Gadgetory

you it's a galaxy s eight world and we're just living in it we're going to run down our early coverage of Samsung's newest hottest phone and plus we're seeing more android wear updates getting pushed down to smartwatches and jamie is making a little noise with their next generation of phones to these stories plus your viewer emails so make sure you're charged and ready for episode 249 of the pocket now weekly this weekly podcast is where we detect and discuss those gadgets that make our lives mobile smart phones tablets and wearables it's all the stuff you wished existed when you were a kid and the most exciting news you'd see about galaxies was watching reruns of cosmos on PBS i'm juan carlos back now senior editor pocketnow.com blasting the signal from sunny Southern California joined this week as always by plexi podcast producer Jules Wong how's it going out there on the east carson allottees behind cosmos are just awesome first you beg for it and then freaking Tyson just close and drops mic everyone acid and and ridiculously awesome that that was produced by what's his name for family guy Seth mcFarland Luke almost forgot that guy's name a terrible casting director here in Los Angeles I can't remember that guy's name but Before we jump into too much of the tech tomfoolery and all the fun conversations that were apt to get into on this podcast we do have to take a moment to thank this week's sponsor and that is blue apron and we get it you're busy but that doesn't mean you don't have time to put together interesting meals using high quality ingredients a blu ray print takes the guesswork out of cooking delivering the exact amounts of food you need for each recipe no joke I put one together last night it needed one scallion I had once Kathy in the box and all ingredients meats and vegetables are sourced ethically using sustainable sources and those and those sources are often very close to you supporting local farmers in your area meals are delivered to 99 percent of the continental United States and the costs are under ten dollars per serving now I actually have recipe cards up here with me some of the meals that are coming out this month Swiss chard and potato shakshuka with sweet peppers and garlic toast we've got mole a spiced beef chili with russet potato and lime creme fraiche and spicy chicken sandwiches with Alabama white sauce and roasted sweet potatoes we put this one together last night and it was delicious these recipe cards are phenomenal because they have like this full rundown of everything that you need to do to put the the recipe together and all of the ingredients that you're going to use from the blue apron packaging putting together rich flavorful meals shouldn't be stressful or intimidating so that kind of documentation is always a nice touch each week you can customize your menu to fit your particular tastes dietary restrictions including vegetarian options blu-ray print has an extensive collection of recipes so subscribers won't encounter the same meal twice over the course of a year unless requested cooking together can help improve family bonds and blue apron families cook together three times more often and my little daughter is absolutely fascinated by me thrown around pots and pans I throw her in her high chair I start cooking in the kitchen and she also gets to kind of sample and taste some of the things that I'm putting together it's a fun way to bond over food and often her favorite Disney songs so you will love how good it feels to it how you will love how good it feels and tastes this is their their end cap this is why I'm kind of stumbling on this to create incredible home-cooked meals with blue apron so don't wait check out this week's menu and get your first 3 meals for free by going to blue apron com / pocket now again blue apron com / pocket now for your first three meals on us and we thank them for supporting the pocket net week you will love how feels that good good it's just like I was getting ahead of myself and like and yeah i kinda I I didn't stick the landing unfortunately but we've been using blue apron for a little while it's a nice way we kind of use it as a way to fill in fill in the gaps on our weekly cooking and meal prep and it is it's really great for three of us one of us is a little baby that when we get the meals for two that's enough food for all three of us to eat so that's just kind of a nice little little side then you know like a little insider info that i don't know the blue apron wants you know yes if you got a toddler they tend to not eat as much as a full-grown adult they put down and that's why you should probably um get you know baby food yeah that's that's the thing that's you should I you know what I really thought you know you have this idea of what babies do I really thought she was gonna be eating baby food a lot longer nope she's like she eats the same things as we do apparently toddlers are also people who knew I mean you know human still but they grow up to be inconceivably weird like beings and then you just started around toddler age so yeah I mean what it yeah right about now man so you probably already like introduced her to pistachio ingrained salami and and you'll just be infecting her with other kinds of them weirdness I haven't gotten there gotten there yet but apparently my daughter is a big fan of sweet and mild curries oh okay like Indian food I have no idea where that came from cuz you don't you don't have in my why you don't have you don't have like even like the Japanese or Chinese styles it was more just like what we thought we would be exposing or two in that like you know flavor combo even a very mild curry is a very powerful flavor you know like we weren't expecting her to really gravitate towards that but you know we we sat down at this indian place and she's just going to town on a korma and she's got the other like little dipping sauces and stuff and you're like wow she's she's ahead of the curve they're sickly and tingle Oh exactly but I we're be able to freely talk about this thing now that we have a specific space in our in our agenda to do so yes we're trying a little format shift on how we we normally go about talking about tech news and some of the things that we're working on your pocket now so hopefully this is this is a fun way to consume the pocket now podcast and also I mean for those of you listening I'll go technically the segment hasn't even start here I still have to get through like the the new news digest thing that we would do yes so we should probably save that but it's also for those of you you know the little behind the scenes here like Jules and I only really get to talk once a week so part of the podcast is you all did having to deal with the fact that this is how we catch up like this is happily feels like our work and conversation is our water cooler like I get to talk to Kwan about my kids as well yeah sure I wish okay maybe I should adopt anyways I'm I'll just go through the news and we'll talk again in four minutes whether or not we would like to talk about chicken korma curry but let's let's just get through the news here and we start with the galaxy s 8ns a-pluses some Korean users who are just getting their hands on the devices say that their screens have odd wit tint to them samsung says the issue should not be a quality-control one and can be