Gadgetory

welcome to the verge live i'm your host ross miller senior editor for The Verge just minutes ago Samsung wrapped up its galaxy s4 launch event and as always we are here to provide a minute-by-minute detailed analysis breakdown of that event and all the news but first here's the galaxy s4 hey guys it's David at the verge and this is the samsung galaxy s4 it's brand new flagship phone from samsung so the first thing you notice is that it's not actually that different from the galaxy s3 it has kind of the same design ID the same even feel in your hand it's a little slimmer a little lighter but basically the same kind of feel there are bunch of things that are different though the screen is bigger it's a 5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display and it has a pentile pixel layout which we don't love but the screen looks great and it's super high-res and really shouldn't cause any problems it's also more powerful than ever has the Exynos 5 processor and either comes with that or a Qualcomm chip depending on the region you're in comes with 16 32 or 64 gigs of internal storage plus microSD slot and it's coming with Android 4.2 point2 jelly bean which is the latest version of Android and not a lot of phones launched with that which is pretty exciting Samsung's trying to do a lot of crazy software things and they really need power to pull it off so one of the big things Tim some talked about is the camera there's a 13 megapixel camera on the back of the phone and a 2 megapixel camera on the front and that allows them to do a lot of different things one is this dual shot mode where you can actually see the front and rear cameras at the same time and they brought some of the galaxy camera modes to this device as well so it's definitely the most powerful camera ever we'll have to test it out more to see how it actually does there's all kinds of wild software stuff on this phone and you can see just from all the things you have to enable or disable that there's a lot going on here one of the big things is called air gesture and basically what it lets you do is swipe through photos or scroll in your web browser without ever actually touching the phone so you can just scroll right through all your photos without having to touch and you can do the same in a web browser or you can scroll through your tabs and it's kind of a gimmicky thing but it does seem to work relatively well and it's cool your hands are dirty or wet or what happened there's also air view which i think is even cooler so in the browser without actually touching the screen you just sort of hover over it and then you can pick what you want to see and even Flipboard has done some things with it so that you can hover over it and see stories within a particular section without ever actually having to touch it one of the biggest things and sort of the most surprising from Samsung is s health they love putting s in front of things and they're basically trying to replace Fitbit and the FuelBand and all these different things so there's a pedometer and a temperature and humidity gauge inside this phone and it'll actually track your steps as you walk or it'll track your heart rate by a device that works of Bluetooth or it'll track the temperature and humidity and it'll tell you all these things about kind of how you're doing over time you can see you know i'm weird in kind of an ugly hotel room so surroundings are poor and you can track the food that you're eating and all this different stuff so it's all built into here and they're selling some add-on accessories as well and it's just a pretty clever thing it seems like something that should have been built into your phone forever ago and it's gonna be interesting to see how this works there's also group play Samsung loves doing things that involve lots of their different phones and in group play you can set a music or photos or documents or what have you to all of the different phones at the same time and it'll sync music so you can listen as a group and again we've seen a lot of these features on samsung devices before and they're kind of gimmicky and we don't necessarily use them a lot but they're relatively clever features so there's also an IR blaster inside the device which lets you use this to control your TV and your whole home theater and they use some of the same technology they've used before they're using peels TV Guide so you can see kind of what's on TV and flip through and use it to actually control your set-top box and there's on-demand content all this stuff that you can watch on your phone and then push straight to your TV it's kind of approximating airplay plus a bunch of extra TV Guide functionality and it's pretty cool and other devices and as a smart thing to have here so that's really it this one's going to be out on all four major US carriers in the second quarter of this year it's also going to be on some regional carriers and be all over the world there's no word on pricing yet except to say that it's going to be a very premium phone and this is definitely Samsung's flagship device going forward and that is the samsung galaxy joining me now is chris ziegler basically he ran point for the entire version news staff today Chris how are you doing uh besides the fact that I need a beer and a cigarette and a nap I'm doing I'm doing quite alright how about your us I'll give you ten minutes you can do all that doing just fine I just want to get your reaction to the event you basically washed it streaming like I did I did I thought you did you just watch the live blog no no I I did I did that was a statement and a question Oh fine fine well so what's your reaction to the event well I think that this this phone is basically what we expected given the leaks and the teases leading up to the event it was a very iterative device in fact you know the site right now we have a great editorial / report up from our own Vlad say Bob on the fact that this is very much emulating apples well known tick-tock strategy of releases where they do a major redesign followed by a minor update and I think that's what the four is compared to the three the three was a major shift from the two but the four is basically the 3s and that's exactly what Vlad calls it the galaxy s3s mm-hmm well doesn't roll off the tongue I want to go over some of the specs though so it's a 5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED is that correct that's right okay it's also got in samsung exynos 5 or a Qualcomm Snapdragon s4 pro why the difference Oh out of you remember but last year we saw and really two years ago as well we saw similar things we're in North America they'd release usually a Qualcomm ship and then internationally they release a different ship either from Nvidia or Samsung both with HTC and with Samsung and and the reason for that is that Qualcomm well we don't know with this phone specifically but typically the reason has been that when a when a chip maker releases a new chip and that chip maker is not named Qualcomm they need to do some work to integrate Qualcomm LTE modems or other companies LTE modems that frankly isn't done yet so but but Qualcomm has already done that work with s4 pro so so they release those devices since they need LTE LT is basically a requirement on all carriers in the US now so they have to use a Qualcomm chip in the US and then international indies whatever chip they want but Samsung is one