The Vergecast - Galaxy S10E review and Spotify takes on Apple

Episode Date: March 15, 2019

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Natt Garun, and Paul Miller discuss the changes in the new Android Q beta as well as a review of the Samsung Galaxy S10, S10+. and S10E. Which phone is best? Also, Spotify files antitrust complaint over 'Apple tax' All that and much more on this week's Vergecast. Stories discussed in this episode: Android Q developer beta is available now on all Pixel devices The best early features of Android Q Every new Android Q feature we have found so farSamsung Galaxy S10E review: short, not shortchangedSamsung Galaxy S10 review: the awkward middle childSamsung Galaxy Buds review: imperfectly acceptableFacebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are still down for some users …Facebook returns after its worst outage everFacebook and Instagram's outage cost advertisers thousands of …Spotify files antitrust complaint over 'Apple tax' Why Vivo thinks port-less phones are the futureApple confirms March 25th event, expected to announce new TV …Apple's WWDC 2019 will kick off on June 3rd  Thanks to Microsoft Azure for sponsoring this episode. Get started with a free account and 12 months of popular free services at Azure.com/trial today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, real quick, before we start, Vox Media is doing a survey about podcast. So just go to this web address, take the survey, make us look good. It's Voxmedia.com slash pod survey. If an answer can favor us, I'd appreciate it. This week on the Vergecast, we're joined by Nat Garen. We're going to talk about the Galaxy S10E. Dieter's going to fall in love with the Galaxy S10. We're going to talk about Apple versus Spotify.

We're talking about Android Q. We're going to do a little bit of a preview of Apple's event on the 25th. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct-taped spreadsheets. Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in.

Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Proms something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data and your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skylar Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports.

And mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello, welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Verge Podcast. podcast network of which there are two. So we're doing great. Why'd you push that button?

Doing a great job. But we are the flagship. I'm your friend, Neli. Paul Miller is here. Hello. Deider Bone is here. Hello. And Matt Garon is here.

Woo. Hi. Nat reviewed the S10E this week. So we're going to talk about that. But we're back. I just want to start by saying thank you to everyone who came and saw us live at South by Southwest. I was just describing it to Paul as an out-of-body experience to have that many people.

A, just come see us at all. and then be completely enthusiastic in a conversation about antitrust policy is just beyond my wildest imagination. It's probably because we had an open bar. I'm going to be honest with you. No, but hang on. At the end of the podcast, we always ask for questions. And typically at these live podcasts, we spent an hour talking about antitrust policy. And then the first question is iPhone or Android.

But instead, all the questions were about antitrust policy. It was really fun. Yeah, it was great. And to everyone who came, thank you so much. You'd listen to it. Just know I, about halfway through it, I just literally could not believe it was happening because it was so much fun and so cool. So thank you to everybody. We want to do more of those in the future.

We'll do more of those in the future. If you want to sponsor the Open Bar or live podcast, get in touch. That'd be great because it really helped everyone along. Okay, let's get into it. First things first. We are recording this before this happens, but the Tesla Model Y will be announced this evening. Elon and crew putting it out. We're going to have full coverage of that.

You'll see it on the site. Just one thing I want to point out, Sean O'Kane wrote a great piece for us today. Tesla, as I'm sure you're aware, is on a bit of a bumpy ride. Liz Lapato says, Elon is Eloning again. But they famously don't advertise at all, right? So even in their SEC quarterly reports, they say one of our biggest advantages

and one of our biggest weaknesses all at the same time is we sell all of our cars through word of mouth and reputation and people loving the brand. So a really interesting thing that has been happening. is Model 3 demand is like a bit of a question mark. So for a while, the Model 3 had what appeared to be like infinite demand. It's like the best selling car ever. People, they literally can't make them fast enough.

That demand appears to be tapering. The Model Y is what comes in. It'll be sort of the compact SUV. It's the most popular style of car. That's going to be the one. It's either going to prove it out or not. So that's the thing to watch for tonight. See how people react to it.

See how pre-orders go, all that stuff. It's the open question. You should read Sean's report. It's a lot more detailed. It has actual research in it. But it's the one thing I think people should be watching for now that the model, by the time you listen to this, the model Y will be announced. It's the thing to watch for. So like I said, we're taping this before it happens, but it's happening.

Okay. Now, on to the extremely nerdy stuff. I'm very happy we're starting the show on nerd business instead of law business. It's where we've been lately. It's where the whole industry has been lately. But there's nerd stuff going on. Dieter, Android Q. Tell me what's going on.

So last few years, Google has been like, surprise. We're releasing a beta of the next version of Android right now in March. And it's no longer a surprise because they've done it again. Android Q is out in beta for pixel phones. And nicely enough, all the pixel phones, they went back an extra year, which is great by popular demand, they said. But the thing about this early beta is it's an early beta. It seems stabbler than I expected, but you still should never install it on your primary phone. and typically there's like the stuff in the early beta that's there because developers need to be ready for it because it might break their app or change stuff.

But the like actual user facing features and final stuff doesn't come until just, you know, a little bit later at Google I.O. So, I mean, we could break it down. Nat did a great video with this thing. I could talk about like the nerdy developer stuff and like there's, but there's also other hints of what user facing stuff is going to be in here. So I don't know. I don't know. Where do you want to start, Nat? Do you want to start like deep nerd or you want to do user-facing? Let's do user.

I mean, the people... Yeah, I think the more fun stuff is user-facing, which I think people are going to be excited to find out that dark mode is now extending to the rest of the phone, or at least it seems like it's going to be system-wide. It's actually disappeared from the display under settings. But if you do just put it on like battery saver, then the whole thing turns into dark mode, which is pretty awesome. Like the settings and like the apps in the main drawer now is all dark mode,

which I think people really excited about. That's one thing. If you dig into developer settings, there's also now some customization tools that changes like icon shapes. So for some reason, you don't like circles. You can now get two-drop. And squark, squirc, squircle.

Squircle. Squircle. Yeah. Official name for the setting, yeah. Yeah, Zoom mode is available now on your pixel phone. Yeah. So if you don't like circles, which are, you know, to me, very appealing to the eye,

you can now get to a drop because why not. That's great. Yeah, and then you can also change like the top bar to a different color. Now there's purple. Sure. Yeah, fun stuff like that. Is it all just thematic tweaks like that? Trying to think what else was it.

So the way I see, like if you look at the stuff that just mentioned, you can change a few colors. There's a dark mode toggle, which actually isn't there. But if you install the beta while you have dark mode on and P, then it like sticks with dark mode. It's this whole thing. and some font stuff and some icon-shaped stuff, you put that all together, and you're like, oh, this is the very early version of theming, and they're just going to actually offer proper theming built into it in the way that Samsung phones have had for years, or if you install a third-party launcher you've been able to get, but they'll do it a little bit more system-wide, a little bit more native to the platform. So even though they're only offering green, purple, and some other color right now, blue, I anticipate that they're going to be officially showing a full-on dark mode and then hard and parcel that full-on theme. And what we've been able to look at so far, like the building blocks of that thing. That's cool.

That's my hunch. Is that going to extend to like third parties or is that? That's complicated, right? I know. It could extend to all third parties. It could be just a base part of Android or that's probably what it's going to be because, you know, it's in this early beta. So they want developers to play with it and everyone to sort of see how it's going.

But like, themeing exists now for current Android phones. So one of the reasons, one of the things you can do on an S-10 is like, They've got a whole theming system, right? And there's like a handful of Samsung apps that could apply to it, and you apply templates and blah, blah, blah, blah. So, like, making it system-wide is actually, like, not that difficult. It's kind of a solved problem. Like, Samsung, for example, is one of the companies that has basically solved it.