adjusted within the device if users aren't satisfied they can take over to s service center plenty of new hardware up ahead as well this week was shall be eastern as introduced the flag should meet six To China we're talking about a Snapdragon 820 five six gigs of ram stereo speakers dual cameras in a very glossy or a very ceramic design and a price starting above three hundred sixty dollars sales comments April twenty-eighth a few days prior to that we're tracking LG's embarrassing track record in Europe continuing on with the g6 apparently 24 countries in the continent will have to wait until at least Monday that's April 24 for the phone to launch that's after gate using Korea the US Canada Australia earlier this month mind you galaxy s eight orders are shipping right now and the similar availability problems have been told over 320 and other phones so that's not good beyond that we see invitations that are out for us to squeeze for the brilliant new and they those are from HTC pocket now has been trucking a phone codenamed ocean with a pressure sensing you are basically it's like the side bezels tentatively named edge sense so we can expect a lot more about that on age 16 to the summer now and sharps newest phone it looks like a samsung flagship of old but it brings us Snapdragon 835 two companies decide early May rangeline up calling it the aqua park it's being paired up with a funky robic hole in telligent swiveling charge based expect to hear more from the foxconn owned OEM soon about that late May will be when the last legacy Android wear SmartWatch gets updated to Android wear to point out if you haven't noticed 360 while a watch or some other eligible device that hasn't been updated yet you may be lucky to see the update coming at the end of this month the time will tell LG display's reported to be making OLED screens for the shall we me notes the next cleaner device and potentially for LG electronics own v30 coming later later this year the company's still crying itself away from LCD manufacturing though which may so be fuel for a contract with apple to provide for the iphone 7 hands of use 7s which is not the fancier iphone 8 coming out simultaneously speaking of that iphone 8 could go without touch ID multiple stories you can check out at our website claim that Apple might open it the tech all together put a sensor at the back and this is the least likely situation it seems successfully implement one below the display there have been trials about that we'll get back to you as soon as developments occur finally on the carrier side Sprint is now offering global roaming data at LTE speeds for its unlimited plan users it's free in Canada and Mexico most elsewhere for all customers except in China and where it's more expensive it's five dollars daily and twenty-five dollars a week t-mobile offers a maximum speed of up to 200 56 kilobits per second that's included with their team over 1 plus plan at semicon dollars which is second tier above the basic team and that is all the news you can see full details on these doors and more hip pocket now calm and look for the podcast section to get to this episode's to run down so with all that said what's your feeling this week what like there's been plenty of I I kind of wanted to backtrack just real quick on use front every Rica picked one of the stories us yeah so oh yeah no so so one of the things like I the the xiaomi announcement that they're going to be partnering with LG was for me one of the more exciting quieter stories in in the rundown and pocket now right now because we haven't seen LG in the phone space with an OLED panel since me relax and in fact i was just commenting on this with someone we were in a conversation on one of the youtube videos for the galaxy s eight you know like it's really a shame that the last flex got saddled with such a crap welcome processor on that first generation the first batch of those qualcomm a-10s because the screen was on point i mean it was a great step in the right direction for some competition for samsung in the oled space and it's you know it's kind of a bummer that we haven't seen LG try anything like that again even if you don't have a bendy phone you can still put an OLED on a g-series a ravine it was kind of a kind of bummed that we haven't seen more in the plastic OLED the film that's because they've been working on that for the flex apparently not faring too terribly well for phones I guess but they have been using them in their smart watches um maybe oh yeah because the size characteristics or something within that system that really works out that plastic OLED is more feasible for smartwatches and smartphones but I mean it's still do you think johnny is going to go with the platico letter do you think we're going to take some of that allege sheet and put glass on top of it for a more traditional I'm not sure if this is the active matrix kind that we're talking about here just they say oleaga those sources don't really go through if that is the source from the the investor and it was like a couple of agencies that compiled this report so yeah it's a drawing I mean LG has lots of competition ninety-five percent i think is the key statistic here oulad the Olin market for smartphones is from Samsung and China is starting to get into things to a couple of its suppliers or ramping up the factories hopefully they can get multiple hundreds of thousands of units per month instead of the tawdry 37,000 per month everything like aren't things that I was worried about when we were talking about the iphone oled iphone back then we didn't know it was going yeah either this year next year but uh is that like we we kept seeing members like in the tens of thousands per month and even with that going all the way like 18 20 24 months back that was only going to provide you know a couple billion units are best when we're talking about a phone that would take a huge portion of the 200 300 million that apple would set in iphones that year so now do we think that that's still on point like if we're talking about a more traditional iphone 8 launch and then an iphone premium that because it would be a more expensive iphone and a bit more of a specialty item like i'd be able to keep the numbers or sales lower to match sort of oled production I don't know on that end I mean does that make sense it should make sense in in real world as in like the place that you and I live in but market analyst high street banks that just like okay so this is probably they're taking you know anywhere from forty to sixty percent of you know new model production this year as opposed to the boring drab old iphone 7s which is also going to be decided maybe the 7s plus we did a story about LG display perhaps being very interested in taking the LCD contracts for those two phones so then we make sense yeah this is a trial period this is a transition period this is definitely a rough time it's going to be certainly interesting to see which any of these manufacturers will be able to make the most dense against Santa so you know in speaking of Samsung and screens probably start shifting over into our actual galaxy SI cover g stuff but to backtrack to your very first story I don't think this is going to show up on my crappy web camera here but if you set the galaxy s yeah delirium if you set the galaxy SI to basic mode now on the s7 