Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - The 2026 Smartphone Awards Discussion Episode

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

This week the news is a little slow, so we decided to take this time to get some discussion in before we have to choose the winners of the 2026 MKBHD Smartphone Awards. We debate some phones in some highly contested categories and ask you who you think should win. We also wrap it up with a discussion on MMOs. Links: Mark Gurman: ⁠LG Partnership Tweet The Verge: S26 Price Increase J1mmy: New World of Warcraft Video Bellular: What is Wow Forever Really? Runescape: RS4 Trailer This episode brought to you by: Charles Schwab: https://www.schwab.com/oninvesting Framer: https://www.framer.com/wave Jira: https://www.jira.com Follow us on socials: Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Waveform Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Waveform Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/?hl=en Waveform TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Intro/Outro music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Who chose your outfit today? You may not realize it, but the stylist behind your look probably isn't human. What we're seeing is that mall brands, fast fashion brands, they're looking for algorithmic inputs from the internet to figure out what people like and what will sell. And then they're making products that way. This week on Explain It to Me, how the algorithm transformed fast fashion.

Listen Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. How could one man break the music industry? I'm Will Anderson, and this week on my music history podcast, The Monday Music Club, we jump into the mystery behind the identity of the most prolific music leaker of all time. How he evaded authorities for years and the way he single-handedly changed the music industry forever. It's a really interesting story about MP3s Napster and the early internet, so you can listen to the episode right now by searching for Monday Music Club anywhere you get your podcast. Apple always seems to try new things, at least with the iPhone, twice.

so they tried the mini, the 12 mini. And then they, yeah, and then, you know. How'd you have your hand on that fun? Yeah, what is up? People of the Internet. Welcome back to another episode of the Wayform podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marquez. And I'm Andrew. No David today.

Nope. But over at the producer desk, we have Ellis and Mariah is back. And it's Mid-Tektober as you listen to this and as we record this, which means, of course, there's a little bit to talk about. It's kind of crazy. There's like one week lull. It's the break between Tectober, or Tectober and Tectober. Yeah, like TechTember kind of spills into the beginning of Techtober,

and then Tectober is about to kick off again, but we have a little... A little rest period. But in this episode, we still have a couple other things. We've got to talk about some price increases and some phones that also have already come out. Apple, with an unusual partner to release some new products, potentially. We're also going to have our preliminary discussions, our way too early discussions, on what could be the smartphone awards this year. I wouldn't even call it way too early.

Not even way too early, but early enough that there's still phones coming out, but early enough that it's fun to talk about. We have some thoughts. And of course, we'll end by talking about some MMOs. I know what that stands for, but I don't know what else we're talking about. So it'll be good.

Don't forget to subscribe, of course. We have found that asking you to subscribe does way more towards getting you to subscribe than anything else, so I'm going to just say it. Make sure you subscribe if you haven't already wherever you listen to podcasts or especially on YouTube. Appreciate y'all. We discussed that with Alex Goldman this week on our bonus episode that came out on Tuesday. You may have missed if you weren't subscribed, but that was super fun episode.

We talked all about podcasting, the old days of podcasting, what it's like starting one today, whether it should be on YouTube. We talked about asking your audience to do things like subscribe or be a premium member and how excruciating it is and how we feel bad about doing it sometimes. but we still have to do it anyways. But great episode, go give it a wash. I said wash because I was going to say if you have extra dishes and I was ahead of myself.

Give the dishes a wash. You know what we meant. Give the dishes a wash. But first, did they even test this? I have potentially the most niche one possible. And this is one I know you have not seen before. So I'm excited to show it to you. And that is in Megaphone,

which is the piece of software that we use to upload the podcast. The audio version. The audio version. When you are going to schedule what time it is coming out, I'm going to hopefully be able to go to it. I have our time trusting these tools already. So in the publish section, we have publishing details draft scheduled publish now. When we do scheduled, we have a drop down for the time.

Right now it says 12 a.m. What integers or what time variations do you think it's going to go down? down when I dropped this menu down. First, I expected one hour increments, but now I'm thinking maybe 30-minute increments. Ready, I'm going to drop this down. You tell me what you see. Okay. One-minute increments. There's a drop-down that starts at 12 and goes to 1201, 1202, 1203, and you're scrolling and it's 12-12, 12-13, 12-14, 132, 132, 134.

That is a long drop-down. It's, I mean, it could because it goes to midnight. You can't type it. You have to scroll? when you click in, the cursor doesn't move at all. So I can't, like, just change the two. Oh, for sure. You can type it, though. You can just start typing, I think.

Yeah, so you have to make sure, though, you're very caught in doing 06 colon and then you get the ones you can do. That's crazy. I think the fact that the singular minutes in the drop down on top of the fact when you click into the box, nothing deletes, or the cursor doesn't move. Yeah. It should at least show that, like, hey, you're. typing now. You are allowed to not scroll minute by minute. It's one of those weird, it feels like

it's vibe coded. We're like you, you want to give people a drop down, but you can only really select the time by clicking something in the drop down. So you start typing and it services the drop down and then you click the time, which is probably, yeah, they probably didn't test that too much. Yeah. So you can scroll through the whole day by minute? By minute. Yeah. How many minutes from a day? Pop quiz. I have no idea. Hold on. Let me count. One, two, There's 3,600 in an hour, right? 60 minutes, sorry, 3,600 in... What's that?

Seconds in an hour. Is it... Yeah, what's the song? Rent, Chicago, one of those. I don't know. How many minutes are in a day? How many minutes are in a day? So 60 minutes times 24.

What's six times 24? 4. 4.400 plus... This is that mental math. ...t 24 times 4... 24 times 3 is... 36 times to 7200.

When people ask us how we retain viewership, this is why we should be the people as to do it. I'm proud of us. Not a single one of us here opened up a calculator. I did it. I just gave up off the start and let you guys figure it out. I think it's 7200 and I'm not going to

double check. Do you want to know? Sure. You did it. Is that trivia? What do you think what do you think it is, Andrew? I just want to appreciate the fact that generally what we've learned about Marquez in the Am I the Asshole episode is he would just search this immediately why we're

all having the fun time of figuring it out and he didn't do that. I know. That's growth. Growth. Yeah. That's gross. Most improved. But now I want to know if I'm right. That's okay. Because I googled it immediately because I wanted to know. And it is 1,440 minutes in one day. Minutes in a day. Is that AI overview? Maybe. 60 times. I'm trying it also. 60 times. It's 1440. 1440. Well, now we know. There's 1,440 things in that drop down. That's crazy.

It's fun. All right. Also, we want to shout out the studio desk mat real quick. So I showed it in the last MKBHD video, but if you haven't already seen it, we are finally, and I say that because we've had a long behind-the-scenes process, but we are finally launching and sharing this studio-themed desk mat with the world. You have two of them, Andrew. You want to say why you have two of them?

I have two of them because we partnered with a company named Omni Type, who has been in the mechanical keyboard marker for a long time. It makes very high quality desk mats. And something they actually introduced to me, which you've been using for far longer than I have, is the, it's called like the rough or controlled texture. Control surface. Yeah. So you use an artisan, a mouse pad because you don't use a full desk mat. And it kind of has this like, I don't want to call it stitched feeling, but almost like raised. Yeah. When you describe it and don't feel it, it sounds bad. You want a mouse to like glide, right? Sure, yeah.

But to me, it actually, it feels better. I think it actually feels like a higher quality than the smooth ones, but it's just not your normal desk bat. For our audio listeners, what does the mat look like? I've held it up already. For the audio listeners. Oh, for the audio listeners. What did they didn't see?

Okay, so studio vibes, studio colors, lots of different colors and shapes that are overlapping with each other to create other colors. And then we have this kind of really nice. fade on a lot of it. I just think overall, it's one of those things that will match with a lot of desks because it has so many colors, unless your desk is just like matte black everything. In which case, it stands out. It stands out a lot. David, when he used to work here, originally started the idea. He's left and then Tim kind of brought it all together to finally make this push. Wait. What? You're talking about our former, our former intern, David.

Sorry, David. Better Spiel. Not the other David. As the chair is empty next to you. Sorry. I'm obviously, I'm so excited about this desk mat that I'm all over the place right now because we have been working on this for a while. And I'm so pumped for it to come out.

We made it the exact. Actually, we made sure it was the same price as Omni type sells it so people didn't think we have like a YouTuber tax on it. We accidentally put it at $29 when they sell for $30. So we're actually cheaper than Omni type by $1. So no one can blame us for that. And not only that, but Garrett at OmniType is big on packaging. I feel like companies that focus a lot on packaging and user experience generally are pretty high quality.

And he let Tim and Olivia kind of go wild with this box. Yeah. Everyone worked really hard on it. Everyone worked really hard. We had a massive studio-wide discussion on if we should launch it in only the rough texture or just the smooth texture since people are used to that. You could say we AB tested it. Yeah, we did. I mean, we did launch both.

We were worried about launching both, but we did. And I think the sales right off the riff were within 10 of each other. Basically 50-50. And I made it clear that if you're not up on game, you could probably just safely order the smooth, and it's going to feel like what you're used to. But if you do know ball, then it's cool to know you have the option of a control texture surface. So that is where we're at.

They're out. They're available. Go check them out. Mkbhbhg.com. Okay. Now speaking of things that are not so cheap. Galaxy S26 prices did go up, roughly by 100 bucks across the board. So we talked about this when Apple did it.

They raised a lot of prices that were not the iPhone, and then they launched new iPhones, obviously, that are more pricey. Galaxy S26s have been out since January, but are now getting a price increase near the end of this year. Well, and Apple in their launch also increased the prices of the previous generation. So it did finally hit the entire Apple store, basically. So basically everything's about $100 more expensive. It's kind of right in line with what we seem to be expecting from everyone.

So like the Galaxy S26, 256 gig, instead of starting at $900, it's a $1,000 phone now. And then you go up from there. So if you want an S26 plus, that's a $1,200 phone. If you want an Ultra, that's a $1,400 phone to start, and then they go up from there. I think the max price, 1 terabyte ultra is a $2,000 phone now. That's wild. The Ultra is a $2,000 phone? A non-folding phone is a $2,000 phone now?

Yeah. Yeah. Is that actually, is that the first time we've seen it? That can't be. That can't be the first $1,000 non-folding phone, but it is definitely like, you're getting, like, obviously the duo is going to be $2,000 to start. So you're, you are approaching foldable territory real quick at the top of that lineup. If you get a terabyte phone, by the way, let us know what you do with that terabyte.

Because the only thing I've ever upgraded my storage for is a lot of video shooting. I know I'm going to doing a lot of photos and videos, so I get them more. storage. Everything else I do on my phone is like a tiny fraction of the amount of photos and videos. All the apps on my phone combined are like less than 50 gigs. Like I don't have huge apps on the phone. Yeah, you do switch your phone a lot. Yeah, but I have a bunch of apps. And I, here, I'll just pull it up on this one plus 15. But like, I would be curious if anyone does anything other than media to fill up their storage. Let's see what I actually have. There is a $2,000 iPhone spec that you can buy. Yeah. A pro max. Yeah. A pro max one. A pro max one.

