Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - In the Heart of Smartphone Season: New iPhones, LG Wing, & the Smartphone Price Sweet Spot!

Episode Date: October 16, 2020

We're in the deep, beating heart of smartphone season! With three big new phone events since our last episode, we revisit our power rankings, cover several of the new phones being released, and wrap it all up with a discussion about phone-price ranges and where the elusive sweet spot for phone-pricing actually resides! Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com Music by KamrenB: https://spoti.fi/2WRJOFh Our Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mkbhd Vergecast with Marques: https://bit.ly/2SZdmhS Jon Morrison iPhone Xr Screen: https://bit.ly/2H2oEj7 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Marques Brownlee. And I'm Andrew Manganielli. And this is, wow, we're in the thick of it now, aren't we? We are, yeah. Welcome to Techtober. That's the way I'll start it. So this is the thick of it now, aren't we? We are, yeah. Welcome to Techtober. That's the way I'll start it. So this is the heart of smartphone season. We knew it was coming, more or less.

Like everything, we've talked about this before, but everything comes out by the holiday season sometime around now. Yeah, I feel like when we say heart of smartphone season, like Techtober is still going to roll on for the rest of the month, but I feel somehow, some way, like everything just happened to be this week it felt like in terms of smartphones we saw the iphone event we had and then we just had some embargoes that kind of like hitting out too like we're just starting to see lg wing stuff we're seeing all this pixel stuff one plus at came out like i can't remember the last time in one week we've had four different phones in our hands where we're like like really important just getting them where

we where we really want to dive into them all at the same time but we can't yeah so that's that's where we're at i think also since we have all these events we can we can sort of update our power ranking i think we should our power rankings of how well these live events have translated so just as a refresher, it's hard to translate a good product presentation in front of an audience that will clap for some things and react to some things into an online presentation where you can choose to continue to keep that style and sort of skip the applause

or turn it into a whole production. We all know it's prerecorded, but maybe you do wanna do some stuff live. It's different. It definitely is harder for sure. We're going to rank these, and we totally understand that doing all of this is not easy. There's something to an event where you go, you're there with a million people,

you're in this big venue, and they have giant screens where the event could probably be terrible, but the presentation of you just like feeling in the moment is going to feel awesome. So that's so true. It's so much different now sitting at your desk or sitting on your couch at home. Like, yeah, it takes something completely different to really get somebody locked into an event. But there's something to be said about that. So there is something to being there. The atmosphere of it is one thing, but I think the replacement for that is production value.

And I think that is an easy segue into like my number one event still so far is Apple's WWDC. Yeah. Now, I think Apple has one-upped themselves in production value since then. But I think that was a great tone setter for like, oh, wow, that's how good a live pre-recorded but live event can be for a product announcement. Yeah, and we got that early in the mists of all this. Summer. Yeah, we had summer. I mean, stuff was kind of getting canceled.

WWDC got, or Mobile World Congress got canceled in February. So that was kind of the first thing we saw canceled. So if you think about it, June's pretty close around the corner. So for them to have that ready that early on to canceling the event, like that was really impressive. They made the decision to not have an event and to record something and that's what they made. So that's, that's still number one for me. And then we had the, uh, the September event, which was watch and iPad. Yeah. And then I'm putting, so I'm going to put right above that, right in between the two Apple events, the October Apple event for the iPhones that we just saw. And the reason I'm not putting it number one is even though it had better production value

and I liked the products they announced better, I thought it was a great event, the Verizon and the 5G part of it, where they harped on how great 5G was going to be, and they brought, I guess, the CEO or CFO of Verizon on stage for a while, it was a little much for me. And that took me sort of out of the moment, unlike the other two Apple events. So it went down a notch because of that, but the production value was so good.

I think the production value was the best we've seen because it had those transitions into the AR houses and that side of the house cut out, which was absolutely incredible. But I completely agree that the Verizon guy has to put this down a notch because it just felt so un-Apple in that moment. It was so corporate though.

Yeah. It was like they're very used to just speaking to us. Apple is a corporate company. Like we know that, but like they've just created this persona that feels way more intimate. And I think they just have incredible presenters. They happen to have really, really good presenters and whether that's the direction or the production or

whatever it is, I don't really know if I can speak to being behind the scenes, but yeah, the Verizon presentation part wasn't that great. Also, do we think that little house thing, was that an actual house set that they built or was that all constructed with effects and different scenes that they shot separately?

I would say at least the bottom house, the bottom half. There was like a second floor that I don't think they ever went to, but I would guess at least the bottom half is like completely constructed. So they built an entire bottom half of a house set somewhere on Apple campus. I'm gonna tell you to look up something here quickly.

Because this is a show that was even before my time, but I somehow managed to catch reruns of it. There's an old game show on Nickelodeon called Finders Keepers, which was basically like, do you know those old puzzles you used to find in magazines? That's like, here's a picture of a scene, find these hidden objects in it.

So the whole show is based on that. And then when you got into the final rounds, you would go into this house and you'd have to find certain objects in each of the rooms. And their set was a big house with the fronts cut off so that the live audience could see so look up uh finders keepers tv show on google i mean it's not gonna look as nice because it's a kid's show but do you see it okay i see what you're saying yeah and so you get they've built this whole thing just for

this they built it on a set so like it would not surprise me if they built a set i mean look at ikea has like these little sets i'm sure they built it just good enough for for it to look perfect for the presentation half the stuff probably didn't have to work half it was probably being held up by like duct tape and glue as long as that's not on camera who cares but like so compare that and the production value of putting that together for your phone announcement versus everything else that we've seen underneath it in the power rank that's why they're up on the top it's so it's so massive of a difference and so actually one plus's event was the next day one plus at and it was again a whole lot of that like what google did where there's a lot of like slightly off axis not talking to the camera.

So it was a live prerecorded event and they had, you know, a couple of presenters in this big, clean, white room and a little interview set. And it was like it was produced nicely, but it wasn't as personal and it didn't feel. I mean, I know Apple's a tough act to follow but the difference was so so stark when you see them back to back i would say if i had to compare it to something i don't know if i've done google which we'll talk about next because even though that was a couple weeks ago we had the main gear episode last week so uh we haven't gotten to talk about it yet but it felt to me like if they tried to take one part of Apple, which is like Tim Cook on the stage, and tried to copy just that.

They would have like a guy in this big empty room with a screen next to it, and he would talk. Now, like you said, the big difference was he talked off camera, which is just like super not intimate. I think it makes a giant difference to not talk to the camera because when Apple and these people are speaking, not even just Apple, but when you're speaking directly to the camera, it feels like you're telling me as I watch what you want to tell me, whether it's a new product or a new feature or whatever. And when you speak off camera, it looks now like an interview or an ad and it's instantly that much less personal and that much less relatable and that much more corporate. Just from that one little touch.

I mean, if you want to talk about how important that is, we say the Microsoft Duo events, like the next step under the Apple events. And while the production quality on that was so much lower, it had Panos and different people on the team talking directly to the camera. Exactly. Super, super personally.

And that's how they pulled that off being one of our favorite events that's not Apple. So you can go the super simple route. You just have to be, and I'm not saying anyone's not passionate, but Microsoft pulled it off as just making us feel the passion with them. It's a style choice.

