Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Our 2021 Smartphone Rumors/Predictions & the Taycan Sets a New Cross-Country Cannonball Record

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

It's our first episode of 2021 and the start of our new weekly episode schedule! We kick it off by taking a look at the Porsche Taycan setting a new electric U.S. cannonball cross country race record, previously held by Tesla. We then cover several forthcoming smartphone rumors before moving on to our crystal ball predictions for the 2021 Smartphone Awards. Happy New Year! Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganell https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com Music by KamrenB: https://spoti.fi/2WRJOFh Taycan Record: https://bit.ly/3hTS6pq OnePlus 9 Rumors: https://bit.ly/38mRrJV Samsung S21 Rumors: https://bit.ly/3q0AVFz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You can't see it. Some things look ambitious, but looks can be deceiving. For example, a runner could be training for a marathon, or they could be late for the bus. You never know. Ambition is on the inside. So that goal to beat your personal best? Keep chasing it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. Good morning, good evening, good night, good afternoon. Welcome to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. And I'm Andrew.

And welcome to the first weekly episode of Waveform. Are you going to do that intro verbatim every single... Probably not. Because you already forgot it? Yeah, I already forgot it. But we'll figure out a good intro. I think we're still a year in looking for a good intro. It's a goal. Over a year in, yeah.

But we got a lot to talk about right off the bat. You know, CES moves digital, but it's still a lot of stuff we've got samsung's event happening right near at the beginning of january now it's going to be january i think it's 14th now so that's way earlier than it usually is so we got a lot of stuff right off the bat to talk about but the meat of this the part i'm excited for is we're going to try to predict the smartphone awards for 2021 think of the majority of this episode as like we are looking forward to 2021 in like a smartphone. We're going to go over a couple of rumors, and then Marques and I are going to try and figure out what 2021 is going to look like, based on probably a lot of really poor predictions.

Yeah, you know, we'll rub our crystal ball, and we'll see if we can make any predictions. And basically over the course of the year, you can come back to this and point and laugh at how wrong we are but you know some of the stuff might come true we'll see uh first of all how was your holiday you doing anything fun um i mean i did it was safe i don't know if that's the same as fun but that qualifies yeah oh i i cut a huge part of my finger off christ Day cooking. So that's fun, I guess. Other than that, yeah, just saw some people on Zoom. You should be happy this isn't a video podcast yet because if we could show you that picture, it would be. It was pretty crazy.

You cut a lot of your finger off. How was yours? I hope all your fingers are intact. Yeah, I still have all my fingers. I'm pretty happy. Had a couple virtual holidays. You know, we kind of separated it. We had like the group FaceTime of like four people, like the immediate family. And then we had like the other zoom call of like 30. So it was like a absolute chaos. Uh, it was actually surprisingly well-maintained. We had one

of my aunts who's like in her sixties, like putting everyone on mute and like unm people one by one really we're doing yeah it was kind of good is she a teacher by any chance i don't know she could teach teachers how to do that right now there i it's it's a clear clear stuff like that it's not fun so kudos to her she's yeah she's the hero so it was a fun time we had a virtual holiday that's awesome so what i'm reading okay i'm reading the podcast notes right off the top i've had a crazy full day shooting retro tech so i haven't seen any headlines and now you drop this bomb on me what is this okay i'm gonna start it off yeah you were busy and i read this and i was like i really hope marquez doesn't get enough time at his computer to read this and we can just talk about it on the podcast but all right i i forget who this is from

um oh inside evs did an article today called porsche take in beats electric cross-country cannonball record okay do you know what the cannonball is that is actually the one thing i wasn't totally sure i just assumed it's some sort of race across the the country so it's a pretty niche thing that i sort of dove into a youtube? So it's a pretty niche thing that I sort of dove into a YouTube rabbit hole of once, so I know way too much about it. Okay. It's people driving heavily modified cars

from a spot specifically, I think, in New York to a spot in California, and all their goal is is to log the shortest possible time. And when I say that's all of their goal, that is the only goal. Doesn't Deadmau5 do this or used to do it? Isn't that why he made the Ferrari? I don't know if it was a cannonball thing

or if it was just like another car run or car show type of thing. But yeah, the cannonball run is literally like, so I've watched these videos and people like they have radar detectors. They have like two passengers that alternate sleeping and driving. And I think the winner had the entire backseat of their four door filled as a gas tank and a huge gas pump. So they had like 60 gallons of gas.

So they didn't have to stop. That sounds highly illegal. Yeah. So it is a very highly illegal high speed run uh i don't recommend trying it yeah i think that's the first thing i have in the notes is like i don't think we can recommend anyone tries to replicate any of this because there is a lot of speeding involved and for context it's usually something like 30 hours to go across the country in one of these cars um so they're averaging well over 100 miles an hour for the entire trip. And now there's an

electric version of the Cannonball record. Now, an electric version involves charging. That's what I think is really interesting about this. So the fact that so much of it has to do with like speeding and breaking the law, it's really hard to take this as like scientific evidence of anything because, you know, maybe you just zipped across and you didn't even think you were going to come past the cop. So you were max speed the whole time. Um, what it is interesting is though the previous, uh, record was held by a model three, actually by the same driver too. So that is kind of neat that we don't have as much of a variable here. Um, but the big thing this tests is the charging network, because obviously Tesla can use Tesla superchargers. And we always talk about how superchargers are a huge part of potentially buying a Tesla over a different EV.

And they had to use Electrify America the whole time. And they did it? They shaved three hours off of the time. Whoa. One thing that they did mention, which I think was super interesting, is that the driver focused all of his efficiency and all of his planning on making sure his charging times were at peak charging. So he almost never charged over 60%. So he was getting the fastest charging possible. Okay.

So that's potentially something he did not do in the Model 3. Okay. There wasn't a whole lot in the article, that that could have played a huge role in it one thing they did mention is there was a software bug so the taken only hit over 250 kilowatt hour charging once right despite it claiming it can get up to 270 i think is there sounds like electrify america yeah yeah but but they did it and they shaved three hours off so i don't know if he mapped it perfectly, or like Electrify America's got a really sick straight line,

or maybe Electrify America's just bigger than we all think. No, I think it's a combination of a bunch of things. So when I hear this, so the time was 45 hours and 16 minutes, by the way, for context. When I see this, like, the more I went down the Z2 rabbit hole, the more I understood various elements of a cannonball run that makes it successful. The winning car isn't like some crazy high horsepower Bugatti or something like that. It's a car that is relatively efficient and stable and can hold high speeds for a long time.

So zero to 60 doesn't really matter in cannonball. It's how long do you sit at 140 and burn through gas. really matter in cannonball it's how long do you sit at 140 and burn through gas and so taikan you know they're it's it's a fast car but you know model three model s they're all pretty inefficient at high speed so what this is really going to come down to is how well planned is your charging it's like the nerdiest version of a cannonball run yeah it's very different i'm i'm guessing they had a perfect run of like arriving at your charger with like seven percent battery charging as fast as you can from low state of charge getting to 60 rocketing off to the next charger and just doing that a bunch of times until you

made it so what i did find interesting though is that because of i don't know when he beat the record in the model 3 but they did mention that the average temperature was like 37 degrees or something. So a lot of this run is very cold, which means less efficiency on the battery. That's true, but when you're going fast, the battery's warmed up already. I think that's actually good for the battery. If you're going really fast and the outside air is cooling you down. It's less than two days. Yeah.

