The Vergecast - Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra review / Galaxy Watch 3 review / BlackBerry 5G?

Episode Date: August 21, 2020

Dieter, Dan, and Becca discuss reviews of Samsung's Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, Galaxy Buds Live, and Galaxy Watch 3. They also discuss a potential BlackBerry phone coming to the market...in 2021.  Stories from this week: Attack of the gaiters  Galaxy Note 20 Ultra review How Samsung’s beans broke the mold of wireless earbuds iFixit’s Galaxy Buds Live teardown shows that even Samsung calls them beans Samsung Galaxy Buds Live review: good sound, unique … Google’s Pixel Buds are now available in more colors nearly four months after launch Google’s Pixel Buds get new transcribe mode, attention alerts, and sharing detection Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 review: time for a change Fossil updates its Gen 5 smartwatches with sleep tracking and more fitness features The Nubia Watch is a decadent OLED smart bracelet New images of Fitbit Versa 3 and Fitbit Sense leak Epic says Apple threatens ‘catastrophic’ response in two weeks if Fortnite doesn’t comply with rules Apple tells Epic ‘we won’t make an exception’ for Fortnite Uber CEO on the fight in California: ‘We can’t go out and hire 50,000 people overnight’ Here’s your best look yet at ZTE’s first smartphone with an under-display camera Apple is now a $2 trillion company A new 5G BlackBerry phone with Android and a physical … theverge.com/newsletters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on The Vergecast, Becca Farsachi and Dan Sefer, join us to talk about the Note 20 Ultra, the Galaxy Beans, Not the Bud's Live, we're calling them Beans, and the return of Blackberry. All that's coming up on the Vergecast. 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. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data.

And Retool actually builds it on your company's data in 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 Skyler 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. Greetings, mobile accomplishers. Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of phones with physical keyboards and stylises. It's like the trio podcast. I am Dieter Bone. I am your pal. Our other friend, Nilai Patel, is off this week.

So instead you get me and you also get two really cool smart people. So you have Becca Farsatchez here. Hello, your neighborhood bud. And Dan Sefer. I'm here. Hello. So we had a lot happen this week. We had reviews of a bunch of Samsung devices to talk about. The Epic versus Apple thing continued.

It's just going to keep continuing forever and ever. and yeah, Blackberry is coming back. So we're going to get into all of that. But first, because Neely is not here, I need to stand in for him and do this thing where we just count weeks. It has been 23 weeks since Donald Trump had a press conference where in his administration held up a sign saying there would be a website where you could go and sign up to get tested. And then you would get the test results on that website to three weeks, which is a lot of weeks. that just still isn't a thing that you can go do nationwide. It's all sort of hodgepodge. We also have other coronavirus COVID-19 stuff to talk about. The main thing I want to point out, though,

is you can go and sign up for a new newsletter from our science editor, Marybeth Greggs. It's called antivirus. And it is going to be about all of the COVID-19 news, putting it in a real science-based context so you know what matters and doesn't matter. And I think most importantly, in the next few months, She's going to be tracking the development of a vaccine or multiple vaccines. And this is going to be a big deal because there's just going to be, y'all, there's just going to be a ton of vaccine misinformation. There's going to be a bunch of bad science reporting of people jumping to bad conclusions based on some, you know, little bit of an update from a study somewhere.

And so this newsletter is going to be the thing that it's going to really help you figure out what you should actually pay attention to and what is stupid. Marybeth has already done some of this work already. She recently published an article with just a chef's kiss of a headline called Attack of the Gators, which is about this story that neck gaiters, you know, those types of masks were maybe worse. But it turned out that everyone's saying that was based off of the wrong interpretation of a study that actually didn't have, you know, as much to it as people assumed it did. So sign up for that newsletter. It's at the verge.com slash newsletters. We also have a back-to-school special, which has got a bunch of articles about all the different schools attempts to open up.

and then realize they shouldn't open back up and then send the students back home and then deal with promote learning and then teachers and parents a lot there. You should go check that out. And yeah, so we know that you want us to track all of that stuff. We are going to be writing about that. We're also writing about the racial justice movement. There's a lot more coming on that front on the verge.com. So stay tuned for that relatively soon. Right now, though, I think it's time to just let's just talk about a gadget.

Like, we're just going to go full on 120 hertz refresh rate. nonstop, note 20 Ultra. I reviewed it. Becca, you have one within arm's reach and in your hand, literally in your hand. It's in my hand. I can't actually see your hand because it's so big that it just like engulfs your whole hand. It is my hand.

Actually, let's start there. This is a huge phone. And I know it's really boring or cliche to talk about it being a huge phone, but something about this phone in particular has me rethinking the. the whole idea of big-ass phones in the first place. Like, Dan, what's your preferred phone size? Where do you land? You know, I feel like it's actually, every year it gets bigger and bigger.

Like, I can tolerate more and more. Maybe that's because, like, manufacturers are making the bigger sizes more efficient, so there's, like, less bezel and they fit my hand better, yada, yada. This year, I'm loving the 6.2 inch size of the S-20. Not the S-20 plus or the Ultra, but the regular base model S-20. Like anything bigger than that is pushing my limit. I have a pixel 4A that we talked about last week or the week before here. That's like 5.8.

That feels small now. Like when I use that instead of my S20, the pixel 4A is kind of small. Whereas like the S20, at least from my hands, I can still use one hands and I don't drop it on my face all the time. But like now it's like I'm stuck at home. So I could probably just use a giant screen all the time anyways because I'm not like standing on a subway trying to hold onto a pole and read my phone at the same time. So I don't know. Becca, where are you at? That's a really good point, not having to hold it on the subway.

I'm holding the SE right now. And I have to admit, I was typing on this yesterday, and I was like, whoa, this is, like, hard to type on it so small. Yeah. And I've always been the person that's like, I want smaller phones. And I'm starting to think, like, do I want a smaller phone? I don't know. If these giant bezels didn't exist on the SC, I think this would be, I could get used to the typing. But the whole bezel thing kind of weighs in on me not loving that size.

either. I do love the 4A. Yeah, the 4A, I don't feel, I feel, 4A is like the right size if you want a small phone to me. Like, it feels small, but it also feels like you can put it in your pocket. It's unobtrusive. I like the S20 size as well. The, the note 20 ultra. So the thing that people always say about big screen phones is you use this phone, you don't need a tablet. And the note 20 ultra is the one that actually convinced me. Like, I did not use my iPad or even my Kindle e-release. a single time during the period when I was reviewing this phone because I had a seven-inch screen,

I mean, 6.9, whatever. I had a massive screen that could do basically all of the stuff I would want to do that didn't require physical keyboard. The thing that really pushed me over the line was gaming, was playing Xbox games and Stadia. It's bigger than the screen on my switchlight. It's just huge, and it feels great, right? And you were using it with, I think in your review, there's a picture of like the Razor, Kishi, it's jammed into that thing that you were playing games with?

Yeah. So the Razor Kishi, it's one of these, like, controllers that turns your phone into like a switch and it, like, has got a little expando thing on it, plugs into the USBC port. It, uh, is not spec for the Note 20 Ultra. It's a little bit of a stretch. I literally, it's actually a stretch to get it onto the phone. Are you saying the Node Ultra 20 Ultra is a big phone? It's so big.

