Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - LG Rollable Phone, Apple Silicon Event, & How We Survived Techtober

Episode Date: November 6, 2020

In this week's episode, we dissect LG's new concept rollable phone patent and preview Apple's upcoming Silicon event. Lastly, we hit up the Twitter mailbag to answer questions from you, our listeners, about anything we may have missed during our busy season. It's a fruitless attempt at playing catch-up with your plethora of questions. Happy Technovember! 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 LG Rolling Phone: https://bit.ly/3508y2t Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. All right, what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques Brownlee. And I'm Andrew Banganelli. And today we're just going to chat for a little bit,

just have a little direct conversation. We asked on Twitter what you guys wanted to know, and we know there's a lot going on in the world right now. Between, like, Tech-tember, is that what we're calling it? Tech-tember, Tech-tober, all of the stuff coming out. Our busy season is the easiest way to put it. It's just busy. Obviously, the election season, obviously, the pandemic.

There's just a lot happening, but figured maybe just a little distraction just to hang out and chat tech for a little bit would be fun. So that's what we're going to do today. We have a couple things also that showed up in the headlines that might be interesting to chat about too. One of them you put down that I haven't seen yet that i'm actually really curious about what is this this okay so it's an lg rollable phone i just saw this last night did you open

it yet i have not okay hold on one minute i just like let's uh i've seen it already if you we've talked about rollable phones i think before so the one i've seen right now is that tcl but it was a paper prototype. So it wasn't an actual rollable screen, but it was kind of like this scroll thing. If you can imagine like pulling two sides of it apart to make a bigger screen. If I remember correctly, it was you hold one side and it pulls out to the right. Yeah. Something like that. Okay. Um, this one's a little different. If you, I guess there's not many ways to imagine it. It's not like this is, I guess this is still a render.

There's when I, but there's kind of like, it goes a little more in depth. It shows some of the mechanisms and stuff on how it would work. So this is, before I click this, this is a concept, not an actual phone. It looks like, yeah, it looks like a concept. But the fact that it's from LG means, I'm assuming there's some sort of patents involved in this well here's the thing lg wing was the first in this lg explorer program that's new this is okay that's what i was hoping to see from lg

just getting wild this is what i would expect from samsung i'm excited lg is doing this yeah it's really pumping me up that lg LG's bringing out all this really cool stuff. They're making the leaps and bounds in the smartphone world right now that I think we need because smartphones are awesome, but they're also getting a little boring. Yeah, this is the perfect time to throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks because we already know what works, which is a slab. LG's already tried their hand at it. This is like google going you know

what we can't really compete quite in the thousand dollar flagship market let's attack something else that we know is getting more important right now which is this premium mid-range price and to an extent this is lg going you know what's working slabs you know we're not really competing very well with slabs so let's go crazy and let's just see what else sticks and we can attack that when it works yeah so LG took the high risk high reward yeah way and Google took the low risk low reward way and I'm much more excited for the LG way I mean I would argue Google's Google's reward might be bigger in mid-range if they can really get sales because there's there's a lot of volume there but it is lower risk that's definitely true yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I don't think

Google is going to get 25 million views on TikTok with any of their stuff they're coming out with recently. So that's what really drives success nowadays. TikTok views. All right. I'm clicking it. Open it up. I'm clicking it. Android Authority's article, LG's rollable Project B smartphone. Okay. I've opened it. It looks from the back like a normal smartphone, but it's got these metal rails all the way around, top, bottom, and sides. The back reminds me of the Galaxy S7 Active. Remember with the rubber guard around it?

Not a rubber guard, but it almost looks like it has like a like an outline it has a very clear body and then outside of the body and then on the front it has two versions of the front one is when it looks like a normal phone which looks fine actually normal bigger forehead and chin so it looks like it has bezels almost i mean yeah i'd say like 2017 bezels, like when we're starting to shrink them a bit, but they're still there, like Pixel 2 bezels. Okay, so here's what I'm seeing. So this bezel on the front, when it's looking like a normal phone, actually sticks forward a bit from the glass because it's thicker than a normal top and bottom.

Yeah, yeah. I actually didn't notice that. So then when you open it up to full size, i guess stretch the left and right side out and there's this like this rail and you you stretch it out and now it's a big almost square sized phone the dock got bigger there's more icons in the dock i don't know how that happened i guess there's a software mode that changed and yeah these rails came out from behind the thicker bezel so now you've got yourself a large screen yeah the top rail almost looks like if you have like a sliding glass door on your house it's kind of like when you open it it reveals that indented part on the inside but i think that it folds out from both

sides it's kind of interesting um i don't know how i don't know do you think there's a benefit or a con to that versus like the tcl prototype where it would all be folding out from one spot well here's the thing i scroll down and you can just pull out one side or both oh so i think there is a benefit you can you can pull out the left and right sides, and it becomes a big, huge screen. Or you can just pull out just the left side, and it becomes a bigger screen with another different aspect ratio. Oh, my God. What a developing nightmare. Okay. Well, this is different.