of the biggest uh chip makers in the industry why haven't they figured this out yet I think it's that they're taking a world view I mean that they kind of have to we've long heard that that carriers favor Qualcomm modems in the u.s. anyway and it was only recently that Nvidia released an LTE integrated a tegra chip and I think that Samsung is kind of in the same boat where they figure that they can they can attack every everywhere except North America with their chip they can sort of hobble along and I shouldn't even say ha belongs s4 pro is a really good chip it's not a samsung but they can they can release that in North America and then maybe down the road they can switch over a notably HTC to did that last year with the the 1x plus the original 1x used a Qualcomm chip in North America and a Tegra 3 elsewhere by the time the X plus came around which is involved last year they had figured out the LTE thing with with tegra 3 so they rereleased at north north america with a Tegra 3 instead of the qualcomm check what you're basically saying is we're gonna have the galaxy s4 S or the galaxy s 3 s plus we just might we just might a couple of things we talked about we have the it launched it with Android 4.2 point2 jellybean it's actually kind of a rarity these days yeah the the HTC One which was announced what three weeks ago I think and actually I've one in my hands now right here this was announced with 4.1 which is kind of sad for HTC considering how long 4.2 has been out but it's I mean this is an age-old complaint right I think since since version 1.6 of Android we've been complaining about how long it takes to get upgrades so yeah the fact that that Samsung was able to release this on 4.2 is good and I think that it's probably telling that they are a little tighter with Google then HTC is not to say they're super tight I think it's widely understood at this point that Samsung is kind of trying to create its own ecosystem outside of the Google blessed Android proper but still I think that they have a better relationship with Google and they have access to those updates prettier Leon if you remember it I think it was at i/o last year Google talked about how they were offering these android updates to major OEMs early these close partners early and I think that Samsung is one of those partners but is it just am something I mean clearly they have a leg up on this than everyone else no LG phone no sony phone no HTC phone and they've all pretty much announced major devices recently Samsung the only one that's gotten four point two point two at launch though I think that speaks to Samsung's size and the fact that Google is completely unable to ignore what Samsung is doing just like Apple is we've seen Apple go on a trash truck at a trash-talking spree the past 24 hours they've been shopping a Phil Schiller around to different news outlets and so i think that's that's just the reality samsung is large enough they have enough scale so that they have those advantages and it wouldn't surprise me at that access to 4.2 before anyone else outside google i really would be surprised at all that makes sense i do on top of the apple thing though you did mention that they've been shopping phil schiller around he's made a lot of great statements lately great being biting it's always fun to watch corporations fight each other not but I do want to ask we haven't heard any of the famous apple rumors come up usually when there's a big announcement we see hints of a new iPhone on new iPad even a watch for example we haven't heard anything like that right and I think we have a report on that up on our front page right now you can check it out but but basically I think what it comes down to is that Apple is in this weird part of their their product cycle where they they literally don't have anything that they could have leaked to take the spotlight off of the galaxy s4 that they may have been able to say something about the ipad or you know leak something to the journal for instance but that's still kind of not germane to what today's announcement was obviously and i think the iphone the next iphone is still far enough out so that it isn't solidified enough so that they can leak something that would garner enough interest generate enough buzz to really pull eyeballs away from the galaxy s4 so the alternative was to shop phil schiller around and have him say really mean things about android and about samsung and that's exactly what happened it just seems weird almost like on the defensive like I'm actually hinting new products they're just going out against the competition this is not style we're used to I guess right yeah I it's it's a very very blatant recognition that Samsung has become too large and too powerful for Apple to just go about their business and ignore them and you're right it does kind of look like a sign of weakness I always go back to Google's Maps event I think it was last May maybe where they they called every journalist in the world out to Mountain View around the same time that that Apple was doing their own version of maps google called everyone out to Mountain View for a Maps event where they announced literally nothing they just like basically wanted to call everybody out to say hey check out doing yeah check out google maps and and it everybody perceived it as this huge sign of weakness and and and you know sign of fear from google over what Apple could do with maps and of course that fear ended up being completely unfounded but but that's that's what it smelled like to me when when I first saw Schiller make those comments to to the journal last night right now I do what I actually one thing you um you've been doing big reports on wearables you seem to be x-pro that's basically on the verge about that we're not make locks right now you were gonna watch right now I've got my my Nike FuelBand which is pretty much kind of dumb phone equivalent of that I do want to ask though Samsung does not seem to go after the phone market they had this kind of health s-band thing spanned whatever want to call it that's basically all we're seeing do you think Samsung's gonna like hit that field or why they avoiding it I think that given Samsung's philosophy the way Samsung does this business it's inevitable that they will eventually if if the SmartWatch feel picks up enough steam I think it's inevitable that they will come to market with one actually interestingly i don't have the name of it but it's probably seven or eight years ago they did a gsm watch that you could actually buy it was a real thing wasn't compatible with us bands but point being samsung is not a complete stranger to the idea of a smart wearable and i think we could definitely see them return to that you know if if certainly if Apple comes out with an iWatch they're widely expected to at this point Samsung will definitely come out with one like six to 12 months later basically basically nest watch a SWAT right well let's watch they can't call us watch they can't calls that's the one time it can't they can't use s they can't uh Kristen what you got a second just one last question we've now seen basically all the big companies come with their flagships the Xperia Z the HTC One the galaxy s4 which is the one to get right now or the when they all come out at least yeah you know so we we saw RZR xperia z and our one reviews go up this week i think that the Z has some pretty serious shortcomings