Oh my God. I mean, Becca, I'm watching you hold it. You've got it no case. Dieter, you were viewing it. it without a case on it, right? So, like, I'm trying to think of, like, the average person buying this phone is definitely going to put a case on it. We'll probably talk about its price, but it's $1,300 freaking bucks.

Like, you're not not walking out of the house without a case on this, which makes it even bigger than it, like, already is. But at least a case would do something about that camera bump. True. Yeah. It might sit sort of flat on the table. Maybe. You need a case so thick.

For our review video, I shot the standup, Becca shot all the actual good B-roll, but She wanted a little bit of B-roll of me writing on the note. And so I took my camera and I gaff taped, because I've got a big roll of gaff tape, I gaffed my tripod to the kitchen table and, like, created a top down that I swear to God I was going to destroy my camera. But I managed to do it. And then I set the phone underneath the camera and everything's good. And I like wedge myself in there a little bit.

And I pull the stylus out. I'm sitting on the table. And I'm just going to write on this thing. So we've got some nice, beautiful footage of my hand writing out something. on the note 20. This setup is going to fall apart at any second, and I'm going to break my $2,000 camera,

but it's going to work. I'm going to do it. And then I tried to write on the note what it was sitting flat on a table. And oh my God, it was a rattle city. You just can't do it.

You have to hold it if you're going to write on it because it just won't sit flat on the table. Yeah, even when I was shooting it and trying to have it sit flat on table, it was like so crooked in a weird way that it made it look like the camera was maybe crooked or something was wrong.

So I just ended up standing it up all the time. Deider, you used the word in your review. You called it a promontory. Yeah. Which stuck with me because I had to double check the definition while I was editing it. What is this? Which means, if you haven't looked it up, so you don't have to pull over your imaginary car and look it up, it means a large landmass, basically like a mesa extending out of the

back of this phone. is like the only way to describe this camera bump. It is a mesa on the back of it. It is so massive. So it's even bigger than on the S20 Ultra. What you get out of this bump is you get their three cameras. On the ultra wide, I was like, it's fine, it's okay. But the dynamic range is pretty good. The more I play with it, the more I'm like, man, maybe I should have been even nicer. It's not amazingly good. But it is way better than average. And average for ultra wides is really bad. It's bad. It's not enough for me to like praise it to that. the high heavens, but it's enough where it would work in situations where like almost any other

phones, ultra-wide camera would just fall on its face. I'm actually pretty happy with the ultra-wide camera on this thing. Yeah, I think you touched on a good point there, though, with the dynamic range, because when I'm shooting something ultra-wide, like, it is dramatic already. And so then when you add that extra dynamic range, it really makes it dramatic. And Samsung software just makes the blue and the sky go nuts. And so it just makes everything look, extremely dramatic, which I don't know. I love to see in an ultroid. Yeah.

Okay, so then I'm getting to the 108 at the end. Then there's a telephoto, which I think on the S20 ultra was like a 48 megapixel sensor or something. But on here it's a 12. And then they use the periscope lens or they call it the folded lens. And so they give you, they say it's 5x optical and technically it is, but really like if you want to like look at the exact, you know, diameter or degrees of the field of view, it might be a little bit less than that or whatever. in general, when you, like, at 50X, I think the S20 Ultra, the S20 Ultra, the S20 Ultra is a little bit sharper than the Note 20 Ultra at this thing's max zoom, which is 50X. But it's also a little bit noisier. So in general, I am finding that when you have like a more reasonable zoom, like 10 or 15X, which is still really good, that the Note 20 Ultra wins over the S20 Ultra hands down.

And I don't know of any other phone other than maybe Huawei that can get, you. you like a 15x zoom that you wouldn't be embarrassed to put on Instagram. Would you say that's like kind of the limit of the zoom usage? Would you ever use that 50X zoom? Or is that just kind of like a demo? No, absolutely. I mean, I used it to like show off, right? To be like, you can actually like see the tiles and it isn't just a weird,

oversharpened, pixelated disaster site, you know, at 50X. So I took a bunch of those photos of like tiled roofs. And so that's cool. It's like fun to show people. So I call it a party trick. That's kind of literally what it is. But I don't know what you'd use it for. Well, you know, I don't know about the 50X, but I do think I am like really bullish on

telephoto lenses being like a very, a thing that smartphone cameras are lacking in need and is like a next step for like everyday people. Like just yesterday, I was out walking in the neighborhood with my family and we turn the corner and there's just like owl just like hanging out in the tree. and like I didn't have my camera with me my phone is like a regular S-20 I tried to zoom in with that I could I could not get a picture of this thing

I could see it with my eyes and it was really cool but like I couldn't get a picture if I had a 10x 15x zoom I could get like a picture of seeing that thing clearly or like if you're at a sporting event you know or you're at anything that you want to get at distance and like there was this whole market of cameras

of super zoom cameras for so many years and parents bought them all the time because they want to take pictures there's the kids at sporting events and dance recitals and all that kind of stuff, then they can't get any physically closer. So, like, I do think that, like, telephoto lenses are the next frontier for smartphones, and it's really great to see that they are actually getting dramatically better this quickly. Like, you mentioned Huawei.

I think Huawei was one of the first companies to put this folded periscope optics into a phone maybe a year ago, maybe a little bit more than that. And they were, like, pretty bad then. But, like, now we're at a point where, like, you could take a TEDx. X Zoom photo with a phone that you can buy right now. And like you said, not be embarrassed about it. So I don't know. It's pretty cool.

Yeah, that's a good point. I don't even know if I want to admit this, but the, the telephoto lens, when I first got it, I had like, I look into like a neighbor's house and he has his computer. No. Okay, maybe I should stop. No, no, no, no. He has his, the back of his laptop is like right up against the window and there's a bunch of stickers on it.

And I can never read them. The back of his laptop. The back of his laptop. Sure. The back. No. But I use the 50X and I could read all of his stickers. And one of them said like brocode or something.

And I was like, okay, now I know a little bit more about you. And then there was a mirror behind him and then you could just tilt the phone up a little bit to the mirror behind him. And then you can see the reflection. I do not endorse spying on your neighbors with your 50X periscope zoom. Oh, so the last one is the 108 megapixel main sensor. I don't want to get into the pixel binning technology too much. They bit it to 12. and they added a laser auto focus

so that it could focus faster, close up. And there is a slow shutter speed thing that a bunch of other people pointed out that I noticed it, but I didn't think it was so hilariously bad that it was a real, that I thought I needed to mention it, although maybe I, since this is such an expensive phone, I probably

should have. I don't know, Becca, what did you think of the main camera? Was it fast enough for you? Did it focus okay for you? Yeah, I found it fast. I found it's focused to be very sharp. The 108 megapixels are actually like, there's actually a lot of detail there. And I usually take, when a phone has like that many megapixels, I'm like, I don't know if I, like, actually trust it, but it's sharp.

It's sharp. And the files are big and you can punch into that. Yeah, I kind of loved it. Wow. So I thought that the 108 shots were like maybe oversharpened or I just, I just, it looked really artifact-y to me. But maybe that's just because, I think if the situation where that makes sense is if you're shooting like a landscape, right?

If you've got a mountain lake, the 108, you might do something really cool and interesting there. But, you know, I was like, I took a lot of photos of flower beds. It's kind of the main thing I take photos. Classic. When I'm testing a phone. And there it was just like, this is, like, this stuff was too close for it to be, like, interesting to switch to 108. Yeah, yeah. I did.