A regular pro in two terabytes is 20. There's a two terabyte? Oh, right. I did not know. Wow, I missed that. A terabyte? Two terabytes? $2,400.

That's, Jesus. That's crazy. I did not know that. All right, I have a 512 gig, 1 plus 15 here. Uh-huh. All of my apps combined are 145 gigs. And that's including everything I've downloaded from Spotify, which is all of my libraries and losses. Oh.

So it's, it's not that much. Lossless. 62 gigs of it is Spotify. So I have like 80 gigs of apps, all my apps. Yeah. Yeah. Is this not, as we're talking about this, is this not the perfect time for phones to start bringing back the microSD card slot

and just being like you guys configure storage out because it's costing us a damn fortune right now? It's funny because I think they would use the opposite argument. The storage is the way that they can upcharge. It's the RAM that costs them so much. And obviously storage is still storage. It's still storage. It costs more. But the amount that they charge you for extra storage

is definitely recouping more than they're paying. Yeah. So they would love to keep charging you for storage and not giving you the micro-SD card slot. Well, but that's not the excuse they're saying out loud because that's basically saying, you eat it. Yeah. I mean, all the prices go up because all these phones

still have a bunch of RAM in them, but they are always going to charge more for more storage. And this is not a shock, I guess. I want the micro-sd card back. I think we all want a lot of things back. We're going to get cloud. storage and we're going to like it. That's the real thing is cloud storage is a subscription. So why would they give you something that you can pay someone else one time for? How much do you think you can

get a two terabyte SD card for? Micro Sd. Which kind? Sandys. A key slow one? Two terabyte? I have two microSD cards both with two terabytes of storage in front of me. They're both Sandusk Extreme SDXCs. One of them has the V30A2 with the three in the bucket rating and the other one does not have the three in the bucket? What are the just the numbers? A2. V-301, A2, one of them as the three in the bucket. Sorry, I mean like 300?

Like the read-right speed. Megabytes per second. All right, all right. Making me click on the week. Oh, really? It usually just says it right on the card. Yeah. I think X-C-XC is they have an minimum speed to qualify for that.

Yeah. So I'm going to, I have a guess already. I should have said what colors is it the Sandus gold one? It is the sandest gold. Okay, that's fine. That's a good or knife. Um, two terabyte? Wait, let me think of a guess so I'm not going off of you.

All right speed. 150 megabytes second. Two terabyte. Read speed. 245 megabytes second. Okay, I'm locked in. Do you want to say it at the same time? Um, okay.

Yeah. One, two, three. 90. Two 30. Whoa. Big difference. Yeah. Yeah, no.

It's way too expensive now. See, that's one terabyte. Uh, the one I'm looking right now is $400. $400. For two terabytes? When you go down to like a five, 12, is that like 60 bucks? I'd say that's probably around 90.

No. It's still 140. How much is it 256? But if you get, is that Gengar? This is a brand name? That's another 20 bucks. Wait, I think it might be. It's a gang.

Oh, didn't the Switch do a bunch of micro SD cards? Yeah. That one's only 120. Speaking of things with memory, there's some interesting stories popping up that are like a combo of like leaks and reporting about Apple's new. I guess home devices. And this latest one is interesting.

It's basically that Apple is going to be partnering with LG on launching a bunch of like doorbell and thermostat and temperature sensor type things. And I saw that and I was like, oh, interesting, partnering with LG. So that kind of implies that Apple is not building them, but they're partnering with them so they'll be Apple branded maybe or maybe it's kind of like a BITS partnership scenario. I'm not really sure. So I click on it. and there's some leaked images from this 9 to 5 Mac article,

and they are just straight up not branded at all. Actually, it just says LG. There's no Apple branding at all on them. So one of them's a doorbell, sort of a deadbolt on one side and a touchpad on the other side, which I don't love. I think those are two different things, no. The doorbell and the... I think, no, no, that's the deadbolt.

Yeah. And then there's a doorbell. I don't think the doorbell's in the leaked images, but it is a rumor thing to be coming out. Okay, so just the deadbolt. Sorry, with the passcode on the other side. With the passcode on the other side, yeah. Yeah, and yeah, it just has LG on it.

There's no Apple branding here. The other is a smart thermostat. Again, it looks like a nest. They all kind of look the same at this point. It's a circle with very thin bezels, with a big temperature, and you probably rotate it or press the button on either side to rise and lower the temperature,

and then a temperature sensor. But the fact that none of them say Apple on it kind of makes me think this is kind of getting blown out of proportion. Like, what kind of partnership is there, exactly. If it's just being in the Apple store or getting announced as a compatible accessory, but it's not made by Apple, then this doesn't really make it as interesting. Well, here's the other thing. If you look up LG homes, like, I don't think LG was making these home devices beforehand. Sure. And I think because two weeks ago when we talked about

this potential, or maybe it was last week, because next week we're having the Apple, like, We think there's going to be... It's the rumored event, the home event. Home Hub event. That's what I... Jeez, I keep getting confused. Not HomePad, Home Hub, which we might get the HomePad at. And we specifically said we were not going to see a security camera.

Yeah. And now we're seeing all this that we are going to see doorbell, deadbolt, thermostat, indoor, outdoor, and floodlight camera, but all made in partnership or co-made with LG. And that's coming from German, the same person who said it's not coming, which makes me think, like you said, LG is just going to make these products, and maybe at this launch, we're just getting the first view of, like, compatible with Apple's new Home Hub. These are the products that are going to work with that. Maybe there's going to be some sort of, like, branding to mark them as officially compatible. I don't really know, because right now,

if you want to buy something that works with HomeKit, I guess is what it's called, you just look for that logo on the box. And it says HomeKit compatible, and you're like, great. If I buy this, it'll be able to plug into the ecosystem. It'll show up in my home. home. Maybe this is some like higher level of this is optimized for and passes any number of requirements for not sharing data or whatever it is. And it'll be in partnership with and they'll get the like plug and they'll show them off alongside the new home stuff. I can see that. Kind of not super interesting. But no, it makes sense to launch it around this time because they're going to need to show off Home Hub and that's they're going to want products that they

you know, feel like they have some control over. Endorse. Partnering with LG, yeah, then they can endorse it and they don't have to be like, because this is so clearly

a shot directly at Amazon and Google with Nest and Ring. Like, yeah. They basically just went, go to the Nest website and make all of the things on that website. Yeah,

we need the equivalent stuff in our ecosystem. And these are easily the most popular. Like, I own one of all of these products in some sort of home thing. I have all three of these in my Google home.

I have temperature sensors. I have the, the deadbolt lock and I have a, I even have a, the camera stuff, like they're all sort of talking to each other in the doorbell. I have the doorbell. So, yeah, if Apple's going to have this brand new fancy display that can show the feed from a doorbell and a security camera and open and close like the locks and all that stuff, you might as well have some first party-ish locks and doorbells and security cameras to point

to that this will work with. Yeah. And in their marketing material, they don't want it to say ring and necessarily. all over the cameras that they're switching to. I'm sure. And I doubt these are going to say LG if they made it in collaboration with Apple. However, they'll have to name it. They'll have to name it something.

It's interesting because it already looks like LG has their own home app for all of their devices for like your fridge or whatever. So I wonder if it'll still be available on that app as well. That's the thing I'm confused though, is like it doesn't seem, and I haven't looked up everything, but like they didn't have a doorbell or a smart lock. So it is funny that you think of LG as like you can create. create your whole home with LG appliances and like everything LG. Yeah.

But they didn't have all the connection things. So maybe this is just a good place to find the partnership of Apple ecosystem, software, LG product. I know Ellis loves LG software cut his mic right now. And this is it. You love Apple and you love LG. This is a perfect partnership. He's just face-famming over there.

I had my final freaking straw with my LG TV this week. Because remember a few weeks ago and I was like, yeah, you know, like LG always asked me to sign this crazy privacy agreement. I just decline and then it lets me use the TV. Last week, man, it was finally like, if you don't accept this, I will not connect to your Wi-Fi network. And I'm working on a few different solutions and maybe I'll bring it up later. But my time with WebOS has come to an end. I'm done with you. That TV is getting air-gapped the second I figure it out.

One other thing, there is, there was an article. at least about the duo potentially hitting some production difficulties already. A quote from someone close to production lines in a Chinese news article, then posted by Mac Rumors, which is the way we seem to get all this stuff, said, Final Assembly yields for Apple's first foldable iPhone were only slightly above 60% as of September 17th.

Source said that under Apple's current quality standards, it could take another six months to a year for the assembly line to reach a mature yield, which is, I don't know what to make of that. My take on this is... I have a hard time believing some parts of it. Like, I think it makes a great headline

and a really interesting headline. Like, oh, wow, it must be so difficult to make the duos, and they might not be able to make as many as they need. But I also tend to think that with a supply chain mastery giant, like Apple, by the time they announce a new product like the iPhone duo,

it's very rare that they aren't ready to make it. Like, remember the wireless charger? What was it called? the air power. That's like the only example I can think of of Apple like getting to the finish line of announcing a product

but not really having the finished product ready. When we got iPhone Duo like announced, I'm pretty sure they had for weeks and weeks and months and months been done deciding

how they're going to make it and they've started making thousands of thousands of thousands of them and the month between announcement and pre-order is to give developers a bunch of people. extra time to start making their apps compatible with Duo and to get it ready to ship and to give

a little gap after 18 Pro. And I don't think that this new information, I don't think that this crazy yield is new information. I'm willing to believe that it is difficult to make these. Oh yeah. But I don't think that there's suddenly some snag of like, oh, we announced it and now, suddenly we're not sure we can make enough. I feel like they've made as many as they thought they were going to make and it's going to be hard to get, but not in any sort of drastic way. I could see there being some sort of issue developed along the way. Like, we've had things where, what was the pixel where some of the screens were made in one factory and had, like, X issue? And, like, when you, when the scale is so big, even when you're producing and producing and producing getting up to it, like, there is potential for a scale issue to come out, which, you know, defeats things.

I remember that. I remember that. I forget what fun it was. I want to remember. But even that, I remember, different reviewers would have different. panels in their review units. So it was like even before the whole like mass shipping situation, like they had already decided that that's how they were going to satisfy how many units they had to make. They're like, all right, we got to get panels from two different factories. And it just happened. And that's how. And then people discovered it and then it was a big deal. But I think, yeah, there's probably a lot of things that have already been decided about the duo that were now discovering because they're just coming out. This headline also is like kind of interesting because it says, like, under Apple's current quality standards, which this is one of those things where a bad

headline can kind of make you look good by being like, well, we're Apple. We have such high standards that, you know, like, we might be reaching some delay, but we're always going to get you the best thing. It kind of reminds me of how every single week we see like AI company delaying launch of blah, blah, blah, because it's just too strong for you guys. Which like then feels like build hype, like, oh my God, I have to get the strongest AI ever. And then they've released it a week anyways. I don't know. I feel like we're getting more into these semi-negative headlines where we all just turn it into, you know, that actually means they're fantastic. Yeah. I mean, this is, you know, probably not a headline Apple wants to be out there, but we,

I think what's going to happen is the duo's going to come out. It's going to be limited in quantity. It's going to be hard to get. It's going to drive demand up. People are going to sell them on eBay for 3K for the first couple weeks. And then they're finally going to start being in more Apple stores and in higher quantities and then we'll all forget that happened. But the people who paid $3,000 for it on eBay will not forget that that happened. No, I'm still so intrigued to see how many of these I'm going to see around. You know what's funny? In the studio, one by one, I see people like caving and deciding they actually like the duo and might want to get one. Because I feel like at the very beginning, didn't we do a short where we're like, how much is the duo going to cost?

