting again. And so then an executive order has been
00:54:27
put in place that extends the the sale for another another 75 days. Yeah. So, you know, keep scrolling. I guess we're in we're in it's Shreddingers Tik Tok. Tik Tok has nine lives. Honestly,
00:54:41
probably on like life five or six three by now. So, if you thought Tik Tok was potentially going to be gone this last weekend, it's now not and you can keep living your life. But, I just wanted to
00:54:52
let you guys know. I still haven't redownloaded it. Very proud of myself. Me neither. I still use reals a lot, but
00:54:59
reals suck because it's just the Costco guys all the time and then I get off reals. I see the Tik Tok things four
00:55:04
months later on. So yeah, I was going to say your reels are just uh curated to you. So forward. So it's just the Costco guys. It's just it's
00:55:14
your think you want. They did just come out with a new song. Oh my god. Terrible. Do not advertise their
00:55:20
standards. Ironically, I've never downloaded Tik Tok, but the day before it got banned the first time, I was I
00:55:26
was tempted because I was like, watching it spiral was fun. Yeah, that like 24 hours was hilarious. Before it got banned at 24 hours was like peak. It felt like what would happen if we all
00:55:38
knew the world was going to end in like a week and we all want needed to do that like last thing before the world ends.
00:55:43
Yeah. But anyways, I remember it got banned on some people's phones when they got the message and I had a friend in another room who was still scrolling. He
00:55:48
was like, I got to keep scrolling. Give me my dopamine. Scroll. Uh, anyways, okay, small another little small story. Google TV streaming
00:55:58
devices are going to be required to have a free TV or live TV button on them. Uh,
00:56:03
if you guys have never heard of things like Pluto TV, it is basically free TV that is being streamed and what they do
00:56:10
is they put ads in it. And you may have heard of this model before because it was cable. So, uh, now Google's getting
00:56:17
into that game because things like Pluto TV have gotten very popular where basically you can just like watch all of
00:56:23
these shows. There's channels and you don't get to decide what you watch and it's just like the past except now it's
00:56:29
being streamed over the Pluto legal TV. I always thought it was not Oh, it's thinking of something else. You're thinking of Plex. Yeah, you're thinking of Plex. Uh, I think there's another
00:56:41
like anyways, Samsung also has a Samsung TV experience where it's the same thing.
00:56:47
It's terrible cuz every time I turn my TV on, it's just blaring some rand like, "Dude, where dude, where's my car?" was
00:56:52
playing the other day and I'm like, "Again, my Bluetooth remote's not connecting cuz the Samsung remotes are
00:56:57
horrific and disconnect all the time and I'm stuck on, dude, where's my car?" Built-in Samsung UI and stuff on your
00:57:04
Samsung TV. I do too. You crazy people. Why? What would you do instead? Oh, Google TV. There's Google TV, there's
00:57:11
chcast, there's like a million ways to bypass that. It's all built in for free. I didn't have to buy a $100 box. It's
00:57:17
fine. I mean, the YouTube app is a YouTube app kind of no matter where you are. I The Samsung TV app's not great, but the worst thing is that the Sorry,
00:57:23
we have derailed this conversation. We can bring it back. But my remote disconnects eight times a week and
00:57:29
sometimes takes 20 minutes to connect infrared. Switch to LG, bro. Come come to the light side. Actually, I have an
00:57:36
LG TV and a Samsung TV, and I personally strongly prefer the Samsung UI. Oh, wait. Is there an infrared? Sorry, this has really been bug lately. Is there an infrared Samsung remote? Cuz I want to
00:57:49
drive my head through the wall every not just the LG remote infrared, but I don't care. I don't have an LG TV. I'm asking
00:57:56
a different question. Built into this glorious infrared remote is universal backwards compatibility. So any other
00:58:03
stereo device that you have in your house, you can sync with your remote. Yeah, that's fire as hell. Does that
00:58:08
work on my Samsung TV? It works on my 1980s stereo receiver. Like it's backward compatible like like decades.
00:58:15
Yes, it does. I'm pretty sure my Samsung TV remote is also infrared. One more minute. Every time it just goes like it'll turn the TV on and off, but I can't control any of the like left,
00:58:26
right, volume, anything. select the UI and then it's like press these two buttons and I have you hold it and it
00:58:31
goes can't connect, can't connect, can't connect, can't connect and you just do it over and over and over till you give
00:58:37
up or it connects 45 times later. Samsung that can't be infrared then. Yeah. Jesus. No, it shows a Bluetooth
00:58:44
symbol when it connects. Gross Bluetooth. It's not even It's the dumbest thing. Did you know that life could be good? Hey, listen. If you want to gift me an
00:58:56
LG TV, the LGC1 OLED is reportedly extremely good. It's been around for a long time. The LG QED displays rock. QED. QED. I'll gift you an LG remote.
