Gadget tips for your next upgrade | Vergecast Hotline

Today on the flagship podcast of answering machines: We answer your questions from The Vergecast Hotline! 01:51 - LDAC and other audio codecs 06:21 - Samsung TV 07:58 - Smartwatches for marathons 16:38 - iPhone upgrades 23:09 - Threads 29:52 - Security cameras 40:46 - Laptops 39:13 - Google Pixel 50:54 - Android phones Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of answering machines. I'm your friend David Pierce and I'm on vacation. As you're listening to this, I'm probably in an Airbnb in the woods of Pennsylvania, pretending to read all of those books that I bought, but ultimately probably just scrolling through TikTok, watching videos of outtakes from The Office, because that's what I end up doing on most of my vacation. And honestly, no complaints. It's not a bad life. Vacation or no vacation, though, we still have a great show for you today. We've been really enjoying getting to answer a question from the Vergecast hotline every week, but the truth is, we get so many good voicemails to just do one a week. So today, we're gonna do a whole bunch right in a row.

• 0:43David Pierce?

  We're gonna answer your questions about iPhones and pixels and threads and Instagram, Macs and Windows, security cameras, and lots more. Turns out, a lot of people have buying questions, so we're gonna just tell you some stuff to buy. As always, the hotline number is 866-VERGE11, and you can also email all of your questions to [email protected]. Thank you truly to everyone who calls and emails. Hearing from you is my absolute favorite thing, and doing the hotline is frankly my favorite part of the show. Lots of hotline coming up in just a second, but first, I gotta go watch more Office bloopers. Have you seen the ones about the plasma TV from the dinner party episodes where he's just pushing it into the wall? It never, ever fails to make me laugh. It's the greatest thing.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  I guess what surround sound means is that, right over here, Tim.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Check this out. Folds.

• 1:41David Pierce?

  This is The Vergecast. We'll see you in a sec.

• 2:15Speaker 02

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• 2:49David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. Our first question might be the wonkiest question we've gotten in a while, and I love it for that. It comes from Clay in Cincinnati.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  Hey, Vergecast, this is Clay from Cincinnati. Last week, I bought a pair of Sony WF1000XM4 headphones, and today I figured out that their LDAC audio codec is not enabled by default. So I turned that on, and I think there's an incredible difference. So my question is, what's your all's favorite audio codec? Or do you think that worrying about codecs is more hi-fi, snake oil stuff? Thanks a lot. Bye.

• 3:24David Pierce?

  Okay, I brought in Chris Welch to answer this question. Chris, I assume you know why you're here.

• 3:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I love to talk audio codecs. Oh, man, there's a lot to unpack there.

• 3:34David Pierce?

  Okay, hit me with it.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  Well, timing is everything. Clay, I hope you held on to your receipt because by the time you hear this, Sony will have announced the new WF1000XM5s. And you can read my review on the site. They're great. They're not that different. They're a bit smaller, a bit lighter in your ears, sounds a bit better. So if you can do an exchange, it's going to be worth it. As far as the codecs go, it's not snake oil, but people spend way too much time worrying about this stuff, you know, like how your headphones are tuned and like designed factors in just as much as like what codecs they have. But I do like LDAC if you can turn it on. So it can hit 990 kilobits a second in theory, but most phones don't ever do that. Like when you pair Sony headphones or earbuds with your phone, by default, it usually goes for like

• 4:17Speaker 04

  660 kilobits per second, which is still better than like, you know, Spotify or whatever else. So if you've got Apple Music or Amazon Music or Tidal or QoBuzz. I never know how to pronounce that one.

• 4:29David Pierce?

  That's not a real thing. I refuse to believe that's a real name you just said.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I swear it is. There's a very passionate community. They all serve very high resolution audio. So if you pair that with an LDAC capable earbud, others aptx HD, same kind of thing. They can hit similar bitrate and you can hear it different. Some people, not everybody, again, it just kind of comes down to your ears. But if you had those earbuds, you might as well use the feature and enjoy it and get the most from your purchase. But yeah, I think we spend a lot of time just kind of worrying about the ins and outs of these codecs too much these days.

• 5:00David Pierce?

  I think that's right. So one thing I've always wondered is kind of where on the ranking of important things the codec is, right? Because obviously, if you're going to spend a lot of time worrying about your codec, but you're going to wear like AirPods that only halfway fit in your ear, like you're worrying about the wrong problem, right? And if you're buying a $15 pair of headphones at CVS and you're worried about like the quality of the stuff coming from your streaming service, you're also worried about the wrong problem. So kind of where along the line should I start to worry about the codec? Like the very first thing is headphone quality, right? Like seems like worry about that before you worry about anything else. The second thing would be basically like quality of what your streaming service can theoretically provide.

• 5:43Speaker 04

  Right. And if you have Spotify, all this is still for naught because they still don't even do lossless. We hear it's happening finally sometime soon. It'll probably cost more money than it does now. So if you have Spotify, I wouldn't worry about it, period. But if you've got, say, Apple Music or Amazon Music, then you can start to kind of factor that into your buying decision. And I think it's also like budget. If you're spending below $100, I can't imagine like that it really matters that much, the codecs, versus if you spend like $200, $300 on a set of earbuds, you want to know it checks all the boxes just because you're spending that amount of money. So why not?

• 6:16David Pierce?

  That's fair. But at least in my experience, these Sonys are good enough that our friend, I don't think this is pure placebo. I think to some extent, you turn on, like you flip the switch that says make the audio fancy and you're definitely like primed to hear the fancy audio, right?

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:30David Pierce?

  But I think we have enough quality in those Sony headphones that they will do enough of a different thing on the better codec that you might actually notice it, right? This is not pure nonsense.

• 6:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, no.

• 6:42David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 6:43Speaker 04

  Not at all. If you've got the ear for it, go for it.

• 6:45David Pierce?

  What is the verdict on the M5s, by the way? How do you feel about them?

• 6:48Speaker 04

  Good. They're not that different from the M4s, which I'm sure Clay will be happy about if he's stuck with the M4s. But they're lighter, smaller, sounds a bit nicer, slightly better at some noise cancellation on streets and like voices and things like that. But there's no like new tent pole feature. They're just a much sleeker version of the M4s.

• 7:05David Pierce?

  All right, Clay, I hope that helps. Welch, before you go, I got an email this morning that I did not tell you about, but I want to read to you and I want you to respond to it because it makes me very happy.

• 7:12Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 7:13David Pierce?

  This email comes from Matt in Switzerland. And I'm going to paraphrase because this is a very long and very lovely email, but it takes a while. Basically, our friend Matt says, "This week I had to say goodbye to my great OLED 4K TV. It was one year old. I spent hours comparing and analyzing, and then the cat jumped into the TV and destroyed it." So Matt says, "We are on the market for a new TV. My boyfriend wants to prove to me he can do it. It scares the hell out of me. I've heard him say Samsung several times. We are already using Samsung for phones and watches, but..." Samsung TV? And I would like to know your thoughts. Samsung TV?

