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Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked Launch Event was on January 14, 2021. Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud went live to discuss and comment on all the product announcements. We invited Art Gelwicks, our Samsung aficionado (and regular contributor on ProductivityCast), to join us on the panel!
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In this Cast | Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2021
Art Gelwicks
Art Gelwicks, a productivity and collaboration consultant, blogger at theideapump.com, and host of the Being Productive podcast as well as ProductivityCast podcast.
Headlines & Show Notes | Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2021
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
If you want to watch the entire event, here it is: Samsung Galaxy Unpacked January 2021 Livestream.
Raw Text Transcript
Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).
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Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00
Hello personal productivity enthusiasts and community Welcome to anything but idle. The Productivity news podcast. Today’s show is brought to you by W three c web services. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.
Augusto Pinaud 0:10
And I’m a bootstrapping up.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:11
And we are your hosts for anything but idle. This is Episode 39 039. And we’re recording this on January 15 2021. Today we’ll be talking, we’re
Augusto Pinaud 0:23
talking about the Samsung event.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:25
What did I say? Do jobs get the sun and get to completely froze? Oh, my computer froze. So Samsung, the galaxy live event and Samsung unpacked live event. And yeah. So today we have our delegates joining us. And he’s our Samsung aficionado. And so our galaxy is a productivity and collaboration consultant. He’s a blogger at the idea pump.com directive podcast each week. And so welcome to anything but idle art.
Art Gelwicks 0:56
Morning, guys. Good morning. Good. I thought Monday’s were early. But this is even earlier for some reason. And it’s the same time.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:05
It’s rough. I think it’s rough on a Friday morning that you you know having to go live that early. But either way, we had the Samsung Galaxy unpacked live event. And they announced what I believe was four or five products, and what our products today for our audience. So they can understand really the context of how they’re going to be able to be more productive with the products that Samsung has announced if they are so I know that I’m very interested in your thoughts. Your thoughts are about the Samsung’s S Pen and S Pen pro that they announced yesterday. And what and so they came right out of the gate, tm ro introduced himself to the stage, he gave a little bit of a pep talk. I didn’t find anything in that building. That was like a hint to anything. He just was basically telling people that 2020 taught us that we were going to be on mobile, and they wanted to give us those capabilities. And so they have been innovating in that space. What did you hear? There was
Art Gelwicks 2:09
there was a theme I heard right away. And I heard it repeated numerous times during the launch event about personalization. I mean, he started right off talking about the personalized experience. And every time they brought out a product, they didn’t wrap up that product without talking about the ways that you can personalize whether it’s the packaging or the case or whatever, there was that recurring. This is mine type of feel. which is which is good. I like that in this type of approach, not so much somebody saying hey, this is what you need. This is the this is designed the optimal way that anyone should enjoy, therefore you don’t need to tinker with it. Rather, hey, this is our stuff. It’s really cool. And if you want to make it more yours, you can do so. So I like the fact that they had that include. I also have to say it was probably one of the most polished ones I’ve seen as of late, just primarily because there was nobody in the state or in the venue. So they had it all pre cut and pre edited. But it was nice. And it was quick. I mean, it wasn’t one that droned on for three hours. They got in there got to the points and got out. So
Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:21
I had those, they only had those two kind of vignettes, so to speak. And they they did a really good job, they really graphically showed a lot of information very quickly. And for me that was useful in just talking about them. So then tm ro then goes ahead, and she introduces the galaxy buds Pro. And so let’s just follow the timeline that they used. And so the galaxy buds Pro is out. And what did you think about the galaxy buds pro?
Art Gelwicks 3:54
Well, first, I thought it was interesting that they kicked off with those because that, to me is a big shift in their product line. I mean they they did the galaxy, I forget what the actual name is, but I call them the galaxy beans because that’s what they look like
Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:08
a lie or a galaxy buds live.
Art Gelwicks 4:11
I forget what they were called. I didn’t pay much attention to them after I they look like something I could accidentally eat. So these are a step back in the design aesthetic to a more classic pod design. But I like the fact that and this is across the board Samsung is unabashedly saying okay, apple, you did that. So we’re gonna do that but we’re gonna take it a step further. And I’m honestly okay with that. But getting that out of the way. The the pods are really an interesting design aesthetic in my book because they address two things, Active Noise Cancelling, but also maintaining your presence within the environment. So the demonstration that they provided, showing you the Active Noise Cancelling moving around the wind can insulation and the visual imagery imagery they provided showing the internals of the device, how they were handling things such as wind cancellation, and the fact that’s got a little like periscope tube in there to block the wind was a nice feature of it, but being able to see them that they had taken into consideration, that when you start to talk to somebody, the pods actually kicked down in audio, and then you’re able to have a conversation with them, your audio plays in the background drops, and then comes back up when you’re done. It’s that awareness piece that whenever I wear, you know, not equivalent noise, cancelling pods, but ones that really close off my ears, I always feel a little bit anxious about the environment around me, because I don’t have that warning coming. And it sounds like these take care of that.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:49
Yeah, they have that vent, so that he doesn’t have that suction either, you know, on you, which is a really nice feature. And I know that I have those on the Google Pixel buds too. And so you have you have the ability to secure it in your ear, but you don’t feel that sense of it being suctioned with that you have with some of the other ones really all and I like the I like the design, I’m not bothered by the bean, the the buds lock, I actually liked the design a lot. And I had really contemplated getting those if I hadn’t bought all of the other ones that I purchased, including the galaxy of the Google Pixel buds, too. And so I’m, I’m really interested in these now, to see how the buds pro really work, especially the quality of the audio that I heard in the in the demo, if they’re anywhere near accurate. That’s pretty remarkable. If they’re going to be able to just I don’t like the sound of the apple, you know, earbuds Pro. The the whole like, there’s like a there’s like this dimming sound on it for some reason. And when I’m listening to speak with them on, there’s just a weird sound that I that I can tell that they’re using them. And there’s there’s just not, it’s not I don’t feel like I’m there with you. And so I’d really like to see if those buds pro provide that same level of being in the same room with you quality,
Art Gelwicks 7:17
especially when you’re doing these kinds of one of the things that intrigued me in the in the presentation is they were showing tied to Dolby Atmos, the position sensing. So basically, if you didn’t see it, what happens is if you’re wearing the pros, and you turn your head, it senses that motion, and it changes the audio within the 3d audio spectrum. So that it literally sounds like you’re looking in at that new sound location. I love that concept. I want to see it actually work or hear it actually work to see how close to reality it gets. And I and I think about it not so much for music musics great, I mean concert No, wearing those for gaming. That would be interesting. That would be very interesting to get true motion proximity or not proximity, but motion sensing within the audio would really extend the capability. And that’s, that’s again, one of those underlying things that I kind of picked up through this entire presentation. And they did call it out a little bit later on is that not only is this around, you know, the new devices, but their focus, again, is on content creation. Their focus is on personal entertainment, and they did call out gaming specifically. So it’ll be interesting to see how this particular part of it ties into it. I also like the fact that they they’re visually apparent and in your ears. I don’t like the the iPhone ones. Okay, I don’t like the dangly little teardrop things. But it does tell you that somebody has a minute. If you’re wearing these pros, they’re very reflective, at least from what I can tell. So it’s kind of easy to tell somebody has these earbuds in like I said I have of the things that they showed. They were two things I was actively interested in getting. This is one of them.
