Tech Brew Ride Home - (Bonus) The Samsung Event With Gizmodo's Sam Rutherford

Episode Date: February 15, 2020

When a company does one of their big product events late in the day, it’s always a mad rush for me to get it out. Apple events are hard, but at least they start a bit earlier. The Samsung event this week just felt like me making a mad list of everything announced and hoping I wasn’t missing anything. So I really felt it was worth sitting back, taking a breath, and looking at everything that was announced in depth. We’re speaking to Gizmodo’s Sam Rutherford today who has actually be hands on with the S20s, so we’ll lay out in a more granular way, the differences between them all, and also, speculate on whether or not the Z Flip is actually the foldable phone we’ve all been waiting for. A foldable phone that might not suck. Sponsors: DoubleUp.agency The Special BookNotes Link Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to another weekend bonus episode of the TechMeme Right Home. I'm Brian McCullough. When a company does one of their big product events late in the day, it's always a mad rush for me to get it out. Apple events are hard, but at least they start a bit earlier.

The Samsung event this week just felt like I was just making a mad list of everything announced and hoping I wasn't missing anything. So I really felt like it was worth sitting back, taking a breath, and looking at everything that was announced in depth once I had a chance to. think about it. Today we're going to speak to Gizmodo's Sam Rutherford, who has actually been hands-on with the S-20s, so we'll lay out in more granular detail the differences between the whole lineup, and also speculate on whether or not the Z-flip is actually the foldable phone we've all been waiting for, i.e. a foldable phone that might not suck. You know what I think we should do? Let's start with the S-20 lineup first. Okay.

Because probably for all the pizzazz of foldable phones, that's the big news anyway, right? Yeah. Samsung made a big deal about, you know, the jump from 10 to 20 and how that was in the naming and how that was meant to signal like a generational leap in terms of their flagship devices. What's your take on that? Is this truly a big leap forward or just iterative? I think it's a little bit of both because, I mean, if you look at last year, you saw, that one plus and Google and some other phone makers, they brought 90-hertz displays to their

phones. And that seems really weird, especially because Samsung was the manufacturer who made the panels that were in those phones. So in terms of generational, I think Samsung absolutely had to add 120-hertz displays. Like, that was a huge feature in terms of like, you know, really jumping from the S-10 to the S-20. On the other side, then you have to have the design aspect. And for the most part, the S-20 looks a lot like the S-10. Yeah, they move the punch-roll selfie camera to the middle. But it's a very similar design.

They changed up the colors. And aside from that boxy camera module on back, I could see how a lot of people might get the toot infused. Yeah, actually, you got hands on with the S-20s, right? OK, let's come back to that, because I want to ask you about that first. But maybe we should start also by, like, breaking it down. So essentially, across the entire lineup, all the device, all of the three S-20s get the same screen, not the same size screen, but the same 120-hurt screen. Right.

And then, so, like, let's start with the S-20. You get what is the, it's a 6.7-inch screen. They all have 5G, but the S-20 regular has, like, a lower-end. 5G chip? Right. So the S20 has a 6.2 inch on the 20 hearse. Yeah. The screen, and it does have 5G support. However, it only has sub 6 gigahertz 5G support. And so basically that only really works on T-Mobiles 5G, which is, you know, they're based on sub-6. However, it starts to get really

confusing because Verizon just recently announced that they're also going to add low-band's 5G capability to their network. Because right now, Verizon is only using millimeter wave. So they're not even going to carry the S20 at launch, and they're working with Samsung to bring a special version of the S20 that has millimeter wave 5G sometime in Q2. So it's very weird how you're looking at things,

and it feels like we've gone backwards, like the 3GJs where people are having to have customized versions, carry your branded versions of the flagship phones, just so it'll work on their network. work because of 5G. Okay, so, and the S20 is sort of the entry level. It's the one that's priced at $1,000. Right, and it's weird that, like, entry level is $1,000.