that actually delivered I think the most accurate screen tone ever measured at the time by a smartphone if you set it to bills from a display right now if I said it to ya from from display me and I might be misremembering that so someone please correct me down in the comments if I'm wrong because I didn't pull up any kind of show notes for this um but if I switch the s8 into basic mode the output is pretty warm yeah that is kind of reddish or i get up around it won't impaired to and it's you know we've seen this in other AMOLED units from the one I remember them I think was the Moto know the Nexus 6 from Motorola yeah yeah very pronounced you know it could go down really low it always seems like you know like you know we made the point of mentioning the low-light capabilities were just drops down to one knit you can it's perfect for load rating and all that and it's also but also has this red 10 which you know sacrifice but you know it also have that kind of indirect um benefit of blue light reduction I guess maybe so it's ya know better provide so that's not with any kind of I filter or anything on either that's taking it at its most basic like there shouldn't be any color processing happening on that screen and it seems like that display is naturally a little on the warmer side something I just kind of curious i mean like we never we didn't really get the true RGB stripe we didn't get the 4k display there are a lot of things about this and shifting the form factor that I think Samsung has kind of slowed played on the rest of the phone but reading that story you know that's kind of a bummer i'm going to go back and go into an adaptive brightness and color mode now just because i don't like the look of that important nothin on my phone screen whereas on my s7 I used that almost exclusively in basic mode because I felt it really was the most accurate from when I was shooting photos and taking video so that's that's kind of a nice spot like it would be an odd transition for 4 from one phone generation maybe that one of the more outlandish theories that I've just thought of the second is that we are looking at like logs I think infrared is shorter wavelengths right now wait that no I ya know it'd be longer because more frequently is the blue and the ultraviolet and all that stuff so if it's shorter doesn't that it don't they like convey themselves longer or like farther than blues usually because it well yeah I mean if we're talking like roygbiv then yeah reddish tones are longer wavelengths you know like so I'm not what little a little high school physics looking through the prism and that's it so like they really make you read that are really pronouncing themselves in just a given like neutral situation i'm not exactly sure of that but you know i mean it's what we've seen in other devices so maybe it's just a rule of thumb yeah I I don't know i i'd be curious to see other people spots like if there's so here would be i think the one thing that would make an actual difference in my opinion of the phone if there's a disparity in the consistency of color tone from other galaxy SI units then that makes me a little nervous about samsung's QA if all if this panel design really is sort of structured and it's a little bit warmer naturally and they're using some sort of adaptive code out of the box to make it whatever brightness or whiteness that you want then i'm not i'm not concerned by that at all I mean this is a consumer-facing phone this isn't sort of a professionally calibrated device we're not looking at the same kind of accuracy we would expect from a graphic design tablet or something like that but if this is an inconsistent issue with panels then we know that Samsung has got some issues and fulfilling orders from the manufacturing side in trying to keep other that opening scene from american beauty is going to be lovely on that phone are you know just like you know i'll always fire up the scene of the floating plastic bag because it's the most beautiful thing thank you on that bag are gonna be really popular yeah this is this is my interpretive dance version of the plastic bag oh man our listeners miss out on so much don't they the audio version of this show is the word be sorry look look let's talk more about the holistic aspect of the yeah and we looks I mean do you have the box with you we can I can pad out if you need to and we could talk about the boxing whoa look at that look at that desk all the way back over there look it's a black box and it's a interesting looking and let me let me get out in front of my face I it is a very dark that's the retail packaging design I mean yeah this isn't this isn't the super awesome I are you joke about that time a got a little bit I mean he got his phones before me so I'm only going into my second day of getting to play with this phone but not only did he get his phones before me he also got the super awesome mega like I think it also came with a gear VR the new gear VR or something like that and I didn't get to play with any of that I went straight into reviewing the audio stuff so you know that's that get down to business I'm going to pay 99 99 for that extra on-ear treatment with them I actually haven't seen this whole video so I'm trying not to be distracted but I am like loading this you know is he's unboxing with a little biofilm and the huge oversized like super wide box that you know I mean it's there on our YouTube page it's darren pocket now and includes everything that is bundled with pre-orders well at least but gear VR and the with the controller that we see on screen right now that looks pretty pretty quality stuff and then there's the extra the on your level here earphones that are paired with a 256 so Giga has SD card 499 extra dollars have you choose to these things started chipping out today technically so the stock pre-orders are like like forced down pre-orders on April 17 and then move them move starving shipments t-mobile actually started shipping them out on Monday of the 18th so that yeah there early streak going for them and you know overall is like you you get the feel that they're nice it's a nice something for reviewers yeah well that's a nice that's a nice way to unbox a phone and I'm definitely yeah i'm super jealous i think especially look at the boring edition what about quad at wine what's a little i really don't want to do this because this is going to take up too much time it's going to be horrible and not interesting at all but what is the unboxing experience for you I so it's well it's terrible right now because like over there on the floor is the charger and the cable so get a charger and a cable that's pretty spiffy really love and then you also i have early and just throw it right on the floor i mean spike it like a football you do get the micro USB adapter so for your existing micro USB cables you can convert them to us bc i really do like this trend of samsung including an OTG adapter for a full-sized USB port so it's supposed to be used the idea is that you use it for transferring your data from another phone but keep it because it'll also plug in two cameras it will plug into USB flash drives it's a nice little handy add-on as we try to keep our phones we start treating our phones more like pocketable computers and then of course you do get the the premium earbuds that will retail for a night