Augusto Pinaud 9:13
Yeah, it wasn’t really interesting. I had nothing against the being God’s life. But I’m curious to see how how they compare in that in that quality. I can’t stand the silicon things I need to start by changing that. Even though there is tapes available that are not silicon that already change in many cases, that ceiling so it it makes no sadly not a product that I will be playing with just because because of that silicon cause allergies on my ears and out of the equation. But that’s that said, there’s one other element that was curious for me and is water resistance and they mentioned that the high water resistance didn’t went into a lot more details than that or I missed them. But I’m curious is that they refer to sweater resistance as now you will be able to do fun things like, you know, get into getting into swimming, or you are going to just be able to sweat better. Yeah, it’s it’s IPS specific about it.
Unknown Speaker 10:19
Yeah, well, they
Augusto Pinaud 10:20
did,
Art Gelwicks 10:21
they did say it was IP x seven rated, which is not, you’re not gonna wear a deep sea diving, no. But you know, sweating activities outside, you get rained on something like that, they should be absolutely fine. And considering the fact that I always chuckle a little bit about this, there are so few holes on the outside of that thing, when you actually have it on, it’s going to take a lot of water just to get it in anyway, it’s more like they were saying the exposure points. Now what I always find interesting, when you flip the buds or the pods over Pro, I’m going to get that right yet, it’s only going to take me till the next launch event to get that right. When you flip them over, you’ll notice there’s I believe there were two or three gold contact points used for charging. I always worry about those because with the Samsung products I’ve had over the years, I’ve had problems where those contact points will either collect dirt or corrode and reduce the efficiency of the charging capability. So I’ll be curious to see if they’ve improved either the actual methodological properties of it or coating over it to protect those for for the long term basis. But I couldn’t argue with the price either. Now, I were just to give some context, I do a lot of woodworking and when I do woodworking I have ear covers the big Mickey Mouse things that I wear, can’t wear 95% of the earbuds out there under those because of how tightly they sit. But I have anchor ones right now that are in the little oval case, they fit just far enough in my ears that I can put the ear covers over it. Which means that if somebody needs to talk to me, I can hear them through there. Or I can listen to my music or I can listen to an audio book while working. I want to see if these fit in that same space. Or if they’re just a little bit too big, because they look like they stick out just a little bit. So but this is the this is the earbud thing. It’s all nuance, I mean, a gousto you’re talking about you know, you have you have a slight change because of the con them it’s the silicone material. And you know, I’ll admit, I have one ear that fits slightly different than the other. So I’ll get one adjusted and the other one will fall out. It’s like what the heck, you know, straighten your head out. But that’s, that’s the battle that I have that this set that I wear, ironically enough, I’ve had this set for about 10 years now. And there, it’s about the dumbest set of headphones ever. But they work and they never fall out. So
Raymond Sidney-Smith 12:48
yeah, no, it’s really remarkable. I have so many different headsets, but they all fit modalities, like they fit different things that I’m doing and why I’m doing them. And I have I have tried to reduce the number, like I have a pair that I bought I bought that are just for the shower, because I don’t want to you know, wake up other folks in the house. So when I’m showering, you know, I I use those and they are like $20 $30 headsets that I buy from Amazon about two or three times a year. Because they’re garbage. They are just rubbish. But I’m not going to bring my normal headsets in there. You know, even though I forget what the pixel buds to I think their IP rating is fairly high. It’s probably 656 some something like that. And ip ip seven that’s not bad. That’s That’s pretty good. I
Unknown Speaker 13:37
gotta give him that water again.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 13:39
So yeah, but but you’re not you can go in the pool, but you probably shouldn’t stay underwater in them.
Art Gelwicks 13:45
Yeah, my my worry would be the infamous bathtub drain. That thing is the floor and I’m going to panic as I watch it scoot across and disappear. So and you know, that’s just although I did, I don’t know if you guys caught it. I didn’t catch it. They didn’t say how long the battery life was. They didn’t say the charging time the battery life or the life in the case. Now the case, if it matches what live had the cases rechargeable. I think it’s usually about 40 hours. But it’s also the cases wirelessly rechargeable, which is kind of nice that you can drop the case on a wireless charger charge it up, it’ll charge the phone, but it also works with any of the Samsung devices that have the what I like to call the shared charging where you can charge a device off of the phone kind of hijack it’s charging. It supports that as well. So that that’ll be interesting. Yeah, I will admit. Although, did you guys notice they were if they were in any other colors? Yeah, the only color I saw was purple. Which I’m okay with.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 14:48
They have really three colors. So it’s that Phantom White Phantom black and Phantom. I’m think violet.
Art Gelwicks 14:56
So okay. And Phantom black. We have to talk about So but we’ll get to that
Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:01
we will get there. And the thing I wanted to just comment on quickly was the were the contacts and you’re absolutely right art because I have a very old smartwatch and I love it. And it’s it’s the Huawei Watch. Original while we watch, and I refuse to give it up, I just continue to keep wearing it. And the and it’s just great. It’s, it’s it fits my wrist, it’s a great band, I mean solid band, the contacts on it are wearing. And not on not on the not on the watch. But actually on the charger, which is a specialty charger, you can only use that what that charger without it, there’s no wireless charging. And so it’s been a real problem. And so you know, finding a replacement, since it’s a discontinued product, it’s old, those things are are problematical. And so be mindful, I know that on the pixel buds to and on several of my other headsets, those contacts are you could just very easily clean them off with a non metal, you know, one of those abrasive sponges that are non metal, water, it cleans it off pretty well. The real problem is getting inside of the case. So in terms of the you know, going inside in like I’ve taken a Q tip basically and gone inside to clean out those those those tips on a regular basis because the gunk kind of you know, builds up inside the contact case I had.
Art Gelwicks 16:26
Yeah, I was gonna say I had a gear fit that that was the death knell for it. Device continued to work. It’s the charging contacts that finally gave up the gave up the ghost and which was a shame. And when you look at the migration of their no this this wasn’t in the launch event, but which is kind of surprising. But they didn’t have any wearable devices like this in the launch event. But when you look at the migration as they started to get into the actual s twos, and the Samsung watches, and they finally switched over to wireless charging, that made all the difference. And it’s progressively gotten better. But I’ve got frontier three that I wear. And I’ve had this thing for quite some time and it just chugs and chugs and chugs. But it’s got the same type of circumstance, its original charger is a vertical charger. So you had to have to get this thing sitting just right. The new ones are flat. So at least they’re learning from it. But yeah, those contacts worry me. And I think they always will.