But Samsung is also an interesting example because it's also like a closed ecosystem of, you know, themes. And so if Google wanted, there could be, like, the Google ecosystem of themes, and then everyone else is on their own to figure out how they're going to theme. I suspect it's just going to be a base, like, part of the system. for everybody and maybe if we're lucky like two years from now everybody all adopt it instead of using their own custom rolled themes

that's what I think is probably going to happen but it's possible Google could just keep it for their own yeah it's also possible to roll out fuchsia right when that is finally done and then we'll start all over again yeah how do you guys feel like dark dark mode seems like it's like one of those like easy features that like Apple and Google have left until last just as like a nice PR win when they've run out of ideas

like I love it I prefer it for most of my applications, except for like reading pros. I don't really like Dark Mode for reading pros. Is it so important to you guys? No. No, I don't think it's that important. I think it's very appealing and nicety eyes, but I also think that, like, I don't know, most people who use phones aren't just like early adopters.

My mom probably won't like this. She won't turn on DarkMud. I think it's cool that it saves battery on OLED screens. That's neat. That's true. Does it save that much battery? I have no idea. I guess you just roped yourself into a long-term test.

Two identical phones. I feel like there was like a like a hack or some extension you can install on Firefox back in the day and turn all the websites black to save to save battery on your laptop. But that doesn't make any sense. That never actually made any sense. It theoretically makes sense on OLED. Yeah, I just think it's trendy, right? Yeah.

Like, we went from, like, you know, the early web, we just did the web 30th anniversary A to Z thing. Jake put together was super fun. There were, like, lots of, like, black web pages and, like, green text on black to be super retro and blah, blah, blah. And then we're like, oh, wait, no, we can make stuff white. And, like, white space exists. And let's make things big and blocky and do cards everywhere.

And then everything was cards. And Dark Mode is just the latest UI trend. Yeah. That's kind of how I see it. I do think it is kind of, it's, what's fun about it is how fast everyone realized what Paul is saying. which is if you just add it, like some X percentage of your user base

will be irrationally happy. Right? It's like, dark mode is here. And I'm like, okay. Like, Slack added dark mode. Like, how moody do you need your Slack to be? Like, what kind of Batman chat room are you in? But like, it's fun.

Like, just that moment is fun. You understand what the incentives are. Like, you flip your UI around and suddenly everyone's happy with you. Like, there are not many UI changes that offer you that. that reaction. Yeah.

All right, Dieter, what's some of the nerd stuff in Q? Well, Matt didn't mention my favorite thing. So, she can guess what my favorite thing is. Oh, God. My favorite user-facing feature. Is it the share sheet? Yes. Yeah, no.

Wow. Mind-meld. Yeah, I got to, bro. My tweet about this was at the top of Android's Reddit subreddit. I don't know. It's insane. Anyway. Okay.

Well, the share sheet now has a much slower lag. Yeah, and it gives you the little URL. and then like the copy to clipboard, like right up top, which is normally the way people want to be sharing stuff. So that's a lot better. I found that in some of my use case, like it doesn't always bring up my frequent contacts, but like if you use it often enough, it'll start to come up and it'll load a lot faster. So that's always really nice. It's based on, I believe, the actions framework that was introduced in P.

And it's also something they've been promising for a year. Right now the share sheet kind of has to like, when you pull up the share sheet, it has to go, hey, Android apps, all of you. How do we share to you? And the Android apps go, hang out a second. Yeah, and they all start running up. And then it pops up and then things start moving around and there's a pause and a delay. But now apps have to publish ahead of time, quote unquote, publish ahead of time how they share to the system through actions.

I think it's actions. Yeah, it's action. Or slices, no, it's actions. And then that allows a share sheet to come up more quickly. Google says instantly, but Nat, I think you said it was less lag. Yeah, no. I think that like once, the first time you hit share, it definitely takes, you know, like a half second. But then after that it comes up pretty quick. Okay. Is that how iOS works? This is you apps publish into a registry and that's why they're always there.

There's a lot of, isn't that how iOS works in Android Q? I see. For example, location sharing. There's one thing on this list. I'm looking at the list from Android Police of continuously updating features that is definitely not an iOS, which is a desktop mode. Have either you tried the desktop mode? Not yet. Like, that's what I want more than anything. Screw your dark mode. Whatever.

You can have all the colors and themes you want. What I want is you plug the phone into a thing and it turns into a fully windowed operating system for no reason. I mean, Dex does that. Samsung does that. Yeah, but Samsung, I mean, isn't that the history? Samsung does the Samsung way. And then Google putters along and two years later they do it correctly for everybody else.

Yeah. I think that desktop mode is also half there because they like, they already like three quarters built it to get Android apps working in ChromeOS. And so they're like, oh, you know, I've basically almost finished a double major instead of getting a minor. I just take this one extra class and do it. And then they create a desktop mode. I love it.

That's great. Anything else from Q that we need to know that? Yeah, there's some other nerdy stuff. Like permissions are going to be a little different in Q. Just like iOS, now you can have, you can set app permissions to only access your location when the app is in use instead of a blanket, yes or no. So that's helpful. I think they'll help with battery.

They'll help with people who want to limit their data sharing with third parties. It's also going to limit how apps can access your other phone identifiers, like your serial number and IMEI. And it's going to, by default, randomize your Mac address. So, like, this all matters and, like, means anything to you if you hate ad targeting and just want more a tighter control around that. So if you care about the stuff, like, that's coming in Q, screenshots now have a freaking notch in it.

Is that sure? that wasn't just part of the early beta that we saw? I mean, it is technically still an early beta, so it is still true. I don't know what this is for. I don't know. This is the definition of weird flex. Because I have a pixel 3. Look at my notch on my screen shot.

I don't know what else. I have no idea what else this is supposed to be for, but that's the only thing I can think of. It's funny because Apple 100% does it the other way and they remove the notch. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's what Android does now is it removes the notch, so it's whatever. The permission stuff is really interesting because that's the other example of like what the iPhone does. And I, it can cut both ways. The way Google's characterizing it is anything that's a permanent, unchangeable identifier on your phone, they want to limit an app's ability to access.

So not just listed off the things. It's your Mac address. It's your IMEI. It's your serial. And that should make it harder for apps to track you and put, you know, whatever. And then, you know, you can reset your stuff. and they'll reset your Mac address by default and blah, blah, blah, blah. On the other hand, it doesn't stop Google from knowing that stuff.

And so it makes it so that if an app wants to track you down to, like, your person, who you are, it gets harder for them to do it just on their own, which is great. But it also means it like, oh, you know who can do that is Google. So maybe we'll just buy more Google ads. Yeah. Yeah, that's 100% what they're going to do. It's like, privacy win. Also Google win.

Well, I mean... I changed my mind. Break him up. Bring him up. I was insane. Literally having people chanting break them up was the most fun. We need a soundboard, so you just hit a button anytime we want to get the sound of the crowd. No, Deeter, to your point, like, if Google makes it harder for other people to track you and they make it easier for them to track you, that's a pretty unassailable moat for them to say we have better targeting.

Do you think that's what they're doing here, or are they actually trying? I think it's both. It's really good for them, but this is part of this thing that Google calls Project Strobe, which is like a sort of Google-wide initiative to like look at all this data that they're collecting on users and decide whether or not they want it, basically. And so that's one of the, that's like part of Project Strobe was shutting down Google Plus. Project Strobe, they also announced when they shut down Google Plus that they were doing a thing that is now turning on in both Android Q and like a couple earlier versions of Android where they're limiting,

limiting app access to some of your contact information. So, for example, if you want a list of, like, contacts, you know, from the address book, Android is not going to tell you who your most contacted people are if you're a third-party app. Like, that's data they don't want to give out. They're also limiting access to other call log information. It used to be if you wanted to, like, make a text message app or make a, actually not even a text message up, make any app that needed SMS for one reason or another. the only way for Android to give you those permissions

was to give you permission to all call logs and text messages, which seems bad. So they've actually figured out how to lock some of that stuff down a little bit more. So they're creating more like discrete limited APIs for apps to be able to get at information that they might want from you so that they can make sure that the siphon is, you know, pretty narrow. And that is also very much like what the iPhone is doing. But again, like, is the iPhone going to be better at limiting what apps can find out about you, Paul Miller, or you Nat, or you Nilai?

