Galaxy Z Flip review, CBS streaming service revamp plans, and Android 11 features so far

Stories discussed this week: Folding glass: how, why, and the truth of Samsung’s Z Flip A Motorola Razr’s screen is reportedly peeling right on the fold Galaxy Z Flip teardown reveals that its hinge brushes may not block much dust Galaxy Z Flip durability test calls Samsung’s Ultra Thin ‘Glass’ into question Leaked images show TCL prototype phone with expandable, slide-out display Dish Network floats merger with DirecTV over pace of cord-cutting CBS is planning an improved streaming service after squandering its head start with All Access HBO and HBO Max are headed to YouTube TV HBO Max’s first ad wants to remind you how many of your favorite shows and movies it owns Disney+ has surpassed 28 million subscribers since launch … Tiger’s retro LCD handheld games are making a comeback The most interesting new Android 11 features so far Android 11 will fix dozens of small annoyances, but what about the apps? Google releases Android 11 developer preview earlier than expected Apple considers allowing apps like Chrome and Gmail to be set as iOS defaults 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.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This week on the Vergecast, Dieter reviewed the Galaxy Z Flip. We talk about the state of folding phones. Julia Alexander joins us to talk about the streaming wars. We go deep on Android 11, which is out earlier than ever. And we talk a little bit about Apple maybe letting you set default apps on the iPhone. That's Vergecast coming up now.

• 0:16Speaker 01

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• 1:21Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast. Although I would say questionably sourced, if I was. We'll get into it.

• 1:29Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna get into it. I'm your friend, Neelai. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  Hello, hello, howdy, hi.

• 1:33Nilay Patel?

  Paul Miller is here. Hello. And I have exciting news. Julia Alexander is going to join us for the second segment to talk about my favorite, the streaming wars. Love them. Love them or hate them. Gotta love them. Love them or hate them, your prices are going up. That's what I know about the streaming wars. But Julia knows more about that stuff than anybody. There's a lot going on. Excited to have her on. Let's, let's do it, Dieter. Do you want to? You want to tell the story of our weekend?

• 1:56Speaker 03

  So, you may or may not have heard that the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip folding phone is available. I put "available" in quotes because, so far as I could tell, when it went on sale on Friday, it was, there were like three per Best Buy and there's four Samsung Experience stores in America. And the one that I called that's local to me in Palo Alto said that they were getting fewer than 10. So it sold out immediately. Who knows how many they actually produced, but they sold out immediately. Sprint stores were sold out, AT&T stores were sold out. By the next day, everything was gone. It was a real struggle. I got a 24-hour loaner from Samsung,

• 2:39Speaker 03

  which is an interesting period of time to give a review unit out for. And I also bought one from Best Buy and then Best Buy said, "Yep, we'll ship it to you. You'll get it by Saturday." And then they said, "Just kidding, we're Best Buy."

• 2:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I spent all day Saturday literally calling around the entire country to various random Best Buys, AT&T stores, and Sprint stores, trying to find one. And we were reaching out to friends, family, and ex-co-workers.

• 3:09Nilay Patel?

  Shout out to Micah.

• 3:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, Micah Singleton. Make sure there was somebody in the city that could go buy it for us. I eventually did manage to acquire one.

• 3:18Nilay Patel?

  Dieter robbed an influencer.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, I have one. It unfortunately was like the Korean version of one. But it's basically the same. However, the one that I have actually reviewed, Best Buy did come through. And so I actually have two now. I have one from Korea and one that was designed for America.

• 3:36Nilay Patel?

  You know, even if it's not a lot of demand or not a lot of absolute units, you know people want them when the Sprint stores are selling it. When people are like, "Yep, I'm gonna take the Sprint one." It folds, but Sprint, I'm going with it. My version of the story is that I was home, it was a weekend, and Dieter, just a flurry of text messages. "I can't get this phone. What's going on with this phone? I hate the phone."

• 4:02Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna buy a phone. Can I, how much money can we spend on the phone? I'm flying to LA, like, Dieter, don't fly to LA. I call Micah. Dieter's like, what if I go to LA anyway?

• 4:11Speaker 04

  I kinda wanna go to LA.

• 4:13Nilay Patel?

  I think there's one in Irvine.

• 4:14Speaker 04

  For a little bit of context, 24 hours is not the typical amount of time that you spend with a phone when you are reviewing it.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  So, I had that, and I had to give it back after 24 hours. So, I needed to purchase one so I could do a review. Because I'm not gonna review a phone based on 24 hours with it.

• 4:30Nilay Patel?

  So, I wanna talk about that in particular. I will say, it's like, it's becoming a recurring theme in our lives. Uh, the idea that we'll just release it, right? We'll do, and I don't mean to like, throw any shade at influencers, because we obviously cover them. I think it is a vibrant new economy. It's a whole new kind of business. It's all happening over there. Uh, it's very interesting. But you see this happen a lot. They buy influencer marketing campaigns. So Motorola with a razor, we can just pick on the razor. Motorola holds a razor launch event, a lot of influencers. Some tech people, not a lot of tech journalists. They don't want the scrutiny, right? And then they say, you're not getting your review in it, or you're getting this very short review period, and then things weigh on sale, right?

• 5:14Nilay Patel?