Augusto Pinaud 17:24
I think that’s something that Samsung do really well. As much as I’m not a Samsung user and have never own any of their products. One of the things you can see a green or not, is how much their product evolved from product to product or product, the product and how much the shortcomings that they could not foreseen on the prior product. They try to fix it that sometimes actually fix it that sometimes created. Yeah.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 17:54
But but but I’m going to but I’m going to give them that, you know, that’s even it’s created a different set of problems. It’s a different set of problems, because they tried to fix the prior year, the product is coming out January 15, which is today. So it’s available today at $199 USD. And And so yeah, so with the voice pickup unit on the system, active noise cancellation, and that auto switch. And I think with the vent, I think that’s a really good kind of set of upgrades to the the pics of the galaxy buds. And so seeing seeing those pros come out were quite interesting to me only because I happen to be a buds fan.
Art Gelwicks 18:34
So I think this truly puts Samsung’s earbuds in a direct competition level with the AirPods. Pro. I think that’s what they are, I think I would consider those like one one a fighting with each other, and everybody else is kind of along for the ride. So unless you’re going to spend $400 on a post set, but sorry, not happening.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 18:58
Yeah. And then and then we move right along in the show to then introducing smart things. And, and the the find application and the fact that the the galaxy buds pro are connected to the SmartThings find application ecosystem, very similar to you know, find my phone or the the Android fire, but either way, you’re able to go ahead into your Android ecosystem and find your devices, find my device, whatever the the idea is, is that we have the capability of going ahead and detecting the location of our devices. But now we have all of these other things, you know, watches, bugs, you know, and so on and so forth. And so the introduction or at least the segue between the the new product that they announced the kind of a minor product, but still they beat Apple to it, which is is kind of what they wanted to do, right? Yeah. So so they announced the smart things tag, the smart tag and the smart tag plus, what did you think about the smart tag and the smart tag plus
Art Gelwicks 20:00
I’m glad I don’t have tile stock, that it provides the same base capability as tile. And I have been a tile user for a few years now. And it has its pros, and it has its cons. And I think this will have that same challenge at times battery life becomes an issue in the last a few months, as long as you can replace the battery and the little things, that’s great, locating things lost with them also nice. The advantage, I think that it has, is not so much the smart things tag, it’s the smart things, or the smart tag plus, which is the second one de identified that one leverage is ultra wideband. And because of that, you get a truer mesh network approach than just the regular Ooh, I can find this tag by Bluetooth. Both of these are really dependent on saturation of use of those devices within a space. And I’ll compare it to tile, if I lose my keys, and they have one of those tags on it. Somebody who goes past those keys has to be using the same tech for to identify it, recognize it, flag it and send up a flare. Until that saturation point happens, it’s only really good for finding things that are within your proximity, something like a smart tags plus, and I don’t have a lot of details on it yet. But I’m hoping some of the ways it works gives you an ability to locate things more effectively, because it’s using a different broadband signal. And it’s going to be an interesting run with this. The play that Samsung is making with smart things when they hit when they started to make this transition transition shift. And several, several months ago, when Google started to really push into the nest space and all that was, that was a big challenge, because you’re looking at the two and you’re going Oh, okay, we can do this, we can do that. We can provide this functionality. But they were overlapping. Now they’re working together. That to me was the bigger thing. I liked the tiles. I liked the integration piece. I think that’s great. But I think the bigger fact is that they are tying into Google nest, that they’re starting to really leverage these capabilities like what we see on the screen. I mean, a $30 tag is still a $30 tag, you have to decide what you’re going to hook it to. I do take umbrage a little bit with their example, which is for finding a lost fight. Oh,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 22:28
okay. Moving moving target. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 22:30
I
Augusto Pinaud 22:30
agree on that one. But you need to agree on before you go in there. You need to agree if anybody who is listening, or any of us has ever lost fighter four for 35 seconds, I’m not asking for a day, I’m asking 35 seconds and you’re like, Holy guacamole. Where is this thing? Okay, when I saw that, I was like, Okay, here’s my credit card. No, no, no,
Art Gelwicks 22:54
no, I and I agree with you completely. I think the concept, I’ve always liked the idea of that kind of locator. The problem is their example, they used a fast moving ship. So it needs to be a slow speed dachshund for that demonstration, because the positioning of the location and tag and you know, by the time you get there, it’s long gone. But the concept is still sound. And I do like that, that concept of this? Do I think this is going to be an earth shaking thing for them? I don’t know.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:27
Not really, if they were if they had showed my parents old St. Bernard, maybe. There you go, you know, say around anywhere.
Art Gelwicks 23:35
Anything that’s like putting a tag on a couch. It’s basically, you know, a couch, the drools. That works, because you know, it’s not gonna wander off. I do. Good. I was gonna say I do like the concept, though. And to me, this is almost like a proof of concept product for them within the SmartThings ecosystem, to prove that it doesn’t have to be a fixed location, and that smart things can reach out to it and connect to it. Because when you look at that ultra, ultra wideband, and you tie that in with the Google nest functionality, which is one of the things that they kind of like said, Hey, we’re working with and like, whoa, hold it. that’s bigger than what we were talking about that spreads it wildly. And I think it’s an interesting parallel, when you look at where this is going compared to where Amazon sidewalk is going, these background Wide Area mesh networks are going to become more and more prevalent. And then I start to wonder about things, you know, we get into our whole privacy discussion and things like that, but not to lose the gadgets. I like the gadgets, I will probably get one to try it out.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 24:42
Yeah, they immediately noted that it was end to end encrypted. And so the data that was being transmitted related to the location of those tags is only for you within your SmartThings find application. So that’s really I think phenomenal and I’m I’m really excited to see the overall Kind of usage of these pieces, I mean, I happen to be a big fan of them, you know, I have a specific device I bought some long time ago on on Kickstarter or Indiegogo or something like that. And it allowed me to throw that little tag into my luggage. So that I knew where my luggage was, when I was at the airport, by proximity as to whether or not I was leaving the airport in five minutes, or in 30 minutes, while I stood there at the carousel. You know, there, there are so many times when that has really helped me to say, Oh, you know, what, I’ve dinner plans in an hour, I’m not going to make it in time, let me let everybody know, because my luggage is not, it wasn’t on the plane, you know, or, you know, or they’re, they’ve got it on in another gate. And they’ve got they’ve got a shuttle that over to my gate, and then put it on to the carousel. So there are all kinds of circumstances where knowing where my luggage is even knowing my luggage is in the in the hotel room, you know, for for conferences, where they would pick up your luggage, they would take it to the hotel, and now I don’t have my luggage with me, I don’t know where it is. But I would be able to open up the application and see that it’s there. And so, you know, once we’re back to normative life again, and I’m and I’m out there in the world, it’s really nice to know where those kinds of pieces are. And even like, if I’m at a conference, I’m about to speak, you know, sometimes there’s a handler who will take my luggage, my briefcase, and will like, you know, hold that for me, you know, my jacket and whatever else. When they take those things from me, I’m like, Where the heck are they? I’d love to have a tag in them. So that I know where my where my, my stuff is. So I can see lots of close proximity use. And as you said, once there’s a wider network of users, then this becomes more useful for everybody in that sense as well. So yeah, I okay,
Art Gelwicks 26:50
I’m tempted to put one in every package I send through the US Postal Service right now. Because where they say it is and where it winds up, do not seem to jive as of late, which I say that jokingly. But to me, that could actually be a thing, we could actually get to a point where we’re paying for insurance on packages and things. And you pay an extra Oh, I don’t know, $10. And all of a sudden they add one of these tags to it for real time tracking. It’s it’s one of those things that these are the door opening opportunities. Excuse me, I I have had powers the only thing that worries me about these. And that’s that’s a consistent thing.