We love LG. Developers hate LG right now. It's a lot of extra work to support this kind of stuff. Yeah. right now it's a lot of extra work to support this kind of stuff yeah but so in terms of all right so maybe there's the advantage of there if you get a kind of three different size screens out of this do you think there's a benefit or something bad in the sense of like creases or just the type of screen the way it rolls so like there'sCL, you would only be having one major crease, right? Because you're pulling it out from,

you're pulling it to the right, which means it's gonna fold over towards the right side of the phone and then the rest of it's gonna live behind it. This way you have it rolling two sides. But you're rolling less on two sides. So I don't, ultimately I think maybe there's a chance

at a higher crease. I don't fully know to me this is harder to me this is you now have two possible creases one on the left side one on the right side if you extend it yeah that's two creases and you also have two mechanisms to to slide out and to me remember how we talk about how hinges and like folding and that actual tactile motion is so important yeah um i'm picturing like you know pulling it open from both sides and it just it just slowly it wouldn't be as satisfying as like snapping something open you kind of have to delicately roll it open yeah so it looks like if you look scroll down a little bit more it shows

the mechanism on the back side of it or or what behind the screen it looked like. And it almost reminds me of the LG Wing where it's like you have a path pretty much that a pin is going to go through. And then it looks like, I'm assuming, will snap into place at the end of that pathway. So for this, it almost looks like a T, whereas there's two rails going along the outside

where a pin, if it reaches the end of those rails, will snap into place at the outside and then has a spring as well for when you're rolling it back in so it doesn't get stuck halfway between that. So maybe it snaps closed. I mean, if it can snap in and closed as well as the LG Wing did, which I think did a really good job with the soft close and making sure it snaps into place. I think it'll be wonderful. I think that's one thing that makes me a little more hopeful for this over TCL. One, because LG is just way bigger than TCL. And two, because we've seen a similar mechanism kind of in the wing.

Obviously, that's like rotating and not just flat, but we still saw it work really well. Yeah. One, I think we might be underestimating how big TCL is. But also, two, I think I'm excited for them to actually maybe, because this is still not a real phone. I'm excited to actually see and feel a working version of this rollable thing. Because we haven't seen that yet. Again, TCL made a paper display version where they had the the actual behind the display mechanism working lg has filed this patent and they've again published a design where this could potentially work but i want to feel it do you

think since we're seeing this far out like we're seeing this from lg which i don't know if this is necessarily an announcement from lg um do you know we saw the TCL like prototype before we even heard stuff about the wing, right? And now the wing has come out already. Do you think LG is way farther along on this than we think right now? Well, to me, it looks like this, this rendering is a not LG made rendering. It's an, a let's Go Digital image based on the LG patent. So if it's just a patent, I don't really know how to feel. Once they start to get into exploring actually making the thing, then I'm interested.

But companies file patents all the time. Yeah, they do. That never happen. They just want to secure it. Like Apple, you've seen every time there's a new Apple patent about a hologram or a crazy car concept. They happen all the time, and they never turn into products. time there's a new apple patent about like a hologram or like a crazy car concept they happen all the time and they never turn into products so i'm not going to put too much weight into lg

filing a patent yet but if they get beyond this stage they got my attention here's interesting though this patent was filed in august 2019 okay so that's that's before we saw tcl's paper version so this is weird this is either a total non-story that I'm just exhausted and pulled up for no reason at all, or this could be way further along than we think. I think my hot take is this phone comes out

before the TCL rollable phone. The article says, dubbed Project B, this rumored phone is expected to launch in March 2021 and it may have been teased during the wing launch. That is a lot of... Maybe, maybe, maybe. That's a lot of ifs and maybes.

Maybe, maybe. But yeah, we'll see. Either way, I'm fully on board with LG really changing the game. They're kicking it up this year, and I'm all in on it. They're switching it up. All right. We did get an announcement for one more Apple event before it's all over. So I guess Techvember. Technovember. How did I not think Technovember? Technovember? I kept trying to think Techvember, like I was trying to shorten it,

but you could just say Technovember. I feel like John Rettinger has to just keep that for himself. John Rettinger gets Tech November instead of Techno Buffalo now. And now he can solely patent that to himself. And he gets an extra month to make up for all the craziness. Yeah, I don't know. We don't have a great name. But the other thing is, is November going to be as lit as the kids call it? It's not going to be as lit as October and September were.

But I feel like when we do get another Apple event, you kind of expect more things to happen. This one, the invites went out. And by invites, I mean come watch our live stream. And it's a one more thing event. Now we all kind of know what's going on here. It's the Silicon Mac, Apple Silicon Mac, the ARM Macs. I think one previous Mac reveal in the past has also been a one more thing.

People love when Apple does one more thing. I do too. This is fun. There's a whole bunch of other possible little things that people have wanted to show up in a little extra from Apple this year. The ARM Mac is one thing, but there's been rumors brewing of AirPods Studios. There have been rumors brewing of AirTags. I don't necessarily think we're actually going to see any of that.

