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Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the biggest online argument of the year. That's such a good Reddit post.
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You know, it's funny. I watched this and I was like, "Wow, I agree with all these." And I was like, "Oh, wait. I would say,
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dude, this is a good ass list. Yo, I love this list." That's hilarious. Yeah. What is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Wave Forum Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marquez.
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I'm Andrew. And I'm David. and it's December, which means there's still huge videos happening and still a lot to talk about,
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which is very exciting. We had two really big videos we can talk about from this week. We had the smartphone awards
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2025. Uh, so feel free to argue with me about any of them. And we also had the Xiaomi SU7 video go up, which was a long time in the making. We had to import a car, a whole bunch of like living with
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it, shooting it. Uh, it went really well. And obviously that video has been out. Also, new Android XR stuff and
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glass and a Pebble ring. Uh, but first I just want to shout out that this channel
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is a mere, at the time of recording, 4,000 subscribers away from half a million on YouTube. The Waveform YouTube
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channel is so close to 500,000 subscribers. So, I just want to give that little nudge. If you're watching on
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YouTube, or even better, if you're listening somewhere and haven't subscribed on YouTube, go subscribe to
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the YouTube channel and then we'll be able to celebrate before the end of the year. It's the last chance to hype us.
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It is the last chance to hype us. We become ineligible for hype once we cross over the threshold. True. We want to pass the hypes on to other
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channels. Yeah. Help us graduate from hype and once we hit 500K, Netflix will put us on the platform and we will be part of
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Warner Brothers Discovery. I By the way, oh my god. Yes. Someone uh someone uh on I think it was on threads. Yeah. There was a clip from us from a
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year and a half ago predicting that Netflix would eventually buy Warner Brothers. Predicting is a strong word.
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Well, joking. But also, it turned out to be right. Oops. Unless you know that kind of thing.
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I can see it now. Netflix Paramount Sky Dance Discovery War. Don't put this out there now.
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Waveform. Waveform. That's right. Oh my god. Waveform. Netflix Paramount Sky Dance. Look, Netflix, I know that you're
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getting a bunch of hostile bids for Warner Brothers and you might not even be able to buy it, but if you want a
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good B plan, we're available. We have like $6. I just want to say speaking of hostile bids, hilarious story that showed up on timeline this morning. Okay. Uh it was just someone who was squatting
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on Lambo.com obviously waiting for a certain car manufacturer to scoop it up. Uh got
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nothing out of the deal. A judge ruled that they were acting in bad faith and then they didn't get Yeah, I know. This
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is it. When you're a pirate, when you just like sit on a domain because you know you're going to eventually sell it
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to someone, that's maybe arguably good faith. That's called capitalism. That's like reserving it for their
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rightful owner. But I read the story and it's like um this person called Richard Blair from Arizona. He bought this for
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$10,000 in 2018. Lambo was already well known to be Lamborghini by then. Uh but then he listed it for $1.1 million in
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2020 and then raised it to one and a half million and then raised it to 3.3 million and then raised it to 12 million
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and then raised it to 58 million and then by 2023 just settled it at a nice even $75 million.
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I see nothing wrong here. That's like having a house on the market and it's not selling for years and you just keep raising the price.
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Yeah. And he he claims that uh Lambo is just a pun on the word lamb and people call him lamb just like Flegos. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So anyway, didn't get the money.
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That's crazy. I kind of think so. Screw I think they had plenty of money to buy that from him a long time ago. He
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took a big risk. But um yeah, this reminds me of for a while, it doesn't seem like it's anymore, but
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Steam.com feels like almost the opposite. Um, but for a while like Steam the uh video game platform platform is steampowered.com.
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So steam.com used to be you would just go onto it and it was like this white page with background of a bunch of pipes
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and then it said welcome to steam.com. Steam.com is the former home of steam tunnel operations and then just says
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this domain is not for sale. Damn. And now it just doesn't resolve. Yeah. Now it doesn't resolve to anything. So
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So is it for sale? Still probably privately owned. I feel like that person just really hated Steam.
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I feel like by this point Steam doesn't need that domain anymore. They don't. Everyone already has it. Nobody.
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Yeah. I just think the whole Lambo story if if they didn't buy it by 2018 and Lambo was just sitting there as a domain in 2018, that's on them, bro.
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I don't know why the judge would rule that. Yeah. I mean, you already knew Lambo as Lamborghini by then.
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By 2018. But nobody was nobody I guess it was like accidentally people going to lambo.com like how many buyers are you
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going to get? I guess that's the thing. What's the conversion rate of someone who accidentally goes to lambo.com instead
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of Lamborghini.com? Did you really lose a customer there? Two Lamborghinis. That's a good point. The customer base
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you're not buying a Lambo. Yeah, exactly. So it's like probably not as valuable to them, but it would be nice to have and that he they just he
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and then they sued him instead. It was more just like the judge took the domain from him. Yeah, but they would have had to sue sue
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him to get it, right? Uh did L Did he have anything on the page or was it just a He did. Oh, he did.
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Oh, it was something on the page. Oh, I can see that. What was on the page? Yeah, I can see that. Was it just like pay me this money? Was
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it something cuz if it's something or Yeah, like uh targeting Lambo Lamborghini. It was a Bitcoin wallet address. He
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directed Lambo.com to a separate personal website where Roto Track reported that he posted a statement that
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says, "I am Lambo of Lambo.com and I will defend, defeat, and humiliate those endeavoring to steal any of my domain
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name brands, including my moniker." You How many does this man have? He was in for a fight. That guy, a little too much confidence
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going into that one. Um, yeah, it's a little funnier knowing he had that statement and watching him lose that.
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You also have to assume this guy wasn't very good at bargaining because he probably had he was easily making more
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than 10,000 he paid for it. Yeah. Yeah. But he had to go up to what 70 million 75 million. He probably could have gotten 500,000
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out of that pretty easy. He won it all. He is hiding every single part of this domain on the who is lookup
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page. Like he is everything is hidden. On that for like three years now. Yeah. I'm guessing he's squatting on more than just that domain. Yeah. So nice. Maybe he'll get some money out of the
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other ones. Well, Lego, if you want to buy league of Legos.com for me, I still have it available.
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75 million. Um, I think it was like 12 bucks. I don't know. 75 million starting 75 million is a fair is fair market value. Do you do they raise the price on you
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every year? No. Who' you Yeah. Who? Well, it was Google Domains. So back in the good part of the internet, a certain a certain domain seller that
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maybe is sort of similar to buy mommy every year raises the price of my obscure ass domain and for that. It's so I you can transfer it.
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I can? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I recommend it actually. I bought it I bought it for dollars like cuz it's it's just a it's almost a random string of characters. What's the domain? Uh I don't want to say it because Well,
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I can say it's Can you bleep it out? You own it. Yeah, it's Ellis.vin. Oh, that's cool. It's not something that anyone would
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ever need. It going up is proof that your popularity is climbing. They raised it by over
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times when I tried to renew it. What? Yeah. like X bleep this out cuz I don't want to get the numbers wrong and like yeah but I
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bought it dollars and when they renewed it they were like that'll dollars what for the year and I was like I'm going to
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do this but you're acting in bad faith. Yeah. I feel like I shouldn't say this into a
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podcast microphone but mkbhd.com has not changed in price once. What? Yeah. Since since we first like got it. Now you're getting scammed. I wonder if
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I wonder if all Vin domains went up in price. Maybe that's what happened. Yeah, maybe like the the global wine
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winery industry uh experience page. No, Vin is is the one for vineyards and the Italian word for wine. Maybe they're mad at me cuz I'm not making wine. As far as they know, I am. But, you know,
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they're trying to price you out. So, some wine. I will say going back a little bit further, I think it's a bold
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move to hear a story about a guy holding on to a website to try and get money and then immediately say, "Hey, Lego, I'm willing to sell me doing the
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exact same." You think Lego is going to want that domain? Either Lego or Riot. And I've got League of Legos.
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So, well, League of Legos is going to be correct, right? Cuz Legos League of Legos. It's League of Legos.
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Is it Lego not sports? Irish sports department sponsors the soccer league. But you don't use Lego as a plural,
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right? It's Lego bricks is the plural of Lego. Yeah. It's likeod AirPods Pro. Yeah. Yeah. Lego bricks. There's no plural. So you can ditch that one. Or wouldn't it be Legos's brick?
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Yeah. I want everyone to know we do have actual news coming up. Oh, right, right, right, right. Sorry. Yeah. Are we still on topic? Are we off?
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Are we still on that? I think we're on topic. Anyway, okay. So, what happened this week? What do you want to talk about? There was actually a lot of stuff this
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week. I I'm very happy that things keep happening because it's usually around this time of the year that we're like
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that things stop happening. Yeah. That things completely stop happening that molecules stop vibrating. The absolute zero starts entering.
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Although in New York it is close to absolute zero right now. Yeah. It's the heat death of New York. It sucks. But one of the things that did happen this year, this month, this week
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was the Android show XR edition. Uh which Andrew if not Andrew, Adam was very hyped about. I was I watched the whole thing on 3x. So I could be hyped, but I didn't watch it.
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So it's your job now to write me on this. Well, so now they're doing like more Android shows per year. They're sort of
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trying to like just have Android be this rolling update thing as opposed to those big platform releases.
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And one of them is XR. And clearly, you know, the Vision Pro style of XR is falling out of popularity. However,
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something that they really wanted to kind of like drive home during this Android XR edition show was that we have
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four versions of XR currently in development, which felt extremely similar to the video that we did about
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the difference between the Oculus version of VR and like the meta like Ray-B band smart glasses.
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Mhm. But they put two more in the middle because they there is a new product coming out called Project Aura which is
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made by Exreal with Gemini. And have you ever used like those X-real glasses before?
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Yeah, they're like the they're they look like regular glasses, but then you essentially flip down like blinders, I
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guess, in front of you and then they can project a screen so you can watch stuff
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on the They have the screen no matter what. The cover is just to like black out the background so it's easier to see the
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screen. And then you plug them into a device. Yeah, you can either plug them into They now have wireless casting which is which
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is cool. But they really That would have been so nice for our third person video that we did.
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Oh, if that lagged though, that would have been Yeah, there was definitely some lag in there no matter what. I have a stupid question.
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Go for it. XR and Nreal the same thing. They rebranded from Enreal to XRE. It's the same thing. Stupid. Yeah. Uh anyway, so yeah, you can project
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virtual experiences onto it. Sort of have like multiple displays. Uh, the battery puck looks extremely similar to
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the Vision Pro battery puck, but it is also a trackpad. That's kind of sick. It's kind of interesting. Yeah, you can use a trackpad. I was not excited about this until I saw
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them use it as a trackpad. I was like, that is so clever. Interesting. You can plug it directly into your
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computer to get an additional screen above your floating screen, but also your screen. And then because it is
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built with Google alongside them, Gemini is available anytime about anything. So
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that actually in my opinion is probably the most beneficial feature is that you just constantly have this Gemini
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assistant who sees what's on your screen and you can talk about things with and it can provide actions for you. Yeah.
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So that's being developed right now. They still don't have like a price or availability for it, but they did show
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it to a number of journalists um as well as detail them a little bit more. Can I confirm something real quick?
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Sure. So, it's wireless casting, but there still is a wire hanging from it for the
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for the battery. Okay. So, it's not totally wireless. I believe you can also plug it in directly to your computer if you
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Yeah. Cool. Um Okay. They are also working on AI glasses which have a display and which
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do not have a display because they're with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster which are very different brands. They showed they showed like this video of the Warby Parker people talking about
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glasses and they were just very like swab and kind of casual and then they jumped to the gentle monster which is like Korean hype
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high fashion. High fashion. Um and they did it for like a minute. It was like 5 minutes of straight AB back
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and forth between the two sets and I was like this is very this was a choice. Exactly. And it seems like the way that
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they're thinking about the Android XR platform is that it's going to exist across like multiple different types of
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devices, you know, just kind of like how Android exists across multiple different types of devices.
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But the biggest benefit about making this um ubiquitous platform that works on multiple different devices is that
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they've made it so you don't have to code your apps differently for different types of devices. Right? So, if you're
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using like the XRE glasses for example and they have the screen and you have an Uber app integration, say you're wearing the XR glasses or say there's a future in which there is a smart glasses with
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the screen because the XR glasses in this context are just like showing you what uh Android XR will look like on
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more like meta rayband display type glasses. Mhm. But imagine you, you know, you call
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an Uber with your glasses. You get the little notification in the bottom that shows like how long it's going to take
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for the Uber to get there. Then when you look down, you can see a map of the area around you and where the
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Uber is. So then you can like walk to the Uber. That was like their their big kind of
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showcase. But the big benefit was that they said that you don't like developers do not need to code anything
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differently. So, as long as they still have these integrations for the their actual Android app, it automatically adds all these features for Android XR.
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Okay. Which I think is a pretty big deal. Yeah. They also unveiled new likeness features, which is their equivalent of
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um Personas. And honestly, they looked very very good. They kind of look like the new generation of Personas. So, they
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they they skipped that really creepy gimmicky weird part. Keep forgetting what each one of them's called. Like is
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Apple's called personas likeness likeness and then there's Samsung's whatever that one's called. They all have a different version of it. Yeah. The better all of these get the more
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they look like um old bad portrait mode photos where like the things everything in the middle is
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really good but then the cutout of it gets worse and worse and like more fuzzy. Yeah. Like the really good visual. Yeah. Um, also you can now turn any 2D
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content that you're viewing in Android XR into 3D content, including YouTube videos, which I found
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very interesting. So, you know how Apple in the Vision Pro has that feature where you can spatialize every anything and also on
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your iPhone? Now, you can spatialize literally anything. Mhm. Which is, I think, pretty cool cuz it
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makes you want to actually wear it more because you're actually getting a novel different experience in the headset. I want to try it out because I'm curious
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how c like different kinds of content are going to behave. Yeah, with that. Do we have the Project Moonhan headset?