Augusto Pinaud 27:28
And well, I hope, you know tile tile who was the first? The first player I remember. You know, they really did a good job into the development and I we have got a couple of them over the years for a couple of things. You know, my wife keys and and I tell the story we we drive from Chicago to staying with some friends in Chicago many, many years ago. And we were driving to Indianapolis where we were living and as we are arriving into Indianapolis, my wife says Where are my keys? And I opened the application. And of course they were in Chicago four hours away. Yep. But at least we knew where the keys work
Art Gelwicks 28:12
well. And that’s that’s like with mine. I mean, I have an RSA token for my client work. But there’s a there’s a tile right there. And Have I ever used it to find this token? No, because I’m paranoid about where this token is. So I keep track of it. But it’s that self confidence. It’s that peace of mind that I know. Okay, I could probably locate it if I really needed to. I have found though in those occasions where I’ve needed to it. It’s fell short at times. I mean, it’s told me it’s still in the house when it’s obviously not. I have one of the the key keeper design ones where the tile is built into the key organizer for the house. That’s a nice design. But that’s a rechargeable unit. It’s charged only lasts about a month or so. And it doesn’t indicate when the battery’s dead. So that numerous times I’ve gone to us I’m like, Nope, it’s battery’s dead. So that’s one of the things that worries me is these are the types of devices that become backup of mind devices, you’ve put it into place. It’s like a smoke detector. You trust it’s going to do its job. And you trust it’s going to tell you when it’s not able to do its job. And that’s what Samsung’s devices have to do and do well for them to be successful in this market space.
Augusto Pinaud 29:29
I agree on that. But I’m coming back to to what I said earlier. What gives me confidence on their smart tag is the ability Samsung has to put the thing out and learn from the mistake and change it as I said, sometimes the next mistake, but he’s the next mistake. So I’m looking forward to see that product in the hands of the people. Yep.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:54
Great. All right. So moving right along. So we have the January 29 at USD for the smart tag, they’re coming soon with multipacks. So you can have a two pack or a four pack at 50 USD and 85 USD respectively. And they said the smart tag plus which would have that ultra wideband capability and adding that kind of mesh network components, those will come later this year they said and and that led us to who I think always steals the show, I mean, I just absolutely adore her. And that is unique Park. Unique Park comes on stage and she introduces the and they are just so we cover the colors. And then we can get into all the other fun stuff. So they come into four colors and the S 21. And the S 21. Plus comes in three colors. So the colors are Phantom violet, for the S 21. The Phantom violet, Phantom gray, Phantom White, and Phantom pink, and the S 21 plus line. They have Phantom silver, Phantom black, and then also equal the Phantom violet. So it seems like Phantom violet across the board for all of them. And then they gave these variations and colors to the various products that they announced today. So what did you like about the es 21? and What did you like about Boy,
Art Gelwicks 31:10
that’s a lot to unpack. I want to talk about Phantom and black real fast and get it out of the way. Anytime you spend five minutes of this type of event, just talking about how you got to the color black, it means you’re serious about it. And I think it’s neat. And it’s the only one I saw that has that I don’t want to say a pixel design aesthetic. When it’s laying face down, it kind of reminded me reminded me of the back of a pixel because it’s that that matted style back. I don’t get that hyped up about phone colors, primarily because you should have a case on it. And unless you’re buying the clear cases, that’s fine. Now, looking at these, there’s a couple things that did intrigued me as they were talking about one as the owner of a note 20 Ultra, the camera bump on an ultra note 20 Ultra is hideous. I mean, they did a good job of trying to make it. But if you look at the way that they’ve done it with the 21, they’ve integrated it into the metal body frame. So that there’s three lenses there, hey, uni, she’s great. If you have an opportunity to listen, she does a keynote or she does an introduction the way an introduction should be done. Because it’s part of the physical unit body. I like that reinforcement structure. The thing with the note 20 is for the ultra, this is glass here. And that’s worrisome to me if I drop it the wrong way that in this bump is just ridiculously big. It looks like they’ve made it much smoother on the integration. So I like the design aesthetic. But then again, I’m a note guy, I like square corners. This is a very curvy phone. And it I will be curious to see from a texture standpoint, does this Phantom black Phantom, whatever, create a texture that makes the device easier to hold. I like the camera breakout that they identified because they’ve got I believe it was a telephoto regular and wide angle. I forget the actual things you could tell when they were talking about the 21 all the way through the line that they are recognizing the value of computational photography. That Yeah, they’ve been, they’ve been stealing a lot of the tech from you know, the newer ones like the note 20 Ultra has got this fantastic zoom on it. No. But their focus has really been in the 21 to be that content creator and provide content creation functionality. There’s some things on there that I I’m like, okay, they were touting the fact it can shoot 8k video. Great. That’s nice. Are you gonna watch it?
Unknown Speaker 33:58
Right? Where are
Unknown Speaker 34:00
you to store it? How big is
Raymond Sidney-Smith 34:02
your television?