  And to me, it is an absolute, and I'm, Dieter, I'm very curious for your take on this too, because you're reviewing more stuff than me. But to me, that is just an absolute signal the product is broken. If you do not trust a reviewer to hold the thing for a week, use it, ask questions about it, answer the questions about it, and then write a thorough review of the product. It means your product cannot withstand the scrutiny. And it is just borne out every single time.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  It's not every single time. It's every single time when you think that might be what's going on. But there are cases where a company is like, we just wanna get this thing out really quickly. Um, or they're like, they're very confident in it, and so they will just, you know. Apple will have reviews go up on the same day as, say, like, preorder day in some cases. Uh, or like, or after preorders happen. Samsung, uh, does similar things. Uh, they will, they'll put it out with like, no embargo, or they'll put it out basically the day it's released. And sometimes that means like, what it means is movies, where if the critics don't get to look at the thing before it shows up in theaters, that's a sign. And sometimes it's just, it's like, actually a genuine sign of confidence.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  And you kinda just have to have a gut feel for like, what game is being played with this particular phone released, uh, from time to time.

• 6:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're right. You're being more charitable than me.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  And to play devil's advocate a little bit, because I typically agree with this. This is typically a sign that it might, it could very well suck. But the, this flip phone thing is almost as much a fashion accessory as it is a piece of technology. You know what I mean? It's like,

• 6:47Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that is the dream of the tech industry.

• 6:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. So they're living in their dreams.

• 6:52Nilay Patel?

  But like, you know, we, um, they still have to work.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  Sure, sure.

• 6:58Nilay Patel?

  They still have to not break.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  Theoretically, yes.

• 7:00Nilay Patel?

  And I would argue in, you know, this is like debatable across a number of metrics, but like, most people gaze at the fashion industry and they're like, oh, that looks weird. I want my clothes to be functional as well. Like, right? Like, there's an element of this where even that industry has to, like, you can't sell a $10,000 purse that doesn't hold anything. It's like, it's not gonna, it's also do its job, right?

• 7:23Speaker 03

  But so Paul talking about fashion like brings to mind my, my number one complaint with the way that these foldable phones are getting released. And that's that these companies aren't setting the context correctly. And this might get into the fact that over the weekend, there was a bunch of drama about the Galaxy Z flips fold specifically. Zach over at Cherry Rig Everything did what he does with every single phone. He scratched it, which is what he does. Like, it is, it is 1,000% predictable. If you make a phone that's notable at all, Cherry Rig Everything is going to take it and it's going to use his little hardness mose picks on it and see where it scratches. So he did that because that's what he does. And guess what? The screen scratches like really, really easily, like just indenting it with your fingernail can do it.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  I tried that at the launch event, didn't really see it, but on the review units and in that video, like, once you actually get on it, yes, you can, you can do it. It feels firmer than other plastic screens, but you can scratch with your fingernail. And so there's like, well, what the hell? And the thing that gets me is that outcome was completely predictable. Instead of waiting until it happens and then reacting and be like, oh yeah, by the way, we have a premiere program with screen replacements. And, you know, you can go get a screen protector installed for you professionally. You break, I fix. All that happened after the fact. They could have just led with it. And if they just released these phones in the context of, I think the way I put it is, it should be somewhere in between like a sneaker drop and Google Glass.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Treat them as like high fashion experiments that are limited edition, limited run. So that nobody runs into this thing or looks at this thing or talks about this thing with the expectation that, you know, anybody's gonna buy it, really. That's how I look at it. But these phones get released as though they're just regular old phones. And so, instead of saying, "Look at this weird special edition thing. Let's see what it's like. Maybe someday it'll become real." We have to say, "Look at this phone that you shouldn't buy that they claim is normal, but it's not. And so now, don't buy it, but we're gonna look at it anyway because if it were a special edition phone that you wouldn't buy, it tells us something about the future of the phone industry." Like, you have to go through this whole convoluted mess. And nobody does that because why would you? Because it's a huge pain.

• 9:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Again, I just think you're, as is traditional, being far more charitable than me. I would say that's our dynamic here. They didn't do it because they don't want to. Like, these are choices they're making. They're not mistakes, right? Samsung employs most of Korea in the service of marketing their phones, right? Like, tens of thousands of people work at Samsung on marketing the phones in every country that they're gonna put out. They have agencies upon agencies working on this stuff. There are millions of dollars and lots of hours and lots of smart people working on how to launch every single phone they put out. And then on top of that, there are the carrier partners who have the same marketing, sales, distribution strategies to manage as well.

• 10:20Nilay Patel?

  It is not a small project. It is not one person. It is this massive machine. And when the machine works, they launch the S20, right? Which we'll talk about next week. And that will be a perfect clockwork launch. They'll put out the phone, there'll be reviews, the camera will be great or not. It'll just happen. It'll just be the thing that you expect. They will distribute millions of units over the course of the next year. They'll market those units. They'll just do it. And you know exactly how the machine works when it works. The idea that it's a mistake, or they did, they overlooked something, or they didn't consider what you have described, right? And they just missed it. I just don't buy, like, I don't buy it. Like, you have to believe that they're dumb. Or they didn't spend all the money, or all the brains aren't working.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  How are, I mean, all the ads, I don't see a lot of ads, because I aggressively block ads. Uh, but, uh, most of the ads, or all of the ads I've seen for the Z Flip, show as a sort of a fashion thing. Like, it looks like I might be seeing an ad for makeup or clothes, but it turns out it's for the Z Flip.

• 11:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, look, they've got a new hardware form factor. That's just like, when Apple did, I mean, I always come back to the iPod. And I probably talked about the iPod, and how Steve Jobs and Tony Fadell, like, handled the iPod design over years. Like, one year it was big, one year it was small, one year it was fat, one year it was skinny, one year no buttons. Like, they changed the way it looked, and they got to market an appearance over the functionality of the phone. And I think so much of phones right now, the function, we take the functionality almost for granted. Like, we review a modern flagship smartphone, we are mostly talking about whether it can resolve a strand of hair at 50 feet or five feet. Right? Or whether the color temperature is accurate or not. We're not like, does it run the apps?