Still, I'm impressed. Also, I'm not sure what kind of thermal throttling you end up with doing high speeds for 40 hours straight. Yeah, it would be really cool if somehow, I mean, not that either of these companies would ever condone doing this run at all, but to actually have some really in-depth statistics based on how these cars handled in that process um would be super interesting to watch um but yeah i thought that was pretty interesting that is really cool i'm gonna check that we'll have the article in the show notes and maybe there's like some sort of watt hour per mile number there's not much in the article okay well i'll watch there's a youtube video in there that you can check out it's a taikan 4s too which

is impressive but uh yeah it wouldn't be a waveform podcast if we didn't talk about tests a little bit. So I'm glad we got that in there. Yeah. Smartphone rumors? Let's go. I mean, there's already some stuff, some stuff brewing. Yeah.

We can talk about OnePlus a little bit because they always have an early year flagship and an end of year flagship. I think we're expecting like April or May would be like OnePlus 9, OnePlus 9 Pro. I'm working on a video at the moment about OnePlus. And without spoiling too much, I mean, you guys already knew this from the Smartphone Awards, but I'm still using a OnePlus 8 Pro from last year. And I love the thing.

I don't really see any massive upgrades or changes that I would want other than a flat screen. I don't know if the OnePlus 9 or 9 Pro will have a flat screen, but I'm curious what the rumors are for the 9. There's not a whole ton, but there is a couple things that I think are cool to think about and potentially interesting. We don't have a rumored price. Last year, what, the top model hit $999. For the higher end one. So it didn't cross $1,000, but just seeing OnePlus even being close to that

is pretty wild. But there's some rumors this year that there could be a potential OnePlus 9 Lite or OnePlus 9e version, which would be like a cheaper. And then on top of that, they also have the Nord, which is like focusing on budget options.

So is this just potentially another year that oneplus breaks a thousand dollars because they're not as worried about the the budget mid-tier option anymore man this this funnels right into my video which is like oneplus is making more phones than ever which seem to the enthusiasts who's followed them like less focused than ever but really it's just a sort of a stratification where you look at Samsung on the other side of the aisle, where they make 785,000 phones at all these different prices. That's a strategy. And that's a real thing. So if you imagine OnePlus makes the OnePlus 9, the OnePlus 9T, the OnePlus 9 Pro, I don't know when E became

the letter for the lower end version. I think people are just throwing, I don't know when E became the letter for the lower end version. I think people are just throwing it. I don't think the specific name is a rumor. I think it's just a downgraded version of the 9 in the 9 lineup. Okay, but you still have to fit that between the Nord and the 8, or the Nord and the 9. So that's another little bump. Where the 8T, I already said, was the awkward middle child. It's just a very different look for OnePlus. It almost makes me wonder,

does OnePlus like split up the year and just think of it in two different sections? Because like you said, the OnePlus 8T was a super, super awkward price point, but they let it out anyways. And like, are they gonna attempt to do a cheaper version at the beginning of the year? And then the 8T, is there a thing to go do in the second half of the year?

Here's my theory. Okay. OnePlus is trying harder than ever to break into the U.S. market. And fun fact about the U.S. market for you guys who aren't here, 90% of smartphones bought in the U.S. are bought from carriers. And so if you're going to sell a lot of phones in the U.S., and that 90%, that's not an exaggeration. Literally 90% of phones are bought from carriers.

So you need to get your phone in front of people who don't shop online, you need to get your phone in stores, and so you need to work with carriers to get your phone sold like this. And carriers have their priorities on what they wanna sell. They wanna sell 5G phones, because they have these 5G plans. They wanna sell certain phones, so you need to work with a carrier and make what they want to sell. They want to sell 5G phones, because they have these 5G plans. They want to sell certain phones,

so you need to work with a carrier and make what they want to sell. So here's OnePlus coming along with seven different phones, and hopefully some of them fit into the carrier slots, and they show up in front of eyeballs, and somebody walks in and they go, "'I have $450 to spend on a phone. "'What do you sell?'

And they'll have a OnePlus phone, and that's the bottom line." So that's kind of the way I see it. I don't know if it's less focused or if it's just more trying in this market. I feel like if I were to take the argument of the diehard OnePlus fan who's been there from the beginning, I could see them being worried about it becoming less focused, more focused on market share and you know market strategy less focused on what they like kind of built themselves up as which is like a phone for the people a phone for the enthusiast uh a cheaper way to get top of the line kind of stuff like that

so like i could see how the average or not the average one plus fan but like the enthusiast from the beginning one plus fan could be worried at least about them losing focus on what what they think the company stands for especially with car leaving too yeah like i bet that worries quite a few people it also just looks i think the word focus comes to mind because a company like one plus who started with one phone per year put everything into that phone. And so this whole campaign behind it would be like, we're setting out to make this better thing. We're pouring everything into it. And the final result will be something the other companies couldn't achieve because they're too busy making 1,000 phones for 1,000 prices.

And now when you turn into the company that makes 1,000 phones for 1 prices, it doesn't just seem, it doesn't seem real reasonable for you to still be pandering to that same audience who loves your flagship killer from eight years ago. I think that's interesting though. Cause we almost like see examples of that in last year where you stuck with the OnePlus 8 pro, you use the OnePlus 8T for a while. And there were parts of it you liked over the OnePlus 8 pro, but you liked the OnePlus 8T for a while and there were parts of it you liked over the OnePlus 8 Pro, but you liked the OnePlus 8 Pro better. So like flatter screen, like you would have taken parts from both of them and combined them and probably could have been your phone of the year. But they're like splitting it between different things and it's interesting. It's not just a straight up,

this is the best, this is the next. Yeah. The bottom line is I don't think there's any going back for OnePlus. I don't think there's any going back to one phone a year for them. Yeah, I don't think so either. I think there's someone, some other brand is going to fill in those same shoes. Maybe it's not even the Pocophone. They make five already. It's going to be someone else who does the same thing and sets the same trap and probably either sees the same growth or disappears.

So you're saying like a successful essential well that would be nice uh yeah basically i mean basically you either die a hero essential or live long enough to see yourself become the villain let's not call essential the hero no essential the phone itself okay call the phone itself a hero deal deal yeah um okay through all of that we didn't say anything about any of the rumors so let's just quick what we see okay there's renders of it out because we think that people found a uh what do they call it not a dummy version but like a prototype yeah or like it has a fake logo on the back so they can test it without it being seen sure obviously as oneplus um and it looks quite a bit different from the eight it's got it's pretty standard left like top left camera bump but i do think they made it a little smaller

i actually think it looks really clean on the back there's a white version out there and i'll link in the show notes but very clean back one OnePlus logo, a kind of rectangular camera bump. It does feel like it's smaller. It looks like they're recognizing that camera bumps are getting way too big. I'm looking at it right now, and it looks like a Samsung phone. Yeah, which is funny because we're going to talk about what Samsung phones are going to look like this year and it's different But so it looks like it looks like a 2020 Samsung phone with the cameras in the corner the big it looks like the s20 version and like took the right side of the camera bump and brought it in like

20 or 30 percent But that's pretty much front side. I believe off of what I remember is just a You know thin bezels hole punch right in the middle. Hole punch on the corner, I think. Hole punch on the corner. I'm mixing phones up, I think. But, yeah, we don't know too much other than that. Specs, it looks like it's going to have the 888, which I have a question.