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Do we have one? We don't have it here. Oh, we don't? Okay. Well, we could try that one. No, we do have a Galaxy
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Galaxy XR. Yeah. Yeah, we should try that then cuz I think it's out. Oh, the updates out.
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It's It's across any Android XR device. Okay. Yeah, I will try it. Uh, and then they also introduced a
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travel mode, which is basically the travel mode that they introduced for the Vision Pro. So, when you get on a plane, it doesn't
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have your windows flying behind you at 500 miles hour. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Um, okay. And then kind of as a as
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a secondary to that, they did give some hands-ons with Google's Project Aura smart glasses things. I'm excited for these. Yeah. Uh, Victoria Song at the Verge said that Google told her to consider it
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a headset masquerading as glasses. Okay. Which is an interesting way to put it. Um, but they have a 70° field of view,
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which is quite wide. Sure. Like I think usually these kind of headsets have about 40. So that's that's
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a lot. Um, and they do have integrations with the Pixel Watch and other smart watches. So, basically, you can take a photo on the headset and then it'll
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appear on your Pixel Watch. And the reason they're doing this is because as they expand the Android XR platform and
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they know it's going to be across multiple devices. There might be some XR devices that don't have a screen. Yeah. So, if you take a picture on that, you
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can just see it on your watch to get a preview of what it looks like. Oh, that's smart. Yeah. Okay. So, they're kind of trying to make this
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whole XR ecosystem. Um, and then the big news that they announced was that iOS users can also use the glasses as long as they have the Gemini app installed. It's actually an enormous deal,
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which is actually a big deal here. So, if Apple never gets into making glasses, just like they didn't get into
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making cars, then uh, you know, there will be a fight for the iPhone users. Yeah, there won't be a fight.
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Pixar made cars. Oh, right. I forgot. Uh, and cars, too. Elect. Speaking of wait for it, wait for it. There's a good segway somewhere. Hold on. Things that have microphones in them
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that you can wear on your body. Speaking of wearables. Oh my god, that was obvious. Speaking of wearables. Speaking of wearables,
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Pebble announced a ring with a microphone in it. Yeah. Okay. It's At first I was like, "This is the
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dumbest thing I've ever heard." And then I just read through it. There's obvious use cases for it. You want to just like whisper into your ring,
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you know, a nice command that nobody else can hear in the room. And it's like an easy way to say it
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like and no one else can hear it. Gollum. Yeah. You just whisper it. It literally said whisper on the website and I was
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like picturing interesting. I I was wondering why you immediately went to that and not just like that. Yeah. A ring's right there and you can talk to
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it. Well, yeah. I guess so. It's that it's convenient. It's on your hand. You always have it in your hand basically.
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But it's also you can like hold it right up to your face and it doesn't seem insane. Yeah. And so you can whisper to it. Nobody
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else can hear you. Yeah. The way Eric Mijikovski, the guy that made this, who is the founder of
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Pebble, brought it back. We talked about that a lot. The way he pitched it to me was that it is a second hard drive for
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your brain because he says he has things all the time that he wants to remember or like create a task for or a calendar
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event for, but he always forgets to do it unless he does it like in the moment. So, he put a button on a ring. It's it's
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a physical hard button. There's no wake word and you press it and it's very hackable.
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So you can do single taps, you can do double taps, you can do triple taps, you can do tap and hold and it can do different actions. Uh but the main point
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of it is to be able to record some audio into it which it has local memory that stores on the ring and it sends it to
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your phone. And it uses the MCP protocol which is like this new AI protocol that Anthropic
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made. They just donated it by the way. Yeah, they donated it to everybody. Uh which allows it to perform actions
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for you. So, right now in the Pebble app, you'll be able to like save a reminder or you'll be able to make a
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calendar event. Um, and the whole point basically is just to have something that is just instant easy access that you
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won't have to like only do that in the Pebble app. You have to have the Pebble app, but it it can take actions in other
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apps. But as the Pebble app is just a connecting like thread, uh, but for example, Eric told me that
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when he saves notes, he always does it in notion. So he has it immediately save a note to notion which I thought would get you guys excited.
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Yeah, I kind of want this now. Yeah, you can only use it for two to three years though because it's a one time use product.
00:20:20
That was also great. This is the weird because I've seen rings charge so I'm not sure why they chose to do this. This is the weird thing. So yeah, it has
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about it has about two years of battery life because it can you know it it has a
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battery that they send in it and you record a certain amount of audio and it can last that long. And Eric's kind of
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like reasoning for this was that you would have to have a propri proprietary charger. Yes.
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And if it lasts two years, you're gonna lose the charger. That was his reasoning. I lose the ring before the charger. My
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charger just sits in a spot. Yeah. So, it's I don't I don't love that it sort of feels like it's e-waste. He said you can send it back to them and they'll recycle it and then you just buy another
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one cuz they're $75. I feel like that that is e-waste. doesn't feel like you waste. Well, it it depends how they're
00:21:10
recycling it, right? It's like if they're taking it apart and putting a new battery in it, then it's different. And if you get money off the new one,
00:21:17
you should get money off the new one. I should be able to It's literally just sending it back and getting a new one because the battery died where a charge
00:21:24
should be pretty cheap or free. I shouldn't have to pay full price again, right? I agree. Seems like
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I think they haven't thought that far ahead yet because it lasts 2 years and they're just releasing this. Yeah,
00:21:35
I by default don't really love single use products like this in general. Um, but we'll see how how they're recycling. It's a cool idea, but I just wish you could charge it.
00:21:47
Yeah. Has he confirmed this is not coming to the watches that they're making that are
00:21:53
also thing on wrist that can talk to? You can do that on the watch as well. You can do it on the watch.
00:21:58
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just he said that it's for people that prefer to just like wear a ring or
00:22:04
you can use it with your watch and it can sort of do multiple actions. So you can ask it to do an action adding
00:22:09
something to your calendar or whatever and then it'll show up on your watch to confirm if you want to do that that kind of stuff.
00:22:14
That's cool. So it's sort of they're building like a Pebble ecosystem in a way. Um and
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they're $75. So again it's like fairly cheap. They come in matte black probably just for you.
00:22:25
All right. gold. Gold and silver. Says if you record for 15 straight hours, then you will kill the battery. So yeah, 15 hours roughly total. That's sort of the Yeah, the the
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estimate that they made for the two years was like if you if you use it for like 1 minute a day for twoish years,
00:22:42
then you get about that. So, I think they're missing a great opportunity here where uh instead of
00:22:48
putting a microphone in the ring, they should put a speaker in the ring and make it thumb sized and then make a much
00:22:54
smaller microphone ring for the pinky, Bluetooth it, every phone call. Yellow. Damn, that'd be dope. Pebble, the cool thing though is like Eric is like very hardcore about things being
00:23:10
open source and hackable. So everything about this ring is open source. So the community can do whatever they want with
00:23:16
I don't know, it's an extra button that you just have on you all the time. So it's sort of like an action button, but it's on your hand instead of on your
00:23:22
phone. I think that's cool. The concept is is super dope. Find a way to not turn this into e-waste.
00:23:27
Yeah, this is really cool. I mean, you know, or it dies and you just use it as a ring. I guess there is
00:23:33
that, too. But I I I agree. I don't love I don't love the idea of just a single use product like that. I'm mostly hyped
00:23:40
that this is coming to the watch cuz I've been more and more wanting to get the watch lately and this seems like a
00:23:47
cool thing. Isn't this just what Gemini is going to be doing? Like you know the raise to talk to Gemini thing
00:23:53
on like or if you have glasses that are listening for your wake word. I like the button though. I like
00:23:59
pressing a physical thing. Yeah, like that's cool. And theoretically in the future, it'd be nice to have multiple ways to interact
00:24:06
with this depending on the way that you like to wear things. You know, if you don't want to use a Pixel Watch and you
00:24:12
want to use your a Ring instead if you're a Ring guy. It's also waterproof. I feel like if I get all my best ideas in the shower and I'm I don't have my
00:24:18
phone or my glasses on. Yeah. You don't have a Google Home in your shower. No, I don't. Wait, is that a good Wait a
00:24:24
minute. No, it's terrible. I don't have that. It have to be just outside enough to where you would be like yelling through the curtain or door
00:24:32
and probably annoying and Yeah. and splashing it. Yeah. Yeah. Allegedly, Ad Week in Minecraft posted an article claiming that advertisers working with Google, at
00:24:44
least two different ones, have indicated that ad placements inside of Gemini's AI
00:24:49
mode will be rolling out in 2026. This is obviously the AI mode just in uh like in the search results where like or rather the results the separate mode.
00:25:00
Yeah. Um but that's all there really is and Google denied that. So yeah uh according to Google's VP of
00:25:06
global ads Dan Taylor quote the story is based on uninformed anonymous sources who are making inaccurate claims. There
00:25:12
are no ads in the Gemini app and there are no current plans to change that. Which is that is a lot
00:25:18
kind of intentionally vague. like no plans to change that this year. Yeah, exactly. It feels
00:25:24
Oh, yeah. He does specifically say right in the start, there are no ads current currently in there are no ads in the
00:25:30
Gemini app and there are no current plans to change. There are definitely plans. They're just
00:25:36
they're not current. There are future plans to change that. This feels crazy because Gemini still
00:25:41
feels like a beta program. It's wrong all the time. Here's some anecdotal evidence. I listened to a disc golf podcast and
00:25:47
listened to all four hosts the other day make fun of Gemini because of how wrong it is. These are non tech people just
00:25:53
randomly getting Gemini stuff and being like where they did the same thing. Like pretty common knowledge that like
00:26:00
no one takes this seriously. I had a non tech person be like, "Yo, I saw that like Gemini is at the top of the AI leaderboards or whatever and
00:26:07
whenever I try to use it, it's completely useless." What are the leaderboards? There's like there's there's a website that does like
00:26:12
a series of trials and stuff like that to try to guess which one and the newest version of Gemini took over Claude as
00:26:19
like the top the top one most capable smartest. Yeah. Although OpenAI's code red is
00:26:26
coming next week I believe or this week. Yeah. Whatever that means. If you're plugged in enough it seems
00:26:32
like everyone's panicking over Gemini being so good. Yeah. Oh wow. But if you're not plugged in,
00:26:37
game's crazy, but if you're the ones using it. Um, yeah, I just wanted to point a finger here because I think I've I've whittleled it
00:26:44
down to where tech in the last 10 years has gone downhill. And I told you I apologize.
00:26:51
I'm blaming it on PUBG. Whoa. Not specifically that, but PUBG to me feels like one of the first, not the first extremely successful
00:27:04
alpha paid for games that came out where they made so much money off of this game
00:27:10
never even getting to beta, let alone a like public full release they claimed. But they made so much money that they're just like, we can still just keep shipping a broken ass game and people
00:27:20
will pay money for it. Yeah. And since then, everyone's just like, I don't need to finish this
00:27:26
project. People will pay for it. And I hate that. And I loved PUBG, but I think it's
00:27:31
PUBG's fault. So that's really interesting. Why did people buy PUBG so much if it was so
00:27:39
broken? It was still must have been still. It was still really good. You still have to get over the threshold of
00:27:44
being really good. So if it does have bugs, it's still worth trying. It is. But just like in all those
00:27:51
scenarios too, like people assumed that the game would be finished and you're like paying 30 bucks to get the game and
00:27:56
you'll keep it once it comes out as a full release, but then they just kept realizing like we're the most popular
00:28:01
game on Steam right now. Everybody's playing us. That's the thing. We just don't need to leave alpha. They
00:28:07
If people vote with their wallets and it turns out the thing that they're voting on is we don't actually care if the game
00:28:12
is finished. We just care that it's good now. Then everyone takes the hint and just starts copying that.
00:28:18
Yeah. What even alpha and beta and in a game gamma in a game? I guess there's just unfinished features
00:28:24
that are not ready or like different modes or whatever that they're going to ship that they're not ready to ship yet, but they ship one mode and it's like
00:28:30
just all software now though. Yeah. Well, that's what we're saying. Yeah, there was some inflection point
00:28:36
where that became the the standard to ship something and charge people for it that's not done yet, right?
00:28:41
And people became okay with it because the part that they're buying was good enough. Yeah. Like Star Citizen. Yeah. the game that is still technically
00:28:48
in curly early access. I was going to say I'm minorly wrong already. I guess it did technically get a 1.0 release in 2017. It was out for a bit
00:29:00
before that, but the first game became insanely popular in alpha. Mhm. And I guess they did update it. So maybe it's not all PUBG's fault. I'll go back further and blame Google
00:29:12
cuz there's like an inside joke now where you're like all Google users are just beta testing whatever new software
00:29:18
and features and stuff they're doing and now they've turned it into a feature with Pixel Drops. It's like hey now you're in on it, you know? It's like
00:29:24
look at this. I just feel like we're all buying beta software lately. The game Star Citizen, which is still in early access alpha,
00:29:31
has nearly weighed $1 billion. $922,579,978. It's not just it's hardware, too. Like, like remember Oh, no. I know. Remember when when someone was like,
00:29:46
"Hey, we're going to sell you this truck and eventually you'll be able to go put an extra battery in the truck. Just buy the truck now.
00:29:52
We're going to sell you this pin." Yeah. You know the story. Oh, we know. Well, I wanted to point a finger and it seems like I'm already wrong about that, but Well, still just mad about
00:30:03
Did Minecraft do this first? Did they? Yeah, you could you could buy Minecraft in its alpha version, I think, in 2010.