will talk about and separated from the phone which we're going to talk about notice I didn't say that they're a cagey headphones you get the premium earbuds that's a tee for what we're going to talk about here in just a bit and that's that's what comes in the box I think this is this is a well a well accessorized device I'd really love for samsung to include some kind of clip on or snap on protective backplate like we've been seeing from Huawei I've been a huge fan of Huawei adding that last little piece of accessory and I think it would come in clutch to have just a clear soft plastic shield that can go on the back of your galaxy SI because this is still one of my biggest complaints with this arrow they had last fall so um you've seen a dumb no I keep thinking lamberti but he's not dumb Esposito his video on that oh yeah but to peace yeah yeah yeah $20 the bell $20 you watching him like no means and yeah those are well and like just hilarious like the worst case you can find everything tactics you know you seen grass what better kabuki knees on so like there you go oh man well that's I'll have to take his word on your night and I'm trying I'm trying to do in case well yeah I'm not interested in that case but um you know it it should be it should be disclosed that for all of our coverage our galaxy SI coverage is sponsored by d brand and the galaxy SI that I got we did put on a dbrand skin just to get a couple vanity shots for for the ads which I don't even think we're using which is kind of a bummer but I was kind of sad taking the skin off I liked having a better tactile grip on the back of the phone and and like as soon as we're done with this podcast I'm going to be outside again to shoot more for the real camera review and I'm really anxious about holding this thing out in public like I'm the one who's rolling around in the dirt I'm holding it over freeway overpasses like I i cram I try to cram week's worth of shooting into a couple days so it's a really aggressive of photo schedule to get all of the setups of y'all going around you're you're running for the crab pincers as well sometimes because you got to get the right aspect ratio have the respect we should I orientation I like it's it's it's the same it's the same criticisms we've been having of these edge screens for a while it's like to avoid any kind of touching of the display where your camera viewfinder is you start doing this really light fingertip hold and the new camera app has a zoom where you slide the shutter button up or down which means if you're trying to just rapidly touch for a couple different shots like especially if you're shooting in manual mode you're very likely not perfectly perpendicular tapping on the screen you might have like a little flick up and if you do that it doesn't actually take the photo it then initiates part of the zoom and it's like you have to be even more careful in how lose Inge early much and parts it it is a little twitchy ER than the s7 was again this is a muscle memory issue more than anything else like I am not used to this phone I've had it for less than 48 hours but I did not have this retraining this retraining wasn't necessary going from the s60 s7 that was baller and even for the day that I got to play with a note 7 um same thing like I didn't have this kind of like relearning like just barely holding it on the edges of my fingertips and then having to interact with slightly more precise pieces of software so all in all this has still been giving off a very positive first impression but there are a lot of philosophical questions that I hope Samsung can address over the life of this particular kind of getting paranoid about how many times I've used my filler word or words you know you know but um Jackie you know but I'm going to ask my question anyways because the do ahead OA so just the length of the phone and like I make you consider the Holy in new ways because I've been able to find that like a like a weird off like this upside grip where it's you know you hold the phone this way like a coffee mug and then you just tilt it over and then assist as needed with the volume buttons with the other hand like that seems like a decent idea for a fried bread but I don't particularly know what kind of solution so you're you're I think I think you're you're totally right there and I think the g6 is a little easier to do that with and I think the regular sized or the smaller si is going to fit right in line with that kind of operation the SI plus starts to get just that little bit bigger that little bit taller that it's just still not quite as handy to do that kind of phone twisting turning shifting kind of along a lot of this also comes down to the fact that i think the LG is just easier to hold on to because of the flat sides so it's not like this phone is so much thinner than a G then I like the s8 plus some Waggoner's it's our physics oh yeah feels yeah exactly exactly it's because of the tapers the symmetrical glass on the front and back of the SI plus that it feels so much thinner but because of that I really do feel like in these first two days so much more of my operation is balancing this phone on my fingertips because I know I'm going to have to reach up if I want to use the fingerprint sensor I know I'm going to have to slide down to hit the home button from my thumb I know I'm gonna have to slide back up or flip the phone flat for my thumb to reach the notification shade or if I want the fingerprint sensor to use the notification shade which I totally screwed up in my 24-hour first look it's like I couldn't find the setting and i was looking at all the fingerprint the fingerprint security settings and there was no option therefore using the fingerprint sensor to pull the notification shade and it's in it just it's in a different venue so that's permanently baked into that video please go to the pocket now YouTube channel and make fun of me there plato deliveries or they pull up here haha no to be doing this right now ah look at that dork oh so I this phone makes me nervous because it comes from a land down under and actually yes it does watching the body yeah that's not that much more than so audio tablet you and you sit and there aren't any like real full body like plastic cases for that yet oh there there are actually um we've got a pretty good relationship with urs design and they're going to be sending us out some cases just to kind of incorporate into some of our other reviews it's just again the phones so brand spankin new that I think a lot of those PR reps are trying to push two different producers in fact we might be bringing on a new pocket no team members soon and hopefully he can start digging into more of the accessories that why what I've been told about I this you're just getting the scoop now me we've been trying to engage in a few conversations with some other youtubers and some other people that we want to partner with and we're just now starting to get to that point so hopefully by by next week maybe he'll even be able to join us on the hog and ethically it's another little T there so yeah this is the I mean well I want to go back to your 24 hour of first impressions because I do want to include the sense that it it's not all brimstone and fire and you know there's definitely some cream and chrome like ratatat has described oh yeah and a lot of this i