Yes. And we went around. And then I think we asked, are you going to get? one and almost everyone was like now and now I think if you went around you might get a few more yeses i know Alex is probably in Olivia said maybe because she wants to watch youtube while she does stuff on her phone people's imaginations are slowly like making the duo really interesting to people and this delay is maybe serving as like a bit of marketing and people like thinking about the duo a little more but it is also expensive 2k for a first gen product i don't know yeah this is going to be fun for the review. Like, I think we have to remember as we review this that it is, it is a first-gen product. Oh, that's so hard as the review because it's like, it's Apple's first-gen product,

but they've gotten to watch eight years of people doing this. Right. So Apple specifically sat back and waited for many, many, many others to do many other multiple generations of their products before they make their first generation. So the standard for this as a first-generation product is not the same as the standard for Samsung being the first one to ship a foldable phone in the US. But it is still the first version for them. And I do find often the second generation is where you learn the most about what this is, who it's for, what it's good at, and like what they're doubling down on.

And I think the second generation will probably be the one that is more likely to be easy to recommend to people. But we have to see like what they change. Because remember all those like first gen foldables, first gen pixel, it was a passport size. First gen, like, Apple find, like X or find N was passport size. And then the second generation, they all started leaving that shape. So what does Apple do with the second gen? I don't know. But yeah, I stand, I'm still thinking about it as a first gen foldable, at least through that lens. I'm most intrigued if they're going to keep the under display selfie camera. For the second

gen. Yes. And I have to assume they are because they're stubborn whether it will be the right move or not. I think it's another question. Yeah. And it's also funny because Apple always seems to try. new things, at least with the iPhone, twice. So they tried the mini, the 12 mini. And then they, yeah, and then, you know. How'd you have your hand on that fun? They tried the 12 mini and a lot of people liked it, but it really did not sell very well. But that did not stop them for trying a second one, the 13 mini.

They fixed the battery life. It was a better phone. And then, yeah, it didn't sell enough and it was over. They switched to the plus. That? You're bringing up the, like, this weird section of, of iPhones where like they do something for two years, kill it, do something for two years. So, mini plus air, we got an air.

We got our new air. We're expecting a second generation air. I don't think there's any doubt. There's going to be a second gen air, probably in January, February, whatever. Then what? Will it stay around? I don't know. But I would bet anything there's going to be a second gen air.

So there will be another generation of, you know, duo, obviously. Will they keep all the things from the first generation? We'll have to see. Speaking of Apple. Yeah. Android Central, closing down. Speaking of Apple. I just want to throw this out here.

It's always a bummer when we see other publications kind of die out, especially in the age of AI, which you kind of have to assume is part of the reason why this happened. Yeah, that's the thing is it's not shutting down. Well, yeah. They got rid of all of their writers. It's not shutting down, but they fired all of their writers. Yeah. And, yeah.

So apparently, so future, they are. They're owned by future. They've owned Android Central for a while. But after this last week, all six writers got let go. Total bummer. All remaining staff. All remaining staff. So what happened is there have been articles launched since this happened, and they do

have a freelance contributor section, and all of those posts have been made by freelance contributors. So it's this weird thing of like, are they just going to ride the freelance contributors and to like try and stay relevant and probably overwork them? or I don't know what the deal is there on how those people get paid. I don't even know who. Right. Yeah.

So that's a really tough thing. They, I think they claim they're not going to use AI, but I think we're all under the assumption that this is just going to, unfortunately, turn into AI slop. Yeah, which is kind of like the dead. It's like the last,

it's like the death rattle of like a company like this. Like we've, all, all publications have some sort of a life cycle, I guess. Well, that life cycle is, getting choked out real hard right now with it. Because like we saw,

didn't Verge post those numbers of like weekly visitors and how bad they got hit in like the last year because of overviews and stuff in the search engine? Exactly. Yeah. This is why. Like a 90% reduction or something. Right.

Which is a this was like what tied into my whole like question about the ask YouTube feature from the made on YouTube thing. Because if you, you know, if you ask most publishers like what happened to your traffic when AI Overview started like learning from your stuff and then just telling people the answer before they ever get to your site. Well, of course, your traffic basically disappears, your ad revenue basically disappears, and you have to completely rethink how you exist. If this YouTube feature does the same thing or a similar thing, what does that look like for traffic? Like, do people use the

feature to talk to it and never watch a YouTube video, or do they use the feature to jump into the middle of a YouTube video, and so they still get the traffic? And then the one second of playtime still equals a view. Not really sure how this is. equals a view, not a view that pays us. Not engaged view. Not engaged view. It's weird on YouTube, because we always say the number one thing the algorithm wants is stay on YouTube as long as possible.

Like, do not leave, come here, stay here, watch around, have a good time. So how does that fit in the ethos of, I don't want to watch this video, I just want to know the answer? Now I'm not watching videos. Is that, is that, do they assume that person is not someone who's going to stay on anyways, they're just looking for the answer? Yeah. Yeah, so YouTube has slowly evolved over the years how they measure success of like a viewer session, I guess.

And I think viewer satisfaction has always come up and like how long you spend on the site was a more rudimentary way of measuring that. But maybe there is a higher satisfaction rate of getting the answer from a video quickly instead of trying to find it and failing and leaving. And so they think that that's a better experience, which YouTube, if you're listening to this and you want to deliver a better experience, perhaps some sort of glanceable information to quickly understand the quality of a video would be useful so people don't waste time on bad videos.

Maybe if there's some sort of like, I don't know, like a ratio of people who liked it versus didn't like it. Then you could see that and go, oh, a lot of people didn't like this one, I'll move on. just an idea. I don't know if you're like thinking about that stuff, but yeah, just a thought. But yeah, that is, that is just a long tangent, which is to say RIP, Android Central.

RIP, you'll be missed. I've read a lot of Android Central articles over the years, especially in my rooting and modding and bootloading days. And I don't want to take away from the people who are the freelance contributors over there. I'm sure they're still writing some good stuff. I just hope that if you are one of those people, that futures treating you well, which I doubt they are. And like... I think he made enough money off of mask off to pay six people. Future. That's a future joke.

Well, you know what else? We'll find out in the future. Yeah. The answers to this trivia. That's good. That was smooth. You were somehow faster on the ding for the iPhone mini than you were for the trivia thing that we just set up for 25 seconds.

Yeah. Diamonds from Africa. It's another future song. Apple is partnering with LG, but it is not the first time. They've worked together. And I'm not talking about the all. ultrafine 4K that was like in Apple stores. That's the one I remember.

That one was that blocked Wi-Fi? That was the one that kept flickering when you were using it in your- Yeah, people forget, people remember that, but they forget that it was actually a pretty solid deal. Yeah. Unfortunately, this question is slightly muddled by the fact that for some reason, LG and LG displays are like separate companies, but not separate companies, but like not the same company. Whatever.

LG displays, which is not LG, so I guess they haven't clapped, but just roll with it. You know, some disbelief for the sake of this trivia question, has made the displays in a lot of Apple products. I was able to confirm two Apple products that they were either the exclusive or main supplier of panels for. What two Apple products? Do you want like specific series number? Nope. Just like in general? Just product.

One of them, I will give you a little hint. One of them is a product line that has had generations. One of them, there is only one. Airpower. There's only one. That doesn't actually narrow it down because, you know, there's a couple things

that still only have one generation. Thinking about, like, home pod has a display. HomePod mini has a display. Just a little glowing. It's probably not the answer, but that's something. Something to think about.

Well, we'll get the answers, like we've said, in the future at the end. So we'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Framer. If you want to create a website that looks great, feels handcrafted, and comes together fast and seamlessly, then look no further than Framer. It's a complete website platform, not just a builder,

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And I'm Sky Galloway. Twice a week, we get together on Pivot to sort through the biggest stories in tech business and politics. And we're taking the show back on the road for a live tour in November.

So we'll bring hot takes. I'll bring the insight. And the dick jokes and Kara will try. Keyword is try to keep me in check. You'll get to see her hit me in person live. I'll do it.

If someone has to do it, we'll cover AI, whatever chaos, is cooked up that week and every billionaire misbehaving. That's all of them. And you'll also get to participate in audience Q&A. So bring your best questions. Scott will probably answer ones you didn't ask.

We also have secret special guests, which you'll enjoy for every city. Get tickets at pivottour.com. That's pivottore.com. We are selling out, so don't wait. And we look forward to seeing you. All right, welcome back. Now, it's Techtober. So we're starting to get towards that end of the year where all of the phones,

are out, which means it's starting to get to that time where we start thinking about who's going to win awards for the smartphone awards. Every year we give out awards for the best and worst smartphones that came out during the calendar year. We have a bunch of categories, and I think we can just sort of step through these and start thinking about storylines and thoughts. And this is also a great fun time to sort of pull, like, what our audience things, because people have hard reactions on what they think should be.

definitely win certain awards. And we will hear from those people as well. Can I do a fun fact of the process of this? I'm bringing it up now, well, one, because not a lot happened this week. So it's a bummer that David's not here to talk about this. But we actually have a date friend of October for when we're going to have a meeting to kind of like discuss this. And I thought it was funny because obviously when the video comes out in early December,

all the time we take to discuss it, we have to order trophies because that's the thing. we started doing a few years ago, there's this gap of when a phone might come out. So I'm sure people are going to be like, what happens if X phone comes out in that process? And I believe it may have been the last year of the year before is the first time we've done it, but we've done where we know a phone is coming out that we don't have that we think could like legitimately fight for an award. And we've ordered the trophy for that phone. Just in case. I think what it was last year was the best camera, right? And we had like two or three that we were. we were juggling between, and we also were waiting to get, like, the Vivo X300 Pro or Ultra.

I'm pretty sure Samsung TriFold was something we were debating for best foldable as well, but it was super, super late in the year. And it's obviously a triple folding phone. Yeah. You have to think about it. Just the, like, maybe this is good enough, so let's just leave room for it to maybe win as well. Yeah. And then obviously decide at the very end.

Okay, this one wins. This one wins. Yeah. So, yeah, we, there's some phones that haven't come out yet. obviously the iPhone duo we know what it is but it's not out yet um i think the vivo like x 500 series is around the corner if things hold like that's usually what happens is it's around this time of year um but yeah this is what we're working with what we have and what's out and uh we definitely already have some thoughts we can kind of go in order you want to go in order okay i'll go in order

so we start with best big phone and this is funny because when we first started the smartphone awards there was distinctly huge phones yeah like fablet like Galaxy Note, Galaxy... What do they call it? Galaxy Mega. Remember that? No. You don't remember that? No. They used to have like a regular size phone. Is it British?