00:59:11
LG bring us back. David, I have a question for you. Okay. This is Can I reassign that button to a Pluto TV? It
00:59:18
has to be the Google TV. The free Google TV. So, they're like launching their own thing and what? Yeah. I mean, so the
00:59:23
Google TV remotes already have built-in buttons for like Netflix and Hulu and and Amazon. Yeah. It's it's like because
00:59:30
these companies pay the makers of the devices to like put these buttons on it so they can make money to quickly access
00:59:37
it. It is very in my op it's very e-wasty to like create a hard-coded button that goes to a service that may get merged with another service next month. Um, generally that happens, but
00:59:51
you know that's what happens. So anyway, I don't know. Google is really leaning into this because I think they're finding out that it's a big cash cow for
00:59:57
them. I have a anchor negula projector that has Google TV on it and every time I open the Google TV UI, they have started prominently putting the free TV stuff like really big on the home
01:00:12
screen. Do you mean Android TV OS or Google TV? It's Google TV, which is which is Yeah, it's a platform. Google TV. I thought it was called Oh, no. It used to be called Android TV is now
01:00:23
Google TV. This is different from chcast. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Chcast is just chcast is like AirPlay, but for Google.
01:00:31
Well, there was Chast which they did sunset. They no longer sell the chcast with Google TV. Now they only sell the box. They sunset
01:00:43
the the actual chcast thing like a month ago. That's what I still have. It was a while ago. It was awesome. Yeah. Um
01:00:50
Okay. I'm glad I still have that. It's like actually it's actually pretty good. It is very good. Yeah. No. Yeah. And it
01:00:57
had a nice texture. Anyway, it that the texture doesn't matter because it's in the back of your TV. But regardless, uh
01:01:04
it is interesting to see Google like asserting a lot of like dominance here because they are now forcing
01:01:10
manufacturers that use Google TV to have a big free TV button. They did not say how big or where it needs to be on the remote. But the product that is being
01:01:21
sold from Walmart, the Google TV box from Walmart, the remote now has a very giant free TV blue button in the center. Full width. Full width. Yeah. of the remote. So, you know, and you know what?
01:01:36
I kind of I kind of like the free TV stuff. I think that this is maybe a hot take, but because we have so much choice
01:01:44
now, a lot of people, you know, that's why I like the Spotify like uh radio stations and like all this stuff. It is
01:01:51
kind of nice to just drop content on your life and not worry about it because there's like too much choice sometimes.
01:01:58
And so I think a lot of people like that, you know, just being able to go on free TV and be like, "Oh, the Star Trek channel is playing. We'll just watch
01:02:04
whatever episode it feeds me." You know, I wonder who you could be talking about.
01:02:10
That was my life in 2020 when Michael Fisher forced me to watch a lot of Star. It was good. It was good. But uh yeah, I
01:02:16
don't know. I think that that is a growing market. We also saw that literal TV that they were giving you to you for
01:02:22
free. Oh yeah. from the company that made the free TV service and the Super Bowl this year was what on free. Yeah,
01:02:28
on Pluto or one of them. It was on Tibo or I watched it on I watched it on one of the free ones. I think it was on to Wait, you didn't watch it. You were on No, I got I landed like right before the
01:02:41
halftime show. So, I I caught like I I logged on like into Dude, it was literally on Hubu. Dude, you didn't
01:02:48
catch it on Hei? I Googled, "Is Pluto TV legit?" And the top comment says, "It's
01:02:54
illegal. You're going to jail." What? That's Is that a Reddit comment? Yes. We do need to give them credit for having a fifth letter. What? Pluto? Yeah. Oh, yeah. But that
01:03:05
was They were early though. They've been around for a while. Oh, yeah. OG. OG. I thought they were demoted.
01:03:12
They were from the solar system. Pluto. Yeah. Same planet. Oh, Paramount owns them. Yeah. Ever. I think there's
01:03:19
something to be said about ever since Napster, all these companies realized that they can't be caught with their pants down. And anytime there's
01:03:25
something not profitable that seems like it could disrupt, it'll just get acquired instantly by one of these companies. Yeah. Like Hulu was owned by
01:03:33
NBC since like the the really early days of that company. Wasn't that like a plot from NBC?
01:03:39
Like like they got together well not like Nebula well kind of Nebulous. They like got together with some other
01:03:45
streaming the other companies and they were like streaming is coming so let's like make this new company that doesn't
01:03:51
look like it's us but it will be us secretly. I don't know. Maybe future bonus episode. Yeah, maybe. But uh but
01:03:58
yeah. No, Pluto is just Paramount even though that's so weird actually. They're like you can pay for
01:04:04
Paramount Plus or you can Yeah. Now Disney owns Hul Hulu. Oh, right. So, yeah, because they're in the bundle with ESPN and now there's Peacock streaming,
01:04:15
which is NBC, but this does say who cares. Yeah, Phoebe owns not. I also wanted to note really quickly last night I was using my projector and it in a very in a very funny series of events.
01:04:30
Uh I was scrolling through YouTube videos and when I would hover over one YouTube video the screen would like
01:04:36
flash and then all the colors would invert and I was like what? It was only one YouTube video when it would start
01:04:42
autoplay. And then I started watching that video on my phone and I realized it was an HDR video.