• 7:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. There are two ways to go with Samsung. I think people love the frame. That's obviously this huge hit these days because people don't like just how heady S TVs are most of the time. So if that's a concern, the frame is great. It's gotten a lot better over the last few years. It's got a matte screen now. It looks like artwork on your wall. And then Samsung also makes some nice OLED TVs over the past couple of years if you want to spend a lot more money. Yeah, in some ways they're better than LG's. Very sorry to hear about the fate of your one-year-old OLED. That's rough.

• 8:14David Pierce?

  Yeah, losing your one-year-old 4K OLED is a tough, tough beat.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  You buy it, you think, "I'm going to have this for the next like decade at least." And then, oof, cats.

• 8:25David Pierce?

  Do you have any tips on cat resistance for televisions?

• 8:28Speaker 04

  Mount it, I guess.

• 8:30David Pierce?

  That's, yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  Though cats are pretty nimble, so who knows? There's no, there's no surefire solution.

• 8:35David Pierce?

  Yeah, just don't have cats. That's, that's my answer. Yeah, I think the Samsung answer seems to be Samsung makes good TVs, but you probably are going to pay too much for them. It's kind of my, my read on Samsung TVs most of the time.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  Costs a lot of money on the softwares, eh. So just plug in your preferred streaming box and pay no mind to it.

• 8:54David Pierce?

  Fair enough. All right, Chris, thank you as always.

• 8:57Speaker 04

  It's been a pleasure.

• 8:59David Pierce?

  Next up, because I think every time we do this, we have to talk about the Apple Watch at least somewhat. We have a question about the Apple Watch from Ben. Let's hear

• 9:07Speaker 05

  Hi, my name is Ben and this is a question for V. I'm training for my first marathon and my five-year-old Garmin watch is getting long in the tooth. I'm tempted to switch to an Apple Watch, but I'm concerned about battery life. Can I get away with an Apple Watch Series 8? Or would I need to go with the Ultra to go that route? Am I going to need to baby the battery life and turn off useful features to get through a long run? Thank you very much. Hope to hear from you soon. Bye.

• 9:29David Pierce?

  All right, V Song, our expert, is here to answer this question. V, I assume you're wearing all of these watches right now as we talk about this?

• 9:36Speaker 06

  I am wearing a Garmin and I am wearing the Apple Watch Ultra. So I feel qualified to answer this question, but also congrats then on training for your first marathon. That is a huge accomplishment. You can get away with using the Series 8 battery-wise for an entire marathon. You just are going to have to be a lot more mindful about charging and charging schedules. So you are going to have to go like, oh, before you go on a run, make sure that's topped off. And it has fast charging, so that's not bad for that. But it is a little annoying because you do have to be more conscious of the battery if you do go for the 8 than you would be if you went for the Ultra.

• 10:17David Pierce?

  Do you think it makes you run faster? Like, is this like a useful motivational tactic? Where like, I have to finish this race before my battery dies. If you get to mile 22, it's like, I have 15% left, like, it's go time.

• 10:29Speaker 06

  I think, I think if you're at mile 22 and you're bonking, you're just not going to give a crap about your watch's battery. Like, it might actually be better if it does die on you because then you can be like, well, I have no idea how much time is left. I'm not going to be... Just speaking from personal experience, you're not going to be going like, oh, my God, I only went 0.5 miles. Are you kidding me? Like, oh, my God.

• 10:50David Pierce?

  I think the rule is you finish the marathon when your battery dies. That's whatever, whatever the time was then, that's your marathon time. Congratulations.

• 10:57Speaker 06

  Yeah. It also, I'm going to say it depends on what Garmin Ben is coming from because if you are coming from a Phoenix or if you're coming from one of the really higher-end forerunners, I just think you're going to have a more analogous experience if you do go with the Ultra because the Ultra has, it just has more. It's bulkier, too, so you might just have that same comforting weight. But in terms of just like the actual metrics you're going to be getting, you know, the health and fitness app are basically the same for either watch. It's just mostly that with the Ultra, you are going to get better GPS. So if that matters to you. Then yeah, you you are gonna want that because you have multi-band GPS, which you know, all the higher-end garments are doing at

• 11:42Speaker 06

  the same time now. So yay, great. But the other thing I'm going to say is that there is a low-power mode and then there's an ultra-ultra-low-power mode. And so you're not really gonna have to give things up if you decide to use low-power mode with the Series 8, just because it's all it's gonna do is turn off your notifications, turn off all that stuff, and you don't want notifications in the middle of training anyway. So it's fine. It's just kind of gonna be a little more annoying because it's not gonna wake up quite as quickly and all of that stuff. But you are still going to be getting continuous GPS and heart rate, unless you go into the super-low-power mode, in which case it's gonna take it less frequently. So that's totally up to you. That's really more for

• 12:25Speaker 06

  ultra-marathoners, you know, the super DC Rainmakers of the world who are just like make you feel real bad about yourself when you see their training commitments. Any Apple Watch, like base-level Apple Watch, it's gonna last you a marathon. Provided that you're running this marathon in like the six-hour range, six-hour or less, which is most people. Like, a fast marathon, a fast marathon runner is gonna do sub-four, which good, good for you guys. I don't have that long capacity. Yeah, like my marathon time, I haven't run one, but my projected one, according to Garmin, is like five hours forty-five or something like that, something obscene. And I have, you know, friends who have run marathons with Apple Watches, been totally fine. You just have to be more conscious of the battery.

• 13:10Speaker 06

  So if that's not you, if you don't want to baby it, if you don't want to think, don't want to think too hard about the battery, go for the Ultra. I I I use the Ultra as my daily driver and in running, and I'm I'm a big fan of it. So there you go.

• 13:23David Pierce?

  I like it. I do think the low-power mode thing is a good hack because A, for the exact reasons you described, it actually turns off a lot of things you're gonna want off when you're running anyway. Like, this is true on the iPhone as well. It's actually a pretty good sort of quick make-my-phone-bother-me-less button, because it just turns down a lot of background processing. It doesn't pull for notifications as often. It doesn't ping your email as often. It just sort of calms your device down a little bit. And that's useful both on the phone and the watch. And it, at least in my experience, purely anecdotally, does a ton for battery life. So that's a big win.

• 13:56Speaker 06

  And you know, like how EVs have range anxiety? Smartwatches have battery anxiety when you are doing continuous GPS exercise. So if that really is a concern, I am going to say the Ultra is going to give you a good time. Cause I ran a half marathon in very slow three hours. It was, it was not my best half marathon time. But I only lost 15% battery, not on low power mode, nothing, nothing done. So I only lost 15%. It was the whole 13 miles, so take what you will from that. You just won't have to think about it. You won't have to worry. So if it's quote unquote, just a marathon, either will be fine, but the Ultra will alleviate that concern for you a lot more confidently.

• 14:41David Pierce?

  Got it. Okay. And the, the other thing I'm wondering is the, this switch from, I've been using Garmin for a while. I'm making, thinking about making the switch to Apple Watch. What do we think about this idea? Good idea? Bad idea? I feel like if our friend Ben was calling and saying, I run marathons every weekend. I'm thinking about making the switch. I feel like I would actually try to talk him out of switching to the Apple Watch.