Oh, we're going to come back to that, too. So then the next one is the S20 plus, which is $1,200. And so then there you get the better 5G chip and a 6.7-inch screen and what, like a slightly larger battery. Right. So the S-20 has a 4,000-million power battery. the S-20 plus moves up to a 4,500 million-hour battery. Like you said, 6.7-inch screen, and it does have an additional time-of-flight sensor on the back, which is a little bit gimmicky, but it's used for things like helping measure things around the house

or Samsung's AR-Doodles, making it a little bit more accurate, a little more responsive. But generally, the cameras between the S-20 and S-20 Plus are the same? Yes. Okay. Go ahead. And like you said, it does support millimeter wave 5G and subsets 6 KHz 5G. So it'll work well on Verizon and AT&T and T-Mobile. And then also, to throw another wrench into the things, Sprintz 5G network, which is completely different and uses 2.5 gigahertz 5G, their carrier-branded versions of S20 are specifically designed to work on their network.

So it sort of remains to be seeing how it will work when you take. take, you know, a sprint S-20 and try to take it to another network. Am I going to have to do my homework if, depending on my carrier, in terms of which one I would want to try to buy? I mean, basically, if you want the 5G support, you're going to be kind of forced to buy it from your carrier in order to make sure you have, like, the best possible support. Trying to, we haven't gotten the devices in hands yet. So it's kind of interesting to see what, like, an unlocked US S-20 will do if you try

bring it to a network yourself. And then finally, just to round it out, there's the S-20 Ultra, $1,400 starting, 6.9-inch screen, bigger battery, and you've got that insane 108-megapixel wide-angle camera. Yeah. Can you explain to me a bit about how their sort of photo software stuff works and, like, if it's for real, like the space zoom or whatever it is that they called it. Yeah, I mean, like, I love that space zoom name.

It's so dumb, but like, I don't know, it kind of speaks to me in a weird, sort of nerdy sort of way. And they even put it on the back of the camera module, so you see it, and this is like space zoom right on the back. So the primary camera on the S-20 Ultra is a 108-megapixel camera. But what they're actually doing is they're using pixel binning to take nine individual photo pixels and combine it into one large photo pixel, so you get better image quality, and in particular, better low-light performance.

And that's one of the big techniques that Samsung's using to really try to catch up to Google and Apple when it comes to overall camera quality, which is something they kind of fell behind in the last couple years. So just generally, across all the devices, there is a pretty big step up in the camera we think until we actually get here. Yeah, I mean, Samsung is talking a real big game this time. they said it's the biggest camera upgrades since the Galaxy S7. So that's like what, you know, four generations of phones? And then there is not the low-end market, right? Because what was it last year that they had on the low-end? Yeah, they had the S-10E.

And I actually just came out with a piece today talking about how, you know, there are three S-20s, like there were three versus the S-10 last year. but because the starting price is $1,000 versus $750 for the S10E, that's like going to put people in a very weird, like, a weird situation when it comes like deciding, oh, is this the year I upgrade? Yeah, I mean, I feel like if it was another company and whatever, like all the talk would be about starting at that $1,000 price level. I mean, that was the talk a couple years ago when we first crossed the $1,000

barrier and that kind of got missed yesterday. Like, could they be maybe painting themselves into a corner by basically, like, $1,000 as table stakes now? Yeah, totally. And, like, it's weird because, like, now that $1,000 tablesakes, they, like, Samsung is kind of positioning the S-10. They gave the S-10 a price drop down to $600. And I guess their strategy is to be like, oh, if you don't care about 5G and you still

want like a shiny Samsung phone then you can go get the S-10 for 600 but that just feels really weird and especially when you compare it to Apple strategy where you have the iPhone xr and then you had the the iPhone 11 this year the iPhone 10R sorry 10R was 750 at launch last year and the iPhone 11 was 700 so even cheaper so it feels like Samsung's like breaking from what Apple is doing and I'm not sure that's a great great idea because the iPhone 11 was, you know, wildly successful throughout all of 2019. Well, maybe the calculation they're making is that, you know, a lot of people have been waiting, knowing that 5G was coming. So they're banging on the fact that, all right, this is officially the 5G year. People are going to upgrade for 5G, and so maybe it's not going to matter.