00:30:10
I'd rather blame Minecraft. I guess that's the other thing is like if you're labeling it as the alpha
00:30:16
version and unfinished and you're honest about that, but you still make it for sale and people still buy it and give
00:30:22
you tons of money for it, it must have been good enough. I will say also as someone who was an alpha Minecraft
00:30:28
player in the fifth and sixth grade, um it it at no point was ever unstable. Like I can't recall it ever crashing. It was just maybe missing a mode or new feature. Yeah, it was just like Dirt
00:30:40
Simulator. Yeah, seems like it was in alpha for 5 months and beta for 11 months. Technically, isn't alpha supposed to be
00:30:47
for like internal testing? Dude, I don't know. No, that's the dog food version. I yeah I thought that was alpha and then beta
00:30:53
was like external testing like then you release it to users and like check how I think that literally everything is in
00:30:59
beta now everything is constantly being developed alphas are the ones that need to get paired with omegas in order to anyone
00:31:09
the point you're making is true though like the more I think about dia this browser it's like clearly not finished
00:31:15
there's tons of features that they're obviously planning on adding but they shipped it super early because people wanted the core of it allegedly and it's
00:31:22
like kind of always in beta like they're always adding tons of stuff. Yeah. So, does it feel significantly better now by the way? DIA. Yeah. Yeah. I can pin tabs now. I have all these like I can double tap to
00:31:34
rename tabs. There's all these features that they added from DIA or from Arc. So, yes, I know it's getting closer to Arc, but I
00:31:41
keep wondering when the point is when I can actually switch cuz I just love Arc. I think it crossed that threshold for me
00:31:46
with like two updates ago. Okay. because of the pin tabs. I still wish I had mobile sync and I still wish
00:31:52
I had like two spaces to swap back and forth between sync tabs, but as of right now, it is good enough for me. I don't think they're doing spaces.
00:31:59
I mean, Chrome added split view, so it has me back now. I'm back on Chrome. Oh, yeah. Split view is nice. Anyway,
00:32:04
let's duck go to the polls and take it to an ad break. 67. Oh, no. Guys, exciting news. Waveform Trivia is
00:32:18
allegedly in Minecraft partnering with Netflix with DraftKings. You listening at home and now bet it's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke.
00:32:29
It's a joke. Who is going to get this question? I'm just kidding. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. Guys, welcome back to Waveform Trivia.
00:32:36
Android XR is here and we all know this is not Google's first foray into AR XR. We all remember Google Glass. But between Google Glass and cardboard,
00:32:50
don't forget cardboard. Yeah, that was that's the answer, right? How did none of you guys see that? It's not none of these are the answers.
00:32:56
Okay. Okay. I knew that. Okay. Project. Also also everybody remember daydream cardboard. That is VR. That is VR. True. True.
00:33:07
Yeah. So maybe let me finish the question. None of you are RuPaul on Family Feud. If anyone gets that
00:33:12
reference. Nope. Famous clip. Not at all. Thank you, Marquez. Between Google Glass and yesterday's
00:33:19
event, Google had a secret ARXR project that was cancelled in 2023. What was the code name of this project?
00:33:31
Well, it was a secret. So, it should be really hard for us to know. The Verge reported on it uh about I
00:33:37
think it was a few months after it got cancelled. And then a bunch of Google employees were like, "Yeah, this existed." And they were really mad and
00:33:42
it got, if I remember this, what happened correctly is Vision Pro came out. Then it came out that Google was
00:33:48
working on this and had cancelled it and a bunch of Google employees were like, you know, we could have been competing with Vision Pro.
00:33:55
Which is what every company is trying to do, right? Yeah. Why? We're not sure. Interesting. I don't think they're sure either. I don't I agree. I don't think Apple are sure either. Well, we'll think about this one.
00:34:06
Answers will be at the end like usual. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Framer. You need a website. Step one, you devote hours of your time to learn how to code. Scratch
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superhum.com/mpodcast. That's superhum.commpodcast. All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the biggest tech online argument of
00:37:02
the year. It's time. I I took that directly from a Reddit comment about the smartphone awards, but it is super
00:37:07
accurate. So, shout out to iron_quirk. Uh, smartphone awards are out. I gave my favorite and best and worst and most notable smartphones from 2025. I'm going to go through them all and
00:37:21
maybe if you guys have alternate opinions or thoughts on my awards. Obviously, some of you guys helped chip
00:37:26
in and we discussed these all kind of as a group. So, some of you probably already got your thoughts in, but for the pod, we can go over each of the
00:37:32
awards, which one won and some thoughts and uh some arguments that happened online about them.
00:37:38
Yeah. Afterwards, I took some of the most common Oh, comments and arguments I saw. I'm glad you did that.
00:37:43
Let's go through the list first. All right, let's start. Let's just go in the order of the show for uh the beginning. Best big phone, Xiaomi 17 Pro
00:37:50
Max. Huge 6.9 in display. When are we going to get a 7 in screen on a phone? We're probably pretty close to that, but
00:37:56
6.9 in is like as good as it gets without being a tablet. Uh, and it had everything. It had the Snapdragon 8
00:38:02
Elite. It had the 7500 mAh silicon carbon battery. It had all the specs. It had the triple 50 megapixel cameras. And
00:38:08
then around the back, it also had a 3-in full brightness 120 Hz corner to corner
00:38:14
screen on the camera bump. And it was actually very useful. Crazy. Uh, super fast charging, 22 and a half
00:38:20
watt wireless charging, reverse wireless charging. Hilarious. Just a complete use of space.
00:38:25
No argument. Everyone agrees. Just like their car. They just went way too hard. That's actually kind of true.
00:38:30
Wait, was this the one that had the reverse wireless charging at 22? Mhm. Yep. Yeah. Faster than any phones charge with
00:38:37
a W. Faster than some battery banks. Yeah. Yeah. Very valid. I don't think there's any anything close.
00:38:45
Am I crazy? I gave a a runner up to I I mentioned the Oppo Find X9 Pro because it also had a lot of this stuff just the
00:38:51
screen on the back was what separated the Xiaomi. So, right because technically if you count the total screen real estate, it's
00:38:58
basically 7 in. That's what I was thinking like screen to body ratio if we were going back to
00:39:04
what do we start adding this to. It's funny actually when we had that remember the the concept phone that had
00:39:09
the screen and it wrapped around the back. Xiaomi, right? Yeah, it was Xiaomi. It probably was Xiaomi. It was the Mi Mix
00:39:15
Ultra, I think it was called. Mix Alpha. Alpha. Alpha. I think Alpha. Yeah, I think they did quote a number
00:39:20
for the screen to body ratio for that phone. And I don't remember what it was, but it was definitely over 100%. It was It was
00:39:26
hilarious. Anyway, yeah, that was best big phone of the year. Now, best small phone of the year is where it gets interesting.
00:39:32
Yeah, because well, we used to give this award to like a 5.8 in screen size phone and
00:39:37
then that was the Zen phone that went extinct. So then we started getting into like 6.1 in phones. Last year it was a
00:39:43
iPhone 16, I think, 6.1 in phone. This year it's like all the small phones are not like incredible anymore and they're all getting bigger and there's just one type of phone that
00:39:57
maintains that preserves like some element of small phoness and that is the flip phones. Yeah. And specifically the Z Flip 7 this year with its like full corner to corner
00:40:08
4 inch cover screen. Yeah. Was more usable than ever as like a take it out of my pocket, use it, put it back
00:40:14
in, and never open the phone. And I was like, you know what? I think I'm going to reward that as like the
00:40:19
best of a compact phone experience because you can still open it and use it as a 6.9 in flagship. Fine. But it was
00:40:25
more usable than ever as a closed phone. And that's why it's a small phone of the year. That's what this should have been this
00:40:31
whole time. I've been fighting for this for a long time, but I'll agree. I think this is the most deserving since
00:40:37
it has gotten uh runner-ups before and honorable mention. I think considering they finally added basically the full screen to the front
00:40:44
and in a year specifically where people are doing anything to not use their phone, like using Apple watches as their
00:40:51
phone in a little case or, you know, just like finding other ways to be able to be in communication with people while
00:40:57
not looking at their phone. Mhm. I think a phone that you do not have to open if you don't want to is a very good
00:41:03
uh small phone awardee. The reason I always felt like this one should have went one small phone is
00:41:08
because if you ask people why they got that phone, it's because it folds into something smaller. Like yes, it unfolds
00:41:14
into a bigger screen, but that's not why they got it. You know, I always mentioned that because it was like yes, it folds
00:41:21
smaller, but like that's not while you're using it. So I didn't I didn't reward it for that. I was like,
00:41:27
"Yeah, it can." You're using a huge phone and then you fold it up smaller and put it away. So, it wasn't until you
00:41:32
really could use it small that I like flipped that switch. Get it? Flip. But also, honorable mention to OnePlus 13S, which had a 6.3 in screen, but they called it the 13s
00:41:43
cuz it's the small one and it was a pretty good phone. All right. So, there you go. That's Ellis's next phone, the 13s.
00:41:51
Yeah. Is it small enough? Ellis will never Ellis loves OnePlus. I no, but I would never use a OnePlus phone again. As much
00:41:57
as I like the open, but I will say the OnePlus 13S intro we did, I think was my favorite video.
00:42:04
One of my top three this year. Yeah, that was a fun one. All right, next one. Straight into the
00:42:09
ones that people had alternate opinions about, but best camera. Oppo Find X9 Pro took
00:42:16
the win this year. Correct. So good. It was This is a triple 50 meg, sorry, a triple camera system. 50 megapixel main,
00:42:22
50 megapixel ultra wide, 200 megapixel telephoto. And you know, I took a lot of sample
00:42:28
shots. I was debating this. I was we we literally we had like alternate trophies. Like we
00:42:34
were ready to give this to like two or three different phones. And I was testing the Vivo X300 Pro. I
00:42:39
was testing this, testing the iPhone, and I just found that this one was the most versatile and the most capable at the same time. Yeah. And it had the fun.
00:42:50
Yeah. So great primary camera, really consistent, awesome colors, great detail, great dynamic range and all
00:42:55
that. Ultraide was really good. Then the telephoto, thanks to having 200 megapixels, was very, very croppable.
00:43:01
We'll talk more about megapixels in an upcoming bonus episode, but uh that there's also the Hasselblad like zoom
00:43:07
lens you could attach to it, which I had a lot of fun with. It's not the best thing in the world, but it was super cool and fun. It also had really good
00:43:13
portrait mode, good night mode, pretty good video, too. You could shoot log. It was 4K. Yeah, I like that complete
00:43:20
package. I think my favorite thing about this phone's camera was how natural the bokeh looked. That was important for me over
00:43:26
the Vivo. Yeah. So, the Vivo very similar set of hardware, uh, but just had like this weird
00:43:33
overprocessing going on with it. And I was doing a lot of sideby- sides because I was like really happy with the detail
00:43:38
in the in the Vivo shots, but the I think because of how much processing and a lot of it was AI processing was going
00:43:44
on, the bokeh started to look weird even on regular shots of just like a single subject.
00:43:50
Uh, and it wasn't consistent enough for me to give it the win. So, that was important. I felt that the color, the skin texture was like perfect. It wasn't
00:43:57
overly smooth and it wasn't overly sharpened. And then the the naturalness of the bokeh,
00:44:03
especially on the telephoto, but like on any of the lenses, but especially on the telephoto with the hosablot attachment
00:44:09
when you get that long um 10. Yeah, that long look with like the natural sort of
00:44:14
fall-off. I I thought it was like I could not distinguish this between this and an actual dedicated camera.
00:44:20
Wow. Yeah, it's crazy good. Yeah, the shots from the Hasselblad attachment lens were
00:44:25
kind of insane. Yeah. Uh so it was a lot of Does Hustelblad now partner with OPPO in the same way
00:44:31
they used to partner with OnePlus? They are partnered. Yeah. And I think they will probably continue that longer.
00:44:37
I think OPPO and OnePlus shared that partnership or something. I don't even know how to describe the
00:44:43
partnership, but yeah, OnePlus dropped it. They're all under BBK. That was my follow. I mean, when when
00:44:48
you said like I was thinking about giving it to Vivo, but I give it to OPO. I just imagine that picture of Obama giving himself the medal like
00:44:56
the BBK trilogy. Yeah, they they're all part of the same giant group. But yes, this was like the first time there was a lens attachment that you seemed excited to use. Not excited to use, you've been
00:45:08
excited to use once, but you use it and you're like, "Wait, this is actually like good and fun." And also the build quality of that
00:45:15
lens is crazy. Oh, Hasselblot's got a reputation. Can't just put their name on anything. Sorry. DJI's got a reputation.
00:45:21
Fair enough. Uh, yeah. Honorable mention still goes to the iPhone 17 Pro. The video is still
00:45:26
undisputed. This is the reason the the iPhone was winning so much almost every camera award before this is because the
00:45:33
video is a head and shoulders and a head and more shoulders above every other smartphone that I use. Ask anyone who
00:45:40
shoots stuff on social media and uses phones to shoot them. We have an entire channel that we run just on phones and
00:45:46
guess which one is the most reliable that we shoot the most with? It's the iPhone 17 Pro. That's because of the the ease of shooting. That's because of the
00:45:52
quality of the footage, the flexibility, the log, the dynamic range, the look. It looks better than ever this year.
00:45:58
Uh, and all they did was like add Gen Lock. Like they don't even shoot there's no 8K. They don't really do much to it
00:46:04
every year, but it's just great every year. I kind of want them to add to it. I want them to get rid of some of the the point light problems at night in the
00:46:10
low lightss. I kind of want them to get 8K and improve the mics, but it's just it's just the best video.
