Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - The Switch 2 Is Coming…Eventually

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

This week, Marques, Andrew, and David start it off with some Nintendo Switch 2 updates before diving into a new killer Oppo phone that really impressed Marques. Then they talk about new CMF products that are being teased as well as the push into free TV that Google is making. Of course, we wrap it all up with trivia. Enjoy! Links: BBC - Tariff list Gizmodo - Hall Effect Joy-cons MKBHD - Oppo video Becca's Light Phone III video Android Authority - Google TV free button Music provided by Epidemic Sound Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Socials: Waveform: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi1 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd 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

Hey, it's Cam Hayward, defensive tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers and host of Not Just Football podcast. The NFL Draft is coming fast and over the next few episodes, we're going to be talking about it, diving deep and also bringing the draft party to Pittsburgh for a special live taping to have some fun. You're not going to want to miss it. So tune in to our show, Not Just Football with me, Cam Hayward, for a special draft coverage brought to you by Verizon Business. You can find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Support comes from ServiceNow. We're for people doing the fulfilling work they actually wanna do. That's why this ad was written and read

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It's your turn. Visit ServiceNow.com. It was rumors, it was rumors, but they do have a startup that they're working on together, I believe, officially. Is this just money laundering? That's the question of the year, my friend. Another sound bite. Perfect. Perfect.

Yeah. What is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to the Nintendo Switch 2 podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Nintendo Switch. I'm Nintendo Switch 2. And I'm Andrew. It rhymed.

I had to keep doing it. Yeah, that's true. I did. Sorry, I'm Marques. And that's Andrew. I'm still Andrew. Oh, my goodness. Yes. We have some Nintendo Switch updates.

Obviously, this is a fast moving environment where lots of things change, and we're recording this a day earlier than usual. So yeah, things may change, but we have updates on that. Things will change. They will change, they will definitely change. We will be wrong, I apologize.

But also, nothing CMF phone, some Google TV streaming updates, and an Oppo Find X8 Ultra first look. Kind of a surprise sleeper. It's a good phone. But first, don't forget to subscribe. We haven't asked you guys to subscribe in a while, but I feel like a lot of people watch the podcast,

and then they don't have to subscribe, because YouTube just serves them the next episode every time it goes up. But if you look down below the video and check and realize you haven't subscribed yet, this is your chance to get that shiny, fun animation and hit the subscribe button. That's true.

Now you'll never have to say that again because I'm going to turn it into a button that I press randomly throughout the episode. Also, if you subscribe and the number goes up, I will be happier. It does make us happy. Yeah. Like, pretty directly. Can happy. Yeah. Like pretty directly. Can confirm.

Yeah. Your parasocial relationship with us. You could actually influence your parasocial relationship with us. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so speaking of switch two, the situation around pre-orders with it

is a thing that's rapidly evolving and interesting, and that's what we were talking about. As of right now, the pre-order is delayed in the US. It's still set to launch on June 5th, but pre-orders are now going to be pushed back a bit, potentially to still start shipping immediately. And that's because tariffs, lots of fun things happening with the state of the economy.

We figured we might as well at least acknowledge tariffs and what they are and what that means, because I think during this entire calendar year and probably beyond, we're gonna have many more conversations about the price of the gadgets that we're talking about and how they are affected by tariffs and many other things with the environment. So here's what a tariff is, at least how I understand it. And then we can

go straight to the prices of things. A tariff is a specific lever that can be pulled by a politician that will essentially be a tax on a good that is imported into the country. So for the United States, for example, lots of things that we buy are manufactured outside of the United States. And so if you're a politician here and you want to encourage more US manufacturing or you want to encourage more people to buy from US suppliers, then what you'll actually do is add a certain percentage of a penalty

for buying from someone outside the US. So let's say US supplier costs $10, China supplier costs $5. I add large tariff to China so that when you buy China product that's actually more expensive than the US, now I'll switch to US supplier. That's the goal of a tariff. It's way more complicated than that.

Building manufacturing facilities in the US is very complicated. Nah, you pretty much nailed it. Extremely complicated. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's basically what is happening in the world of electronics, where now, if you look at, say, the iPhone,

you might have seen some articles about the iPhone's price potentially going up. It won't be $3,000, by the way. But. That is fear mongering. Yeah, but the idea is lots of parts and assembly happen overseas, and so lots of those things will cost more.

And since there is no readily available US equivalent manufacturing, the only choice is the price will have to go up or maybe they eat into their margins, et cetera, et cetera. So the Switch 2 is affected by this. I think the headline that I saw is that the price of the Switch 2 as it exists does not account for tariffs, but we don't expect the price to as it exists does not account for tariffs correct

But we don't expect the price to change. We're not sure yet I think that the reason that so Doug Bowser the CEO of Nintendo of America incredible name I know does it it does not have anything to do. No, it's just pure coincidence And it's like my name is Adam podcast. So it's kind of like a bad coincidence because he's the villain It's like tiger would see a golfer like you don't want to be in the woods and golf But like his name is what it's like. There's lots of great last names. Oh, yeah, good opposite There's a disc golfer with the first name Eagle and in golf scoring. It's great, but I feel like that's a lot of pressure That's true. Yeah Eagle gets an eagle

Anyway Bowser is a villain, but also the CEO who is maybe the villain, but probably not. I don't know. I have no opinion on Doug Bowser, the CEO. Regardless, he went on a bunch of podcasts stuff and some interviews and he basically said, the price of the Switch 2 that is $450 is what we thought it was worth.

That did not account for tariffs. And so while we are assessing the situation in the United States, and that is why we are delaying the pre-orders, they didn't say the price won't change. And I think that's the reason they're delaying the pre-orders is because they need to assess if they need to change the price.

And the timeline of this is April 2nd, the announcement happens, right? Yeah. They announced the price. That night is when we see the numbers of tariffs. And then within that week, we got the delay for the April 9th US pre-orders. Yeah, it was within two days.

I think it was in two days from then. So the problem is that a lot of the regions where Nintendo Manufactures the switch are being hit very very hard with tariffs They manufacture a lot of them in Vietnam and also in China Vietnam's getting hit with like a very large 46 percent tariff China's getting hit with a 34 percent tariff at the time of recording Because because 6% tariff China's getting hit with a 34% tariff at the time of recording Because because

Later in the episode we'll talk about tick-tock That sort of changed things and then they pull out of a tick-tock deal and that made the government say maybe we'll add an additional 50% to China so Nintendo really doesn't know what they can do right now Yeah, Nintendo is just in this very nebulous space where they're like, we literally have no, because they might lose a ton of money on the Switch 2 if they sell it for that price. Doug Bowser had also mentioned in this interview that I watched, I believe with CNBC,

that they already have a lot of Switch 2s in the United States. So luckily, it seems like they probably could release it at the normal price. But the problem would be once they start running more in the United States, that could be a problem. And they don't want to like, release a bunch at 450 and then increase the price later. So it's just, it's forever changing. And by the time this comes out on Friday, we might have more information. So yeah, it's like the first reaction we saw

because of the timing, right? In the tech world, it feels like the first, it's not a price change yet, but it's a direct reaction to what happened because of the timing. And we don't really know what that's gonna be. We were talking about this before, like this is gonna happen way more during the year.