Probably. But Android is moving in that direction, and that's part of this project strobe thing at Google. To everything you just said, there is a well-known, rational self-interest for a company to collect less data, which is that there's a liability there. If they own a bunch of personal information about people and then it gets leaked, And there's a lot of privacy advocates talk about it. It's not like I want to, you know, everything I do to be so secret because I'm a secret agent. You know, it's that these companies literally can't, even with the best intentions, keep data safe. You know, Home Depot can't with the best intentions not leak credit cards.

So how could you trust really anybody to own sensitive data about you? And therefore, you know, so I hope more companies come. around to this. And I hope this is literally Google actually doing that and not just doing this as a like a PR move. Yeah. I wish the liability was higher, right? I mean, like, how much trouble did Home Depot get in really? Well, I will tell you that I happily went to Home Depot and bought more stuff from Home Depot last week. Like, it's, I mean, I don't know. Like, if you just look at the data, like the lists of ongoing data breaches, like there's not enough, right? Like, and I think you're right, Paul, like at some point stuff

leaks, but the sort of like, we have to keep it secure because otherwise we'll face billions and fines or someone will sue us or our market position will be eroded. That link is a lot weaker than I think anyone wants. You could argue that it's hurting Facebook's market position a little bit of a black guy. But only because of like an unrelenting series of insane candles. Like an all-time historical string of like blunders has gotten face with a point. where maybe some people are quitting Facebook. But I do agree with you. There should be a very high liability to misusing people's personal information.

Yeah. Well, it's good that they're trying to protect it more. Hey, Nat, is there anything else in Q? You've used it more than I have. How is this product sans font everywhere? Does it look okay? Does it look fine to you? It looks fine.

I mean, I like it. I mean, like, it's starting to show up everywhere. I think you're seeing it in a lot of the web-based Google services. so for it to show up in Q now, it doesn't surprise me. You can change it to a different font, but the one that you can alternatively change it to is like really just not very nice. So it's stick with the new font, it's fine.

Okay, Nat. You review the S-10E? I did. Which is like the one. If you had to pick from the three, I think that the S-10E is definitely the one that most people will like. It's cheaper.

The fingerprint sensor placement, in my opinion, just makes a lot more sense on this. I know that there are some opinions about the in-screen reader, but I just prefer the placement on this one better. It fits better in a small hand, especially mine. I actually think it could go smaller, but so far so good. The past Samsung phones, I think S9 and S8, have a 5.8-inch screen, so they suck with that size and just made the body smaller

and the screen fit around it more with thinner bezels. Yeah. How's the camera? The camera, you know, it doesn't bother me. It doesn't bother me It's just it's hard for me to have strong feelings about the camera Because I do think that it takes really nice pictures And like their wide angle actually looks way better than like

They're ultra wide I should say Looks better than they're wide which is weird Like I always always keep it on ultra wide Really? Yeah it's weird like I keep it on that because it's just I don't know Like you get more you can it's easier to just crop than to get too close And then you're like whatever But I'm so spoiled

Let me take a photo. She like runs away from you. I really don't want to be that close, y'all. No, but I don't know. I feel like I'm so spoiled because I come from the pixel camera. And I know you can just download the pixel camera on this. But like night... But does it improve it?

I just... I haven't really used it on that too much in the week that I had to review it. But I just feel like the niche features, like NightSight or... Sam's version is called Night Bright. night. Samsung. Yeah, you can't get it to come on, like, manually. It just has to be really dark out, which is kind of annoying.

You know, sometimes I know that Vlad likes to apply the night side effect, even when it's daylight out, and it's, like, just fun and more versatile. You get to play around with it a little more, and you can't do that on the Samsung phone, that's kind of a bummer, like, just low-light pictures just don't look that great. And, but, yeah, otherwise, like, the camera's fine. The screen is fine. I don't notice the difference at all. Like, I know that people, maybe if you're coming from a quad HD screen, you're like, oh,

this doesn't look as nice, but I don't know that you'll notice that much. Most people, anyway, I don't think that they'll notice that much unless they put phones literally side by side and try to like pick out the differences. Yeah. The one thing I want to talk about. Well, so first, with a camera, you published your shots in the review. Mm-hmm. And I just don't think it looks good.

Like, I think Samsung, they used to be kind of in the lead. and then the iPhone and the pixel are both, they're going in opposite directions. It's totally fine. I think most people will be happy with it, but if you're coming from something like a pixel phone, then it's like, yeah. It's just not the same. Yeah, and a wide angle selfie has a smaller field of view than the pixels, and it tends to make people look really pale. Yeah. Like, I think in the sample shot that I put in my review, you can see that, like, Dami's, like, looks like a ghost.

She's a ghost. She's a ghost. Maria is like five shades lighter than she is. It's not great. Samsung has a combo platter of over-exposing and blurring of skin tones. Oh, yeah. They love to try to like skin smooth, which, you know, I used it. It's fine.

But like the idea of just knowing that you had to turn on skin-smoving is just so offensive to me. She's like, I thought I had nice skin. But like, wow, this does look better. And wow, like now I feel really weird about myself. I'm all in. I'm like getting older. I'm like smooth it out. Whatever.

No, man. I'm trying to love being for me, okay? Self love. And then the other thing I want to talk with the S&E, you know what I'm going to talk about, is the screen protector. Oh, my God. It's just such a piece of crap. I've had it in my pocket and like, okay, I know people are going to like yell at me for keeping my phone in my pocket with my keys, but I literally can't put it in my jeans. I'm sorry. So I keep it in my purse or in my jacket pocket with my keys and the scratches are insane.

So, like, if you use a screen protector, just peel this thing off that comes with the box out of the box. It's terrible. Yeah, the corner radius and the whole punch, as you can see in our review. Does that line up. It looks crazy. Was that on when you pulled it out of the box? Yeah. I pulled it out of the box like this.

I was looking at the phone. And then I saw, like, the little line around the whole punch. And I was just like, what the hell is this? I thought it was just the plastic that comes with new phones. So I tried to get it off. I'm just like, this is really not coming off. So then I, like, talk to Samsung. Is it supposed to be like that?

Or like, did you send us a device that somebody already used and maybe suck this thing on? They're like, oh, no, that keeps out of the box. I'm like, what? So just to be clear, so other Samsung phones, the corners of the screen don't match the radius of the phone, right? So like the iPhone, this is like one of my favorite little Apple things. Like all the radii are perfectly matched, right? So Samsung phones, LG phones, all these other phones, the corners of the screens are curved and the radii don't match. The S10E, they match.

They got there, we did it. Mission accomplished, and then there's a screen protector on it that doesn't match. And then on top of it, the hole for the camera on the front is misaligned. So, like, I can't look at it. I don't know what to tell you. It's very sad. I don't know what Sam's like. They can do better than that.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's not... It's thoughtful that they tried, but like... It's very thoughtful to try, but I think that it's almost borderline offensive to be like, to be like to give you a shitty product than to not give it to you at all. Especially at like 750 bucks. Yeah. And, you know, like if you're going to get one, just get a new one.

But like if you are just keeping this on just until you get a better one, sure, it'll do. Yeah, that's all I can say about it. But it also scratches. Yeah, I mean. All right, 750 bucks. 750 bucks. S10E. I actually don't think, I know I called it a cheaper phone, but it's not a cheap phone.

So I actually don't think that people should go out and buy it. right now unless your phone is on the road. You're breaking. If you wait a couple more months, more than likely this thing's going to get cheaper. It's going to get discounted. It's going to come in Bogo deals. Like, galaxies go on sale really quickly. So if you want one or if you're getting multiple devices for your family,

you should definitely wait it out for a couple months. Yeah. Okay, but it's 750. Yeah. S10E or iPhone 10R. But here's the thing. iPhone people are going to use iPhones, right? Because they're locked into ecosystem.