mean again a wee we got a couple of very frustrated comments like we were just throwing shade part of doing a 24-hour video isn't necessarily just to be wow and impressed by an unboxing I didn't get the box be impressed by an unboxing it's to start asking some of the questions that we need to examine as we go through the review process and so against phones like the g6 or the v 20 or a huawei mate 9 Samsung is asking me to change my behavior and how I handle a phone if I want to use the phone naked or I'm going to have this beautifully designed device this is one of the most beautifully constructed pieces of consumer electronics you have ever seen when you handle it in person but I'm gonna have to cover it up with a case or put some kind of skin on it for better grip else it's just a really big Barb's slick slippery soap so that's a part of that review process we have to start asking some of those questions and looking at what is it that changes our behavior and this is one of the things like I've not been a huge fan of curved glass and glass on glass design since I smashed a note 5 that's the only phone I've ever broken during the review I've scratched some phones i dented some phones it's the only phone I've rendered completely inoperable and from a pretty minor drop so I've been very anxious about this kind of design philosophy and this phone doesn't really change my opinion of that but now I have to look at what is it that is changing about my behavior when I use this phone and especially when I use this phone very aggressively like shooting the real camera review or taking it out and trying to do some water resistance tests or something like that and and I don't have those same concerns with the g6 I no ratings or whatever you know you can still smash a g6 you can still break it but there's just that little extra peace of mind with the mil spec rating and I don't feel like I'm really changing my grip on the phone from the v 20 or from a mate 9 because of the flat sides on the g6 so again it's just the 24 hours is my first part of the review process and then we'll be able to examine those questions and find the pros and cons and and selling celebrate a bit more of the phone after we've gotten more of a chance to get used to it we weren't in on the early pre-embargo stuff so a lot of the reviews that are out there from people that have already spent probably a week or more with the phone you know I'm still playing catch-up there this is still ran so there's a lot of coping going on compared to other devices that you view this is the most you would think that you have done and not the most for pocket now because you know I made spent almost all of his time with Samsung nearly exclusively on the s7 edge I didn't spend any time with the S Evan edge and I did get a note and I got the note days before the major recalls on the note so I'm coming my last my last long term use samsung phone was the regular flap front s7 so that's that is kind of a little bit of of a sea change you know if you were coming from an essex a flat front s6 not in s6 edge or a note 5 a flat front no 5 and then you came over to this s7 there is a little behavior modification in how you go about using the phone now I think for a lot of our audience especially the people that flip their phones from more frequently this isn't going to be a difficult acclimation but I'm looking at you know like my mom's on an a galaxy s5 I don't know that the essay is going to be a phone she's really going to enjoy for the way that she's been using her s5 so it's those little things or Mike my dad is still on a galaxy alpha yeah you know it's like a little mini baby note for design those those hard metal flat edges and I was rubbery back plate I don't think he's I loved that phone i really wish they had kept up with that because i just love the note for design language in general but i don't know that he's really gonna dig the essay coming from a phone like that so again it's it's I'm not worried about our audience and our audience is already like a lot of the people that are leaving comments especially are people who already own it already own the s8 and they're coming to join the conversation it's more or not and I hope it's not really coming across like I'm trying to put it all over this phone because I'm not it's just this is this is something that's fresh for me and this is something that's new for me and I'm also trying to look at this from the perspective of other members of my family other friends of mine I think we take it for granted that we're just going to get used to some of these changes and I think there are a few things about this device not that I would ever say that this should take the device out of a purchasing wreck mendation but there are a few things about this device that I think are going to be a challenge for some users out there interesting um another I don't mean to pile on this whole economics aspect but one of the features oh no please please do because I think this is a fun debate you know what I mean like like it's a fun thing to kind of me because I'm asking I'm asking you the questions but I don't get to ask like the other side I guess questions like because they're not he's right um there and they might not even exist who knows [Laughter] anyway so one of the big feature paradigms that was introduced with the edge is the edge sweet like you'd swipe away the edge screen and you would have all the tools like contacts and and other apps and whatnot how have you been able to get along with that feature if you ever use it at all because um one of the features that i enjoyed from Chris Lacey's action launcher and I believe maybe or maybe not a one plus as employment but it was like an instant shelf where you from any points in on the phone no matter what if you were on the home screen or in an app you would be able to swipe the shelf and get access to any app that you would need so that I feel like would be so I haven't been the biggest fan of edge because I I do somewhere in my bookcase full of crazy old phones i do have an s6 edge+ um I actually haven't been the biggest fan of that kind of you I edition so I am going through I'm still setting up like I just got all my apps last night on my second home page set up the way that I normally would and I'm right now I'm trying to simplify I used to be that guy who had seven full home pages and I kind of whittled that down to five and I kind of whittled it down to three and I'm down to two and I like trying to streamline what I can get to and a part of that is because my usage is very not like your average consumers where the muscle memory of navigating a phone kind of needs to stay the same no matter what phone I'm on just that I don't drive myself crazy so I'm still in the process of setting up the edge panel on this phone but so far I just don't see where that kind of add on really gets me to the services that I need or the contacts that I want to communicate with in any more efficient way than just a smart streamlined approach to customizing home screen panel so there's so much kind of going on right now where I'm looking at huawei was actually the company that made me start taking a look at this because there were so many extra steps involved in navigating Huawei menu they're like there's got to be a way to kind of clean this up and then over emu i-5 they've