Lots of gadgets are gonna come out and we'll have to, I think we're gonna have to speculate about if tariffs were included in pricing. He said they were not. In this, but in the future, now that we know there's some volatility here, like I don't know. I think in general, we never hear from the company

about why they chose a price for something. So there are lots of economic conditions and suppliers and margins and things that they keep in mind when setting a price for something. And this tariff stuff is another one of those variables, but we never hear from the company about why they picked the price. So I think that's gonna continue to be true.

I don't imagine any company is gonna go, here's our new price, it's higher because of tariffs. I don't think they're gonna be able to say that because they never wanna change their price. They just wanna hopefully predict the future enough to factor in enough margin to be okay if the tariffs change. I feel like they could say that because they are not the government of the country.

I thought about that, like kind of takes it off your shoulders But then if tariffs go away, you're expected to lower the price. That's also tough. That will never happen. Yeah Yeah, that's pretty much what happened with yeah, and I'm not gonna get it. Okay. Yeah. So anyway Yeah, well speaking of the price of things and them not saying generally why they picked the price they did In the same interview that I watched, they asked why mario kart was 80 dollars So this is something that we didn't cover actually. I think last week I was like 60 game because we didn't know a lot of these games are now 80 mario kart world is 80 dollars The new donkey kong game is going to be 70 dollars

And the interviewer asked, why is this game $80 and Donkey Kong $70, how are you thinking about this? And Doug said, it depends on the value of the game and how much value we think the user is going to get out of the game. Translation. I think we can get away with charging this much.

Yeah, I mean, I think that they know that Mario Kart is like the console seller and it's gonna be a pack-in game So it's 50. I mean, it's $50 extra for Mario Kart if you buy the bundle so It does seem like there's going to be there's been a lot of controversy around these game prices Yeah, well, he called it variable pricing and that games with Yeah, well, he called it variable pricing and that games with like extra depth and replayability would be more expensive and that they'll judge it game by game,

which I can guarantee you whatever Zelda game comes out next will be $80. Oh yeah. They also, so one thing we did do an insert in last week because there was this story that came out about digital games being $80 and then a physical copy being $90. It seems like no one knows where that came from

and it seems like I don't think there's gonna be a price difference between physical, but we also wanna talk about the difference in what physical games are now. Because they're not really what they're used to be. There are no physical games. Yeah, so physical cards is still kind of up in the air because some games, the physical card

isn't the physical card that we all know. It's actually like digital key, so when you plug it into your Switch, it actually downloads the game online. And then in order to play the game, the key or cartridge must be put in the Switch. Yeah. This is weird. It's different.

There are some benefits to it though, that I didn't account for. And there's definitely some drawbacks to this. I think the obvious drawback is, what do we own anymore? This is not a physical thing anymore. If I want to play my Switch 2 in 15 years when the servers are offline. So this is the thing, I see your face Marques and I see why you're like,

I don't understand what this matters. In 15 to 20 years, 30 years when Nintendo decides to turn these servers off, all of a sudden you can't sell this, you can't like give this to someone and have them put it in a Switch 2. Okay, I have a couple logical questions then. Okay. So you're buying a cartridge which is a key that you plug into the Switch and then you download. Does that mean some of the game is on the cartridge or none of it and you still download the entire game? The ones where it's just the key, it's not on the cartridge?

So you put the key card in the Switch and then download the entire game? Yes. And then is that a one-time download? So then you don't have to be online. You can plug in the key and play because you have it downloaded already. Yeah, because it's downloaded.

Yeah. Okay. And then, so transferring it, if I wanted to unplug that key and plug it into a different, like I get a new switch. Then it wouldn't work if the servers were down. If the servers were down. But what's interesting about this is,

if you, let's say you buy NBA 2K, because that's a game you would buy, and you're like done playing it, or your friend wants to play it, you can give them that key, they'll have to download the game, but now they can play it for a while, or you can sell your cards.

Like if you play a game, finish it. You can sell the game on Facebook Marketplace where if you only do the digital download, you can't do that because it's connected to your account. But then Marquez can no longer play. But you can sell the game on Facebook Marketplace where if you only do the digital download You can't do that because it's connected but then Marquez can no longer play But you can't play it anymore even though it's downloaded to your device right you don't have the cartridge because I don't have the cartridge So it acts exactly like a physical key then yes and less like a physical game far in the future Until yeah until somewhere Maybe they shut everything down the other super niche thing would be like if you're on a road trip or on an airplane

and David's got the new Zelda game and he's not playing and I'm like, Oh yo, can I play that and I grab it? I'm offline. So offline install is the hit. Yeah, that part sucks. That makes sense. And it just takes memory away from your internal storage. Because it's the regular fully developed card, you're not taking away

storage on you, which it's more storage, but I'm sure everyone will hit that storage. Yeah. I read that they did this because there are some games that are just too big for the storage of the cartridge and they wanted to allow more third parties that had bigger, harder core games with more assets to fit on there, especially because it's higher fidelity, it's a much faster processor, console,

well, like, PC games are, like, huge now. This is part of my speculation, because I have a Switch One, and Switch One games were small enough that I could fit a few games on the local memory before needing an external card, and my biggest game was 16 gigs, and now we're seeing, like, Switch 2 with high resolution and more textures and bigger assets.

It's probably gonna be like 64 gigs plus for a single game so I could see that actually happening. Great point. Thank you. I thought about it for a while. Nice. Those, I think those are the bigger updates but we also have like 10 quick hit updates

that also came out. You wanna go through them with me, David? Yeah, let's do it. Rapid fire. Okay, so remember the pack-in game Switch 2, what is it called, Switch 2? The Switching? The tutorial? It's the tutorial. It's the tutorial game.

It's the manual. It's the manual world. Hush. It's anyway, it's the tutorial game that teaches you about the Switch 2 and you get to walk around it and whatever We were we found out it was it was a paid game Which we did comment on last week and said that's ridiculous We didn't know how much it was it has been verified. It is $10 welcome to our welcome to our switch to welcome tour

$10. Yeah, what's stupid? We also found out most of the upgrade packs to upgrade things from Switch One to Switch Two editions are 10 bucks. Yeah. I can't decide if that's worth it or not yet because I haven't seen a Switch One game and Switch Two game on the same Switch Two to decide if there's a big enough difference. It's also not always about fidelity.

Like, the Legend of Zelda games, they are mostly fidelity and then you get this app where you can do other stuff in the app and there's you know Whatever. Oh wait, I have a stupid question about this. What the update thing? That is free though. I believe does that mean that I can't play my original game if I have you can you can It's just not that for switch. It's lower resolution Yeah, so it depends so so the Zelda game is mostly about fidelity. You're paying ten dollars to make it more pretty, which is kind of ridiculous. I don't know. The Kirby

game that's being updated, they're adding an additional like big level to it. So they did add content to it. So it's DLC. So that's arguably valuable. Sure. It's different on every game, which is just confusing like super there's so many things about This launch that are like oh in this case. It's this but in this case It's this there's just no through line for anything regarding pricing regarding like what the updates do regarding any of this That's why we're doing like a half an hour update. Yeah Give him a break. They only had eight years to work on An episode later. Give them a break, they only had eight years to work on it.