The only thing I think we're guaranteed to see is the Apple Silicon Mac, which will be a laptop probably, and that's all I'm going to cross my fingers for. It would feel weird if they did a one more thing and then announced three things at that one more thing. That's fair. I also wish they did the one more thing announcement a little. I guess it was kind of a surprise email,

but what if Apple's YouTube channel just went live with nothing and didn't say anything, and then all of a sudden, like 20 minutes later, when the hype starts freaking out on that Apple's live with just a blank stage just tim cook walks out says oh yeah good morning one more thing and then just shows the date and then he walks off the stage yeah that would be so it's the theatrics of it right samsung kind of did it with the fold where they had unpacked and then they were like by the, a little more info on the Fold coming in another event on this later date. And we all

marked our calendar and we set that up. Apple didn't do that, but hey, now we know when the event is for the Silicon Mac. Yeah, I'm interested. I am very interested. I have not bought any Mac laptops or adjusted my Mac. I've just been

cruising with the MacBook Pro that I've used for a while now, hoping to switch to this ARM MacBook. Are the rumors that it's a MacBook? Yeah, the rumors are it's a MacBook. I don't know why, but when I think Apple Silicon, I think

big, powerful, I just want to automatically believe it's some sort of desktop, whether it's an iMac or a... I guess they're definitely selling more MacBooks and it makes far more sense to yeah this i talked about uh i talked about this with Viper actually on his live stream but basically i see it as either being a very strong power thing or a very strong efficiency thing Apple Silicon has been great with efficiency especially if you look at the iphone the ipad the apple watch it's just as powerful as anything else even more so but usually way more efficient i've got five nanometer chips in the phone already um i think

this would play best in a laptop where it's just as powerful as any intel chip but the battery lasts twice as long true that's such a great user benefit. Yeah, laptop batteries have never been something I've been impressed with. Yeah. I can't think of a single laptop. I think there was one time I used like a Razer laptop on the plane and I edited a whole podcast without it dying. And I was pretty pumped about that.

But other than that, I've never had a laptop where I've been like, oh man, this battery is really killing it today. And rather just like being plugged in almost all the time. You know, back in high school, when I got one of my first ever laptops, it was an Acer netbook and it was an ultra low voltage processor. And I got the extended battery for it. And that thing was like an easy 12 hour battery. And I loved the battery in that thing. And I couldn't help but rant about it in a video I'm sure you guys will find that but that's the last time I remember raving about a laptop battery all right cool uh I guess we'll go right into Twitter because I asked you guys on Twitter

what do you want to talk about we can just chat we can just have a casual conversation about whatever other tech is on the mind top of of mind in Techtober, Techvember. Let's get into that. Okay, here's an early one I found. If Apple announces AirPod Studio, do you think it will be exclusively Bluetooth or will it include a cord for recording purposes? You know, the thing about Apple using the word studio, I think falls in line with them using the word pro which is

I don't think it actually means it's used in the studio. I think when Apple puts the word studio on something or the word pro on something it just means it's the better version of it. Airpods studio we've kind of pictured weirdly as over ear headphones even though Airpods suggests earbuds.

These would be like imagine like Beats Spedray, Beats Studios big big over-ear noise-canceling headphones. Do I think they'll be exclusively Bluetooth? Yeah, I think so. Really? I think they'll be just wireless, noise-canceling ear pod, headphone, you know, you can picture them already.

Silver, they have the Apple logo. I think I disagree, but not because people are gonna bring them and have a cord for the studio but because like what about an airplane if you're going to try and listen to something through the airplane like every single pair of noise canceling bluetooth headphones comes with a wire and a lot of them come with the airplane adapter for it like yeah flying is a huge reason to wear those headphones and then being able to plug it into whatever the the like tv system or whatever on an airplane is feels like that i think it would be

i find it very hard to believe it not to just come with like a really low quality wire to plug into something in very rare occasions yeah i could see that and also being able to use them when the battery's dead right which, which Apple does not care about. Probably not. At all. They don't let me use the Magic Mouse when the battery's dead, do they? You could use it if you can find out a way

to scroll it around with a giant wire coming out of the bottom. Yeah. I don't know. I think, because even Beats by Dre comes with a wire, correct? Yeah, pretty much every pair of headphones. Which is made by Apple at this point. Yes, yeah.

Every pair of headphones, even the PlayStation headphones I just unboxed, they come with a headphone jack and usually a wire, and you can plug them in. I just wouldn't put it past Apple to be the first ones to be like, no, you don't need that. Let's put pressure on the airline industry to start making wireless adapters and some ridiculous standard. Could you imagine if, like, airplane TVs were Bluetooth and the amount of oh my god

confusion try pairing that you would like stewardesses would need to be tech support tech support as well that they already basically are i've watched them try and fix tv so many times but yeah maybe let's keep that wired forever that'd be a nightmare yeah i i feel bad about giving ideas to apple for this let's just just uh let's just say yes it should have a wire it should have a wire i think it will have a wire i think it will have a very low quality wire okay um and it is but yes it is not for your use in the studio whatever they don't care about that at all okay i have one here i'm gonna paraphrase it a little bit but pretty much like what's a general day like during Techtober?

What's our shoot schedule like? And how is it testing so many products at the same time? Yeah. Well, that's what makes Techtober hard actually is overlapping products. I remember a couple weeks ago I was testing. Was it? It was Pixel, iPhone, and oneplus all the same time like genuinely actually testing a daily driver at the same time as another daily driver is really hard um but yeah no i'd say a typical

day in tech in october i keep just calling it tectober but whatever that's what it is uh luckily you weren't born i could imagine yeah right imagine you like signing up for something like what's your birthday? The 13th of October. What? No, yeah, it's pretty much just constant working on the next thing until it's done. So if you're not working on, for me anyway, if you're not working on one of the videos, whether it's editing or writing or research or putting everything together. It's testing the thing. A lot of stuff comes out, and we have it in our hands before, obviously, the embargo, which is one, two, three weeks,

whatever, after we get it, and we're testing it behind the scenes. And we basically have to just put in our due diligence and actually make sure we get to test everything the way we normally would, even if there was more time, which just means there was more time which just means there's more happening during more hours of the day a lot a lot more longer days basically for me but at the end of the day it just turns into more videos and and more tech coming out and you guys just get to see more of it yeah i think this is one of our best years what vin and