that prevent us from giving it our seal of approval particularly in software Sony is not known for its software chops in android and i think that the z is no exception unfortunately the one having played with it for the past 24 hours here i have to agree with david's assessment that the hardware is incredible it's um it might be the best looking and feeling phone ever and and and that's saying something considering that i have an iphone 5 sitting right next to me and I've played with basically every phone made in the past decade so I think I think that you could feel very good about buying a one in the next few weeks the only reason that I can see to choose a galaxy s4 over the one is that a the galaxy s4 is probably going to ultimately be available on more carriers than the one just because of Samsung's reach in coal with carriers and two if you're if you're just completely obsessed with bells and whistles the galaxy s4 is going to win on that count just like the galaxy s3 did tonight we saw so many weird and wacky features get introduced into the platform like the air gestures and and all this ridiculousness so if that really draws you in that's something that HTC just can't win on but if you're looking for the best feeling and looking phone on the market I think it's going to be the one alright Chris thank you very much thank you all right joining me now uh actually right here there's special magic right here David Pierce I just a Peter out of the floor out of complete dusting this remarkable talent is pretty awesome i gotta say samsung taught me how with the galaxy s4 oh is this the SF / ition separation permissions apparition david thanks for joining us thanks were running right back after what a weird i wish i could be censored kind of show right it was it was a scene it really was i don't i don't even know how to describe it like it was so we had this qualcomm event at CES which right just veered into this almost like surreal territory this didn't quite get there but it was it was pretty close you see whose it was closed in reading we were watching from the from the stream and it's just it was insane the amount of like Broadway bravado I think its nine like brought it was like these kind of off Broadway yeah and i was there hacking act they're definitely really getting into it it seemed like so we were as we were walking back jordan our video producer said he was like they must have just come up in casting and been like you know we need is a Neil Patrick Harris character so they found like the best Neil Patrick Harris impersonator they could find for you know $75 and then got him and he got up there and it was just it was the strangest I don't know they like they showed off the phone and it was a pretty normal presentation right and then they were like alright that took 20 minutes let's put on a play I just weren't Radio City Music Hall actually kind of panic I thought they were ending after at 30 minutes ok they announced the phone they got some of the key details out of the way and they're saying thank you and goodbye the guys walking off but no which honestly would have been awesome but I guess somebody who has SAT through way too many two and a half hour long events if they had just gone in been like here's a phone see you later I would have like I would have stood up and cheered it would have been amazed that this is a this is borderline hubris with Samsung's part they've done they've had so much success like with these outlandish commercials and ad campaigns and use on the events to I mean hubris hubris is Samsung's thing it's it's how they separate themselves I mean laborious they don't care insurance they don't care if you make a better phone than they do they're gonna sell so many more of them because their commercials are better and even if they're not better there's so many more of them that eventually you're just going to be beaten into submission and you're gonna buy a samsung all right now let's actually let's talk about that so they're gonna sell these phones no matter what and it's arguably they didn't really try to do much different this time around no so I mean it's on the one hand I kind of forgive them for that because why would they change things like this phone that galaxy s3 sold like crazy and people love it and it's become I it's the only phone i would say i see as many of like out in the world in new york city as i do the iphone right and it used to be the iphone and then you'd be like oh that's a kindle fire or like you debate what phone it was and now it's the galaxy s3 is on that level so i have a confession to make i used to commute from the l train and i would see a dude even recently i would see him carry the blackberry tablet old he's using it he's not wild he's not both now ready to be bold yet no but so i think on the one hand samsung feels like they got it right in a lot of ways and i think they did get it right in a lot of ways but they also samsung's whole thing is like let's have things that Apple can't do or doesn't do and if you look at their commercials all of their marketing is it's not about their Hardware necessarily it's not about LTE and like all these things are they have kind of league average to above average stuff and then they just pile on these features that they're like look at this nifty thing right that the iphone can't do and like this phone the Galaxy s4 it gives great demo like it's gift it gives great demo that's the quote you're gonna yeah it does and like they they go through and they're like look I just did this with my hand and it went through my pictures and eventually you're like yeah that's actually kind of cool i could see how i'd use that and like I don't know if you would or not but it this phone like on a store shelf as the guy in the verizon store walks you around is gonna seem super compelling right now actually I'm gonna talk about all this if you saw at the hands-on demo but first we've got the galaxy s3 here mm-hmm we've got the Galaxy Note 2 yep so basically s4 is just somewhere in the middle it's not even really it's basically the same size as the galaxy s okay they shrunk the bezels a little bit so the the phone is the screen is bigger but the space around it is a little smaller so basically just the same size it's yeah and it's a little it's a tiny bit taller but it's actually lighter and thinner so it okay like to hold it like if I held both in my hands and close my eyes it would legitimately be difficult to tell which is which because it's not actually that's not a bad size no it's good to hear and it was I was I was really impressed like we saw some of the leaks the phone looks enormous and they must have had like a four-year-old holding this phone because it looked gigantic right but as it is it's it's really no harder to use like all these phones are are difficult to use in one hand but it's really it doesn't feel as big as a phone like the Xperia Z feels it's it's pretty well suited for a size like this it's also got the HTC one with me here too which is about you know it's about the same size how would you compare this you'd actually review this phone as well so I like this phone a lot and and the on the hardware front there's just no comparison the one is is aluminum and put together and has this kind of fit and finish that the galaxies for just doesn't and Samsung doesn't care like they've honestly they've made it abundantly clear that they don't