It's 100% the right style choice. I think Samsung, despite their unpacked events, could have stylistically chosen to do it differently. It's just not their way. Yeah. It's just not their way. Yeah. It's just not their way. So they did their whole big production, their whole big ad, which was a little bit chaotic the first time, and they toned it down. But yeah, that's lower on the power rankings because it's just not the same.

Yeah. And OnePlus, they had a lot of moments that just felt like they were trying to take that extra step and it didn't quite pan out. There is just like, there were times where they kept moving the camera to add all this space. And I thought some like text or something was going to pop up and then the text would pop up like along the bottom. And then you just had a ton of empty space for no reason or lots of graphs and stuff like that,

that just quickly like we were watching. And then all of a sudden we would notice we're all just talking to each other and none of us were facing the event anymore. So it- You know what I like about OnePlus though? Their events have always had this pretty consistent voice to them.

So even when they were doing regular events, they would kind of have this like underdog presenter attitude where like, you know, how much do you think this phone's gonna cost? Like you've seen our competitors, you know, they they're more expensive we figured we'd do it this way and like they they still keep that voice for sure which is good um but you know if i'm if i'm putting them in the power rankings right now i'm putting them i guess i would say fifth right below surface duo event right above their ar event in Unpacked.

Okay. We'll relist everything at the end of here. Sure. So just to recap on it. But next we have the Google, we'll call it Pixel 5 event. I mean, it was Pixel 5 and also like the new Nest Home lineup. Nest Audio, all that stuff, yep. Yeah.

That was just textbook ad. It was all the stuff that we were talking about how it's not personal We're like it's it's produced very well, and it was on Google stuff So we know what we're expecting half that leaked already But we're waiting for the information about the phone and they would go Minutes at a time in this like little Q&A or like ad segment where it's clearly not personal But they would do it anyway And then you'd get,

you'd start to just lose focus and lose track of what's going on. And by the time you're 10 minutes later, getting back to the next product, it's like, I didn't learn anything there. That was almost wasted. So yeah, it was the off camera talking, all that stuff. What I found the most interesting about it is when it first opened, we looked at each other and we're like, wow, the,, the production quality of this is really good. And we instantly were like, okay, this is going to be one of the better live events we've seen. And as it went on, segment by segment, it just dropped and dropped and dropped. It plummeted.

It kind of reminds me of if you, like, we've obviously been to Google I.O. events, but I don't know if everybody's watched them. If you remember I.O. events, it would always be a presenter and then they would have this little segue into the next thing that would kind of recap everything they did without going deep into the information. It would just be like a quick little montage of the product they just talked about. That event felt like they just took all the montages and put them together. So you got almost no information. You just got like these fun little commercials for each thing, which are wonderfully produced and like really fun to watch. But if you don't know any of the information behind it,

it's kind of pointless for us to watch it. Exactly. Like I learned almost nothing about the Pixel 5 from that event. So it is, I think that's a good way of putting it, a fun little bunch of commercials they put together for us to watch. Yeah, but commercials aren't fun when you watch them for half an hour straight. Right. Yeah.

So that's why that's lower on the power rankings. I agree. When we first started, I was like, oh, Google. Wow. Nice. Okay. They've got the budget. They've got the know-how to make this look great.

And then it just slowly started descending as they started. It started actually with Rick Osterloh talking straight to the camera. Yes, and we were like, perfect. And that was a great start. And then from that point on, it was everyone doing the ad thing. So Rick nailed it. Opening. Tons of perfect. If you guys do your whole event like that, and you can keep some of the high production quality stuff, but just talk to us. Talk to us. Please. We're here. we're right here we're watching um all right so let's go over the power rankings completely here all right number one wwdc still number two apple october iphone event only because of the verizon stuff yeah then number three apple's september event which was Apple Watch and iPad Air.

So it's Apple, Apple, Apple, top three. I mean, those are just, again, they hit all the marks. They talked to us. They had easily the best production quality. Yeah. And it was just to the point we got all the information we need, maybe a little extra information, but at no point in any of the Apple ones were we really sidetracked during everything. You're just paying attention to it. Constant information. Exactly, yeah. And by the way, there's more events

that are not on our power rankings that are happening. We're just listing our major ones. Yeah. Number four, Microsoft Surface Duo unveiling with Panos. Official walkthrough video. That was great. Number five, OnePlus 8T event. and this is where we start to get towards like the bottom half where none of them really do the personal talk to the camera thing anymore

yeah and get deducted major points yeah because of that right below that i have samsung's or no right below that i have samsung one plus is ar event and then right below that is samsung unpacked and samsung galaxy fold event google should be in there between oh yeah where's the ar event and well it's above samsung unpacked and we just oh we've talked about it before samsung unpacked was just oh my it felt like a like nickelodeon sitcom with like how cringy some of the like talk and responses were to each other it just it was really hard to not notice that and then quickly you're just like oh man this script is terrible what am i watching i forgot i'm watching this for a new phone or new tech or anything yeah and no and no bixby home so like minus

major major points deducted for no bixby okay so like minus 100 major major points deducted for no bixby okay so that's to wrap it up so it's uh one plus error event six google event seven samsung fold eight samsung impact nine there we go there it is okay let's do a let's do our little recap of uh some videos we've done on the channel since we last talked. And we did, this is before Main Gear. So we're going all the way back to eight videos ago. And it's eight smartphone videos. So what do you know? Smartphone season in full effect.

Oh, wait, no, there's one that's not a smartphone video. Oh, true. There's one. There's one non-smartphone. But there's a smartphone in the thumbnail, so it's good. Okay. And also our TikTok video, but we'll get to that. So the first one was iOS 14, the ultimate home screen setup guide.

This is mainly just we saw everyone's finally getting ios 14 right before the new iphones are getting announced and discovering widgets and the beautiful world of what you can do with them so did a little level one level two level three uh home screen setup guide by the way neat story the people uh the artist actually who developed the icon pack that i use in the video had a pretty great article about how he made a lot. Yeah, I'm going to put that in the show notes. We tweeted about it and we debated tweeting about it because we were worried all the Twitter replies were just going to be, check out my icon pack, can you please feature my icon pack? Which kind of has happened a little bit.

It 100% happened and I'm actually really bummed about it because I thought it was a really fun story, and we posted it because we wanted to show just a cool story that was completely unprompted by us asking or anything. He just created that, and I wish more people read it instead of just trying to spam their icon packs. Moral of the story, I think, product is king. There was no sponsorship or anything there. It was just a great thing that they made.

After that was Galaxy S20 fan edition video which was talking about the phone but also its positioning and samsung's gigantic lineup of phones which go all the way from 99 to 3400 which is the like tom brown edition galaxy z flip 2 with all that other stuff that comes with it. Yeah, we're going to talk about price ranges later. Yeah. But that that video is just a another one in this hot new six to seven hundred dollar price range that's happening now. So that was good. Then there was the one non smartphone video. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 6 review. It's out. It's great watch. I'm wearing it right now. I didn't think i would switch to it but i did get the black one and uh it's got a couple new features my title is it's bait because it's it's

some of the greatest ecosystem bait ever it's such a great watch that doesn't work with any other phone but the iphone and as soon as you get used to really liking the apple watch you don't want to use any other smart watch or any other phone that doesn't work with one. So, Apple Watch Series 6 is out. Then the next one is, why don't people buy Sony smartphones? A topic that I think has been on all our minds for a long time, and we just didn't really have any reason to put together those thoughts into a video, until we finally, six months after ordering it from B&H, got the Xperia 1 Mark II, which was one of the most... Six months. Yeah, six months after I it from B&H, got the Xperia 1 Mark II, which was one of the most- Six months. Yeah, six months after I pre-ordered.