brennan have been on the channel for three years now so this is like our third busy channel as a team of four and we've we've brought michael and also as a graphic motion graphic so like we've definitely been very organized this year um and ready to to make sure that everybody's kind of all hands on deck doing things to get us ready for the next step rather than we're we're a team that focuses so much on the current step and the current video that we've gotten way better this year at taking those next couple of steps. So if that means, uh, you know, everything's written one day, Vin and Brandon are shooting B roll while the writing's happening. And then we, Vin and Brandon set up for a roll. And then while we're shooting a roll and fact checking they're already starting to b-roll on the next product that we have in line or

or you know i'm getting one of the consoles set up and all the updates for it so marquez is just ready to sit down and play on it or like we're just doing as much as we can to get as many testing hours in as possible which can be hard but yeah it yeah, it's, we, this is the most organized we've been in having the new studios probably helped quite a bit. Yeah. Uh, giving us super efficient places where top down room is just set up with a camera. So you just turn it on and shoot where we have microphones and cameras in different rooms and SD cards and SSDs all over the place. And we're just, we're ready to be efficient. Yeah. Here's what I'll, efficient. Yeah. I've never said it out loud or articulated it out loud, but here's how I view this time of year for being a tech YouTuber.

It's like the playoffs for your workflow. So all year, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, you're working on getting better. You're working on your workflow, making your team more efficient. You're working on, you know, whether it's we're here, moving into a new studio, into a new space, setting everything up. It's getting that workflow down packed so you can make the best possible thing. And every video you make, you're trying to make better and better and better.

And then you get to this like September, October time. I forgot who I was texting. I think it might've been Peter McKinnon, but it was like, all of our training has come down to this. And it's like, you flip a switch and you just, you're in cruise control in the workflow. You don't make any more adjustments to the workflow. Now you're just making videos with that workflow you've established. New tech comes out, put it through the workflow. New tech comes out, put it through the workflow. And the workflow has been such a well-oiled machine for us for this year that it's resulted in a lot more videos because I'm not tweaking the workflow at the moment. I know how I'm doing each video. This is what we've been training for. It's the playoffs.

You get through it. On the other side, it'll be January and we get to start tweaking the workflow again. We start setting up again. We start building. We start adding. We start switching. And that whole process starts again. So yeah, Techtober is like playoffs for the workflow. Here's an interesting thing to think about. And this is an assumption I'm going to make, and then you can clear it up to see if this sounds sure correct so we had a time when the pandemic hit in March or April I believe is when we went home and Marquez started coming into the office by himself we came back in August in that time you were doing the basically all the videos completely by yourself I I mean, like very little we would do at home. Um, I could see two things coming out of that. One is you're really knowing you're going back to your roots. You're figuring

out what you're really, really good at doing all by yourself that you don't need any help with. But then it's another way you're probably realizing like, wow, this is the time I really wish I had a team around me, blah, blah, blah. Which now when the team comes back and we're in super crunch mode, you have fresh in your mind, like, this is something I know I can just blow through. I don't need Vin and Brandon to come in on that day. I can just do it by myself. And these are the days where I'm really going to need them and we can make it as efficient as possible.

So it's almost like you trained. Like you said, you were training really hard beforehand. You were almost doing extra weight training without any of us, and then coming back in, being that much stronger. We're way ahead of schedule in terms of videos released this year. We're blowing last year out of the water.

It's true. Yeah, maybe that training analogy is good. It's like I was running with a weighted vest, and that whole time I was running, I was like, yo, the second I get someone to carry this vest, it's gonna be sick. And as soon as the team was running, I was like, yo, the second I get someone to carry this vest, it's going to be sick. And as soon as the team's back, I'm like, here, take this vest.

And then we're running twice as fast. So yeah, I think it definitely all comes down to having a workflow that we get to fine tune in the months leading up to crunch time. And then once it's locked, we know how things are going to go. Let's just start watching tech events and getting through that.

So I think that's it. Yeah, maybe that's, that's the analogy. It's the playoffs. I think that's actually a perfect time to take a break. Let's, uh, let's take a breather. We'll come right back and we'll get way deeper into Techtober Twitter questions. 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. Donate at camh.ca slash donate now from December 23rd to the 31st,

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But this one is actually kind of based on a video that we just finished. So why would somebody get the iPhone 12 Pro over the 12? He says, for me, it's used to be the screen, but that seems pretty much a non-issue anymore, and I don't care about the nits difference. Great question, Trevor. That is basically the entire iPhone 12 Pro review, which is called, you sure about that? Because yeah, the phones are so similar.