Are you going to call it the Snapdragon 888, 888, 888? What are you going to call it for the rest of the year? That's a mouthful. That's funny. I actually haven't said it out loud yet. 888, that's annoying to say. 888. Snapdragon 888.

Let's call it 888. 888. Sure. I like that. Us first. I don't think anyone else. Someone probably does. Someone's probably here probably if you're

listening just tell them we said it first it's a it's a five nanometer chip so i'm excited to see how much better the performance and efficiency can be on a five nanometer chip but i'm looking forward to triple a oh i have a question yeah how do you feel about these i'm still working on getting my hands on it but about the under display selfie camera. Oh, I saw like the rumors. There's like a Vivo out, right? I think it's a ZTE phone. ZTE.

Working on getting it in a video. But the trade-off right now is technically, yes, the camera is under the glass and you can't see it. But you also kind of can see it in this weird like pixelated dot matrix in the top with this little rectangle. And the selfie camera quality is significantly worse it's foggier they need a defogging algorithm to work on the picture are you willing to trade that yet or do you think you're gonna wait for like gen three four i would i mean i wouldn't want to trade that i appreciate decent selfie quality like i would be all for

there's so many people out there who are like, I don't need a selfie camera, I don't need blah, blah, blah. But I don't know. I enjoy having memories of me in places and I'm totally okay with that to admit that I take a lot of selfies. I was a person in the past who was like, I don't think I even need a selfie camera.

You could take the selfie camera out of my phone and it would be fine. So the motorized ones didn't bother me. And then I look back and I'm like, I actually weirdly do actually use a selfie camera a lot. Maybe it's because 2020 is just a lot of video calls, but hey, selfie camera is pretty important. I think not including video calls,

you just like, maybe I'm not posting a million selfies. And like, I think people see, hear the term selfie and just think like, oh, my Instagram page is full of selfies because I'm full of myself and they don't want people to think that. But I have so many pictures that I've taken out on hikes or at restaurants or stuff like that of me and my wife in a selfie that I'm not sharing with people,

I just like to hold onto because it was a fun memory and selfie makes that easier. That's why I want Pixel to bring back the ultra wide selfie because that was like one of my favorite features on a phone in a long time. That was very useful. Yeah. I miss that.

I do too. Somebody bring it back. Somebody want to win smartphone of the year early, bring that back. That's an easy, you might've just developed like 20. No promises, no promises obviously. But hey, if you want to be pretty high on the list, bring that back. Last thing I have here for specs for the OnePlus 9.

The OnePlus 9, 65-watt fast charging, 30-watt fast wireless charging, 4,500 milliamp hour battery. And one person is saying there's potentially IP68 only on the Pro model. Okay. So it's looking like a flagship. Yeah. Again, what do you think price? Over $100,000.

$999,000 counts as under. And we'll say top model, not base price. Oh, top model? Top model. Okay, I can see top model going over. I think base is more interesting of a question. Really? Because OnePlus 8 Pro started at $899,000,

and then the upgraded model was $999. Can OnePlus sell a base model $1,000 phone? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think even Samsung, with their high-end ultra version of their flagship, has to come up with a cheaper option. They can't start their nice phones at $1,000. I agree with everything you said, and I am ready for OnePlus to do $999 base and $1099 high-end model. What would that be? Like 8GB for base, probably 12GB for the next step up.

That's usually what they've been doing the last couple of years. Yeah, sometimes it's 12 and 16, whatever. There's some leeway in there. If there's a 16 gig OnePlus 9 Pro, it will 100% be over $1,000. That I think is probably true, yeah. But we'll keep an eye on that base price.

All right, let's take a quick break, come back, talk some more smartphone rumors, and then predict our awards. Cool. With Uber Reserve, good things come to those who plan ahead. 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.

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well, I say one other phone, but it's kind of a bunch of phones. One other lineup, yeah. Yeah, that we're seeing some rumors floating around. Of course, we're about to find out all this stuff basically next week, but Galaxy S21 lineup. And by S21 lineup, I mean S21, S21 Plus, S21 Ultra. Now, I remember when I was going through

the Smartphone Awards about bust of the year, I thought there weren't really that many massive busts of the year. I thought there weren't really that many massive busts of the year in 2020. And then I watched Viper react to my smartphone awards, and he brought up a really interesting point. Galaxy S20 Ultra was a potential bust of the year because it's not really a phone you can recommend anymore. The camera had so many issues. It didn't really have any standout good features. Yeah, I think you could argue it was hard to recommend from the start, not just anymore. The camera had so many issues. It didn't really have any standout good features. Yeah, I think you could argue it was hard to recommend from the start, not just anymore. I mean, it was basically dead in the water the minute the Note 20 Ultra came out.

Yeah. So a lot of releases after the Ultra made the Ultra look like a bad buy. And so I think S21 Ultra kind of does have a little bit of redemption that it has to pull off. It's just got to have a great camera system. Of course, it'll be their highest end version i suspect it'll be well over a thousand dollars but uh that'll be interesting to keep an eye on but i think what's what's drawing a little more buzz right now is s21 and s21 plus what's going on with uh with prices and with yeah i think so there's like already leaked specs out that i'm sure are fairly close just based on what we've seen in the past um samsung's i mean we're also really close to it almost any phone two weeks before it comes out you know everything about it so i we're

just going to kind of skip over the exact specs because not quite as fun to listen to in audio format and so let's just go over some of the changes we're seeing um so i think the the biggest change we're seeing is the design and the photos we're seeing of the back of the phone are vastly different from before and while it's not really that much different it just looks entirely different you've seen it i'm guessing so yeah the rumors it kind of looks like they just took a corner cut out for for those cameras uh so it kind of looks as if you'd overlaid one phone over the corner of another what do you think do you like it it's different it is different this is the first time i'm really excited to kind of hold it get it in hand and see

what it looks like it's like if you took a rectangle camera bump except the left and the top side are meshed in with the corner of the phone rather than having a spacing between it yeah and it kind of like curves into it they designed it so it looks actually imagine if you took the fold one turned it uh portrait and then imagined the cutout in the top of that as the the camera bump of the back of the s21 that's kind of what it looks like a weird curve into it and then it's a rectangle yeah there's really not that many ways to do a camera layout anymore no they're used to now it i think it actually used to be worse because you only had one camera and a flash and a mic. And so there's really very few ways to arrange one camera on the back of a phone.