I flipped it around and, like, took a picture of myself and then, like, zoomed it on my pores. And maybe it may not just being self-conscious, but they were there. Well, I mean, it's the only way that this phone. let you get pictures of your pores, right? Because the selfie camera, oh my God. Ham cam. Hashty ham cam. Ham, I am so frustrated by this thing.

I don't even think I should be allowed to talk about it right now. It is so bad. When I saw the photos, the selfies that you took, they really, I actually cracked up. Like, it looks pretty hammy. So we should clarify what we're talking about when we say ham cam, but like basically, you can't, to say, sample Samsung skin-smoving stuff. Even if you turn it off on the app and you slide all the sliders to zero or whatever, it's still mucking with your face.

And it will just like smooth out any pores or, you know, imperfections or wrinkles or any of the reality of your face and turn you into a boiled ham. I mean, in certain lighting conditions, it's fine. And like if you don't have it too close to your face, it's fine. But the spot where I happened to take it was just like I had really nice lighting, like natural sunlight hitting my face. And like any camera, it's like this is it. This is a moment when you could take a really good relatively close up selfie. And it was just like exactly right to just screw with Samsung's idea of what color should look like and what it should do to faces.

And it just went haywire. And I was like, okay, I'll try this in another situation. And it, I don't know. It's like it, usually you say that phones are better in like good light, but not this one. So it's like, it's like a combination of the skin smoothing that I mentioned. And then it's also like brightening your face, right? Like it's doing that artificial stuff. Like the iPhone does this all the time where it tries to brighten faces.

But like, and it's it's very distinct. I can always identify an iPhone selfie versus others. But like this is just like beyond that, right? It's next level. Yeah. Here's a thing. It's just spent a ton of time talking about the kids. cameras. And normally, like, especially at like this class of phone, the main things you've got to

differentiate a phone are the cameras because like everything's going to be fast, everything's going to be smooth, everything's going to, you know, do the same stuff because they're all running Android or iOS. So you really like key in a lot on the cameras as like the thing that's your decision point. So you would think given that that given that I think that the selfie camera is like pretty flawed, that, like, that's a deal breaker and you shouldn't buy this phone. But I don't actually feel like that. I feel like this phone has enough other qualities that might appeal to somebody that's actually interested in a note, specifically the stylus, that just because the selfie camera hams my face up, that that's not necessarily a reason to completely avoid this

phone. I mean, how many selfies are you also taking? I mean, I'm sure there's people who take more selfies than others, but I do, I also, do you want to talk about, like, the video capability? abilities here, like the 8K. Yeah, okay. So it does 8K, and you're more interested in 8K than I am. I feel like it's like, what are you doing? But like you actually like see some punch in opportunities there, right? I do.

And I used to kind of be one of those people that didn't like see the need for 8K, but now that I have really dove into the punching in the videos that I create and just in the cadence of my voice on camera, I loved it. And putting it

into a 4K timeline, on Adobe Premiere and having like so much latitude was huge for me. Latitude in punching in that is, punching in and out. Yeah, and I thought its image stabilization was really good as well because while I was filming it, I was like, oh, I'm really shaky. This is going to look horrible. And then watching it back, it was pretty smooth. It is very vibrant like Samsung likes it.

And it is kind of a tight frame when you're shooting an 8K. Um, like if you flip, if you flip it around, you're using the rear camera on yourself. Like, it's, it, like, just barely got my whole face in the frame. And my arm was fully extended. But I would, I would take ham cam selfies if I could have that 8K sensor. But I also shoot a ton of video. So that's a little bit more important for me. So do you feel like the 8K, like you kind of need to know what you're doing?

Like you need to either know what the right lighting is that's like this thing is within this thing's technical range or you need to have a tripod so you can stand for it. back from it. Like, there's a pro mode and it has these microphone options, which I actually love. Do you, or is it the sort of thing where, like, anybody that wants to shoot a video, they should, like, just give the 8K a shot. But I would worry recommending it. Because, like, I'm happy to say, yeah, give the 4K a shot. You can play around with that and do stuff there. But, like, with the 8K, I worry that if you miss it, it's gone and it's not worth the risk of doing 8K unless you know exactly what you're doing. Or am I just being, like, super paranoid? I don't know.

Does the average person actually know the resolution that their phone's video capabilities can record in? Does the average person care about that? Or is it just people who are taking this? No, but we're talking about like people who are spending prepared to spend $1,400 on a note 20. That doesn't fold in half. That doesn't fold in half. So I would hope that like there's like reasons that they're willing to spend. And maybe we'll talk about the stylist.

Maybe that's the reason. But like maybe the 8K is the reason. reason. Like, we saw 8K on the S20 Ultra, and both of you guys used that far more than I did. But it was kind of problematic. It was limited in frame rates. You already mentioned, Becca, the cropping is really tight on the 8K mode. So, like, you can't, like, shoot a wide scene or capture a group of people with it or anything like that. Did it get better enough on the Note 20 that, like, maybe, to, like, Dieter's point, is 8K something that someone should care about? or should you just be really thrilled with high-quality 4K video?

It's a really good question. I don't know if I'd ever buy a phone solely based on the fact that it could do 8K. Because if you're that concerned about having 8K video, then you're probably looking at bigger, batter cameras, like actual standalone cameras. I don't think I would buy a phone strictly for 8K capabilities. If you have an 8K TV, you will actually have content to play. play on it. Oh my God. So maybe then you... So that kind of like gets to the crux of the matter, right?

Like you don't... You, you, you, you, you, I can guarantee that you the listener and me, the talker and everyone else on this podcast does not have a screen that can play AK content, right? I don't know, dad. Our audience. Pretty advanced. Maybe you can hack together like four 4K TVs and and that's awesome if you can do that. But like realistically, there's no screen that you can play that video on F4K or AK resolution. So the point of shooting AK is that. like you mentioned earlier Becca, that ability to punch in or crop in on the video so you can like reframe or,

you know, get closer to something and still have that resolution to fill a 4K timeline, right? So like... Sure. It does feel like a very niche type of need and a very specific need to somebody who is going to do that with the video later on.

Like to Deeter's point, like if I'm just shooting video around the house or whatever of my kids or making TikToks or whatever it is, I'm never taking that video off of my phone to edit, right? So like I might like change where it starts and change where it stops, but like I'm not reframing the video. It's not going into a timeline. So like, do I need to use the AK mode in that sense?

Or am I better off going with something safe on the 4K mode, right? Yeah, right, right, absolutely. And your file sizes are just going to be bigger. Yeah, that was the other point that I was hoping somebody would break up. Well, and the fact that the baseball listing only has 128 gigs of storage. Like, come on. Yes. At that price point, that's just ridiculous.

How many 8K TikToks is that? Oh, my God. So the stylus. I hit this so hard in the video and in the review, I don't need to belabor it here. But, y'all, Samsung Notes is really good. I don't understand it. I don't have, I feel very strange saying it. The rest of Samsung software on this phone is like, they're like falling back into their old ways

and they're popping up ads inside their phone app and inside other apps. They're, you know, it's getting bad again. Like, one UI had like two good years or like a year and a half of goodness and now they're just like backsliding. But somebody somewhere, whoever is in charge of the Notes app for the Galaxy Note, don't let anybody come into your office. Don't let anybody find out that you're making good software. Just lock your door and continue to work on it and only talk to Microsoft to improve OneNote syncing. And don't let anybody else from Samsung talk to you. That's my feeling.