So it's hard for me to convince an iPhone to user to switch an Android. But if you're going to use an Android phone, like, really the question is S-10E or Pixel-3. And I think that if you care a lot about the camera, Pixel-3, for all other things, I think S-10E will make a lot of people happy. And I have an iPhone jack. Yes, yes, it does. Super important to me.

Deeter, you spent, I watched this happen. Yeah. Deeter landed in Austin for South by Southwest on his way to the hotel. he stopped and purchased an S-10. Actually, just to be clear, I blew past my hotel a half an hour north to the nearest Best Buy and then made my lift driver wait for me. And he didn't want to get in trouble. So he clocked out. So I had to pay him cash to drive me back down to my hotel.

And the traffic was horrendous. So this whole like S-10 trip took two hours, which doesn't sound that painful because, you know, whatever. But it was two hours in traffic. And in Austin when all I really wanted to do was go get taco. goes in a beer. So it was, it was painful. Anyway, so I watched this happen. He, Dieter went on his adventure in Texas to buy a phone. Then he showed up. The most boring adventure ever. Dieter shows up in Texas and goes to Best Buy. He's like, I think I like this phone. And then over the course the next four days, I literally watched this man fall in love. So you love this phone,

but you think the camera is fine. The camera is fine at best. It requires more skill than the pixel 3 camera and it is not like it is not a step change better compared to the s9 which is not a step change better compared to the s8 it was like you know they're incremental improvements um and meanwhile we did see something closer to a step change from like the pixel to the pixel 3 like you could see that improvement curve and I think the same thing happened like I'm actually um more impressed with the 10s compared to the 10 on the iPhone side than I thought I would be even though it doesn't seem like that big of a difference but the change on the S10 is just not that great

and their scene stuff is like also pretty bad the telephoto is like shruggy I think the wide angle takes worse pictures than the standard the ultra wide angle takes worse pictures than the standard white angle but it's just way more fun it is it's way more fun it looks impossible I just like that you can see more yeah now when you look at it and you're like holding it

you're like switch to it you're like this is impossible No, but also once you have it on ultra wide and then you switch back to wide, you're just kind of like this looks like Zoom. Like it just doesn't look. It's like too close. Too close. But the thing I love, the thing that has sold me on it is this like cuts both ways thing of the software. I was not expecting to like be deeply into Samsung software because there's, you know, too many options. But like there are just a few things that are great.

The like edge panel thing, I could put my calendar over there. Love it. There's a few more options in the quick settings. You can theme it. You know, you can screw out of the wallpapers on the, you know, whole punch, whatever. And I love having the full-size screen with like minimal bezels. And you kind of get that with the S-10E too. So it's not that big a change. Yeah, I actually prefer the S-10E. It's like it has a little bit of a bezel. I prefer that. I like I'm not super into edge screens, to be honest. So like I just like it better that there's no access. accidental way for me to pull out the edge panel. Right. So I think most people should get the E if you're looking at a Samsung phone, like for sure. But I'm happy that I got the regular S-10. And I'm having medium good luck with the fingerprint sensor.

It is definitely slower than a standard capacitive sensor. It's about the same speed as Face ID, but it feels slower because with Face ID, as you're unlocking it, you're like already tapping the thing or already swiping up. So it feels faster. but it's about the same speed in my experience. But I'm also not using any kind of screen protector, and it seems like screen protector really hurt the reliability of the thing

actually reading your thumbprint. Yeah, this fingerprint sensor is hit or miss. It's either it works and people like it. I guess I never miss. Oh, what finally happened. There it is. We finally have a TikTok meme on the first cast. You started it.

I just said a phrase. I just said some words. As important as this topic is, I really do want to hear more about one UI. Yeah. Like, could you convince somebody like, oh, you have a phone that does have one UI? You're really missing out. Like, what's the selling point? You're not really missing out.

But you're missing out of, like, you know, some of the apps having the little jib jib jabs at the bottom. So it's easier to reach with your thumb. Like the UI. Like shift everything down. What's a jib jib. You're missing the edge panels. There's like a million little extra cute little settings that are fun. Like you can mess around with what the lock screen looks like.

They work incredibly well at the Galaxy Buds, which don't quite have the Bluetooth capability of AirPods. But Galaxy Buds work are like good with a Samsung phone and just kind of average with a non-Samsong phone. Because you can like customize the sound and you can like set the taps to like change the volume and all this stuff. there's like there is a moment where you're using the Samsung phone with the Samsung stuff where you're like oh I I'm like in a Samsung ecosystem and I'm not all the way and I'm not using Samsung health because I'm not a maniac but you like you have this moment where you like look back and you're like oh god I cross the border and I'm like living that Samsung life and I don't know how that happened I never thought I would be that person.

Dieter's lost he's sitting in a highway. in Texas, just being like, what happened to me? Standing behind you is the ghost of Bixby nodding, approving you. Okay, so Bixby is still objectively terrible. But you can download, it's called Bix Assist, and then that lets you remap the button to Google Assistant. That's pretty good.

Yeah. I'll take that. Poor Bixby. Yep. Just a little dog with shoes wants to be loved. So of the three, you think the middle one, so Nat has voted. S-10E.

But I mean, I kind of can't choose the other two because they don't fit in my hands. So, like, well, look, sometimes you vote for some reasons. Sometimes you vote for other reasons. You should get the S-10E. You don't need the telephoto lens. You don't, like, the fingerprint sensor on the side is fine. The screen is a little bit smaller, but it's just as fast. For me, I got the S-10s to the S-10E for similar reasons to Neli preferring the iPhone 10S to the iPhone 10R.

Like the screen is better in a way that like people that like care about screens deeply will notice. But the screen on the S10 is really good. It's just not like the holy shit best screen on a phone good. Well, I just think it's, I mean, we have, there's three of yours I talk to. Dan is like, get the S10 plus. Like that's the one. It's either the E or the plus. I love the plus.

Nat's like physically I'm only allowed to have this one. They're all literally the three little bears. Yeah. And Dieter's like, I like this one because it's the middle. And like, is that just three different people? Like, great, Samsung made choices. So Dieter's mama bear and Dan's Papa bear, and I'm a little bit. I hate this metaphor, too.

I hate this the most. And Eli's Goldilocks. If you go to a store and hold all three, like, you'll pick up the plus and the 10, and you're like, these are basically the same size. I might as look at the bigger one. And then you'll set down the plus, and you'll pick up the E. And you're like, these are basically the same size, but the smaller one feels better. And then, like, you, when you put them all three side by side, you're like, it is insane that you made three phones.

You should have just made two. But then when you, like, try and, like, pick each one up in turn, you kind of don't know where to go. And I think for a lot of people, the regular 10 is just going to fall out. They're either going to want to get the big one or the small one, especially since so many of us are recommending the small one is, like, why not get the small one? I think Marquez's video about it was literally titled, why not, right? And Nat says, go get this one. And she's right. And it's not just if you like small phones.

It's like, it's objectively a great phone. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm just the weird one that likes the one in the middle. It's just like the, it's basically basic economics. Like you go to movie theater, you get the medium small, like large popcorn. And like no one gets the medium except if your theater. Wow. I do.

I do. You are truly the medium popcorn of the Verdi-cast, my friend. I am a middle child. And so it falls naturally to me to be forgotten and choose the forgotten phone. I will say this, the S-10 having played with Dieters and played with Matt's a little bit. the SN is an objectively nicer thing. So it's worth the upgrade just for like, it's a little bit more premium feeling

and that screen is a little bit nicer. But other than that, whatever. All right, we have to take a break. We're going to come back. I'm sure Paul and I are going to yell at each other but I interest a lot. It's going to be great. We'll be right back.