Now there's like you could have two, you could have three, you could have four. You have a flash, you can have your mics, you can have dual LED flash, you could have a periscope camera, you could have all kinds of other weird stuff. So there's a little bit more variety. But at the bottom, at the end of the day, it's just like put them all on the back somewhere in a cluster near each other and hope it doesn't look terrible yeah it looks fine i think there's two ways of doing it is it can look really good i think the square camera bumps on like pixel and uh iphone look really good or my personal favorite way i think is the just the best use case is like how LG does it, where it's horizontal along the back with almost no protrusion, just a little

tiny bump. So you're not scratching it up on the table, but it just feels like your phone's laying flat. Yeah. I think that's the best way. I don't think LG gets enough credit for how they designed that back. It might not, it looks super, super like super like looks like a robot yeah it doesn't it doesn't like stand out which I guess is bad for marketing but for a user I think it's way better yeah that way every time I look at these designs I always think how would I do it if I designed a phone and I think I would be the unique one now that oneplus is stopping to do it I would put it in the middle and I wonder if they don't do that anymore because

you lose space in a weird way where you can if you can cluster stuff in the corners yeah then it's more efficient i'm not sure but i don't know either way i like when the phone doesn't rock so for sure that's something you find in those yeah i'm like very against the note 20 ultra camera bump i thought that was ridiculous that's fair that's rock central um design if you flip it over though s21 s21 plus look like they're gonna have the 2.5 d screen similar to s20 bravo that's gonna be great but then s21 ultra is probably gonna have the curved edge display that i think all of us are getting pretty tired of um but we'll, it's the S21 Ultra. Is that this point?

Is that just, like you said, it didn't sell very well last year. Is this the marketing phone for them? It has the curved display, which looks amazing in marketing material. It's gonna have all the big specs to market it and people are gonna go into their Verizon and say, I love the new S21. Oh, it's that expensive?

Oh wait, this is also an S21 and it's cheaper. That's basically the, I love the new S21. Oh, it's that expensive? Oh, wait, this is also an S21, and it's cheaper. That's basically, I think, the thought process. I think another wrench that gets thrown in all of this is the S Pen support we keep seeing that's potentially being added to the highest-end phone, where it goes, well, now I don't even need a note. If I want S Pen support, I buy one of these, and maybe I grab the pen.

I don't think it's that simple because you don't put the S Pen in the Galaxy S. I mean, I have a whole section to talk about that. Do you just want to talk about S Pen right now? Oh, okay. Well, yes. Let me just say, I think the purpose of a flagship, we definitely had this conversation before

where it was like it's the boat at the front of your boats with the flag on it. It's the one you walk in and you see, wow, Apple makes a $1 thousand dollar phone. That's incredible. But wait, I can get a phone that looks just like it from Apple for 700 bucks. Let me get that one. Yeah. Samsung knows that strategy. So I think that's true. I think Samsung's, dare I say this, getting close to the point of people just want an iPhone. I don't think people know the Galaxy S name, but I know people who generally used to say,

I have an Android, who now say, I have a Samsung. So I think Samsung's getting a step closer in that name recognition when it comes to the average citizen who's not a tech nerd. Whereas if it were LG or Motorola, I bet a lot of them are still probably saying, I have an Android. Yeah, I remember when it used to be the Droid.

That was the worst way to start an operating system by naming it the same thing and just confusing everybody. It was funny because Motorola had a brand name phone called the Droid. So if you called it the Droid, you were weirdly confusing them. But now I think a lot of people call it the Galaxy, which is funny. My aunt has a Galaxy S8, I think. And we were talking on a holiday FaceTime about when she's going to upgrade. And she said she might get the new one, which should be the S11. And I had to break it to her that they're on 21 now. And that was a fun conversation. So Samsung, they matched it with the year. I get it. But, you know, naming has always been tough.

That's really funny. Okay, let's go into S Pen support, though. Because this has kind of been a super... People are really looking forward to this or wondering about this because there's rumors that the Note series is going to be stopped. I think it's overblown, to be honest. What isn't overblown in terms of headlines, not just in tech, but in everything? So I think the train of thought is,

oh, wow, rumors or whatever internal code are pointing to Galaxy S21 Ultra supporting an S Pen, right? Now, if you want to make a juicy headline out of that, it's like, well, looks like you don't need a Note anymore. This will just be like the high-end Samsung phone. Maybe the note is on its way out they don't sell as well whatever it is i'm naming this this podcast episode end of note 20 but listen but the the other side of that is there is still no silo in the phone for the s pen so that means a bunch of new questions arrive one how do you carry the S Pen?

Do you have a separate pocket? I think the rumor is that there is a case that holds it. Yeah, you have a case with an S Pen holder built in. Does everyone have to use that case? Is that how you charge the S Pen? You probably need that case to charge the S Pen because it used to charge in the phone. That's a good question.

How much does the S Pen cost in addition to the cost of phone. That's a good question. How much does the S Pen cost in addition to the cost of the phone? Because you already got it with the Note20 Ultra and now you have 1200, however many dollars the S21 costs. You need to also buy the S Pen. How much do you really use it? Are the capabilities the same? I don't think it's as straightforward

as just replacing the Note. I think it's just a nice bonus they could add. So I wanna think hypothetically here, kind of is like what i would like to see in this the issue i have right now is that the s pen supports only or at least rumored to only be with the s21 ultra people are saying right now that it doesn't seem like the s21 and the regular and the s21 plus are going to have s pen support which kind of makes it feel like oh oh, this is a note replacement, but I'm not on board with that either. What I think is interesting and what I think they should do is if they're going to create an S Pen case and S Pen support, make it available for every

single phone in your lineup. And that way, if there are those people who are diehard stylist people, they can have a chance to buy a cheaper phone or something that they don't need to spend fourteen hundred dollars on and can still get an s pen those people who are working out in the field but we want all their money andrew well then they're going to start losing all their money when you have places like motorola who are starting to have cheaper stylus supporting phones yeah so like i think i kind of don't hate that ploy of like making the S Pen available everywhere. And then you fall in love with it and you find out that they make a $1,400 phone with the silo built into the phone. And you're like, oh, that's clean. I

kind of want that one now. That could be a move. But honestly, I don't think, I really just think they just added it to the Ultra to justify the higher price. Like they'll just, they'll throw bells and whistles, like exclusive software features, like just random it to the ultra to justify the higher price like they'll just they'll throw bells and whistles like exclusive software features like just random stuff at the ultra so that you really feel like you got your money's worth maybe you never buy that s pen but you just know you got the best phone i think it's pretty simple but we'll see how much do you think the s pen case if that's what happens oh boy it's gonna cost uh i hope it's not more than like 70 bucks i hope it's i think it's at least 99 oh wow how much is the uh now this isn't the same but how much is the velvet or the like v60 dual screen

case i think that was i think it came with the phone actually the velvet was 700 800 bucks and came with the dual screen the v60 you could get a package with it. Yeah, I forgot the price for that. I mean, it's obviously less than that, but I'm guessing 99 bucks for the case. Interesting. That'd be a very expensive Samsung day. We'll see. No part of me would be surprised by that. Last little thing here.

Last time we talked about charger not being included in the box was because there were some import papers from Brazil. Now there are also some papers or something importing for the uk that looks like it doesn't have it so i think we're just pretty locked in here that oh it's gone this doesn't have a charger it's gone again yeah and samsung won't be the first or the last to get rid of it oh it's no i bet at least three different companies get rid of it this year that follow Apple's suit. Yeah. Let's see.

I think so Samsung gets rid of it in a flagship. I think there's rumors of one other already. Who? Xiaomi. Interesting. Yeah, they have a bunch of fast charging tech, but they do lean pretty hard into wireless charging. So I could see that happening with one of their phones.

Would OnePlus do it? I was just thinking of their phones would one plus do it i was just thinking how there's no way they do it this year they would really lose some so some serious street cred if they did that wow there needs to be a smartphone man like some startup phone company that's ready to make a phone for the people for the year that one plus stops including a charger and they will make so much money just by people jumping ship. That would make it a strong contender for bust of the year.