No, it's just Galaxy Mega. And it was a Fablet, freakishly big phone, which to us today is a regular size phone. Guess how big that? It was like a 5.3 inch phone probably. Oh, it was bigger than that, but it's still... 6.3? Okay. So like, but back then, phones were all 4.75. Are any phones under 6.3 now?

That would be a small phone today. Yeah, I know. Which is crazy. Galaxy Mega would be a small phone today. Oh, my. But yeah, we used to have, like, distinctly huge phones and small phones, so I would give an award for Best Big Phone. Yeah.

Nowadays, all these slab phones are kind of the same size. Like, we have the ultras that are really big, and then we have all the other phones that are just big. Yeah. So it's hard to pick one that's, like, clear-cut best big phone. I don't know if I have any thoughts yet. I tend to not do the ones that are like super, super safe with design. Someone who did something interesting last year was Xiaomi 17 Pro, which had the screen on the back.

Like they really use the space well, huge battery, great specs, great cameras. They did that again with the 18 Pro this year. So that's interesting. I did find a comment last year on a Reddit thread that I found interesting because we last year, I think it was the first time, had a small phone. a flip phone. And they said if a small phone that can flip to a normal size phone is allowed to be a best small phone, why isn't a folding phone allowed to be best big phone? And I think it's along the lines of, it's not that it's not allowed. It's that the criteria between these two are,

generally the big phone should have the absolute packed amount of features because it is using, is utilizing all the space best. Where small phone is like, we know there have to be sacrifices made for it to be small, but what can they pack into the smallness of it to make the size of it beneficial? So like, a folding phone is like, you get a normal size phone, but it gets to be little for like putting it in a purse or like women's pockets sucks. So like maybe they can actually fit it, but you still get a lot of stuff where it feels like a lot of folding phones actually do have sacrifices compared to the slab phones that those companies make. Totally. But I also think that's valid. If you want a huge screen, you would say,

I want the folding phone. That's the best big phone for me. I think the bummers, we still see, like, lack of flagship, not flagship cameras, but, like, in the lineup, they're never the best of the best. Yeah, the best, they are the biggest and most expensive phones, but not necessarily the most capable, because they don't have the biggest, you know, internal space for the heat shield. They don't have the biggest internal space for the cameras, so they don't have the most flagship specs, which is probably why you lean again towards, yeah, the big slab phone with

the big slab specs. It used to, like, ROG phone used to run away with this because they were just, like, throw all the cool features that other phones don't have in here. And a vapor chamber and, like, all of these crazy, like, flashy external pieces of hardware, like external attachable fans and stuff. Yeah, they went super hard. Now there's a lot of those things. Honestly, big phone and small phone writing this is the ones I had the absolute

hardest time. I'm thinking these categories are almost, I think they're still beneficial. but they're becoming the least competitive. You know what it is? You know what it feels like? It's like when there's an MVP award, but there's also an offensive player

of the year award. And you're like, isn't the best offensive player probably going to win MVP? Yeah, usually. But if there's like an extremely interesting example of like super heavily weighted offense and no defense,

you're like, all right, that's the offensive player of the year, but the MVP is a little more well-rounded. That's kind of what best big phone is to me. So I don't really have a front runner for that yet, but that's how I'm thinking about that one. So, yeah, best small phone. You didn't really get any small phones.

There aren't, they don't exist anymore. Yeah, it probably has to be a folding phone. One of those flips. In which case, you have a couple. I guess we did get smaller folding phones. Yeah, and you have like Z-fold. We have like razors. We have a couple of those Huawei.

Like there's a bunch that are all kind of the same size and shape that we can look at those. But yeah, we don't have like small. I remember when the Zen phone was just like such an easy pick. It was so good. It was such a good phone in general. We might, 2026, 7, 2027 smartphone awards, we may have some small phones depending on the successful release.

Because click's communicator would be a small phone. Oh, is that coming out? They're running out of time. Yeah, that's another one that we might want to see if that comes out this year. I don't know, actually. Also, I don't know when minimal phone ships, but I would call that as small phone too. Yeah, they are technically small. That's interesting.

Yeah, some of those are going to be like thoughtful, small phone executions. So we'll have to think about those. It is hard because in the sense of like we want the small phone to be the most capable thing in a small form factor when those you could argue are like trying to be less capable. Yeah. And therefore is the size to capable capability ratio not really that good. I think they're worse. And arguably big, like big for what it can do. Yeah, you know, it is technically the best compact award, not the most capable compact award.

So I'm like, if we just really like it, then we can give it the award. Vague awards means we can change your mind every year. Exactly, it's our award. I think I opened the last three years being like, it's my awards, guys. I can decide whatever I want to win, and I will be able to justify it. Okay, wait, if that's the case, can I lobby for a nomination? Of course. There's a few comparable products and projects.

The one I'm looking at is called TinyPod. Are you familiar with this? No. It's that Apple Watch and Apple Watch Ultra case that hooks up the crown to a scroll wheel. So if you have a cellular enabled one, you can use it as a standalone handheld device. Technically, you can make a phone call on that. This is, you're right. It is small and it's technically cellular enabled.

And you can connect AirPods directly to it. So it kind of. That's like what you. If kids their first phone, that's what they should have. Wow. I will add this to the consideration. I doubt it will win. That would be a wild card to just play it out.

The winner, the Apple Watch. Like I said, there's a few different companies that are making pretty similar products. This is just the first one I could remember the name of. Here's a controversial one. Should thinness be small? I mean, like, in the area of where we're at, if all phones are small if all phones are big no phones are big right so every phone is the same size so what else makes it small if it's thin and light here's the issue like a cop out i feel like

there actually are genuinely small phones they're just the weird little freaky phones yeah but then the question is are the weird little freaky small phones the best small phones but it's still subjective so it's yeah it's true is is the iphone arrows it's a compact phone so i guess it technically Well, the iPhone era and the S25 Edge came out last year, so it doesn't even matter. That's true. Ah. And there is no S26 Edge. Yeah.

Yeah. So they're both not going to qualify. So why am I even saying any of this? Well, I honestly, I thought you were going to come at me with someone that I just missed. No, no. That's, that's, I mean, there are thin phones, but they're all folding phones now. So, yeah. Interesting.

Yeah, I'd like to hear about some of those. That's a fun one. Yeah. All right. So next one is best camera. Okay. And so there's lots of good cameras at the. this point and I almost talked about this I'm trying to think of which one I think it might have been

the pixel 11 pro review where I almost I think I cut it from the video but I almost went on this like diatribe of like I don't know they're all kind of the same thing but like playing in different character and it's just how much do you like the character that they play do you like the contrasty confident one do you like the super super flat one that always has light on your face do you like the really really sharp one because they all just do their own thing and Whichever one is best, I don't know, do you just want the sharpest one? Do you want the one that looks the least processed? What is the best camera anymore?

There are ones that have clearly the best specs. Yeah. Like the biggest sensors and the most advanced hardware and the most customization. Most sharpening. That is a character that you can get. But is that the best, maybe. You know, David is fuming somewhere listening to this. To bring up what David would probably say, and this is potentially, I have a couple different things

written down on some things I think should be considered. Some things that I wonder if we should consider, probably not. But I do have Pixel 11 because of Camera Looks. Like, Camera Looks is actually a really cool feature they added. And arguably the shining spot of the Pixel 11 series, which didn't shine very bright overall. But Camera Looks is a really cool new thing that kind of defaults and does the thing we've been asking for a long time, which is like stop processing the absolute hell out of my photos. And you get to default them in the camera. app, correct, and change things up? Like, I actually think that's awesome.

And Pixel's always been a camera that can hang, but having that feature, I think, is nice. Yeah, and that's kind of the story of a lot of the most high-end smartphone cameras is they are very high on processing, too. Yes. And it's an interesting story if the one that is the best is the one that turns down a lot of that over-processing. And gives you some options as well. So like you said, you were just saying, do you want the most contrast?

Do you want this and that? the pixel 11 gives you some options and lets you lock in on your option. Yeah. And I think that's a good thing. I still like the look at the pixel cameras. I think for a couple years now, many years actually, they've been on the contrast your side. A lot of the smartphones kind of just opt to like put light on your face no matter what.

But it's on the contrast your side. Skin tones are sort of realistic in a lot of situations. So I value that in a smartphone camera. But I also just took a lot of pictures with like the, the Xiaomi 18. Pro Max and it's a really, really good set of cameras. They kind of just stopped caring about the Ultra Wide, I think. I feel like everyone stopped caring about it. The Ultra Wide unfortunately feels like it's turning into like the, what, 10 megapixel

macro or whatever, the one megapixel macro? I wouldn't quite go that far. Not quite by. I think those macros were just like zero value add. I think the ultra wides at least give you like the option to like zoom out or take like a wide. I've also taken, this is something I noticed in the last year specifically. I've had a lot of people like take selfies with me.

And a lot of times it's like the selfie camera and like just holding it out or whatever. And there's this maybe not Gen Z, but there's this young person thing where they will use the regular camera. They'll flip it around to the ultra wide and they'll take it from up high. And that's a specific thing you need an ultraide camera to do that. But I see that a lot more. And I'm curious if neglecting the ultra wide is a bit. mistake for people who love that stuff. It feels like every camera is always, every time we review a camera, there's always just,

oh, this is good, this is good, ultra wide, not as good, or we'll be like the ultra wide finally matches the megapixels of everything else, so maybe they care about it. Yeah, but that's the, yeah, the megapixels thing. That doesn't necessarily mean it, but yeah. Yeah, yeah, because people see the 200 megapixel number now and they go, ah, selfie. are like flagship, like 200 megapixels equals flagship. But then you look at the size of the sensor, and you're like, oh, it's just kidding.

They packed the sensor with pixels, but that doesn't mean it's actually great. Sometimes it means it's worse, because the pixels are individually smaller and it's noisier, blah, blah, blah. We're getting into the waste. You mentioned Xiaomi before. This felt like the year of really harping

on the legacy camera collaborations, because we got the Lyca phone, which is, this is the Xiaomi 17. That is a phone. Got it. But yeah, the Likaze. No, this is a Xiaomi 17 Pro Ultra. I forget the name of it.

Like Edition. Like Edition. Technically, this release in China, December 25th. 2025. But globally was February 28th. I think this should count. This is just one of those things where, like, it has the Zoom ring on the outside. It has this incredible nerling, I think it's called, right?

Yeah. Nurling? Yeah. Nurling. Nirling. Nirling. It feels like a... Oh.

Yeah. The side of the phone. Yeah. It's a nice phone to hold and take fit of photos with. Speaking of another one, the Apo X-9 Ultra Hasselblad edition. Yes. And then I think Vivo's also been doing Zice stuff. And like there, we think the X-500's coming out soon.