Yeah, and I think that that's really what Samsung's banking on. It's like, oh, they want to be 5G ready. You know, they made a big show about being 5G ready across the different lines. There's a little bit of messiness in terms of like what kind of 5G. But I think, you know, that is their main strategy. On the flip side of that, I'm not entirely convinced that consumers care enough about 5G support, especially considering, you know, it is very limited in terms of cities so far, especially millimeter-way 5G, which still has hard times penetrating through windows and buildings. So you can get great 5G, you know, a thousand gigapits per second performance.

outside on the street, but if you go inside, suddenly you're right back to 4G, and it's like, oh, okay, that feels a little bit weird. You know, I was talking to somebody about that the other day. I kind of, of the inverse on that, where I feel like most consumers remember getting onto 3G and like how that was so much different. And that was a lot of people's, you know, first introduction to mobile interneting full stop. And so I think everyone's just assuming, oh, it'll be as transformational as that so I actually think that everyone will upgrade it's just that there's going to be a lot of people that are like oh well that really didn't make that big a difference to my life oh yeah totally

um and especially if you took look at you know the most widely the carrier with the biggest 5g coverage right now which is team mobile you know they're using sub six kHz 5g um and the upgrade over 4g with sub six gigahertz 5g is you're going to maybe see 10 15 20, maybe 25% increased performance. So you're looking around like 50 megabits per second instead of like 30 or 35 megapits per second. And that's nice, but that's definitely not transformational. And to get that really like ridiculous speeds that people talk about, FryG, I haven't been talking about for years, you know, you really need that millimeter wave like,

you know, one gigapit per second connection. And that's just not as stable or as reliable as people, would like it to be. Well, and then the amount of people that will buy a 5G phone expecting it to be, you know, plug it in transformational. And then it turns out at my home, I don't even have 5G coverage yet, so it doesn't Yeah. And yeah, that's the other thing is that like, you know, a lot of the big cities, they do

have 5G in parts of the city, but a lot of times it's like hard to even figure out if your specific neighborhood or your home is covered. And like, some people are like, oh, I have it at work, but I don't have it at home. And it's like, yeah, it's just kind of a mess. And, you know, obviously we're very early in 2020, but, you know, it's going to take pretty much the whole year for carriers to really roll out and, you know, build up that coverage. Okay, so then I hope you remember to put a pin in it. The actual hands-on, you were talking about how the design is essentially the same. Like, if I held last year's and this year's in my hand, is it going to basically feel identical?

I mean, you will definitely get that, like, Samsung heritage where, you know, you have that curvy glass. and, you know, that really great screen. Yeah, I keep... That screen is still the best, so it's the same thing. It's like basically bezel-less and, like, that's the thing that I love about all of Samsung's phones. Those screens are insane. Yeah, and Samsung for years has been far and away the best, like, mobile displaymaker. And, you know, they're really proving it.

And that's why, you know, that 120, bringing 120-hertz support to the S-20 is such a big deal. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then the big chunky photo thing on the back, not a deal breaker or anything like that? I wouldn't say it's a deal breaker. You sort of wish Samsung had been able to come up with a somewhat more elegant solution. I mean, Apple, even Apple struggles with this too. You see people were, you know, meaning about the iPhone 11 Pro with it's like, you know,

it looks like a stove top. So because, you know, across the board, you know, phone makers are trying to cram huge sensors on top of a bunch of different camera lenses on the back of phones. You know, they're sort of being forced into, like, you know, a difficult spot in terms of making it perform well and look good. So moving on to the Z flip, I'm actually going to talk about this in the show today, but I was surprised by the people that got hands on last night, I was surprised by how uniformly they all were surprised by they were impressed at least.