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Terms and conditions apply. We're back. So last week we did a live verge cast. I met with Elizabeth Warren, a senator from the great state of Massachusetts. It's running for president. She told me she wants to break up all the big tech company. She's got a whole bunch of rules. We can listen to that episode. We went through it. It was really fun. Break them all up. We all chanted. Great time. This week, Spotify is suing Apple in the EU for very similar reasons to what Elizabeth Warren was laying out. So Warren's plan is if you run a store, you shouldn't be able to participate in that store. If you have a company that's over $25 billion in revenue and you run a store, you shouldn't put your own products in the store because you

will have incentives to do bad things. Right? So we want to break them all up, have the store companies, have the product companies. Is that workable? It does not seem so. Like that's the conventional wisdom. But her argument to me was it's easier to just break them all up because then I don't need to regulate every little thing. Everyone will just figure it out on their own. That's her argument. Spotify says, well, hey, we're an Apple store. Apple bought beats.

They launched a music service. And after that, they began screwing with us constantly. So they started rejecting the spot. Like when Spotify would update the app, those apps are getting rejected by Apple for mysterious reasons. Spotify famously, this is going on for five years now, hates the fact that if you want to sign up for Spotify on an iPhone. You have to pay the Apple 30% tax famously. Spotify cannot even email. Apple won't let them even email their users on iOS to say you can sign up in other places.

They reject the app constantly for having it point to where else you can buy it. Apple withheld like Apple Watch features forever. It took forever to get a Spotify app on the Apple Watch, even though other partners are there. There's some other stuff in there. They're like, we want to be on the HomePod. It's like, do you? Does anybody care about this? But they've bought this laundry list. And the thing that I think is powerful about their argument, whether or not you think it's right, is Apple is motivated to make Apple music more successful. So they use the power of iOS and the app store to restrict Spotify, to hold Spotify's updates back, to prevent Spotify from going outside of the payment ecosystem, and to boost Apple music.

So Walt was tweeting at me and Dieter yesterday. This is how Apple keeps their platform secure. How do you make the connection between running the app store, the Apple tax, and the app updates? And so here's just my read on. I tweeted this at Walt, love Walt. It's good to talk to me about it. Apple, when you think about monopolies and antitrust, you think about leveraging a dominant position in one market to gain a dominant position in another market. So Apple in America has something like 45% or 50% in the market, 43% to 50%, depending on when you measure what quarter.

in the UK, it's right up there too. So country by country, you look at it. They've got some huge chunk of the market. They have an absolute monopoly for iOS users. You can just define the market that way. So if you're an iOS user, Apple is your gatekeeper. And a company can't reach you except through the open web, which is there, but you can't do a Spotify in the web.

So a company can't reach you with an app or service unless they come through Apple's gates. They're literally the gatekeeper. So they're using that position to, you know, price Spotify higher, which is price discrimination, and to restrict Spotify's competitiveness by eliminating its access to features of the platform that they then give themselves. They also break the rules on their own behalf. So I think we've written three or four stories about this now where other companies are not allowed to do push notifications that are promotions.

And Apple Music is like, do you have a family? You should get them on Apple Music. And so that's the argument. One of the things you guys talked about in the South Buy episode is that a lot of antitrust for a lot of these major tech companies are difficult because all these products are free. But this is a really interesting case where there's a very obvious Spotify for a time cost $13 on iPhones because Apple. Yep. So does that count as like this is raising prices in the or is it? I mean, because there's also, you know, a lot of people make the argument, well, this is just.

what a retailer does. They mark up goods, you know. Like, this is what Walmart does, right? And Walmart obviously has a lot of control over the various people who want to sell things through Walmart. I mean, and this is tough for me because I hate Apple's position on this from a technical standpoint. Yeah.

I think it's so dumb. It was so frustrating. It always bugged me. I'm a huge customer of Audible, you know, and I'm sorry. Apple, but I have given Amazon very many dollars because I love audiobooks, and they're better at it than you are. But Apple has made my life hell having to shop Audible on the Audible website all the time. And in the fact that Apple literally, and this is in Spotify's lit any of complaints. It seems like almost every time Spotify's app got rejected is because they tried to, in some way,

inside of their app suggest that a paid experience exists for people worthy to use the web browser. Yeah. And Apple makes the rules and Apple interprets the rules. There's no recourse

to some independent authority. So Apple gets to say, well, that's not in the rule. And Spotify says, well, last week you said it was. And they go back and forth and they don't get through. Well, part of the problem there is a bunch of those, like, app projection complaints

and even like Apple Watch and HomePod stuff is a sort of thing that if you are, Apple or you are more sympathetic to Apple than to Spotify, you could just nitpick to death, right? Like your app got rejected. You don't really know why. And you know that this is the rule anyway. And so that's separate. And you can't connect one thing to the other thing, you know, just because some, you know, random, you know, low wage app review or blah, blah, blah, blah. And so it's like making, like, if they actually want to make that case that those two things are connected, like that would take like an explosive like court case lawsuit.

like, you know, discovery. What they're doing right now is this big, giant PR push, right? And they're not the only ones. Like, they're the only ones doing it in like this, like, direct and explicit a way. But, like, Netflix is waiting in the wings to see what this looks like. Tim Sweeney is just agitating. A man. A man, Tim.

Tim Sweeney's the CEO of Epic, which makes Fortnite, which famously pulled its app out of the Google Play Store and said you need to sideload Fortnite because we don't want to pay Google's app tax. They obviously cannot do that on the iPhone. I think they're very upset about it. Netflix won't let you sign up through iOS anymore. They want you to go sign up on the web. There's this argument, look, these are the biggest things. What are the biggest things going?

Netflix, Spotify, and Fortnite. Like, what do you want on your phone? Those are the things. And so, of course, they can force users to go another way. If you're a medium-sized company, you're not one of the biggest cultural institutions in the world, you don't get to play these games. Right.

And I think that's, there's the Spotify stuff, and, you know, they're big and they're competitive with Apple in one way. And I don't think the Spotify app gets reviewed by low-wage app store reviewers. Fair. I think that shit gets reviewed by Eddie Q. Right. So they have this argument that Apple's screwing with us, right? And they're screwing with us to promote Apple music.

And to Paul's point, some prices are higher, right, because of it. But in Europe, as we have, I think, hilariously discussed on, this podcast many times, the standard is actually competitive behavior, right? It's not this extremely tightly tied to price thing, which is the standard of United States. So I think you can see kind of like both sides of it. It's Apple's platform. This is how they keep it secure by tightly controlling the store. You can actually even argue at that. There's definitely scam apps in the store. The incentives they built in the store around like free to play games where they take 30% of everybody spending too much money in candy crush.

Those are bad incentives for Apple. Like there are some bad outcomes in the store, but on the whole, it's like a well-cureated store that keeps people from getting viruses. So like that's their argument. They did build the iPhone, right? Like they should get some credit. It didn't exist and now it does. So they should be able to say how it works.

I think those are pretty valid arguments. But on the other side of it is, well, this is the. only marketplace that people with iPhones can experience. And maybe they chose it and maybe they didn't, but they're not going to switch. How many different ways are you locked into an iPhone, right? Like, you're not going to, unless you're Paul Miller personally, you're not going to say, I want a phone with multiple app stores and switch your phone. And I don't think the market can speak that loudly about this issue. I think the companies involved need to say, hey, the market for our little slice of the market, the market for music streaming.

services is tightly constrained because of Apple's behavior, right? And that is a problem. That's like a problem for everybody. I think that's a little bit, that's a little bit paternalistic. And I feel like there's too much paternalism on all signs. Apple thinks that you are too dumb to be safe. You are too dumb to decide what is an appropriate thing to be listed in the podcast app and what is an appropriate app for you to download and what is an appropriate in-app purchase, that you are too stupid to figure it out, and therefore they will protect you. But at the same time, I think that's exactly what this antitrust law ends up being, is that, well, consumers are too dumb to leave companies that harm them.