Not including the... We'll come back to that in a second. It'll be very funny. Don't want to make too many negative predictions. All right, we'll take a quick break. We'll come back and we'll predict our 2021 smartphone awards. our 2021 Smartphone Awards. 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, and your gift will be tripled for three times the impact. Support for the show today comes from NetSuite. Anxious about where the economy is headed? You're not alone. If you ask nine experts, you're likely to get 10 different answers. So unless you're a fortune teller and it's perfectly okay that you're not, nobody can say for certain. So that makes it tricky to future-proof your business in times like these. That's why over 38,000 businesses are already setting their future plans with NetSuite by Oracle. This top-rated cloud ERP brings accounting, financial management, inventory, HR, and more onto one unified platform, letting you streamline operations and cut down on costs.

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to make your holidays brighter with all your Popeyes favorites. For just $25, you'll get four pieces of delicious Popeyes signature chicken, four tasty chicken tenders, four regular size, and everybody's favorite, four buttermilk biscuits. Hurry up, though. Like the holiday season, Popeyes' $25 Festive Family Box deal will be over before you know it. Love that chicken from Popeyes. All right, welcome back to the Crystal Ball podcast, where we predict the future of tech, which is the hardest thing to predict the future in,

but also kind of the easiest, because you just look back a year. Yeah. So the Smartphone Awards are, I mean, personally, maybe one of my favorite things to do on the channel. Every year, you know, smartphones come out left and right, all these great things, all these weird quirky things, all these bad things. And sometimes you just kind of forget. And so to look back over the landscape at the end of every year on December 23rd, I think, for the last few years, we give some trophies out for the best and worst of a bunch of categories. There are nine awards for the Smart few years. We give some trophies out for the best and worst of a bunch of categories.

There are nine awards for the smartphone awards. So now here in January, Andrew, with absolutely no information about what's happening for the next 12 months, let's give out some smartphone awards. Yeah, I wanted to do it as early as possible. I'm already upset that there were rumors and it feels like it's kind of tainting what we could know.

Like I wanted to do this as blind as possible. Put our blinders on. But I still think we can make some fun predictions. And I cannot wait until we go back to this in December and take a look at what we thought. So for those playing along at home, you can write down your own predictions if you want. Like I said, there's nine.

Right off the top, ready? Best big phone, best small phone, best camera, best budget phone, best battery, design award, most improved award, bust of the year, and MVP. Yeah. And I want to do a prediction and I want obviously a reason for why we think that, which I think is going to be the more fun thing. What predictions are we going to, what changes are phones going to make that we think might come in that puts them over the top or at the bottom Oh boy, okay, so best big phone

Let's start off right off at the top you might if you write down your your predictions and you tweet them at us We will be able to fact check how many you got right in December in 12 months So if somebody somehow gets all of these right and tweets it in January, I don't know. I'll give you the MVP phone. How about that? If you predict all of the list and what our actual awards turn out to be, and you tweet it at me in December, but you better write it down and tweet it at you in December. Yeah. Tweet it down, tweet it in January, but also when the awards come out in December, and you link me that tweet and you're correct about everything, I got you.

Cool. Tweet it at WVR4M and then retweet it at us if you get it right after the smartphone awards. There it is. All right, best big phone. What's it going to be? So I'm looking at the best big phone from last year,

which I gave to a Xiaomi and I runner-upped to a Note. What do you think is the best big phone for 2021? They're all still kind of huge. They're all big and it's hard not to think about foldables and it's hard not to think about foldable. We keep seeing rumors of rolling and tri-fold, which are going to be huge, but they're going to be first generation. So I don't think they have a shot, right? There's a bunch of ways this could go. There's, that's what I like about all these awards though. There's like, there's not always one specific thing, which kind of pigeonholes what, who can win it every year. In the best big phone category, it could be a traditional big

phone. Like it could be the Note 21 Ultra, or the thing about foldables is it can be the best small phone or the best big phone because it opens up to be gigantic. Or it could just be like the iPhone 13. Like they finally add like a bunch of good stuff that takes up a bunch of space. Like if they add Touch ID back under the glass, they finally add like that beautiful two megapixel macro we've all been waiting for. They finally add that beautiful 2-megapixel macro we've all been waiting for.

They do a bunch of stuff, and you just end up with a great big iPhone. Yeah. Okay. Here's a prediction. This is never going to happen, so I'm already kicking myself out of category for winning this award show.

Razer Phone 3 is going to come out of nowhere and is going to be big, nice box, bezel-less, but still have stereo speakers. Two had the headphone jack still, right? No, it didn't. Two got rid of it. Just kidding. I take back my entire...

I was thinking if there could be a headphone jack phone that really came out with everything huh i'm gonna i'm gonna just go ahead and give mine preemptively to the rog phone 4 my thought was if rog phone 4 can just somehow get like a b plus camera yep basically yeah i think so could win. Yeah, I think so. And I think they probably will end up having at least a dual camera system like last year, maybe a third with a telephoto. And Zenfone 7 Pro was a good camera. Asus, you can't sleep on Asus's cameras.

Take that out and put it in ROG Phone 4 and then slowly upgrade everything else like you've been doing and yeah wow they'll probably have a snapdragon 8 triple eight they'll probably have some extra cooling in there to make it incredible they'll probably have those gigantic speakers again they'll probably have even faster even bigger better display uh i think that's my that's my safe pick rog phone that's a safe pick yeah all right best compact phone this one uh well mean, we have a couple perennial champs, but this one could also go one of maybe two ways,

folding phone or iPhone. My first question is, do you think any company sees how well iPhone Mini did and replicates, or do you think we're still another year away from that? You know, what's funny about the iPhone 12 Mini is I think it gave Apple a reason to price hike their bigger phones by slotting in a mini phone at the normal price. And I wouldn't be shocked if some other companies like maybe Samsung kind of got the same idea where they slot in a mini phone, which has flagship type spec, but at the same price that they were previously selling like a high end phone.

I just wonder if iPhone mini came out so late that the majority of phones coming out this year have already are pretty far into their development and to add something after seeing how well it did. Is it too early? And we probably won't see that till 2022. Yeah, I guess it would just depend on how long that phone's been in development since the iPhone came out right around the end of last year, the 12 mini. But yeah, I just, I get pretty used to seeing a lot of companies sort of learn from what does well and do it well the next year. So I wouldn't be surprised. That being said, for 2021, I'm gonna go ahead and, ooh, will they make another mini? I think so. Yeah, for sure. I think iPhone 13 mini is a probably pretty safe bet. I can't wait to see sales numbers because I still,

I said I think mini sells the most and I still think that's a possibility. So I guess the only other way this could go is if there's a really good folding phone that folds its way down to be legitimately smaller than, you know than an iPhone and is worth it and delivers that flagship experience when it's open. Like if the Z Flip 2 is incredible. I like the Z Flip pick for best compact phone, but that's because the only other category I've thought of is most improved.

And I like the Z Flip for the most improved. So I don't know if you want to switch to that right now. We'll get to it. Every time we do this, I have thoughts about how we might adjust the whole show, and I think we might have to add a category for best foldable, just because I'm trying to give credit to these amazing foldables

in their own unique way every year. Maybe it's in the build category. Maybe it's in the best small phone category. But maybe I just need a best alternate, like a best alt. Best innovation? Maybe. Or like alternate.