We've been doing all these things where the Hasselblad one and Vivo in the past have had all these extra lenses. Do we add extra lenses? That X-9 Ultra I thought was incredible. That won last year, right? I know this came out this year okay x9 pro right x9 pro one last year X9 ultra i use that phone for a while for a couple yeah no it came out this year i think okay now you're making i'm almost i looked at so camera collabs things and sometimes the chinese phones are hard to tell it is hard to remember sometimes i i use it for a bit this year because i remember i had it in that um when we shot the luce i had that

as my phone okay fun fact for those of you who don't remember we went this year yeah we went to Italy to shoot the Ferrari luce, at least I did. I forgot my charger. No, I didn't. I forgot my adapter for Italian outlets. So I had to make my phones and everything that I was using last for two days without charging it. Luckily, I had an iPhone air and this phone.

So the iPhone air died really fast, and this phone lasted forever for like two straight days. And I took a lot of photos and videos on it, and it was excellent. And yeah, I remember that being really, really good. That's definitely a candidate for camera of the year. Do you remember if this orange like Hasselblad colored camera button has like haptics because it's not turned on right now and it feels awful? I have to assume it's happening.

Just a shortcut. I think some of them have also copied the like swiping back and forth to like change. Yeah, camera control stuff. I don't think that's one of them. This one does not have a rotating bezel around the camera. No. But this is a good looking phone. Yeah.

Really, really capable camera system. That's definitely a candidate right there. And then the last thing, which I don't think we should count, but we have to bring up is we just kind of got the first looks at this Huawei Mate 90 Pro Max that has a $900. They're calling it the Z10 camera attachment. Okay, this should not count. No.

Okay, I'm glad we're on the same page. Yeah, so they made a... This has actually happened before. Yeah. I think it's happened a couple times, actually. They made a lens that you attach to the phone, but it has its own sensor in it. So it's like a 24 to 200 millimeter lens or something.

It's a one inch sensor. And I know it has 10x optical zoom. Yeah. So what happens is you screw it on to the back of the phone and it uses your phone as a viewfinder. But it's not using the cameras on your phone. It has its own camera built in. So you're connecting to it

and then you take pictures with this. It's a whole camera. It just doesn't look like one because it's sort of closed off. Yeah, I think it actually is like a, is it magnetically? hooks onto the back and then you screw the lens on, it's like... Something like that.

Yeah. But yeah, I... It is not part of the phone, the Huawei phone. It actually only works with like some special edition version of this Huawei phone. It's like the collector's edition or something, yeah. But that is a really funny concept because we've seen this before. I'm trying to remember, was it Sony that did this? Yeah.

It was Sony like QX10 or something like that. I don't remember, let me get it, but it was Sony. So last time I saw this, it latched onto the phone. and it again had its own sensors in it and you could connect it and you'd pair it with your phone your phone became the viewfinder and that was supposed to be a better sensor

you could take pictures with. I do think Zhaomi did this a couple years ago. Yeah, yeah. Jaumi did this last year actually at CES I think. It was bad last time. Yeah, it looks much different.

This one looks way nicer in the sense of how it physically looks but who really cares about that unless it takes a nice picture. Marquez, that was a crazy poll it was the Sony QX10. Yeah. 12 years ago.

Because I reviewed this and I was like hoping it would be great and it was a real pain. It did not connect very smoothly to the phone. It didn't take much better pictures in the phone. It was a cool idea, but it did not work very well. But you looked cool using it. Yeah. Yeah. You felt cool sometimes because you thought you were going to take a sweet photo with that big zoom lens.

But yeah. Anyway, that will not qualify for camera here. I think cameras got the most fun distinctions this year. good stuff in there. Competition. Then there's a value award. So we changed it because it used to be best budget phone. Now it's value award because what is budget anyway? You know, 200, 300, 400, whatever. Best value award. We have lots of players in this space every year and it almost ends up just being like most interesting good value phone. I mean, this is a year where it's the hardest to pick it because everything, things have literally gotten more expensive since they launched. We just talked

about it. So, you know, this is usually something where we talk about MSRP, but MSRP at launch isn't even how much they cost anymore. So it's such a hard thing in Ramageddon to think about of a good value right now because it's not a lot of things are a great value. Yeah, I kind of think that the, we have all the usual players in this space. Like we always get Moto Gs at $225 or whatever. We always get now we always get CMF phones. We always get nothing phones. We always get, we always get like Galaxy A series phones. And a lot of them are pretty predictable. And I don't want to fall into the trap of just being like,

well, this one has the best specs, so it just wins. Because I think the experience of using a budget phone sometimes is more than just the specs. Well, CMF's not releasing a phone in 2026. That's fine. I mean, there's going to be, you get like, like the A series is very predictable. They're just pairing down what you know from a Galaxy S26 and it's just going to be the A50, whatever they do. Like, that's a very predictable.

safe budget phone. But that's almost like the most boring possible option. And I'm curious, I'm going to sort of, what I usually end up doing is digging back through the whole year of phones under a certain number and seeing like which ones actually were good, which ones were interesting, did something unique at that price. That's more likely to win an award for best budget phone or best value phone. I think it's the one we're going to have to do the most research on because we didn't cover a lot of, you know, more budget things this year.

and we'll probably have to go find what people are enjoying, yeah, under X amount of dollars. That's 26 Ultra, best budget phone. What price, if you had to guess off the top of your head. Mariah, don't open this can of worms. What price should win? Oh, no, I was going to say, like, if you were considering a budget phone, like, what price would you start at? Or, like, you know, go under. So the law of diminishing returns, I think the, I think the, your phone isn't going to get much better bar is at like $800.

I think once you get to $800, you can't really, your phone's not going to get much better than the phones you get for $800. But if you're looking for value and you're looking to get significantly less than $800, I think, I think $500 and under there's some good value down there. I think $500 is the number for a long time that I've thought of with price increases. Like those phones we were used to being at $500 are probably closer to $6 right now. Yeah. The problem with the can of worms I'm talking about is no matter what we say, people are going to say, that's not budget. Budget is under 350. Yeah, two is under children.

So yeah, that's why we kind of changed value and, like, defining a number bites us in. So that TinyPod might win two awards this year. $79. It is a, it is a case, technically. That makes it hard to win. I don't know. I'm, but yeah. It is interesting.

Like, and again, we're in the United States. States where an MSRP of a phone doesn't matter as much because especially the people looking for just give me whatever works are definitely going to a carrier and not and paying monthly. Like no one in the U.S. is really buying phone straight up unless you're probably listening to this podcast. Yeah. The people listening are like, what do you mean I do? Yeah.

But yeah. Yeah. Well then, um, okay. 500-ish. This, uh, best battery category. Wow, there's so many good ones for this year. I have a question. Yeah.

We still should consider 1 plus 16 in everything. It'll just make you even more sad when it wins a bunch of awards for all the things it's getting. Yeah. So best battery is, obviously you wanted to have

phenomenal battery life, but then also includes some of the other things that make a good battery experience. It lasts all day. It doesn't kill background apps in doing so. It charges fast,

ideally. Maybe it has wireless charging. It's just super convenient to charge all the time. Maybe it has magnets in the back, so it's super easy to charge. Stuff like that. I want to include all of that in my best battery award.

But yeah, the 1 plus 16 has a, is it 9,000 million power battery now? I think 9,000 or 8,800 or something. Like, we've got a lot of phones with ridiculously big batteries now. That X-9 Ultra, like I said,

lasted me two straight days plus traveling. Like, it was a dog. It lasted a long time. And I think that's a 7,500 or something. But that dog in them award. It's got that dog in it. And then this one plus 15, which I've been using since last year, is still, like, a phenomenal battery.

And we've gotten phones that are, like, running laps around it. It's crazy. I got to pick which one is legitimately just, like, a two-day-long, heavy-used one. Do you know what probably would get two days? What? The tiny phone? Tiny pod. No, the Apple Watch battery is noticeably less than.

Yeah, but it's not doing heart rate sensing. Oh, if it's in your pocket? That's, it does it? If it's sitting in your pocket, what is it doing? The other one is called the mini phone Ultra. That's the one that specifically for the Apple Watch Ultra. And I think, yeah, yeah. Oh.

Damn, that's kind of sick, not going to lie. So you put your Apple Watch in a case. It's got a flat screen. This is so Adam Corp. I can't even. Wow. He's. Although this could not go for best deal because it does, it is $800 because of the

The case is $800? No, no, no. The Apple Watch Ultra inside. Oh, the case is $38, but you need an Apple Watch Ultra. Yeah, that's fair enough. That's funny. Yeah, there will be some interesting ones for Best Battery. Okay, next up, best design.

Best design. Best design. I have one in terms of just like, honestly, coolest-looking solid materials, the nothing phone 4A pro. Yes. The funny thing is, in neither of the colors I'm holding up because the silver color is the best,

this is pink and this is black. Yeah. But the silver color is the best looking. I think the keeping the transparency to just the camera plateau and then making the rest of it metal for a fairly decent price, I think this is designed great. My biggest gripe, that one button is rounded and the rest of them are flat, but I think that actually does serve a purpose of, well, they say it's the easier to find the AI button, except it's the only button on that side. So I don't think I need it to be round. I just know it's on the left. But I think these are really nice designed phones.

I agree. Now, here's the complication with this. Yes. This has always been the most objective and most complicated award for me. This one's changed names more than once. It used to be the best built phone, like durability award, and then like build quality, and now it's design. And design includes so many things. It includes functionality.

It includes durability, potentially repairability, and aesthetics. The metal on the bottom of that phone means no wireless charging. If it has a design compromise, can it win? Yes, but makes it harder to justify. So I love the way that phone looks. Aesthetically, it wins, but that's one of the compromises it has. There's other things that are just like, we have these crazy thin, like folding phones now that could win a design award because they've done great there.

We have, well, there's no new thin, thin, thin phones, like the iPhone air that won this last year. There's no new S-26 Edge or iPhone Air 2. But, yeah, design award is, that is, I'm all over the place with this one. Design's always tough. There's a feature I can think of, which is, I think one day, especially with big and small-phone category getting a little more boring and it's hard. Like, I think in the future, a potential new category could just be the best feature that launches in a year of like what actually is like a really cool thing be plighted.

And I do think the S-26. privacy display is really cool. The reason I don't think it can win best design is because it actively makes something else worse on the phone, which is hurting the resolution and quality a little bit. But I especially like the S-26 one over the Jaume 18 Pro Max one. I just didn't think that worked quite as well when I saw it. But I was like genuinely impressed with how well the S-26, it's only an ultra, right? Only ultra, yeah.

That privacy just play was really cool. When I was editing that video, I was like, I want this online. phone now. Like, it's been a long time since I've seen, like, a feature. And I'm like, wow, that's, like, really great. I think they could have so easily done just hardware-wise what every privacy, like, screen protector could do. But the fact that they're making, they're localizing it to, like, notifications and

certain things or even just certain programs, I think that was a really smart idea. Yeah, that was a really good feature. I don't know if we're, yeah, is it a separate, like, best feature. S-26 can't win because it's the exact same photos is it for four years. Yeah. It's, yeah. It's, yeah, that is the other thing. I think a feature, a feature award would be pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah, we'll have to, I'll play with this one. Best design is, uh, I'm also going to listen to comments, but that's a, that's one that I don't have a frontrunner for yet. Best design, I think, peaked with the essential phone. There's also, a lot of phones are like kind of the same design. Like the big, look at the big circle on the back of the Apollo and then a big circle on the back of the Xiaomi.