The 12 and 12 Pro came out at the same time, and the screen difference is now, like you said, basically negligible for most people, leaving the 12 Mini and 12 Pro Max to be the more interesting phones. And so the reason that anyone would upgrade specifically to the 12 Pro, but not to the 12 Pro Max, are very small. And that's what I go over in the video. It's like, okay, you want the extra telephoto camera, the 2x telephoto, which isn't even really on all the time. If you're in low light, it's just going to zoom digitally from the bigger, better main sensor anyway. But okay, sometimes you get that optical zoom. Great. You get the LiDAR sensor, much better AR experience,

much better. And I'll give them that for sure. And then you get two extra gigs of RAM. You get that stainless steel side. You get the matte finish on the RAM. You get that stainless steel side. You get the matte finish on the back. You get some different colors. That's basically it. You're spending extra money for that. If you really want a better camera, you're going to go for the 12 Pro Max,

which has a bigger sensor, which has a better telephoto. If you really want a better screen, you get the 12 Pro Max, which has a bigger screen, higher resolution screen. If you really want a better overall phone bigger battery it's got to be 12 pro max right so the 12 pro is in like a weird middle child spot as i described it um that being said we still have to

test the 12 pro max that review is upcoming and if it turns out those improvements aren't really actually making a difference maybe the 12 Pro is just an overall better buy for more people. It'll depend on how good 12 Pro Max actually is for the extra 100 bucks. We'll see. Yeah, I almost like, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people

got the 12 Pro, honestly, because they're fine spending an extra 100 bucks on the color. I think that's almost, to me, that would be a better reason than LiDAR and a little bit better Night Sight. I think the color i think that's almost a to me that would be a better reason than lidar and a little bit better night sight i think the color is really good you see people spending extra money on different colors on cars all the time so like case though but you never put your car in a case is the thing like whenever i see that guy with a wrapped car but yes yes no no

sorry it still completely is the reasonable argument i just had to yeah um because i'm just picturing like 90, whatever it was, 90% of people put their phone in a case. Most of those cases aren't clear. So if you're buying a phone for the materials or the way it feels in the hand or the color, you're going to lose that immediately. This is what I get for trying to argue something that I don't even believe in. I think the 12 is such a better deal and I think is the way better option to go. I'd rather, I think the thing is, if you think about just spending the extra hundred dollars, would you rather spend the

extra hundred dollars on getting the 12 pro or would you rather spend the extra hundred dollars on doubling the storage on your 12? Yeah, that's a, that's a great point. Yeah. Do you just double the storage? Do you just spend the money on some headphones? Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's, that was my favorite Reddit comment was, oh, you can get LiDAR and better. It is better. Like $150 isn't that much. Yeah, or I could get an iPhone 12 and a pair of AirPods.

Right. That seems like the very, AirPods are way better than. Than a telephoto and some LiDAR. Yeah, for sure. For a lot of people, I think that's going to be true. So I will stay recommending the 12, but we will be testing and reviewing very soon the 12 mini and 12 Pro Max.

So Trevor, stay tuned for those. Yeah, those are clearly the more fun ones for sure. This is kind of a tough one, but I think it could have some interesting answers. Do you think there will be a significant shift in focus to new tech that looks to support people that are working remotely? Likewise, what tech do you see both people investing in more due to COVID and potential future of more remote working?

I'm hoping he means people investing in things to make their remote workflow better and not just looking to see what tech you should invest in because they're going to make more money during COVID. It's both. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's technically the same thing. Yeah. Okay. So two questions here. Let's go.

Is there going to be a significant shift in focus to new tech for working remotely? That's a weird, I think that's kind of weird because ultimately, do you think the pandemic is temporary? And even if it just lasts another year, should tech really shift their focus just based on something lasting another year? That's very short in terms of like big tech companies. But then you also have the thing, are a lot of companies realizing that they can have similar workflows done with their employees working remotely, which means they can save money on workplace environment. So even when the pandemic is over, I could see a lot of companies working remotely permanently.

Yeah, for these tech companies who are investing in tech, they've always had like really long term goals, five year plans, 10 year plans for the future of their tech. So their answer to the question will literally just depend on how long they think that the remote workflow thing will last. How long do they think the effects of the pandemic will have people working remotely? If I'm guessing, I feel like we got another year at least of a lot of people working remotely that typically didn't. And if you want to develop for that, if you want to make moves for that, I think that's great. But again, like a lot of these companies are just going to keep rolling forward with their 10 year plan. And this little blip in

it won't make as much of a difference as possible. But it is also interesting to me that you do see like a couple phones coming out now with fingerprint readers, or the iPad Air has a fingerprint reader in a world where we're all wearing masks. And we all kind of love that. Yeah, I think that's total coincidence. I don't think anyone's arguing that, but it's really funny watching reviews saying, like, in the world of face masks right now, like, this is actually super beneficial.

Like, Pixel 5 went from all face recognition unlocking to just the fingerprint reader on the back again, and we all went, you know what? In COVID times, good idea. And Google's probably sitting back like, oh yeah. Phew. That's why we did it too, for sure. And then so next part of the question, what kind of tech do you see people investing in due to COVID and due to them potentially switching their workplaces to remote?

My first thing is not necessarily tech tech i think the most important thing people should be investing in if they're going to work remotely is a good chair and potentially a good desk ergonomics like take care of yourself yeah working at home and not we have very nice chairs we have herman miller chairs here because marquez is very generous shout out to the herman miller embody greatest chair i've ever used. Marques takes care of all our backs here. When I was at home doing podcast stuff and sitting all day at home, I felt the difference.