• 11:59Nilay Patel?

  Does the screen disintegrate into a thousand pieces if you touch it? Like, that we take all, we take a bunch of phone stuff for granted. Dieter, to your point, we're no, we cannot take any of that stuff for granted with foldables, because we just don't know what they're like. And so, yeah, they're marketing, I think they're marketing it as though it's a regular phone, a new form factor. Right? They're not, they're not emphasizing the fact that, like, the form factor shift has caused a reset of everything else that you would expect. And I think that's actually, it's the evidence of the mistake. They're like, if you just had some more money, you would get this cooler form factor that's, uh, an S20, but it folds. But like, really, you're not getting that.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  You're really not. So, like, the Z Flip review should be up around the time that, uh, this podcast gets posted, so I'll just say. I actually think that the Z Flip is, it's the, it's the best foldable phone with the best hinge and the best feeling screen, and so what? Because we don't know what counts as the right, the best, well, we don't know what counts as good yet, or like, still figuring that out. But I do think it, after using it for about five days, it started to just feel normal. Like, it's not a normal phone, but it starts to feel normal and a little bit boring, which is where these phones should go. So in that sense, it's like closer to what a folding phone should be than any other phone, because I was able to start taking it for granted just a little bit.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  However, it's not an S10 or an S20 that folds in half, because in order to get it to fit, in order for space, in order for price savings, just to make me sad, I don't know, they chose to put camera sensors in it that are just like not quite as good as they could have been. It's like not quite up to like S10 standards. It's better than, you know, the Razr, which is the lowest bar possible. But it's not quite where I hoped it would be.

• 13:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and you know, like the packaging of the phone, like the entire, if you think about a candy bar phone, the middle is like available for use, you can like put stuff there. If you think about a folding phone, like the middle of the candy bar is the hinge.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  Which middle are you talking about? The sides, the sides of the middle?

• 14:01Nilay Patel?

  The middle of the phone, like this part of the phone.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  You're pointing at it, it's a podcast, Eli.

• 14:06Nilay Patel?

  Pull over in your car, pull out your phone, hold your phone in your hand.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 14:11Nilay Patel?

  See the middle of it, the dead middle of the display, where the, where the five is on the dial.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  Right, okay, okay.

• 14:17Nilay Patel?

  Behind that is like usually a battery and some chips.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 14:21Nilay Patel?

  Right, maybe some antennas, a sensor that's probably tracking everywhere you go.

• 14:25Speaker 03

  So you're really talking about the core of the phone?

• 14:27Nilay Patel?

  The core, the heart of the phone. But it's a chunk of space. A folding phone is like a bunch of moving parts.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 14:35Nilay Patel?

  And so they just have physically less space to package all this stuff in. And I think that is, again, right, that's a huge trade off. Is anyone talking about this trade off? Absolutely not.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  How does, if you're holding, this is a little bit of a tangent, but if you're holding a Z Flip and you're holding like an iPhone 11 or Max or whatever, like where is it like weight and thickness?

• 14:56Nilay Patel?

  Chalk, chalk wise.

• 14:57Speaker 03

  It's about the same thickness when it's open. It's about the same weight, maybe a little less than a max. I haven't actually checked the grams, but it's about the same height. It's like the Z Flip is a tall boy when it's opened up. So it's very, very tall, but it's narrow at that height. So it's like a 20, it's like 22 by nine or 21.9. It's some very narrow aspect ratio, which makes video sort of hilarious on it. But it does make it feel like a pretty big screen because if you're holding it in portrait and scrolling, you get just a ton of stuff on your screen. So that's great. And I'm not even that unhappy about the thickness when it's closed. It's slightly thicker than like two smartphones like sandwiched together because it has a little bit of a gap on the hinge.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  But that's a trade off that like I fully understand because if I had a pocket that couldn't fit a big tall phone, then maybe a little thickness is worth the trade offs that it's not sticking out of the back of my pocket. Or, you know, fitting in a bag or whatever.

• 15:55Nilay Patel?

  But, but when it's open, that balance and that size and that weight feels very normal phone?

• 16:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. So that's, that's, that's why I say that the Z Flip approach is normal. Like I was able to take, once you like stop like saying, all right, is a hinge any good? Does it make like grinding noises? How do I feel about the crease? Is the screen sharp enough? Am I like protecting it from the elements? All of that stuff. Once you get rid of all that stuff, then you're like, oh, the camera's not quite as good. It's like literally the review I'd write of like, you know, a OnePlus phone a year ago or two years ago. It's like, oh, like this, everything here is great, but the camera's just not quite up to snuff, right? Like, and that's a, that's a nice thing to be able to do, to just be like, I'm going to just review this almost like a normal phone. But of course that was only like the back quarter of my review because I still had to talk about the hinge and then the glass.

• 16:42Speaker 03

  And maybe we should briefly mention Sean Holster wrote a really excellent story detailing how the glass works on the Z Flip.

• 16:50Nilay Patel?

  Sean has been working on this story since like the first time we saw the Galaxy fold.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:56Nilay Patel?

  Like he's been cranking away, trying to find the suppliers, talking to material science engineers. He worked with the Verge Science, like he's, you go read it and there's just this one, one like line, it's a classic Sean line. It's like the punchline of the story, which was like, anything folds if it's thin enough. Which is like, it's just a kind of a threat.

• 17:20Nilay Patel?