I got to be honest with you, like, this is very good to hear. As someone who spent years reviewing prior notes and prior note phones and always struggling to find, like, a good notes app to use the stylus with. Like, I would try the Samsung notes or S notes. It used to be called Snotes. Snote. Snote. Snote.

I would try that out, and it was always kind of like half of an app that they built as a concept. And then, like, I would try, like, oh, maybe Evernote can work. and like, oh, I can write in this, but it's really kind of broken. Then, like, Samsung actually partnered with, like, some other app developers. I can remember their logo, maybe pen up or something like that. That was, like, they pre-bundled it on the note, and it's like, ah, this kind of doesn't work. So, like, the note, we're on the note 20, note 20.

Like, there hasn't been 20 notes, but there's been, like, 11. So, like, we are finally getting a good native core note-taking experience on a phone that is built around the ability to take notes on the go. Like, that's like really great to see, then finally get there. I think that's a little bit harsh. Like, I would say it was good last year. And this year, it's like great. And that's confusing is Samsung has made some great software. And there's no ads in it, right? Like you mentioned, there's no ads. When I was editing Deere, the Note 20 review, and you had like this two-minute chunk where you go on about notes. And it was beautiful to watch. And I was so, worried about like the pace of the video that I kind of, you know, put some B-roll over it,

you know, jazzed up a little bit. But I almost wanted to leave it with like no music and just watch you gush over this notes app. I, it's very strange. And again, do not buy this phone just for the notes app. But it's, it's actually worth gushing about because you're going to be able to export it to one note. And I really wish it was a two-way sync, et cetera, et cetera. But the reason I would never tell anybody to go all in on Samsung notes is then you're stuck buying notes for the rest of your life. And now it actually has an off-ramp if you ever want to buy some of their phone. So something Marquez pointed out in his YouTube video that maybe we could have brought up, like I knew we'd talk about it here, is Samsung, just like they did last year, they seeded out review units of like the top line ultra version. and they didn't seat out the base note.

And last year, we were like, well, wait for the regular note 10 because, you know, it'll be a little smaller and cheaper and it'll be just as good. This year, it seems like the regular note 20 is, I mean, we got to review it. We should reserve judgment. But Becca, you've held it. You know what it's like.

It seems like they, it's not, it's not very ultrae. It's not very not very altruy. It's not very altru. I almost call it like the note 20 light. could be a better name. Note 20 minus. So, okay, what do you lose if you go down to the note 20? You lose screen size.

Screen size. It doesn't have the, like, edge display. Right. It's flat display. Which maybe you prefer, but whatever. It's plastic, right? Yeah, the back is plastic. The screen size is smaller. The resolution is also lower.

Yes, resolutions are. And crucially, it's 60 hertz, not 120 hertz. Ridiculous. That's the thing. That's the thing. No $1,000 phone should have a 60-hertz display. Like, if Apple's iPhone this year doesn't have a high-refresh-right display, I mean, I'm not going to say it's junk. Don't buy it.

But, like, come on. It'll be a very big surprise if it doesn't. $1,000 phones should have high-refresh-right displays. It really does make a difference. And then the camera array is different. I don't think it has 108 megapixel sensor. So, like, it is actually minus in every spec that you care about. Like, everything about it is worse.

And, like, yes, the price is lower. Like, $1,000 is not a low price. That's not a low price. So minus phones are great. The Pixel 4A is great. Sorry, not minus phones. Light phones, whatever. They're great.

But the 1 plus 8 pro is like, what, $8, 900 bucks? And it beats out this Note 20 pro, this Note 20 in like every aspect except it doesn't have a stylus. You can get really solid phones for not a lot of money. Like, another thing that happened this week is Samsung gave us a list of phones that it's guaranteeing three years of Android updates to or three generations, whatever. And like the number one thing on that list is the A51. I reviewed that early this year.

There's a 5G version of it now because there has to be because otherwise carriers will ignore it. But they're great, but don't charge a thousand bucks for it. But the thing is like the S20 is a thousand bucks and it's better in every metric over the note 20 that we know. Obviously, you know, review TBD, but like we've been doing this a long time. we can kind of read between the lines here. And every metric except for the stylist. And so, like, if you're going to spend $1,000 on a Samsung phone, you'd be better off buying an S-20.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, on that down note, I think we should take a break, and we're going to come back, and we're going to make jokes about beans for, like, another 45 minutes, because that's where we live now. Love beans. Support for this show comes from Shopify.

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every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. Nearly 60% of hirers find a candidate to interview within a week.

With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focus shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn. to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right. We're back. Becca, you and Chris Welch have both put beans in your ears officially under review.

True, but gross. Maybe not literal beans, metaphorical beans. I did think, for like the thumbnail, I did think about putting a bean in my ear, like an actual bean, and I did not. So I just want to clear that up. I did not. Don't do it. But, okay, you and Chris have both actually reviewed these things. Tell us about the beans. We know about them in theory, but what do they actually like to use? You know what? So as a biker, I bike a lot. And bicycles, not motorcycles? Yes, I don't ride motorcycles. I do ride bicycles. And while doing that, I want an open-eer design

so that I can hear what's going on around me, but also I can, like, bump while I'm biking. And so I was excited for Samsung to put out an open-ear design. And then I was really excited that it didn't have a stem, and it didn't look like most other open-ear-designed headphones. Because when I'm biking the stem, it's actually more of a problem than people think. Like, my helmet straps are honestly hitting it all the time.

Yep, no, I can't. I can't. Any kind of stem, even a little one, or if it sticks out too much, like it flies out of my ear. So I'm also trying to bike more and I'm, because there aren't a lot of open headphones, I don't, to be safety helmet, literally. I only put in my right earbud and I leave my left ear open and I listen to podcasts or whatever. So it's not like a full immersive experience, but I would never put an isolating headphone into my left ear just would never happen.

And I always need something that my straps won't just knock out of my ears. Yeah, absolutely. And now you're adding in like a mask too. I'm usually like, even if I'm not like directly wearing it over my mouth while I'm riding, I have it like around my neck so that if I stop and I'm close to people, I can pop it on. So there's a whole other, you know, thing that's around my ears. So stems just get in the way. So I was very excited about the stemless open ear design. The thing that I don't often talk about, I actually have never talked about in one of my reviews, is the amount of noise that the wind hitting it causes. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like when you're riding, and I must say these, like the wind hits it in a certain way that you really hear the wind.

when you're writing, which is like an interesting thing, but I haven't explored that enough to fully talk about that in my reviews. Yeah. The one thing, though, with these that I am perpetually confused about is the whole idea of active noise cancellation. Can you just like at a top level explain what these things philosophy is towards noise cancellation? Because we've written about it a bunch, but I think that just like hearing, like reading it,

you don't really get what the difference is between this and like a standard pair, I don't know, Bose or Sonys or whatever. Yeah. Okay. So in my video, I went to the Brooklyn Promenade, which is above the double-decker highway that is the BQE in New York City, and it is loud. Like, it's not a quiet, serene place. And I truly went there on purpose because I'm not really riding the subway right now. I can't test them down there. And so you put in, like, the AirPods pros. And you pop those in, and instantly, like, the cars disappear, the city disappears. And it's like you and your music. That is active noise cancellation. You put these.