Again, you know, you only get to play with it for a few minutes or whatever. Sure. To a person, everyone was talking about, like, how solid it felt. Like how – does that surprise you at all? It does, and it doesn't. I think, you know, after seeing the fold, people got even more wary about the concept and the idea of foldables. But obviously, you know, that was a beta. You know, there was only so much you can get right the absolute first time you try it.

And I think it's really impressive to see how full-fellables. far Samsung has come with the Z-flit, especially as it pertains to that ultra-thin glass screen. And I think that is like the real thing that's like, oh, man, this, I don't feel like there's any trade-off. It still feels sturdy. It still feels like I'm using a solid, well-made phone instead of dealing with that, you know, delicate plastic film that the original Galaxy Fold had. Well, and unlike, you know, the Razor, which everyone is reviewing right now, like, the Razor seem to be underpowered and spec compromised, like, almost everywhere, which, you know, three or four months ago, people were still willing to forgive because it was an experiment in foldables.

But, you know, there's a Snapdragon 855 plus 885, 88 bytes of RAM, 256 built-in store. Like, that's a decent, those are decent specs. Yeah, oh, the specs are great, and it's like, if you don't care about 4G, like, you don't have to worry about that. And to your point, I absolutely think that the Moto Razor, is like the biggest loser in all of this because, you know, because of the timing, and it's like the razor had like a one month

or two month window where it was like following up the fold and it was like, you know, bringing back all these great nostalgic feelings about, you know, I had three original razors back in the day. I broke a couple and the last one survived. And it's like, oh man, it looks the part, it feels the part, you know, it has like, it evokes the right design language.

It's like, you look at the new razor's like, oh yeah, that's absolutely a razor and it's something that people, you know, get warm and fuzzy about. But then when you look at the Z flip, it's like, oh, wow, this is what, this is a device that makes you excited about the idea of foldables. It, you know, it combines everything you love about modern phones and very few compromises, except for, you know, maybe not waterproof or not water resistant. Well, and it is the, you know, this is all relative, but it's the least expensive foldable phone yet. Oh, yeah. That totally, that totally helps too. And it's like,

like I said, that window were like, you know, the Razor just went on sale, you know, last week. And now this, the Z flip is going on sale this Friday. And it's like anyone who had a pre-order on the razor, like, if you're not running and trying to cancel that now, it's like, I don't know what you're doing. Given what we were just talking about with 5G, no 5G on the Z-flip, not a problem, you think, not a deal breaker? No. Like I said, it's like, I still think consumers, aren't super invested in 5G. So if you buy a Z-flit now and hold on to it in a couple years,

you know, you'll be, whatever is out in a year and a half or two years will be, that'll be the 5G phone that you really, really want. And on top of that, I think a lot of the people who are going to buy a Z-flit, they're the type of people who upgrade their phone every year. And I think, you know, in the next 12 months, you're not going to really miss not having 5G support. Two things real quick that I gave short shrift to yesterday and the Mad Dash to get the show out. It has that, when you close it up, it has that tiny little one-inch screen on the outside,

which actually, now that I went back and looked at some of the live blogs and stuff, like, I forgot that that actually had more utility than I thought. You can not only get notifications, take calls from it, but it's like even like a selfie. Yeah, you can use it to compose selfies. I'm actually kind of impressed with how much functionality Samsung into like a tiny and it's a 1.1 inch screen and if you look at the razor the razor actually has a much bigger exterior screen but it actually doesn't have that screen is much bigger but doesn't have as much functionality as you expect

whereas Samsung kind of you know under promised and over delivered on its like tiny one-inch screen so it's really interesting to see that I mean you're still not going to be, you know, doing much besides, you know, checking notifications and composing selfies, but it's, like, pretty handy. Yeah, it does what you need it to do, essentially. The other thing, the other thing was, and I feel like people are kind of thinking of this as, well, it's an interesting gimmick. And I'm not suggesting that this would transform how I would use a phone, but I think that ability to have it stay open at any angle, like, I'm kind of more psyched about that than I thought I'd be, because I can think of a lot of use cases for that. And, like,