Yes. And I accidentally pulled out the, well, the, and the other. fun I talked about in terms of legacy camera collaborations is the Vivo, which looks just... Big circle. I mean, they're all supposed to be cameras, so I guess that makes sense. But yeah, big old circle. It's the Minions phone. The Mity.

All right. Best Foldable is another award. There's a lot of options this year. Finally. Because it's different. We arguably have three, I guess we've always had passport, but like we really got the more like squat passport style come back along with regular and a lot. with flips. Yeah.

I mean, I think it's between duo and Xiaomi 18 fold. Okay. They just seem to, you know, be the newer thing, which maybe that's recency bias, but they're just the more fun thing. Foldables are fun.

Well, don't forget about Fold eight. I was going to say, bro. Full date? Yeah. I remember full date, but full date, my issue was full date. It was like two months ago.

Full date, though, is worse than the other thing that came out with it, which is... Full date. Full Day Ultra. That's why I don't like it. I think if Fold 8 was same specs as Full Day Ultra and like hammered home, I'm still like, you know, like flagship level as my older brother. But I'm just, you get to pick your form factor. I would like it a lot more.

Interesting. Yeah. There's also the Huawei Pura X Max, which is another like exact same shape as the duo and the passport stuff. I don't know. I think the Fold 8 had a lot going. And you said, worse specs, but like it has, I think, one less camera and less battery than the big screen. But I think that sacrifice was worth it to make a phone that's like funner to hold and use and has like this great aspect ratio when it's open. I think it looks nicer. Looks nicer. Than the duo and the 80s.

Oh. Cheaper than the ultra. Price probably is super. Are you considering just hardware or like also are developers making like actual apps that utilize these spaces? Everything. That's definitely a part of it. Android's had folding stuff for so long that that world is kind of a little bit more evolved, but also messy. iPhone Duo is going to come out, and we expect to see a big response from developers, and we kind of hope to see a bunch of really good iPhone Duo apps that could push us in that direction. That animation, though. That animation, though, it's pretty nice. They're also, capability-wise, all pretty similar to each other. Like iPhone Duo, dual cameras. Full date, dual cameras. Yeah, I guess when you compare full date to duo.

Very similar. Like, I think it looks way better than both of them. Which one of you think is better? The full date. I think the two vertical cameras looks so much nicer than the horizontal cameras on Duo and, uh, Xiaomi. Yeah. And I like the symmetrical front versus asymmetrical front.

True. It looks, I haven't held it in a while, but I also haven't held the duo at all. It's really light. The fold eight is way. lighter than the others. Yeah. I think you may have convinced me. Full date probably is... I think it's my favorite that I've used this year. And I haven't spent much time with the duo, so we have to obviously reserve judgment there. But I think a lot of the things I like about the fold eight are a little bit more unique to it, how light it is, the dual camera layout,

stuff like that. And Samsung has years of experience of making the software functionality. I just wish they could have gotten the no crease down the way Apple did because, God, that's screen on the inside of the full, of the duo. the best inside screen. It's so funny that they focus so much of being like, can't see the crease, but you are going to see this dot for the under display selfie camera.

They had such an opportunity to be like, don't see anything, but they're like, I'm going to make something else also pop up in certain bits of light. Yeah, it's not not noticeable, but it is less noticeable than maybe the worst creases that are out there. Creases are generally getting really good across the way.

So I'm not really mad about the crease. But yeah, what Apple did with their screens and the anti-reflective coding and just using it really liked that screen on the inside. So, yeah, we'll use it more obviously later in the month, but that is interesting. I'm so interested to see how much you like the right-aligned menu system in the front screen. And I think that could be, it's either going to be like, this is a great idea or you should have just put the selfie camera in the middle and called it a day. And to see what sort of experiences app developers come up with for iOS. iPhone Duo. Because I use, there's a bunch of interesting iPhone apps that I'm curious if they're going to do like fun stuff on the duo or if it's just going to look like a iPhone app or an iPad app.

We'll see. Okay. So there's three more awards. There's Most Improved, Bust of the Year and MVP. I've got one down already. I think these are my most important ones. You got one for Most Improved? No, Bust of the Year. Oh, Bust of the Year? Go ahead and- Pixel 11 Pro. Don't even debate it. The Pro? Highlight was the biggest failure of the year, by far. And the Pro is such a waste of money compared to the 11. And the 11 already is more expensive and still stupid. And this is coming from pixel user. You make a lot of good points.

It is definitely, this was the year of pixel and pro-pixel being the least differentiated. And highlight, yeah, nothing good there. So I feel that. Is it the bust of the whole year considering all the other phones? I got to actually think about that. I mean, that's what bus is becoming harder because less phones are taking big risks. And so you have to just actually nail the things that you're doing when you want. Calling highlight a risk is wild.

It's been the thing phones have had for over a decade ago. Like they could have just done it right the first time. And we probably would have been like, damn, that was one of the best features of the year. The lowest bar possible. and they still slam their forehead on it. It's tough. The bluey phone. If you get Bluey Phone Bust of the Year.

It didn't come out this year, actually. That's funny. You have to consider that one for all the categories. Yeah, the Bluey Phone has to be in the race. Or just like it should be on the side of the table and just never mentioned. Virtue phone. Virtue. Virtue phone.

Oh, my God. Wow. Yeah. It's been a long year. Yeah. I'm willing to say that the Pixel 11 Pro is on the front page of things I'm considering for bust of the year. The Trump phone was this year, right? Trump phone was this year.

Damn. That's a great point. That probably doesn't count because the phone on the base of it is probably seven years old. Yeah. Unfortunately, that makes it worse. It came out this year. Well, then there's Most Improved. So Most Improved is another one where it's like, all right, who actually did something

like really different? The Privacy Display on the X-26 Ultra might be enough by itself to make it most improved, or at least be on the front running, for Most Improved, because people don't do that much different from year to year with their phones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are the iPhone 18 Pro at, a variable aperture and a 2-9 meter chip? Is that? Bigger vapor chamber.

Most improved? Yeah, bigger vapor chamber, which is great. Like, that's three things. Three things. That's true. We don't often see three things. 20 minutes ago, you were like, the S-26, we can't even talk about a design award for it because they haven't changed it in five years.

Well, the base S-26 is, there's nothing new about that design. S-26-plus, nothing new about the design. S-26 Ultra. Barely new design, new screen feature, new chip. That's basically the three things that are new with it. You look at a lot of the budget phones, like the nothing phone, where they play around with the design more, they changed more things.

Well, their issue is, is last year the nothing phone three, their fan base hated, and then they didn't release a flagship this year, so there is no nothing phone four. I don't think we can consider for a pro the same phone being improved. So they were ready. A lot of times the people who win most improved for the people who essentially won a bust the year before or were in runner-up for bust,

and then they made a change. Nothing was like, nah. Yeah. So on that note, the bust of the year last year was the iPhone 16E. Well, yeah. The 17E is a better phone, but not good enough to be like a most improved winner, I wouldn't say. Not a celebrated. Yeah, not exactly a trophy winner.

So yeah, another one that will have to do some digging. for. It might be... One plus 16 is so sad. Not coming to the U.S. Well, it's hard to improve over the phone that you're literally still using, so it obviously was great. True, but they somehow did. They got the 2-9mm

chip in there. They got the 9,000-m-ampere battery in there. They got the screen on the back, for some reason. Don't know what that does, but it looks cool. 15-1-oh- No. 15 didn't win anything. It's just the phone that I used the most. I was going to say, I thought, thought it one phone of the year last year, but that was iPhone 17. It was pretty close to battery.

Oh, one battery award. It won battery. Yeah, it was great for battery. If iPhone, or sorry, if One Plus 15 or 16 wins most improved, I don't see how it doesn't win phone of the year. Fair enough, yeah. So, phone of the year is like the MVP award. I know. How can you give your most valuable phone to a phone that's not even coming to the U.S.? Or you can really use in the U.S.? That would be a real bummer. What would win phone of the year? Okay, there's a couple of storylines iPhone Duo is a storyline because folding phones have been around for a long time but then when Apple jumps in it kind of brings that category to the forefront of people's attention

even though it's been around for forever now suddenly we may get a bunch more people interested foldables good folding apps etc so that's a storyline um the one plus is kind of a storyline but it's like in the opposite direction like it's not available like one plus is kind of shrinking their footprint and not shipping to the US anymore. And like they made it in a really, really good phone, but I'll never be able to use it. And that's really sad. There's also the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max, which was just like, hey, everyone who did something cool, we're going to put them all in the same phone and just make a behemoth of a feature set phone.

Yeah, they doubled down on just one-uping everything and did a really good job. Sounds like a good storyline. And then, yeah, phones that sort of get forgotten about from earlier in the year, like the S-26 Ultra with the privacy screen. or the Find X9 Ultra with the Hossoblod collab and the incredible battery life or the great design of our nothing phones that we've seen for the past couple. It's a good design. It's not a MVP level design, but it's interesting. Yeah, I don't have a front runner for this either, but I'm keeping an eye.

Carl's ears just perked up when you said nothing in the MVP. I really consider everything for MVP because I know it's not, I always say this, It's not the best phone of the year award. It's not the most capable best specs you win. Here's the trophy. It's the phone of the year. And that's like all the things that come with, like what happened this year,

the stories of the year. Maybe it was just like they finally did the thing we were asking them to do for years, like the iPhone 17 last year. So things like that all factor in. So I have to think about that too. But yeah, I'm fascinated for what the comments will be on this episode.

Because I think people always, feel strongly about things that they think should win certain awards for sure, definitely. And we'll see a bunch of people disagreeing on what they think those things should be. Yes. It's also okay if the phone you own doesn't win an award. It's still a good phone. If you're enjoying it. Yeah. Congrats. There's lots of really, really good. It could ABC test phone of the year. Oh, no. That would be terrible. A.B. Test the video. I think that what happens is a lot of the best, most boring phones don't win any awards because they're already really good and they

take no risks and they change nothing. They're not most improved. They're not the bus. They're not the phone of the year. They're not the design award. They're just boring. Like, I just won an S-26. All right, fine. That's a solid phone. Nothing boring. Like next. Like phones like that, like the iPhone 18. We don't have one yet, but the 18 pro, hey, good phone. Design award? No. Best battery, no. Best specs? Best cameras? No. But like, pretty good at a lot of stuff. So it's not going to win awards for that. The issue is, is like, the goal of almost every major phone company is, they want to eventually be the boring phone because that means they're selling so much

that they can just continue to be a default. And like boring probably means a ton of money. So like if you're doing all these crazy features, it's usually because you're trying to catch up and market share. So Samsung is just dominating the Android market. They get to just be the same S23 plus plus. Yeah.