  So, basically, they call it ultra-thin glass, and it is very, very thin glass.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  Yes. Samsung Display claims that they make it. Samsung Display, separate from Samsung. But in fact, it is, it's a group of companies that make this, starting with a German company called Schott. And then there's like, they make the glass, and then like, stuff happens to it. And then Samsung Display puts a layer of plastic on top of it to protect it. And that's what you can scratch and indent with your thumb. And, you know, it's all there. But it's, it's just like, it is in fact glass. All the conspiracy theories that it wasn't glass were not true. But that, just because it's glass, doesn't mean that it's good.

• 17:58Speaker 04

  Well, okay, if it's glass, that bends, that it's not rigid. And I guess for some reason, when Samsung announced this phone, saying, "We have a flexible glass." Like, I was like, "Well, that's, that's impossible." But also, that would be nice, because that'd mean you'd have a hard surface.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  That you're interacting with. But if it's flexible, it's not hard. So...

• 18:21Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, if it's flexible, it's still hard. It's just, it's very thin. So if you get one crack in it, the crack instantly goes all the way through and the glass shatters.

• 18:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. Or the crack ruins the structural integrity of it. So like, he has this really great photo that's really obvious. Like, imagine a piece of foam, and you bend a piece of foam, right? And the top of the bend is just a bend. Now, imagine you like, put a scratch in the top of the foam, and then bend it. Like, eventually that scratch grows. It ruins the structural integrity of the glass. So the reason Samsung had to put a plastic layer on top of the glass is a tiny nick, some tiny whatever, could ruin the structural integrity of the glass, so that when you bent it, it would just shatter.

• 19:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So there's this, there's this line, from, last week we were talking about T-Mobile and Sprint. There's this line in the case, it's like, "Dish is gonna build a network that the lawyers can use and no one else can use." And that is exactly how I feel about this glass. It is such a technicality. Yes, it is a folding glass display, but the thing you touch is plastic. And it's like, yeah.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  It does feel firmer than the Galaxy Fold and the Razr. Like, it feels better. It just doesn't feel that much better.

• 19:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, you have spent more time. I feel like the Razr just doesn't count.

• 19:32Nilay Patel?

  Like, yes, it's better than the razor is, as you have said, like, the lowest pop. Like, it doesn't, does it creak? Like, it's dying every time?

• 19:39Speaker 03

  No, it doesn't creak. But, so they have tiny little bristles in the hinge mechanism to try and keep dust and dirt out. And you can't hear it, but if you, like, put it literally next to your ear, you can hear the bristles a little bit.

• 19:50Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my god.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  It's the maximum extension. It's great. Sorry. Did you see what the tagline is for Samsung Ultra Thin Glass? They have a whole, like, thing that they're gonna sell to other companies, and they're very excited. And there's, like, PR for it, and they have a, they have a marketing tagline. Would you like to hear it?

• 20:06Nilay Patel?

  I would. Nothing more.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  Samsung Ultra Thin Glass. Tough, yet tender.

• 20:13Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no. That's bad. That's not what you want.

• 20:16Speaker 04

  I don't want tender glass.

• 20:18Nilay Patel?

  It's like, that's just a crying cowboy. Like, what? What is that all about? Okay. I mean, I get it. They, they did it, and, you know, again, read Sean's piece. Corning is at it, Shott is at, like, everyone understands the problem. The thing that is great about, uh, big competitive markets, lots of players, lots of money, everyone understands the problem. Uh, one can assume we are, you know, uh, there are lots of smart people spending lots of money to solve this problem. Right now, what we have is, uh, tough but tender.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  Uh-huh.

• 20:50Nilay Patel?

  Uh, the tough is presumably the plastic, and the tender is the glass, and I think that is maybe backwards.

• 20:57Nilay Patel?

  So, yeah, I, that's the, uh, right, that's the bar. Like, Dieter, last week, we were talking about the, the razor, and, like, I don't know how to measure this stuff. I feel like I'm not touching plastic is a, is the thing to measure.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 21:10Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 21:10Speaker 03

  Probably.

• 21:11Speaker 04

  It's the only

• 21:11Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 21:12Speaker 04

  real solution, like, like nano machines that, like, reconfigure themselves as you're folding.

• 21:18Nilay Patel?

  You're just like, like, you're just like pulling a vape over there?

• 21:20Speaker 04

  Like, again, like, our phones, like, our phones that are good with, with hard screens that are scratch resistant are like, they're, they're like, they're like pressurized. They're like bulletproof, or they're like a helicopter windshield material, you know?

• 21:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:40Speaker 04

  It's crazy stuff. I don't see how you could possibly get anywhere close to that with something that's flexible.

• 21:46Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I think that is, one, the problem to solve. Two, I think that's why you have not seen the Cornings of the world, like talk about it.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  Corning is like, non-stop, like, in closed doors being like, "That's great, but you should, you should just wait a little bit."

• 22:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  They've been doing that for a long time, but Corning is sort of like around. They're like floating around.

• 22:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  You know, the other thing is glass is-

• 22:10Nilay Patel?

  They've just got dishes, like Corning dishes, just floating around.

• 22:14Speaker 04

  When you're making glass, it's flexible. So if you just keep it real hot.

• 22:18Nilay Patel?

  That's the answer.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:19Nilay Patel?

  The Apple folding iPhone has a button where it just gets real hot in the middle. And that's like, Phil Schiller's gonna be on stage, I mean, like with our proprietary iHeat mechanism. No, I mean, I think that's, you've reviewed three of them now. We're figuring out just like what makes them good. I think that's like, this is one of them, right? This is just one of the marks to hit, like, "Does the screen scratch with your fingernail? You probably shouldn't." That's probably the mistake. Like, we're validating the form factor, but the technology isn't there. Would you say that's fair?

• 22:53Speaker 03

  I think that's fair, yeah.