care that like our hardware is good enough and everybody has ding them for having plasticky backs and they keep making like they don't care right and and I think they're bet is that most people don't care and sales kind of seem to bear that out like most people want a phone with a big screen and a nice screen that like has these cool features and runs the apps that I want and the this real choosing between like really nice hardware and pretty good hardware doesn't seem to factor in for that many people but you're mostly just saw about the initials are the internal seemed pretty good and they are at any rate so one thing Samsung is great at is is building these like bleeding edge phones and the s4 is very much that it has its it either has a Samsung's processor or a Qualcomm processor depending on where you are and either one is really powerful it comes with two gigs of ram and like Samsung doesn't skimp on the power in its phones and like we've seen a little bit of even sort of pre production software but was just blistering fast and they have this camera thing that shows the front and back camera at the same time you can take pictures and video and it's super responsive works perfect also when you do that it always puts a little stamp of your face on it so there are a bunch of bunch of different templates one is like the postage stamp others make it look like you're like on a safari there's all these different ways you can do it too kind of in bed it's just basically different Frankie's around that all right what what is the other use case with you know scenario for this I have no idea and this is the thing like me no honestly the impression I get from this event is that Samsung has this great list of features right and you look and you run down the list and you're like these are all cool things I want all of these and some of them you may end up using but most of them are things that you're like huh this is nifty and then basically forget exists and I remember a long time ago I was meeting with somebody from Sony and they were telling me about the difference between buying behavior and using behavior and their point was that people buy phones for a certain set of reasons and like them for a totally different set of reasons on and so for them I forget what it was in our particular case but they were talking about like people walk in and they're like oh this has more megapixels on the camera I'll buy that because it has more megapixels and like that ultimately makes no practical difference in their life and Samsung has just nailed that game right so they have all these things where like the gestures you do it you're like that seems cool and then another phone doesn't do it you're like oh that's a shame it doesn't do it and like you get to a dozen of those over the course of using these two different phones or like well what can the iphone do and whether or not those actually add up to something you'll use in real life I don't know I think some of them are cool like I actually I kind of get the gesture thing a little bit like let's actually get into that little bit cuz i am i watch the hands on obvious i just saw this weird event i'm still not sure how that works or how actually effective it is so well so there there are four different kind of weird interaction things that Samsung's done there's smart pause and smart scroll I think they're called which basically are designed to they follow your eyes and if you're watching the phone and if I'm watching a movie and then I look away it's designed to pause the movie and then when I come back it'll play the movie again and that seems to work but I actually think it's sort of useless because a lot of leg out it would be annoying if I'm like sitting on a train and I look up and then my movie pauses then I come back and wait a second for it to pick up I just I don't want that right the scrolling is designed to basically follow your eyes and move the page with your eyes so you can read comfortably that sounds really cool so it's like does it actually work like we're looking to top of the screen to scroll up and you're like in the middle stay focused so I I have to kind of give Samsung the benefited out so I saw a model this morning that just straight-up didn't work okay it would it did this really funny thing where I would look a tree down the bottom and then I would wait no wait that's still be looking down at the bottom and then it would just snap to the bottom of the page I bet that's not what I wanted uh and then I would have to scroll that is a better question but so would turn that off but then dan seifert who was also at the event with us when did it at it and said it worked great so I'm I'll give Samsung they benefited out here and say they pulled it off so then there's there's gestures which let you do things like you can scroll a web page just by going like this or you can scroll through photos by swiping left to right and stuff like that I get for you know they said something about it during one of their scenes at the event and they were like oh my nails are wet or my hands are dirty and like honestly I kind of get that a lot of times we're like you know people talk about how we use our phones and tablets for cooking in the kitchen it's like my hands are dirty and I can just go like that like that's pretty cool like for assignment it's a how far away it is they're like that's what I'm kind of curious about cuz I'm for the hover stuff it was like yeah you have to be good right on it like that's yes I know but the hovering are the gestures rather you you can be like a foot away it's a pretty comfortable distance like between you and where you're holding the phone and you just swipe over is it just using the cameras like the camera always looking it seems to be okay there there yeah the front facing camera is like Samsung's favorite thing that harness to do cool stuff and I guess you need to make apps that actually use this stuff or is like is this um that is actually built on the system level to know so it's Samsung's not clear on a lot of that stuff which is difficult because a lot of the cool features that they have even going back to some of their older devices where they have like the split screen stuff where you can see two apps at once which is that's even still learning they didn't mention it at all and I don't think so because they want to keep the note as kind of this productivity device and between the note 2 and the no date and now the note 10.1 those are kind of the get stuff done devices and these are more sort of normal because a father flagship too I don't a 5-inch phone just clearly you can't do anything done on it it's tiny it's basically not easy to train like you can I can't see anything okay so it all in all though you've played with it mozar feel is it the best phone out there to get it for an Android device I mean obviously we haven't reviewed it right but it is coming out q2 it's the phone to say don't buy anything yet wait for us I do you feel like that's the safe thing to do well so on the one hand I think we actually have a really interesting competition for the first time in pretty long time because it looks like the HTC one is going to come out on all these different carriers so Samsung's biggest advantage was that they got to this point where people just walked into a store and we're like I want a galaxy phone and that was just what there was to buy because every