And it has a lot of really cool features, and I went over all of them in the video. It's a 4K screen. It's a 4K screen in your pocket. That's the main thing when people say, why don't you do Sony smartphones, is it's a 4K screen. I thought you liked 4K.

Yeah, but there's so much other stuff to that story, and where Sony's been all these years, you know, never mind their naming of their products, but their marketing and their inability to launch a product the way others do. So that's all in that one video. And I think that's a good place to put it. Then we got right to iPhone season. So iPhone 12 lineup was announced. iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro max And also home pod mini shout out to the little home pod mini We'll see if that actually changes anything or makes me want to use a home pod because I clearly didn't like the first one

But they're all out there and that video is up then in the last 19 hours we have the one plus 80 review the Google pixel 5 unboxing and first impressions shout out to FedEx and Last 19 hours, we have the OnePlus 8T review, the Google Pixel 5 unboxing and first impressions, shout out to FedEx, and the $200 smartphone, the Infinix Note 8, which was kind of like an exploration of like, what can you get for 200 bucks now?

Now that we have all these great $600, $700 phones and the best phones are stretching all the way up to 2,000 bucks, what has happened to the baseline and it's actually moved up a lot so it's gotten way better pretty good one to look at also sorry yeah that was a pretty good one to look at that was sponsored by infinix and they got that phone in our hands for that showcase and it was really cool yeah also fun fact our original pixel 5 we were supposed to get we said shout out to fedex it's still somewhere in tennessee apparently allegedly yeah they don't know where it is.

If you call them and ask, they'll say, the latest we have is it's departed Memphis. And that was supposed to get here, let's see, it's Thursday. So that's five days ago. It's supposed to be here Saturday, right? Like latest on Monday? Yeah. So I understand mail is harder in this pandemic,

but we just straight up never got that. So we had to actually get in touch with Google, and they had to ship another one. So there we just straight up never got that. So we had to actually get it in touch with Google and they had to ship another one. So there we go. Got the Pixel 5. Okay, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and we'll talk. We'll talk new form factors

and we'll talk our TikTok video about LG Wing. We'll be right back. This holiday season, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health is counting on your support. CAMH is on a mission to make better mental health care for all a reality. And they've made incredible strides forward, breaking down stigma, improving access to care, and pioneering research breakthroughs. But now is the time to aim even higher. You can help create a world where no one is left behind.

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Family vacay? Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights. To all the planners, now you can reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. See Uber app for details. All right. We made a TikTok. We made a TikTok.

And like we've made, we've made some TikToks, but we made the TikTok. We made one. I told you this one was going to blow up. You did. I called this one. I mean, our other ones have done well.

1 million, 1.8 and like 3.2 million. one. I mean, our other ones have done well. 1.8 and like 3.2 million. Yeah, I mean, okay. I've been making videos for years, right? A lot of YouTube, you know, ever since creator of the decade, you kind of have to zoom out and look at like there's Twitter, there's Instagram, there's Facebook video. But I'd resisted TikTok for a long time, you know. It's the place where there's cheesy video, but I'd resisted TikTok for a long time. You know, it's, it's the place

where there's cheesy jokes and physical humor and like dancing videos. And like, I don't know if I'm cut out for TikTok. Right. But I always saw TikTok and like open the app and you guys have seen it on my phone and videos and like, I watch them. There's some cool stuff, but I've never found a way to like shoehorn my passion for tech into tiktok but i'm also now i guess now that we've made these tiktoks super aware that it does fit that there's plenty of great stuff yeah in the tech world for tiktok you need to think so far outside the box or just like so much simpler because like we are trying to cram as much information as possible into a like 10 minute

video to trying to help people make a buying decision where tiktok is more like i have the attention span of a goldfish and i want to laugh as quick as possible all i'm doing like be amazed yeah it's i i had the idea a while ago of like all right i think tiktok could be good if we did like a like my whole thing like you said is TikTok could be good if we did like a, like my whole thing, like you said, is density of information. What if I did like a 15 second video of every, everything that we do on the channel on TikTok? So like a new pixel five would come out and I'd do like a 15 second vertical video of like, all right, pixel five, here's the camera stuff. Here's the battery's great. Here's a new metal build. But wireless charging works through it, blah, blah, blah, 15 seconds. And I'd be like, maybe I could do that.

And then we'll work on TikTok, but I never did it. Cause, blah, blah, 15 seconds. And I'd be like, maybe I could do that and it would work on TikTok. But I never did it because it just felt like kind of forced and I don't know. Maybe I might still work on that idea, but we found something a little simpler, which is just quick. Go to the memes, baby. Straight to the memes. It's all about the memes. Yeah.

Yeah, we had done a couple and then I finally had one click. I watch TikTok more than I'd like to admit. I think it one click. I watch TikTok more than I'd like to admit. I think it is amazing. I think everyone who watches TikTok over the age of 22 watches TikTok more than like- I want to get rid of the stigma. There is, if you watch enough of it, there are plenty of creators out there

who are over their teenage years and you can quickly find a group of creators that you like and cater to your demographic. But- You know what that perfectly reminds me of? What? How everyone always said YouTube was just cat videos. And everyone who got older just ignored YouTube

because it's just cat videos. But what do you find on YouTube now? Vibrant, diverse communities of all kinds of things that people want to engage with. And so here we are in danger of becoming those old people. We almost didn't embrace TikTok. We almost did, yeah. But here we are. Anyway, what are we even talking about didn't embrace TikTok. We almost did, yeah. But here we are.

Anyway, what are we even talking about right now? TikTok. We made a TikTok. So I guess I'll start with the story about it. We got the LG Wing, which is like the most radical form factor of a phone you can think of right now. It swivels. Yeah, it doesn't sound as nice as purely microphone-wise. Microsoft Duo still wins the asmr power went frank the thump is obviously more satisfying yeah um but i we knew we

had to do a tiktok video because it's different and non-phone enthusiasts would like it and i had obviously been watching a lot of tiktok and thought of a song that's kind of popular right now the like hip swing song and i thought swing wing why don't we like pretend it's just a regular phone and people will be like huh i know this song though and then right on the swing part we swing it open and then people who have no idea what this is which i think is everybody outside the tech world is like what in the world just happened yeah and we did that it took like five or six shots uh brandon was on camera you were hitting your marks on that and i was just laughing in the corner thinking i can't believe i pitched this to marquez and it's working and i feel like

i also kind of had a hunch that it would be a good TikTok because there's also this thing on TikTok called duets yeah which for a lot of people has been this really creative way to like it's just side by side video where you take a video and then record either your reaction or like you sometimes people singing alongside another person singing so it's like a duet basically but I'd done this video on the just the xbox when we first got it just hitting the power button turning it on and that was when i realized oh people are going to do out my tiktoks too okay and i go over and check them out and it's just people reacting like surprised like oh it turned on i thought it was one of those dummy models um and so i realized yeah with wing it looks like a normal smartphone right up until you swing it out and so people are

gonna realize what's happening right at that moment and so it has that little moment in it so i've been pretty caught up seeing how it's done which is done really well but i completely forgot about duet so let's go over some of the stats and then can you tell me how many duets it has is that something you can look at oh yeah i'll open the open the app. So TikTok does not have as much analytics as I wish it had, as numbers obsessed as I am. But let's see. We posted this TikTok

as of the time of this recording, 20 hours ago. If this was a YouTube video, this would break every record I've ever posted. So I'll just start it with that. So this video has 10.3 million views. It has 1.3 million likes and it has 25,500 comments that's absolutely wild all in less than 24 hours and i think my page went from less than 170,000 followers to over

270,000 followers and yeah i would love to have seen some sort of in-depth analytics on this. But that's all I know. So we were trying to gauge how many we thought it would get. We were trying to think of within the first 24 hours. And I don't know if any of us even said a million. I thought it was going to beat the other ones we had. But I didn't know it was going to beat it like this, this fast. Yeah. So we are now, our top video is 3 million.