in and there's like a hum to the city and it'll take away this like low hum but the cars are still there the people are all still there everything is still with you and your music that's the difference and I don't honestly don't I don't these aren't this isn't this cancellation it's not it's not so like for me I'm like okay that sounds interesting because then I could wear them at home and then when my wife wants to get my attention she doesn't have to like walk up and tap me on the shoulder. I'll still be able to hear or say, hey, Deeter. So, like, that's interesting, but, like, I'm not going to buy a whole pair of headphones for that. What are you canceling out at home? My family. Well, actually, we've got a bird. We've got a

effing bird. And we live in an apartment complex, and so there's a bunch of concrete, and the bird has discovered that if it sits on our patio and chirps, it can hear an echo of itself, and it thinks it's another bird. And so it thinks it's found a best friend that will talk to it all a time whatever it wants. And so there's this bird, I just, there's a constant cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap that happens where I live. And I swear I'm going to lose it over this thing eventually. And I'm just going to like, I'm just going to go crazy. I'm just going to go

nuts. So I, that's what I would cancel out. Yeah, that bird has figured out social distance quarantine survival. Yes. So these won't solve that problem for me is what you're saying. And these do not, this won't, the bird will still be with you. Great. Yeah, and you will be with the bird. I like birds, but this bird, I hate so much. So what situation do you think it'll be good for?

Like, we can't go on a subway, but if you could, it won't draw that out. It'll draw it like a hum, but like what, like, if you sit next to an air conditioner, I guess it's good. But like. Maybe a really quiet train that is already really quiet to begin with. It will make a little bit quieter. Yeah. Okay, so I must have been, when we were watching the, when I was doing the super cut of the event, I was watching the event. And we all, the video team, we all are on a Zoom together, kind of talking about what's going on,

doing breakouts and whatnot. And when they said this had active noise cancellation, I was like, oh, the price of these is going to be in the 200s. Like it has active noise cancellation, it's going to be up there. And Viren, who's another senior video director here, he was like, oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. And then they announced the price. And I was like, there's no way it has active noise cancellation.

Yeah. And I was, I think I was right. So the key different. I mean, like, because technically, right, it does have active noise cancellation. But the problem that you're saying is in practice, it doesn't because it's not effective. And the problem is they don't form that seal, which is so necessary to augment the active noise cancellation to actually make it effective, right? Is that kind of the gist? Yeah, yeah.

I am interested to see where Samsung goes with this. Because to me, like, it's a first-gen form factor, first-gen open noise cancellation. Like, I am wondering, like, is this just like a stepping stone? Is this just the start of open ear noise cancellation? And where will it go from here? But then maybe it's just me being extremely optimistic as I am. Yeah. I mean, maybe they can keep that open ear design and make it fully active noise canceling.

Or maybe, because it's Samsung and they love weird little things. They could, like, have it like a little mechanical part where, like, you turn it on and then it, like, it fills up your ear to seal it. and then you get active noise cancellation? Like an air bladder? Yeah. I hope so. That would be amazing. That would you trust the company that lit a note out fire to like have a moving part in your ear?

I don't know. This sounds like the opposite of the air vent that's on the AirPods Pro. Like that's supposed to let air out. This would be like putting pressure in your ear to seal it up. Yeah, what if it got stuck or something? I don't know. Anything else about the beans? Chris Welch also like he talked to the designer.

And, like, I love that, like, you open these things up, but it says beans on the inside. They, like, called them beans up until the 11th hour. Why did they change the name? It would be so much more fun if they just called them beans. So much more fun. And shout out to Chris on that article. That was, like, a really, really cool read to hear and to see all the photos of the different prototypes of the cases and how the case was going to be designed, like, a bean at one point.

Yeah. That was really cool. Lean into the beans, Samsung. Just lean into it. Chickened out on the beans. Chickened out. Well, speaking of buds, we should just briefly mention that Google seems to, like, not be completely abandoning the pixel buds, which is not what I expected them to do. I expected them to, like, forget that they made these things.

But they finally released the other colors. And then they threw a bunch of software updates at it that can, like, do more stuff now. Yeah. Yeah. I'll admit, like, I love the pixel buds because I love the Google Assistant. And I love, like, rolling up to my house and telling it to turn the lights on without having to get my hue app. you know, up and rolling and all of that. So I am excited that they're putting a little bit more attention in

because the Bluetooth dropouts that started happening a few weeks after I was using them are real and were real. So hopefully all of these improvements will improve that as well. But we'll see. We've got to put it to the test. I'm really excited to try out these attention alerts. So the idea is like they're sealed, right? And so you can't hear the world around you. It's not active noise cancellation, but whatever.

but there might be a siren or crying baby or whatever, and you wouldn't hear it, but the pixel buds are going to listen for it now and then tell you, actually, hey, you should listen, something's happening. That sounds fascinating. Yeah, that sounds really cool. In New York City,

I feel like it's just going to be constant alert. So we'll have a lot of opportunity to test that out. Yeah. And since we're talking about accessories, Dan, you reviewed the Galaxy Watch 3? I did. Tell me about this thing. So, I mean, in short,

it's Samsung's latest smart watch. It is their most expensive smart watch. If you are an Android user, and if you're especially a Samsung user, really the only smartwatch is worth putting your money into at this point are Samsung smart watches. And so this kind of carries that line on. We said the same thing with the watch Active 2 last year. What's the unique about this is that it's a little bit more high-end.

And I kind of think of that as like, on the Apple Watch, you've got the aluminum model, which everyone buys. And that's like the 400 and not. model and then there's like the stainless steel model that like some fancy people buy and that is like seven hundred dollars or whatever it's a few hundred dollars more it doesn't actually add any functionality like it it it is exact same apple watch it's just nicer that's kind of the story with the galaxy watch three versus the galaxy watch active two the watch active two is aluminum it's less expensive it does all the same functions the galaxy watch three does all the same functions with

a couple minor tweaks but it's just nicer the stainless steel body is nicer. The mechanical rotating buzzle is a lot nicer to interact with than the touch bezel. So like the overall experience is upgraded, but it doesn't do anything more than the $250 watch and this is a $400

watch, right? So if you care about those things, the Galaxy Watch 3 is really nice. I do think that Samsung is still making these things too kind of big. Like they're chunky. Yeah. How big is it like compared to like a, you know, whatever, the 44 millimeter like Apple Watch? So I reviewed the

45 millimeter Galaxy Watch 3, which is the bigger model. And it sits on the wrist bigger than the big Apple Watch. So if you are wearing a 44 millimeter Apple Watch and you put this on, this will sit bigger. Like it just feels

bigger. And part of that I think is the shape. It's round versus square. And it's got it's got like harder edges as opposed to the rounded sides of the Apple Watch that kind of hide its size really well. And I think Apple did a really good job of like minimizing the size based on just like the visual weight of it. But this thing feels big. I'm not like a small person. I have pretty

averaged large size wrists and arms and things like that. And this watch feels big on my wrist. Like they made the screen bigger, uh, which is nice to read, but it also makes it look bigger on your wrist. So like, I'm just not, I, I, I, like, Samsung touts have it's like 11% thinner and 14% lighter and stuff like that. And like, it's not uncomfortable to wear. It's just big. So for me, my personal choice is to go with the smaller model. Uh, and the smaller model is, I think 41 millimeters, and that fits me very well. But like I said, I'm a 5-foot-10, you know, guy with arms that are, like, matching my size. So if you are a smaller person, the small model is going to be big on you, right?