• 22:54Nilay Patel?

  Also, all three of them have broken.

• 22:56Speaker 03

  Yep. Within, like, within the launch weekend, they have, in ways that are,

• 23:03Speaker 03

  every phone probably breaks in that way, somewhere in the world, when you launch a phone. But with foldables, there's just like, it seems like it's a higher percentage because a few of them are sold. And it's also like, we're paying attention. So a Z Flip cracked somewhere in the world. It also easily scratched. Inputs Motorola Razr had like a complete screen separation at the hinge. Just ridiculous. Yeah, they just, they all keep breaking.

• 23:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. And it sounds like neither the fold, or the, sorry, the Flip or the Razr have had the sort of same impression on you as the fold did, as like, "Oh, this could be, this could transform my relationship with my phone." Is that-

• 23:43Speaker 03

  That's exactly right, yeah. The- The fact that it's smaller and can fit in a pocket is nice. The fact that you can have a big phone that fits in a small phone form factor when it's folded, smallish, is nice. But none of it fundamentally changes your relationship with your phone. I love being able to close the phone and have it closed on the table. There's something psychological about that, but it's nowhere near as big an impact as having a candy bar that turns into a tablet.

• 24:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, secret tablet. Like this bonkers TCL prototype.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 24:15Nilay Patel?

  I don't understand how that works.

• 24:16Speaker 04

  I don't either.

• 24:17Nilay Patel?

  You try to describe it to me, and then I'll try to explain it to you.

• 24:19Speaker 04

  Here's my theory. Okay, there's two images, right? That's all we've got. This is a leaked TCL prototype.

• 24:25Nilay Patel?

  So MWC is canceled, so this is how it's all happening.

• 24:27Speaker 04

  This is all we've got.

• 24:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:29Speaker 04

  One image shows the phone like a normal phone. The other one shows it pulled out somehow. And so my thinking is that the phone wraps around to the back of the... The screen wraps around to the back of the phone, and then when you pull it out, it extends, and now it's all on the front. Does that make any sense? Like a garage door coming around. I'm not describing this very well.

• 25:00Nilay Patel?

  No, not at all.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  I think it's just three different screens. I think there's the outer screen, and then there's a little itty-bitty baby screen. And then you slide the outer screen and the baby screen apart like a dining room table, and that reveals a third screen underneath them.

• 25:13Speaker 04

  No.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  Or maybe it's two screens. And so they sort of one folds underneath the other, like slides it.

• 25:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's an S curve. That's what I thought, too. But if you think about it, again, this is great radio.

• 25:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:27Nilay Patel?

  Okay, pull over in your car and hold your hands side by side.

• 25:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:31Nilay Patel?

  And imagine a screen going over the top of both your hands.

• 25:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:33Nilay Patel?

  And then slide one hand onto the other.

• 25:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 25:35Nilay Patel?

  Right? It's an S curve.

• 25:37Speaker 04

  Oh, I'm not seeing that from this photo.

• 25:39Speaker 03

  I don't think it curves. I think it's literally just two screens.

• 25:42Speaker 04

  I'm saying take...

• 25:43Speaker 03

  And there's just a...

• 25:43Speaker 04

  It just slides in. Take your phone, put a piece of paper on top of your phone, and then wrap it around the phone. And then if you slide that piece of paper across the surface, more of the paper will be revealed.

• 25:55Nilay Patel?

  What I worry about is that the scale of our show, there are like tens of people right now in their car with like phones and paper, try to... Just look at the website and look at the picture. Tweet at us how you think this works.

• 26:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:08Nilay Patel?

  Because none of us have any idea.

• 26:10Speaker 04

  What's the prize if someone nails it?

• 26:11Nilay Patel?

  Well...

• 26:12Speaker 04

  Do they become the CEO of TCL?

• 26:16Nilay Patel?

  Dieter will send them an illegal phone. I'm not saying which one it is. I'm not saying it'll be cool. I'm saying Dieter's gonna find like an illegal flip phone on Verizon and send it to you.

• 26:29Speaker 04

  Like a fake SE.

• 26:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. All right, Dieter, last Z Flip review observation. What's your big takeaway?

• 26:36Speaker 03

  The little screen on the outside is just not good. It's too small. Like, it's fine for showing the time and that's it. It's a clock.

• 26:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah. Here's what I'm telling you. Again, I'm being less charitable than Dieter. If you see a product of this scale and it just arrives and it's fancy and there's a new technology in it and they have not given it to reviewers, it's probably broken. I'm just gonna keep, just keep hammering at that.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  I want to hear the testimony of a person who is all about looking cool and they got this phone and they feel like it upped their game. That's what I want to hear. I'm not, I'm not saying that's for sure gonna happen, but I'm hopeful.

• 27:17Nilay Patel?

  It's definitely gonna happen.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  Like, I was already a pretty cool person, got this phone, I'm even cooler now.

• 27:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and then that person's like, it's on Sprint.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:27Speaker 04

  No, they also carry an iPhone.

• 27:30Nilay Patel?

  Like, I can only get the Sprint one. All right, we're taking a break. When we come back, Julia Alexander is gonna talk about the streaming wars.

• 27:40Speaker 05

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• 27:49Speaker 06

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• 28:15Speaker 05

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• 28:21Speaker 07

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• 28:41Speaker 08

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends. Like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra because it's not just a superior like beer. It's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 29:11Nilay Patel?

  Julie Alexander. Hello. Our embedded streaming wars correspondent. Back from the front lines.

• 29:19Nilay Patel?