So we're three times over that in less than 24 hours. And that video has been up for a couple of weeks. Yeah. By the time you see this podcast, I might've been on a whole nother level. It could literally reach 20 million by the time this podcast. So a couple of really interesting things to me come up from just the analytics. And we'll talk more about LG wing in a second. We're on this TikTok rip right now. But first of all, the ratio of engagement to views is really, really high. And so on YouTube for me, typically you'll see about 10% is a good number.

So if you see a video with 100,000 likes, or sorry, 100,000 views, for example, 10,000 likes is a pretty normal number for that, 10%. On TikTok, right away as soon as we posted it, I remember we just refreshed it a couple minutes later and it had 500 something views and 187 likes. And I was like, if you saw that on YouTube, that would be very suspicious.

That would be really weird, like a 40% on that ratio. So that was number one. So again, now this has 10 million views and a million and a half likes. I have videos on YouTube with 10 million views, and the ratio typically goes down from 10% as the views go up. And it stayed. It's a million likes. So that's number one, really interesting to me. Number two is I posted about this on Twitter and one really interesting

thing came up, which is a little suspicion. Maybe it's a conspiracy theory, but someone said they think TikTok, when a new creator is coming up and posting their first few TikToks, will really boost them in the algorithm and really share, overshare their videos in the For You page so that they get hooked to chasing those numbers and then they never see the same numbers or engagement ever again. And to me, that would make sense for TikTok to see, oh, look, a new upcoming thing. Let me share it and see if it hooks. I don't think it's intentionally like keep them chasing the numbers or anything malicious

like that, but it can very easily be construed that way when a creator comes up and tries to see if they can make something go big on TikTok and then it does and then it never happens again. So you're verified on TikTok. Do you know if that was like after your first video it did that already? It's a good question. So I posted that Xbox TikTok and it started to get a lot of traction, and that's when one of my friends, Sam Sheffer actually, he actually DM'd me on Twitter with a screenshot of it like, hey, just so you should know, there's somebody on TikTok posing as you, reposting your clips, and they have the MKB underscore HD username, just so you know. And I said, Sam, you found my TikTok.

And he was like, what? No way. This doesn't look official at all. Let me get you in touch with my TikTok contact. And so from that point, they were able to get me the actual MKBHD username and verified in the same day. So that video was already blowing up before that happened. So I don't think I can tie a video blowing up to getting verified but it was definitely it was definitely after that point that it definitely hooked so looking at these videos we have seven up right now i have a hard time believing they would the way the the views work here just don't really make sense at least in terms of our latest video so like xbox 1.9 million obviously doing very well before that's a couple hundred thousand next video is 3.5 million so like xbox 1.9 million obviously doing very well before that's a couple hundred

thousand next video is 3.5 million so like if you want to throw the conspiracy theory there it is like 1.9 to 3.5 but then the next video is 500 000 so like drop significantly like it's also possible that it just wasn't a good enough video because 550 000 is way more than the others before it it just wasn't good enough to to catch engagement and maybe when another one does catch engagement they keep pushing it again this is a whole lot of questions because there's hardly any analytics for me to look at in tiktok and i would learn a lot more i would not doubt if after you got verified there's a higher chance of someone being verified getting popped up into someone's algorithm whether that means it's them like overly trying to push it or just they'd rather not take the risk of non-verified users in the like for you page it's probably more of just like a risk assessment kind of thing so

like you benefit from it but i highly doubt they like then stop all of a sudden to make you start chasing things. Right. It wouldn't make sense for them to stop as much as that conspiracy theory suggests. But I just thought it was interesting that, yeah, the videos right as you start TikTok are immediately like funneled into this

like amplification system where it's absolutely everywhere. I think it just has the best chance of somebody to go from absolutely nothing to a full-blown influencer on TikTok. Definitely. It's absolutely wild how you see one person makes up a dance and it hits people's pages. The minute people start replicating that dance, it just happens. It's everywhere.

I think one of my favorite ones is this guy doing this really great dance and i can't remember what it is he has like over 50 million views on the because every single person's tried to replicate it not a single person's gotten anywhere near as good as him and like it was just a guy dancing in his bedroom and there's probably a lot of duets and a lot of people talking about it and a lot of comments my question just because there's no analytics and my numbers brain wants to know are like what are the records on tiktok like what is the most viewed i know like the rock is on tiktok and does crazy numbers but like what's the most viewed tiktok ever what's the most viewed uh what's the most liked tiktok i don't know most viewed or most liked but searching

through some things i've i've come up against ones that have i'll notice it gets duetted a lot and so i'll click on the original one and you scroll through their page and i've seen pages where just every single video in the grid is 20 million views jesus that's that's so crazy you'd think some of them would just fail but i think after a certain point on there it's kind of like uh like ariana grande on instagram like every one of her posts is just going to show numbers that you no one can believe even the top influencers are like that seems impossible yeah that's crazy so that there's a reason why it's the number one like fastest growing social network and it's that algorithm is pretty damn good man anyway so

we that was the lg wing yeah let's talk about the actual wing now let's yeah i'm holding it right now it's a big phone it's a pretty heavy phone and as we speak also we're working on the video about the lg wing and like everything it does and like why it's interesting but as an alternate form factor basically what's happening is the front half of it spins up into this t-shape at the top and reveals a smaller screen underneath it and the question after you get over like the fact that this phone is transforming into like a t-shape the question is like why why why would you actually want a phone to do that that's a lot of things with these alternate form factors when you unfold it and you're like whoa the screen folded in half that's amazing and then you calm down and you're like okay so why and i think for folding phones we're finding

that obvious answer is bigger screen smaller smaller pocket like it just works out um for for a swiveling screen it's a very different set of answers, some of which are just seeing two things at once or watching a video on the top screen in horizontal while texting vertically on the bottom screen, putting the whole thing sideways in a car mount so that you have this side rectangle screen. It's hard to describe on a podcast where you can't see what i'm doing but there's a lot of really interesting it's wise it's super interesting so like dual screens give you that chance of having like like a dual monitor setup that's pretty easy to imagine what the use case there is you can have two separate windows and then also which i would kind of argue is you have a bigger screen for media consumption.