I have a decent chair at home, and I felt a huge difference. Yeah, ergonomics, that would be a good call. I'll also throw a shout out to just a fast internet connection. If you don't use your home internet that much and suddenly you're using your home internet way more for video calls and file transfers all that's you're gonna feel that so I know a lot of people have I just know a lot of people have have

cancelled things that they only use because of their commute and spent extra money on like their cable subscription for more tv channels or faster internet because they're just using that more now yeah i think a good good internet connection i i kind of hope webcams like get a little better now that we're going to be remote so more because do we want to see that though so long do we want to see that oh because you don't want to have a better connection and you're now you just want you just want the the classic 720p webcam so no one can see the crumbs or any of the background you just blur the stuff out there's you're good there's a difference between that though and if it's like a team you're used to working with and

maybe you guys are talking about physical products that you have to show your team like i don't want to see something i'm spending my whole life working on in a 720p webcam. I think Elgato just, Elgato I think is owned by Corsair. I might totally be wrong by that. But Elgato, the capture card company, I believe just bought out an app that lets you wirelessly use your phone as a webcam, which might actually be super cool with that.

And if that works with low latency and everything might be a big step but to take a quick step back you were talking about people canceling subscriptions and stuff yeah i could see that i think a big industry that may be affected by this and working remotely is podcasting like i always listen to my podcast on commute. I tried to listen to one yesterday on the couch and I fell asleep. I like, I need something keeping my attention so just enough so that I'm like having more fun

paying attention to the podcast and not, I'm such a visual person. I have a hard time reading books. So like being in a car, that's when I can listen to an audio book I can listen to a podcast or even on a train where like even then I might doze off but like I think the podcast industry is probably losing a lot of listeners so that's fascinating yeah I I have actually been also that person I always listen to podcasts while I'm driving

like almost exclusively yeah and I have definitely only, so yeah, it's slowed down my listening to podcasts. That has actually, that's funny. I never even, as soon as I'm done driving, I like stop the podcast and I walk inside and I don't listen to the rest of it. Unless it's a really good one and then I listen to the rest of it.

Like sit in the driveway, listen to the rest. I can't get out the car. The car is the only speaker that plays podcasts. It's the only thing that works. No, that's funny. I don't know if numbers globally for podcasts will see a decrease because of people driving less but i'd be curious and anecdotally if you guys tweeted us if you've stopped listening to podcasts as much because you stopped commuting that's a fascinating i wonder if mark at studio 71 has any numbers i

would be willing to bet that within like the first two months of lockdown, podcast listens dropped like significantly. And now maybe people are realizing like, oh, I miss listening to that and re-listening to things and finding ways to listen to it at home. Yeah, it's kind of the opposite of what happened to YouTube, which is like everyone just started watching YouTube videos. And they went, oh, we can't handle this much bandwidth.

That's never happened before. I'm still, I can't believe how crazy that is that YouTube went, there is so much extra traffic. We're not doing HD for a minute because this is wild. That's insane. Okay. Here's a, here's a head scratcher from Kim Lundstrom. I don't know why I'm deciding to say names for some reason now. I'm going to start mispronouncing. We appreciate all you guys. Yeah. Sorry. We appreciate all these questions like a ton. Yeah. Sometimes names are not in our wheelhouse,

and I'd rather not say a name than just completely butcher it. And knowing how I feel when everyone else mispronounces my name, I would rather I just not even make that a feeling you guys have to experience. Okay, best looking phone of all time. That is the question. This is almost something i've been thinking of recently because i was looking through our phone drawer because i was getting phones ready for the smartphone uh blind bracket uh camera blind bracket i say the something different

blind smartphone camera test yeah um okay my favorite back of a smartphone i know mine i've uh it's htc u11 i think oh that's not what i expected the blue one yes that's like partially transparent right in the middle oh interesting no not u11 that no not u11 I'm looking that up. Which one is it? The U11 was like this super fingerprinty. Was it U12? It might have been U12. Yes, U12. Okay, I do remember that.

It's got a little translucent look, but it's sort of a fake inside where you kind of feel like you see a little bit of. Is that one fake? I think it is, yeah. I think there was a teardown. I think a lot of companies have caught on no Xiaomi Xiaomi did this too where they know people like the translucent look but they also know that the actual inside of a smartphone isn't really that sexy so they've sort of dressed it up and put like a sticker graphic inside

the translucent back so it looks super cool But if you're nerding out, you know that that's not actually where the pieces are. I'm going to go grab ours and see if we can do a quick, if we can tell if it's fake or not. Okay. Because that definitely changes my mind if it's true. Okay. Let's take a look here.

So you're holding the phone now. Yeah. I don't think the phone now. Yeah. I don't think this is fake. Really? Hold this. Let me look at this. So the difference here is the whole back is in translucent, just a very specific spot near the fingerprint reader.

Okay. So there's a single ribbon cable coming up over the top of the sticker to the fingerprint reader, and then the camera, the microphone, the flash. You get like a little glimpse. Okay, so you get a little glimpse, but see how the rest of it is covered, how they've covered everything behind it? So it's not fake, but it is a nicely tailored version. I think that's why I like it, though, because you get like a little glimpse into it. It fades off, which is really nice.

The fade almost highlights the HTC yeah logo um no camera bump which is awesome okay um I think it just gives like a little bit of character to the back without doing the full blown because yeah totally clear sometimes I'm not talking about that okay at all sorry if we're going full phone probably not this is my one of my favorite backs on a smartphone okay if we're separating front and back i have my i have my answers for sure okay best looking front of a phone ever is galaxy s8 s8 plus same depth of the top and bottom bezel it happened to spill over the edges a little bit if i could have a flat version i would but that was just the cleanest, simplest,

like immersive display front. Easy. Best back of the phone ever, I immediately thought of Huawei P40 Pro. Just the one I did a video about, which is this frosted silver. It was a matte white silver version. No, no, no.