yeah. That's something also that I think that people maybe are sleeping on. Oh, totally. I actually think that is probably the most underrated feature of the entire Z-flip. And it's like just for simple stuff, it's like, how many times have you been like out, you know, hanging out with your friends and you want to take a group picture? But no one has a tripod. And so you end up trying to like prop your phone up against like someone's book or like a bag. And it's like, no, you just put the Z-flip down on like a picnic table, open it up to 90 degrees. And there you go. You have like a mini tripod set up And if you're like, you know, trying to be a vlogger or something and like you don't want to carry a big camera around, it's like, oh, okay, I automatically have this thing that turns into like a little mini setup. And then there's like, you know, Google is working with Santong to add value to apps like Duo and YouTube so that you can scroll comments.

And it's like, I think that's one of the like most, most eye-opening things about foldables is that like because of people are not playing with the design of phones and how you build them. you're seeing a lot of innovation in what, you know, these little improvements can have on how you actually use the phone on a day-to-day basis. Right. You know, again, it's always if you're early or too early or whatever, but people forget about the fact that, like, things that you're like, well, I have no utility for that when you first hear about it. But then when you're using it, you find the utility. And listen, it can be as simple as if you've got small kids, I am so tired of Papa being the freaking cinematographer every time we talk to the grandparents. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

So if I can just sit it down and have them talk and I can walk away, that's fantastic. Right. It's almost like it's like a mini GoPro where you just set it on a table and then you forget about it, but it's sitting there capturing all the stuff. And no one's really thinking about it because it's just sitting on a table. Yeah. Or you leave it open next to your computer with Twitter on, streaming by, or whatever. Totally.

Yeah. And that's the thing. There's so many use cases and being able to make it, make it sturdy enough where people get excited about it and then get it in their hands. It's like, oh, now we're really seeing how, you know, the foldable technology is impacting the way people use phones. Last thing, you mentioned, like, you know, the integration with duo and live captions with Google. Like, what do you make of Samsung really wrapping themselves in Google, and, heck, I mean, and wrapped themselves in Microsoft and Netflix, too? I'm assuming that this is basically, you know,

If Apple is going all in on services and features and stuff, they have to be like, look, we're still here and you can do all that stuff and we're doing it with the best people, I guess? Right. Yeah, totally. Samsung has always really worked to make partnerships with a lot of the big players. And especially more recently with the unveil of Samsung's One UI last year and then OneUI 2.0 now, they're really trying to, to get better about software and how their phone, you know, plays nicely in the Android ecosystem

because obviously Samsung's, you know, their bread and butter is they do great hardware, they do great design. And now, you know, their software side is, you know, starting to catch up as opposed to like, you know, Google, their main thing is like they do amazing software. And the design of their phone is like, you know, not quite as exciting as you might expect. So it's kind of an interesting shift to see Samsung put more. effort and attention to the way the software works on their phones by bringing in partnerships with Microsoft, Google, and others. So all things considered fairly solid event for Samsung and their prospects this year.

Yeah, you know, the phones have great specs and we didn't even mention, you know, all the phones have 12 gigabytes of RAM, which is kind of nutty in a world where most laptops have eight. And you know, Samsung is, you know, really trying to goose the hardware with the 20. The one, you know, the really one concern is the price. It's like, you know, are people going to bulk at that price or are they going to be like, you know, 120 hertz screen, 5G support? That's enough for me to upgrade and, you know, they feel good or feel at least okay about paying $1,000 for a phone. Anything you want to plug, Sam, just Gizmodo, I guess. Yeah, just, you know, for more coverage, you know, always check back with Gizmodo.

We're looking forward to getting the Z-flip in relatively soon, so we'll have that review up as soon as possible. And I'll read it on here. Thank you, Sam. Thank you for having me. for having me.