Art Gelwicks 34:03
Exactly how big is an 8k video file? I’ve been I’ve shot 4k on my phone like oh, this is really cool. I can only watch it on my phone because I don’t have a 4k TV yet. And if you try to back that up to Google, you might as well just send a mortgage payment along with your storage requirements because it’s just huge. But again, they’re they’re really thinking about this from what it looks like around again, the content creation, the user experience, they touted the display quite a bit and I have to say I’m a touch jealous on the display. Because they were comparing it to the note note 20 Ultra and it’s it’s either 25 or 50% brighter. Now, writers good outside, I can only imagine what it does to your battery life. But the fact that they’ve carried over things like the variable refresh rate, that’s a nice touch. It’s not a game changer though. But it is carrying the power up into that line, so that it becomes more common across the devices, I will be very interested to see the photographic comparisons that start to hit over the next week or so when you start to look at what the image quality is, versus a pixel versus an iPhone, actually, we’re going to run some competitions in our house because my wife just upgraded to a 12 Pro max this week. So her camera and my camera could just gonna slug it out. And we’ll see what happens. But that’s, I like where they’re going with it. I’m not sold on the design aesthetic yet. But they could have done worse, at least in my book.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:42
Yeah, I don’t I didn’t mind the design aesthetic. I am a round phone fan. I actually do like that as long as as you said it’s grippy on what I want to be able to hold the phone inside and out of the case. Because there are times when I’m at my desk, when I just really want to use my phone. And I want to take it out of the case. And really just use the phone itself. And maybe I’m unique in that sense. But the stronger glass, they talked about having a stronger glass surface on on, they
Art Gelwicks 36:11
didn’t mention what type though, they didn’t say what if it was gorilla 12 1874, whatever. They mentioned nothing about that, which is kind of unusual for them.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 36:21
Right? And it looked as though they just like put a screen like that. I know, they were just showing it but look at the screen cover. I was like, Why’d you do that? But yeah, so so there is clearly some stronger glass and probably is some just gradation above their existing line of Gorilla Glass. They talked about director’s view. And like if you’re new we’re recording being able to see yourself and or others losing the multiple cameras in the the device that I really like being able to have that director’s view concept of having the picture and picture of the other camera so that you’re able to see what other people are doing and see yourself at the same time. Which is interesting, because if I remember correctly, the note eight used to do that, because I
Art Gelwicks 37:00
had I have a video somewhere in the cloud that has me superimposed within, you know, a basketball game providing, you know, commentary for it. So again, this is that computational thing. Where does the device take us software wise, beyond just the physical capabilities of the device itself? I like I mean, the touting of the selfie modes and the touting of the zoom capabilities? No, that’s great. What are they going to do with it? That’s really the question.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 37:31
Right. And this is their standard like this is their, you know, this is where they want to set the standard for all of their other devices down the chain. And so since the galaxy line is their high end devices, they really want to set that standard fairly high. And it seems like they’re doing some really good stuff. Now, some of the other upgrades that they they talked about was this new concept of the Knox vault. They could have just called it Knox or vault, but they decided not as vault has one full word, mixture, word salad. And so Knox vault is akin to what we know as the apple secure enclave, they’ve now created this physical hardware space on the on the device where your primary security information is held. So biometric data and other kinds of password authentication data are all kind of held in this space. I’m really curious to see how they kind of worked through that over the next year or two. You know, Apple obviously had their problems with the secure enclave regarding some, you know, minor issues. But for the most part, it’s retained its power as being something very useful on a device that holds so much of your personal life data. And so I’m excited to see them bring the docs vault and I hope that Google and their pixel line brings something akin to that. But I don’t know, I mean, they’ve done such a great job. so far. I mean, Google has had relatively has stayed relatively unscathed than the pixel line in terms of major security problems that have kind of plagued the other OEMs. And so we’ll see. They also have secure share now where you can send things to people or messages to people and move that sharing permission to a file or to things over time. So you can say, oh, in three days, I want this to disappear from from access to that person, or delete this thing at that time. Really nice to have that capability kind of caked into the operating system.
Art Gelwicks 39:24
Yeah, they’ve had Knox for a while, but they haven’t really touted it. It’s really been more positioned around the business use, especially on the notes. It is nice to see it spread out to the main line of the phone set. I don’t know how heavily people are going to utilize it. I’m also curious to see how many people managed to lock stuff in it and can’t get it out. So don’t store your bitcoins stuff in there. But, again, it’s one of those steps and, and this is more not specific to the device, but and again, I know Other underlying message of the entire thing is the partnerships. They specifically called out that Google messages is now the messages client that’s now granted Samsung messages has been since its inception. But the fact that they said, Yeah, you’ll probably want to use this one from Google. That to me is a big step. They called out Google, they called out Microsoft, they called out all of the the partner integrations. And I think they’re really starting to get that messaging across that you know what, if you use ours, you can use it with a bunch of things. We’re not a closed ecosystem. So I found that fascinating. We rarely talk about S Pen.
Augusto Pinaud 40:44
Well, before we go to this, one more thing I want to mention that was interesting for me on was the emphasis they did on on privacy and remove your location data and remove content access, where I can share, but then Now remove the access, you get stuff. That that was really interesting for me what approach they did to that.
Art Gelwicks 41:07
It’s fascinating, but the challenge you get into with that is a lot of that privacy issue has nothing to do with the device itself. It has everything to do with the cloud services and the back end. So when Samsung saying yeah, we’re going to create a more private environment. But yet, we’re partnered with Google, everybody’s kind of like, Okay, which one is it? So out while we’re talking about it, I just want to get this out of the way. Samsung, shame on you for taking the charger out of the box. I this nonsense of it being better for the environment. I’m sorry, guys. I tweeted about this last night, I said, Look, if you truly believed that load of malarkey, you’re selling, you would put a coupon for a free charger in the box. Because if somebody wants it, they should have it. If they don’t want it, they don’t have to get it. But this non No, I’m sorry, guys,
Raymond Sidney-Smith 41:59
I think it’s support carbon offsets. I mean, they could with every phone purchase, or some some legitimate carbon offset program to be able to do that while still making their customers happy. There’s enough money in the in the pot. This is about writing with Apple.
Art Gelwicks 42:16
And that’s that’s the and that’s one of the if you look at I think it was on the samsung site, it they have all the package offerings you do a trade in and things like that right now, if you buy it, they’ll give you a free charger, as part of that package offered you offering? Well, guys, that just means it’s not in the box. It’s now in another box. Are we not seeing how this doesn’t make it better?
Augusto Pinaud 42:40
So I just no good boxes to do contamination. But what I’m going to say about this is that is a problem when you decide as a corporation, any corporation to go and make fun of the other Corporation. I’m not saying what Apple was right or what’s wrong, that is a set of other discussion. Okay, but don’t go dark publicly to make fun of the other corporation to then six months later say, Oh, they weren’t? Oh, yeah, you look kind of ridiculous, you know, between that one and all the tweets of the other set of tweets that went out and use Twitter for us, it was like for the love of god people. You know,
Art Gelwicks 43:21
this is one of the things that I I’m actually kind of happy that they’re getting smacked around a little bit for, because you know what, there’s certain times you just made a dumb idea. And they caught, they caught grief over removing the headphone jack. And to this day, I still have issues with him removing the headphone jack, I will always have but that’s because I’m an old school kind of guy. But you make these kinds of silly decisions and you try to justifies it, fire it from a marketing and a sales perspective. And a lot of times you get burned Well, this in my book, this is one of those things they get burned. would I not buy a Samsung device? Because they don’t have the charger in the box? No, that’s not going to be a deciding factor for purchase. It’s just going to give me something to grumble about on the internet. So
Raymond Sidney-Smith 44:08
Alright, so they are like I need anything. Yes, 21. And yes, 21 Plus, are starting at 799 and 999 respectively, and you can pre order them today. Oh, that’s pretty good. In terms of screen size. Do we know screen size? I didn’t see the actual specs on
Augusto Pinaud 44:27
21 is 6.2 s 21 Plus is six points that I was interested in because I look into their comparison again. I’m not a Samsung guy. I don’t I don’t know if I have ever played with one recently at least for sure. Not in since COVID. So I thought it was interesting for me to see that they it was they were a point one larger than the than the iPhones. You know, like like to claim and I was laughing about because again, that’s a marketing Then that is okay. Our phones are much a screen well. Okay, let’s get let’s get you claimed your marketing thing that your screens are bigger than the iPhones by point one in all cases?