  Well, I asked you come on, you're like, nothing happened. And then I'm looking at our like list of headlines and a lot of things have happened. Yeah. So I just want to start with this one because last week we just yelled about T-Mobile and Sprint for like a long time. Yeah. The Sprint T-Mobile deal is like predicated on one, you believing that John Ledgers is the shit. I do. Great. It's also predicated on two. This is true. That's like what our nation's judiciary has said. Two, that Dish Network will build a 5G network from scratch using a bunch of spectrum they have. Okay, sure. Maybe you believe it, maybe not. This week I'm looking at Dish Network's earnings and Dish chairman Charlie Ergen is like,

• 30:01Nilay Patel?

  we're gonna have to merge with DirecTV, which I just want to remind everybody is currently owned by AT&T. It's like they're just like personally, like he knows I'm looking at it and he's like, we're gonna ruin that guy's stuff.

• 30:14Nilay Patel?

  Just explain to me what is going on because it seems like the pace of cord cutting is like faster than ever. It's happening. We're watching the sort of like the classic TV streaming providers like the Sling TVs. They're not succeeding. Yeah. It just seems like that's falling apart faster than anybody expected. But what's going on specifically with DirecTV?

• 30:34Speaker 09

  What is not going on with DirecTV?

• 30:37Speaker 09

  I mean, the funny thing, just to add to how insane this whole deal is, is that DirecTV and AT&T, like basically AT&T's linear networks, lost like 3.1 or 3.2 million paid TV subscribers. And out of all paid TV, there was only like 5 million lost. I mean, so there was a lot of people lost and AT&T was most of it.

• 30:57Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 30:58Speaker 09

  So Dish is like, "We're gonna merge with them! We're gonna be fine." I mean, there's a lot of things that are happening, and I think Dish is kind of realizing that they, satellite is, people are cutting satellite faster than most other things. They are a dying kind of technology, if you want to use that word, and they have to team up with someone. The question is like, why AT&T would want it? They're trying to get, they're trying to get rid of their expenses. They have investors breathing down their backs going, "These are dumb purchases. Why do you keep doing these things?" And Randall Stevenson-

• 31:30Nilay Patel?

  That's for me.

• 31:30Speaker 09

  Yeah. Neil, who's not their investor, also yelling at them.

• 31:33Nilay Patel?

  I have no pull with AT&T, as history suggests. So I'm also not-

• 31:38Speaker 04

  So Dish's thought is that they're gonna get bought by AT&T? I thought-

• 31:41Nilay Patel?

  Or that AT&T would slough it off.

• 31:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, I thought he was saying that Dish would be buying DirecTV.

• 31:45Speaker 09

  Yeah, sorry, sorry. All the way around. Like, it's just, it's ridiculous, and I don't understand what they're doing. And the other part of it is SlingTV.

• 31:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:52Speaker 09

  SlingTV is like, in my-

• 31:53Nilay Patel?

  Owned by Dish.

• 31:54Speaker 09

  Owned by Dish. And they just recorded their first subscriber losses in a quarter, which has not happened before. And they basically said it's increased competition in the space, and the space is a really interesting one to be in right now, because there is increased competition from like YouTube TV and Hulu TV, which saw increases, but like PlayStation Vue shut down. Yeah, AT&T TV Now, which was DirecTV Now, lost a bunch of subscribers. So there is competition, but there's also a decline in competition in a lot of ways. So I think they're just getting, quote, "point where people are choosing ecosystems they want to be a part of." So you're in the Hulu ecosystem with Disney, you're in the Google YouTube ecosystem with YouTube TV, and people are just going there, plus they're a bit cheaper.

• 32:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The thing that, um, so I have Fios, and they have unbundled their TV from their internet. So now you can just like, you don't have to buy a triple play or whatever from Fios, you just like buy them all the same. And they're like, "What if you just buy YouTube TV?" Like, they're just like openly on the same screen, they're just like promoting YouTube TV instead of their own TV offering, which I think is- Utterly bizarre for a cable company to do.

• 33:00Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 33:00Nilay Patel?

  But they're definitely pushing people towards by this kind of thing.

• 33:04Speaker 09

  Yeah, I mean YouTube TV just, well, Google just secured a new deal with Warner Media. So like HBO and Cinemax are now going to be on YouTube TV. You can buy YouTube TV also just became the first official distributor of HBO Max, which is like a cool thing for Warner because that's what they really want to sell. And we know like there have been reports that YouTube and specifically Google is interested in expanding the idea of like selling additional TV subscriptions via YouTube TV. Basically taking on Amazon, which Amazon does with channels, and Apple, which has probably the kind of best looking ecosystem. And so it makes sense that YouTube's going to come in and go, listen, we can offer a cheaper price for subscribers. People are signing up. They, there's reports that in 2019, they had 1 million paid subs.

• 33:49Speaker 09

  Now by Google CEO Cwchi said now they have more than 2 million. So like they're growing at a pace which is impressive. And so I think what we're seeing a lot of with the Sling TV stuff, with the AT&T TV Now stuff is people going, I don't want to pay $65 to be on this, on this service, or I don't think Sling TV gives me enough. I can go to YouTube TV, pay, you know, decent price and get a lot for my money.

• 34:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I have not actually even used YouTube TV. Have you ever used it?

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I use it all the time. I'm in the place where I'm like subscribing and unsubscribing to it depending on like if I want to watch, you know, the Super Bowl or like award shows or like the Democratic debates or whatever. So I'm like hopping on and off. I was just on it until they raised the price and now I'm like, I'm constantly subscribing and unsubscribing.

• 34:36Nilay Patel?

  I per-

• 34:37Speaker 03

  Like every couple of months.

• 34:38Nilay Patel?

  I perceive YouTube TV as the thing for live television.