Yeah. The new Joy-Cons are not Hall Effect Joy-Cons. We were really hoping they would be because that would have fixed all the drift issues. They said that they re-engineered them from the ground up and I'm imagining that Nintendo definitely knows that the drift was a problem. Whether or not they cared

because they could just sell new Joy-Cons for $60, I'm not sure. these now cost $80 So, you know, I don't know but we'll see okay Okay, so says the port on the top cannot transfer data only charge the console Yeah, so they added an additional USB-C port to the console which I was extremely excited about specifically for charging to be fair But apparently people were excited because they were like Oh people could just make new docks that can make the Switch go in sideways and it'll take up less horizontal space,

and it could be interesting, but no, it doesn't output video, so it can only charge it from that. The camera still connects to it though, correct? So it can, I have not seen that yet. Well, that is, in the launch they showed that. So it does transfer data. I guess it does, but I guess it doesn't do some case doc data I guess it doesn't do you can't dock it. You can't do video output only video in video in

Interesting, which seems like a thing that they did on purpose Wow, but anyway, okay. Okay, cool There you see this Yeah, wait, what? Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, read it. What? I know, it's so funny, I didn't want to say it this morning. Okay, you probably saw that there is the Switch camera that's coming out that's in the shape of a piranha plant.

Awesome. It only does 480p versus the Nintendo edition camera that does 1080p. Yep, so that really sick Piranha Plant camera, it's like, I think actually what's cool about it is the plant is USB-C, so I'm assuming you can plug it into the Switch by itself, or it has the little stand that's like the tunnel system.

480? But it's 480, and not 1080. It's like the normal camera. Nostalgia must eventually come to an end. I bet people will buy that camera, put it next to their Switch, and then also buy the real camera to have 1080p. Okay, but also I did read you can use any USB-C webcam as well.

Really? Okay, that's awesome. Yeah. So everything about this is like, wow, yay, wow, oh, yay, oh. It's everything. It's everything. Nintendo did respond about the choppy playback for shared screens that we saw, and I appreciated their honesty in the sense of them. They basically said, like, listen, we'd much rather the majority of resources go to gaming. Yeah. Like, not only does it help with the games that are being played, but like more games are going to come out in the future

and they're going to be more resource intensive. So let's just make sure we're using the minimal amount for the actual game shares or not game share the like gameplay footage, social aspect of it, which I agree with. That's more of a social thing. It's to kind of see what's going on. I do think like they showed some scenes where they were watching another person play the game and sort of helping them go through it. I think what they should do is whatever is the primary screen, they should devote most

of the bandwidth. I think that's fair. Yeah, but they didn't do that, which was weird. So oh, I wanted to say one more thing, which is just I found this really interesting. But so like the old Joy-Con bumper, when you split the Joy-Cons, the old bumper was like literally the worst thing in the world. It was like really rattly and you could put it on backwards

and get it stuck and it sucked. The new Joy-Con, it still has a bumper because it wants to add the wrist strap. But since they made the buttons so much better, it actually now the buttons still like pressed through the new bumper. And it's just this really simple, like I think there's a small hook on the bottom of it,

but Mark has some footage, we can put it on the video here. I don't think we included it in the first impressions. I thought that was awesome though. It was better. And it also puts like little tiny mouse pad feet on it. So when you do the mouse thing, that's also on the bumper. Oh, you probably can't do the mouse without that. Cause it wouldn't really be as flat of a surface.

It creates a flat bottom for it. Yeah. Cool. So yeah. I have a bit of a hot take. This is also stolen from David Pierce on the Vergecast. Basically, I think that this console was developed during COVID because everything about it

is like the social features are such a core part of it. The camera, the cutouts, the like trying to make it feel like you're more in a room. Like Switch One, all of the advertising was like, teens hanging out on a roof playing Switch together. Yeah, I think that, I've said this about a lot of phones in the past, but it's also probably true of this.

The second generation of a product is always the most interesting because it teaches you everything that company learned from the first generation. So like when we got the first generation Apple watch or the first generation iPad, they kind of thought it would be one thing and then they saw they put it out into the world. They saw how people use it and they went, oh, okay, we can capitalize and make things for this exact group of people. So obviously the first switch came out in, I think 2017, pre-COVID, and they had a lot of ideas about how people would use it.

Now, they have the data, and they've seen how people have used it, and COVID happened during that time. So now, a lot of the switch use is probably different from what they imagined in those first ads, and they are adjusting to the usage numbers. Or they had three years of development during COVID where they thought this is what we should prioritize. I think it's a good point too,

because so many people saw that and they're like, why is anyone excited? We've had Discord forever, but I don't compare this to Discord. I compare this specifically to being on Zoom calls with friends playing Mario Kart. Like, it's a lot different. I get to see my friends, which is different than Discord.

I mean, you can do that and you can share screens with Discord's way more of just voice. So this is voice and seeing. It's so much more casual. And don't get me wrong, like I am super glad they added these features regardless, but the battery life is also notably worse than the OLED model.

I think the quoted battery life was two and a half to six hours, whereas the OLED model was like four and a half to eight or something like that. So I don't know. I mean, playing it handheld obviously is better with the bigger screen. That's cool. I kind of wonder like the percentage. Like it is a switch. The whole point is to be able to use it handheld or in a dock.

I kind of wonder like what fraction of people have a switch mostly docked versus mostly handheld. I play almost exclusively handheld. So that's same. Yeah, I travel with it. I use it. That's the only thing I use it for. Yeah, I think if you're doing it in the like social camera scenario, though, you're probably playing it docked.

Yes, exactly. You probably need the camera set up on something. Seeing that big focus makes me believe that most people use a switch docked. If I only watch the video. Or at least they did through 2020 through 2023. Maybe that's, I don't know. It's interesting. So yeah, I think that is all we have so far for Switch updates.

Breaking news, Switch 2 canceled. Wow. This is the Switch 2 podcast after all, so we will be back with your rapid fire updates every week until June 5th, obviously. That's just how this is gonna go. And probably after. And probably after. We still won't have it then. Yeah. But yeah, I think that's a perfect place to take a quick break. We got much more to talk about. And so trivia. All right. This one's a little bit of a

Where's the whiteboards? Little explaining, so let me get into it. So earlier we mentioned Doug Bowser, whose name is an example of this hypothesis called nominative determinism. Wait, wait, wait, his name? His name, Doug Bowser. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, sorry. It's a sociological hypothesis

that people choose careers that fit well with their name. Obviously not proven or disproven, but these names that fit well are called aptronyms. Doug Bowser, according to Wikipedia, is actually an inaptronym because he's the villain of the Mario thing. But I have before me four aptronyms, and I need you to tell me which one I made up.