And so we have to help these consumers by destroying these companies. Well, I don't think anything that's destroying is like a hard word. A specific example that Senator Warren gave to me was, look, we broke up standard oil, And actually, because they were four different companies, shareholders got more value returned to them. So there's like a positive net economic benefit. There wasn't one monopolist collecting monopoly profits. And that was the net loss. But overall, shareholders, you know, however many standard oils were created, return more value.

Sure. Like, you want to fall all the way down those weeds. There's a podcast that Vox Media makes called The Weeds. They are happy to do that for you. I think my point is if you are on a platform, if you're a customer on a platform and the platform vendor is doing all kinds of petty shit to make your free market choice objectively worse than their own product, that's probably an issue for you. You can feel it. And I think all of us feel, this show is about feelings about technology. It's core.

And like we are constantly feeling platform vendors doing weird stuff to us. right we're constantly feeling that that sensation of choice getting constricted and so there has to be some recourse beyond you know throwing out how i share it i want to switch to spotify and i want a better spotify experience so i have to degrade my photo experience with my family because i prefer apple photos like that is an insane market choice to like how are how is any rational person going to make that decision well and this is why i i don't i'm going to be i feel like i'm becoming a total one note on this because I'm starting to doubt that there is any such thing as a good, large company that provides services. Break them up. You want 50 small companies. It just feels like no matter who you trust to run your life for you, they will fail you. And the problem was up front when you decided that you were going to offload responsibility to somebody else. Well, and I think another way to the alternate approach is you should have more companies competing in the market.

on different levels. And again, I think the Elizabeth Warren approach, it was fun to talk to her about it. I think the lack of nuance that approach is actually really refreshing, where she's just like, the answer is breaking them up. And then like, you know,

the sort of VC class of Silicon Valley is on CNBC today being like, everything's so complicated. How can you just break? And she's like, yeah, that's exactly the point. Like, I don't want to sit around and go into Twitter with 10,000 lawyers

and figure out how to like carve it apart. I just want to break you up. Like, here it is. is it's done. I want to steal the easy way. Yeah. The direct way. The easy way. Without any legal cover. One of the things she says to me that I thought was really interesting is

this way you also know it happened. Right? Like you don't have to you don't have to sit there and like a measure like you know we we turn down the lock in screw on Tim Cook's panel like his iOS control panel and like five years

to now we're going to measure some effect and be like it sort of didn't. It's like no we just broke you But it definitely happened. We definitely took some action and then we can definitely measure the effects. Again, do I actually think it's totally workable? No. But has it sort of, for me personally, like, made me realize like I am actually fundamentally a capitalist who believes in competition?

Like, that's where I'm at. I don't think these markets are competitive enough. I don't think that consumers have the ability to make real choices in these markets because on both platforms, you are constantly shoveled towards locked-in services. You are constantly, like, either by price discrimination or by user experience or by, you know, like marginal ecosystem benefit, you're constantly being told, wouldn't it be great if you use Google Photos?

Wouldn't it be great if you use the built-in mail app instead of whatever app you want to use in the iPhone? Like, that's constantly happening. Do I think there are much narrower solutions than just, like, blowing every company up? Probably. My experience is I go to my room and I secretly write essays I never publish about how maybe everything should be more difficult and ease of use is a bad thing every time. And then I go and help my parents set up Google Photos.

Anyway, so Spotify thing is super interesting. It's my life. So here's another example. It's going to play out. It's amazing that, one, like, 2020 election coverage season is here for every news outlet. and B, I think it's really important for us to go talk to 2020 candidates because they all have positions on it. Mechanic Kelly talked to a bunch of them. They're all going to come out with some tech regulation platform.

Who better than the verge in its audience of drunk people at South by Southwest screaming, break them up to like go after these candidates? So we're going to try to pull as many of them in. But here's another example. Facebook went down yesterday for like a day. It was down for like 25 hours, right? And a bunch of people are tweeting this morning. I think Taylor Lorenz, who's a friend of the Verges. a great reporter. You should read her stuff. But she's tweeting this morning, like, here's some

story about MySpace from like the early 90s or whatever. And the headline was, is MySpace a natural monopoly? And she's like, this is just something I'm keeping in mind. And I get that. But what MySpace was not, and MySpace like fell apart. And then, you know, there's like, there's like Nokia's on the cover of Forbes or whatever. It's like, can anyone beat Nokia? And it's like, yep, sure can. And Paul, I think that's kind of your argument. It's like, companies get too big. They get clumsy. They stumble. They fall down. They miss the next thing. I just think, like my point of view, is that betting on other people's failures is a mistake. Right?

Like, that shouldn't be your animating principle. Like, something will just happen and everything will write itself. Like, you have to be active. So betting that Mark Zuckerberg is going to blow it is like, for me, it's a tough call. Betting that Jeff Bezos is going to blow it. It's a tough call. And those companies are situated wildly differently than MySpace was. So Facebook goes down for a day.

and Ashley Carmen wrote a story that's like influencers lost a bunch of money brands that advertise on Facebook launched a bunch of money like random people who do motivational speaking are like scrambling to fill their seminars because they'd had this Facebook promotional plan so like this entire second order effect of businesses built on Facebook

like falls apart because they're wholly reliant on Facebook now that is like a huge amount of responsibility for Facebook it's a huge thing for all of us to contend with. Yesterday was also, there was like a momentous vote in the British Parliament about whether to delay Brexit. A third of British news consumers get their news from Facebook. So like it just went away like on this big momentous vote, which is the 9,000th momentous vote of Brexit that will happen in our lives. That's like a huge amount of responsibility for one company to carry. And I think antitrust aside, the amount of scrutiny.

that you have to apply to a company that has that much responsibility should be higher. Because there's not, when it went down, it's not like all those influencers just shifted their dollars to another platform. All those little mom and pops Kickstarter projects didn't shift their dollars to another platform. They just took the hit. And so if there's no market competition there to incentivize Facebook to act right, well, then I think you get the past year of Facebook, where they are just stumbling from thing to thing to thing to thing. and they can't get it together. Don't you think Facebook lost a lot of money in those 24 hours?

I'm sure they did, but... I mean, they have an incentive. It's just... Yeah, look, online services have an incentive to keep their services up. I get it. Right? But... I mean, regulation did not build this.

Regulation did it design and build this up to be as big and stupidly central as it is. I mean, I hate Facebook. I was very proud of the fact that I... I did not know Facebook was down until somebody told me on Discord. But it's dumb and I hate it and it's useless. But I didn't build it. Like the government didn't build it, you know. They didn't do all that work in investment and risk.

I mean, that's the thing is that we look at winners and then we want winners to be better. But what we don't see is people who try risky things and then they fail. And we don't, you know, I don't know. So that comes back to like my point about competition. Like we're in a place, I think, where no one is going to try to build a competitor to Facebook. Right? It's just like it seems unlikely.

There might be Discord is a great example. There might be a place where other people go and they build different kinds of businesses. But there's literally no market competition for Facebook. And when there was, they bought it. And they bought it again. Right. And like that sort of that like that consolidation is I think the harm, right? You, I would have preferred a world in which Facebook was competing with Instagram and WhatsApp was a paid messaging service that was encrypted by default and they weren't going to do ads.

Like I think that is sort of the heart of the, well, screw it. We'll just break them up. Right. Like, why not? Like what if we just had three companies again? And then we, and then we'll like see what happens, right? Instead of this, we're going to go in there and sign a consent decree and a lawyer will sit. on Jeff Bezos's shoulder and be like, you can't make that laptop stand, but these sheets are

fun. Like, that seems horrible to me. But, yeah, Paul, I think your point, like, there's an element here where there was nothing and there's something. And if you get too successful, like, the punishment shouldn't be like we get destroyed. But I also think if you're a platform, if you've been listening to the show for, we've been doing it for, for what, eight years now, Paul and I before that for two. So, like, Paul and I have been yelling at each other about this for a decade. Yeah. What is the thing that we are talking about?