Art Gelwicks 45:14
Well, one of the things I did a quick look up on was the comparison of the 21 Plus Ultra, to the note 20 Ultra, which by the way, 5g is the thing that they’re all touting. And maybe someday we’ll get 5g antennas to actually use it. Different conversation though. There’s, again, point one inch difference in screen size, between the S 21. And the note 20. And the note 20 actually comes across as a slightly larger screen because of the square corners. So we’re getting to a point of it’s a big screen. I mean, we’re still in tablet territory with the larger ones. And when you’re targeting around content consumption or gaming specifically, Biggers better Yeah,
Augusto Pinaud 46:01
I still insist that I, I would love for Apple to give me phone capabilities on my iPad Mini, then I can get rid of my phone of my phone and I will be happy carry that dude.
Art Gelwicks 46:13
It’s, it’s interesting, because I do game off of mine. And I game on stadia I game on Xbox, I use those apps and I have Bluetooth, Xbox controller, I connect by Bluetooth. And it’s a sweet environment, I got to give it credit, it runs at console levels. So I think this, it all fits into this grand scheme of things. And again, going back to that partnership piece, you now have devices that are targeted at a more general audience that have a high enough level of power. So that things like stadia will run effectively, and run extremely well. So
Unknown Speaker 46:54
now, can we talk about s pens?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 46:56
No, we’re getting we got the one UI three, they did bring it up. And I and I do think it’s important for us to just cover here, what you’re going to be seeing on screen is is them walking us through the the one UI kind of concept. And I’m just curious, you know, while this is playing for us, what you what you thought about the one, the one UI concept, and you know, they continue that the whole concept of one UI from my perspective, this is a lot of this is coming from what Google has been doing with the with Android pure. And so I’m very curious to see how these compare, I’ll want to look at them side by side to see what really is the difference. But overall, I really like this. I like the notion of being able to solve this problem of having multiple different interface experiences. And then pulling this all together I think is a really, I think this is going back to your point art about software and the importance of what we do with the software. This is really where I see their power is making the experience seamless the way that Apple does with regard to their ecosystem.
Art Gelwicks 48:09
I like the one UI, the three one I was very happy when I got it updated onto my phone because at the same time I had a pixel four XL, and I could compare them side by side. I like the experience. There is one thing in the entire environment that just makes my teeth ache and causes me to not use the one ui 3.1 launcher. And that’s the fact that when you swipe left far enough or swipe right far enough, instead of on the pixel you get there discover mode where you get Google News and things like that. On Samsung, you get this thing called Samsung free by tabla news which is if you’re familiar with the internet, it’s an ad companies news feed. They don’t currently give you an option to get rid of that thing. To me, it’s like the news version of Bixby Come on guys give me an option to turn it off. So once they give you give me an opportunity to flip that over. I will probably use their launcher as well right now I use one called launcher I was using Nova I turn that off. I went back to launch here because it makes it for easy for that sweet. That aside. I think one UI is probably one of the best non pure Android experiences that I’ve had.
Unknown Speaker 49:31
I I’m not that much of a
Art Gelwicks 49:32
an Android purist myself, honestly. Because when you think about it, what’s the benefit of Android? You can customize it, you can make it exactly what you want. So what is a pure experience? A pure experience is basically nothing in it. I mean, that’s vanilla ice cream in the bowl with a spoon. You know I want the chocolate syrup. I want the jimmies I want the whipped cream and the cherry. Those are my choices. And as long as the user experience is staying on the way That, that to me is doing it right. And I think one UI does a pretty good job of that it can be as intrusive, or as unobtrusive as you want.
Augusto Pinaud 50:08
You know, there was one thing that they show in there that I had, I don’t have knowledge, if this was available before or not, but it’s one of my favorite features on the iOS ecosystem where I live, and he’s done, I can copy on my phone, paste it on my iPad, paste it on the MacBook. And this is the first time I see on a video of them, that you can do that, at least between Samsung devices, copy on the phone and paste on the iPad on the tablet. And if they if that actually, you know that that actually acid, in my opinion, that makes the platform so robust, especially when you have devices is so comfortable, to be able to copy on your phone and paste back, I hope, really, that they are able to integrate that, not only with that, but with Windows and other things, because that will make them a really, really strong feature and a strong competitor.