I can already tell this is probably your favorite question you created. Are you ready? I love this. All right, number one, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Zurich University, Jules Angst. B, American Ornithologist and program manager

for feather identification in the division of birds at the National Museum of Natural History, Carla Dove. Yo. C, 1984 Olympic gold medalist swimmer, Jeff Float. D, current host of the show The View, Sunny Hostin. Or E, these are all real, baby. Wow. Wow.

When I took drum lessons in high school, my drum teacher was named John Bassa, like bass drum. T-A-S-S. See? There's so many good examples of this. Yeah. I pulled these best ones from a ginormous list. Really?

Yeah. This really does happen. I mean. Usain Bolt is probably the top of the list. Yeah, Usain Bolt. I found a composer named David W. Music. No. No way.

That's too easy. That's too easy. Wow. Wow. Yeah, okay. I will be thinking, I don't know any of those people you named, so I. Wait, wait, Yeah, okay. I will be thinking, I don't know any of those people you named, so I- Wait, wait, I'm sorry.

This one is real, it's not part of it, but one of the guys who worked on the Transcontinental Railroad as an engineer, and this is not a joke, was named George Francis Train. Meh. It's perfect. Perfect. Well, I, yeah, I'm gonna have to think about this.

I hope they're all real secretly. Answers will be at the end like usual. We'll be right back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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Let Vanta help make the process a little bit easier. For a limited time, listeners get $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com slash waveform. So that's vanta.com slash waveform for $1,000 off. All right, welcome back. I am holding a Nintendo Switch 2, and by Nintendo Switch 2, I mean an Oppo Find X8 Ultra. What's the difference?

Yeah. Audio listeners really just got excited. Yeah, sorry for the jump scare audio listeners. No, this is a, so this one came out, or was announced this week. I dropped my, by the time the podcast goes out, my first impressions video of this phone is also out, but it kind of came out of left field

because we've had the X8 series going for a while and the X8 Pro is already a really good phone. This phone comes out, I didn't really have plans for it, it shows up, the spec sheet blows my mind. Unbelievable spec sheet. From top to bottom, literally the best available spec other than I think refresh rate because it has 120Hz LTPO, maybe it could

have been the 165Hz from the ROG phone. But everything else about it, Snapdragon 8 Elite, 6100mAh silicon carbon battery, great haptics, IP68, IP69, a terabyte of storage, 16 gigs of RAM, like you name a stat, it's got it. 1440p, super bright. And then the camera sensors, which are kind of the main draw of these phones, one inch type sensor for the primary camera, 50 megapixels. And then it has a 3X camera,

which is a absolutely massive sensor and is basically the same size as a primary camera on a lot of phones. Then there is a 6X telephoto, there's an ultra wide, there's a chroma sensor for white balance. It is loaded. This camera is ungodly good. It is loaded.

This is possibly the best phone camera ever. Marques, is this everything that you mentioned that every phone is gonna have this year? So the big hits, yes, it hits all the three, the big three of phones having the thing that we thought they were gonna have this year. One, Snapdragon 8 Elite. Two, really, really bright display.

Three, silicon-carbon battery. It has all of those. And it has maxed out everything else. Oh, that picture you just took is fire. That's tough. That's a tough look for me. But it's really impressive. And I think, so I ended up making a video on it,

not expecting to, until we got it in the hand But I'm impressed. Can I ask the least interesting question possible? Yes Okay, I've seen this with a couple other phones and I remember bringing it up when we were fact-checking a video once But why are phones now saying like it's IP 68 and IP 69? I don't know because I thought it was pretty intuitive that if a phone would pass IP68 then it would also pass everything below it, but technically they don't have to test everything below it. So if you'd pay for the IP68 and the IP69 test, maybe you feel obligated to say both. Both of them?

But I, you know, yeah, IP69 is not just submersion, but like high pressure, high or low temperature water jets. It'll survive that too. Something I wanna note here, they copy camera control. Oh yeah. Okay, it's a whole section in this video. Yeah. And maybe I haven't said it on the podcast before, but Oppo with ColorOS is so shameless

about copying many, many things from the iPhone, from Dynamic Island to open a settings app, and tell me that's not just the iPhone settings app. The Dynamic Island is so good though. The Dynamic Island they've copied, live activities they've copied. Yeah. Hit that, see that button on the side

on the top left of the phone? Okay. Hold that down. It's exactly the action button from the iPhone. And it has the action button thing. Now on the right side of the phone you see that little flat area. It's literally camera control. So if you open the camera and slide your finger along that area, or yeah, double tap opens

the camera, slide up and down, it zooms in and out. They've copied camera control. It literally looks the same. You hold it in. Oh my god. Yeah. So yeah, they've obviously taken a lot of inspiration. The settings app, the settings for that action button,

or I mean, quick button, Right. It looks exactly the same as the iPhone. I ended up kind of remembering that obviously all the other markets that aren't the US, where people just buy the phone based on whatever has the best specs and seems like the best value, it kind of works for them to just embrace

the other features of other phones that work well. And if you have all the features, then people are more likely to buy your thing. Like if I like Dynamic Island on the iPhone, okay, now here's another phone with Dynamic Island. Yeah, something I want to note about the camera, usually when you zoom in like a ton, what happens is it looks really soft

and then you click the shutter button and then a few seconds of processing goes by and then it looks really over sharpened just because they wanna like bring out all the detail. But on this phone, even when you use like an insane like 30X, it looks soft, you take the photo, wait a couple seconds, and then just look like a normal photo. It looks sharp. Like it looks good, it doesn't seconds, and then it just looks like a normal photo. Like sharp.

Like it looks good, it doesn't look over sharpened, it looks amazing. I think the telephotos are great on this camera. That's insane. You did rich from like across the entire office, and then it starts like haloing pretty hard. Yeah, so it is tough to tackle like tough lighting conditions at 50x zoom, but on like a skyline or whatever,

trying to zoom in on some buildings, like it does a fantastic job. Anything that's sitting still, it does a great job. I followed Zuri around, it does a good job of like freezing actions, Zuri's the dog that's over there sleeping in the corner of the podcast room right now, but it did a good job with that. I'm just, yeah, the thing about it, okay,

so I've only had it for a few days. I assume the battery life is going to be just fine since it has a 6,100 milliamp hour battery. It also has 100 watt fast charging, 50 watt wireless charging, reverse wireless charging. Does it have Qi2? It does not have magnets in it, unfortunately. Qi2 is fake as far as it.