Not the Mate 40 Pro. The P40 Pro from earlier. Oh, no, no. Not the Mate 40 Pro. The P40 Pro from earlier. Oh, yeah, the ceramic white looking one? Yeah, oh my God. I love, I wish every phone had that option. That's the best back material I've ever seen. Back material. I hate the camera bump on it, though.

Yeah, when I think of overall design, I wouldn't go with either of those phones. I'm just thinking of pure aesthetics of the front or the back, and I love that back. There's some really good ones. Do you know what? I loved the minus the fact that like, if we could take fingerprints out of, Oh, this brings me to a question I asked Marquez that now I'm going to ask after I say this, but there was a, uh, one of the essential phones that came out with three new colors. And there was like an emerald green with gold rail

that looked really, really good until you touched it. And I loved the feel of that phone. It was just super simple. It felt really nice with the ceramic. It was just a solid-feeling phone. I think that's why I like the Huawei so much, is you could actually touch it, and it wouldn't turn into this Godzilla fingerprint collector CSI agent.

It would just be like somewhat tame the whole time. Yeah. So I had a hypothetical question for Marques the other day. Let's see if I get this right. I think I said, would you rather have, was it high refresh rate on a phone or a phone that was immune to fingerprints or did i say would you rather have 120 hertz phone or a 90 hertz phone that was immune to fingerprints let's do that let's do would you rather have a phone with 120 hertz or would you rather have 90 hertz and it could not have any fingerprints on the phone at all. Including the front? Yeah. Oh.

Whoa. Well, okay. I'm going to go with, I think it would change my mind if I saw it in person, but I think I'm going to go with 120 hertz and I'll just wipe it down on my, you know, microfiber shirt or whatever. But I'd be really curious how that would look.

Well, I mean, just imagine the best phone you've ever pulled out of a box, how that looks, and it just always looks like that. Oh my God. There are some good phones out there that would actually look really, imagine some of the Note 10 Aura Glow, how cool that would look

if it didn't get covered in fingerprints. I'm not a big fan of reflections. Anytime the back of a phone reflects too much, it doesn't photograph as well to me. What about iPhone 12 Pro where the sides didn't get any fingerprints on it? That would be nice. That would be ideal.

That would be perfect because that's the number one thing I don't like about that build because the frosted back is great. It doesn't really pick up fingerprints much. The OnePlus 8 Pro I'm holding, again, frosted, really doesn't pick up much fingerprints much. The OnePlus 8 Pro I'm holding, again, frosted, really doesn't pick up much fingerprints.

But the second something is reflective, it doesn't even matter if there's fingerprints. It just looks sloppy for whatever reason to me. So that's all. Yeah, no, I think I'd still pick 120 hertz, but I'd be very curious about that. I would love, yeah, it would be cool if it worked. I don't think that's ever going to be a real thing. Yeah, true.

A man can dream. Oh, my God. Someone said, do you think wireless charging technology is already perfect so that the next iPhone could be portless? No. Wait. Do we think wireless charging is perfect?

Yeah. Yeah, wireless charging is definitely not perfect. Actually, there's just a story about how the iphone 12 mini only does 12 watts through magsafe peak their peak charging rate is 12 watts where it's typically 15 watts and all the other iphones and of course people immediately get all like confused or just angry about that but really that's just physics like it's a smaller battery it's a smaller contact. It's a smaller contact area. Actually, it's the same contact area, but you're just not going to get the same charging rate in a smaller battery.

And on top of all that, the peak charging rate of 15 watts that you get through MagSafe, you really only get that with any fast wireless charging for the first little bit, and then it evens out and you get a lower charging rate as it gets closer to full. This is true about any battery charging method. So yeah, wireless charging is not perfect by any means. There's a long way to go with it. Will they make the next iPhone portless? There is still a chance, but I would definitely say wireless charging is not perfect. Yeah, I don't think we know anything to guess whether next iPhone goes portless. I think you have a better argument saying that the next iPhone goes portless so they don't have to include anything else in the box. And whether they, I mean, that's for money and environmental reasons.

Mostly money reasons. Yeah, it's not air quotes there. Yeah. Like, I don't think we know enough in that. When there will be a portless iPhone, I can almost guarantee you there will be a portless iPhone before there's a USB-C iPhone. I don't think that's a hot take though.

That's the sad hot take. That's the sad truthful take. Cold ass take. Cold take, yeah. We're going to get a portless iPhone. I said it in the review that MagSafe makes sense for them to just commit to it and go full wireless charging. They just wanted a better way to do wireless charging before they committed

to getting rid of the port, because that's the last thing we've really used the port for, is charging. And so maybe MagSafe was their idea of, all right, this is it. Wireless charging is better now. We can get rid of the port. And i don't know about all that i do think ultimately they'll have to try and sell magsafe for a bit longer before they really go portless because if we're going to assume and almost no one assumes this that apple changed to or like you know stopped including the brick because everyone had stuff already then for that to even seem like a reasonable line of logic they need to let magsafe be out long enough to where they can say oh well now if you're buying a new phone you probably have a magsafe charger already so you don't need next year would seem very very early to just be full-blown hey if you're buying a new

phone because i don't think they're ever going to include MagSafe in the box with a phone. Interesting. So they would have no real way. I think they might. I guess it still has Qi charging, so if you have any type of wireless charger. Yeah, I think Apple could reasonably stop including the USB-C to Lightning cable and just include the MagSafe to USB-C charger for charging for future iPhones. Do you think they're going to put MagSafe in the box though? Yeah, I think they could.