Art Gelwicks 51:04
Yeah, I’m trying to make sure that I don’t confuse their business approach within the note line. And what they’re doing within the es 21 line, which is much more personally focused. But you’re right, being able to do that copy and paste synchronize your browsers, you know, those types of features are extremely convenient. And from a personal productivity standpoint, you start to count on them after a while, you know, being able to direct share to telegram, for example. Those are really nice capabilities. And to make sure that the user experience drives to that is powerful. While always user experience looked like it was going in the right direction, but then we freaked out in the hallways not here. You look at you know, the the one plus phones, their user experience is pretty good. Motorola has moved to a more pure Android type of experience. Like I said, as long as you can tune it and customize it to what you want, you’re still in my mind following the spirit of Android, it’s when you start to lock it down to the point where you can’t make those changes. Well, there’s a there’s a device with a fruit on the back that you can go by that.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 52:14
And for those of you who have any issues transferring either data or file, Microsoft, and otherwise, even to some extent, using iOS and on the iPad, I use pushbullet. And pushbullet really allows me to be able to copy and send those those either a link in if I’m in Chrome, you know, I’m just capable of sharing those kinds of items across each other pushbullet has lots of other features. But it really does give me that capable of, of, you know, synchronizing across devices, like if I copy something to my clipboard, I could just pay chuck it over to another device. And it’s really, really helpful, especially when I’m on my mobile phone. Many things that I want to browse on the on the phone, I want to actually browse on the desktop. And so I can just share that to pushbullet. And it opens it up on my, on my desktop browser. And that’s really, really handy. Of course, there are now caked in functions in like the pixel line and other high end phones. But then, you know, as you get, you know, lower down in the Android versions, those are not available to you. So pushbullet helps to solve that problem. And I’ve just become so comfortable with pushbullet I haven’t actually used the native, you know, functionality in Android to do that. Alright, now we move into the s 21 Ultra and the announcement of the S Pen and the S Pen Pro. So they bring Charlie McCarran I believe it is onto the stage. And he introduces us to the s 21. Ultra. And then ultimately to the S Pen and the S Pen Pro. What do you like about all three product announcements? Obviously, the ultra was supposed to be like the big announcement. But
Art Gelwicks 53:50
it’s amazing how divisive this little thing can be. Because you ask somebody, hey, I have a phone with a stylus in it. And they’re like, what, why why would you note has its bread and butter has been the stylus. Since as long as I can remember they release the fact that the ultras are going to have access to an S Pen S Pen plus and er S Pen Pro. To me, the bigger issue is the fact that they did not change the physical device design to support the S Pen and the S Pen Pro. So if you get one, you now basically have like a mini Samsung Tab S seven because the pen attaches to the outside to through a specialized case, which means I’m glad it has a locator built into it for when you lose it because that’s going to happen a lot. But the fact that they’re introducing it I’m curious to see if they really start to press now the abilities of creators to use it or because they’ve isolated it too. Just one particular segment of the s 21 line that being the ultras, is this more just a test gimmick. And before these came out, there was debate as to whether or not they’re going to kill off the note line, you’re gonna say, Okay, you know what s 20 ones are going to be the thing notes are going to die, s pens will be available and the S 20. ones are the ultras, seeing what I saw yesterday, I’m convinced that’s not going to happen. Because I don’t see the S 21 Ultra as a business device, it doesn’t have that same feel. But what I did like, and this is I’m actively anxiously looking for these s pens, I believe, and I haven’t been able to actually confirm this work across anything that uses an S Pen. So an S pen or an S Pen Pro, I can use it on my note ultra, I can use it on my Chromebook because I get a Chromebook pro that uses the S Pen, I could use it on a tab s6 whichever one uses the S Pen s seven, this now becomes the Samsung pencil for lack of a better term. To me, that’s a big deal. Because if you’ve ever written for any extended period of time with one of the Note s pens, you know what finger cramping is. But to have something that’s much more ergonomically designed the right size, the right scale usable across multiple devices, this could be a significant thing, if you like stylus, but again, we’re talking I mean, Ray, I know you have one, I have one, it’s a niche market. There’s not a lot of people who live and die by their stylus.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 56:45
Yeah, I think this is really real, but I think that it’s going to be a really game changer. If you are right, that you are capable of using this cross device. Because that line capabilities here where all of these different form factors are in a unified sense, then your productivity gets to to increase one of my biggest problems with the Apple Pencil line, I want to be able to take my Apple Pencil and use it on an iPhone and use it on an iPad use it on a pro use it on the screen of my MacBook, I want to use it on all of those devices, the limitations of the of the of these types of styles, something that I hope at Samsung and Motorola and so on so forth really start to push the boundaries of so that we can start seeing the productive gains of being able to move from one ality of working to another and have our our peripherals just match up
Unknown Speaker 57:34
with just a here’s good.
Augusto Pinaud 57:37
You know, I agree with you completely. I think that’s a game changer. You know, I remember, you know, the year so the Palm Pilot, you know, where you were having that little stylus and I remember, when I was able to acquire the first, you know, normal size pencil that I can use instead of the, and leave the little plastic thing there for just backup use. The fact that they come with a full size, I think is brilliant, but on the fact that you can use it on multiple devices. You know, that’s one thing that has been annoying with Apple, you know, if you have two devices, and iPads and they are different generations, then now you need to carry to pants and they even to this day I i understand the technical capabilities. So this is more a complaint. But why I need to have multiple Apple pencils to talk into my different things come on Apple, you already figured it out the sound that need to be way more complicated. The touch of this, okay, why I cannot use one pencil for two devices on a three set. I’d my iPhone and my MacBook so that way I can use it everywhere.
Art Gelwicks 58:48
Yeah, that’s that’s really the challenge. I mean, what I have here is two s pins. The silver one here is out of my Chromebook. This one’s out of my note 20. They are just about the identical length. The thickness on the Chromebook one is slightly larger, what you can’t really see easily is there is a button midline on right behind my finger here on the note one that actually controls functionality as well. Now, these are nice and keeping in mind that the stylus or the S pens were originally designed to be stored inside the devices. For reference, this is roughly the size of what we’re talking about with the new S Pen products. Now this is a common one. But just to give you an idea of scale. If I’m going to be writing all day, I want this one, huh, these are nice. And these are the ones are going to be with me when I’m out and about. But this is the one that’s going to live on my desk. The thing that I like about the S Pen configuration is if I’m using this silver one on my Chromebook, I can reach over to my phone and use it on my phone and go right back to my Chromebook. There’s a setting where it recognizes devices other than the R s pins other than the one that’s assigned to that device and they have Built in charging capabilities and things like that. So it’s definitely Samsung’s Apple Pencil, I think it’s got a huge opportunity to kind of push this forward in the market. But again, unless they really start to press in this space, the usage of this thing for creators, it may still be a novelty thing.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:00:23
Okay, any other thoughts about S Pen, and then let’s cover the main line details for the S 21. Ultra. And then we can start to wrap up the show. And so the S 21. Ultra is coming in at 1199 USD, and it’s going to be available for pre order now, and that will get anywhere free. And so the S Pen Pro, while the S Pen is available, I believe immediately, the S Pen Pro is going to be available available later this year. So they announced it, it finally comes out and they’re working with other partners they showed on screen, you know, maybe four or five different other partners, including way calm, to bring out different versions that work with the Samsung Galaxy.
Art Gelwicks 1:01:12
I saw Statler on that list, I thought that was interesting that they’re actually going to a legitimate writing instrument company and saying, okay, you know, come do this. I’ve even seen Lamy pens who does who are out of Germany, and they do wonderful fountain pens, they have an S Pen version. So the fact that they’re starting to open this up, maybe we’ll see more versions of this by other vendors. To me, that breaks this wide open, then because you can actually get it for something that’s really useful. So
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:01:42
go ahead, and it also helps to bring together the community of people who are, who are pen aficionados, you know, real pen lovers, I consider myself a pen enthusiast auto category, right? You know, I love them and appreciate them. But I’m not necessarily capable of giving you great detail about, you know, all kinds of pens, but I like to toggle between those two worlds, right, I like I like to have my fountain pen. And I also like to have my stylus, and I want the capabilities for me in those two different environments.
Art Gelwicks 1:02:14
Well, and just not to not to belabor the pen geek thing of it. But there is definitely a context for this within the productivity spaces. I’m a OneNote guy I unabashedly iPad users of OneNote almost consistently live and die by their pen. They do digital planners, they hand writing. And that’s an audience that is consistent with that. And they love it, and they do some fantastic work with it. So there’s definitely places where this is useful. And I’ll just be curious to see does this continue to happen? Or is it just one of those things? That is, again, that kind of hanger on?