01:04:50
So, my Google TV, and I don't know if this is like all Google TV platforms, mine seems to be different because it
01:04:55
literally does not have a speed changing thing, which really bothers me. Um, but
01:05:02
yeah, I just thought it was very funny that Google TV's YouTube could not handle HDR when they push it so autoplay
01:05:09
HDR. I I think one more thing about Google's official free TV thing. Yeah. Is that I I don't exactly know a lot about the the inner workings of Pluto or whatever or the other free TV stream
01:05:22
apps. Ads. Well, ads, but you know, one thing that's kind of interesting about IP TV is the ability to serve ads. Like
01:05:30
obviously in traditional TV, you have to do all this work to predict who's going to be watching at any given moment. and
01:05:37
then you sell that information to advertise or give that information to advertisers who are like will probably hit our market demographics with this
01:05:42
show. Whereas with something like Google that has information on every consumer that has ever lived and ever will be
01:05:48
born, uh they might be able to squeeze a lot more juice out of this thing than another company. Yes. Because when I was during like 2020 2021 when Fischer was
01:06:00
having me watch a lot of Star Trek and also we were watching this old house which was very nice. the advertising
01:06:05
that was playing was like New York state advertising, right? So, it was definitely localized. Yeah. So, that did
01:06:12
used to be a problem where they couldn't target you before. Now, they can target you, so they could probably make more money. And so, they're taking an old
01:06:18
business model and they're like, "But we're using data." Dude, we're only like a few tokens away from ads being LLM
01:06:25
generated on the fly. Like like picture you're like watching a basketball game and then it goes and it's like yo
01:06:32
Marquez. I actually think you're not even exaggerating. I don't think you're exaggerating. It kind of is already, isn't it? Like certain ads will only show on the court if you're in certain
01:06:44
areas. That's not the actual stadium. That's not tailored to you audience of one. Yeah. Like a man walks on screen
01:06:49
and is like, "Adam, it's been a while since you've been to Disneyland. You want to go?" Adam, you haven't
01:06:56
bought her $1,000 Switch, too. It's only $9.99. I didn't realize Pluto TV is like
01:07:02
a bunch of channels that's not regular cable. It's like the Fail Army channel and Cats 24/7 and there's a couple like NBC News and stuff, but then there's also The Onion and So, that makes the
01:07:16
Monster Cat channel. At least like the Samsung one has regular channels. Yeah, I'm Every time it comes on, I'm like, "Go away, please." Oh, wait. My remote's broken.
01:07:27
Yeah. Okay. I don't know. All right. So, I think that we should go to trivia. Yeah, let's wrap this up. You know, our
01:07:34
viewers say they love it best when we make no sense. All right, guys. I have four hilarious names. Are they all real?
01:07:43
Is one of them fake? If so, which one? Hit it, Adam. We have professor of psychiatry, Jules Angst. Ornithologist and program manager for feather
01:07:54
identification at the National Museum of Natural History, Carla Dove. 1984 Olympic gold medalist swimmer, Jeff Float, and current host of The View,
01:08:06
Sunny Host. And again, I will and there is a all of these are real e option. I'm
01:08:14
so bad at reading multiple choices. No, that was great. Well, I didn't get the letters. All right. Uh, one at a time,
01:08:20
folks. Well, we all put different answers. Yes. I put a A. Unfortunately, Jules Angst is real. Dang. I put Sunny Host. Sunny Host is real and the host of
01:08:31
the view. You should have made that one the fake one because we definitely just don't want. I couldn't have made it fake
01:08:36
because it's real. I dare you. Float is fake. Jeff Float is also real. These are
01:08:43
all real names, people. All real. All real. I like how no one doubted Carla Dove. You were like, I can I can feel it was a really long title and I think that made it seem more real. Carla Dev's my
01:08:55
cousin. Quick update on the score, especially since no one got anything right now. Marquez with 16, Andrew with
01:09:03
seven, David 10 points ahead from Andrew with 17. That's not how you do things. That's how you do things. David with 2.1 Andrews at 17. 2.1 isn't
01:09:16
it just two? Okay. Well, that would be 14. Yeah. So, like what is it? 2.2. Sorry. Yeah. I think in base 10 that's
01:09:22
why. There you go. Okay. So, the OPPO A103 was nicknamed the smiley face. Why is it? Because a the phone itself had a smiley face on the
01:09:35
back. B the person who designed it was nicknamed smiley so it was in his honor. C. The original store that it was sold in was translated to Smiley Shop, so it was a partnership. Or D, none of these
01:09:48
are true. What do you guys think? My marker is pretty screwed. But uh so it goes from all of these are true to none of these are true. Exactly. All right. Better not the the answer. Who wants
01:10:02
mine says something? Well, these two have the same which is Marquez and I put a Yes, it had a smiley face on the back.
01:10:14
Andrew, what did you say? Thanks for listening to the Waveform podcast. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Raven. We're partner with the Vox Media Podcast Network and Interactive Music was created by Vainil. Whoops.
01:10:28
Emoji phone. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. See you next week. Bye. [Music]
01:10:47
tariffs.