Yeah. We don't get Qi2, we only get Qi2 ready. Yeah. just the Motorola skyline or whatever. Yeah, but everything else about this phone is basically peak 2025 smartphone the bar has been set now. That's crazy. This is how good it gets. That's unbelievable Yeah, I might have to get one and speaking of something almost as good. You also got to try the light phone 3 Yeah, right. to try the light phone 3 out, right? Do I want to bring it in here just to I I'm gonna I'm working on a video about this light phone, okay and Minimal phones we talked about it briefly on the last episode. I respect it. I understand it. There is obviously some desire for it

but the light phone 3 if you pre-order costs $600, and if you don't pre-order costs $800. Yikes. I don't understand that value proposition. Wow, that's a lot. If the entire point of the phone is to be less of a phone, how do you charge more than a lot of phones? How much does this cost, do we know? This phone, I don't have a price actually for it yet,

but I'm gonna guess it's around 900 to $1200. Like it's a flagship. The X8 Pro costs about 800. This is not coming to the US, by the way, but that's about how much it would cost. So that's, yeah, I'm trying to square like what they're doing with the light phone because it is so expensive. Yeah, we got a few minimal phones in recently. We got the Lite Phone, there's also the Minimal Phone

that came in, and I think for some people, like Becca Forsachi just made a video on the Lite Phone 3 and she did a really good job on that, so you should go watch that. I think it can work for some people, but she had a lot of frustrations as well. So it's one of those things where it's like, in order to live the life you wanna live,

you gotta have some trade-offs. Yeah, so. Tim, I think, and I'm not 100% sure about this. Maybe Becca said in her video, I didn't get a chance to watch it, but Tim was trying to bring it home to use it for a little bit and can't transfer any of his text messages over to it.

Is that only cause he's using iMessage or is it just like? I haven't been able to do that either. He was trying to find some stuff and like, it still has SMS messaging, but you can't transfer your previous SMS messages over to it. There's a portal. There's an online portal that you can log into

and like add and remove different apps and things that I can, not even really apps, they call them functions. But it, yeah, it's very limited and intentionally so. Yeah. So. All right. Before we move on, I think I have a loose answer as to how a device and why a device

might be rated both IP68 and IP69. It turns out, while you would think that the difference between eight and nine is just harder better faster stronger drier It turns out they're actually different materials International Standards Code Society, whatever actually prescribes two different kinds of tests IP68 refers to a submersion survivability capability whatever So when you test for when you give it the IP68 rating, you're literally submerging the device.

The IP69 rating demands that the device be subjected to what is akin to an industrial cleaning environment where they actually blast the device with high pressure, high temperature water. So they are two different modes of survivability when it comes to water. I really hope that's right. I was just reading standards codes

and trying to make the best sense of it. But it does seem like actually it sort of describes two separate. Okay. I'll reference one of our most hated videos because I did go to see one of the like water, the durability testing from the Apple Labs. But yeah, the IP68 test is literally just put the phone underwater

and like close the tank, but the thing that they do to simulate depth because they don't have a 10 foot depth is they just close it, seal it, and add pressure. And so IP68 does include some amount of pressure, IP69 is just way more pressure with those jets that they're hitting the phone with. Yeah, because five and six are jets of water not submerging,

which is under the submerging of seven and eight. And then nine is close range high temperature water jets. Yeah, I think when you say jets, they're like sprinkling water on the phone. These make it, what I would have made it sound like for real IP69, you need real jets. And then they also specify it needs to hit all sides of the phone for at least three minutes

Wow, yeah. All right So if you are going to dishwasher your phone Yeah, that's basically what it is. Oh, so we can try we can put that phone in the dishwasher for three minutes We could try it. Yeah or a laundry or whatever I mean, I don't know if you put your phone through a entire laundry cycle I don't think you expect it to survive But there's a higher chance that it could if it is IP 69 Did you rated that this tweet came back? This is relevant

I promise the resurfaced in the form of screenshot and I feel that they need to share and I have it pulled up right now It's oven has a window Microwave too you can see all the way through a blender, but the dishwasher, oh no, you could never see in there. They refuse to let us see what's going on in there. That is a great point. That's a good point. Maybe it's just because it's mostly ugly.

Yeah, that's- I did watch a video a long time ago of someone put a GoPro in a dishwasher. Yeah. I've seen what happens in a dishwasher, but how come no one's done like a dishwasher with a window? Maybe because it looks dirty. Yeah, it looks bad.

Makes your house look worse. Anyway, breaking news. Breaking news. The Switch 2 is also delayed in Canada. The pre-order is delayed in Canada, as well as the United States. So it is literally breaking, top of the timeline. Breaking.

So anyway, we'll continue with the Switch 2 podcast talking about other things. Things evolve, guys. But there may be multiple breaking news stories about the Switch 2 during this episode. Other interesting phone tidbits, which we haven't really had a lot of phone stuff in a while. Nothing sub-brand, okay, I'm going to go through this. Nothing is a budget phone brand, right? Okay.

Technically. They have a budget phone, the A series. They also launched a budget sub-brand. Oh, yeah. Yeah, CMF, right? Now the budget brand's budget sub-brand just is launching a pro-phone. So I'm not really sure where this puts everything.

Me neither. But you know, so CMF is making the CMF Phone 2 Pro. They kind of showed a few little animated things related to it. It's going to have three cameras on it. So it'll, I guess, have a telephoto and a wide. Is that all that pro means anymore? Because I kind of feel like that's all it means anymore. Often. Cause there's, oh my God, I can't even keep up. There's the nothing phone

and then there's the budget nothing phone, which is the A. Yeah. But then there's also the budget. A pro as well. And then there's the A pro that just came out. Cause it has the A pro. Yeah.

Yeah, there's like budget companies pro budget phone. And now this is the budget companies budget company budget subcompany budget pro phone pro phone yeah the only thing these pro phones all have in common is they all have triple cameras from the iphone 16 pro all the way down to the nothing 3a pro all the way down to the cmf phone pro all that pro means is we have a regular camera, an ultra wide camera, and a telephoto camera. But they did tease that it's going to have a new finish. They said a new finish, textured, tactile,

comma, different, period. Which is cool, I wanna see that, but again, it's like. That's code for metal. Yeah. Well, yeah, well my question becomes then, the whole point of the CMF Phone one was that it had that 3d printed Like you could 3d print your own backs. Yeah, we're up the plastic back off. That's what was sick about it So like if they're just making a metal or like a glass phone, then isn't it? It still has the screw here. It still has the screw

So although that screw doesn't look like it takes that back off This one specifically is inside its own little, you can see the back. Remember the screw was not to take the back off. This one was just add accessories. That was like for lanyard accessories. But wasn't there also another one that took the back off? That was the dial. Yes.

Right. And you unscrew it and take the back. Okay. Apparently they're going to announce this on Monday, the 28th of April. So that's in a couple of weeks. But they're teasing it early. They're also releasing three new sets of earbuds. The CMF Buds 2, the 2A and the 2 Plus.

Shocker. Okay. So, so, so, okay. Budget brand releases a budget, even budget or sub-brand, which releases a budget set of earbuds, a normal, whatever that means, picking up the budget sub-brand, and then a pro set of budget earbuds. Cool. Plus a plus set.