So, like, I think Samsung still needs to, like, work on that and get that better in terms of, like, you know, a broader appeal. But otherwise, you know, I kind of like the Samsung Wall Street. There's a lot of complaints that are just, like, perennial with these things. Third-party apps are terrible. Like, you're not going to find any third-party. apps there. Bixby is the worst thing on earth. It is so bad. Like, you could joke about this on a phone, but like with a watch, you actually use the voice assistant a lot, or at least I do. When I'm wearing an Apple watch, I use Siri all the time to turn lights on and off. Like Becca just mentioned

with Google Assistant, I set timers all the time. I'm terrible at cooking, so I'm always setting timers when I'm drilling so that I don't burn things. And like... What if you have to set more than one, though? Yeah. Like, well, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's series limited there. But like, at least, at least when I say, you know, Siri set a time. for two minutes, it does it immediately. Whereas, like, on the Galaxy Watch 3, Bixby takes, like, 20 seconds to respond and, like, hear the message. So now it's a two-minute and 20-second timer.

Like, it's already messed up. Yeah. So, like, and it can't control things. I don't know. It's just a mess. But, like, these are, like, the same complaints we've had forever with Galaxy watches. And, like, Samsung just hasn't gotten there to address them. I mean, you look at the Android Smartwatch universe, and it's like Galaxy Watch and live

with Bixby and like, you know, Samsung's attitudes for software and deal with like the lack of what? It's like, is there a good mapping software for the Galaxy Watch 3? No. Nope. There's nothing, nothing on it out of the box. Solve that. You can download Here Maps from the Galaxy Watch Store, but I've never gotten here maps to work.

And I've installed on three different Galaxy watches. I know that like the idea of a map on your smart watch seems dumb, but it's actually, if you need it, you need it. Like I go out on your bike, you've just got your watch. And then like, oh, wait, how do I? you know, something, something. Like, it, you're, ugh. So that's annoying.

But, okay, so Fossil just updated their Gen 5 smart watches with sleep tracking and some fitness stuff. Fossil did this. Not Google who makes WarrOS. And Fossil is like the only company that bothers making, like, wireless devices. Fossil had to do this. And dummy that I am, I actually like, oh, maybe now it's time to buy another wearOS watch and see if, like, that's the way to go.

Like, I prefer the Google assistant to Bixby so much that I was like, oh, yeah, maybe I'll buy another smart watch and I was going to buy myself a wearOS watch this I have a problem um but like you know we're waiting for this fitbit acquisition to happen did you guys see this um fitbit versa 3 and sense leak uh from this week I did and uh it looks like there's no buttons on it yeah which is adeter's gonna make fun of me the way I say that word but buttons it seems like a backwards regression like smart watches are a place where physical controls are actually very I just said how like the galaxy watch three is nicer to use in the act two because of the physical controls it adds.

Yeah. It looks like Fippet is removing those entirely, at least according to these leaks. And I don't know. I think it's a mistake. I think Futson with a touchscreen on your wrist is kind of annoying. So, like, you should improve that with some dials and buttons and switches and all that fun stuff. There's nothing wrong with a button.

Can we stop trying to eliminate them everywhere? Yeah. At least they don't look like carbon copies of the Apple Watch is my take. Like, they do look, like, unique. They've got their own shape. So I'm happy about that. You mentioned the Google acquisition. Like, that's a thing, right?

Like, that happened? Or are we still waiting for that to... Well, it's got to be approved. Like, sort of just floating. So, like, Versus are going to be just doing Fitbits thing. Google's got whereOS, but, you know, I don't know. The other problem with the versus is always the software as well. They're really, really great fitness trackers.

If that's all you care about in a smart watch, the fitness tracking is really good on the Versus. If you care about anything else with the smart watch, they kind of fall on their face. Yeah. It's sort of like smartwatches are a piece of tech that I have never touched simply because I am an Android user and I have very small wrists. And if you are an Android user with a small wrist and you don't want to wear a giant computer on your wrist. A giant puck.

There's like nothing. There's nothing for us tiny people out there. Our tiny Android users. Yeah. I mean the FitBits are relatively small. So like they might be worth a look. Sure. I am currently the weirdo who's like trying to use.

use an Apple watch alongside, like, an Android phone sometimes. So, like... How is that? Well, it's like, I've got the Apple Watch for IMessage because I'm leaving I message on because I'm locked into IMessage because I want my family to actually talk to me. Although we've got, I've managed to, they're on Facebook Messenger now, so like, that's working, but I'm still got some people who only talk to me on IMessage. So rude.

The watch is there to, like, get and respond to I messages. And then the Android phone is like the Android phone. So that's, you know, it's awkward, but at least I have a decent smart watch. Wow. I don't know. It would be nice if Google would figure this out. It is nice that Samsung has mostly figured it out, but like, man, I just... It doesn't pass the sweater test for me. Like, if I'm wearing a tight sweater, I cannot put it on over my watch. Like, that's the test it's got to pass. And I find them to be quite thick as well, even the smaller. I think to Deeter's point, I just trashed Fitbit's smart watches for being bad smart watches. But like, if you do want to watch, as like a fitness tracker the verses are really thin and and you know RIP pebble pebble

did it right they were really thin really comfortable really they were available for all size wrists you'll pour one out for pebble everybody yeah but you know Fitbit bought pebble anyways there's one more smart watch I want to talk about Sam Byford a reporter out in Japan he got access to this thing called the nubia watch And it is the most absurd, ridiculous. Like this is like when I look at this pictures and you should go check it out on the site, but it looks like what everyone, like these sci-fi concepts of what a smartwatch would be like seven years ago. Like there's going to be this.

It's basically a cuff with a flexible screen that wraps around your wrist. And it's like all screen and it's like technologically like a wonder and really wild and cool. but like can you imagine ever actually wearing that and using it? It's like so absurd. It's like the exact opposite of, you know, what we were just talking about wanting something small and discreet. I'll never forget. I think this was, this might have been John Porter, one of our reporters' first video he did with us, was the Nubia Alpha hands-on we did with this watch. And it's and I remember being there with John, it was in his first video and he was kind of, you know, nervous, rightfully so.

And I was nervous working with him. And I was like, I think we just. have to lean into how crazy this is. Like, I don't think we can take this too seriously, John. It's nuts. And it's huge. Yeah, yeah. It's wild. I mean, like, cool. It's cool that it exists. Like, it's cool that they did it and they built it. And apparently there's a Kickstarter. And if you want to be part of that party, you can go join. But it's something. It's, it's, it just, it just looks like a concept that's come to life. And like that's, you don't always see that. We were just talking about how the beans got so watered down and became the buds.

before they got released like this thing, no watering down. If you want a smart watch, you have an Android phone, like you either have to go big with the Samsung, get the Versa, or do what I do, which is I use a withings, you just accept that you're not going to get all the fancy stuff, that it's just going to count your steps and show you some notifications and read your heart rate, heart rate. And if you accept that the watch is that limited,

it's great because the battery lasts forever. Like, I don't know, I charge it once every two or three weeks. Like, you never really have to charge it, which is great. But then you don't get any of the stuff. I don't know. Eventually, this will get solved. Never. We've been waiting for Google to, like, fix the smartwatch thing for five years now.