Yeah, you've got to take risks to get to the top. And then once you get to the top, you don't want to take any risk to lose your spot. And then someone else is going to take risk to get to the top. So playing with a lead, yeah. Yeah. All right.

Well, let us know in the comments, how you feel. Of course, we will be reading those, and in a few short weeks we'll be starting to pick them out. But of course, we have a little bit more to talk about. So let's take a quick break and do a trivia question. Do you guys want, they're both tech questions. The way you said it like that makes me think one's not really. Okay.

I want the less tech question. You want the less tech question? No, no. Marka's going to have the more tech question. Well, here's the thing. The less tech question has more points available for it. More points on a No David week? I think we have to assume.

I need more points. All right. Yeah. After the break, we're going to talk about MMOs. And every single person who works here asked me to do an MMO question. But here on the Waveform podcast, we believe in fairness. And so I went on a bunch of forums looking for the original 2004 minimum specs required to run. World of Warcraft.

Oh boy. I need you guys to tell me, closest delta, this is not Price's right rules, these are Delta. How much video memory do you need? How much hard drive space do you need? And how much RAM do you need to play?

World of Warcraft on the minimum specs in 2004. Fun fact, in the minimum of specs from that year, they specify that you need at least a 56K modem. hilarious that you could get half a megabyte per second. I'm pretty sure. And still play World. Wow came on three or four discs as well. If that helps.

Wow. But yeah, I remember putting multiple CDs in my computer to download. See, I'm at a huge disadvantage already because you have installed and played this game before. Yeah, but I, this is on like a family computer. Which means you've got the minimum requirements right there. I'm just looking for context. Oh, I don't remember the minimum requirement. Also, actually, this was a.

surprisingly difficult thing to find online. And so I'd like to give a shout out to the Blizzard forums user, Kruge. Krooge. Thank you, Krooge. Thanks, Krooge. You couldn't find, like, did it have it on the box? Man, I remember that box.

It was in the manual. The intro sequence when you first booted up, wow, the, like, cinematic intro of OG World Warcraft chills. Can I guess for David this week? Because I don't know the answer. Yeah. You could. However, I think I know what David is doing right now,

and I kind of want to just call him out of the blue on the podcast. And see if he knows? Yeah. Or just text him and be like, you have five minutes to respond to this text message. All right. Well, we'll have those answers at the end as well, like usual. We'll be right back. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive.

The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and Game Sense remind you to play responsibly, 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. All right, welcome back. This next part of the podcast will probably mostly be dominated by Mariah and myself, because we're going to talk about MMOs. But you did say you know MMO stands for. Massive multiplayer online. Yes. Almost always essentially also means MMRP, which is the role-playing game. Correct. Yes.

So, oh, man, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to condense this. And the hardest part about condensing one of the most convoluted video game types possible is I'm going to get flamed. Is this a new story? Sort of. Or a new thing that's happening? It's a mix of a bunch of new things with your absolute favorite category possible, which is nostalgia. Oh. Yes.

So let's go. See if you follow me at the end. I'll kind of see what you think. in the last couple months we've gotten a new World of Warcraft game announcement and we also just got at Roonfest. A new RoonScape announcement. Of course. Roonfest is something that Mori and I will be finding a way for convincing you to send us to it for studio or something. For business.

For business. Purely business. It is in London. That part will be a little tough. Anyway, World of Warcraft and Roonscape are kind of like two of the bigger MMORPGs out there. there. And both of them, you know, have a great player base and a lot of them are focused on nostalgia. But with these two announcements, in my eyes, it feels like World of Warcraft is trying to be Roonscape and Roomscape is trying to be World of Warcraft. And I'll explain why. All right,

let me bring you, let me, uh, re-evaluate myself here. Paint him a scene. Okay, yeah. So Runecape is a game that launched in 2007. It was a browser based MMO. It was, it was really popular because a lot of it was free. It was actually you could, it was linked on mini clip. So a lot of people found it through mini clip. It was browser based so you could play it at school, which is probably a huge plus.

Almost zero computer requirements because it's browser base. And even when you did pay for the subscription, it was like $5 a month. So fairly cheap. Lots of stuff to do in it. World of Warcraft on the other hand, like Ellis said in the trivia question, launched in 2004

or backed by, I mean, made by Blizzard. So we're talking about massive gaming company here. Also made on existing IP. Yes, correct. From the Warcraft RTS games. And, you know, this was an expensive. You had to pay for the actual game. And it was $15 a month.

But this is like more modernized of that time because we had actual graphics. We had incredible scaling open worlds. It was first player for a third person, roaming a lot more where RuneScape is click-based, you know, a much more lax combat style and everything. Okay. And both of these games, you know, kind of have had their heydays and then of all both went astray

a bit. Roonscape kept trying to modernize. It changed the way combat handled. It changed the way graphics handled. It turned into what we now know as RuneScape 3. In 2013, Jagex launched something Jagex makes RuneScape, called Old School RuneScape. which essentially was, thank you, Mariah, bringing back the 2007 Runecape that we all knew and loved.

Yeah, they said, do you like nostalgia? Yes. Do you have money? Yeah, I'll say you some. Come back and one thing they've done great since then, that game is still running, is they just kept what was good and what everyone liked about old Runecape,

but still added updates to it. There's still progression and what they call permanent progression kind of where like you grind really hard to try and, and get something and that thing stays relevant, even though they're going to release new items, new bosses, new raids, all new things to do. Can I ask a dumb question? Always. I'm going to get flamed.

I already, no, it's okay. You're not going to get flame because you're saying you don't know what's going on. Yeah. Can you win? No. I mean, I mean, depends. It's to say. You can't, in this game, you can totally win.

Yeah, there's a game over section. Because the way you're describing it, because when I picture a game, I'm like, all right, it's competitive. people are trying to win and then you win. But as you describe the game, it sounds like, oh yeah, you're just kind of roaming around doing stuff and then you buy the expansion pack and you can roam around more and then do more stuff.

Then you can scam 12-year-olds. Free gilded armor. So like RuneScape, the ultimate goal is you have, what is it, like 26 different skills that you can all get to 99, which takes a metric piss load of time. I mean... You can basically max out everything, all skills,

do every quest in the game. For some people, they don't consider that being done. But I would say that's more than enough. Yeah, there's more to do because then there's like, there's collection logs of different types of gear. Some of the gear is just for show, essentially. There's a notorious, like, meme going around that it's a game you never quit because, like, the game really never ends.

So it's like people will come crawling back years later. I'm in RuneScape recovery right now. So you only take breaks. RuneScape does such a good job, though, of keeping the old style. releasing updates that are still to what all the players want and not making all the work you did totally useless. World of Warcraft, on the other hand, they're the ones, or they re-released something called Wow Classic in 2019. I got really into it again because it was literally just re-released the old game that everyone loved, max level 60, slowly roll out the old raids, everything used to do.

The issue is then they made the same mistake of they continued to launch all of the old expansion packs they did in the past. And now we lost this, you know, all the stuff you worked for again to get in 60. So now both of these have launched new things. World of Warcraft is launching something called Wow Forever, which is essentially bring back the old World of Warcraft that launched in 2004. But they're going to actually update the thing while guaranteeing a level 60 cap, which is what the original one was. So they're focused on this like permanent progression, horizontal progression,

whatever you want to call it, where you work and work, and it's beneficial to do all these things. You don't lose everything. So in my eyes, World of Warcraft is like, what did RuneScape do really well? I want to launch the new game. So they're adding in professions, there's all these new items you can get from only grinding professions.

They're opening up that part of the game more. They're adding different skills to characters that have been around for a while, a new race. New things that still are part of the old game, the nostalgia game that everyone likes. because they keep ruining their games. And now they're relaunching that, where RuneScape decided to just launch a new game

called RuneScape 4 that's currently in development. Won't be launched for a new year, but it's made on the Unreal Engine. It's going to be the same world and characters and general storyline in a different time, but we're finally going to get the modernized graphics. So when someone decides, hey, I want to play Runecape, if you don't know about it or have the nostalgia for it,

if you went into old-school Runecape, you would probably be like, What the, what is this low-poly ass like? Yeah, so basically like most of the demographic is familiar and has the nostalgia for the super low-poly and can do imagine jumping from that to Unreal Engine new game. This vibe, this low-poly vibe into a modernized version of it on Unreal Engine. So I'm really excited for both of these. I have two questions.

Okay. I rambled so much there. My two questions, and there might not be real answers to this, but one, is the, there, because, you know, kids growing up these days, playing games, didn't play old school runescape. Do those kids clamor for the old runescape, or do you think they are just on the new runescape? Like, if you were to start playing runescape today and you played the newest one, do you think they go, ew, this sucks?

Give me the, like, new one that looks like the old one. Or do you think they wouldn't care for that at all? I think actually right now old school runescape's more popular, even in the same. if you're a new player because there seems to be this back and forth with at least streamers, which streamers kind of essentially help control a lot of popularity of games, right? So like, wow and RuneScape keep hitting these lulls of content, and a lot of the streamers play both of them. There's just one, you're not going to watch it.

But if anyone out there is interested in this, a YouTuber named Jimmy J1MMI plays both of these a lot and does really great content just discussing the changes between both of them. But we'll see a lot of things happen where World of Warcraft launched hardcore mode, which is if you die, you lose your character. There's a lot of dying in MMO. So all these streamers and YouTubers got together and made a guild in this hardcore mode and turned a bunch and made a bunch of content. And then once that started getting stale, a bunch of them went over to Runecape and started playing Runecape. And Runecape had this like huge surge. So they're kind of going between both of them.

And I think old school is already just more popular. This new game, I do think if you discover Roonscape, especially if they, Mara, do you think there'll be a free to play world in RS4? Dude, there better be, I don't know. That's the thing. If you, you can hook people with free. And when I say, like, there's free in membership, membership unlocks a bunch, but there's so much to do in the free version.

But if you're asking Marquez, if the young folk are playing these games. I don't know. There's definitely... But Roonscape and stuff, like, there's surely other things. I would argue all they need to do is see a streamer watching it and then be like, oh, I want to play with you.