Because we have swivels, we have rollables, we have all kinds of other stuff. So maybe it's not just foldables. Folding, we only have two companies. Moto and Samsung. Royal. Royal, I guess. all kinds of other stuff so maybe it's not just folding we only have two companies royal but yeah that's an interesting thing i mean like design award kind of covers that but then you're also no regular phone is ever going to get a chance at winning that when some of them are designed extremely well they just look the same right um so that's uh yeah it might be props to you if you predict this entire

show and the new category and get that right and listen to us um the new category yeah if you get the whole thing right you gotta have the new category too no yeah that that's a that's a that could go either way but compact phones are definitely appreciated i like i like z flip because i went for it so hard this year to try and convince you to do it, and I agreed with your choice, but I think if the Z Flip could have a little bit better of a front screen to make it more usable in its compactness.

The outside screen. Yes, and if the battery could be better, I think it could easily win best compact phone. Yeah, okay. All right, we'll see. Keep an eye on that. Next up, best camera. I'm going to be perfectly honest.

I think this one's a lock. I think it's iPhone. No questions asked. I think it's a lock. And that's just because I don't see, now I really hope I get proved wrong, but I don't see even the close ones like Samsung or LG getting that much better at video that they catch the

iPhone in one single year because it still comes down to apps, still comes down to support, still comes down to compression. And all the stuff you do in the iPhone video world is just light years ahead of anything you see as much as I hate to say it on like any Android phone. And that's why I carry an iPhone for a large majority of the stuff I do. So I think that's the easiest one to pick out of all of them. I think that one's potentially a lock already. We'll see. Yeah. Let's just go to budget then since we're not going to debate that very much.

Budget phone. All right. Well, that's another interesting category. That's a really hard one to pick because what budget phone could potentially just shoot up by $200 next year and maybe not be a budget phone? What is your definition of budget? I think we've kind of, we've never set this in stone.

Yeah. It's more, I don't want to say bang for your buck because you can have an $800 bang for your buck phone. And that's, I don't know if anyone would consider that a budget. Well, here's a, yeah, I mean, I was going to ask you if you had an $800 phone like the FE that was literally just an incredible phone that matched every flagship spec, would you give it budget phone of the year? No, I would give it, um, I would say it was worth my money. It was a good investment, not a good budget phone.

Yeah, I think budget. So we're inevitably going to get a bunch of budget phones during 2021. And the question will be, what are they? Who decides to make a budget phone? And what do they decide to make it good at? We think we'll probably get a new Pixel 5a version, like a 6a. We think we'll maybe get a new iPhone SE, maybe not. We think we'll get a bunch of new Moto Gs. We know we'll get a bunch of new Samsung A series and J

series, and we'll probably get a bunch of stuff in between, something by OnePlus, something by, yeah, maybe a Nord. Yeah, we'll probably get something in the Nord family. We'll probably get a bunch more stuff that we don't even see coming that we don't expect. So it's really hard to predict a winner of budget phone of the year this early. So I think when I first read that Pocophone was kind of branching off and making this, was it M3, that last one they made?

Yep. I would have right then said like, oh, they're going to have a lock on like a really good budget phone and then we watched that phone quote unquote do its magic aka um swim in molasses and i have a hard time believing that could do that again i really don't know i mean i i don't think it's be Nord. I just have a really hard time believing that the company that is always one or two steps behind the flagship is just also going to be one or two steps behind the flagship cheap version of it. Like the Nord is always going to be a little behind the Pixel and the iPhone versions. I could see.

Um, I could see. So I think the, the easiest answer for each of these categories is going to be the next version of the one that just won. And so I think the easy pick is probably pixel six, a something like that, but pixel five, a right. Oh yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Wow.

I was on pixel five. Okay. Yeah. So we don't have a 5A yet. So yeah, Pixel 5A would be, I think, a safe pick. But I'm going to go a little off the beaten path, and I'm going to say that Samsung will throw out a comparable S21-level phone

in the back half of the year for $550. And I think it's going to stretch all of our imaginations about what a budget phone can be but it's gonna probably line up with their $900 phone and make us all consider it so you think like like a fan Edition but cheaper yeah something like that I don't know what it's gonna call I'm just going off the beaten path just for fun I think it's probably still gonna be pixel 5a or somewhere in there, but yeah. Real quick, two probably like biggest competitors would be iPhone SE and Pixel 5a. What would each of them have to do that could make that a lock essentially? Okay. Good question. I think Pixel 5a has to address performance. So I think a higher end

chip, like at least a 765G, but a newer version, and maybe higher refresh rate, like 90 hertz, I think that would make me definitely give it over at least the current SE for sure. I think I would like to see iPhone SE move to the newer form factor. Because right now Apple is just cranking out that iPhone 8 form factor with the home button. And it doesn't have a headphone jack and it's fine it's it's a fine phone for a lot of people but if they really want to win me over give me like I guess like an iPhone 10 type of body and like a $500 price true do you think um do you think there's any chance 5a goes down in price since we saw the price drop on the flagship to create a larger gap between them i think there's a chance i don't know if i had to read into it too much i think it was already

pretty great at 349 349 yeah oh so it would have to go down to like 299 to really if yeah if pixel 5a was essentially just like the next the steps we would all expect 4a to make, just like slight improvements on some of the specs, pretty much be almost the same body, but it was down to 299. Do you think that could lock it in? Yeah, 299 would be amazing. 299 would be nuts. I think it's more likely to go up to 399

than down to 299 as it gets better and maybe has higher refresh rate. As you say that, I think it's gonna stay right at 350 now that I think about it. Which would be fine, that'd be fine. All right, best battery. It's hard not to think of ROG phone. of fresh air. As you say that, I think it's going to stay right at 350 now that I think about it. Which will be fine. That'll be fine. Alright. Best battery. It's hard not to think of ROG phone.

I feel like ROG phone just made its name as like a battery champ. It's really hard to go against that. I think something that could come in is anything comparable. Wasn't there something with 7,000 milliamp hours this year? There was a Samsung phone that launched out of this region, yeah. Which. Which is crazy, but are we going to get

that here? I think the way ROG gets dethroned, if it doesn't increase at all, something gets to its level and then somehow improves the charging experience of it. Yeah. So my battery award was not just the biggest battery, but like the best overall battery experience which is going to be super long battery life and then if you can toss in fast charging and maybe wireless charging that's awesome and i think that definition might get scrambled a little bit if we get a phone with like a decently long battery but that just has unreal fast charging i think that could be really cool so if you get like a 5 like a decently long battery, but that just has unreal fast charging. I think that could be really cool.

So if you get like a 5,000 milliampere battery or something like that, it's not the biggest, it's 6,000. But what if you have that with 65 watt charging and like super fast wireless charging? Isn't that part of the OnePlus 9 rumors? I don't know if it's gonna be that big of a battery, but that's potentially a way to dethrone. Love to see OnePlus actually just put a huge battery in their phone

and continue with all the charging hype. I feel like they've always used the charging hype as an excuse to not have a fantastic battery, whereas just to both. Well, part of it is chemistry, where in order to make a phone that has that much charging capability, it takes up more space because there's more, I don't know exactly how it works, but if you look at the way they build batteries, there's more capacitors in between the cells and there's more amperage going through the whole thing. So it's just a bigger battery when you have that much voltage. Would you be okay if just every smartphone manufacturer out there

just made the back thick enough to the camera, to where the camera bump is already? So you're already using, it's already that thick. Why not just take every phone and even it out with the camera bump that has to be that big already and give us a better battery? You're speaking the minds of many, many nerds over the years who have asked for this.