carrier had it you knew was going on and it was implicit like the de facto android phone and HTC can kind of get into that if because they're on all these carriers and HTC if they can market the device right and get some real momentum they could do it but I think we're also at this kind of exciting place where all of these phones are good like the Xperia Z for all its weaknesses is a good powerful fast phone that you can also like throw in the toilet it's fine on that's a story the one has great hardware but has some issues with the camera Samsung has typically done a much better job with the camera and they're really focused on it again this time which if they pull it off could be a huge differentiator it's like the Lumia 920 and really the iphone 5 are the only two cameras in my mind that are great as smartphone cameras and if the galaxy s4 can get in there that's a big win for them on because they become kind of the one android phone with a great camera right and pull that off and just for the shameless plug we did just do like the best smartphone cameras okay no and Michael Shane agreed with me and Michael Shane agree with you yeah one of our best photographers on staff it was Lumia 920 or the iphone we done top shelf which you can see every Thursday's right I know but I think to the galaxy s4 is probably going to remain the de facto android phone and it's because Samsung has done a lot of really good things they've done a lot of things right and they've done some really smart you I things that make the phone easier to use and more understandable in a way that HTC hasn't and Sony hasn't and I think you're going to see this on shelves everywhere they're going to market it like crazy and I think people are gonna start buying this and I'm gonna end up seeing it basically on the subway just like the galaxy s3 and then I'm gonna look in Vegas at the galaxy s3 there's out the s4 and no one will know that's where we'll be all right then great great um well I think Jesus Blitzen I literally I keep looking at that thinking it's the galaxy s4 know how do we get one and then it's it's it's not it's the s3 I did like this form factor though that's the thing is like but we we have this great advantage of like we get to see all these phones side by side and be like this is pretty but then people are gonna pick that up because that's going to be the first phone that the guy at the verizon store recommends to you because everybody else bought it and you're gonna be like oh this feels nice and works well and I'll robot right actually I wanna say random tangent cuz I was going through is looking for all these phone all the different variations of samsung galaxy s2 which back then you forgot you forget I forgot at least they were just different by the carrier yeah there were like a hundred and forty million different yep galaxy has two phones and then I was like the blaze which was also a galaxy s2 and then there was like a galaxy s 2 3 and then like the 4g it was i was well playing on snapchat point that reminds me i actually wanted to talk about vlad tutorial i just went up the galaxy s3s think it's fair I mean it's yeah i really do i think it's it's the it's the tick-tock strategy that apple has really pioneered and pulled off and they made it work where people are on to your upgrade cycles right and it's just it's just kind of in a way dumb at this point to continue to reinvent the wheel every year like we're going to run out of things to do and we're gonna you're going to lose your customers every time you're going to make people feel like they have this incredibly outdated phone but they can't like their contracts not up and they've so Samsung has adopted the same strategy and I think that is what this phone is it's it's faster it has a bigger screen it has you know some new tricks and software but fundamentally it's it's the same ID it's the same idea the same features like it's it's gonna feel like the same phone so if i have a galaxy s3 I don't have particular you know upgrade envy right now but if I the galaxy s2 suddenly it's a no brainer no I do want I do want to talk about it so it seems like Apple and Samsung are the only ones right now we can do this kind of what they call it tick tock formula sure take being before talk mean for us why not HTC whistle trying to find its first it gets tick is if this is a hit well we see the 1s like in the year from now or two like that I'm not the one s whole dad no I mean I think what what Samsung did which is what Apple did is really corner this market I mean we've we've heard Google say they're worried about how much Samsung has cornered the android market and like it's impossible to underestimate or two over us my brother how significant Samsung's brand is in that world and it used to be years ago that people would walk into a store and they'd either buy an iphone or a droid right so motorola had the droid and they dominated that for a long time and it's now it's a galaxy instead of a droid people buy those phones now and it gives samsung this leeway to say like there's a good chance you already own a samsung phone right whether it was a galaxy s2 which they flooded the market with a million things two years ago or a three from a few months ago the force coming on now it's like Samsung has this giant market share and they can they can make a case for all the different features it feels like they're coming out with stuff over every every other manufacturer especially the iphone so they're gonna try and woo you away like one device at a time right alright well David thank you so much my pleasure when are we getting one I I stole 400 of them so their exact time actually wanted now in the state of New York no no I'm so hopefully I'll get through say thank you to write so very premium price it's gonna start being out it's going to be out in April first around the world but they haven't made any specific us announcements it'll be on all four carriers plus some of the regional carriers right and it'll be yeah they called it a premium samsung price so it'll be what you know one hundred ninety nine dollars unlocked they're not doing a 300-foot anymore they might I'd be I'd be shocked but yeah and it's it's gonna be this spring and basically don't buy a galaxy s3 until then alright David thank you so much my pleasure oh we're gonna cut to really quickly we've got some highlights from the event oh dear so summary stay tuned enjoy that and we'll be back in the hotel ladies and gentlemen the samsung galaxy s4 I'm sorry honey I'll get the galaxy s4 after the presentation yeah on the other hand Patrick does have an s4 so he can take amazing shots of his son Jeremy as he gets ready for his first tap dance recital you're up next honey who am i nervous oh you're gonna do just fine I want to get some backstage footage now if you're like me you have 800 pictures of your mom and like two of your dad because dad always took the pictures our family videos look like a movie about a single mother well all that's about to change what if I'm watching a movie then switch to playing a game no problem and what if I'm reading an email and then play a game and then watch a video adapt display adjust what if the video is about a five legged cat doesn't matter what it's about I have another album of onna in the market I have another album Ivana at the falls I'm sensing a theme yeah dude they're all pictures of Brazil okay Oh being able to