I'd say they're more likely to be influenced by someone on Twitch playing Roonscape. Yeah, unless you had like an older sibling who played it and then told you about it, you probably wouldn't really know what it is. Rooscape came out in 2004 or 2007, at this point parents might be showing their kids. Here's my other question. I'm going to describe to you a game that I used to play when I was

in high school. Okay. And you can tell me if it's closer to runescape or world of warcraft. Okay. So the mechanics of this game, this is, this game is called Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007. And here's what happened. I, I obviously played golf growing up. And I had like a not that powerful PC that I installed this on. This game came on three discs, three CDs. Nice. And I install the game and basically let me build my own character and then go play any number of like

kind of photorealistic golf courses. But it also let me play the game as Tiger Woods or as Davis Love the Third or as VJ Singh or any number of those characters that had different sort of attributes and you could swing their swing and like play the golf course as them. So if you play it as your amateur

character, you'd probably not hit the ball as far as not as fun. You play as Tiger, you're like, wow, I'm a god. When I first got that game and started playing, I didn't have nearly a powerful enough GPU. So when I loaded that game up and installed it, my character was a series of like vectors and like colorful lines on the screen, but it didn't actually load all the polygons to like see their face. And I still could see the golf course and the ball. So I would play the game as this bunch of lines and rays and like I'd see the swing and I actually went in and customized their face

and their clothes and bought accessories. To not even see it? To not even see it. And then one day I got enough allowance money to get a new GPU for that computer and I installed it and I loaded up the game for the first time and saw my character for the

first time. He looked nothing like what I thought he looked like but the general tones and colors were correct but like everything else is a surprise. But then I went on to like play the game with a new appreciation. I would like spend earned money in the game to get like a new glove or a new club or a new ball and you could play new courses. You could never win like you could compete and win a tournament and yeah, you won the tournament and now there's another tournament next week. So like you're not winning the

game but you could always play new courses. You could always buy new accessories for your player. You could always upgrade your GPU and see more. There was also future versions of the game that had more micro-transactions and higher-quality graphics and that maybe made people crave the nostalgia of the 07 version of the game a little bit. So in the terms of how you're longing for it, nostalgia-wise, that's like the RuneScape perk, I guess? It's like we all had that moment.

You know, we wanted to, I remember the first time I got my first dragon weapon was like the coolest thing ever. And that's, yeah. The rest of it is more RPG versus MMRP because there's no online. So imagine you had, you built your character. And now all of those golf courses, other people online were also had all of their characters at the golf course. So maybe you would team up with four people on a card that would be like running a dungeon. I think that was a thing in later versions of the game, and I needed to have a certain level network connection to play at the same time as other people.

And the most important part of that online game would be you get your, you know, your really sick new golf clubs or clubs and stuff, and it's equipped to your character. The most important part is then when you stand at the clubhouse and everyone just stands around and you look at all the, you like, you. You stand there asserting dominance by how much better your gear is. We call that bank standing. So much of MMOs are just standing in the popular places to show off the stuff you worked for and doing actually nothing. Nice.

Yeah. Yeah. That's why MMOs are so great. It takes so much time to play RuneScape. I kind of just want to be in the world again and screw around for a while and not commit to anything. But that's not going to be out for a few more years. But, you know, maybe you'll send Mariah and I to Runefest and we'll have a good time there. company card, we'll make a studio video.

You know, I'll spin that in my head a few times. I'll think about it. I appreciate you. Yeah. Thank you, Marquez. Yeah. Well, you know what it's time for now. I do.

The end. Andrew, you said something earlier that I wanted to draw attention to. Okay. I'm scared. You made sure to specify that you were referring to a metric piss load. Oh. Which sort of implies the existence of both a... Imperial?

Well, I was going to say, like, the mega and giga piss loads. That's part of the tier. system. I just thought that was really funny. Oh. I don't know why I used the term pistol all the time. I think it's my way of trying that to curse on the podcast, which probably just makes it more offensive. Because everyone's like, what is that?

Guys, LG has made display panels for two Apple products. What were they? He's thinking. Someone else is writing. Also, they probably made displays for more Apple products, but these are

the two that I could find like industry trade journals being like LG made these. LG display made these. And, uh, you know, it's just so hard to track down Apple suppliers. You think something Marquez said before already. Unless you're a big Quo. All right. I'm going to give one point per correct answer. Who wants to read first? I'll go first. Mark as this. Uh, an iPhone at some point. Okay. Um, I think it was an iPad, damn. And I said I'mek. but if anyone online can find proof that Marquez is right, I will award him the point in retrospect. I just spent a lot of time and these are the only two I could really confirm.

Andrew. I heard a MacBook and a home pod. Oh my God. The answer I was looking for was the Apple Watch. Oh, I would not have missed that. They made the OLED in that. Yeah. And the Pro Display XDR.

Oh. Pro Display XDR. That is an LG panel. An LG displays panel. No, I don't know anymore, do it? Wait, no, wasn't it the... Oh, it was the Pro Display Xterre? Because that was a 5, 6K.

Well, okay, so I remember the LG Ultra Fine 5K came out, and everyone was like, oh, the same panel, but smaller slice of it, were they referring to the Pro Display? I don't know. Because it doesn't have the same specs, but the idea was they had the same scaling... Damn, I missed...

I forgot that story. There was a whole story. about that. For three more potential points to get today, I need you to tell me the video memory, hard drive space, and minimum RAM required to run 2004's World of Warcraft. Wait. Storage, V-RAM, and... And RAM.

And RAM. They... Wait. Wait. What? Sorry, we're having a... Technicality issue. All right.

Because I'm trying to get you a point. All right. We're doing closest delta. I have two gigs of storage. That's definitely too high. 256 of V-Ram megabytes. And 512 megabytes of RAM. I think I'm too high on everything.

I wrote one gig of storage, 8 megabytes of V-Ram, and 64 megabytes of RAM. He said one gigabyte of storage. One gigabyte of storage. All right. Let's see if David is driving. I'm on the waveform podcast. Well, that's crazy. You're on the waveform podcast. David, I need to you to answer two trivia questions for me. Are you ready?

Okay, I'm ready. Can you name two products that LG, two Apple products that LG made the display for? Studio display XDR? No, I'm sorry. Pro display. He can, in fact, hear you. I can't hear Marquez, but I didn't hear him. Just get it wrong. Just get it wrong.

Apple products. All right. I'm going to have to cut you off. I'm so sorry. Okay. Wait. I'm going to say iPhone 4S. Probably not, but if it turns out to be right, we'll give it to you. All right, question number two. I need you. The answers I was looking for were pro display XDR and Apple Watch. Didn't I say that? No, you said studio display XDR. Yeah, really?

You did. I have it on tape. Next question is going to be so confused by this question. David. I was thinking the pro display. Okay, whatever. Are you familiar with the hit game World of Warcraft? I'm familiar. All right.

I need you to tell me the minimum hard drive space, V-RAM, and regular RAM memory of the 2004 release of World of Warcraft. Minimum hard-dried space, I'm going to say two gigabytes. Two gigabytes, hard drive space. RAM requirement, four gigabytes. RAM requirement, four gigabytes. Okay. And then V RAM?

V RAM. V RAM. Two gigabytes. All right. Is everyone ready for the answers? Yes. The first one, we're going to do hard drive space. Andrew, you said two gigabytes.

Marquez, you said one gigabyte. David, you said two gigabytes. Yep. The correct answer is four gigabytes. Oh, my. David and Andrew tied and get the point. How did they both? updating the score. That's David and Andrew. Get one point. Next one. Let's do V-RAM. Andrew,

you said 256 megabytes. Marquez, you said eight megabytes. David, four gigabytes? I said four-gigabytes. Oh, sorry. My bad. Marquez has gotten this point. You need 32 megabytes of V-RAM to play. Wow. Geez. Okay. That's it. I'll take it. Okay. And finally, RAM. Andrew, you said, 512 megabytes. Marquez, you said 64 megabytes. I think Markaz is on the money. And David, you said two gigabytes of RAM. Do I have that correct?

Yeah. Marquez gets the point. Wait, or I said, I think I said four gigabytes of RAM, but I said two gigabytes of V RAM. Either way, we need 256 megabytes of RAM, meaning Marquez's 64 megabytes barely inches out, Andrew. We're both like one delta off. in terms of the actual number. Yeah. So I really said studio.

Oh, no, actually. He did. I'll check the tape. He said studio. I'll check the tape to make sure that none of your guesses were accidentally correct. You definitely said.

I know he said studio because then Marquez said into the mic, Pro Display XDR. And I was like, if David then guesses that next, I know he heard Marquez because there's no reason

to guess the pro display after saying studio. All right, quick update on the score while we have you, David. Oh, Mariah is still adding the points. We're going to have the score will be on the screen as we review the tape. It should be respectable now. Audio listeners,

enjoy. Yo! All right. Next day is here. I'm editing the podcast. It's Ellis, if you're audio listening and don't reckon on my voice for some reason. I did not award those trivia points correctly because questions about Apple suppliers are really, really hard to answer. I did more research, and I think I have at least some conclusive answers. So let's get into it. Okay, Marquez, he said iMac G4 and Apple iPhone 4. I don't know why I said Apple. It's an iPhone. They're the only people that have ever made iPhones.

The G4, I was able to find a Mac World article from 2002. That cites some sort of industry trade journal-jurray type publications talking about how a second display supplier had been added to the G4's supply chain. So LG was no longer the only one. so I'm counting that as proof. It's sourced. LG did make displays for the IMACG4. So Marquez gets one point for that. iPhone 4, this one is a little bit harder to track town,

but I was able to find a Korean trade journal press report type thing from 2010 that I had to translate from Korean into English with the safari thing that talked about LG ramping up their production of the retina display in that. phone. So I think that's safe to say LG did produce the displays in both those devices. Next, Andrew. Andrew said the HomePod Mini. There's an I-Fix-it tear-down that I think just shows that the I-fix-it's not actually a screen. It's like an LED controller by Texas Instruments or something like that. So LG's not involved there. He does not get that point. Andrew also said MacBook. And I wrote this question really poorly. I'm just going to accept that answer. LG does make

the displays in the Apple Silicon Macbooks, or at least they did for a long time. I think they're no longer the primary supplier. But again, this stuff is really hard to get actual answers to, which is part of the reason Ming Chi Quo is like so amazing. Like, I don't know how they find out. Anyway, whatever. David, what did David say? David said iPhone 4S, which would be correct because it's the same retina display as in the iPhone

4. They're not the exact same display, which explains why I could not really find that much about the 4S, but I could find stuff about the 4. I'm just going to assume they're the same. We're just going to give David that point. David's other answer was the studio display XDR. It's too new. I just couldn't find supplier data on that.

So he's not going to get that point. So in conclusion, Marquez got two points. Andrew got one point. And David, also got one point. Thanks. David, do you have anything you want to tell the people before you go home? Okay. Do you think World of Warcraft is turning into RuneScape?

And do you think RuneScape's turning into World of Warcraft? I've never played either of those games. I really couldn't tell you. And you would agree Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007 is the best version of the Tiger Woods franchise, right? I'm partial to the 2006 version. I'm going to be honest. I don't think that exists. But okay, I'll, I buy it.

I buy it. We didn't have the technology back there. How many gigs did that require? I don't know. It was three CDs, so something huge. Three CDs? Three CDs, yeah. For a computer game?

Yeah. It was a lot. All right. Thanks for picking up the phone. David. We really appreciate it. Bye, David. From Stowe, Vermont. I'm out. David Amel, everybody. Wait, isn't that the crazy trivia music for like the big ones? I use it all the time.

So anyway, thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Thanks for the trivia points. It is, of course, mid-Tektober, which means we have much more to talk about. And next week's going to be lit. And so will the next one. So will the next one. See you soon. get subscribed if you haven't already get a desk pad

watch those dishes and we'll catch you the next episode Pace I really hope David's waiting Bingo let's go let's go Waitform is produced by Mariah Zank

and Ellis Rovin Reparming of Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro outro music was created by Vain Sil All right great show everybody great show great show great show Thank you so much David appreciate it

Glad to contribute