Yeah, I don't know why I've never just thought that in my head before, but it's just like. I have pitched, I bet there's a video of me as a child arguing that we would take one millimeter more thickness for better battery that's there's no question uh this was this was in the years where apple every year was like it's 12 thinner look at this new phone and we're like lou bent it in half it's too thin so yeah i don't i don't know i think the charging experience can be upset basically by uh if i'm gonna make a

predict let's make a concrete prediction we should my uh my safe pick i guess this is my format now safe pick asus rog phone 4 um dark horse one plus nine pro i think my dark horse would be like xiaomi mi 11 pro or whatever the successor to me mi 10 pro mi 10t yeah big phone big battery pro Mi 10T Pro, yeah. Big charging, big wireless charging. I could see them, because they're doing a lot of stuff with charging as well, and they're shoving battery in there like no tomorrow. So I could see Xiaomi taking it. Okay.

Design award. That's like impossible to really choose. If iPhone came at you no notch. Here we go. 120 notch. Here we go. 120 hertz. Here we go. Same design. It wins, right?

Yeah, it does. Something would really have to be out of this world to compete against that. Here's the thing, though. iPhone probably won't have a port. And can I give a phone without a port a design award? You really think that's going to be this year? I do. I really do.

I think iPhone 13 will have no port. Actually, I'm not super convinced with MagSafe, so I don't think I could give something with MagSafe, especially if it's MagSafe only, a design award. Yeah. Luckily, this isn't my award show, but... I mean, if we stick with that train of thought then, let's assume we have an iphone 13

with magsafe and no port you probably don't want to give that the design award so what do you reward for design in this 2021 year we're gonna have a new we have to make some bold predictions yeah we're gonna have a new bunch of foldables which i think we're gonna be really interesting one is fold three because i don't know where you go with Fold 3. Do you make it bigger? Do you change the shape a little bit? What do you do? And then you get Surface Duo, which we already know we have a lot of room for improvement. It's a sexy design, but if you can thin up those bezels, if you can make the whole thing more functional with cameras that work on the outside, that might be it. I can't see myself predicting Surface Duo because I either think they're going to take a year off

and do an insane job in two years, or I think this year is going to be a stepping stone year. I just don't think they can fix enough things from last year to make it the phone we are all dying for it to be in 2021. That's a great point. I think that's a 22 or 23 phone where we are going to be like, wow, I never want wanna put this down.

Yeah, and I think that's also, well, we saw that phone took a year and a half, two years to make, and it had last year's internals. So if that process plays out again, which, hey, that's my formula. If it happens again, history repeats itself, then I could see that phone being a 2022 drop, in which case we disqualify it this year too.

So what is the design award? I don't know. Part of me wants to say like LG Wing is gonna do something really cool next year. There's gonna be a Wing 2? They're just gonna like make the Wing. They're gonna fix the kind of issues it had, which weren't that many.

I just think the overall like materials used and thickness of it was a little off i think it had cool potential maybe people start i don't know yeah i don't know design award oh what about this what if the note this is assuming there's a note which i think there will be note 21 regular just actually has flagship specs. I think the size of it and whatever design things they're gonna change to it, because it's like a flatter screen, boxier. Is it plastic or metal?

It's a glass stick. Oh boy. I'm just kidding. No, no, it's, I don't know, it's like whatever the normal, the high grade, it is just smaller and not that behemoth of a phone but that like nice square form factor that the that it had last year it just lacked all of the good parts of the note 20 ultra right so we're upgrading the note 20

with flagship internals higher refresh rate screen and glass back. The good, good. The good build. Keeps the S Pen. Okay. And. Keeps the S Pen, keeps the port. But is the smaller size, which feels much more reasonable in your hand. And fits an S Pen in the side. Okay.

I could see that. I could see that winning. You could see it winning, or could you see them doing it? I could, yeah. Well, if they do it, I could see them winning i i'm not confident that they will do that and for that reason i think we're going to end up giving the design award to a well-executed experiment like a foldable or a rollable or a something we don't see coming gen 2 type of improvement so I I'm gonna go crazy bold

and say Surface Duo does it Surface Duo is in the works they're gonna make a Duo .1 update version with thinner bezels and it's just gonna be the nicest hardware design award

alright you don't sound convinced no i'm not i'm not at all but we can go to most improved okay which if that came true that's easy most improved that would be a lot yeah um i think it's gonna be z flip too i think they're gonna go the razor route of having a screen on the outside that's way more usable that would do it i really hope they're gonna improve the battery. And then other than that, it was a great phone. Maybe they upped the internals a little bit.

Right. Flagship, so get the AAA in there. Get that flagship grade, maybe high refresh rate internal display in there. And yeah, please with the outside screen, make that bigger, make that more functional. And that to me dominates the flippy phone game because that's the thing that Motorola had over it. Most improved.

Okay, I could see that. I'm struggling to come up with any better most improved things. This is a hard one. I've always said this about every category. But this is a hard one because you don't know what risks are going to be taken. Well, but you can, this one I think is a tad easier because you can see things that just didn't quite work out this year and assume they get better next year. They get better or they drop.

Well, you hope that they get better. At least you have those something to, you have a base to jump off of here. You're not just totally guessing in the wind because you know what was bad this year. Because here's the risk with Surface Duo. Remember they said they were going to make a Neo also? That never happened? Mm-hmm. Usually when things go poorly,

they either have a dramatic improvement or they get dropped. Like Pixel had all these crazy things. They all got dropped. What if Surface Duo did so poorly that it just gets dropped? There's nothing else that Microsoft's doing in the world of smartphones.

So I have a hard time believing it would get dropped and Microsoft is just big enough and like hardware focused enough. I have a hard time, if they drop it, they're gonna come out with something else, I feel like. And I think that's a bigger prediction than just assuming. Do you think, I could see them not putting out a Duo next year, but I don't see them dropping it completely.

Interesting. If Royale can make two phones, Microsoft can make two phones. Yeah, that is true. Man, I'm gonna go off of that path, though, for my most improved. And I'm gonna say OnePlus 9T. I say they see what happens with their first phone this year,

and they also see what happens with the rest of their lineup, and then they make a killer $800 phone. That still has a weird price point, though, when 9 and 9 Pro comes out. It is, but I think it's just going to make the 9 Pro look stupid, basically. I think they're going to make a great 9 Pro, and I think they're going to have a 9T or whatever later in the year that's just like,

look, we made another 888 phone with a flat screen, and this phone is a baller in every way you want it to be, and it has a great camera that we learned from the two previous years of phones, and it's 800 bucks, and that's way better than the 8T was. What about this what if they made a 9t pro next year 9t and went back to their old roots of we come up out with

a phone in march and we come out in a phone that beats it later in the year whereas this year was we come out with our best phone in march and we come out with a phone that's under it later in the year because it used to be like the 7 pro and then the 7t pro was better than it so the 8t the 9t pro would be would be an improvement over the 8 pro yeah okay because we didn't get no no sorry pro wait would be an improvement over the 9 pro oh then it's not most improved. Well. Because the 9 Pro comes out in 2020. Well, it's very improved because there wasn't an 8T Pro, so it came out of nothing. I don't know. I just feel like it's missing that,

that phone is missing from OnePlus' lineup. That's what confused me so much about last year is there was no 8T Pro. Even like a couple months after, sometimes they like, didn't the 7T Pro like McLaren come out later and was like 16 gigs of RAM or something? Maybe it was just a confusing name. They were just like 9T, having people say 9T Pro instead of 90 Pro is just, just call it the Pro.