I can't, I can't keep this. Is this all just there to make us realize that the term budget means basically nothing or a million different things to everybody and that it is basically a curse to even say that word in any tech video possible? Pro and max and plus, like, yeah. I guess the strategy which we've seen before

is we want to offer a product at every possible price tier in increments of 10 that someone might buy a product at. Samsung's been at this forever. They have the A series, they have the Galaxy series, they have the Galaxy S, they have the Galaxy Z, Z whatever, like there's a bunch of different series and versions and so they end up having a thousand phones and if you pick a price point, they've got a phone for you

and I guess that's kind of what this company's doing, but instead of everything being a nothing phone, there's the nothing series, and then there's the nothing A series, and then there's the CMF series, and then there's the CMF Pro, and CMF, like they'll get every price point sooner or later. It's just that Carl Pei always follows

the exact same trajectory, which is like, launch a company that has really good specs for the price, launch a pro version of that that's more expensive, and then be like, but we hear you, so we're gonna launch an affordable version. And then they make the pro version of the affordable version, and then they're like,

you know what, this isn't even affordable anymore. Here's a sub brand. It's just, it's just. Can't wait till he reacts to this on the Nothing Channel. I also think what you realize when you are a young or small smartphone competitor is that the price points that you compete at also determine how competitive it is. And at the 800 to $1,000 price point, it is super hyper ultra competitive. Like Samsung Galaxy S versus iPhone versus Vivo versus Oppo. Like these companies are pouring so much into bleeding edge phones and if you're just starting up,

you can't like get the suppliers and get the price down to actually compete there. So they're kind of forced into starting at, we're gonna have a lower priced phone and try to compete there instead. And they'll compete there with, you know, fancy software or some interesting new design or whatever. But I think you it takes a long time and a lot of volume to get up to, OK,

now we're going to compete with like the Snapdragon 8 Elite, like big dog, nine hundred dollar phones. And it also makes people very angry when your whole thing was like, we do this cheaper and better. Yeah, so definitely. I have a we do this cheaper and better. Yeah. Definitely. I have a pitch for budget phone naming schemes. Okay.

Let's just, the number is the price. The Nothing Phone 349. That's so much easier. What about when they have a sale? You have to launch a new scheme. Variable pricing, Doug Bowser. I think you could pull that off. That's my new company. Very fun.

Okay, last story before we take another break. This is so sticky. Okay, you may have heard that Sam Altman and Johnny Ive were working on a product together. This happened quite a while ago. I'm so happy I don't know about this. Oh really, okay. This was like a year ago that the rumors around this started. I was just gonna say it's rumors

It's it was rumors. It was rumors, but they do have a startup that they're working on together. I believe officially. It's just money laundering That's the question of the year my friends another sound bite. Perfect. Yeah, so Report same old man and Johnny. I've startup might be sold to open AI for 500 billion plus dollars 500 billion dollars. What are they? So I don't know about this 500 million. Oh, sorry. Did I say billion? Yeah, no mark. I said billion this one right here says 500 Million I wrote billion. I was wrong. Okay. I should have, yeah, okay. That makes no more.

That would have been a lot of money. Okay, same old man and Johnny Ive's startup may be sold to OpenAI for 500 million plus dollars. What? So I don't know what the startup does, but 500 million dollars implies they do something. Well, implies. What do they do?

Okay, well so, very big, you know, XAI purchases X energy here. They have reportedly been working on a phone-like product without a screen. I've heard this before. Which we have heard many times before. Go on. It could be a little bit different considering.

No, don't do that. Yes, it could be a little bit different considering, you know, OpenAI actually has a working voice mode model that is good it's not like the human AI pen or the rabbit as for it actually being like agentic and taking action for you I'm not sure about that they are also reportedly working on AI enabled household devices which is also kind of interesting I was thinking about this yesterday and I'm like, well,

surprisingly, Google has not added Gemini to any of its Google Home products. Yeah, I feel like they have to do that this year. Siri is nowhere to be found. Alexa Plus was announced and it was supposed to already be out in early access and yet I have not heard of anyone having it. So weirdly enough, there is this gap in the market

for home-enabled smart AI devices that are generative, that nobody is doing yet. But of course, this isn't available yet, but I don't know. So yeah, I don't know. I could see there being something there and OpenAI does have a lot of cache right now, but it's just sort of, you know.

I wish I had Sam Altman's superpower to just raise infinite money. Yeah. He just like gets money. Ro is so good at getting money, he can literally pay himself and get Microsoft to be the person that gives him the money to pay himself. Like what the-

He's acquiring his own company for $500 billion. With daddy Satya's money. With Satya's money. This is the most Silicon Valley bubble thing I've seen in a long time. I watch a lot of Shark Tank. I don't know if you guys watch Shark Tank. Have you ever watched a good amount of Shark Tank?

You know how there's at the beginning of every pitch, they're like, hi, my name is blank and I would like to offer you, a shark, the opportunity to buy 10% of my company for $100,000. Here's what I do. And then they go through the pitch and then they get to the end of the pitch and then Mr. Wonderful goes, well, with this valuation,

you must have a lot of sales, my friend. Why are you worth a million dollars? And then they have to justify themselves. That's easier when- I'm trying to put this on Shark Tank of Sam Altman going, hi, my name is Sam, and I'd like to offer you the opportunity for a hundred million dollars to buy 20% of my company,

and here's what we do. And then this wonderful goes, wow, a $500 million valuation, you must have amazing sales. And then they go, no, we actually don't have any products or sales or anything happening yet, but we just got this good idea. And there's a spot in the market that seems like it's open right now.

And Google and Apple and Amazon haven't done it yet. So we have a chance. You know what they have? Johnny Ive. Well, but this shark tank is Sam Altman comes out and says, I have this, what would you like to see? And then the camera turns and Sam Altman's sitting at the shark tank chair and says, you got, I'm in.

All in. You son of a bitch, I'm in. Yeah. That's exactly what it is. That is what, That is literally what this is. And then he goes, but why does everyone hate me? Whoops.

Well, yeah, anyway, we'll keep an eye on that. Cause if it happens, it happens, whatever. I don't think that affects us in any way. There's no products to talk about here and no one can buy anything. Any of these people are making. So like good for them. Congrats.

Keep it up. Mom's proud of you. But yeah, I don't know what's going on. I'm sorry or congratulations. I'm not reading all that. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll have a little bit more to talk about

after the break, TikTok getting banned, maybe or maybe not, and also some streaming stuff. But before that, trivia. Trivia, dude. So we spoke about the Oppo Find X8 Ultra. We're gonna just keep adding words to the end of phones. Plus. Budget.

But their first phone ever had a much better name. The A103, AKA the Smiley Face. There's multiple choice. Why was it called that? A, the phone itself had a smiley face on the back. That's cool. B, the person who designed it, Tony Chen, is nicknamed Smiley, so it was in his honor.

C, it was originally only sold in a store that translates to Smiley Shop, so it was a partnership. Or D, none of these are true. The first ever phone, or the first? Their first ever. Oppo's first. Yeah, Oppo's first phone. Yeah.

What about, it was the first phone in China to be able to... Alexander Graham Bell, like, I've invented the first phone. It's called the smiley face. I would call it that. Okay. All right. Emoji. Cool.

It could do emoji. We're so good at podcasting. That's my guess. We'll be right back. Great segue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fox Creative.