I think my argument on that is the fold is going to unfold into non-16x9. So you're getting a bigger screen, but 40% of it is black bars. Anyways, this is a little different because you're getting two screens, but they're different sizes. So now, do you put your less needed screen? Oh, they're also different, like not just different. Yeah, different aspect ratios. So it's weird. You can't have your main media and then something you can really scroll that much on on the bottom because even bringing up Reddit, you probably only get two to three links in it.

I will say the bottom screen is bigger than I imagined. Seeing pictures of it, I think the whole phone is bigger than I imagined. It is. But the bottom screen, I kept thinking about them saying, you can text on the bottom. And I thought if you had the keyboard up

and a text conversation, I don't think you'd have much room, but you can probably see two to three lines of conversation with the keyboard in it, which is probably enough, especially if you're paying attention to a movie. I, though, I have higher hopes for it holding onto it than I did when just seeing it. I think it's going to accomplish more

than I gave it credit for to start. So I'm gonna preface this by saying it is $1,000, right? And so, you know, I didn't used to talk about price that much, but anytime now you have to consider like, do I actually want to get this phone? There's going to be other options of things you can get for the same money spent. So it's $1,000. And so instead of getting like a normal high-end smartphone for $1,000, you're going to get a, I believe it's 1080p 60Hz P OLED on the front.

You're going to get a Snapdragon 765G, so not the highest-end chip. You're going to get like, you know, it's an LG phone, so it's got like the nice UI and it's got a bunch of LG's features. But, you know, there's nothing really too special as far as cameras or anything else going on. It's got a pop-up selfie camera. But what you're really paying for is getting that swivel and that's the question is like how how valuable is

that swivel gonna turn out to be for real people yeah i mean the screen's 1080 but it's a nice looking screen it it's bright and vibrant and maybe the resolution isn't quite as good as some of the ones but like it it looks fine most people aren't going to notice this. Yeah. And like a thousand dollars is a weird price I think for this, because in one hand it's way cheaper than every other strange form factor. Like there's no folds anywhere close to this price. Um, and then, but at the same time you're having specs in it that are at the price range of like the seven to eight hundred dollars so yeah i i think it's a fair price i think it i think it's the perfect price i think if lg wanted to go the extra step probably lose money on this but really show a new form factor and show that they're leading in this smartphone world,

if they dropped it down to $750 or $800, which I don't think would be the best idea profits-wide, I think this phone would be everywhere. Maybe not everywhere, but I think LG would be putting a way bigger dent into this smartphone enthusiast market. They kind of get counted out a lot. To me, they're more of the most people who use LG phones

are either huge audiophiles or people who got an LG phone at a carrier because they're huge in carrier stores. By the way, there's no headphone jack on this phone, on the wing. Yeah, I'm sure that's not going to make some LG fans happy. But actually, I might push back on that a little bit. I know that it is $1,000 and that it's harder once the price gets higher to justify it. But I think even at a lower price, like $700, there's still the question of why. And I think when people see this in the store, no matter what the price is, it's still going to put...

Even if they put the highest-end chip and 120-hertz screen on the outside and all this stuff and flagship spec, I still think there's a why question, no matter what the price is, that is harder to answer without a demo. So do you think, when you say in-store, you're talking about, like, Best Buy or Carrier Store or something like that. Yeah.

Do you think there's enough time? Most people going into the store to upgrade a phone probably have a broken phone and are probably making that decision that night. Do you think there's enough time to start thinking about why? Because the first thing is the wow factor. Clearly, the first thing they're going to flip this and be like, oh my goodness, what is happening? I just want to scroll around. Look at that crazy phone over there. Yeah. Do you think they're going to spend enough time after that wow factor to think, why do I need this? And then make the decision then? And then do you think, can they make the why decision in time? I think they're going to walk into the store, they're going to see it,

they're going to get wowed by it for the first few minutes. And then they're going to go, wait, okay, so I can buy this right now. Would I want to use this every day? And there's going to be a bunch of other much easier yeses to that question. Like there's going to be an iPhone 12 sitting right next to it for $700. There's going to be, you know, the Galaxy S20 FE. There's going to be all these other phones that you can just go, yeah, I can plug this into my life and it replaces my phone and we're good for a couple years. And you're going to look at this phone and go, is this going to break? Am I going to get annoyed by having to flip it open all the time? Am I going to never flip it open again? What's like, what is the sacrifice here? And I don't think all those questions are answered as easily with a plus shaped phone. I think maybe

with a folding phone, you're like, oh yeah, I'm getting a bigger screen. There's no way I get this anywhere else. I want it. But it's just with the swivel, I don't know. It's harder to answer that quickly, and I think that's going to be a reason why it probably isn't going to immediately pop. But I still like that they did it. I love that LG doesn't follow anyone for any reason. I think to me holding it, I would feel more confident in terms of durability than a folding phone.

Might be skewed because I literally watched you tear the screen apart on the original fold. Yep. And I've just seen how delicate those. If you want to know how delicate those screens are, like take a good look at inside the razor like hinge part. You can see how thin it is. And that just makes me nervous. This feels way less fragile compared to other ones. But yeah, I like it.

So I have an interesting question here. This is one I've been thinking about for a long time. So putting you on the spot is totally unfair. We've seen folding in two different ways. Now we've seen this swivel. If you were a different smartphone manufacturer and you wanted to bring in a new wild form factor that is going to make anybody say like, oh my goodness, what kind of smartphone are you creating? What's the new form factor? What's it doing? Okay. is my goal to sell as many as possible?

I think your goal is to create something that has a benefit to having the new form factor, if that makes sense. Okay. Why is this new form factor beneficial to the person buying it, which I hope is the reason that more people buy it and sells better.

But now I'm interested in both of your thoughts. Well, okay. If my answer is I want to sell as many as possible, I'm debating in my head, is a flip phone versus a folding phone going to matter? Honestly, I think the most easy benefit to explain quickly is honestly the dual screen. The way that Surface Duo started,

if we look for a Surface Duo 2 where it's like higher performance and obviously much better in a lot of areas and maybe has better cameras and everything, but just like the dual screen thing, I think speaks to benefit for the user the most. But if I just want to sell as many as possible, I'm going to do a flip phone well so i want though i want a new form i want one that's not done so something that's totally unique and

and i had a very hard time doing it thinking it i think even my answer might be kind of cheating okay well here's my answer then is uh the dual fold so i can like a trifold yeah trifold so that i can unfold this giant 16 by 9 display again so we're doing we're doing these folds and we get like a square screen out of it i want like a fold and then another unfold so a full screen video plays full screen widescreen didn't tcl try and do that i'm still counting the answer but i think tcl like tried to do something but it had a very royal uh it was not to it it was very prototypey and i think some of them weren't even actually working they had a paper screen but i i think that's something they proposed at one point yeah so my my theory or my thought is

and this has kind of been done or at least prototyped do you remember the the rollable screen that came out also tcl prototype tcl right yeah so i don't like it in that form factor because it does the same thing as like the fold where it turns into four by nine i want to turn it if you if you consider the rolling phone compared to the z fold i want to make one equivalent of the z flip where it is a small square that rolls up like a mini scroll yeah so like it would just be a little square in your pocket and then you roll it up and now it's a full size smartphone slab you know what the biggest problem with that probably would be a lot of battery because when you have to fit it in that small square how big could your battery really be and

then you're unfolding this huge screen for the tiny battery to power that might be the biggest but is that so i guess folding phones have the battery in both they have two batteries sides all right yeah i never said it had to be reasonable i agree totally agree but yeah uh there's a whole lot the whole point is like these alternate form factors are keeping smartphones interesting i think the way I haven't made the video yet, but I think the way the video for LG Wing is going to start is like if you really still believe that all smartphones are boring, then you haven't been paying attention because it's getting crazy. All right.