00:46:16
Honestly, I want them to add true raw cuz right now they only have Pro Raw and you have
00:46:21
to use all these apps and there's all these apps that are blowing up like the Moment Pro Camera 2 app got really big and then Hallied
00:46:27
and if Apple just like sherlocked all of those by next year just announcing, all right, we're just allowing True RAW out
00:46:33
of this camera in this like pro mode setting. I always wonder about that. Yeah, it so that in 8K I always wonder about
00:46:39
because it seems like a storage problem. And I don't know if it's it's not even a problem. It's just that they don't want
00:46:45
to give people the ability to fill up their entire phone storage with an hour of video. I think that Apple is more afraid of people taking photos that they
00:46:52
don't like, but they let us shoot log, which is Yeah. Like they they give us pro features and
00:46:59
and people who know what they're doing can shoot quote ugly videos and then make them look great cuz like 4K log
00:47:06
looks quote bad and then you make it look great. So I figure they shouldn't be afraid of that so much. I guess so. I think that they're
00:47:11
definitely leaning more into it finally and I think they're getting a little less afraid of it. And honestly, like every single year they have to release
00:47:18
some new camera feature, right? Because they know that the camera is the main selling point of a lot of these phones.
00:47:23
That's why they had announced Genlock because they it's it's a pointless feature for literally like 99.999%
00:47:30
of people, even most people on these sets. Yeah. But, you know, it's a new thing that they can say like look how even more pro
00:47:36
this is now. So, uh notably friend of the show, Mr. for mobile. Michael Fischer, who hates
00:47:42
iPhones with a sthing passion, still carries the newest iPhone on him just for like Bcam footage to put a lot
00:47:49
says a lot. He could carry anything, but for videos, you know what it is. So, yeah, that was my runner up and my
00:47:55
winner. And I also mentioned the X300 Pro, but any other camera thoughts before I move on?
00:48:00
Have you not tried the 8K uploading from Pixel up to the cloud so that Oh god, I have 24 hours. I actually remember having really high hopes for that. what do they call it? It was like
00:48:11
uh post-processing in Google Photos. Like you could shoot a certain mode and your photos or videos, I think mostly
00:48:17
videos would get like this massive quality boost. Number one, the quality boost turned out to not be that big for most of the stuff
00:48:23
that I tested. And number two, is that even a phone feature? Like it's uploading its feature for postprocessing. It's technically pixel only, but like that would that was
00:48:34
tough. It's good in low light cuz it gets it gets rid of a lot of the like low light artifacting and noise, but it
00:48:40
takes like 20 hours. Yeah. So, it's not It's tough. It is tough. Go photos. I like the idea of like offloading super high processing stuff to cloud. That's
00:48:50
not a new concept, but that just wasn't it. That just wasn't, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Next up, best value. This is
00:48:56
one that gets a lot of chatter every year because this is there's a thousand definitions of best value. Most phone
00:49:02
for the least money. best phone under X dollars, however you want to phrase it. Uh, I went with the CMF Phone 2 Pro.
00:49:08
It's under $300. It's the best phone under $300, but it's also the I feel like it was really close to flagship
00:49:14
feeling. It's like a big smooth screen. The software is super smooth. It's got great battery life and all these things. It's
00:49:20
got multiple useful cameras and it was just like a very good usable phone in the price range and I thought that
00:49:26
deserved. It also had like the fun orange color and the modular accessories and all that. So, that was a nice cherry on top. But I did give a runner up or a
00:49:33
mention to the Moto G Play, the Pixel 9a, and the base iPhone 17. All good values in very different price categories. I'll throw something out there to just another reason why I think this CMF
00:49:45
phone 2 Pro. The Nothing Phone 3A Lite is the exact same phone and it's $10 more and one less camera and has ads on it. And has ads on it. I forgot about it.
00:49:57
Which makes this phone look awesome. Yeah. Very good strategy for winning an award. Put out another phone. Sabotage
00:50:04
your own system. That looks like a way worse deal. Being able to buy any phone in 2025 under $300 is pretty awesome. Moto G is
00:50:10
under 200. That's crazy. That's insane. It's funny cuz Moto excels in this category a lot every year and never
00:50:17
quite breaks into like true flagships and it's almost like they're destined to have like a cap of like you shouldn't
00:50:23
buy a Motorola phone over $400. You probably just shouldn't like get the Razer or anything under it. Don't get
00:50:28
the big the Edge phone. which is not a good buy. Yeah. Edge for a,000. It's like why? It's crazy. Yeah.
00:50:34
Okay. Best battery. This one I also feel really good about. OnePlus 15. Ridiculously long battery life. I went I tweeted about this. I went three straight days. I went Friday, Saturday,
00:50:47
and Sunday without charging the phone all day for all three days. 3 hours of screen on time all of those days. So, I
00:50:53
ended up with like 10 and a half hours of screen on time and the phone was still going. now did this the smartwatches challenge.
00:50:59
Garmin accepted. It's pretty It's pretty incredible that we're we're about to get a bunch of
00:51:04
phones with 7,000 millah batteries next year with Chinese silicon carbon. Yeah. So like Samsung doesn't, Motorola
00:51:10
doesn't, Apple doesn't, the ones that are big here are not doing it. Pixel doesn't. So they're all like kind of capped. And if they did, that's the
00:51:17
thing is a lot of these phones would be awesome if they were silicon carbon batteries. Like iPhone Air would be way
00:51:23
better. S25 uh Edge would be way better for a silicon carbon battery. These folding phones, their thinness, they'd
00:51:29
be way better. Anyway, the point is this slab phone was just as thin and light as the previous
00:51:34
one. It added 1,000 mAh and it still charges at a bazillion watts. So, when it finally did die, I plugged it in for
00:51:40
two seconds and was back to 100%. So, it was like this is no clear. That's how it feels. So, it was great. Uh it also has super fast wireless charging. I gave runner up to this the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max. And I did
00:51:53
also mention the Dooji S11 Ultra. I want to make that's probably not even the right name, but it had an 11,000 mAh battery. S200 Ultra, I think, is what it was called. They still doing that.
00:52:05
It was the biggest capacity battery of any phone in the studio this year. Dang. When When can you not go on a plane with
00:52:10
it anymore? It's pretty close to that, right? Oh, it's that it's 110 watt hours or 100
00:52:16
watt hours. 100 watt hours. So, I don't know how that translates because there's there's voltage and comparisons. Anyway, great
00:52:23
battery life in this phone. No regrets. I think that one deserved the award. Yeah. Can I say this sandstone in this trophy
00:52:29
shot? Mhm. Looks great. So good. Is my favorite color. It's so pretty. I want to be able to use a phone that
00:52:35
color. I just don't like that the the bezels around the outside. I can see them all the time. Same with
00:52:41
the orange iPhone. Being able to see the orange from the front. Yeah. It's a little picky thing of mine.
00:52:46
Anyway, yeah. If there was no cap for real for real on American phone batteries or like western phone
00:52:52
batteries, that would be nice cuz I we're we're just locked and loaded down to like 40 4200 or whatever
00:52:59
all day. I have it all. The OnePlus 15 is available for pre-order on AT&T. It's still not I
00:53:07
still haven't been able to switch my eSIM to it because the whole like government shutdown FCC didn't approve any new phones for a while thing. So, I
00:53:13
still haven't been able to get my my AT&T SIM in it, but it's coming to H. Are you going to mainline it?
00:53:19
Yeah. Really? Yep. Even with the bad cameras? Mhm. Yeah. Cuz I'm going to have uh the iPhone in
00:53:24
my other pocket and the Hasselblot in my back pocket, right? Back pocket. Is that a big pocket?
00:53:29
It's Yeah. Yeah. Metaphorically. Um Okay. Design award is next. Yeah, there's some comments about
00:53:36
this one. Um are you doing all your comments at the end? Am I doing Yeah, I'll do comments if one particular pops out. But yeah, I'll do
00:53:43
most of the comments at the end. So, design award. I gave it to the iPhone Air and there's probably six
00:53:49
phones I could have given this this to, but I the iPhone Air Yeah. was so uniquely like I this this is not
00:53:56
a good phone for me, but I want to be the type of person who could use this phone because when I was testing this
00:54:03
phone, I was I was loving it. I was like, "Dang, this battery sucks. Dang, this lack of an ultrawide sucks." But oh
00:54:08
man, holding this phone, using this phone, it's so ridiculously light and thin. Using any other phone directly after it
00:54:16
feels shockingly bad. Yeah. Weird. You know, Quinn was uh Quinn Snazzy Labs on on YouTube was was
00:54:23
posting online. He's he has been posting about how much he loves the iPhone Air and how much it like just is an awesome
00:54:28
phone that feels amazing. It's awesome. And then he posted either yesterday or the day before like, "Oh
00:54:33
no, the iPhone Air just feels like a regular phone now and everything else feels insane."
00:54:38
Yeah. Yeah. You get to this point, ruins you. So like I tested it. I think I used it for like a week and a half for my review. But continuing to try to use it
00:54:45
after you do get to this point where it feels it starts to feel normal and you're like, "Oh, it's finally worn off.
00:54:51
Maybe I'll switch back." And then I used this iPhone 17 Pro and it was like, "This is heavy. This is a thick phone.
00:54:58
It's not even that big of a phone, but it was like it changed it just warps your perspective of phones. Yeah. Um
00:55:03
Yeah. And New York is not a real place because I keep seeing the Air everywhere. Like yesterday I saw five.
00:55:10
Yeah. And it's what, like a failure by sales standards. Yeah. It sold 10% of what they thought it would sell. Yeah.
00:55:15
But it is But it is out there and it is really clever. They rearranged the internals.
00:55:22
You got to think on Apple's scale. That's still a lot of phones. I'm not surprised you're seeing that many. Yeah.
00:55:28
And they were all in New York and and San Francisco. Yeah. The highest density of iPhone airs
00:55:33
and ZFolds. I will say one comment I liked about the thin phones. Mhm. Is and this goes for the S25 edges. Well, uh a phone is only as thin as its largest
00:55:45
part, which I thought was interesting. And the way they described it the best said that actually
00:55:52
um if you had So what it what is this again? 5.6. I think it's 5 something. Yeah.
00:55:58
So, like if you had a 5.7 mm hole to slide this phone through, it wouldn't make it all the way through because of the camera bump, right? And same with S25 Edge. I think the thing with that is is like, yes, I agree
00:56:10
that it still doesn't fully mean as But also, I just don't think there was a ton
00:56:16
of other design things this year. Maybe the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max. Yeah. Yeah. I'll give you others because I had
00:56:21
some other mentions. Um, I I will say the the like thickest part of the phone thing
00:56:27
I I in hand you never hold the thick part. So it's like the thinness is the part you're holding. Anyway, uh I
00:56:34
mentioned the Xiaomi 17 Pro. Yeah. Which had the screen on the back and that design was awesome. Very complete
00:56:39
phone. I mentioned the S25 Edge which had better spec execution, not better design execution. It's more of like a brutalist square version of the thin thing, but it
00:56:50
had a primary like real flagship camera to match the S25 Ultra. And it had a second camera and it had a bigger
00:56:56
battery. So, it was like it felt closer to usable everyday, but wasn't as like shockingly
00:57:02
awesome to use. Still very cool. Overall battery life was probably still worse though, right? Because worse than the big phones?
00:57:08
Yeah. No. Worse than the Air. Um I don't know if I've compared them directly, but they're both not great.
00:57:15
Yeah. And then holding both I think the iPhone air feels better which is like buying this
00:57:20
is like a hand feel thing and kind of but like Yeah because you canize feel in the hand.
00:57:25
Yeah. You can emphasize thinness with like the curves and the the chamfering and the proport they just did it very
00:57:30
well. Yeah. I also mentioned Fairphone 6 which has obviously the most repairable most
00:57:35
sustainable phone design maybe ever and actually kind of feels pretty close to a regular phone. It's still a little thick, but it's still it feels very close to a regular phone this year. Nice accent color power button.
00:57:46
You loved the Switch, too. Yeah. So, shout out to the Switch on the side of Wait, are we How are we going to talk about a phone design award and not talk about the Nothing Phone 3?
00:57:58
Because I like to reward good design. No, no, no, no, no. That design, it was brave. You love spinning the model way. Yeah. I spin the model every day.
00:58:09
The phone. Yeah. the the weirdness of it never quite wore off to me of of the Nothing Phone 3. Oh,
00:58:15
the pointlessness of it. There were a lot of comments about Nothing Phone 3. We'll get to that. We'll get there. I thought
00:58:21
Mhm. that design aged like fine wine. The more I looked at it, the more I was like, that is a good looking phone. I thought the prettiest phone of the year was the OnePlus 15. Personally,
00:58:35
if we're just going off pure aesthetics, which I know is different than design. Interesting. I think the Nothing Phone 3
00:58:41
aged like wine similar to that bottle of Snoop Dog wine that's been laying outside the parking lot for like six
00:58:47
months. No, that thing is cool, man. That thing is cool. Is there still wine in it? I think it finally exploded. There might be vinegar in it.
00:58:54
Yeah, that's an interesting take. The OnePlus 15. Do Would you The Samsung one you think is the best looking one? That one looked so nice.
00:59:00
They had this like purple violet one that was interesting to look at. Yeah. Well, and like the way the light comes off of the uh ceramic back too is
00:59:07
like really pretty. I know it's like sort of a matte. Not matte, but like it it's not It doesn't exactly have a texture, but the light does come off of
00:59:13
it in a really cool way. I like the matte black one. It is. Yeah, you would say that. Well, it is the darkest matte black
00:59:21
phone I've ever seen. Oh, that's a good point. So, I thought that was nice. That's a good point. Yeah. Can I throw a design award out?