• 34:41Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 34:41Nilay Patel?

  But HBO and HBO Max aren't.

• 34:43Speaker 09

  No, you have to add them on their add-ons, like what Amazon does with channels.

• 34:46Nilay Patel?

  But and then those are just per show. You're just watching.

• 34:49Speaker 04

  Shows.

• 34:50Speaker 09

  Well, you get both linear and on demand, so you'll have access to all the whatever Game of Thrones, if you want to go back and watch it, but also if you're a Succession fan, come Sunday night, you can watch Succession live.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, and YouTube TV has like traditional DVR stuff. So it doesn't, it doesn't have really on demand, though. Uh, so it doesn't really, I don't know, for some reason, maybe because I didn't grow up with TiVo, the idea of trying to fuss with like, here are my shows, I'm gonna tell you what shows to record, and then you'll record them, and then I'll watch them before they run out, run out, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just, I, I have no patience for it.

• 35:22Speaker 04

  Maybe this is a little premature, but how am I gonna watch the Olympics?

• 35:26Speaker 09

  Peacock, baby. It's NBC Universal's whole big push.

• 35:29Speaker 04

  Is that gonna be good?

• 35:30Speaker 09

  No.

• 35:35Nilay Patel?

  I just wanna right here disclose that NBC Universal is an investor in Vox Media, a parent company. It's fine. They don't love me.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  My best ever, my best ever Olympics experience, I just built my own PC, and I got a, like a H, like a TV tuner capture card for my PC, and I just DVR'd 24/7 Olympics, and I could watch them perfect, like Windows Media Center. And it was just a wonderful, wonderful time. Uh, and I've never really reached those heights. Because it's so difficult to.

• 36:10Nilay Patel?

  Well, uh, so I, I currently have a TiVo Edge review unit. It's a thousand dollar TiVo.

• 36:18Nilay Patel?

  With six tuners.

• 36:19Speaker 04

  I don't love track and field that much.

• 36:21Nilay Patel?

  It can do anything. And I have not yet recorded, it's, it's automatically just recording stuff. Could, because like all things, it's an algorithm, just like, I'm doing stuff for you. And I've never watched one thing off its DVR. We watch it, we, we're using it for live TV.

• 36:36Speaker 09

  I recorded a lot of, uh, Young and the Restless back in college.

• 36:40Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 36:40Speaker 09

  Yeah, it was my, but the thing about, the thing that Dieter's saying, which is also what I do, um, or in the case of like any award, like the Grammys was on CBS All Access, you sign up for CBS All Access for seven days, then you unsubscribe. The other thing that, like, who, like, companies are realizing this, Hulu had a really great blog post for Hulu TV that was like, we know you're not gonna be here all year round. You should just leave and come back when you really want to be here. And I think it's like a brilliant marketing move, which is just, they understand how people are using it. It's so easy to just cancel and then go back, cancel and go back. That leaning into that, um, and then. Disney figuring out bundling options, going down the line with like the Hulu TV aspect, is like where they really succeed. Cause they're like, "We get it."

• 37:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Speaker 09

  You have other places to go.

• 37:21Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's funny, um, if you pay for something, and then you, you don't pay for it anymore, and you pay for it again, you actually have not subscribed to anything. You're just buying a thing. Like, it's bizarre that the mechanic is like, "I will now just like buy this like virtual DVD of the award show."

• 37:40Speaker 09

  Well, our, like, my poor editor Jake, uh, who's one of the best editors of The Verge, he has to listen to me every award show complain about subscribing to some network, when I can just be like, the, the, it's wild that it's not on YouTube and they're not charging like $5 a night. Like, yeah, here's the thing.

• 37:55Nilay Patel?

  I can just pay for the thing I want.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  Like a, like a boxing match.

• 37:58Speaker 09

  Yeah, PPV.

• 37:59Speaker 04

  Like a pay-per-view.

• 38:00Speaker 09

  Pay-per-view.

• 38:01Nilay Patel?

  So all this comes back around to the thing I'm constantly thinking about, which is eventually it gets even more unbundled. So the thing that has already happened is instead of subscribing to FiOS TV, I'm gonna subscribe to Disney Plus and maybe YouTube TV to pick up all this live stuff, and Apple TV, and suddenly I'm just paying as much as I was paying for cable.

• 38:21Speaker 09

  Right.

• 38:22Nilay Patel?

  And you keep unbundling, and now it's like, "Per show, I will spend $5." And like, "I'm definitely gonna spend more than cable."

• 38:27Speaker 09

  Right.

• 38:27Nilay Patel?

  Where does the, sort of like, the value come back around?

• 38:30Speaker 09

  There's only a few that are gonna be kind of your staples, right? Netflix will remain a staple for at least a few more years, cause Netflix has a lot, and they produce a lot. I think it took for Disney Plus to come out, for people to realize how much Netflix puts out? Cause they were like, "Oh, so Mandalorian's done, and now I have nothing to watch unless you have kids." And you're like, "Your kid's watching Finding Nemo every night."

• 38:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, this is very true.

• 38:53Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's also clear to me that I'm paying way more for Finding Nemo over the course of the year than if I just purchased Finding Nemo. Finding Nemo is $20, uh, unlike any streaming, uh, on any traditional movie platform. I'm just $12 a month for like, 2 minutes of the movie.

• 39:12Speaker 09

  Here's the thing that I run into with, uh, my friends though. We, this came up a lot, we had, screener season happened, so the studio sent out screeners for your consideration, and everyone I talked to was like, "I don't own a DVD or a Blu-ray player. How am I gonna play this?"

• 39:24Nilay Patel?

  Don't they have like Xboxes and PlayStations?