You want to talk about iPhones for a little bit? I feel like we have to. I think I want to talk about one iPhone specifically since we're talking about form factors. And while this isn't a new form factor by any means, I think the iPhone mini is like the most interesting new one out of their lineup. The most interesting, okay, yeah. I think it is.

Well, I think there's a lot of interesting things about the new iPhones, but I think purely form factor wise, iPhone mini, I'm really happy that they're going. Small phones. We know a lot of people that want, or Grover, if you're listening, he wants small phones really bad. I would still stick to a big one, but I know a lot of people who would prefer. The trend of putting flagship specs in a small phone, I think died with the last small flagship iPhone. So yes, I'm glad we're going to see a mini.

But let's just go over the whole lineup real quick. So Apple announced their new stuff. We're getting iPhone 12s across the board, and there's four general models of the new iPhone. iPhone 12, which replaces... I won't say what it replaces, but... Well, I can. Okay. iPhone 12 replaces iPhone 11. iPhone 12 Pro replaces iPhone 11 Pro.

iPhone 12 Pro Max replaces iPhone 11 Pro Max. And there's a new iPhone 12 Mini, which is a 5.4-inch screen, so closer to the size of those smaller ones, but still like that full-screen notch size. Really interested in that phone, like we said, having flagship specs in a smaller body. How big will that notch

look on a tiny iPhone? I have a lot of questions about battery life. There's a lot of remains to be seen stuff about that phone. And interestingly, the iPhone 12 mini and the iPhone 12 pro max are both coming out about three to four weeks after the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro. So we'll have to wait extra long to see how these mini iPhones stack up. But that's the number one curiosity for us. I'm with you on that. It's going to really mess up our video schedule. Honestly, I'm fine with it because making a video about four different iPhones,

testing them all at once is so much harder than letting them sort of spread out a little bit. Shout out to the trucks that are always driving by. Gotta love them, yeah. So that's the Mini. Then we have the iPhone 12. The iPhone 12 Mini starts at $699, and the iPhone 12 is up back again to $799. So I think that's a little interesting because if you remember back to the iPhone XR,

that started at $749. Then the iPhone 11 dropped to $699. And we said, whoa, Apple dropped the price of the base iPhone. That's something you don't see very often. Now that's back up to $799, but the mini slots back in at that low price again. So, you know, it's a little bit more expensive, but I think that all the features that they announced that go into these phones kind of justify it. They're pretty sweet. Yeah, they made it, I feel like, the biggest, especially when, remember how many people complained

about, like, PPI and resolution on the XR? Like, to the point, John Morrison made that great video of who can actually tell the difference, where he, like, did two screens where you couldn't tell what phone it was that video and a ton of people had no idea and most of them picked the XR but they changed that to now the point where the 12 and the 12 pro have the exact same resolution biggest upgrade is the screen yeah so you're getting an OLED you're getting a higher resolution. It is still 60 hertz. And as much as I wish we had a higher refresh rate iPhone, they're all 60 hertz again.

But yeah, massive screen upgrade to the iPhone 12 makes it no longer a 720p cringy spec. And it's going to be a great looking screen. Yeah. And makes you wonder, is this really worth spending $999 on the iPhone 12 Pro? Yeah, I want to get to that. Yes, that. So yeah, let's just get right into that. So iPhone 12, you have new screen. You also have A14 Bionic, which is a new chip.

You also have MagSafe and these new magnets in the back and this whole ecosystem of like magnetic chargers and magnetic cases and wallet attachments. And that'll be open to third parties. That I think is super cool. I can't wait to see what slaps on the back of the iPhone for the next year. But the question that we've come up to is, okay, iPhone 12 is $799.

iPhone 12 Pro is $999. Why would you get the 12 Pro? And so the differences, physically speaking, are one, it's going to be a little bigger, a little bit of bit of a larger screen it's not it's exactly the same 6.1 oh wow okay yeah so 6.1 we went over this yesterday yeah okay so they both have the flat sides and the new design but you have stainless steel sides on the 12 pro versus aluminum sides honestly i personally prefer aluminum i think that matte finish is a little bit nicer to my eye um but you get that new shape on both. You get the telephoto lens of the 12 Pro. You don't get a telephoto on the 11, or sorry, on the 12. So if you like taking zoomed in photos, you will notice, I guess. You get LiDAR for better portrait mode, better low light autofocus and better and more accurate ar stuff on the pro honestly i could be fine without lidar i guess if i'm a camera nerd i'm really looking for that improved autofocus performance but that's another difference and then you know it's like it's those

extra video features the pro raw format that they're coming soon with we don't we don't know when that's coming but pro raw um that's that's about where the major differences end if i'm being honest the screens are about the same now which is crazy there's no pro motion or high refresh rate so do you pay 200 extra dollars uh for stainless steel lidar and a telephoto my my gut answer is no of course not uh but we'll see we'll see i i would if i had to guess let's try and guess well let's see if you agree with me on this if we were to guess sales for all four models i would put i think mini is going to be number one because it's the cheapest uh yes i think 12 is going to be number two then i would put 12 pro max as number three and then i would put 12 pro as number four and my reasoning would be 12 mini is the cheapest. Then 12 is the next cheapest, but also so similar to the Pro

that I think anyone who really wants to go full, full-blown best iPhone, they're not gonna go Pro. They're gonna go 12 Pro Max because that is the best of the best. And you get that slightly bigger sensor, which is also weird that there's a difference between the 12 Pro and the 12 Pro Max.

And then 12 pro just feels like the worst deal out of all of them comparatively okay that's a very logical way of predicting the sales i think your order is the order of compelling buy which is the 12 mini is the cheapest and it gives you all the features of the 12 just a little smaller and cheaper um i think it will be 12 okay then 12 mini then 12 pro max then then 12 pro and the reason i say 12 pro max being above 12 pro again is like you said there's a couple things that are actually better this time about the 12 pro max than the 12 and apple usually doesn't do that but that, but there's better autofocus, or sorry, there's a better, slightly farther telephoto camera

on the 12 Pro Max, and there's better shifter sense optical image stabilization on the 12 Pro Max that is not in the 12 Pro. Sensor shift. Sensor shift. Shifter sense. Shifter sense, Shifter sense. Sensor shift.

So that's going to be a little bit better. So if you definitely want the best thing that they can offer and all the Dolby, you know, Atmos, HDR video and all that stuff, you go with the 12 Pro Max. No questions asked. You spend the most. You get the biggest battery, best phone. But I think still the 12 for most people is gonna be the default.