00:59:28
Yeah. Actually, I almost have two. That TCL next paper, bro. That switch that switches it from like color e ink to regular e ink is
00:59:39
like I think it's one of the most jaw-dropping things a phone has done in a long time. I want to rewind that. It was like when
00:59:46
this the sermon in church. It's a really good bar. Everyone goes, "Yeah, preach Andrew." Yes. It's I feel like we barely showed that thing off.
00:59:57
Just the animation. We barely showed that thing off. I still get tweets that are like, "What are you going to talk
01:00:02
about the TCL next paper?" All right. Make sure we show a clip of B-roll in this, but like it has the switch that goes between colored e- in
01:00:10
to black and white e- in. And the animation. Yeah, it's awesome. Is chef's kiss.
01:00:15
I think when I first saw it, my jaw literally dropped. It kind of looks like the Harry Potter uh mag whatever the magazines are called
01:00:21
in Harry Potter that the quibbler. Is that what it's called? Where the images move on the paper and you're
01:00:26
like, "This seems crazy." Yeah, it's like magic. It's pretty cool. I have to throw that. That's valid. Okay.
01:00:32
Yeah. Yeah. You know, ultimately I I gave it to the iPhone Air. I don't regret it and I just need them to give
01:00:37
it a silicon carbon battery and dual cameras next year. I just I know they're not going to do it, but I need to put it that out there. Just
01:00:43
wait. I have a suggestion for next year. Okay. What if we remove the best small phone
01:00:48
award award since there really are none anymore? Go on. And then we add Uh-huh. like a a best technical
01:01:02
achievement award because we had the the screen on the back of the phone this year that you can
01:01:08
actually use gimmick is cool. That's interesting cuz there's a lot of stuff that comes out that qualifies for that. You could say the screen on the back. You could also say like one of those super thin foldables
01:01:18
with like no crease could be interesting. You could also say we just spoke about
01:01:24
valid. Okay. Yeah, best gimmick. I love the idea of it, Adam, but you have to put yourself in the in the perspective
01:01:29
of these tech companies, right? Boardrooms across the world are saying, "Look, market research shows people
01:01:35
don't want small phones. The things people do want in their phones will not fit in a small phone,
01:01:40
but we have to win the MKBHD small phone of the year award. This is the only thing keeping the category alive." It's why the OnePlus 13S exists. Yes, but it's but all they did was make a not
01:01:52
small phone and put an S next to it and pretend. The only reason that's small is cuz they said it was small.
01:01:57
I'll take it, man. Slightly smaller. I'm open to bringing the award back if they actually release small phones.
01:02:04
We should hold the award hostage until someone breaks. We I know this phone had some issues, but shout out to
01:02:11
the minimal phone. That was a small phone. I'd say the light phone was smaller. The light phone was even smaller. I never used that. The light phone is
01:02:17
like a like a box. Little box. I was going to say the light phone design looks so cool that I want to use
01:02:24
it except it has literally I couldn't survive. I couldn't work or do anything on it. I thought the design was nice
01:02:30
though. Eric Makikovski, the Pebble guy, owns the website smallandroidphone.com because he wants there to be another small Android phone. 75 million bad faith. If you're gonna if you're going to make
01:02:41
a a ring, I feel like you could make a small Android phone. Don't make your Don't let your dreams be dreams, right? Yeah.
01:02:46
This could be awesome. This could be real. Yeah. Bring it back. There's a whole award waiting for it.
01:02:52
Bring it back with a sixack. Yeah. No, I like I like We'll We'll We'll play with this. I think this small category award will be really
01:02:57
interesting next year for the design category. The best gimmick of the year for you.
01:03:02
Okay. The I think it's the screen on the back. I'm trying to think on the Xiaomi, right?
01:03:07
Yeah. The the Xiaomi 17 Pro. So, we got that. We've got the Nothing Phone 3, which is a bad gimmick.
01:03:13
That sucks. What about the Hasselblad camera attachment? I think that's a cool gimmick. That's really cool. That's a good gimmick.
01:03:18
Yeah. Trillions of dollars spent on AI assistance and not one one mention in this conversation.
01:03:24
Apple intelligence. I will say I shot the Xiaomi car review on the Xiaomi 17 Pro and I've always been doing this thing where I use the primary cameras and I flip the camera around. Oh, now you can see.
01:03:35
And I've gotten really good at that with not being able to see myself, but I could see myself on that phone. That was like super useful. I think it's got to
01:03:41
go to the Xiaomi. I think best gimmick would be great because there's all these Chinese phones that we can't use consistently, but they all have awesome
01:03:48
weird gimmicks. Thousand watt charging. Yeah. What? And not actually gimmicks used to be bad and now I think there are actually useful gimmicks on on phones on good phones.
01:03:59
There's a there's a there's a spectrum. There's there's definitely good gimmicks. There's definitely still bad
01:04:05
gimmicks. the LG G7 Thin Q with its uh blood blood sensor palm sensor palm. It was the glucose sensor. You could do this and it never worked.
01:04:17
That is that's a good camera. Next year's award. That's a gimmick. All right. All right. We had one more interesting
01:04:23
one. Best foldable is maybe the last boring one. Uh Samsung ZFold 7. Any questions?
01:04:29
Uh no. It's the safest. It's like the only one that I could really daily and be like happy that I can use. I want to point out like the Pixel 10
01:04:40
Pro Fold. I liked it. No, I'm not saying that. I want to point it out to win to win cuz No,
01:04:46
that's the thing. But this is the the thing is because the the the original Pixel 10 Pro Fold to the Pixel 9 Pro
01:04:52
Fold was so astronomical. This is why businesses every year with their year-over-year growth only want to have
01:04:58
like 1%. Because if they have 50% in one year and then the next year they don't have another 50%. Their stock goes down.
01:05:05
Yeah. Right. So Google did too much of a good thing in one year and then all they did was add Mags Safe or G2
01:05:12
which is big which is big. Pixel drops but it kind of sags a little bit. Pixel snap. Pixel snap. And then they, you know,
01:05:18
made it waterproof. That's important. It's important and good. like in a year when the this the Galaxy ZFold 7 came out and was super thin and had a really
01:05:30
good screen to body ratio and was just like a great same battery as the thicker version. Exactly. And then you got the Pixel
01:05:37
which is just like it's better than it was but now it's you know now they feel really behind. So, I feel like next year
01:05:42
Google is really going to have to try to make it thin. Otherwise, strategy go way backwards next year.
01:05:48
Way worse again and then step up again. We're back. We're back, baby. The window strategy.
01:05:54
Just go worse, better, worse, better. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I gave a mention to the Z Flip 7 and the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, but it
01:06:01
it was the Samsung to lose this year. And uh Becca recently just put out a video about it 7. She said it was the
01:06:08
best phone of the year, and she said, "Sorry, MKBHD." There's two categories left. There's the bus and the Let's do bus last.
01:06:13
No, we got to do the bus now because there's interesting chatter about this one. All right, let's bust. The bus of the year for 2025
01:06:20
is the iPhone 16. And I think that was pretty clear. A lot of people actually said they forgot it existed by the end
01:06:27
of the year because it was that forgettable. Proves the point. Yeah. Um because number one, if you actually had $500 to spend on a new iPhone, you
01:06:35
should just get the 16 or the 15 Pro or something. There was no reason to buy a new 16e and get a 60 Hz screen and no
01:06:41
Mag Safe camera. Yeah, it was just silly. It just didn't have any reason to exist for regular people. Then I got the
01:06:46
comments about like, oh, it's a B2B phone. It's really just like the fleet phone for all the, you know, the old E
01:06:53
phones that are all getting replaced at once, which is valid, but you still that's not that doesn't make it good.
01:06:58
Yeah. That doesn't make it a good deal or a good phone. And so the cherry on top is the one I reviewed was a 512 gig 16e
01:07:05
which was $900. So there was just no reason for this one to exist at this price. Uh doesn't mean it's a bad phone. It's just a bad price. If it was $450 it would make it would be
01:07:18
just like the other iPhone SE. 375. Take it or leave it. Dang. That's single camera no mag safe 60 Hz notch. What are we talking about? It's 2025.
01:07:30
M Why does it still have 60 Hz to be honest? Well, they just added 120 to the new ones.
01:07:35
The Moto G Play is $180 and it has 120 Hz display, but it doesn't have a little Apple on
01:07:41
the back of it. That's actually true. That is true. Yeah. Um Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Bad regular phone. Bad price.
01:07:49
So, that one bust of the year. Bad phone, bad price. Pretty bad. Yeah. Don't buy that one. This I think this may have gotten the
01:07:54
most chatter comments on. Go on. My favorite thing about this was the nothing community hates the Nothing
01:08:00
Phone 3 so much they were almost they almost seem mad that an iPhone one bust because they think the nothing phone 3 should have won bust of the year. They
01:08:13
were pretty hard so much. Yeah, that phone's fine. Nothing's strategy with phones was just all kind of all over the place this year. like the 3A and the 3A Pro were
01:08:23
pretty interesting. And then they they got rid of the glyphs with the 3 and then 3A light and then the 3A community edition.
01:08:31
There's just a whole lot happening. It's a whole lot. I don't think it was a seven that was $7.99 that phone when it launched.
01:08:36
That's actually a lot. So it was not good for the price either. And I think people expected a very
01:08:42
different direction with like making the glyphs on the back more functional. And instead it was like here's a little screen. It's 25 pixels. Spin the bottle.
01:08:48
And we're like what are you doing? Yeah. Um, so yeah, that that actually did get a mention in Bus of the Year.
01:08:53
I think like it got posted as this was the runner up and everyone's like it should have won. Yeah. Wow. I don't No, the E is worse.
01:09:00
Sorry. The the reg the Nothing Phone 3 is a fine phone. It's just that they went
01:09:05
with the worst possible gimmick and tried to make it seem good. That's really the problem. And it was too
01:09:10
expensive. Those are the the main problems. Otherwise, the OS is fantastic. Like usable UI. It's a fine
01:09:17
phone. I think the nothing 3a light is a worse phone because of the CMF phone 2 pro 2. Oh, interesting. Like I think the light is a just as a there's no reason to ever buy that phone
01:09:28
when the CMF phone 2 Pro is awesome. Yeah, the budget company's budget lines budget pro phone pro phone is better than the I'm not even going to do this.
01:09:40
I can't even cuz you forgot already why I did forget where. Um can I throw one more in here? Mhm.
01:09:45
Maybe this is self-loathing. Hm. Interesting. Pixel Pixel 10, man. Really? What? I thought you said phone
01:09:51
of the year earlier some of these takes. Did I say that? I have a hot take later. Okay. Well, this I think this segus into
01:09:57
phone of the year very well, but like wait a sec. The Pixel 10 base. Yeah. Being it was $800, right? Yeah. $800. Yeah. It got triple cameras, but all but
01:10:10
they're downgraded cameras compared to the Pixel 9. Yeah, the Pixel 9a sensors or C whatever the
01:10:18
128 GB base storage now watching I if you told me in the Pixel 7 days that the iPhone base would be the better deal and have more features and stuff. I
01:10:31
would never believe you. But we're in a place right now where even though it has one more camera,
01:10:36
the base iPhone has more base storage for the same price and like and has 120 Hz. It has all the other things. Now, I feel like I got scammed.
01:10:47
I still love the phone, don't get me wrong. Like, it's a fine phone. I am enjoying it,
01:10:52
but I can't believe they're up at $800 and we're finding an iPhone has a better deal. That's still so unpixel. They just dropped the price. I
01:10:58
mean, it's on sale, but it's $5.99. It's been on sale for like a month now. Proof that it's not started, which Yeah.
01:11:05
Which is proof that that's what it should have been at, which is what they used to be at, which is what the 16E is.
01:11:12
Did you guys all disagree with me? Well, I'm saying like, yeah, that phone for $799 is a bad deal,
01:11:20
but you could see it being a pretty good deal at $599. Yeah, the 169 would be the 16e is $599 and is a horrible deal.
01:11:30
So, that's why it it got the award, but I agree that it was a bit of a disappointing year for Pixel. Um, I you
01:11:36
I've used Pixel 10 Pro for a lot of this year as well. It's not great. The camera's has been
01:11:42
fine. The battery is not that great. We were kind of hoping like a lot would come from this tensor refresh and it
01:11:48
didn't. So, it didn't. Yeah. Yeah. I have a question that you guys probably don't know the answer to. Mhm.
01:11:54
In Japan, no idea. Do are are they also on like a carrier system where people just pay monthly for their phones and then they get into carrier contracts? I assume that was
01:12:06
just here because I have a big question that's going to lead into the phone of the year that we're about to talk about.
01:12:11
Okay. And that is that my friend from college just bought a regular iPhone 17 and we, you know, we named it phone of the Well, I guess I'm jumping the gun. We named it phone of the year and we
01:12:24
talked about how like they made all these upgrades and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I have literally never seen one in the wild. Um, so my question
01:12:33
they're all in cases probably. So my question becomes like in America where or in the the west where everything's a carrier contract and I see so many pros
01:12:44
and I'm for some reason I think it's just in America. In Europe I don't think you're locked into carrier contracts like that.