they've done a better job but there are still a few things like you've buried this setting three menus even you didn't really need to so if I'm gonna pull the edge panel you know that it's a gesture and it's a gesture which honestly might not always be perfectly executed and then you slide through the edge panel to get to the piece of information you want whereas if I've already customized my home screens for the most used services and the most contacted contacts that I've got I hit the home button you know like in terms of like programming muscle memory and what I'm getting used to for myself personally that's that to me sort of the most straightforward approach for how I can live my life while also being a gadget reviewer again like should I be trying to minimize even just repositioning the phone in my hand to interact with different parts of the hardware or software so that's where I'm kind of stuck like I've disabled bixby from the home screen so like when I slide to the right it doesn't pull up fix be there because I just want my home screens to be my home screens I'll play with the edge panel I'm not I don't think it's going to be something so we have all those kinds of them those elements where it's just dealing with the hand feel of the phone I want to move on in the short time we have left to some of the audio visual components of it um so let's go through the camera because I think you're in the middle of your process for that right now so far so good yeah so far so far very good um this isn't going to be revolution uh for samsung I think if you were on an s7 s7 edge I you probably won't be seeing tremendous differences in the photo and video output from the s8 a couple key things that I've already seen it because I've done mostly all of my night shots so low light photography night shot one thing I'm going to give a thumbs up is that we do seem to have a slightly better lens on the essay it's not quite as Flair prone as what we saw on the s7 and then a lot of the changes I think are coming down more to image processing more than some kind of radical hardware improvement this does use a different camera sensor than the s7 but what I'm noticing is more samsung I think following in the footsteps of what like the pixel is really good at not not necessarily in taking multiple photos but in using software algorithms to help reduce noise bring up more detail better contrast better color better clarity and this isn't radical departure from the S Evan but it genuinely seems to be improved across the board when you look at to sort of a shot from the hip quick photo here it's the middle of night on a busy street so you're you're lit by street lamps and then you look at the photos and like oh yes eight actually did deliver a better photo in that kind of auto mode in the moment kind of film differently um it works where it counts the most I guess you could say right now but it's an improvement where it counts the most I don't think the s7 I you know I think the f7 still works there especially if you've got a pretty good feel for your phone camera the only other major difference that I've been able to find is video now while shooting UHD there is an option to software crop so that you can further use software stabilization in addition to the hardware stabilization I haven't shot a lot with that yet so I'll be curious to see if that really does help improve handshake or if it's going to be the same sort of weird distortion that I find when you use a combination of software and hardware stabilization why not a big vana to have with the sensor and the frame because it's if it's very 816 yeah I'm soon i think it's the 13 megapixels so okay we're talking about like 5000 ish and you know 3,000 plus whatever yeah it's it's it's a total affordable sensor and so that 8 megapixel image yeah it's it's a pretty small window but we've seen where the pixel and the iphone deliver phenomenal software stabilization by punching in to that 4,000 pixel border and so Samsung could stand to improve their my big problem is with hardware stabilization always on that means the lens is wobbling you know the lens is compensating for the movement of the phone that does create optical distortions you know you see it a lot on LG phones right you go handheld and you see those big jello II swings because there's such a huge range of image stabilization on in LG there's a there's a smaller range of stabilization on a samsung but there is still optical distortion happening so when you have those wobbles happening and then you crock this is the worst hand drive I've ever done on camera but then you crop that image in the the software is panning to compensate for movement and the lenses wobbling so you often arrive at this kind of sub daughter really wobble a multi-step like it's hard to drive in words those of like the pixels are all of a sudden yeah okay they're kind of writing waves so your background stands to be just a little bit smoother but then you still see the swings of the lens in distorting field of view and I think that that effect is less pleasant than if you just had a little extra on shake in your video you know like it you know you look at a hallway and that's probably I think the busiest looking video of any phone from this year and I would still probably take that over the combo of software and hardware sort of mucking with the scene I think it makes it look kind of are we talking about too much is a good too much of a good thing in this case for the essay in particular I you know it's I don't think it's a situation of too much good things because I don't notice ever looked good I don't think this isn't this isn't unique to Samsung a lot of companies especially when you shoot HD video will combo hardware and software and I don't think it's ever looked good so this is just as something we need to test is the Samsung have a better solution for this like their software processing better or if we're going to use software stabilization should we be more focused on like the pixels implementation of it where there is no hardware image stabilization but that video in good light comes out buttery smooth that video in medium to low light looks really artifact II you know it as the software is trying to compensate for the longer shutter speed of each individual frame you get blurry streaky things happening it doesn't really smooth the video out very well so again it's all it's all compromises you know where do we want to put that compromise and honestly I think more people will probably land on the Samsung version of the compromise like if I were to just show you a blind taste test of low light pixel video and low light Samsung video I think more people would probably like the low like Samsung video but it's still something that we need to take a look at because i think in good light the pixel video would probably also we're expecting that a real camera review tomorrow i believe or sometime in the future i'm going to try and get it out tomorrow it might end up dropping over the weekend but it will become when they say podcast drops as well so by that time maybe you'll have different judgments what's this camera can do uh let's talk about yeah like tune back in because the the analogous will know your mind you're going to say the exact opposite of what you're talking about in this podcast so everything I totally