I could see that. Yeah. I wonder how it's gonna sit on the shelf next to the mini though. That's really interesting. Yeah, I do think Pro Max is definitely gonna sell over Pro. And I think that's because if you're jumping that,

camera seems to be like far and beyond your most important spec. If you're jumping $200 to Pro, of course you jump another $100 to 12 Pro Max because you actually get tangible benefit there. Yeah, and to make better use of all those cameras, the better battery and bigger screen are gonna be huge to take advantage

of the thing you're paying extra for. So it seems like a no-brainer to go 12 Pro Max over 12 Pro. Yeah, so that's the basic lineup the way we see it. We'll of course be getting to all this stuff. The no charger in the box, we'll be unboxing the iPhones. And by no charger, we mean for environmental sake, they didn't include the charging brick, but they also included a USB-C to lightning cable when pretty much everyone has the USB-A charging brick at home. Yeah, that's the only. So that's a weird one. That's kind of weird.

I still am 100% behind no charging brick. I'm behind the initiative, but if you're going to make the argument that everyone has a charging brick at home, your last nine years of iPhone customers have the USB-A charging brick, and you should include the USB-A charging cable, and they're going to include the USB-C charging cable

and make their extra money by selling a bunch of people USB-C charging brick. So that's kind of rough. But again, way smaller boxes for the iPhone. No headphones in the box for the iPhone either. So, you know, all that being said, iPhones are the same price. But that's something we've learned

and we'll keep an eye on all that iPhone stuff. All those reviews are coming up soon. iPad Air review is coming up soon. Xbox review is coming up soon. Xbox review is coming up soon. There's a bunch of phone, like it's, it's techtober. It's all still coming out,

but I think we should take a quick break after all that tech talk talk. And, we'll come back and we'll talk a little bit more tech stuff. You know, what's great about ambition. You can't see it. Some things look ambitious, but looks can be deceiving. For example, a runner could be training for a marathon,

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and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash waveform. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com. All right, welcome back. We got one more thing to talk about, which I think is actually maybe the most interesting part of the way smartphones have evolved over the past couple of years, which is, well, first of all, remember when you used to ask, like, what's the sweet spot for a smartphone screen size? And that answer changed every year. It used to be 3.7, believe it screen size? And that answer changed every year. It used to be 3.7, believe it or not. And then it was like 4.4 is perfect. And then 4.7 was perfect.

And then 5.4 is perfect. Now the iPhone 12 mini is the smallest one and it's 5.4. So that's been shifting always. But the new question is, what's the sweet spot for price? For like how much you spend on a good smartphone and i think some of this comes from our like good phones getting cheap cheap phones getting good sentiment where good phones aren't cheap anymore they're really the best phones are very expensive but the sweet spot for like where you can spend and safely comfortably have a vast range of good smartphones to choose from has sort of landed around this like $600 to $799 price range. And that's been heating up a lot lately. A lot of good phones there. Yeah, I think $699 to $799 is like the sweet spot. It's the

biggest gap from the price range before it, which I consider like 500 range right so 500 to 750 let's say you're getting a huge jump but then when you jump 750 to a thousand diminishing returns are kicking in pretty hard bells and whistles kicking in too yeah so like you're i really think that is the prime spot you should be looking for a phone right now if you're not just willing to toss whatever. If you don't need the literal best thing on the market right now, that's where to look. And so that's where we just got OnePlus 8T. We just got iPhone 12 mini. We just got iPhone 12. We just got Pixel 5. And we're going to keep getting phones at that price. Samsung FE.

Galaxy S20 FE. So there's a lot going on. I was actually just on the Verge cast chatting with Dieter, one of my favorite podcasts. You guys should check out their last episode. It was a really good episode. It was a lot of fun. And we talked for a while about Samsung and that conversation about how they attack price, which is like, sure, they have the Note and the A series and the Galaxy S, but does any of that really matter if all they're trying to do is stratify price? They're just trying to offer a phone at every price.

And if they can get you at $600, they've got a phone for that price. If they can get you at $800, they've got a phone for that price. If they can get you at $1,200, trust me, they've got a phone for that price too. And so that was a fun conversation just about smartphone world in general and can Samsung keep this up with being the default i'm sure what was that an iphone who said that i don't know who said that okay i'm sorry i'm putting that in the i'm not editing this part out because we were just talking and somebody's smart assistant said,

I'm not sure I understand. And we have absolutely no idea who it is. Who said that? That was weird. Anyway, yeah. So the Verge cast was fun. Check that one out. But I think that's the point we've landed on

is like, is that sweet spot gonna change? Are we here for a while? How much would you spend on a new phone today? Do any of these new ones in that price range speak to you? Like right now, what phone are you? Yeah, what do you want right now? I actually think this is interesting because I have a Pixel 4 right now.

Okay. And while I'm super bummed that the Pixel 5 didn't come out with a like full-blown flagship. Same. I still think the Pixel 5 is an upgrade to the pixel 4 i think getting rid of solely was awesome i hated solely i'm so mad i'm so mad that i have this like giant forehead on my phone just for some extra cameras to for me to disable so you have a 4xl right 4xl so i'll get to why I'm not going to get a Pixel 5.

I think I'm fine with the 765G. Yes, I would want the best for future-proofing or whatever, but I've changed my phones pretty often. I probably don't hang on to them as much as needing a full-blown CPU out of it. Seems like they upped the battery a little bit. I thought battery life was not great on the 4. They upped the a lot i mean just anecdotally i've had a couple days with the pixel 5 but it's a 4000 milliamp hour battery versus 37 so i think maybe pure size is only a minor upgrade but then you're also getting the more efficient 765g which is going to help a ton so to me that feels like an upgrade um hole punch uh hole punch cut out i'm totally fine with fingerprint

sensor even though i did get used to face unlock but maybe i don't like it as much right now just because of wearing masks which i hope everyone's still wearing their mask um i think the design looks great it has an ultra wide which was like my biggest gripe on the last one yeah i think the refresh rate is still still 90 still adaptive though yes but you can force 90 i would feel more comfortable forcing 90 hertz because the battery life's better biggest gripe is there's no xl i like the xl version i don't think i would buy the smaller phone and that's completely personal preference but i think if you like uh smaller phones i think the pixel 5 i don't know if you have to upgrade from the pixel 4 but i

would still almost consider it an upgrade yeah wait okay wow so all of that good stuff about the pixel 5 you just said but you wouldn't get it because it's it's a little too small yeah interesting yeah i'm i'm with you where i i like mid to larger size phones, but the reason I am starting to think I probably won't stick with Pixel 5, despite its incredible cameras, is I really have become accustomed to the bells and whistles, which is, to me, 120 hertz over 90. To me, that's, you know, it's fine having the fingerprint reader on the back, but also having it under the screen is a little nicer to me. I like that a lot. The squeeze is gone.

That's not a big deal for me, but Snapdragon 865 just for future-proofing and high performance all the time would have been awesome. A little more RAM. I think it has 8 gigs, which is a lot, but a lot of phones nowadays have 12, and I'm super used to that. It's a lot of things like that uh that have added up to me i think probably at the end of this testing i might just go back to one plus eight pro despite its inferior camera it's wild that that's and it's that's curved screen yeah i'm gonna miss the flat screen

because i've really liked having a couple flat screens in a row I've tested on OnePlus 8T and Pixel 5 but um I'm really really liking high refresh rate and like flagship type stuff so yeah that's where I'm at um that being said the review is still coming soon so obviously all the competition at this price has to be evaluated and that's where we're at and of course the iPhone stuff comes up into that but yeah that's just where we're at I I think the 750 price range is like a huge i think a lot of people are probably super excited for it people that are starting to like who are really big phone enthusiasts but really don't want to throw no one wants to throw down a thousand dollars for a phone 750 is still pretty expensive like i bet you the vast majority of

people are getting phones closer to that 500500 range. Obviously, there's still budget phones, but I think this brings into our next conversation. You and Dieter talked about it a little bit, but not too much. Where do we name all these price ranges? Because it used to just be budget mid-range flagship. But there's a couple of reasons why I don't think we can use that anymore. We have now, companies' flagships are a huge price range difference i mean like we're talking four to five hundred dollars sometimes i think if you can fit the price of a phone between a price range like where that price range is gone so okay flagships i don't think work as a name anymore i think mid-range has changed completely

because when I used to think of mid-range, I used to think $500, but those have kind of evolved into this $700 to $800 type of phone. So we have more types of budgets, more types of mids than we have the folds, which are just $2,000, which is crazy. Yeah, this is how I'm thinking about it.