01:12:50
Very American. But the reason I say Japan is because the iPhone is in also incredibly popular in Japan. It is
01:12:55
where in Europe like it's a mix. It's a it's a grabag. So, that's kind of my question. I just like it's incred it's crazy that the iPhone 17 both is like the best value phone this year and also
01:13:08
I haven't really seen that many because everyone keeps using the carriers. So, this could be the same exact
01:13:14
reasoning why you see so many airs and folds is because the masses that are using the the 17s are like slowly
01:13:20
trickling out and getting them in a way that people who just snap up the air probably aren't. So, I think it's kind
01:13:27
of like the Camry where you don't realize how many you see, right? They're everywhere. That's true. Um,
01:13:32
and the fact that it looks like the last iPhone, it looks just like the last if you got silver one or whatever, you'll never
01:13:38
know. I think also part of it is like phone of the year doesn't necessarily mean most
01:13:43
popular. Mostly because consumerism and so many people are okay with spending way more than they really need to. But like I see this as like the people watching our videos who are going
01:13:55
to try and find like enthusiasts. Yeah. Like it's not just bang for your buck, but there's so many things about
01:14:01
this phone that just nailed it this year that I think our audience would be more inclined to be like impressed by it.
01:14:08
Yeah. Well, I guess we'll just get right into it. The phone of the year is the iPhone 17. It is. Yeah.
01:14:13
And uh it also won most improved, which we skipped over, but that's basically handinand here. So, iPhone 17, they
01:14:20
finally did the thing. 120 Hz, much brighter, better display. Thank god it's way overdue. Uh, the other thing is the much improved selfie camera, which is across the entire lineup, which is
01:14:32
sneaky great upgrade, and I'm I'm expecting to see a lot of people copy that. The big square sensor where you can do horizontal or vertical
01:14:37
portraiture selfies. That's awesome. And then doubling the base storage to 256 gigs. Also didn't have to do that,
01:14:44
but kept the price the same. So now it's a better deal at 256 gigs than Pixel's base, than S25's base, than a lot of other phones. And it's just become the
01:14:54
easiest phone to recommend. I had a couple people ask me like this year, "Oh, I'm due for an upgrade. Like, which phone should I recommend?" And you'd
01:15:01
look at the lineup and you go, "Oh, you're staying with the iPhone. Okay, I think yeah, you could probably go with like an old 15 Pro or 16 Pro or maybe
01:15:08
you should get like a I don't want to recommend the base, though. You'll have a 60 Hz phone for five more years." Now it's just like, "Oh yeah, get the 17."
01:15:14
Yeah, that's the one. super easy. Yeah. So, yeah, iPhone 17 won it and my runner
01:15:20
up was the Xiaomi 17 Pro. I've talked a lot about it this podcast already in the review. I loved it. The screen on the
01:15:26
back is awesome. It's a super complete phone. It's never going to be on sale here in the US, but the fact that I got to test it, uh, it impressed me a lot
01:15:33
and it was definitely deserving. And I always mention the phones that have spent the most time in my pocket in
01:15:39
between reviews. So, I'll at least do that again, which is it started off S25 Ultra for like the first half of the
01:15:45
year. Then it went to a whole lot of Pixel 10 Pro and then OnePlus 15. So, that's me.
01:15:52
I was going to say how Samsung has fallen. Next year, like no, we've we've had the S Ultra phones in in the like
01:16:01
lineup of this for like ever since the S21 Ultra basically. Yeah, the really good ones
01:16:06
because S20 Ultra was horrible. I think that was bust of the year that year. Yep. But like, yeah, the fact that they're
01:16:12
not in the lineup at all is kind of crazy. It kind of just shows how they just totally went super boring until we
01:16:17
get the trifold in the beginning of next year. That's crazy. The same company is doing like incremental baby steps on their
01:16:24
biggest best phone and is also like by the way, here's one that folds twice and like what do we That's That's the
01:16:29
same company. Next year's going to be crazy cuz we're going to have that trifold and we're going to also have the iPhone foldable allegedly. Seems like it's going to be next year.
01:16:35
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. Ellis, would you go from a mini to a fold? That's why I'm not buying a Pro. Really? I'm waiting for the fold. Wow. Two airs glued together.
01:16:47
Yeah. To the fold. Could be awesome. Rumor has it. It's 2026. So, yeah, we shall see. Wait, didn't Adam have a hot take? That's around this category.
01:16:58
It was Pixel related. My hot take was that Pixel 10 was phone of the year. Can you press that button for me?
01:17:06
There you go. I'm surprised you actually did it. I have the Pro and I feel like I spent too much. Like I should have just gotten the 10 because the 10 does everything the Pro does.
01:17:18
It's super on sale almost immediately if you don't get it at launch. Like if you just wait a couple weeks, it's on sale.
01:17:23
And besides that, the AI, I hate to say it, but the AI stuff that the Pixel has been doing compared to something like
01:17:30
the iPhone, which is just another iPhone, it's actually been very useful. and like
01:17:36
thinking about switching phones, even Android to Android. I'm like, uh, I'm gonna miss some of those AI features,
01:17:41
though. Like, I really enjoy them. I mean, I could go to Samsung because Samsung just has all the Gemini features anyway.
01:17:46
I was, that's exactly how I would pick it apart is like if I were giving an AI of the year award, it would go straight
01:17:52
to Google and then by proxy, also Samsung because they use all the same stuff. And then I would also say to your
01:17:58
point of the Pixel 10 Pro feeling like a ripoff. I think it's because it was a worse deal than ever this year. And it
01:18:04
doesn't mean that 10 is phone of the year good. It just means it's a way better deal and feature set because it
01:18:11
has all the same software features and it has the same tensor chip and triple cameras. I just feel like if
01:18:16
you're like if if you take I mean I know this is a hard ask but if you take someone out of the like Apple versus
01:18:22
Android world like a fresh person coming into the world who's just looking for their first smartphone and they have no
01:18:29
no horse in any race and they're like give me a phone I'd probably give them a Pixel
01:18:34
because it's doing more interesting where in the world they live. It doesn't matter. You're giving them the phone or they
01:18:39
have to they don't have to pay for the phone. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm giving them the phone. You're giving them a Pixel. Like the best phone. I'm giving you a
01:18:44
phone. Here's a Pixel 10. That's interesting. I That's an interesting question. I would probably give that person a
01:18:51
S20. No, I would give them an S25 Ultra probably just like the most beefiest. Just the most stable. It's the most boring, the most stable. It doesn't improve that much year to year. But it
01:19:03
always has good battery, good cameras, good software updates, good screen every time. You want to give someone fresh to the
01:19:08
universe a boring phone? Yeah. Well, I don't want to give them a phone that like if I give them a a Xiaomi 17 Pro, next year there's going
01:19:15
to be like a totally different design and no screen on the back, but this other crazy feature and they're gonna have gotten used to one thing and have
01:19:22
to switch around. People just want stability. Exactly what we went through in the early 2010s. Okay. Every single year was
01:19:28
fresh as hell. Yeah. Yeah. Consistency was not a thing. I don't know her. As the only Pixel 10 owner here, Andrew,
01:19:34
what do you think of my take? I think you're wrong. Um, well, it's funny because you you keep thinking
01:19:41
I feel like I should go down. I keep feeling I feel like I should have spent another $100 and went up because then I
01:19:47
would have gotten 256 base storage and better cameras and a better I I mostly wanted the yellow
01:19:54
which was my ultimate downfall. The only reason I got the Pro would be so bad. Yeah.
01:20:02
Uh, I think one thing you did mention though, which is kind of a comment I wanted to address, is
01:20:07
there's so many people, we judge everything on MSRP at launch. Um, which is like a lot of people keep
01:20:14
saying, well, this was actually a great phone once it went on sale, blah blah blah. And it's like that can be true, but it's so hard for us to ever base
01:20:21
that off of I know we've said this a thousand times, but like I can't we can't base things off of carrier deals and two for one deals and like on sale
01:20:28
the Pixel will go. It's great to know it. Great. It's great to say like, "Hey, this kind of sucks at $800, but if
01:20:34
you're willing to wait three months or Black Friday, the Pixel will be way cheaper." I mean, MSRP stands for manufacturer
01:20:40
suggested retail price, and that means that that's what they think that that device is worth.
01:20:46
So, if that's their judgment of it, then that's probably what we should be basing it on. Yeah. I could also you could probably
01:20:51
make the argument that things that constantly go on sale means that a suggested price probably wasn't the best
01:20:58
uh idea in the first place and it's correcting pretty quickly. Well, Google should figure that out cuz
01:21:03
they do the same thing every single year. Just make it cheaper to begin with and you'll sell way more.
01:21:08
They had that. They had it for a while. I know they did. They almost did it. Remember when like they could have had it all. We were
01:21:14
saying that like Pixel 7 was too good of a deal to not even look at the Pro and people on the Google team were like I
01:21:20
guess we should just make it more expensive. Haha. You shouldn't have. You really screwed the pooch on that one,
01:21:25
man. Well, they shouldn't have made it $300 more for the Pro before. Like that was insane.
01:21:30
Overall though, um I'm pretty happy with the awards. I think that people picked up on some trends of like this. I don't
01:21:37
know when's the last time Samsung or when's the last time Google won zero awards
01:21:42
and Samsung S series won zero awards. Yeah, probably first time in a while. Um, iPhone winning bust and winner in the same year is hilarious. I think
01:21:53
that's also happened before. Didn't HTC pull that off? No, they did most improved and bust.
01:21:58
Oof. And we they asked for the most improved trophy, so we sent them the toilet bowl trophy also.
01:22:04
That's hilarious. Yeah. Anyway, so let us know in the comments if you agree, disagree. We enjoy reading all the
01:22:11
Let me speedun a couple comments. The comments. All right. The most comment was wearing a blazer
01:22:16
and a hoodie is diabolical apparently. Last year I got I thought it looked sweet, but I have no fashion sense at all. So maybe that
01:22:23
tracks. I loved it. All right, next comment. Good lord. This one recently has been nagging at me
01:22:28
a little bit, but there's so many people who love to say you're in a bubble. You don't get to experience all the other
01:22:34
phones, but like we're all in our own bubbles. So, as long as this is my awards,
01:22:40
I thought you were super clear about it this year, too. Sorry. Phones I test. Yeah. Phones you test and ones like
01:22:46
it's within the US bubble because we live in the US. Unfortunately, we try like we probably get more phones than the average US reviewer gets and you definitely try them. But I thought
01:22:57
you were very clear this year like these are my awards, the things that I like. It's I also said that specifically
01:23:02
because other YouTubers also do their own awards. If you have your people were uh quote tweeting my list and giving
01:23:09
their own set of awards which is maybe they have used some of those phones, maybe they haven't. But like anyone can make their own set of what they think is
01:23:15
the blank of the year. Um I give mine because I think I have a unique perspective of I've been able to
01:23:20
test all these devices. So here's my perspective from what I've tested and then other people will give theirs. So
01:23:25
yeah, I'm I'm sticking with mine. Yeah, obviously. Um, okay. I went through a couple of
01:23:31
these just in our normal thing. Okay, here's one that made me mad. No. And it has nothing to do with our audience. It has to do with YouTube. Where's the timestamps?
01:23:42
Okay. I added them at at launch. Did you? They were there. Yeah. So, they were there for a couple hours and then I saw
01:23:48
that comment. Then I went back up and I was like, they're gone. So, I went back to the description. They're all still sitting there. So, I simply deleted a
01:23:55
letter and added a letter and hit save again and all the time stamps came back. So, we do this with the pod. We've we've had this struggle before. Obviously, this is a video that we should be timestamping. So, I
01:24:06
I'm sorry, but also like not cuz I It's not my fault, but yeah, the timestamps should be back. And if they disappear
01:24:12
again, just ping me on Twitter again and I'll put them back. There was a comment that did the timestamps and everyone's like, "You're
01:24:17
a savior." It's like they were in the description, but just like Yeah. YouTube, what the man, please let that we I want a public apology. Fix this.
01:24:29
Also, this isn't like UI. Like, this isn't like a YouTube feature where you click the timestamp button and add them.
01:24:34
This is if you decide in your description to type out timestamps with titles. It autodetects it in the description of the video and adds timestamps. Everyone has sort of figured
01:24:45
out that that's how you do that at this point, but there's never been official UI from YouTube to add timestamps to a
01:24:51
video. Why? It's unofficial. It's a super useful feature. It should be the easiest.
01:24:56
Only like a trillion dollars in data center investment away from pulling this up. They're going to get it soon. Don't worry. Seems very doable.
01:25:02
They basically have it already, right? You can pick where ads go in the middle of your video through a UI system,
01:25:08
right? But Andrew Andrew, I just make them money. Okay. It can d it can insert dynamic ads into timestamps, but I can't just pick that
01:25:18
time stamp and write this text. Do time stamps make them money? They got rid of annotations. They got
01:25:24
rid of all the clutter. I think it would be super easy to add a timestamp feature. Please, YouTube.
01:25:30
I want to scream. It makes me so seems so obvious. By the way, the video we did uh the summer
01:25:36
awards is a 2.4x1 aspect ratio, which meant it's not supported uh for end cards. So, I couldn't add end cards though. Really? It's an unsupported aspect ratio, which I thought was a bummer.
01:25:46
Uh but yeah, that's another weird quirk about this video. I saw a lot of comments about that, too.