should let's uh let's uh almost wrap this up with audio now we do have a unique situation just to gloss over I mean I don't want a gloss over but um there is a bigger issue with the summarized very summarized word better audio not the best internals are better than before and kind of closing in on the upper mid-range you would say speakers are just the same ish because no definitely situation so so so I I think that we we I tried to address all of you in the exact same sentence we um let's start with the speakers so we have the real audio review and we go into a little bit more depth and we actually have like our charts and graphs and stuff so that you can see what's going on to summarize the real audio review tldr over the s7 i do here not not a humongous but a noticeable improvement in quality because the sm and speaker was pretty weak oh I thought the S Evan was a step down from the s6 the essay I think would be a very minor improvement over the s6 and that's important because the common knowledge was waterproofing a phone makes the speaker less good and LG and Apple have broke both disproven that and now Samsung has finally caught back up so that's definitely something that we want to give them the thumbs up on getting back on track there the headphone output again we're coming at this from the Qualcomm powered Samsung's I don't think the XO knows powered Samsung's have had as many issues but in North America we get Qualcomm and they kind of use just whatever normal audio settings come with that chipset and it's always been closer to the bottom end of the smartphone spectrum this now gets us back up into Pettitte of territory against iphones which is which is a very positive step for samsung much better signal-to-noise ratios yeah I mean for all of my griping about Apple its they still deliver a a respectably high quality audio string even through that ridiculous dongle adapter that they've got for the Lightning connector so what's funny is and I mentioned this specifically in the real audio review what's funny is that this is all positive for a company like Samsung you know this is improvement this this is a better audio output for the headphone jack and it gets it's nearly identical to the output from the LG G six where a lot of people are griping about the LG G six because it's a step down from the LGV 20 and only a few select markets are going to get the v 20 DAC in the g6 where we know the v 20 is still one of the best headphone phones ever created so I just think it's a funny perspective where any minor improvement to a North American galaxy is kind of a big positive deal and it's the almost exactly the same output from the g6 which has been a negative talking point for a lot of the people who leave ganar videos there are some talking words we want to um I don't know trade bats with maybe if we want to get into our discussion about the AKG situation so I'm view if you will if you will going on with the the bundled in earphones from a kg so this isn't this is breaking news this is bleeding edge commentary did it did it did it um no so we put out the the day I got the phone I I was right on tasked to do the real audio review and while I was digging into that I felt it was just sort of it was worth splitting off the headphone commentary as a separate review and and I'm glad we did because it it sort of needed its own video space not to just be lumped in with the rest of the phone video review stuff that we've been doing sorry excuse me so I they're very high quality earbuds samsung saying that they're going to sell them for ninety nine dollars and i think they compete well against other sort of fashionable branded earphones your ear buds that are around that same price territory like in terms of actual output quality i would put them up near say the bno plays that i got with the v 20 and those retail for around 150 so those h3s are not cheap i I think Samsung's and spitting distance of that I like the binos better I think the highs on the binos could be a little bit more sparkly and a little more playful but I think Samsung's right in line with this pricing and i would say that they're competitive against other manufacturers like a v-moda where v-moda earbuds can often run around a hundred dollars now what bothers me and we put out a video today after we released the AKG earbud review we got a message from a samsung PR rep saying that our review was a little inaccurate because these are not a kg earbuds there samsung earbuds tuned by a kg and that disclosure actually did bother me a little bit because there's huge AKG branding on the earbuds all of Samsung's primary discussion points have said that these are earbuds from a kg that that's exactly what they said wonderful errors that we went to out in New York and that that type of disclosure means something to me because a kg is one of my all-time favorite audio brands my absolute favorite studio microphone is the AKG c 414 this is a company that it set the gold standard for recording and professional audio electronics since the late 60s i believe and so this makes me a little nervous with samsung owning the parent company of a kg being so cavalier with that branding that these are not a legitimate earbuds out at all and that that also the tone from samsung PR was that we should have known this we didn't know this not because we didn't do our homework we didn't know this because it really hasn't been disclosed in that way you know this this this really I don't feel like you know you have the AKG logo on the earbuds that were supposed to assume that this is not a cagey hardware that this is Samsung hardware and so that that the way that this was sort of illustrated to us I don't to be a little problem i mean we want to let's go back as a step here so Samsung did recently closed its acquisition of Harmon which among all of its brands including Harman Kardon and write it has a cagey JBL is off I think JBL yep yep JP AKG and is also one of them and you know there is there is some sort of you know arm that you put out for distance just to say that what they do is not what we do and so on so forth but there is also that kind of desire to bring them in partnership and you know leverage all their expertise and what not to show a strong combined brand or you know to strengthen both yeah it's a win-win for samsung they didn't have the best audio reputation and they want to start capitalizing on their acquisition financial literacy Winkley is boss exactly fair in its representation to just okay so there's the we're dealing with part I'd companies and you know we can blow them away if we have to absolutely like way we can just push them away so I'm really getting a sort of mixed sense of who they are they're still separate entities I think still in this like at this moment yeah i mean this acquisition still has still has fresh ink on it right yeah I can still some mud the signatures from all parties involved that's that's how recent that this this move was finally approved because I'm with you too this does not change my opinion of the quality of the accessory which is included in the box but this does annoy me a little as a branding and labeling exercise because I feel Samsung is not properly disclosing to consumers what this relationship actually is and we have a nearly identical situation that we can point to with the LG v10 the v10 