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:02:55
Yeah, so just a couple of details one, I know we noted earlier, the sizes of the screens, but I’m just gonna say them again, just in case we got anything incorrect but the S 21 and s 21. Plus, they have the 6.2 inch and 6.7 inch displays. And they’re running the the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processors and then the at eight gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigabytes of storage, no microSD card slot, the Samsung ultra is 6.8 inch screen. And and so they have they have they are starting at eight, expensive 1849 USD is what it’s starting at. And and so 120 hertz refresh rate. And so it can obviously do that variable refresh rate. And so that’s really good. And yeah, so so those are some of the details and and then they fast forward in the show as we come to an end they talk about a little bit more about the connected vehicle world. And did any of that stand out for you? I mean, from my perspective, I was I was a little curious, they kind of threw that in there, mostly as like a nod to Android Auto and to their relationship with Google again, like kind of pushing that
Art Gelwicks 1:04:07
nothing. I mean, some of the functionality was nice. No, I always had, anytime we start talking about embedding a system into a car, it always sits the wrong way with me, because to me that’s built in functional obsolescence. I mean, I think about the Honda Pilot that we bought years ago that had a GPS that stopped working in 2011, because you couldn’t buy map updates. I mean, those those are the types of things that occur with these. And for the large portion of vehicles out there that don’t have embedded Android Auto systems in them. You need whatever’s on your phone device. So I’d rather see them you know, integrating more. There dare I say it Samsung dex type of experience plug in display control and interact with things that way. Then I do want to see it embedded there’s potential to it but it It doesn’t do anything. For me personally,
Augusto Pinaud 1:05:01
I agree with what you said, but I’m going to say that I see, having that same experience that you had with your pilot with with our minivan. A lot has changed from from those days to now my, my jeep got an update that it was cool, we got a couple things, I mean, nothing, nothing life altering, but but it was cool to know that they are that mentality from the auto manufacturers are, are changing, you know, you have read about Tesla’s giving, you know, significant updates and, and others. So I think one of the things was that industry is they were, they took a lot of time to get into that concept of the upgrade to understand the ad use have another computer, you can call it car, but it’s really a computer, and they’re coming to peace into this. And, you know, same with, again, I live on an iOS system, but you know, our CarPlay, for example, the fact that I can add the app that I now integrate my device into that screen on the car, it’s beautiful. And and it works. As it does improve, it’s really works well. And now you get the updates when that happened. And it really make a difference. So I’m hopeful with all these manufacturers adding to this car capabilities, because I think Finally, we’re starting to see significant change on the automobile industry. Do you understand? Yes, the car you sold me three years ago, it’s a still a computer, and I want you to give me a date until that date is going to be.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:06:42
And I think that there’s an important piece here, which is that Samsung makes more than phones, and and these are personal devices that connect to those phones. And so, you know, from washer dryers to refrigerators, to toilets to all kinds of other things. They’re that demonstration of I think the connected car digital key concept, I think is one, you know, they’re just trying to compete with Apple, you know, because Apple talked about it in their last event or leave it prior to that. And the other side is that they are showing that they have an ecosystem of other products and the the appliances that they have in there and that you can have in your homes and wanting to show that and showcase that in some light way. In the event. They just wanted to nod to the fact that they are a much bigger entity with all showcase that. Any final thoughts comments? Regarding the Samsung unpacked event? Yes.
Art Gelwicks 1:07:37
It was a nice event. It wasn’t a huge event. It wasn’t the earth shaking one. I mean, we didn’t see any new fold phones, roll up phones, flip phones, whatever kinds of fancy, who knows what’s phones, what we saw was Samsung saying this is going to be our standard of product line for the next year. This is what our expectation is that people will be using these. We’ve tested it out on other platforms such as the note, we know these things work. Some of these things are trial, it seemed to be like a normal unpacked level event, dealing with a lot of the the uncertainty we have now. It was it was nice and even. I mean, there wasn’t a lot of there wasn’t a lot of hoopla. I mean, it was one of those things that I look at the products. I’m anxious to see how they all turn out. There was nothing there that said, What the heck were you thinking? Or, you know, there was there was enough new things, little new things, that I’m optimistic about what they’re bringing out, but I’m not gonna run down the street screaming by Samsung. So
Augusto Pinaud 1:08:44
no, but I think they did a really good job into giving you a lot, at least for the for the middle geek in me, giving me a lot of information to me wanting to go and open another browser tab and try to find more. And that is a hard balance to to accomplish, especially for a person who don’t have anything invested. There is no no sense of product in my proximity not I have one ever the fact that they were introducing the stuff that made me go there, I’m going to assume that for a person who leave into that environment, that thing was even stronger.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:09:22
Yeah, I will. I will embed in the show notes, the the little summary video that Engadget put together, it’s just a, I think a 1217 minute video that they showcased all of the various products together and kind of their shortcut. And so with that, thank you gentlemen, for joining me today. Art, where can folks keep up to keep up with your work that you have going on
Art Gelwicks 1:09:46
out in the world? best thing to do come over to the idea pump. I’m posting more stuff actively now. I’m in the midst of the project, but follow me there find me on Twitter, I usually have something to say about something. So
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:10:00
Wonderful, thank you so much art already gousto. Just you and me. We’ve reached the end of our commentary on the the unpacked event. Thank you so much for joining me anything but idle every week ready to go.
Augusto Pinaud 1:10:17
It’s my pleasure. Thank you very much. And I’m looking forward to our next one.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 1:10:21
Fantastic. Well, everybody, we have reached the end of our coverage for commentary show on the samsung unpacked 2021 event. If we missed something, if there’s something about the Samsung event that you wanted to let us know about, feel free to head over to anything but idle.com forward slash 039. And there in an on the page, you can comment, leave your thoughts. If you have something that you thought was interesting about the event you wanted to point out to us, feel free to go ahead and do that. And there, you will also be able to find our transcript. For the show, you’ll be able to find the embedded video of the show as well you can listen to the show. Obviously, if you are listening to it in a podcast app of your choice. Sometimes we have extra little things that we add to our show notes. So all of that stuff is there on anything but I’m watching the live stream, you can go ahead and hit subscribe. And that’ll let you know when we have new live streams that will go weekly. This is a special show. Obviously we’re recording early on on a Friday morning because of the schedule that Samsung had. But normally we go live on Monday. So you can always join us for our live shows where we cover all the news and in the productivity and technology space each week. And so go ahead and head over to anything but I back to the podcast. If you want to listen asynchronously after the fact. You can you can find the instructions to follow us and get episodes downloaded for free every week in your podcast app of choice. With that, see you all next time on anything but idle. Here’s to your productive life.
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