01:25:52
Why didn't this auto play? I think the last thing I have here is there's a lot of love for the Red Magic
01:25:58
11 Pro. Yeah. Yeah. Uh I have flirted with the idea of adding a gaming category every year, but I never really test that many gaming phones
01:26:09
and I'm also not even that into gaming. A lot of the gaming phones I end up testing, I end up looking at them
01:26:14
through the lens of are they a good phone the rest of the time that you're not gaming, right? So, like the two or three gaming phones we got this year
01:26:21
were good phones, but this phone had like a a liquid like cooling loop that was like visible
01:26:26
through the glass back. It was super interesting. I'm pretty sure Zach tore it down. It was a really interesting interior. Uh like a phone on the side of
01:26:32
the phone blowing hot air out of it. Like it was a cool phone. Um but I it didn't really it wouldn't
01:26:38
have won like my design award. It wouldn't have won my best big phone. So, it just kind of didn't get mentioned. So, that's valid. I just haven't like
01:26:45
there is no gaming category. So, yeah. Did you see what it looked like in your story about the uh I saw someone screenshot it looked kind of I took like a story that we were shooting smartphone awards and because
01:26:56
it's like a it's like a clear back but it has this like faded black border and for some reason the way the light was hitting the phone and you took it, it just looked like this almost see-through phone with black bezels and no one could
01:27:09
figure out what it was. Oh wow. Um that's funny. It was Yeah, it was kind of Does have 80 watt wired and wireless
01:27:15
charging. Yeah, they got wireless charging in there, which is cool. 80 watt wireless. Is that just like a space heater?
01:27:21
Yeah. I mean, it's probably% It's kind of crazy how many phones charge at 80. Don't use that in your apartment.
01:27:26
Especially when they don't have uh G2 and so they can't perfectly align. They're probably losing so much heat.
01:27:32
Wait, 80 watt wireless. It has both 80 watt wired and 80 watt wireless. Oh my god.
01:27:38
Losing a lot of heat. You need like the perfect charger. Yeah. Okay. I have one more thing I noticed quite a few people mentioned. Ellis, did
01:27:45
you use the PS3 startup sound? Dude, let me let me I This was a This was This was a healthy learning experience for me. You know what I mean? Cuz I went into this I was like, I want to use music to explain what
01:28:01
makes this smartphone awards different from all the other smartphone awards we've done in the past because that's
01:28:06
something that we can't exactly express visually. I do think this was the most beautiful set and the most beautiful
01:28:12
lighting we've ever had for a smartphone awards. But also, we're we're we're at the top of our game right now. We are we
01:28:18
are we are chugging out these excellent videos. And I wanted the theme of this smartphone awards orally to be prestige.
01:28:26
And I thought very hard about that and I said, how can we in about 8 seconds communicate prestige and and tradition
01:28:34
and the fact that we've been doing this longer than anyone else has been doing this? And I thought, you know what would be great? PlayStation.
01:28:40
No, PlayStation. For 300 years, for 300 years, before America, orchestras have been tuning the exact same way with an obo starting, then the
01:28:53
concert master, then the rest of the orchestra. I thought I thought it for three because that had been happening for 300 years, everyone would know
01:29:05
that's the case. But apparently this little company that makes a little box called the Xperia
01:29:12
rewrote what that sound was for everyone in the world. And I probably should have
01:29:17
known that. But yes, apparently you cannot use the sound of an orchestra tuning without
01:29:22
people being like, "Oh, that's the Uncharted machine." LSL too highly of it. It's an expensive.
01:29:29
Yeah. So, yes. No. Almost $2,000. My goal was not to use the PlayStation. Actually, fun fact, that is the second original piece of music that has ever been written in a video here. Rufus and
01:29:41
I wrote that from scratch and and and produced it ourselves. So, no, I didn't use the PlayStation 3 startup sound in our video. A great minds thinking alike situation,
01:29:52
I guess. So, and uh also, how dare everyone pay so much attention to that? And I didn't see one comment about the toilet flush I used in the in the Bust of the Years card. I was shocked that
01:30:03
nobody mentioned that. I will say we we put so many Easter eggs in videos that it sort of trained people to look for
01:30:11
Easter eggs, even some of which don't exist. So, I'm both shocked that they didn't notice the toilet flush, but also not shocked that they assigned PS3 sound
01:30:22
to the others. So, it's a trivia. We'll win some, lose some to the obo. Anyway, but thank you for listening. It's trivia time.
01:30:33
Um, yeah. Trivia, dude. Someone yelled at me last week for not doing that. So, real quick,
01:30:39
Ellis, what's your battery percentage right now? Oh, okay. So, may have forgotten to charge my phone last night. So, we got a little juice in David's car this morning. Oh, is it even Dude, you could have plug
01:30:50
Oh, no, you couldn't have cuz you have lightning. Yeah. So, I wireless charged in David's car. Also, it's a 12 mini, which doesn't
01:30:57
really line up with the Teslas. It really does not. So, it mostly just gets hot. Anyway, anyone want to guess
01:31:02
what my battery percentage is at? 27. 26. 27. 26. Marquez. 34. 34. You guys give me too much credit. That's a solid 18% right now.
01:31:13
Honestly, you know how phones sometimes will just die even though they have like 18%. I'm sure surprise didn't like
01:31:19
that's just misreading the battery. All right, next trivia question. So, earlier we were talking about Android
01:31:24
XR. They introduced a new UI toolkit called Jetack Compose. What? And it looks kind of like uh if material you expressive had a baby with
01:31:38
glass, liquid glass, and I think it looks kind of dope. I hope they don't bring it to phones, but it's it's I skipped this part of the keynote and I
01:31:44
remember dude, I swear to God, as I was skipping this part of the keynote, I was like, Adam actually watched this video.
01:31:52
Not because of trivia, just because I knew that you would be interested in this stuff.
01:31:57
That's when he slowed down to 1x and was like, I'm not even joking. That's the first thought I had.
01:32:03
I knew it would me. All right. Well, those of you who 1x that part will know the answer, but we'll think about it. We'll be right
01:32:09
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01:34:14
Christmas tree. Zoe, this thing weighs a ton. Duski, live with your legs, man. Santa. Santa, did you get my letter?
01:34:19
He's talking to you, Bridget. I'm not that. Of course he did. Right, Santa? You know my elf Drewski here. He handles
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the nice list. An elf. I'm 6'3. What everyone wants is iPhone 17. And at T-Mobile, you can get
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pay plus taxes and fees required. Check out 15 minutes or less per line. Visit T-Mobile.com. All right, we're back wrapping it up with a couple last thoughts and things
01:35:15
that we wanted to at least chat about. One is the Xiaomi SU7 review is finally up and also chats just in general about the state of Chinese electric cars and
01:35:26
what would happen if they came here and how good they are through the lens of checking out this one EV. It's a really
01:35:32
good car. It's nice. Um the conversation is basically it retails for the equivalent of $42,000 in
01:35:40
China. And so if we were to get a car like that for $42,000 here, it would be just completely ridiculously out of this league good. It feels like a $75 $85,000 car. And I said that in the video. Lots
01:35:55
of cool features, really good drive, uh, self-driving, great build quality, all this great software, and you should check out the video if you haven't seen it already. Any other thoughts on it? I just thought it was a one of the most
01:36:07
interesting products of the year that we reviewed. It has multiple reverb engines in the karaoke system, which like hilarious.
01:36:13
Most karaoke systems only have one reverb. So to have multiple car, I was like, for those for those confused on what the karaoke system is, this car had software that was really good. It also had uh
01:36:27
modules that you could buy that would attach to the car. Things like an extra speedometer at the top or ambient light
01:36:34
bars on the sides to move up and down with your music or USB type-C cables at the bottom. And one of them is a pair of
01:36:41
high-quality karaoke microphones that will plug in and charge based on the car's battery and will work with the
01:36:48
car's built-in karaoke mode in the software. said software had multiple reverbs and lots of other features. We actually demoed it briefly. It was hilarious. That is a feature that exists
01:37:00
in this car. Just one of many. I'm just so disappointed that you didn't mention a mini fridge. Ours didn't have that option, I don't
01:37:05
think. Okay. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, there is a mini fridge. Yours did have duin built in to the back
01:37:11
screen, which is Chinese Tik Tok for anyone curious, which provided me with ample time to scroll Chinese thirst
01:37:18
traps and League of Legends live streams. It was quite fun. I drove it for like 20 minutes to go get
01:37:25
charged and as I'm like sitting there while it's charging, I'm just like, "Oh, this thing's got a lot of stuff." And then I was like looking under the center
01:37:32
console, thought, "Oh, Miles and them left some walkie-talkies here from when they were doing rollers." And then I
01:37:37
clicked them and they like popped in perfectly. I was like, "This car has walkie-talkies in the bottom of it." Two
01:37:43
of them built in. They worked. They were better than our walkie-talkies. We were using them to do our shoots because they had a
01:37:49
longer range and were incredibly good and had a long battery life. I have a super small gripe or something that they should add.
01:37:55
Mhm. Okay. So, on the left side of the steering wheel, there was a little raised MagSafe puck
01:38:00
for you to put your phone on that needs wireless charging on it. The YU7, it does have it. Yeah,
01:38:07
they thought of everything. They did. Yeah. I thought the same thing. I was like, this is like a little mounting point, but you know, it would take it to
01:38:13
the next level if it could charge my phone. The Y7. It does get power. Yeah. So, when did we get the YU7?
01:38:18
Yeah, I kind of want to get the the hands on the Y7. The YU7 is like the Model Y to this Model 3. Although,
01:38:24
that's not a good analogy. These are super premium. This is like the hm this is like the piroangu.
01:38:34
These cars are essentially stealing design from the other most popular luxury cars that you see everywhere that are successful. So the the SU7 just looks like a Porsche in a lot of ways.
01:38:46
It has lines from like Lotus and McLaren headlights and like dimin bezled mirrors like a Polestar, but essentially they just said, "Let's make a Porsche Tyan,
01:38:53
but better." Yeah. And they made a liveable, incredibly cheap version of a Porsche Tyan. And it's amazing. The YU7 is more of an SUV.
01:39:01
It's a little taller. And if you look up the Ferrari Purus and put it next to a a YU7, you're like, "Oh, they just made
01:39:08
the Ferrari." The Ferrari is $400,000. Andrew, the the Puro Sangu is the car that almost burnt my eyebrows.
01:39:15
I we were recording exhaust sounds and I was like, "Oh, I'll just sit behind the car while Miles red blines it and a hot
01:39:23
exhaust, Jesus." Literally blew his hair back like or maybe it was whatever. Um yeah, one thing I found funny, I couldn't get over that there was a Mi logo on the front of it. There's just
01:39:35
like something about a phone a phone logo being on a car, which now makes me wonder if there was an Apple car, like how long would it take me to get used to seeing an Apple like hood
01:39:46
ornament or logo on a car? Yeah. Yeah, that was kind of silly. It almost made it look less expensive, if that makes sense.
01:39:57
I don't know if I would think of that as premium. Yeah, that was one of the things I said at the beginning. Uh, a lot of these
01:40:02
older car companies that you do think of as premium have this like history of premium. So, you assign that shape with prestige and Xiaomi doesn't have any of
01:40:13
that history. So, they kind of just Yeah, they just borrow prestige shapes. They just borrow the Porsche silhouette.
01:40:19
Obviously, their logo is like we don't associate that with prestige, but they just borrowed that a lot. Um, and the
01:40:25
more I think of this car, the more crazy features that are just coming to my back to my mind from testing them. So, I'll just blurt some of them out. One of them
01:40:31
was the 50 watt wireless chargers in the center that charged the Xiaomi 17 Pro I
01:40:38
was using extremely fast. Another one is the speakers in the headrest behind me,
01:40:43
which no matter what phone and navigation I was using would separate out the navigation voice from the music that was playing from the same phone.
01:40:50
And would play just in the speaker while the rest of the music played in the rest of the car. So much better. I don't I can't
01:40:55
underestimate how awesome that was. Like I would be using ways and Spotify on the
01:41:01
same phone at the same time and it would separate just the ways voice and play it on the speaker and keep the
01:41:07
music the same. That was awesome too. Um the ambient lighting in the car at night it was brighter and more visible
01:41:13
would pulse with the bass of the sound I was listening to in the color of the album art of the song that I was
01:41:20
listening. Ridiculous. Did go you work with them? It was crazy. I don't know, but it was like it was built into the software. It
01:41:25
just knew. Um, what else? Uh, there was this full-on like rad tuner equivalent from Riven where essentially the Xiaomi
01:41:32
you could change all of the driving dynamics with a custom mode. You could flip it to be fully rear wheel drive if
01:41:37
you want, fully frontwheel drive if you want, change the brake calibration, change the acceleration rate, and how
01:41:43
much it slowed down and regen. All this stuff was in the software. Crazy. I noticed that because I was flipping through the drive modes and one was
01:41:49
called miles, but it was lowercase and I was like, "Huh, they didn't capitalize this." I was like, "Wait, they use kilometers." Oh, this is miles rated
01:41:57
one. Yeah. Um, there was also, stop me if I'm getting boring. There's another one where you could mirror the screen of
01:42:03
your phone in real time for some reason. For some reason, cuz it's a Xiaomi phone and a Xiaomi
01:42:08
car. Uh, CarPlay, full screen, the whole thing. 16-inch CarPlay, wireless CarPlay. Why do they even have CarPlay? I guess because people will buy it and not have iPhones and will have iPhones. So,
01:42:21
if a hold on, I didn't know it had CarPlay. If a main competitor smartphone company
01:42:29
can put the competitors CarPlay inside Mhm. suck it Tesla and Rivian and everyone
01:42:34
not giving me CarPlay and Android Auto. Get over yourself. Did they say Tesla's finally going to add CarPlay? Are they allegedly?
01:42:40
I'll give them a ton of credit for doing that. They should do it. Yeah. Yeah. They said that that Well, everyone assumes that they need that to like pump
01:42:47
their sales up again, but they haven't done it yet. But they might do it because that's what they need. Well, remember according to Apple, like
01:42:54
95% of people wouldn't buy a car without CarPlay in it. Yeah, that was the best CarPlay
01:43:00
experience I've had in a car. Yeah. Um anyway, the list goes on. Shout out to Hugo Bar who uh ex Google
01:43:06
guy, friend of the show. Had him on a show one time. He was able to source this for us cuz he was also a big guy at
01:43:13
Xiaomi and that's how he was able to get us the car. What would it take for you to want this car? Assuming it was sold
01:43:19
like you would actually like actually like Okay, it's available for sale. Uhhuh. Price aside. Uh-huh. Like what would you just buy it? Like no matter what?