came with earbuds that were tuned by a kg and have LG logos on them because LG made those headphones and then reached out to a kg for all of the final like special magic sauce that went into making those good ear buds we don't have any confusion as to what that relationship was and I feel Samsung is not in any kind of criminal sense and not in kind of any duplicitous sense but I feel like they're misrepresenting exactly what you're getting in the box by putting the lid by yours wing-like here but take credit like we don't mind it seems good good on you for making it's a pair of earbuds but you know to say that entirely yeah made of an a it was all an AKG effort I that's that's what's so frustrating is I don't think it diminishes the reputation or the product in the slightest to say that these are Samsung designed you know premium custom buffet you know not custom fit but you know like premium interaural super high quality earbuds that would sell retail for a hundred dollars and already is a part of our partnership with harman we reached out for them to do the final pairing so that these earbuds were specifically designed to showcase the power of the new galaxy s 8 audio processing units on board I mean like that's just such a an organic way to talk about this relationship that it's a it is kind of frustrating to me that that's not what they did and in the in the sort of rebuttal video it's not even a rebuttal videos the correction video that we put out for this for the situation like I actually included the clip of the Samsung unpacked event where they they say these are from a kg and that wording means something different to me then these are Samsung premium earbuds that were tuned by a kg that that's something very different to me as someone who still has a love of high quality and professional audio recording gear from my sennheiser headphones to my blue microphones and everything else in between and i don't mean blue yetis I mean like my $2,000 blue kiwi and my thousand-dollar blue blueberry that that that's a distinction that I still hold to be very important one that I don't think changes any kind of purchasing recommendation for consumers but it makes me less accurate in how I'm talking about these products especially for the few people in our community who do care about that level of distinction in that level of echo what do you think i'm going to go fly to shenzhen and order a whole bunch of generic odium earbuds and then you know have them plastered the pocket now Logan on them and I'm going to fly it back over and drive down to a Manchester Connecticut to meet up with a Harman and an AKG or whatever and just basically passed through tuning the tuning processes from all of their associated brands right then we can go to market and say anything pocketnow freaking earbuds for the best your food but are like 1500 like um man hours of Hogan is a man but damn Jules that's elaborate but you know it there there are a bunch of bad comparisons we can make it mean it's like if i buy a toyota and just put a lexus badge on it do I have the same thing and some of the some of that some of those comments I don't really feel have been quite fair to the value of Samsung's premium your your but you have you have the metrics it's fast it's not the exact it's past but believed yeah yeah totally absolutely it's just this is again I mean like I keep wanting to stress for me this is a frustration of branding and labeling and also because I very much care about that AKG label IIIi can't I can't stress that enough I love their professional recording equipment I love their mixing gear I love there DJ gear this is a company that I've grown up with in the world of recording and I don't like seeing that branding tossed around so cavalier because there's a trust there's a trust in me expecting something from those three letters that I can't get somewhere else same thing with sennheiser same thing with sure same thing with audio technica same thing with Sony I have an expectation and if I just start seeing the letters AKG popping up on whatever Samsung wants to slap them on very quickly that brand is going to fall by the wayside I mean I'm not aware of any Samsung toasters flying around the walmart locally so I just like a you know Samsung Wi-Fi connected AKG speakers toasted radios man a they a thing back in the staties I guess maybe they were a thing i'm not sure said that no one ever so let's um what are you so overall at this point you've had it for a couple days now the essay what what's your yeah what you're going on a goal date away from this so far overall this is a very this is a very positive first 48 hours again one of the most stunningly beautiful devices i think we've we've ever had the pleasure of reviewing a pocket now the aesthetics i don't think anyone would call into question the big questions I have for the review process are how much potential will we really see realized from this change in form factor and it's going to be a difficult conversation for us to have it's going to be a difficult question to answer because it can't come just from that first review we still have to wait for the final update to bixby including more voice controls and we have to see what app developers really start embracing these taller screens because right now the solution is to stretch apps which means certain things get cut off in the corners will we see developers embrace this hardware within the life of this phone or are we buying a product with potential that might never be fully realized and that's always sort of a difficult idea to examine so none of this is fun none of this is me saying like you shouldn't be hyped up about this phone or you shouldn't be jumping on board I know a lot of people who have already picked their phones up and are having overwhelmingly positive experiences with their essay purchase it's still something that I want to take a look at philosophically because I feel like something has to start changing in the world of smartphones and I don't know if taller screens are really the killer app that we've all been lacking from our smartphone usage is this just going to be another step in the right direction that's not something to take my hands and just have all our content in like 10 by one you you know me man if we could go straight to neural plug directly into my optic nerve I'm ready sign me up let's do this well in that case yet let's properly end this another episode of the pocket hell weekly has come and gone the show is over but the conversation continues on Twitter you can find Jules as at point Jules and I'm roughly at some gadget guy pocket now is around the web on social media YouTube and our home site pocket now calm we're basically everywhere and shows like this cannot exist without your support by sharing the weekly with your friends who love mobile technology and by dropping reviews on iTunes stitcher google play and wherever podcast reviews can you laugh once again we want to thank this week's sponsor blue apron they're helping us keep the lights on and they're helping me keep my stomach filled with delicious food but ultimately there wouldn't be a show if it weren't for our listeners and subscribers who have kept us on the air since 2012 the pocket now weekly will be back next week with all kinds of delicious technology goodness so make sure you tube back yet you