I think they could do that. I think they could. I don't think they will. Oh, interesting. It would kind of be weird to not have a way to charge the phone at all in the box. Yeah, I think that's what I'm saying. Technically, when they included this year's phone, they gave you the cable because it's a lightning port

at the bottom of the iPhone and you just supply the brick. It would be really weird to me for them to ship a phone that could probably arrive dead and potentially... Literally not have a way to charge it. Yeah, not have a way to even use it. It's a brick until you buy more things to make it work. That, to me, seems like too many steps. I think Apple's intuitiveness requires them to ship a away to power it in some way in the box.

And that's got to be either a wireless charger or MagSafe, which is a wireless charger. I have a hard time believing they're going to go from the smaller box to now a bigger box. I don't think they need a bigger box, though. MagSafe, you think, can fit in there without it? Yeah, that little coil where they put the USB-C cable before, they could fit a MagSafe in there. Yeah, but it still has the coil on it doesn't it yeah which is about the same length as what's normally in there i think there's enough i think there's probably some room they probably could fit it yeah that's interesting i'll be really excited to when we like look back

on this episode when they either go portless whether they included that or not what their reasoning for it was what their public reasoning for it was we should say and here's a i want to ask you guys something on twitter tweet at me if if you have any reason why you believe a portless phone is better than just having a port because i i imagine apple gets rid of the port and like every Uber in the world that's always handing you a lightning cable now has to hand you a MagSafe puck. Like every-

Or any Qi wireless. Any Qi wireless charger will work. But like, I'm trying to imagine a world where they actually get rid of a charger and people go, oh yeah, that's a good idea. I don't really need that. I'll just use MagSafe and I'll just charge wirelessly all the time.

Tweet at me if you have a good idea for why no port is a good idea. Is it one less failure point? Is it one less water-resistant point? Are you making space for more battery? Why not just leave the port there legacy? Apple doesn't really do leaving ports for legacy, but let me know what you think. That's something to tweet at me. I'm curious. curious i think i'm gonna make a whole video on the whole idea of why go portless in the first place because we have portless phones already and they're not good why am i what portless phone do we have there is some concept phone i don't even know i don't remember who made it but if you look up a portless phone it's been done. It was actually a hole-less phone.

It had no microphone hole. It had no- Oh, I do vaguely remember that. And like it used vibration for speakers and stuff like that. No speaker hole, exactly. So this was the whole concept of like, this is our super minimal hardware form factor.

It's just like a, just a super minimal brick. And it wasn't that great. It wasn't really ready. The fact that I can't remember, you can't even remember the name of it means it's not, it wasn't that great. It wasn't really ready. The fact that I can't remember, you can't even remember the name of it, means it wasn't selling anyone, really. Now, again, if anyone can make it happen, if anyone can push the tech that isn't ready yet to be ready,

it's the biggest company in the world. It's Apple, but that's a big if. That's a wait-and-see thing. I think that's an interesting point, is we're so quick to hop on. I mean, we mostly do Apple, but there's a lot of other phones that do crazy stuff like Samsung and LG. And we're really quick to hop on it.

Like, you're so big already. Why would you do something like this? You have so much money. Because any of the smaller companies that really try and bring something like this and they fail, they don't have the money to keep going and keep trying. So like, yeah, I mean, unless you really knock it out of the park as a small startup company, like we need these big companies to take risks every once in a while.

And sometimes that's going to suck for the consumer. Yeah, the status quo is really easy for Apple. They've got their workflow down to the point where like, imagine, like they don't do things without a larger purpose for them as we understand them so imagine if they came out with the lg wing imagine if apple made a phone that swiveled and had a t-shaped screen that would be like all the rage for like everyone would start making t-shaped phones like developers would start making tons of t-shaped apps there'd be t-shaped cases and t-shaped cars driving around.

It would be a T-shaped world the year that they do that. So it's hard to imagine that happening in Apple world, but we do see it sometimes from the smaller, air quotes, smaller companies like LG. Yeah, smaller. It's a little more fun. Yeah.

All right, let's do one more here. Yeah. Let's see. All right, last question coming in from Star Warski, I think. They have a Star Wars avatar, so I'm going to assume that it's pretty close. Are you getting the Linus drop from dbrand? First of all, it's a sweet drop. I thought it was just going to be the meme of his face.

Yeah, the Linus. And then they came out with an awesome sticker pack skin. Yeah, they made a Linus skin. Well, you saw they made the PewDiePie skin too. We've been into that. They made the, the Linus skin, which is a couple of different versions. One of them is just his face, which is really funny. But another one is actually like a design of a bunch of different parts.

And that's kind of cool. I don't have one, but I think it's cool. Yeah. I think it's really cool. And then he says, would be nice to see some kind of MKBHD skins. Oh. So like an MKBHD D brand special, huh? Yeah.

Yeah, I like that idea. I like that idea. Stay tuned. But yeah, that's about it for this episode. Let's just end it there. Let's cut it there. Thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for watching the videos on the channel. And again, tweet at me. Tweet at me if you've got any ideas for portless phones and why they're a good idea. Thanks for listening. Catch you guys in the next one. Waveform is brought to you in part with Studio 71 and our intro outro music was created by Cameron Barlow.