Like we all know what the Pro is. It's a good one. You don't need to make a T Pro, just make it the 10 Pro. I think the confusing thing is that they would say uh like if we put the not it came out with the nine and the nine pro and then it came out with the or it came out with the eight and the eight pro and then it came out with the eight t which is between those two but that came out later so why did they make a sand the cream filling of the one plus oreo come out seven months after it just makes no sense oh my god we're so in the weeds right now. Why don't you just come out with the better version of it later?

Why isn't your best phone the last phone to come out of here? Fair. Okay. Well, that being said, most improved Oreo. I also could just throw this out there. I could see if Pixel 6 decided

to just actually give us a flagship and base it's a quote unquote success of this year. I like that a lot. And actually have a flagship version. I like that a lot. Bring back the flagship Pixel. That would be a great most improved word. And don't screw it up.

That's the most important thing. Don't go adding crazy stuff we don't need. Don't go making those bezels the wrong sizes again. Give us the ultrawide selfie camera back. Give the people what they want. Okay, I like that. Bust of the year. Oh, man.

I'm so excited because I've predicted this already in a different episode, and it's funny because it's pretty much what you just said you thought was going to be most improved, but I think 9T is going to be bust of the year. You think 9T is bust? I think they're going to mess it up and just make it even worse. It's going to be even more confusing than the 8T, and I think OnePlus is going to be bust of the year. You think 9T is bust? I think they're going to mess it up and just make it even worse.

It's going to be even more confusing than the 8T. And I think OnePlus is going to start being known as just the March release phones. Yeah. It's funny because I could easily see both versions of this happening. Wow. It's going to be really boring

when it's just a mediocre phone that we can't make as much fun of or praise at all. That's funny. Oh, well, here's the other way this could go, is these foldable phones just don't get better. Because I'm not very creative or imaginative about what the next version could be, and the Surface Duo is just another Surface Duo.

That would be bad. That would be really bad then you have to go oh this isn't it if you had huge bezels in that terrible camera even if you fixed a couple little things like that would probably just straight and last year specs yeah that would be pretty rough yeah I could see what Viper said in s21 ultra coming out again in this year just not selling very well but it's like it's kind of hard to give that bust because it is a great phone it's just like yeah i mean so s20 ultra was a it was a bad phone because it had those weird quirks with especially the camera yeah true and so if you

wanted a great phone you have to have a great camera and a great phone and so this was a great phone all around that just had a rough time with the camera and never really got fixed so if s21 ultra has laser autofocus and everything they learned from the note 20 ultra it shouldn't be a bust i don't think unless they go wild with that price so i don't know i don't see that being a bust this year. Red Hydrogen 2. Whoa. Out of nowhere. Out of nowhere. I'm pretty firm on my 9T prediction.

Okay. I'm going to stick with Surface Duo 2 then. Woof. Which is funny because I also have that winning. I so hope you're wrong. Don't I also have it winning most improved and design award? So this is crazy. Yeah.

There's no way I get this right. I mean, I think it's literally impossible for you to get it right at this point. MVP. All right. Well, MVP again, just for those who haven't seen the Smartphone Awards, is not necessarily the best overall phone of the year. We've given it to phones that are either the greatest phone or the phone that had the biggest impact or my favorite phone that I just love that it came out this year and I'm so glad it came out. I've given it to OnePlus 8s.

I've given it to a Galaxy S20 FE. I am convinced that this year's MVP will just be something that doesn't screw up because there's gonna be so many ways. Again, it's like a process of elimination. There's gonna be phones this year that doesn't screw up. Because there's going to be so many ways, again, it's like a process of elimination. There's going to be phones this year that drop the charging brick. There's going to be phones this year that drop the port. There's going to be phones this year that curve the screen. There's going to be phones this year that fold in half. There's going to be all kinds of stuff that just goes wrong. And I think the

MVP this year is just going to be a good solid right up the middle well-priced phone that is just so easy to recommend if if 90 pro comes out we're just gonna will this into existence i think it's every word it could uh i could see that winning even even if it's not a world that i'm living in where 90 also is the. Even if it's 9. In the imaginary world that I'm living in where 9T also is the best. Let's just call it the 9 Pro. Even if it's just like one of the two Pro phones OnePlus comes out with this year. It's got the newest chip and everything.

When you have, like last year, when you have an 860. 865 Plus. 865 in the beginning of the year and then an 865 Plus later. It has to be a incredible phone to come out in the first half of the year and win mvp that's just because of how quickly things are moving yeah um so i think you're automatically at a disadvantage if you're in the beginning of the year just based off of pure specs like there's a huge chance something

gets upgraded later. I never thought about that, but that's very consistently true. That's why I think a 9T Pro could win because it would come out in October. Gotcha. If Pixel, even if Pixel 5 came out with a flagship, I have a hard time seeing it win MVP

because I still think Pixel has just never hit that stride of like. That's where I disagree. Yeah. I think Pixel 6 in my most improved scenario could win MVP where it finally does find its stride of like nailing specs for the price. We had like a mid-range 799 Pixel 5. We get this year, we get like the high-end 888 plus or 890, whatever it's called.

888 plus. 888 plus. We get all the RAM. We get all the software features back. We get high refresh rate. Are you expecting a Pixel to have high RAM? I'm expecting them to really, really push those specs this year

because RAM's not super expensive. Yeah, give me eight gigs of RAM. Give me 120 Hertz on a nice display. Give me ultra wide selfie camera, give me good rear facing camera and decent enough video. And maybe that's the one, 899. And never speak of Soli again. Never speak of Soli again, 899.

That might be my MVP. There's my prediction. Pixel 6 makes a comeback. Okay. I would love for that to happen. Yeah. That is like a dream scenario where that happens um i don't know i don't know 9t pro there it is i'm gonna wish a phone into all kinds of awards

these are pretty wishy wishy predictions i'm almost scared to like tweet our trophy results because they're hilariously all over the place and partially impossible but we've made it to the end and if you actually have written down your awards and do want to tweet it at us and you do somehow get them all right i really will give you the mvp trophy i mean the mvp phone yeah i'll do it so don't make a trophy uh you know what if you I'll get them all right. Yeah, it'll come late because we can't order it assuming someone gets it right.

Yeah, but yeah, that would be pretty crazy. All right. Well, this was a fun first episode. I mean, there's a lot of tech about to come out. You obviously know CES is on the horizon, but also all the Samsung events and stuff coming out. So stay tuned. Waveform is weekly now, as we may or may not have mentioned. So we'll talk to you guys next week. Thanks for

listening and stay safe. Waveform is brought to you in part with Studio 71 and our intro outro music is created by Cameron Barlow.