• 15:01Speaker 06

  I, I would like, so the main question I have for Ben to think about is how much do you want the smart features? Because Garmin, it has a better training platform. It's very information dense. Do you need all that information? No, even the professionals don't need everything that Garmin is going to get you. But it is a lot more comprehensive. I find that the daily suggested workouts on the Garmins that I test, they, I find them really helpful. Cause I'm like, oh crap, I don't know what to train for. Oh, you're telling me to do, you're telling me to do 31 minutes at a slower pace, base, base pace? Cool. Great. And it helps you kind of track your recovery a lot more effectively than an Apple Watch will. An Apple Watch, you have to be more hands on with your training, which may be something that you want.

• 15:45Speaker 06

  The data is going to be a lot more streamlined, which I find helpful. Like what's not helpful is me saying that I think the best of both worlds is to use both and just train with both of them at the same time. But yeah, if you are super hardcore into the data, the Garmin is going to be better for you. But if you want apps that work, if you want. Better connectivity with your phone. If you want greater control over what notifications are going to annoy you all day, then the Apple Watch does make a lot of sense and is the smarter choice because the the number of notifications I get on this Garmin that do not matter is it's very high. It's very high. Do you want a smart experience? Then yes, this makes sense. But if you want the fitness first experience, the Ultra is great.

• 16:27Speaker 06

  It's just not going to be as hurrah as the Garmin. And I know people who are making the switch in both directions, going from Apple to Garmin, super happy, and then going from Garmin to Apple, super happy. So it's just a matter of what your priority is.

• 16:40David Pierce?

  Yeah, they do. They do land in surprisingly different places. It's like the the Garmin is better for the things that it does, but the Apple Watch does more things, right? Like, it's it's a pretty. And the thing is, it seems to be mostly self selecting. So I feel like, Ben, if you know you want an Apple Watch, totally cool, lean in. But also, Garmins are very good. Also, V, before we go, I just want you to know that Buzz Aldrin tweeted a picture of himself the other day on the 54th, I think, anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch day. And he's sitting there eating a plate of steak and eggs and he has three watches on. And all I could think, literally, my first immediate thought upon looking at this picture was, V is probably wearing four watches. I just want you to know, this is your legacy, V. Congratulations.

• 17:25Speaker 06

  Double wristing, double watch hands. That's how you know I'm the real deal. Double watch hands year round. There we go.

• 17:31David Pierce?

  It's it's a life. All right. Well, Ben, let us know how the marathon goes. Good luck with the training. V, thank you.

• 17:36Speaker 06

  Thank you. Bye.

• 17:38David Pierce?

  Next up, we have a question that has actually made me think a lot of things and feel a lot of feelings over the last few days. It's from Dave, who I promise is not me throwing my voice. Let's hear it.

• 17:51Speaker 07

  Hey, so I'm a dad now. You can call me Dave. My family budget is pretty tight. Food has gotten very expensive. I've always wanted the latest and greatest, but I've been rocking an iPhone 12 Pro for a couple years now, and it's great. The battery needs to be replaced. But anyway, I'm debating about whether to just get like a free iPhone 14 and get the 15 and have payments and all of that. And I'm really feeling like there's a pretty significant argument to be made for getting a free iPhone 14, except, you know, the 36 months of waiting and what happens after that. So I don't know. I would love the verge of spending.

• 18:32David Pierce?

  All right, Allison Johnson, welcome to the show.

• 18:34Speaker 08

  Thank you.

• 18:35David Pierce?

  You can just feel what Dave is going through here, right?

• 18:38Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 18:38David Pierce?

  There's a lot of emotions wrapped up in this decision. I've been thinking a lot about this and have come to, I have a pretty strong opinion on the right answer here. But before I rant and rave about what I think Dave should do, I want to know what you think is the right answer here.

• 18:53Speaker 08

  Yeah, this is a tough one. I do see the argument for the free 14, especially a 14 Pro. The way I see the 15 and the 15 Pro is kind of, you know, based on the rumors, like, the regular 15 is just kind of getting in line with what the 14 Pro offers. But it sounds like we're going to get the higher resolution camera, Dynamic Island. You're not going to get like a nicer screen, but that's Apple. And then the 15 Pro, it sounds like is going to be more fancy things, telephoto periscope camera.

• 19:26David Pierce?

  Potentially USB-C?

• 19:28Speaker 08

  USB-C, that is the big exciting one. Dave already has some lightning cables around, so you know, probably that's a wash. But yeah, I kind of went back and forth. I think a free 14 Pro would be a smart move. It all just depends on what carrier deal you can find. You're going to sell your soul to your carrier either way, so.

• 19:53David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 19:53Speaker 08

  I'm curious what your answer is.

• 19:56David Pierce?

  So my stock phone buying advice is buy the best phone you can possibly afford and keep it as long as you possibly can. Right? So by that advice, the answer is wait for the 15, right? We've hit the point of the year where anyone who's like, what phone should I buy? I say none, wait until September, right? Because there will be, there will be new Samsung phones, there will be new iPhones. You can make a much more rational and informed decision. At like the end of October about the whole phone landscape. If you know you want an iPhone, wait until mid-September. They'll come out, there'll be a new iPhone by that one. And especially now, I feel like the normal age I would expect a phone to be is probably like four years. I think if you've had a phone for four years, you can consider that phone to have like lived its best life.

• 20:40David Pierce?

  Time to upgrade, buy the best phone you can and plan to have it for four more years. That said, I believe firmly and strongly that the correct thing to do is get a free iPhone 14.

• 20:48Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 20:49David Pierce?

  A, because it clearly sounds like money is an object. And a free iPhone 14 is going to be a terrific phone that probably will still last you four years. But B, I think this USB-C transition is gonna take a while. I think back to when we all went away from like the 30-pin ports in the iPhone. That took a while. Everybody had docks, there was all this stuff in like the hotels. Going to Lightning was annoying for a couple of years. And you had to have dongles and you had to buy all kinds of new stuff. And eventually the world transitions and it works. I kind of don't wanna be at the very front of that change if I don't have to be. You and I will be, because this is what we do for a living and we're like phone sickos. But for most people, like you have cables, you might have a dock.

• 21:29David Pierce?

  Like your phone probably connects via a certain cable to your car and lots of other things. And I think actually the next phone after this one that you buy this year is gonna be the one you wanna try a bunch of new stuff with. And granted, there might be things in the iPhone 15 that we don't know about that are amazing and cool and blow everybody's minds. But rumors that I've seen about the Pro are basically like new chip, titanium frame, which could look cool. There might be an action button like on the Watch Ultra, which I'm very excited about. But the USB-C port is the thing, right? Like that's gonna be the big shift. And that strikes me as something to actually be a couple of years late on instead of being super early. So I've come down really aggressively on the get the free iPhone 14 and be very happy with it for a while inside of this.

• 22:15Speaker 08

  I like that, yeah. And you may have the right cables for your phone, but like, what are you going to encounter in the rest of the world? So yeah, let the dust settle on your SBC for a little bit. You know, get that good carrier deal for the 14 Pro. I traded in my iPhone 11 for a 13 Mini this year. So like, all four are getting an older iPhone and just like coasting as long as you can. Get your money's worth.

• 22:41David Pierce?

  Just my, my only real advice is don't buy an iPhone Mini. That's like, whatever you do, do not buy an iPhone Mini.

• 22:47Speaker 08

  Don't be a sicko like me for small phones, R I P battery life.