The thing we're talking about is that platform vendors have some responsibility, right? They need an elevated sense of fairness on their platforms. And some platforms, you know, they're differently situated right now. So like Windows and iOS and Android and OS10 are all kind of different and Linux is out there being as different as it can be. But there should be some level set of if you want to make an app and get it to somebody at a platform, the platform vendor won't screw with you. If you're a customer and you have a Windows laptop and you want to put Chrome on it,

Microsoft isn't going to stop you. Right? And I think we need to get to that mindset because we all feel. I just think we all feel it. Yeah. Right. And that's like you can get to the rule in 50 different ways. But I think if you're a tech person and you listen to the show, like all we ever talk about is platform lock it.

And like how it makes us feel bad. So like there's some way to get there. Okay, Dieter, what were you saying? So I was going to say there, like one way to think. about this is we're thinking about this on like a spectrum of like on one end is I don't know big companies and one of the small companies but I actually think it's there's actually like two axes so there's let companies be big and make companies be small on like the y axis and on the x axis there's uh don't regulate it all all the way up to like full on Bernie Sanders controls everything right yeah uh by the Bernie the Bernie the Bernie bros uh they tweeted at me that Bernie is not trying nationalize things so if you're It's just no, it's a symbol. We're describing a symbol. Yeah, full on regulation controlled by Bernie.

Oh, God. He's at Backlon. Him, not me this time. If you look at it as like this sort of like, there's a Y and an X axis, if you look at allow big companies and have zero regulation, you get to like where we are right now, right? Facebook just buys whoever they want. You know, Google gets to do like weird stuff with ads, blah, blah, blah, blah. So Elizabeth Warren's proposal is like low regulation but small,

companies, right? And like, figure it out. We're just going to break them up and we're going to regulate that way. And then, but so when people are calling for regulation, there's like, are you regulating them into smaller companies or are you just going to like let them still be big monopolies, but you regulate them as monopolies? And it's like we need some sort of like Z axis to like get out of this or we just need to pick which quadrant we want to live in. Because right now we're living way off in the corner on big companies, big unregulated companies. And we either need to pick another quadrant to move to or we need to figure out some way out of like this rubric of thinking about these things. Yeah, I think it's the moment right now,

it's weird. You know, this is a tech show. We've spent however long talking about the S10E and how it feels in the hand, right? Like, but these companies are under an enormous amount of scrutiny because they went from being gadget makers and photo sharing service providers to being basically the center of modern life. And what Facebook decides. you can see is like what you're going to see on Facebook. And like there's a lot of action on the right wing of this country to break up Facebook because they don't like it. They don't like that.

Is that the same is what Warren is saying? I don't know if it is. But the feeling towards the company is exactly the same, which is you are too powerful. And I think if you get the feeling on both the right and the left of you are too powerful, then the government is probably going to find some way to check that power. My Z axis, and I really like this analogy, but my Z-Z. access is can I find a way that I don't have to care what happens to these companies? Outside of a theoretical, like, I'm going to defend property rights and I'm basically an anarchist.

But like outside of that, outside of a theoretical sense, I don't have to care, like I don't have to care about, you know, sorry, my brain just turned off. Because you don't care. Because I don't care. I just lost my train of thought because there was no care there. The hope is that I don't have to care and that I have my own soft, my own products, and Libram's a new phone that runs actual Linux. It works and it's wonderful.

And then it's all in like a peer-to-peer mesh network. And so I don't need the big telecoms anymore. And it's just wonderful. And we store everything on IPFS. We use the Ethereum name service for DNS. Paul, I mean, I love you, man. but if you're betting on the Linux phone like I just I worry that you're

going to be disappointed All right like I said This is going to keep happening We're going to keep trying to rope politicians in To talk to us in the Vergecast We're having some good bites already So yeah more antitrust talk is coming your way You can't stop me

Try your best Because Neely has a monopoly on the Vergecast I do Break him up Break him up All right. We're right back Support for this show comes from Whatnot

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Every week. Uh-huh. Hit me. My segment has always been called phones aren't jokes. Okay. This is about a very negative trend in our industry where companies make phones that are jokes. And I can't handle the pranks. So this started with Mizu, which made a portless phone as a publicity stunt.

Yeah. And now Vivo has the Apix 2019 concept phone, which is also portless. I have very strong feelings about whether or not that phone counts as portless. Why? Because it's got that little thing on the back? Yeah, it just has a USB port that isn't a USB plug. It's just, it's a Pogo plug version of a USB port. It's not portless.

Pogo puns are back. That's a port. So it's like a double prank. Yeah. Again, like I always say, phones aren't jokes. Stop lying to me with your joke weird phones that aren't real. No, it's just a flat port. Anyway.

No, it's not a port. Wait, a port cannot be flat. Is there a hole in the phone? Yes. It's a metaphorical hole. No, it's pogo pins. Pogo pins are back. Yeah, but it's Pogo Pins, but the Pogo Ponger pins, I guarantee you it's just like remapped

USB leads. Oh, sure. Yeah, but is there a hole in the phone? I mean, okay, I just Googled a port. It says a socket in, you know, in which a device can be plugged. Yes, I think that qualifies. Can you locate the socket, Mr. Bone? Yeah, it's magnetic.

It's around the port on the inside. Yeah, there's like a little dip. It's a little dip. This is like the worst court case in history. Is MagSafe a port? Is MagSafe a port? R-A-P MagSafe, by the way. It's a socket.

If a port is a socket, then yes. But what if a socket is a port? I think, hmm, yeah. All right. You're laughing, but phones aren't jokes. I don't know, man. We're all having a grand old time. about my favorite Pogo Pinjoke phone,

which is the red hydrogen one. Oh, no. Just summarily sort of like... So we reviewed the red hydrogen one, which is supposed to be this modular phone. It was going to get a red camera module on the back. And it was a horrible phone. I think Jake gave it our lowest score ever for a phone of three.

That's three points out of ten. I think two of them were simply for existing. In this red... Just removed all mention of this camera module from their website and they put out a statement that was like,

yeah, it turns out making a phone is really hard. So we're gonna not do this and we're gonna come back. We're back again. Round two, don't worry, hydrogen one owners, all five of you,

well, we'll take care of you. So my favorite Pogo PIN idea, which I was super hype about actually because how cool would it be if you could just like stick a red camera on the back of your red phone? Much like your Linux phone, Paul,

I think. Yeah. Really. This is your dream? Really ran on hope. Less so, Android. Android did not run well on it. There's a new version come in.

They're going to fix it. And the CEO, who has historically been very salty when people have reviewed this phone badly, says there's going to be some sort of upgrade program. And as a side note, all hydrogen customers will be his quote, quote, obsolescence obsolete when buying into the new professional image capture program. All his customers are obsolete? You'll be obsolescence obsolete. They're going to make obsolescence obsolete.

Oh, okay. That's upsetting. It's words. We're going to obsolete obsolescence. Like, that's a cool phrase, but to say that customers will be obsolescence obsolete is like a whole other. Yeah, you're in the right ecosystem. You just run around being, you can't obsolescence me. I'm obsolescence obsolete.

It's great. These pogo pins are going to save. me. All right. Mr. Red said. Deeter, before we started, I was going to take this out, but Deeter made me put it in, and it does sound cool. You have some conspiracy theory about the Chromecast turning into a game console.

What's happening? So, Google has a big gaming announcement at the game developers conference, GDC. They posted like a teaser. Someone took that teaser. I think Extreme Tech took that teaser. It was like, you know, zooming in towards a glowing door. And at the end of the glowing door, it was giant ghost cowboy, which was amazing. But we're expecting to do streaming games.