Like, they jumped out of the gate. They got smartwatches out ahead of Apple, and then it's just been, meh. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, we need to end the next segment on an up note because we ended the last one on the down-note 20. We're writing this one on M-WROWS. We're going to come back, and it's going to be. going to be all positivity all the time. Oh, I'm so ready. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn.

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developers. MongoDB. It's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. All right, we're back. And the best thing, we're going to be positive, and it's time to talk about Epic and Apple. We obviously, like, the entire last Vergecast was nothing but this, but there have been a couple of small updates since then. Epic has come out and said that Apple has threatened to just kick them out of the Apple developer program entirely, which Ah, that would mean that they couldn't notarize their Mac app, that like they would just stop being able to make iOS apps entirely. That seems dire.

There's a deadline on that. And then Apple comes back with, you know, another statement, and it's another very aptly statement. They say they very much want to keep the company as part of Apple's developer program. The problem Epic has created for itself is one that it can easily be remedied if they submit an update of their app that reverts it to comply with the guidelines they agreed to, blah, blah, blah, blah. blah, blah. We won't make an exception for Epic because we don't think it's right to put their business interests ahead of the guidelines that protect our customers. Yeah, this fight is just going

to keep going. Neither one of them is blinking right now as of, you know, the day we're recording this Thursday the 20th. And now iPhones with Fortnite preloaded on them are going on eBay for $12,000. No, they're not. What? Yeah, that was making a rounds today. Like, if you want to buy an iPhone with Fortnite preloaded on it, of course. Someone on eBay will sell a T for five figures. Snaps for that. You just got to wonder

how long this is going to keep going on and when is, I mean, I feel like the lawsuits will continue. Those are going to go through the court system. At some point, Epic's going to relent, right? And they're just going to kind of like push that update and fix it and like silently Fortnite will be back in the app store.

Maybe not. Maybe they just looked at how much money they made off of iOS and they're like, yeah, we could forego that. That's worth a fight. You know, the discourse around this thing. It's gone the full Apple circle, right? So Apple is the worst. No, Epic is the worst.

No, Apple is a big bully now. They think they're a small company, but they're actually a huge company. Well, actually, have you seen how bombastic Tim Sweeney is? He's kind of a jerk. Well, Apple's kind of, like, it's just like, at this point, it's just, like, gone around the bend two or three times now. But neither one of these companies is backed down off their, like, initial, you know, stance. So here we are Without Fortnite on the iPhone

Or on Android phones Unless you have a Samsung phone But you could side load on it But we should say it's not on Google Play It's not on Google Play, yeah That's right And we did make a really good explainer YouTube.com slash The Verge

That came out this week If y'all need to want Check that out Big picture with Russell Brandum It's very good It's very good Well grab bag stuff Just a couple of things

I guess just today Right before we recorded Uber and Lyft got a stay So they're not getting kicked out of California. They're going to be able to continue to operate for a little while longer while they fight over whether or not drivers should be treated as employees or not. We will get into this much more when it becomes a little bit more real. It seemed like it was going to be super real until right up until we hit record. So like stand by for that. But I just want to read

this quote. So Dara Kosra Shahi was on the Pivot podcast with Kara Swisher. And just listen to this with me. I do think that we have the system that's optimized. It's called capitalism. It's not called laborism. It's not called socialism. It's capitalism. And it's a system that's built to maximize shareholder value and capital. And if that's the only input, then you're going to keep getting the same results going forward that you get going backward. So these kind of systemic changes, you know, I'm game for it. I don't want yesterday's capitalism 20 years ago to be the same 20 years from now. man, like you're talking about like Uber just he just goes full like let's talk about, you know, late capitalism and like the systemic ways that we build our entire economy. And like we got to solve that problem in order for Uber to solve its problem. Like that's a lot.

That just feels like maybe maybe the bar is a little too high there for solving this question. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that's like we got to solve capitalism if we're going to figure Uber out. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. It's a, it feels like that's a separate issue that needs tackling. And like Uber's got other problems and like it needs to, it needs to figure them out within the constructs of what, you know, our society offers right now. And then, you know, maybe capitalism needs to be fixed. But like plenty of companies have existed in the past without, you know, the issues that Uber is facing right now. So it's a core of way they built a business. Maybe clock a quarter where you make a profit before you start talking about.

The way capitalism works. Just a thought. It's working for somebody. Yeah. Speaking of capitalism, Apple's worth $2 trillion dollars according to its market cap. Yay. Mm-hmm.

I don't care. I mean, well, so that feeds into our point, you know, with Epic, right? Apple is a $2 trillion company. Epic is an X-number billion dollar company. I think it's $17 billion? Yeah, 17 billion. They're so unfathomably wealthy for, like,

Like, it's just like, they can just go tit for tat and fight each other all day long. And then, but at the end of the day, like, the ones who actually pay are the people who can't get Fortnite on their iPhone or Fortnite on their iPad and they just want to play the game. So, yeah. Yeah. So we have seen prototypes of this, but ZTE is actually saying that they're going to sell a phone with a selfie camera that's completely hidden behind the screen. Can't wait to test it out and see if it's any good. If it's a ham cam. If it's a ham cam.

Right. But what level of badness are you willing to accept on a selfie camera if you don't have to have that whole punch? Like, what's the train off there? Okay, I don't mind the whole punch. Yeah, I don't mind the notch either. Like, you get used to both of them as you're using it. The one thing that the whole punch is a little weird is it cuts into things. Like if I'm watching on my Samsung phone, my S-20, if I'm watching a YouTube video and the YouTuber is using a two-by-one aspect ratio, which a lot of tech YouTubers are using nowadays, it cuts into, the whole punch cuts into that because the app

wasn't coded to like acknowledged fact that the whole punch is there and I can't zoom it out. So like I'm either zooming it in to cut in more or I deal with it. So like it is annoying in that sense. Is it the end of the world? No, it's in the lower, lower left corner of the thing or the middle of it. Like it's not the end of the world to me. And same thing with the notch. Like it's like something that I totally get used to.

That all said, I never take selfies. Like the amount of times that I use my selfie camera is. so small. So like, if, if that camera disappeared or got really worse, it would not be the end of the world for me. But that's me. Lots of people take selfies. Obviously, it matters a lot more to them. Yeah. My attention is so rarely on that part of my screen where the notch or the hole punch is, that it doesn't make a difference for me. And when people complain about it, I often, it's like, is it really that big of a deal? But I am someone, I do, I take a fair amount of selfies. But I also usually flip my phone around and I use my rear camera and then I just put like the timer on and kind of chance it because I'd rather have like high resolution and all of that.

You do the fancy selfies. Listen, my content game is not strong, but the quality is good. The 8K selfie videos. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So, but to see a phone that's fully screen is is cool. I mean, like we saw that last year's one of, one of the first. plus did it with a seven pro right and it had a pop-up camera yep and uh that was one solution

i mean obviously that has other concerns in terms of like manufacturing complexity uh liability and stuff is that camera going to break at some point i mean at the time one plus was like no it's not going to break it does all things the very next phone they release they got rid of it and like put a whole bunch in so like maybe it does break so like we and like on the seven pro that was awesome screen like there's nothing interrupting that it was a really cool experience. So, like, I could see this being worthwhile as long as, like, the camera is, you know, functionally decent. Yeah. Decent. Yeah. Talk about a party trick. That, like, the pop-up selfie camera, like,

my favorite thing was, like, pretending to drop it and it closing. I was like, this is the coolest thing ever. But, like... Okay. Very last thing, we started the show talking about a phone with a stylus. We're going to end the show talking about phones with physical keyboards because it's 2004 again. And... Blackberry's back, baby. Wow. So if you didn't know TCL, who would license the Blackberry brand was making the last handful of Blackberries you may have heard of, it was like, well, we're done with that.