• 22:52David Pierce?

  If you want a phone that's going to last a few years, don't buy the one with the tiniest battery and worst processor of the bunch.

• 22:58Speaker 08

  But it's so wonderful.

• 23:01David Pierce?

  I know, it does. It just fits. It fits nicely in your hand.

• 23:04Speaker 08

  It's in my, it fits in my pocket.

• 23:06David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 23:07Speaker 08

  It's settled. Get a free 14.

• 23:09David Pierce?

  There we go. Done. And it is true. I will say, if you want a 15, wait until like, what would you say, early 2024? And all this stuff starts going on crazy sales anyway. And there's a decent chance that whatever free offer you're getting now for the 14, you'll probably get for the 15 at some point. So if you, if you can hold off and really want the 15, but price is the question, what do you say? Wait nine months if you can and you'll probably get it?

• 23:35Speaker 08

  Yeah, I would say hold off. Like if the battery's holding up, just keep an eye out for the deals. Hold on to it as long as you can. I think the, the deal I got on the 13 through Verizon was like halfway through this year. They just sort of were like, wow, we have these phones. You might, you guys might as well have a free one. So hold on.

• 23:55David Pierce?

  Yeah, I like it. All right, Allison, thank you. Let's take a break and then we're going to get to some more questions.

• 24:06Speaker 09

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• 25:10David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. More hotline questions. We have a couple on threads because everyone who's talked about threads. Neelai Patel is here to talk about threads. Hi, Neelai.

• 25:18Nilay Patel?

  Hey, I love talking about threads.

• 25:20David Pierce?

  You're my, you're my threads guy. This is, this is what we do. So we, we got two emails that are both about threads and I want to talk about them. So the first one is from Stephen. It says, "The honeymoon phase of threads will be over soon enough and ads are inevitable. So I ask, do you think threads would do a plus subscription where we pay $2 to $3 a month to go ad free? To sweeten the deal, Threads Plus could also give us extended time to edit, more pins, and the ability to schedule threads and mass delete slash archive them. Your thoughts, please." Basically, the question here is like, "Threads blue?" Question mark?

• 25:50Nilay Patel?

  Twitter Blue has ads, right?

• 25:52David Pierce?

  True.

• 25:52Nilay Patel?

  A huge part of the problem for all these companies is they make so much money on ads that paying money to go ad free almost never makes economic sense, but paying money to see slightly fewer ads makes a lot of sense.

• 26:02David Pierce?

  Right. I do think you'd have to pay more than you think, generally speaking, to not see ads on the internet.

• 26:08Nilay Patel?

  Well, it's a weird problem. So the answer to your question, Stephen, is yes, but not ad free. Meta is already doing paid verification on Instagram. You can see how they might just extend it and put some features behind a paywall. I think all these companies are interested in revenue and if they can actually make threads successful, I think Meta is better at saying, "Hey, pay us money for features" than Elon Musk and Twitter at this moment in time. But there's just a weird problem in the business model where ad targeting works if you can target someone who's likely to buy something. And they're hard to reach, right? That's what sets your ad price. So if you have ads for everybody, that's great. You have a lot of people you're likely to hit who you want to reach. If you let some people turn off ads, you're letting the people with the most money turn

• 26:53Nilay Patel?

  off ads because that's who's going to pay the money. So you like reduce the pool of your ads. If you let the people pay money to see slightly fewer ads, you've reduced supply and the price of those ads goes up. So there's just a weird problem in the pricing curve where getting to ad free doesn't make any sense, but getting to ad light makes a lot of sense. And I bet one of these social networks is going to figure that out soon.

• 27:14David Pierce?

  That's really interesting. It also seems like, I feel like there's a weird thing that happens when you get rid of ads or let people pay to get rid of ads where you're sort of tacitly acknowledging that ads are worse than no ads. And I think Meta in particular goes way out of its way to never acknowledge that ads are bad, right? Like it is, it is a foundational belief of that company that ads are good. And so I think even the idea of letting you do that and sort of pay for the privilege sends messages that company does not want to send.

• 27:43Nilay Patel?

  Also, truly, given how Threads is right now, what does ad free Threads even mean? It's like the brands are there, man.

• 27:50David Pierce?

  That's true.

• 27:51Nilay Patel?

  The commercial messaging is happening there. It's like, it's down to whether it can be, you can pay money to target it better, not whether it's there at all.

• 27:59David Pierce?

  Can the Nugget account pay money to have even more posts in my feed?

• 28:02Nilay Patel?

  Exactly.

• 28:03David Pierce?

  All right, next one. This email is from Dewey. Dewey says, "I find it endlessly fascinating that Threads is a project helmed by a subsection of the Instagram team, Mosseri, rather than having it be overseen by any other team at Meta or their own product team. Any ideas why it's a product overseen by Instagram and not Facebook or Messenger? I assume it can't be its own team yet because it's still unproven. Do you think that would change if it actually does become a Twitter killer or will it always be under threat of being absorbed in Instagram?"

• 28:27Nilay Patel?

  That's a lot. That's a, it's like a good decoder question.

• 28:31David Pierce?

  It's a good question.

• 28:32Nilay Patel?

  It's just an org chart question.

• 28:33David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 28:34Nilay Patel?

  You could also ask, why isn't it part of Facebook? The combination of Instagram and Threads right now is the Facebook newsfeed.

• 28:40David Pierce?

  Yeah, it really is.

• 28:41Nilay Patel?

  It's just like kind of funny that they've they've split it apart and made two products inside of Instagram that recapitulates the original product.

• 28:47David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 28:47Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I'll say, it's part of Instagram because the code base of Threads itself is Instagram.

• 28:53David Pierce?

  Right.

• 28:53Nilay Patel?

  So if you look at the version number of the Threads app, I think it's like 291 or something and Instagram is at 290.

• 28:59David Pierce?

  Hmm.

• 29:00Nilay Patel?

  It's some number like that. I don't, the exact number might be wrong, but it's it's some increment of the Instagram version number because the underlying code base is Instagram. Then I think it's a small team inside of Instagram because that's where you can insulate it. If you made it its own team, it would have to sink or swim without the resources of the larger thing. And I think Instagram is where the kids are. Instagram doesn't already have a text posting feature in this way. If you made it part of Facebook, people will be like, I can already post to Facebook. You make it part of Instagram, you get the cooler, younger brand and you're adding what feels like a new feature to celebrities who are already using that product in that way. And I think fundamentally, you want it, you want that team to be as focused on the product itself and not,

• 29:44Nilay Patel?

  is this a business? Do we have to add all these other features to make it a business? You're just, take what you need from Instagram and start from there is a much smarter decision.

• 29:52David Pierce?

  I also think if you're going to pick a meta social graph to start with, Instagram is the right one. And we've talked about this on the show, right? But I think my Facebook account is just like a morass of people I haven't talked to in a decade because that's kind of when I stopped using Facebook. But people still sort of actively engage with their Instagram graph in a way that I think a lot of people don't on Facebook. And I don't have data to back this up, but it certainly feels true that if you just wanted to pick a list of people and things and brands I'm likely to find interesting, betting on Instagram as that sort of startup moment is much smarter than betting on Facebook. And I suspect that's true for most of the people Instagram and Meta would like to have on Threads at this moment.