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Alright, welcome back. That's how I feel right now because TikTok is on the clock once again. Yeah. We made an episode called TikTok on the Clock when it was banned and then delayed and then banned again. And then there was a clock where it took 75 days for it to be banned unless a deal was reached that 75 days was set to be up this weekend And reportedly well last weekend at the time of the listener viewing this oh Yeah, oh April 5th. Yeah, which was oh yes Okay, and reportedly there was a deal that was going to be reached, and then the tariffs happened on April 2nd.

And apparently China was like, we're not gonna do this, we're not gonna sell the company in the US unless you pull back on the tariffs, and then they didn't, and then now they're fighting again and so then an executive order has been Put in place that extends the the sale for another another 75 days so You know keep scrolling. I guess we're in we're in it's Schrodinger's TikTok. TikTok has nine lives

Honestly, probably i'm like life's five or six. It's on at least three by now So if you thought tik tok was potentially going to be gone this last weekend It's now not and you can keep living your life, but I just wanted to let you guys know I still haven't redownloaded it. I'm very proud of myself. Me neither I still use reels a lot but reels suck because it's just the Costco guys all the time, and then I get off reels. I see the TikTok things four months later on, so. Yeah, I was gonna say, your reels are just curated to you.

So, it's just the Costco guys. It's just your fault. Don't ask me here. They think you unwashed. They did just come out with a new song. Oh my God. It's terrible. Do not advertise that. Ironically, I've never downloaded TikTok,

but the day before it got banned the first time, I was tempted because I was like- Watching it spiral was fun. Yeah. That like 24 hours was hilarious. Before it got banned, that 24 hours was like peak TikTok. It felt like what would happen if we all knew the world was gonna end in like a week and

we all wanted to do that like last thing before the world ends. Yeah. But anyways. I remember I got banned on some people's phones when I got the message and I had a friend in another room who was still scrolling and he was like, I gotta keep scrolling. Give me my dopamine. I can't scroll. Anyways, okay, another little small story.

Google TV streaming devices are going to be required to have a free TV or live TV button on them. If you guys have never heard of things like Pluto TV, it is basically free TV that is being streamed, and what they do is they put ads in it, and you may have heard of this model before because it was cable. So now, Google is getting into that game

because things like Pluto TV have gotten very popular Where basically you can just like watch all of these shows There's channels and you don't get to decide what you watch and it's just like the past except now it's being over the Pluto Legal I was TV. I always thought it was not Something else you're thinking of plex you're thinking of plex. Well, there's another like Samsung, Samsung. I'm thinking of something else. You're thinking of Plex. You're thinking of Plex. Well, I think there's another, anyways. Samsung also has a Samsung TV experience

where it's the same thing. It's terrible, because every time I turn my TV on, it's just blaring some rant. Like, dude, where's my car was playing the other day. And I'm like, again, my Bluetooth remote's not connecting, because the Samsung remotes are horrific and disconnect all the time. And I'm stuck on dude, where's my car?

Built-in Samsung UI and stuff on your Samsung TV? I do too. You crazy people, why? To just open the YouTube app. What would you do instead? Oh, you just get Google TV, there's Google TV, there's Chromecast, there's like a million ways to bypass that.

I mean, it's all built in for free. I didn't have to buy a hundred dollar box. It's, yeah, that's fine. I mean, the YouTube app is a YouTube app kind of no matter where you are. The Samsung TV app is not great, but the worst thing is that the, sorry, we have derailed this conversation.

We can bring it back. My remote disconnects eight times a week and sometimes takes 20 minutes to connect. I miss infrared. Switch to LG, bro. Come to the light side. Actually, I have an LG TV and a Samsung TV and I personally strongly prefer the Samsung side. Actually, I have an LG TV and a Samsung TV, and I personally strongly prefer the Samsung UI.

Oh. Wait, is there an infrared, sorry, this is really important to me lately. Is there an infrared Samsung remote, because I want to drive my head through the wall every time it happens. Not just as the LG remote infrared, but it's- I don't have an LG TV.

I'm asking a different question here. Built into this glorious infrared remote is universal backwards compatibility. So any other stereo device that you have in your house, you can sync with your remote. Yeah, that's fire as hell. Does that work on my Samsung TV? It works on my 1980s stereo receiver.

Like it's backward compatible like decades. Yes, it does. I'm pretty sure my Samsung TV remote is also infrared one more minute every time It just goes like it'll turn the TV on and off But I can't control any of the like left right volume anything select the UI And then it's like press these two buttons and I have you hold it and it goes can't connect can't connect can't connect That's we can't connect and you just do it over and over and over to you give up Yeah, or it connects 45 times later.

Samsung. That can't be infrared then. Yeah. Jeez, no, it shows a Bluetooth symbol when it connects. Oh, gross. Bluetooth? It's awful. It's the dumbest thing ever.

That's disgusting. Did you know that life could be good? Dude. Hey, listen, if you want to gift me an LG TV. The LG C1 OLED is reportedly extremely good We're way off it's been around for a long time the LG Q. Ned displays rock Q. Ned Q. Ned Hmm gives you an LG remote David I have a question for you. Okay, this is

Can I reassign that button to a Pluto? No, has to be the Google TV. A free Google TV thing. So they're launching their own thing. Yeah, so the Google TV remotes already have built-in buttons for Netflix and Hulu and Amazon. Yeah, it's because these companies pay the makers of the devices to put these buttons on it so they can make money to quickly access it. It is very, in my opinion opinion it's very e-wasty to like create a hard-coded button that goes to

a service that may get merged with another service next month. Generally that happens but you know that's what happens. So anyway I don't know Google is really leaning into this because I think they're finding out that it's a big cash cow for them. I have a anchor Nebula projector that has Google TV on it and every time I open the Google TV UI, they have started prominently putting the free TV stuff like really big on the home screen. Do you mean Android TV OS or Google TV?

It's Google TV, which is, yeah, it's a platform, Google TV. I thought it was called, oh. No, it used to be called Android TV, it's now Google TV, which is which is yeah, it's a platform Google TV I thought it was called. Oh, no used to be called Android TV is now Google TV. This is different from Chromecast Yeah, yeah Chromecast is just Chromecast is like airplay but for Google well, well there was Chromecast With Google TV most Google which they did sunset they no longer sell the Chromecast with Google TV, which they did sunset. They no longer sell the Chromecast with Google TV. Now they only sell the box. They sunset the actual Chromecast thing like a month ago. Is that what I still have? It was great.

It was awesome. Yeah. Okay. I'm glad I still have that. It's actually pretty good. It is very good. No, and it had a nice texture. Anyway, the texture doesn't matter because it's in the back of your TV.

But regardless, it is interesting to see Google asserting a lot of dominance here because they are now forcing manufacturers that use Google TV to have a big free TV button. They did not say how big or where it needs to be on the remote, but the product that is being sold from Walmart, the Google TV box from Walmart, the remote now has a very giant free TV blue button in the center. Full width. Full width of the remote. So you know, and you know what?

I kind of, I kind of like the free TV stuff. I think that this is maybe a hot take, but because we have so much choice now, a lot of people. You know, that's why I like the Spotify radio stations and all this stuff. It is kind of nice to just drop content on your life and not worry about it, because there's too much choice sometimes.