see all of his photos as soon as he takes them makes it easier having Jeff away being able to use my car makes it easier for him to be away but I love these pictures of Brazil where do you see Brazil behind honor ah but what about the life of a New York actor may I have my car please now I don't know where I'm going I'm totally lost that's okay with the new galaxy s4 you don't need a navigation system it's all installed right there on the device you're killing me I found it here are you ready for the next Galaxy well here it is what are you doing now whatever you say you just experienced I can't watch I was there ok a lot to me most saw the strangest happens in the person and it changed me I have to say my name less better let me tell you something important about this event it was actually really good what it was really good you mean you mean the first 30 minutes is really good and then know the whole thing if else the whole thing was great and this is why so this phone is like a laundry list of features this like endless parade of stuff and all of its really esoteric and weird like ultimately all every single feature in this phone is esoteric and weird right it's its camera they can take 100 photos and 4 seconds that doesn't mean anything to people but saying we're gonna do a skit with like actors to show it off is successful like it's modest it's not what we want to see because it's super cheesy and lame but for the thousands of people in my theater it was entertaining and demonstrated the features of product let me run down literally run down a list of the weirdest stuff that you and I have done together yeah since we started working years ago we've seen zool soul Samsung's crazy little you little guy with years we've seen three Howard Stringer keynotes at least which is cirque de soleil which is Elvis professor there's a difference with that stuff so all that stuff that's just showmanship right so dancing zol has no connection to the product always a in the product is the product right i mean that's samsung invites you to their CES keynote and like the kid from billy elliot dances and he's the future right I figure it really was it was a kid you know yet that cat that was not what they did today right now they grew up a little bit today okay they talked about the phone the whole time so this is there was no abstract like BS about like digital humanism there was no inspired by nature there a blooping sounds it was here are the features that are found and here's the way that we have chosen to demonstrate so there's like this is total like though this be madness there is method in it there's no b-roll there's no born mobile this is just use our condone right exactly and then so then the way they chose guess that's why so it's a headset I'd like to note that it was a gigantic improvement for samsung all right fine it was entertaining like entertaining in maybe all the wrong ways but very very entertaining then the but the thing is okay fine we've crossed the barrier now we're talking about the product we're using the products features the skits and the things they did to showcase the product was so silly and so like out of touch with reality like at the beginning there like they showed a family and the right the kid was like I have a play Oh dad your phone isn't good enough to take a photo of my play now and I thought what kind of like ranked consumerism are you like you're like oh you should get a new phone cuz otherwise your kid's life will I kind of wonder if that is what kids are like now I don't know maybe I don't talk to kids I regular basis or really ever yeah but D maybe like that they may be like look cut the iphone 5s passe I think yeah probably that's probably what kids they are like and all of you should be ashamed of yourselves let's gonna leave it like that it's like still frame no he's shamed of yourself no I mean it was just silly was way over the top why was your an orchestra they leave at the beginning mate they Orchestra came up out of the bottle and then it then it went away and then at the end right Ellen thank you to our Orchestra the orchestra came back it leaves why are you paying for an orchestra least there was no celebrity like cameos there was no new creative dress here's there are two plot holes ok that's a plot major major annuity hate your plot oh ok uh ok so there's will chase who's an MC don't know who he is a good actor very sarcastic there's Ryan Biden oh we know if he I love Ryan Ryan's great his buddy monetise to be blackberry well rim then black whatever it's called now yeah rim berry now is the samsung he's great today were doing their little shake and all these other actors come out and at one point a woman named Vivian appeared and everyone talked about Vivian like they knew her this is like the black level men black gloves and she was like just there to like say mean things to will chase whoever he was she was your Broadway vamp stare yeah she's on like Fran Drescher then she like play to the phone and then she left and I was like who's Vivian what why was she so important for two minutes and where does she now you didn't like lost did you then she came back and her name is Sheila very meta very strange she even acknowledged it like hey Vivian and she's like no no I'm Sheila now very odd then and I think this is the most important and the most to me personally troubling okay at one point they demonstrated s voice driving or whatever it's called this voice drive in to hammer home the fact that this was meant to be used in a car they brought out of sideways Mini Cooper which is that oh I remember then we have a shot we have a shot of the sideways Mini Cooper mmm but they bring it out and bring out what that remained on stage for the rest of the presentation and no one attempted to get in it or drive it sideways it didn't do a loop-de-loop all right it just was sideways like that with Samsung's contribution no they're mini coopers contributions absent presently except like do not use samsung's driving because you'll end up sideways and edit our it was very troubling that's very weird very very weird you're just using hand gestures he just hit the wheel but at least with this almost like over-the-top like it worked like it I don't know how else to explain this for the first time it was shocking and weird they had a hunky guy come on stage and take a shirt off that gaggle of women tittered and as they looked away from their phones to look at the hunky guy the video paused like all this like crazy stuff at one point they're like but why would you ever want to use this feature where you can like just wave at your phone instead of touching it because what why and and they had one of the women go because my nails are wet which is like don't do that and then another one was like because I didn't want to put down the drink and like drunkenly staggered around stage right just crate crazy but effective but relatable use case scenarios relatable crazy all right samsung i'll skip the kids a kleiner so here's the real tagline of the phone are you ready for this I'm ready Samsung this is true i'm not i'm not kidding all right i'll mention why vlog several times samsung galaxy s4 life companion life can add it on on slides like huge letters life companion no irony know like it's they oh that's right cuz they had a little kid of the box going Oh a light companion or so like that no that'd be weird that would be very