• 30:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Instagram and Twitter, for that matter, are one-to-many broadcast, right? You are LeBron James and people follow you.

• 30:45David Pierce?

  That's true.

• 30:45Nilay Patel?

  And that's it. There's no reciprocal following and Facebook is all supposed to be all about your friends.

• 30:51David Pierce?

  Right.

• 30:51Nilay Patel?

  And so, yeah, you already have that graph and you already have that user behavior. It's like, here is where celebrities and brands will talk to me, which is what happens on Instagram.

• 30:59David Pierce?

  I will say, if it hits, you know, a billion users, this team will get much bigger and it will probably separate from Instagram in some meaningful way. But I suspect that's an org chart thing more than anything like most people will notice over time.

• 31:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't know. You know, it's their first from-the-ground-up social network that is successful in quite some time.

• 31:19David Pierce?

  Yeah. And since Facebook.

• 31:22Nilay Patel?

  And I think the fact that it's part of Instagram means that Instagram stays relevant, which is very important to Facebook. Like, what we don't want to do is like let billion-user social networks quietly die over time, right? You want to keep them alive and keep them relevant. And Instagram is the one that has been the most relevant for the longest time, next to YouTube.

• 31:42David Pierce?

  So reels are coming to threads sometime soon.

• 31:45Nilay Patel?

  There's gonna be, I think they'll get closer together rather than farther apart.

• 31:49David Pierce?

  Yeah, fair enough. All right, Neelai, thank you. Let's get to some more questions. Our next question is an email and it comes from, I believe it's pronounced Tade. I'm sorry if I get this wrong. Jen Tuie, back from vacation. Welcome back to the Vergecast.

• 32:02Speaker 11

  Hello, always happy to be here. Best way to restart my working week.

• 32:07David Pierce?

  There you go. Let me read you this email because I actually think this is a really interesting one and matches a question you and I have talked a little bit about on this show before, but let's just get into it. So, the email says, "I'm in the process of buying a few indoor security cameras for my home. Nothing too fancy, mostly just for when I'm on holiday or have the cleaning lady come by," which I actually argue, by the way, is like the perfect way to describe what an in-home security camera should be for. Anyway, "As you can imagine, this feels a lot like inviting someone into your home, so choosing a brand can be difficult. I have to mention I'm from Europe, so some of the US brands, albeit with seemingly good offers, sadly lack the app support here. Do you have any clear suggestions? I'm mostly concerned on the privacy slash security front." Then, Tade has a bunch more questions about Yuffie and Xiaomi in particular, but I think

• 32:52David Pierce?

  the big question here is like, if I'm coming at the camera question from security first, what should I do? What do you think?

• 32:59Speaker 11

  Yeah, well, and I can relate to this question because having just come back from vacation, I did set up a few cameras before I left because normally my recommendation is not to put security cameras inside your house. Personally, I feel like they're great on the outside, but inside can get a bit dubious unless you follow a few practices and be concerned here about privacy and security. So the good thing is there are a lot of solutions to this particular problem. The straightforward answer about security, and remember, so there's two sides here, there's the privacy and there's the security. Now, the security, very much focused on which company you buy from. Do you trust their security practices? You know, high-profile,

• 33:42Speaker 11

  well-known companies, ones that are going, are the ones that are under a lot of scrutiny. So generally, I think you can feel quite comfortable buying from a well-known company.

• 33:53David Pierce?

  So are you talking about like the Apples and Rings and Googles of the world? Like the simply safe kind of folks?

• 34:00Speaker 11

  Right. You know, and for Europe in particular, you've got, I think most, it's interesting that he said that there were a few that he couldn't go for from America because he's in Europe. A lot of the big security companies, camera companies do come, you can get in both countries. So Rings available in both, TP-Links brands, Tapo and Casa are available in both, Arlo, Google Nest. So you've got a pretty broad option. And then you've got Ufii and there's also Akara, which is one of the Xiaomi brands. So there are a lot of good options here. And I would say any of these, you know, that are from well-known companies, do not go and buy a no-name brand of Amazon for $20 or £20 or €20 and stick it in your house. That's just not a good idea. But, you know, there's a few key things

• 34:45Speaker 11

  you should look for. You want to always look for a camera that has two-factor authentication so that if there is any social engineering or hacking or anything going on that, you know, someone's trying to get into your camera feed, you're getting, you're going to get an alert or a warning. And so that's, you know, key. But then the other thing is end-to-end encryption, especially if you're concerned about the potential for a company to

• 35:09Speaker 11

  View your videos. Obviously, this is one of the big issues that has been around Ring and also Google with the police partnerships and the potential for, you know, your footage to be subpoenaed. If that's something that concerns you, end-to-end encryption is something else you definitely want to look for. Security as a whole, though, I mean, these big companies have security researchers, you know, banging on their doors, trying to figure out holes and they should, you know, and fix and patch. And that's why if you do get a security camera, always update your firmware, you know, whenever there's an option. And most cameras nowadays will have the option to turn on automatic updates. So you don't even have to worry about it. It will just keep updated in the background. But from, from a European perspective, and

• 35:52Speaker 11

  if you want a smart security camera that is entirely private and, you know, local, doesn't go to the cloud, because that's kind of, the cloud is where you start to enter that attack vector, because your data has been streamed outside of your home. There is one really good company that I would recommend, which is Netatmo. Their kind of focus is entirely on privacy and security. There is no cloud involved whatsoever. It's all done locally. It's all processed locally on the device. It is not, does not have as many of the bells and whistles as some of the other cameras might have. And it's not as high resolution. It's a slightly older camera. But if all you're interested in is checking on your cleaning lady and the potential of someone coming into your house when you're not there,

• 36:34Speaker 11

  it's a great, it's got a great feature. It has facial recognition and you can set it so that it will only record if it sees someone it doesn't know. So it's on all the time, but it will only record when it sees someone it doesn't know, or you can set it to only record if it sees your cleaning lady, so that it does record your cleaning lady. Though if you want to record your cleaning lady, you might need to have a conversation with her.

• 36:55David Pierce?

  Yes, tell your cleaning lady, yes.

• 36:57Speaker 11

  So, I mean, and you can also use your own, you can use cloud with Netatmo, but it's your own cloud. So you can upload to Dropbox or an FTP server or iCloud. It does support HomeKit Secure Video, which would be my next suggestion here. HomeKit Secure Video is one option that gives you a cloud, gives you some of the features of cloud video recording, but is end-to-end encrypted, because all of the device, all of the data that needs to be processed in the cloud, that's why a lot of camera companies send their data to the cloud, so for people recognition or. To tell you whether it's a dog or a plastic bag that's caused a motion alert on your camera. With Apple HomeKit Secure Video, that's all processed on your Apple Home Hub.

• 37:41Speaker 11

  So it's all processed in your home, not in the cloud. But you need an iPhone for that. So if you don't have an iPhone, HomeKit Secure Video is not going to work for you. But HomeKit Secure Video does work with a number of different manufacturers, including Logitech has a camera. Ufii has some cameras that are HomeKit Secure Video. And also Akara, which is the Xiaomi brand, Eve and Natmo. So there's quite a few options there. Overall, though, I think if you're really concerned about security and privacy, you want to record locally. That's the thing to look for. So if none of those brands kind of float your boat, there are a lot of brands that you can just record to a micro SD card on the camera. And Akara is one that has that option. Tapo and Casa also you can do that.