And so I think a lot of people like that, just being able to go on free TV and be like, oh, the Star Trek channel is playing, we'll just watch whatever episode it feeds me. I wonder who you could be talking about. That was my life in 2020 when Michael Fisher forced me to watch a lot of Star Trek, it was good, it was good.

But yeah, I don't know, I think that that is a growing market. We also saw that literal TV that they were giving you to you for free Yeah from the company that made the free TV service and the Super Bowl this year Was what on free? Yeah on Pluto or one of those on Tebow or I watched it on I was being something I watched it on one of the free ones. He was on Tebow Tebow But you didn't watch you were on the plane to be no I got I landed like Right before the halftime show so I caught like I logged on like you know, dude was literally on hubu To do didn't catch it on he mean I googled is Pluto TV

Legit and the top comment says it's illegal. You're going to jail We do need to give them credit for having a fifth letter jail. What? Is that a Reddit comment? Yes. We do need to give them credit for having a fifth letter. What, Pluto? Yeah. Yeah, but that was, they were early though. They've been around for a while. Oh.

Yeah. OG. I thought they were demoted. They were, from the solar system. Pluto, yeah, it's still a planet. Oh, Paramount owns them? Yeah, I think there's something to be said about ever since Napster, all these companies realized

that they can't be caught with their pants down, and anytime there's something not profitable that seems like it could disrupt, that'll just get acquired instantly by one of these companies. Yeah. Like Hulu was owned by NBC since like the really early days of that company.

Wasn't that like a plot from NBC? Like? Like they got together, well not like nebulous, well kind of nebulous, they got together with some other streaming, other companies and they were like streaming is coming, so let's like make this new company that doesn't look like it's us, but it will be us, secretly.

I don't know, maybe future bonus episode. Yeah, maybe. But yeah, no, Pluto is just paramount. Even though, it's so weird actually, they're like, you can pay for Paramount Plus, or you can. Now Disney owns Hulu. Oh, right. So, because they're in the bundle with ESPN,

and now there's Peacock streaming, which is NBC, but this does say, who cares? Yeah, Phoebe owns it. Not me. I also wanted to know really quickly, last night I was using my projector and in a very funny series of events, I was scrolling through YouTube videos

and when I would hover over one YouTube video, the screen would flash and then all the colors would invert. And I was like, what? It was only one YouTube video when it would start auto playing. And then I started watching that video on my phone and I realized it was an HDR video. So my Google TV, and I don't know if this is like all Google TV platforms, mine seems to be different because it literally does not have a speed changing

thing, which really bothers me. But yeah, I just thought it was very funny that Google TV's YouTube could not handle HDR when they push it. So, autoplay HDR. I think one more thing about Google's official free TV thing. Yeah. Is that I don't exactly know a lot about the the inner workings of Pluto or whatever or the other free TV stream ads Well ads but you know one thing that's kind of interesting about IP TV is the ability to serve ads Like obviously in traditional TV you have to do all this work to predict who's going to be watching in any given moment And then you sell that information to advertise or give that information to advertisers who would like will probably hit our market demographics with this

show. Whereas with something like Google that has information on every consumer that has ever lived and ever will be born, they might be able to squeeze a lot more juice out of this thing. Yes. Another company. Yes. Because when I was during like 2020, 2021 when Fisher was having me watch a lot of Star Trek and also we were watching this old house, which was very nice. The advertising that was playing was like New York state advertising.

Right. So it was definitely localized. Yeah. So that did used to be a problem where they couldn't target you before. Now they can target you so they could probably make more money. And so they're taking an old business model and they're like, but we're using data. We're only like a few tokens away from ads being LLM generated on the fly.

Like picture you're like watching a basketball game and then it goes and it's like, yo Marquez. I actually think you're not even exaggerating. I don't think you're exaggerating. It kind of is already, isn't it? Like certain ads will only show on the court if you're in certain areas Yeah, that's not the actual state. That's not tailored to you like audience of one Yeah, like a man walks on screen and it's like Adam. It's been a while since you've been to Disneyland

You want to go? I didn't realize Pluto TV is like a bunch of channels that's not regular cable. It's like the fail army channel and cats 24 seven and there's a couple like NBC news and stuff. But then there's also the onion. And so well, that makes the monster cat. At least like the Samsung one has regular channels. Yeah, I'm every time it comes out, I'm like, go away, please. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Well, at least that makes with the monster cat at least like the Samsung one has regular channels Yeah, I'm Every time it comes out. I'm like go away, please. Oh wait, my remote's broken

Yeah, okay. I don't know. All right. I think that we should go to trivia You know our viewers say they love it best when we make no sense. All right, guys, I have four hilarious names. Are they all real? Is one of them fake? If so, which one? Hit it, Adam. We have professor of psychiatry, Jules Angst, ornithologist and program manager for feather identification at the National Museum of Natural History, Carla Dove. 1984 Olympic gold medalist swimmer, Jeff Float.

And current host of The View, Sonny Hostin. And again, I will, there is a, all of these are real, E option. I'm so bad at reading multiple choices. No, that was great. Well, I didn't get the letters. All right, one at a time, folks. Well, we all put different answers. Yes, that was great. Well, I didn't get the letters. All right. One at a time, folks. Well, we all put different answers.

Yes. I put A. A, unfortunately, Jules Angst is real. Dang. I put Sonny Hostin. Sonny Hostin is real and the host of The View. Probably should have made that one the fake one because we definitely would just don't watch the video.

I couldn't have made it fake because it's real. I put Jeff Float. Float is fake. Jeff Float is also real. We just don't I couldn't have made it fake because it's real Jeff float is also real. These are all real names I like how no one doubted Carla Dove you were like I can I can Really long title and I think that made it seem more real Carla does my cousin quick update on the score Especially since no one got anything right just now. Marquez with 16, Andrew with seven, David 10 points ahead from Andrew with 17. That's not how you do things.

That's how you do things. David with 2.1, Andrew's at 17. 2.1, isn't it just two? Well that would be 14. Yeah, so like what is that, 2.2? Sorry, I I think in base 10 that's why. There you go. Okay so the Oppo A103 was nicknamed the smiley face. Why? Is it because A the phone itself had a smiley face on the back? B the person who designed it was nicknamed smiley so it was in his honor. C the original store that it was sold in was translated to smiley face on the back. B, the person who designed it was nicknamed smiley, so it was in his honor. C, the original store that it was sold in was translated to smiley shop, so it was a partnership. Or D, none of these are true.

What do you guys think? My marker's pretty screwed, but you'll be able to see. All of these are true to none of these are true. Exactly. All right The answer who wants to find says something well these two have the same Marquez and I put a Yes

It had a smiley face on the back I could see Andrew what did you say Thanks for listening to the waveform podcast. Waveform is produced by Adam, Alina and Ellis Rubin. We're partnered with the Vox Media Podcast Network and Interactive Music was created by Veincil. Whoops. Emoji phone. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe.

See you next week. Bye. Tariffs.