But now this new company called Onward Mobility out of Texas has said, well, we're going to make 5G Blackberry phone. It's coming out in 2021. Yep. They said that. They say it's going to have a keyboard. So, like, the reason to put a Blackberry label on anything is if it has a physical keyboard. I have a keyboard. Right.

Okay, so who is on where we're a bill? Well, it's a tiny little company. I think they haven't been around since, like, I don't know, late 2019 or something. So I just looked at, like, who the employees are listed out on LinkedIn. And so a bunch of people came from this company called Sonim, which makes a bunch of, like, industrial, like, construction, like, full, rugged, heavy-duty phones. So that makes perfect sense, right? Like, Blackberry is really trying to position itself as the phone for corporate use. They're not trying to appeal to consumers.

So having people with experience making, like, bespoke custom phones for a certain type of business, like, that makes perfect sense to me. There's a reason to be excited and there's a reason to be concerned. So the reason to be concerned is that a lot of the employees have a bunch of history, like doing product management specifically for phones that are going on AT&T, which makes me worry. that this is going to be like an AT&T special in the way the new little palm phone was a Verizon special. So that's a little bit troubling. I think the reason for hope is that this company onward, obviously they can't make a phone themselves.

They've got to have somebody else make it. And the company that's going to be manufacturing their phones, they've already announced, is FIH something, something. It's a division of Foxcon. And that's interesting because it turns out this division of Foxcon that's going to make this Blackberry phone is the same division of Foxcon that works with HMD to make Nokia phones.

Yeah, they're the cranking out the retro phones. I will say that, like, the reason that you say this is promising, and I think you're right, at least in this respect, is that the Nokia phones are good. Like, the Nokia phones are well made. The hardware is good. The construction is good. The software, I mean, like, that's a separate story,

but the software on those Nokia phones is typically good and stuff like that. And they're made to an aggressive price point that seems to be successful for HMD. The problem that I have, or is that, the TCL phones that had the Blackberry label were not bad. Like, they didn't have bad hardware. That was not the problem with them. They were well-built. They were, like, you know, the keyboards were felt like Blackberry keyboards.

They were traditional. They were everything that you would want. They had big batteries. A lot of people liked those phones because they could go two days on their battery life. That wasn't the reason that most people didn't buy them. Like, the most reason people didn't buy them is because a fiscal keyboard makes your phone good at messaging and worse at everything else. And so, like, messaging is one component of what we use our phones for nowadays, and, like, everything else a keyboard gets in the way. So, like, that doesn't solve the fact that they have a good manufacturing partner does not solve their core challenge of the fact that in 2020 or 2021 when this comes out, the concept of what a smartphone can do is much different than it was in 2006.

Yeah, I mean, that's true. Part of me wants to say, like, oh, but the problem is that Android just isn't designed to work with keyboards. And if they just optimize the software, you'd be able to fly around on this thing in the way that you could fly around a Blackberry Bold back in the day. You'd know what all the keyboard shortcuts are. And you've had years of experience knowing that hitting the Blackberry button and H does one thing. And all of that could be true. And some of that was actually true with like the key one. They did have a bunch of keyboard shortcuts.

But like no one is going to build up years of muscle memory on this thing. Right. It's not going to have the critical mass. And then like when you think about the Blackberry bold. had a like a postage size stamp screen. Like, like you didn't, you weren't sitting there watching videos on it.

You were not shooting TikToks. You were not scrolling through long social media feeds. You were not watching quivis, which you're not doing on a phone today, but you could. You know, so like all of those things are necessitated and made better by the fact about a big screen.

At the top of the show, we talked about like, what's our preferred phone size? And we were like, they're getting bigger. And why are they getting bigger? Well, they have bigger screens.

And the bigger screen, like you said, Deeter, on the note 20 means that you could do more things with it and like you can play video games on it instead of using your tablet and stuff like that you stick a hardware keyboard in the way of that and all of that experience gets worse in service of one particular thing that you do with your phone so like maybe it is something that you do really like maybe there is that niche just like the sonem company and we mentioned has a

niche of like rugged heavy duty phones that are kind of crummy to use because of all the ruggedness to them but the people that need those and rely on them need them maybe there is that small niche, but TCL couldn't find it. Blackberry certainly couldn't find it. The odds that this company is going to find that niche? I don't know. Very slim. I don't mean to be a downer at the end of the show. You put some really heavy expectations on me to say

something positive about a Blackberry phone in 2021. They might find the niche, but it might just be like 100,000 people and that's it. Or 100 people. Right. Well, I mean, before today, had you ever heard of like Sonem? Like, Dan and I have. But like, are you listening to this? Have you ever heard of Sonam?

Like, nah, maybe. Maybe not. And maybe that's just what is going to happen to Blackberry. Is it, they'll, they'll be, they'll have a decent little business making phones for a small number of people at the end. And that's like, it's not great, but it's, um, it's better than it going away completely, I guess. It kind of did, right? Like, it went away. I mean, like, like, TCL was like, we're done. We're out.

And so, like, there's no more new phones. And then this company's like, six months later, they're like, oh, we're going to do it. But you got to wait a year for it to come. Which is why I'm worried, like, that's why I'm, like, smelling palm again, right? they like just picked up the brand. Okay, but here's my big takeaway. We want phones with multiple app stores because of this epic controversy with physical keyboards and with styluses.

So we want trios because like there are multiple app stores with trio. They had stylists, they had touch screens, they have physical keyboards. That's like, that's the lesson here. I say 5G, like all these phones are so big because they need all these 5G antennas. Just bring back the antenna bump. Bring back the like external antenna with like the little whip cord that you like pull up. and have that be your 5G antenna so you can make a small phone with 5G. I'm saying to go all the way back.

Think about it. Deidre's conclusion, Palm was right. Damn. On that note, that is Zverge cast. Becca, you have a YouTube show. Tell us about it. Oh, yeah. I got this thing called Full Frame, where we talk anything and everything cameras.

I'm working on something right now. Hopefully coming out next week for you all. So stay tuned to YouTube.com slash The Verge. and yeah, watch our first episode. We built, I built a camera. And I don't recommend it unless you know how to code, which I did not. But, anyway, it was lots of fun. So next week, stay tuned to YouTube.com slash The Verge for a new episode of Full Frame.

I'm just going to say, if you're not subscribed to us on YouTube, we would please pull over in your car and do it because we are just knocking on the door of a milestone for our subscriber count on that channel. It would make me feel personally good. If you would just go hit the subscribe button, ring the bell. be kind of cool. Yeah, YouTube.com slash The Verge.

You can find us on Twitter. I'm at Baclon. Becca is at Becca Fersachi. Dan is at D.C. Cfert with an E.I. Neli, we'll be back next week. He is at Reckless. You can subscribe to a bunch of newsletters at Theverge.com slash newsletter.

There you'll find my newsletter processor, Casey's newsletter The Interface, and very best forthcoming newsletter, Antivirus, all very exciting. We'll have the interview show back to you on Tuesday and, of course, the chat show again later next week. Thanks for listening. Thanks, guys.

Rock and roll. Wear a mask, y'all.