• 38:27Speaker 11

  Google Nest and Ring, there is some local element to those, but not as straightforward as just a little micro SD card. Wise has that option. Not sure you can, I don't think you can get Wise cameras in Europe, though. But in terms of a smart home security camera for indoors, as I mentioned, I'm not a big fan of them. But one thing I would recommend strongly, if you are going to do that, is get one. He mentioned getting lots. I feel like that's, you know, it's a little weird just to have cameras all around your house. A good solution is a pan and tilt cam. So that, you know, you put it in a central place and it can pan and tilt around. So Akara again has a good option there. Ufii has one too. Akara one is really cute. It looks like a little cat.

• 39:11Speaker 11

  And you have the option in the app and there's a number of cameras that have this option to just turn off the camera remotely. And it just, its little eyes close and the camera rolls away. So that's another good option to look for if for an indoor camera, one that you can shut off remotely. And automatically have it turn off, say, when you come home. And then turn on when you leave. So that way you're not going to end up with random pictures of you walking around in your underwear. So if there was the concern about security, if there was, you know, you may have bought from a brand that you trust, but then they have a major security breach or a data breach, you don't have to worry that your private footage that you care about is likely to be exposed. You've got,

• 39:54Speaker 11

  you know, hopefully only recorded when you weren't home. So most good security cameras these days have some feature like that that will turn off when you come home, turn on when you leave. The downside of that is if you're at home asleep and someone comes into your house, your camera's not recording. So this is why I like that Natapmo one that I mentioned at the beginning, because it's always recording, sorry, it's always scanning, it's always looking, but it only records when it sees someone. So, which is a really neat feature.

• 40:23David Pierce?

  You answered all of my questions. I think the one other thing I was thinking is, does it make sense if you're going to do an indoor camera to have it sort of disconnected from the rest of your smart home system? Because I'm just thinking that is like the most high stakes thing that would be in your smart home. So I almost don't want to connect it to anything else in my smart home, just as another sort of way of walling it off from everything else, that if you're going to have a whole bunch of stuff on a Nest system, I'm like, screw that, buy a Ring for this and just run it on a completely separate version of your smart home, just to kind of air gap it as much as you can from everything else. Does that make any sense?

• 41:03Speaker 11

  Well, I'm not sure that it would necessarily, that your, that the camera itself is going to do something to the rest of your smart home. I mean, I think the biggest concern about the camera really would be the footage, right? So that's what you don't want people seeing. One thing I have seen people do, especially when you use HomeKit Secure Video, is, so the way HomeKit Secure Video works with Apple is you can just put your camera into your Apple Home app and in some cases not use the company's app at all that it came from. But in the case of Uphi and Bakara, I believe you have to, or at least get most better benefit from using their app as well. But people, a lot of people don't want to do that. They just want It all processed locally. So what you can do is go into your router and turn off

• 41:48Speaker 11

  the Wi-Fi access for the camera so that it can only go through Apple's servers and there's no chance of it using a separate server. And so that's especially if you're using local recording or some kind of NAS device or something and you want to know that it's only in your home and it's not being sent off somewhere into to someone's servers, you can, you know, disable its Wi-Fi access. That's a pretty, you know, that somewhat requires a little bit of technical expertise, but not a lot, especially if you have a mesh router that gives you the option to pause internet to certain devices. You can also get devices that monitor traffic from your smart home. So you could see if a camera was talking to its cloud. So that's a good option.

• 42:34David Pierce?

  Okay, we need to take one more break and then I think we can do a few more questions before we get out of here. We'll be right back.

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• 43:47David Pierce?

  All right. Next up, we have a laptop question. Monica Chin is here to answer laptop questions. Hi, Monica. Hey. I feel bad for just dragging you in here constantly to help people buy laptops, but the people need to buy laptops, so we're gonna keep doing this. This person did not give us their name, I don't think, but let's hear the question real fast.

• 44:05Speaker 12

  Hey, David, and hey, rest of the Vergecast. My question, and you probably get a lot of these, is so I have a 2019 MacBook Air. It's got an i5 processor. I got the base model, which I think was a terrible idea four years in. So I'm trying to figure out where I'm gonna upgrade computer-wise. I have a basic, like, PC, but I'm on the fence. I like Mac, but I just feel like for my money, I want something to where it has more processing power. So as a person that's trying to, like, possibly go back to school, I need a little bit more computer with computational capabilities. What MacBook is it that I should go for? And my budget's probably around, like, I think the Mac I could probably do is, like, three grand.

• 44:49Speaker 12

  And then PC-wise, what options do I have? Like, I know you can get a lot of PC for under $2,000. So like, in your guys' perspective, what's a good, like, laptop to go for? Because I like all the bells and whistles. I do like the damn Rainbow keyboards. They're so cool. But I want something to where it works with my lifestyle, to where I can do casual stuff, and I could take it on the go, but it also has, like, good battery life as well. And if I need to do some stuff at Excel, just full transparency, I am an accountant. It can actually do what I needed to do. Anyways, that's a mouthful. I hope you guys are able to answer my question. Thanks, and have a great one.

• 45:28David Pierce?

  This question is a lot, and I love it for being a lot. But I feel like what this boils down to is kind of like everybody's computer question, which is basically like, I need a computer that's like as good at everything as possible. $3,000 is a pretty big budget, actually. Uh, so I'm curious, like, let's start on the PC side, because I think that's probably the trickier question to answer. Where would you send our friend here?

• 45:51Speaker 13

  Well, what I would actually say is this is a little bit of a tough question to answer because I don't actually have a great sense of what you're doing with it. And so if I had you in front of me, I'd be asking you like, what exactly are you doing? What I get from what you want is Excel. That was like the main thing that you mentioned that you would need like, quote unquote, computational power for. And for that, I would honestly say, I mean, if you're already using a MacBook Air and you want to stick with, you want to be under 2000. If you're, if you're trying to go back to school, you probably want something portable. You're going to be carrying that to and from school. You want battery life, as you mentioned, that is really hard to find on the PC side. We can get into that shortly. But my honest recommendation with the, the only info I have about your, your lifestyle being you need it for spreadsheets. I think you stick with what you know. I think you get the Air.

• 46:36Speaker 13

  I think of the M2 Air, like that can do your spreadsheets. Like I had actually a very similar conversation with my dad about this a couple, a couple of months ago because he was like, he's into similar reason. He was like, I need to do spreadsheets and you know, I just don't know if the MacBook Air can do my spreadsheets. And I was like, dad, get the MacBook Air. It can do your spreadsheets. He got it. It can do his spreadsheets. He loves it. He has no issue.

• 46:56David Pierce?

  That is true. And especially if you're coming from a 2019 i5, the jump to the M2 is going to like blow your mind.