01:43:31
I mean, I already have a daily that I love, but if I didn't, yeah, I would I would get this car. Even if it was like the price of the
01:43:36
daily that you love. Oh, cuz that what we don't know what would it would realistically cost if you
01:43:41
brought it here, you know? So, like I mean if I didn't have a car and I was like trying to pick a car, I would pick
01:43:47
the SU7 up until about $75 $80,000. Okay. It's really good. Do you like it more than the Lucid Air Sapphire? No, but that car is $250,000.
01:43:58
And I would pick that car pretty much anything over $250. But like Yeah, the the Xiaomi is I would pick it over any
01:44:06
Tesla. Yeah, I think I would pick it over any like the Lucids that I tested with the air suspension that are not the
01:44:12
Sapphire. I would probably pick this Xiaomi over those. I just wish I had a little more range
01:44:17
because the Lucids have like 400 500 miles of range, but everything else about the Xiaomi was awesome. So, really good.
01:44:23
Very nice. Can I um There's a lot of chatter on Twitter, which mostly was like, "Wow,
01:44:29
these cars are amazing. I'm sad we don't have them in America." There's a lot of Tesla fanboys absolutely freaking out
01:44:35
about this and being pretty mad, which kind of makes it seem like it's doing really good. Well, it's really funny. I reviewed this
01:44:40
car. People on YouTube went, "Ah, cool car." and commented about the car. People on threads went, "Oh, cool
01:44:46
feature." And commented about the feature. People on threads saw it and went, "Oh, let's talk about how this
01:44:52
compares to Tesla like or Twitter. That's how Twitter is." Uh, so I saw that, too. Yeah. Crazy. I thought it was funny. It's so weird
01:44:59
that like the website where people get paid to say nice things about Tesla, you know, people say nice things about Tesla. Like who would ever expect that?
01:45:05
There was It was very obvious when all the mean comments, you'd click on their profile and dollar sign TSLA was in it
01:45:12
every single A lot of them were like, "Well, this car doesn't have self-driving, so it's not as good."
01:45:17
Self-driving saves lives. Yeah, that was an actual comment I saw. I guess you could just reduce every car to does it have Tesla self-driving or
01:45:23
not. And if that's your version of an advanced take on cars, then keep shipping that. But I think there's a lot
01:45:28
of interesting things about this product. Teslas don't have Teslas. Okay, ignore that. Ignore that. Ignore that.
01:45:34
Um, yeah, this was this was a really good complete product in a lot of ways and that was worth talking about. Well, speaking of Tesla, really quick, sort of.
01:45:46
Where are we in the segment? This link is still here. Wait, this Are we talking about this? Have you seen this yet? I watched this clip. Did you watch this clip? I can't tell.
01:45:52
Do we know anything else about this clip? We know what happens. Yes. Okay. So, where is this from? I'm going to explain something to you. Okay, so we all know
01:45:58
the Tesla Optimus robot, right? We all know that they're remote controlled. We do. Not everyone says it's not.
01:46:04
Not everybody thinks like that. Well, you have to phrase it like this one is remote control. It's pretty clear
01:46:10
if you leave the cookies out on Christmas Eve. So, there's this incredible clip of a
01:46:17
Tesla Optimus robot who had been serving people water bottles. Um, and you know, I'd been serving them, you know, autonom
01:46:23
autonomously not. And then at one point, uh, the robot just picks its hands up, takes off an invisible headset, and then just falls backwards. It like just minorly bumps the table,
01:46:39
gets frustrated, and then beautiful. Like, at first I'm like, "Oh, that's so funny." It takes his headset off, but then it just like freezes and just fall
01:46:46
like comedically falls backwards through a like curtain. Guys, guys, guys, but have you tried
01:46:52
version 14 yet? Oh, yeah. True. Tell me, have you tried? This clip is outdated as long as version 14 exists.
01:46:58
The the best part about this is that this event was called the Tesla autonomy visualized event.
01:47:03
Oh, that's where it came from. When this was not autonomous, it's not autonomous. You think it was that got the person who
01:47:09
was wearing the headset so fast? They're like, somebody picked up a water bottle for
01:47:14
themselves. They're like, I'm out. I'm out. What? One of the water bottles like explodes. Watch right here. when it
01:47:20
falls down. This is brutal. He hits it so hard. This is a tough clip. Yeah, it's beautiful. I just, you know, this will make the headlines, but none of the successful autonomy of the robot will make headlines, guys. All
01:47:31
right, so last thing before we go to trivia. A few weeks ago, uh I had mentioned that Fairphone was going to
01:47:37
finally start selling stuff in the US. They were going to sell the Fairphone 6 in the US and they're going to sell the new the all new Fairbuds XL which are
01:47:45
headphones that you know they're it's confusing when they fair buds but they're XL but they're not buds they're
01:47:51
actually there's also no regular fair buds. Yeah. So there's just the XL. Yeah. So anyway, um I talked about that
01:48:00
and the funny thing about that is that there are there's a thing called an embargo. Wait, there are fair buds?
01:48:05
Oh. Uh are there? So I was like I'm pretty sure there's fair buds. Okay, good. A week or so ago,
01:48:10
um, Fairphone posted a teaser on their Instagram. So, do me a favor. Click on the link that I put in the show notes. Mhm. Uh, the Instagram link. Got it. Okay.
01:48:21
So, describe what this video is that they posted. Someone pulling up a box and then it
01:48:27
says stay tuned. So, what is on the box? Braille. A QR code and Can you scan that QR code?
01:48:35
Can I? Let's try. Marquez, can you describe where it brought you? It takes me to a YouTube video that just says, "Introducing the improved Fairbuds
01:48:41
XL." And it's a 45se secondond video of Wait, what? The headphones. No, they changed it.
01:48:47
Oh, mine takes me there, too. So, up until they had literally announced this today.
01:48:54
It took you to the YouTube the waveform episode where I accidentally broke Embargo.
01:49:00
Really? Yeah. Wow. That's hilarious. That's Are you serious? I'm serious. They emailed me about it.
01:49:06
That's so good. They emailed me. They're like, "Hey, David." And then wink. And then they they shut the showed the frame and then
01:49:12
I went to it and I was like, "Oh my god." Well, and in the comments of that post, people say, "Where does the cure go?" And then
01:49:17
someone says, "A YouTube podcast." Anyway, um, incredible. These are officially Was that Megan Fox? No. No. Megan Fox was Bieber. Oh, okay. Okay.
01:49:29
Shout out to Megan. Uh, anyway, they're Transformers was lit. They're new headphones. They sent them to me. They're They're much better than
01:49:36
the first Fairbuds XL. Um they have this plush material on them. I forgot to bring them today. I really wish I had
01:49:42
brought them. Oh, I brought mine. You have them? I have them, but I didn't. Oh, I It's too late. I
01:49:49
describe them. All right. They they have this sort of a knit like 3D knit kind of material,
01:49:54
which is like much higher quality. Uh you can replace pretty much every aspect of them. The cool thing is that if you
01:50:00
had the Fairbuds XL from the last generation, you can actually just buy the new drivers from the new Fairbuds XL
01:50:06
and put them in the old Fairbuds XL. So, I think that's awesome. One thing is they sent me both colors. They sent me
01:50:11
the there's a really nice green one and then there's a black one and the joystick on the one. The green
01:50:16
one was broken when I got it, which sucks. Can you replace it? I don't know. Oh, good question.
01:50:22
In theory, you should be able to, right? Maybe. Isn't that like the whole thing? Or maybe the whole can. It's like a lot
01:50:28
of it. Yeah, it's a lot of it. Uh anyway, yeah, they're going to be sold in the US, uh just like the phones.
01:50:34
So, fair fair is like really making a US play now finally. $229 for these headphones.
01:50:39
229 US uh through Amazon US. I think they sounded pretty good. Um I think you're you're mostly buying the
01:50:46
sustainable like better, you know, better diamond blood diamond mine stuff. I think this is a good category for them. Like the phone obviously is hard because you try to miniaturaturize everything
01:50:59
and then the Fairphone is like a little thicker and that's fine, but like I imagine they can match all the specs of
01:51:05
normal headphones. There aren't like super cramp for space. Like they can have a 40hour battery life and A&C and microphones everywhere and all the stuff
01:51:11
that you expect out of headphones and make them comfortable and make them repaiable and not really sacrifice. So I think
01:51:17
that's a good that's a successful new category. I think that they sounded way better than the other ones. They they fold
01:51:24
really well. The other ones were just too stiff and like they had like this leather. I don't know. It's it's a lot
01:51:30
better now. So, it's good. Anyway, those are officially out. Um I apologize to absolutely no to absolutely. It is funny that they lean into it. It's like kind of when I've told the Samsung
01:51:42
story before on this the SSDs. Yeah, we kind of remind that I did a what's in my bag video like many years ago back when I was about to go to CES and I had the Samsung X5 SSD in my
01:51:53
and and I've been using it for like weeks and I was like this thing is awesome. I definitely need to shout it out and I shouted it out and then I was
01:51:59
as I was adding links to the description for all the stuff in my bag, I couldn't find a link for it. So, I just went oh well. And then I got a email from them
01:52:06
after the video published saying we're really glad you like the drive. Uh embargo's tomorrow. So, just I'll have a
01:52:14
link for you when you want to add that to this. The funny thing, too, is that that SSD was like went on to become like one of
01:52:20
the best SSDs for the next like 5 years, and they discontinued it, and there wasn't anything better than it for
01:52:27
another like few years. Yeah, it was awesome. Yeah, they were selling like secondhand for a lot of
01:52:33
money, which is crazy for a Samsung SSD. I know. I know. But anyway, but anyway, it'll never be discontinued.
01:52:39
Trivia. Good answer. until this podcast crumbles. You haven't seen my 2026 plans yet?
01:52:45
Oh my god. Yeah. No more trivia. What was the name of the cancelled Google ARXR project?
01:53:02
Damn it. I don't have the right answer, but I do have a good answer. I'll give you a hint. No, I won't. Wait,
01:53:15
sounds like we all need the hint. Yeah, this one's a little difficult. I How much time do we have?
01:53:21
That's the hint. I wanted to ask a different question, but I realized I spoiled it by putting the answer in memes because I got an email from some
01:53:28
PR agent this week about about asking me to come check out a product that they claimed was the world's smartest toilet. Um, we made a joke. Go to Japan.
01:53:41
This one was genius, bro. I want the wrapped from that toilet. Yeah. No, but that was what made it so
01:53:48
smart is it would like analyze your pee and make make health recommendations and then also if you sell your data
01:53:54
if you bought it for old people and no one used it for 12 hours, it would notify your loved ones which actually is
01:54:00
kind of cool. I mean, I don't use my bathroom for 12 hours. Okay, we're not going to get into that. We're not going to
01:54:06
All right. Do you want the hint? Yeah. No. Well, we can't change it to change it.
01:54:11
I really bungled this one, guys. All right. Flip them. Oh, boy. Okay. All right. Who wants to go first? I I'm wrong. I'll just say I wrote Google Beam because it can beam you to a
01:54:21
new location. I think that is a thing, but it's not this thing. No, it was not in Android 4. I wrote Project Buhon.
01:54:31
It's not Halloween anymore. I said project glass. What an idiot. Wait. Oh, I should have said air. It was air. The answer was project Iris
01:54:42
project. That makes way too much sense for a Google project name. I know, right? That's why it got cancelled. RIP.
01:54:48
Yeah. Score time. Marquez has 10. Andrew with 13. Feel like I've had 10 for like
01:54:54
I know it's been a minute. David with nine. All right, here's your chance. This is it. You guys can all get a point.
01:55:00
Why don't you meet me in the middle? With the new Android XR stuff, they introduced a new toolkit
01:55:07
called Jetack Compose. What? And because we didn't have enough time for Ellis to
01:55:12
give you a hint, I will give you guys a hint. It rhymes with shimmer. Jetpack joy ride that doesn't ride with shimmer.
01:55:28
Jetpack joy rider. Joy rider jetpack. Veritoss. Be really funny if it was just shimmer. That would actually be hilarious. I
01:55:41
would feel really dumb. Flip them and read. Flip them. Now, Marquez, what did you write?
01:55:56
Jetpack composed. Dimmer. Dinner. Andrew, what did you write? Glimmer. David, I wrote Glimmer. Correct.
01:56:08
We're finally tied. Marquez, don't you like being tied with me? I've had 10 points since 2022.
01:56:15
It's been so long since I got a point. We're in the same club now. 10point club. Carry the one. We're all
01:56:20
carrying the one. That's good. 10 point club. Remember that? Oh, yeah. When you by accident,
01:56:26
we we learned something new. That's the point of trivia. We either get it right or we learn something new. And today I learned two new facts. So,
01:56:32
I thought the point of trivia was to win. It's about the friends you make along the way. Thanks for watching. Thanks for
01:56:38
listening. I assume you've already subscribed. So, thanks for getting us to 500,000 subscribers. This is huge year for Waveform. We still got more coming
01:56:44
up. We got regular schedule episodes. We got bonus episodes. December don't stop. So, I guess we call it techber.
01:56:49
No, catch the next one. We don't say that. See you later. Bye. Bye. Some people say
01:56:54
waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Reven. We're partner with Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro music was created by Vainil. We can go.
01:57:10
They spent hundreds of hours and sleepless nights prompting This