weird but I swear good Samsung's newest product yeah try held follow you around child no I just don't know I honestly I don't think I'm so overwhelmed he time the talking too fast on higher pitched and it's just because the emotions that I felt during this event for you always wanted this the emotions that I felt during this event event were so varied I felt sad I felt a great deal of embarrassment uh I felt joy at one point a man named Jeff just talks about taking pictures of a girl he met in Brazil Madonna mm-hmm he talks about that for I would say five to six minutes right he took a lot of photos there's actually two things uh from the from the thing I kinda want to talk to you about first off is s translate speaking of weird gags yeah well so here's the nest translate it's already in android right google translate has these features but it's a google translate that you have to be connected I was a nest religious has hand it has canned stuff in it ok so does all that stuff in the back end but if you're like in France and you're like take P to a bathroom like you push a button the phone will say it in French ok so just it's all building some offline caption that's actually really smart I will give him the credit flip it's just like it just sounds built like how much it's doing ok maybe it is going the internet well then it's the exact same thing right but it seemed to suggest it was gonna be an offline of some sort no sue the offline is like it has this database afraid it's the stocks yeah yeah and you can rely push the button and like it'll help it where is the nearest apple store yeah yes it won't do that probably probably not do that uh that stuff is interesting I mean I will say that the number of this was actually feedback I got a lot on Twitter which was a lot of this stuff is an Android already right it's all over the place Android like these aren't features of Samsung needs to promote in this way it will rebuild in some other way this is a very head-on competitive with what Google's but if you do any small tweaks they can put an s in front of it and that's there's squeaks squeaks but I mean look at like this like in actually the one thing that this has in common unfortunately with Samsung is crazy new video formats because they're now must exist something between us still in the video audio it's a Zoe it's a was it a camera photo yeah or some sense camera stuff yeah there is very little like over cheering at the event right the camera demos got all the cheering so when they took out the guy photobombing cuz they take 100 photos right in four minutes 44 seconds when they did the drama shot so we could call drama shot just forgive me for is it is it was it just burst mode or something like what is yes they do with this crazy burst mode and then they can composite so if I you're running across the room and I'd like burst mode photo you it like composite four of you like running so that's cool stuff but it's it's weird because it's like what you're saying it's like the idea of like just taking a photo is gone it is dead to the smartphone industry and now we're going to do other weirder with photos mm-hm and I'm this would drop the f-bomb on the air espa haha what he really said was s hit this s hit yeah exactly uh duh you know here's the thing so here's the one right and actually can give me the gs3 sure cuz just take them all in at all in all reality the gs4 looks just like this phone right it's a little I went on to the dead too it's like point 0 to wider or something so very very small slight visual differences the sides are squared off more it feels it feels only slightly different to hold their hand but I will tell you that this phone this piece of hardware is so much nicer to have in your hand because it's made of metal it has it just HTC one's a really nice phone this phone still feels like the piece of plastic right and the gs4 still feels like a piece of plastic and what's interesting to me and invite put up a piece today like noting this is that Samsung has this enormous marketing budget they spent all of this money to put on this event it's something like 400 million dollars to launch this phone rights I heard that number from lots of people so much money anyway they have so much money they're spending money like crazy the orchestra literally a date ball and orchestra and then hid it under the stage like and they would raise and lower at every night again to remind you that they had spent money on orchestra and the orchestra would go right like that's ridiculous um and I think what they're doing is they're they have so many features or adding so many features in this event was all about features right here's how this phone will slice up some piece of your life that may or may not be recognized to anybody who has a normal life and will show you how phone feature will like solve this problem that may or may not exist we're of HTC is like we made a little bit better camera and it has footboard but is a much better design i'll give him that but the hardware's better i think ultimately it might be a better phone like I haven't played with the gs4 from or terrace we're actually we're gearing up toward the end but there is something I want to ask about before is a quick tangent the IR blaster and watch on they mentioned I don't feel like we talked a lot about it on stage but they did make a point of it early on well so there's like a weird trend in phones right and it's that your cell phone will be the remote control for your television H the one has 12 the IR blasters built into the power button to does to the notes you guys won I don't know that the gs4 has an IR blaster built in the top as well right my pee in the power button as well and I have these apps right that like they learned they you type in your zip code it tells you what's on your cable provider and it changed the channel for you and that's great but it's so like super useless it's I mean in our boxers look literally like a sixth sent part like right you can get 140 money they can put in a phone for zero money and cool you can call peel in the give you a version or app to run on your phone and that's neat but it's not useful I don't think people are actually use these phones is remote and that's what's weird to me because like there seems to be a lot of least a lot of time and money going to making the software try to simplify this very complicated system of cable operators with different channels and try no that's all does that ties that's all done that's not hard you can call TV Guide and i'll sell you the data right you can call peel they'll give you the data but they already have the app what's hard is and this is the problem samsung should be solving is they make tvs to write their phones don't actually talk to their tvs sony's phones don't actually talk to their TVs Sony's Xperia Z tablet as an IR blaster and it runs the peel app right ah these things aren't actually talking to televisions they are doing the same dumb thing that every universal remote has ever tried to do and that's why people don't love the universal remotes they're doing the same dumb thing that every I phone accessory if an IR blasters ever tried to do and that's why those never took off and it's a little bit more interesting because they've the phones are really small and thin and they've integrated the piece right into here but ultimately it's having IR blasters I'm going to fix your experience