I had Project Stream a while ago, and I don't remember where I can cite this. But someone had the conspiracy theory of like, imagine. You remember last year when they added Bluetooth to the Chromecast Ultra and nobody knew why? Imagine you just any Bluetooth controller or in a Chromecast, you now have a game console. There's been a patent for a Google-made controller. The patent was not for the controller itself, but for like, you know, an indicator light, basically. so don't over read it, but they had a drawing that looked pretty complete. Anyway, look for that announcement from Google,

but there's also other streaming game things happening at GDC. So Microsoft has got streaming games. There's something that just happened with PS4. Valve is turning Steam link into a streaming game system. Everyone's making streaming game stuff now. It's just like that is what's happening at GDC this year. I thought everybody already was making streaming game things And then it didn't work

And then and then again They were like hey let's do streaming games this time And then it didn't work again I can't keep track of this industry as all I mean it's it's happening again I think it's all about like codex And how fast is your wireless and how fast is your internet Yeah I remember when Steam link came out

I was like oh this is exciting like I can you know I can use my laptop in one place on my apartment and have my PC somewhere else and I can play Factoria. And then it will crash constantly. So I completely gave up on it. And now they think they're ready for my desktop computer to stream video games over the internet. Like, I don't know. Like, if somebody does this, it really is actually fun to play those video games.

Good for them. That will be a great time. Until then, I just so unconvinced. I mean, I have a slingbox. I can barely stream like 720P. television over the internet from my house. Right? But, like, we tested Project Stream.

Stefan wrote an article back in October, and he's, like, way better than he expected. Granted, he wasn't expecting much, but, like, it worked way better than we expected. Like, it is, like, as a minimum viable gaming product, like, you're going to go from, like, spend $100 on a controller in a box, and, like, good enough, a little bit of lag, but whatever, if you're going to just go play, I don't know, Assassin's Creed or some other, you know, for person game, you know, by yourself, yeah, you can get by. And then there'll be this delta, and then you buy an XboxS, and, like, they'll be like these step functions all the way up to buy an insane gaming rig. And the, it does seem like streaming games is going to get

like viable and cheap, even though it won't necessarily get good. And that'll be different than what we had before. Everyone's going to announce their plans for that. It may all disappear to puff of smoke like the last three times. But that's what's coming. Is anyone here contractually obligated to say something about 5G at this time. Oh my God. It's like, John Ledger are going to pop like burst through a window and be like 5G bro. That's a thing, right? Zero latency,

wireless connections. Only if you pair it with 8K and AI. No, you're killing me. No, you use AI to figure out how to how to encode the game and then so that it doesn't take a push bandwidth and then you stream it over 5G to your 8K screen.

It all makes sense. Yeah, and then you just put a crater in the middle of Wisconsin. and take the money and run. It's great. It's perfect. The physics of this are just stupid. Because what do people want to do? They want to play Fortnite.

What happens in Fortnite? You are in multiplayer death matches. You're shooting at people. The latency is so fundamental to the experience. Paul, let me ask you a question. Yes. Do you stream 4K movies onto your TV via some box if you have a 4K TV? Is that a pretty common thing people do in American?

even though bandwidth isn't that great? Yeah, every time I push play, it starts out really blurry, and then later on, it's 4K. Right, go ahead. If the conversation we would have had around whether or not 4K streaming was viable without some massive infrastructure upgrade five years ago, would have been like, no, this is crazy, it'll never happen.

And then we just sort of muddled our way there, and it sort of happened. And I think the same thing will happen to gaming. Streaming. I'm with you. But how do you fix the speed of light, Dieter? You can't improve latency. Truly the Vergecast has landed in its natural state.

How do you fix the speed of flight, Dieter? I will say I have PS4 remote play. He's now in iOS. So, like, I have it on my iPad. It's, like, pretty neat. I bought that. I played Madden on it. I tried to play a racing game on it,

which was super dumb. That was not a good idea at all. But you can play, you can, like, get through a Madden. Like, that game stops and starts enough, you know? But I bought a Steel Series. nimbus controller so that I can like play PS4 in another room in my house. I haven't said it up yet but maybe it'll be awesome and then I'll let you guys know.

I'll let you guys know. I think the idea like the the idea that I'll travel with an iPad and then I can actually play PS4 wherever I go is like very powerful. Is that any of that going to work? No but the idea is powerful. That's really the theme of this episode the ideas are so good the executions are so good. If you can dream it. If only you can dream it. All right one last thing we

got to talk about Apple this week announced an event for the 25th. The last Vergecashat show we had, we had Julia Alexander on. We talked about streaming wars. 25th, looks like Apple is going to be in the stream wars. They're going to announce their new streaming service. I bet there's going to be a bunch of celebrities on stage. It doesn't sound there's going to be any hardware at that one. They're probably also going to announce their like Apple News premium thing where you like pay money to Apple and you get a bunch of subscription news. things like the Times or whatever. They're having problems signing up newspapers like the Times actually

so we'll see who's in the bundle. So basically if you're just like take a step back Apple's going to have an event on the 25th. We'll talk about it more next week in the lead-up to the event, but they announced it this week and that event probably looks like just Apple announcing partners. Right? Like an hour of being like here's a show. Here's a network. Here's the CEO of another network.

Here's the publisher of Time magazine. Here are some trailers. I don't think they're going to announce bunch of new software. Like, we kind of know what the TV app looks like. They got to do some kind of tweaks to the TV app. I mean, they'll announce partners, but like some of those announcements will be like, and the TV app might, in my dream, and it's actually my nightmare, in my nightmare, they

announce, and now when you hit the, you know, now this is the new home screen and it takes four convoluted button clicks when you're holding the Apple remote upside down in order to get to the old home screen, right? Yeah, they'll switch it. So the TV home screen, the TV app screen is the homes, which has always been there explicit plan, they've said it to me directly. The TV app screen will be the new home screen, and the app screen will be an app screen. And then, not for nothing, the people who have chosen to partner with Apple will get preferential

treatment on the first screen of Apple's interface, and the people who haven't, like Netflix, will be hidden away. Yep. That theme is right there. And then Apple News, the same deal. They'll announce some software tweaks, and the publishers who have chosen take money from Apple and pay a cut. will be promoted in Apple News

and everyone else will not and Apple will literally be a news distributor and we're all gonna have to deal with that together as a family. It's gonna be great. But that's coming on the 25th. I'm sure more reporting is going to emerge next week so I won't belabor it here.

On next week's show we'll do a whole preview of what we expect on the 25th but I want to mention it because invites to go out this week. And that's it. Nat, you got any last hits? What's your dream? What's my dream?

Paul's dream is a Linux phone. My dream is playing PS4 games streaming on a tablet when I'm traveling. Deeter's Dream is obviously WebOS returns triumphantly with slices. What's yours? Small phones up fold.

Small phones afold. By the time this comes out, I think we're going to have our chart of folding phones and the things that they're called, and I don't want to give it away, but it's one of the funniest things we've made in a long time.

So look for that. All right, that's it. That's a Vergecast. We'll be back. I'll just going to let you know what's happening. Next week on Monday, we're going to drop an episode

of Switched on Pop, which is a great new show in the Vox family. Dieter actually met one of the hosts Charlie at Southby. He's great, ex-Google engineer and IMA music podcast. That's coming on Monday. On Tuesday, it's not going to be me doing an interview. Casey Newton actually interviewed Alex Stamos from ex-security at Facebook at Southby.

If you listen to a podcast at 1.5 speed and you try and listen to Casey's interview at 1.5 speed, you will die. Play it at normal speed. Just trust me, they talk that fast. Stamos said that Facebook's pivot to privacy was Mark Zuckerberg with his back to the wall

burning the boats and pivoting the entire company. So that's a, it's a take. So that's coming on Tuesday. Next Thursday, we have another chat show. So lots coming up

next week on our chat. Thank you for listening. We'll see next week. Rock and roll. Paul. promo code. Linux phone.