• 47:02Speaker 13

  Yes, that is really slow. If you like have tried, had tried the M2 before and like found that it was a limitation and you, and you were wondering like, that might be a case where I'd say, okay, you might want to think about going up to the M2 Pro or M2 Max. But that is such a jump in price and it's such a loss of portability. I mean, if you're, again, if you're going to school like back and forth, you're going to classes, you're like sitting around the cafeteria. Do you really want to be carrying that like 16 inch shirt? I mean, that's just, it's so much heavier. It's really not that much fun to lug around. I really don't see a reason not to get the Air. That is sort of what your answer is, is screaming at me.

• 47:42David Pierce?

  That tracks, but let's say in theory, we want to go Windows here.

• 47:47Speaker 13

  So if you want to go Windows, it is hard to find battery life on Windows these days, especially if you're looking for what you call computing power. Like if by that you mean you want something with a discrete GPU. For under $2,000, my best recommendation is going to be the Zephyrus G14. That's a gaming laptop. I know you didn't say you want to play games, but in all honesty, if you're looking for battery life, like that is some of the best you're going to get. It's like really ironic that that's a gaming laptop, but that's just how it is in the current landscape. The Zephyrus G14 is one of the few devices that has like real GPU power that also has all-day battery life. So that is what I would be looking at.

• 48:29Speaker 13

  It does not have an RGB keyboard, but it does have a backlit keyboard that you can do some like fun effects with. And you probably can't get this for under $2,000, but if you end up going above that, you can get a lid that has some fun little lights on it that can do kind of cool stuff. So if you're looking for bells and whistles, it does have that option. It's going to be a little pricier.

• 48:48David Pierce?

  They did say they like the funny, the fun colors, so get some fun colors.

• 48:52Speaker 13

  There are a few laptops as fun as the Zephyrus G14, but again, that model is really, is going to be a little over the budget that you gave us. But even under that budget, you know, the keyboard is still, it's a fun keyboard. You know, it's got, it's got a fun little font. It's got some fun keys on it. You can get G14s that come in different little designs. There's like an Alan Walker model that comes with a DJ deck. There are some fun special editions that you can, you can look at. They're going to be a little more expensive, but I think you might be able to get some for under $2,000 if you do a little bit of digging on Best Buy.

• 49:23David Pierce?

  So yeah, I think the more we talk, the more I think you're right, that the M2 Air is the safest choice. And I agree that there are, we've definitely reached the point of like, I'd like to be able to ask some follow-up questions because it's like, if you want extra power, it's like, okay, well, are you more likely to want that or to want the thing to last, you know, eight or 12 hours? But here is my last question, and I think this, this is important. And I forgot until just now, when I was trying to spec this thing out, that this matters. 13-inch or 15-inch Air? Because now you get to choose.

• 49:53Speaker 13

  Yeah, that's a good question. Honestly, the difference in power between them is not huge. Like, there's the 15 inches, like, a little bit are benchmarks. I don't know if the kind of spreadsheeting you're doing is gonna make a huge difference. I think that's honestly, it's gonna come down to how big of a screen do you want for your spreadsheeting?

• 50:12Speaker 13

  And, you know, there's a non-negligible weight difference between the two as well, so you may want to factor in, you know, how much are you gonna be carrying this around, you know, on campus or to other places that you go during the day. The 13-inch is certainly more portable if you're gonna be on the move. The 15-inch is not, like, it's not not portable, but it is heavier. I'm a little less happy when I have to put it in my backpack. There's a little bit of a difference. And so there's some trade-offs that are ultimately up to your preference. The one other thing, if you're looking at Windows and you don't want, if the Zephyr's G14 is, like, too clunky for you and you want something a little bit thinner, the other thing to look at would be the Dell XPS 13. That is much more on the portability side. That's a very thin, very light one.

• 50:56Speaker 13

  You know, if you have, like, a backpack full of all your schoolbooks and whatever, it's really easy to slide that in. That's gonna be much closer to carrying around a MacBook Air than it is to be carrying around a Zephyr's, which is gonna be a little bit thicker. That battery life, for me, is, like, close to all day, but not quite all day. For you, it might be different, depends on your workload, but that is some of the better battery life you can get as well. It is not close to the battery life they'll get from the MacBook Air. But if you're looking for, like, a MacBook Air size, but with Windows, that is what I would point you to.

• 51:28David Pierce?

  Okay. Yeah, I just went in while we were talking, and I specked out a 13-inch M2 MacBook Air with 16 gigs of RAM and a 1TB SSD. 1,800 bucks, way under your budget. I suspect you will be thrilled with that computer coming from an i5-2019 Air.

• 51:44Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 51:44David Pierce?

  I think that's the one.

• 51:45Speaker 13

  Especially if battery life is your priority, that it's gonna be really difficult to beat that combination of, like, portability and battery life in pretty much any other line with the budget that you have.

• 51:56David Pierce?

  And it will crush your spreadsheets. Don't even worry about it.

• 52:00Speaker 13

  Like I have a Mac MacGarry, I use it for spreadsheets all the time. I wouldn't worry too much about it, but you, if you're worried, you could add in some extra RAM, extra, extra stuff to make sure that that can handle it.

• 52:10David Pierce?

  Totally. Awesome. Monica, thank you. Appreciate it as always.

• 52:13Speaker 13

  Thank you.

• 52:14David Pierce?

  All right, let's get to our next question. Allison, welcome back.

• 52:17Speaker 08

  Thank you. It's good to be back.

• 52:18David Pierce?

  We got so many more questions. The people keep having questions about phones, Allison.

• 52:22Speaker 08

  I love it. I'm here. I'm literally here for it.

• 52:25David Pierce?

  I love it. All right. You have not heard either of these, so let me play you the first one and then we'll go from there.

• 52:31Speaker 13

  Okay.

• 52:33Speaker 14

  Hello, this is Shravani from India. I just do want to know that I am using a Pixel 6A, so is it auto upgrading to Pixel 7A or I will wait for Pixel 8A or nine something? Thank you.

• 52:48David Pierce?

  We love an upgrade question here on the Vergecast.

• 52:50Speaker 08

  Oh, I love it.

• 52:51David Pierce?

  This is a good one, right? Because we just spent a bunch of time saying like, if you have an old phone, here's when you should get a new phone. But this is, this is last year's phone and this year's phone. Worth the upgrade?

• 52:59Speaker 08

  I, I say, hold on to the 6A unless you are like a wireless charging stand. Because that's, in my mind, that's the big upgrade with the 7A. Like, there's a lot of other stuff. But no, I think that 6A is going to be solid for like, a couple more years at least. That's my hot take. Don't buy a new phone.

• 53:20David Pierce?

  I like it. And I think Google has done a pretty good job of keeping these phones updated for a while. So I think you've, you've got at least another couple of years of solid updates and the thing will continue to work. And Google's so invested in the software anyway, that it feels like the pixels have been kind of the rare phones that do a good job of getting appreciably better over time.

• 53:40Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 53:41David Pierce?

  And so I, I feel good. I'm kind of with you.

• 53:43Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 53:43David Pierce?

  That is good. Stick with the 6A. I think it's the right call. Here's hoping Google cares about the Pixel long enough to make an 8A.

• 53:49Speaker 08

  Please.

• 53:51David Pierce?

  All right, let's get to our next one, which is substantially more philosophical than the other one.