I'm like thinking about it. I'm constructing it in my head as we're going. But I think it's kind of like cars where there's no just like. Careful, careful. Car people, treat us nicely. I'm treading lightly here, but I'm not going to like name drop two specific things. But I just think like when you look at one car company and all the stuff they sell, you can't divide all of what they make into just flagship, budget, or mid-range. There is all kinds of stuff in between for all types of different buyers. So if I'm looking at

a smartphone right now, I'm still generalizing, but I'm going to go four groups. I'm going to go budget, and that's honestly like 400 and below. You hit the 399s with the iphone se with the pixel 4a and anything below that that's like air quote and budget okay okay then you have mid-range which is yeah there's some overlap but now you're going anywhere from like 400 to like 650 somewhere in there right so mid-range now you're paying a little extra for something. Then there is the one we don't really know how to name, which is like premium mid-range maybe, which is going to go from like 600 something to like 800. And then you're creeping up on flagship.

I'm going to keep using the term flagship because I think it works here. Flagship is going to be like your highest end maximum spec stuff from like 800 up to 1200. And then I think there's another category. So maybe five above flagship, which is like aspirational, which is where you have your folding phones or your alternate form factors or your bells and whistles to the max, like the ROG phone, the crazy highest end, that's your aspirational above flagship. Where you might have a, here's one for the car people, you have your BMW M5 and M7, which are your flagships,

and then you have the i8, which is not for nearly as many people, but it's a little more aspirational and futuristic and different. So hopefully that makes sense. Okay, okay i have i just thought of this we've been trying to compare phone price ranges to a lot of different things but here's my here's my new thing to compare it to i'm going to compare it to like an international flight and based on what seat you are sitting in okay so we have budget which is like budget is literally all the way in the back of the plane where you're stuck with a completely regular like cheapest seat possible and you're in the back so it doesn't lean back is it a middle seat too yeah we'll call it a middle seat so like you are you're buying that phone or plane seat for the sole purpose of making it to

the destination your economy yeah utility okay you have it that's all you need we're going to call mid-range so like 400 to 600 an exit row seat so you're getting some extra leg room you can even have a window or aisle extra leg room but you know when like those exit row seats don't lean back so like you're getting something extra but you're losing something that could be normal gotcha so it's like you're usually pretty pumped if you just bought total regular cabin you'd be really excited for if you could score an exit row seat out of that you found the good deal almost right then we're gonna go into which we haven't named yet 700 to uh like 800 range that would be like not first class but you're in the front uh what do they call economy plus now so they usually give you there's like four or five rows that are extra

leg room leans back you're at the front of the plane you're near the bathroom like you've got some you're the first person who gets the drink cart pretty much like you're paying extra now to get a bit of an upgrade. It's a more complete package, too. Yeah, but you're not paying out the wazoo for it. Right. Then you've got first class. So now, smaller group of seats, the wider seat.

There's only one person sitting next to you. It leans back. It has a TV. You've sometimes got dinner and stuff. So that's your like flagship thousand dollar and then i like to call the top one like luxury this is like business class now where you're you're in lay flats you're getting a full like three course meal you're getting wine above and beyond to the point where you can't really use all of the features yeah if you do get any use

out of them something's probably going to waste and everybody who walks by you is like oh man i wish i had that like everyone who sees a folding phone is like what like it catches their eye like you don't walk onto the plane and think like oh check out economy plus they have extra leg room you're like look at that guy who's laying down and sleeping already and i'm about to go have my knees hurt for the next seven it's like the the plane tickets casey's made videos about yeah like that's the fold that's the z-fold that's uh moto razor stuff like that okay all right yeah i think that checks out cool i'm pretty pumped about that yeah who's the pilot i don't even we are the consumer oh yeah competition imagine competition for those seats just like fighting each other for i'm glad that's not a thing.

Yeah, no, I think the airlines compete, flyers win. Maybe that's a good metaphor for, you could fly LG Airlines, or you could fly... Actually, that is a good metaphor. Is it airlines, or is it specific seats? No, no, no, it is a good metaphor, because you could fly LG Airlines, and maybe LG's budget is one thing. The back of the LG plane is one thing, but the Samsung Airlines back of that plane would be different. Oh, there's a big difference?

Yeah. And they offer, there's much bigger planes for Samsung. So Samsung's got that second row. You know, seeing those Airbuses with the second level? Like the bar? Yeah. They've got that big plane. So you can get the crazy $3,000 seats up there. That is the Samsung plane. But like, you know, maybe the OnePlus plane only has a couple different choices because there's like three different models.

And all of them get you to the same destination in the same amount of time. It just is how you're enjoying that. Yeah. Yeah. But we still haven't named them. So my personal favorite is I like, hmm,

I haven't figured out that like premium mid-range. I like calling $1,000 premium and I like calling over $1,000 your aspirational category as luxury. Yeah, it is luxury at the end of the day. Yeah, I think that's like a luxury. Like you're paying to have something that other people don't have essentially.

Your premium I think works well. I guess I don't like the term flagship because, like I said, there are companies where their flagship is $600, and there are companies where their flagship is $1,400. So it's very different. But that middle range, which is what you and Dieter were trying to figure out. Middle nice. Middle nice.

I can't say I'm a fan of that one. It's not the worst, but it's not the best name. Yeah. I can't say I'm a fan of that one. It's not the worst, but it's not the best name. It's not the worst, yeah. Premium mid-range? Mid-premium? Mid?

I think that's fine. Premium mid-range is fine. Premium mid-range. Okay. What would you call that in a car? What would you call something over a Honda Civic, but under a mid-range plus well with with cars they often talk about size so you're at like mid-size or luxury mid-size or what's the difference between a

a honda civic and a porsche in size no and like naming scale oh uh civic technically a civic is like their flagship. I know you hate flagships. We've devolved. This is where I get into the car world. Stop talking about cars before we get hate comments. Let's end the podcast before we get flamed by all the car enthusiasts about how we don't know anything about them. Yeah, no, that's basically where we're at.

I think just keep an eye on all these phones coming out on all these different prices. And obviously, all these reviews are coming out. October, Techtober, excuse me, rolls on. How dare you? Yeah yeah i can't even call it that i write techtober on checks now it's crazy um that's been it thanks for listening we'll be back with our regular scheduled episode in two more weeks and we appreciate you tagging along catch you guys in the next ones peace waveform is brought to you in part with studio 71 and our intro outro music was created by cameron barlow Peace.