and it never has it was ok so what is going to I mean there is that kind of dream of not having remote walking to a room and going ok this is mighty remote no or sunset a dream i would like to like not have remote you know what i use now the wii u gamepad I mean but you're a huge nerd yeah like I can find that we're like it is good because its enormous like you're a loser it's kind of a cop-out look that's great I think that you can argue about the future of television rights all you want I think I don't think design or interface or technology as a problem I think literally talking to a television or cable box as a problem ok and the only way to do it right now is an IR blaster and as long as that it's true this like dum dum technology from the 60s it's like still in our living rooms none of these things are gonna solve the problem fair enough but you know I can commence what I our last Friday night maybe that's just one of many features obviously samsung s4 has the air scrolling the itraq in case your nails are wet yeah of course look at a hunky guy but it's still excite the hard was the same it's still the same looking TouchWiz and Samsung is not apple before for lookin like the exact same like OS so one point and again right I'm very fond of Ronnie bud okay at one point he was like it's so much more alive than ever before and then he demonstrated that they've changed the trends the menu bars no longer black it's translucent right uh I mean it's just the TouchWiz is like a silly thing it is a silly dumb gimmicky ridden thing right you can you can definitely knock apple is the iOS home screen is boring and the weather it's always 73 degrees and sunny but there must exist some happy state right between iOS being boring and and this being a circus and they are just going full circus which is very I guarantee you it very full circuits the bloops are louder than ever and they probably swear you if you don't if you try to turn it off me yeah maybe that happy thing is called stock Android just just an idea that I have a speaking of either speaking of that so we've now seen the s4 which is not now you it yeah they see one Xperia Z which are out LG's got a number of flagships every now and then they'll just pop something else out they did one optimus g pro pro yeah over the for advertisement Times Square right now yeah so everyone's gotten their flagship Android devices obviously apples probably do something next few months oh yeah the 5 5 s plus mm-hmm are we carrying off like is s for the phone to get for Android or should we start looking to the next Google whatever yeah it's weird because they sell so many more iphones than an s4 is just tons more but if you are in New York and ride the subway you see s3's everywhere right I think if you have an s3 there's no reason to get an s4 I think if you have a previous flag flagship Android device probably won't want one I think if you're among the millions of people of a galaxy s2 that's probably the place to go um if you have a iphone I don't know the answer I don't I mean it there did their wildly different experience what are you using right now what is your driver I have a nexus 4 and iPhone okay what do you see more i use the iphone Marcus as LTE mmm right i mean that's the reality of it I with the nexus 4 I tell to you things will change very dramatic but the s4 has four point two point two with TouchWiz though but it has LT or will have LTE yeah but it's it's I TouchWiz is not an attractive thing and I believe you know they're saying that's for point-to-point to Google i/o is like right around the corner we don't know what's gonna happen so they're gonna fall behind again and TouchWiz is I it is becoming a different operating it's funny that you say they're going to fall behind because the only phone is gonna have whatever next Google Android operating system is there is going to be the Google device of nightmares are real there's a real divide between Google's Android and samsung's android you know because Google doesn't have ear view or smart pause or any this stuff right and i think it's it's unfair to samsung's efforts actually it's unfair to their efforts to say that these features are tacked onto android now these features are integrated with the phone so if you buy the s4 you're going to get these features as part of your core experience and they're not in android but there's just a huge gulf between the two companies now I think you know aunty ribbon he just left Google but well weeks ago he was laughing Android he left Android she's still somewhere he's in a basement he's rattling original moon shots um that's what he said he said he Larry Page was like we want more moonshots you're out Andy and go to Google acts and do it every day anyway look II was at nwc or whatever and he said to the wall street journal Samsung is a real threat to Android right and i think that was like a rare admission of like the truth which is google's platform is no longer being driven by google and i think if you buy an HTC One what you're getting is some of it yet another version of Android that isn't as competitive that doesn't have the resources invested it doesn't have the user base of samsung's version of Android and doesn't have google driving forward its version of Android I think that is probably not a realization for like the ordinary consumer I think that's a realization if you're like deeply in EdTech I 11 more wild horse question that we have to wrap up the dark horse in all this what's going on motorola that's that's I don't know they certainly can't look even if you're even if you got google money you don't have google money to get samsung weird s weird it's weird sweet because this at this event in this launch and this marketing they are spending money like that event was uh it was over the top like crazy and super weird esque weird and very few companies can just get s weird and nothing nothing's going to top that nine times then I look maybe motorola maybe google motorola will combine to produce some crazy chrome OS android hybrid phone flexible display can like drive your car for you that has stock android no t-that's and you can wait on your head that yeah there's a lot of stuff that can do to compete with the s4 I don't think the s4 is a pinnacle phone right I think it has it what it's a pentile display but appears to look very nice I think your cells that are about pentile i don't i don't like them they look too green to me um but whatever it's it's going to be the indie android phone that other people have and that is something to be reckoned with and from motorola or to do able to get there they have to market the hell out of have to they're gonna have to spend money trying to sell the phone and google historically it's not good fair enough all right let's close the show Neil I thank you so much actually when I think everybody Chris power I've Chris power Chris power hey chris bowers I'm gonna get one chris ziegler who is e power on Twitter nia of courses reckless david is Pierce david just swap them around I'm owner Roscoe noe of course you catch all the Samsung news and more lots more on the verge com next week we'll be back with an actual verse cast with a full studio well if top shelf on Thursday 90 seconds average every single day and right now I'm gonna go pass out fall down fall down s weird that's sleep I'm gonna go get s weird I don't know what you're gonna do let's go get us