• 53:56Speaker 15

  Hey guys, this is Mark from Houston. Some comment that David made, it was like a week ago on Vergecast, and he talked about how he felt that the Nothing phones, who sort of represented a sort of shift back into maybe like the old days of Android, but there is a lot of different competition and a lot of different interesting phones. And I was wondering, I feel like a really big part of what made phones interesting in the mid 2010s were really the fact that we had a kind of like, you know, Chinese phones and even Indian phones. And so I assume that with a change of administration that we'd maybe see, you know, some sort of movement on that front.

• 54:37Speaker 15

  But I was wondering, are we ever going to get any phones from Huawei or Xiaomi or Oppo back here in the US? Or is that sort of just doomed to never come back? Because I really do feel like we're providing an interesting sort of competition here. So anyways, I was just wondering if you guys have any updates or if you guys could maybe show us or talk to us about that.

• 55:00David Pierce?

  So I like this question in part because it references things that I said on the Vergecast. So congratulations to me. But I think this is really interesting. What I don't want to do is like, make political predictions, right? Because so much of this is wrapped up in in politics and things change really fast. I would say if you like forced me to guess, I would say the relations with China are not going to get immediately better.

• 55:22Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 55:23David Pierce?

  But the world changes quickly. Who knows? But I do think one of the things we talk about, I think, not enough on this show is the fact that the US as a phone market is so much less interesting in a lot of ways than all of the rest of the markets in the world for exactly the reason that they're describing. And I do wonder if you think about it that way, like, is it a bummer that we don't get kind of the full breadth of what's out there and is available to us? And is there a chance that like more American companies might try to do in this market what is happening in other markets around the world?

• 55:56Speaker 08

  I have so many feelings about this. Yes, like, it is a bummer. There are so many, especially in foldables, like, there's so many more options, thinner, you know, cheaper, that we basically have two foldables here and they're expensive as all hell.

• 56:13David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 56:14Speaker 08

  So I think there's a few things going on, like, obviously, the relationships with China, and I don't see that changing anytime soon either. It's also the carriers, I think, have

• 56:26David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 08

  have the manufacturers kind of under their thumb. And it's really a bummer. I feel like it just has resulted in like, we get the kind of phones that Verizon and T-Mobile and AT&T think they can sell, you know, at every price point. And that's kind of all there's room for. And you've seen things like even when LG left the mobile space and they didn't have like massive market share, we were kind of like, oh, now they're chanting, maybe Oppo will come in here and Samsung just like shut that shit right down. And we are exactly where we were before, but with less LG.

• 57:06David Pierce?

  Yeah, I do think it's, I forget about the carrier thing sometimes just because like I live in the US and I'm sort of used to the way that it is, but it is so unlike the rest of the world in that basically like the way most people buy phones is they walk into their carrier store and they trade in their existing phone and they get a new phone and they leave. And that's, that's why people by and large don't switch ecosystems. It's why people mostly don't change brands. And it's why a couple of companies, namely Apple and Samsung, have been able to essentially just corner off the market for themselves. Whereas other places, you can just like walk into a store, stick your SIM card in and poof, you have a new phone. I wish the world worked more like that in the United States, but it really doesn't seem like there's any chance of that getting better. And we even talked about this with Carl Pei, like these companies are desperate to find

• 57:51David Pierce?

  a way to make like unlocked phones work in the US. And I just don't see any way that's going to happen anytime soon. Do you?

• 57:59Speaker 08

  No, I, I think it's a mess for them and I sympathize, you know, when coming into the US and trying to like sell an unlocked phone, you know, without the benefit of those carrier deals, the trade ins that they can do, the marketing, like it is just such an uphill battle. And yeah, I'm, I'm rooting for more options in the US. And yeah, I think the carriers could do better. Like I go into a Verizon store is literally like, here's iPhones, here's the Samsung phones. There's a few other phones like over here and it stinks.

• 58:36David Pierce?

  I agree. Are there any, as you, as you look out across sort of the rest of the world, if you could handpick a couple of phones to bring to the US, does anything come to mind? Is there anything you like lust after as an American that you can't have?

• 58:50Speaker 08

  Yes. The Xiaomi kind of flagship phones, I think like the 13 Ultra is the latest one. They have that one inch camera sensor and just fully embrace the like camereness of the phone. I have this photography kit that you like attach all the stuff to it, like a shutter button. It's fun. I mean, is it the best idea? Is it something a lot of people are gonna buy? No.

• 59:15David Pierce?

  Right.

• 59:15Speaker 08

  I would call out Xiaomi, but there's a ton of stuff out there.

• 59:18David Pierce?

  Yeah. Well, and that, that exact thing is kind of the thing that I think the US market is missing the most, which is different ideas about phones, right? Like at this point, it's pixels, it's galaxies and it's iPhones. And basically those are all the same thing, right? They have slightly different ideas, but they are functionally the same devices, doing the same things, the same ways at this point. And I kind of wish there was somebody out there doing what like Nokia did a bunch of years ago, being like, what if we just made an enormous, way too big camera and that was your phone? Like, is that anything? Or if somebody was like, what if we put a TV antenna on your phone? Is that anything? And then LG is like, what if it had wings? Is that anything? And I just, so much of that still happens in the rest of the world and we don't get

• 1:00:00David Pierce?

  any of it here because everybody is just making these kind of like lowest common denominator, how can we sell three phones to 300 million people kinds of decisions? And the smartphone market is much weirder than US people would know. And that kind of makes me sad.

• 1:00:16Speaker 08

  Yeah, we're missing out.

• 1:00:17David Pierce?

  So let's just all move to Europe.

• 1:00:19Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:00:20David Pierce?

  We won't get to have threads, but we'll get to have cool phones.

• 1:00:23Speaker 08

  Well, that works for me. No one's talking to me on threads anyway.

• 1:00:28David Pierce?

  All right, Alison, thank you again. Appreciate you coming back.

• 1:00:31Speaker 08

  Thank you.

• 1:00:34David Pierce?

  All right, that's it for the show. Thank you to all of my Verge friends for helping answer questions. Thanks to everyone who called and emailed, and thank you as always for listening. If you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or devices you also want to upgrade but want to know how to do it, you can always email us at [email protected] or keep calling the hotline 866-VERGE11. We'll probably do another full hotline episode before too long because we keep getting these great voicemails and emails, but also we're trying to answer at least one question every single week on the show, so keep them coming. Also, speaking of the hotline, we're getting an episode ready all about cybersecurity, and we're going to do a full-on call-in show answering your questions. So if you have a cybersecurity thing, you can't figure out, big, small, whatever, or you have some crazy

• 1:01:17David Pierce?

  mystery you can't solve, which is even more fun, call the hotline 866-VERGE11, or send us a voice memo to [email protected], and we'll get back to you if we think we can help. This show is produced by Andrew Moreno and Liam James. Brooke Minsters is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm out the rest of the week, but the rest of the Vergecast crew will be back on Friday to talk about all of the big news of the week, including whether threads is still going to be a thing when I get back from vacation. See you then. Rock and roll.

• 1:01:57Speaker 16

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• 1:02:28Speaker 17

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  Join Greg Gates from LPL and Peter Nolan from Anthropic for a candid conversation on Agentic AI and the future of financial advice.

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