• 39:25Speaker 09

  I bought my Playstation, well, I didn't buy it. My brother bought me a Playstation, and that's why I use that for, but I only use it for Netflix and Disney, and HBO. Like, I don't use it for anything else.

• 39:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 39:35Speaker 09

  Um, and I, I haven't bought a DVD, and I used to work at like a record store where we sold DVDs. I haven't bought a DVD in- Years. I think what it comes down to is like, the more that people unbundle, they're just gonna go back and forth. Every analyst I talk to is like, you're just gonna go back and forth, and you'll have one or two that you keep. Most people right now will keep Netflix and Disney+ because the Disney+ offerings are pretty good, and if you have kids especially, and Netflix is just a staple. The more expensive ones, HBO Max is gonna be $15 a month, and you're gonna get a lot out of it, but really, like, are you spending $15 a month for Friends? Like, and The Matrix? I don't know. You don't really need it, especially when you can open up a Google Doc or Google Drive and watch a bunch of this stuff online.

• 40:15Speaker 04

  Wow, dude.

• 40:17Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 40:18Speaker 04

  So I've conditioned-

• 40:19Nilay Patel?

  Deep window into Julia's content consumption habits.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  I've conditioned my TikTok algorithm to tell me about how to cheat at school-

• 40:26Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 04

  And how to steal movies.

• 40:27Speaker 09

  Me too.

• 40:28Speaker 04

  Like, there are like 20, there's like 20 different websites where you just, like, and it's always presented as a cool secret tip, and you go to this website, it's just like a regular domain name. You go to that website and you can watch all anime that's ever been made for free.

• 40:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's a countryroll.com. You're supposed to pay them for it.

• 40:47Speaker 04

  It's like, it's like-

• 40:48Nilay Patel?

  No, it's probably like not, no, not that one. Not the legit one.

• 40:51Speaker 04

  It's like popcorn time, or, or, or like Netflix, but it's just, it's just in the web browser, and it just works.

• 40:58Nilay Patel?

  I like that we did the first 40 minutes of the show on Dieter stealing a phone, and now we're like, here's how to steal movies.

• 41:03Speaker 04

  I did not steal anything. I paid a lot of money for it. Nah. Has anybody talked to Google about this Google Drive? Because that is another, it's a very hot tip on TikTok.

• 41:12Speaker 09

  Yeah, no, Russell wanted us to blog about it, and I was like, I'm not gonna narc on the TV.

• 41:17Nilay Patel?

  That's how I feel about all of our Plex coverage. We should do a story about the reality of Plex. Everyone's like, shh, shh, shh.

• 41:24Speaker 09

  Well, like, the best app I ever got pitched on, and I never wrote about it, because I think I forgot about it, but the best app I got pitched on was this idea that you, it's basically like Nintendo's family sharing plan, and you all, you've picked like seven friends, and each of your friends chooses something to subscribe to, and then they like share that account, and it's like, who shares what, who owns what, how many passwords you get onto this, who's streaming it right now. I was like, it's a great idea for a app.

• 41:46Speaker 04

  That would also like just improve the bonds of your friendship. That sort of collaboration, that's like a team building exercise.

• 41:52Nilay Patel?

  Why'd you push that episode, why'd you push that button episode about this? Password sharing and then like people break up.

• 41:58Speaker 04

  Oh, that's true.

• 41:59Nilay Patel?

  It's very good.

• 42:00Speaker 09

  This is a question that the executives get asked probably the most, aside from like, how fast are you scaling? It's, do you worry about password sharing? And for the most part, they've been like, it's going to be an issue in about two years, but we're not worried about it right now. If you're Disney and Netflix, you're like, I don't give a crap, really.

• 42:17Nilay Patel?

  So I think that's related to like this moment in the market that we're seeing, the thing that we started talking about, which is the, what do you call the YouTube TVs of the world? Virtual?

• 42:26Speaker 09

  They're VMPBDs.

• 42:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:28Speaker 09

  Oh, my God.

• 42:29Nilay Patel?

  It's not a great name.

• 42:31Speaker 09

  What does that even stand for? Virtual Multi-

• 42:34Nilay Patel?

  Video Platform Distributor.

• 42:36Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 42:36Nilay Patel?

  So here's like a problem you had in the old, in the old days, when Dish and DirecTV were vibrant companies in the future, was you couldn't just call them cable companies because you had the two satellites.

• 42:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:46Nilay Patel?

  So they made up a new acronym, MVPDs. Multiple Video Platform Distributor.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  Just to be clear, what you're talking about are things that have like channels?

• 42:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:55Speaker 04

  And not just on-demand episodes?

• 42:57Speaker 09

  Right, but there's a difference between the MVPDs and then the VMPDs, which is like the virtual. So that's the YouTube TV, the Hulu TV, the AT&T TV now.

• 43:06Nilay Patel?

  If you can come up with a better word for this, please just let us know.

• 43:09Speaker 09

  And Jake.

• 43:10Speaker 04

  What about like a hyper-virtual?

• 43:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Where you run YouTube TV inside of YouTube TV?

• 43:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:16Nilay Patel?

  I see what you're saying. I got it. Anyway, so we're, we're seeing a lot of those enter the market. Now they're consolidating, that's a pretty normal course of, right? A bunch of new services enter, they see an opportunity, some of them succeed, some of them don't, they consolidate. You're seeing that churn, but you're not worried about password sharing yet because you're trying to get share. You're just trying to get people to get your app.

• 43:38Speaker 09

  Yeah, it's trying to scale.

• 43:39Nilay Patel?

  Right, so you just need, whatever, share it.

• 43:41Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 43:41Nilay Patel?

  Like, give everybody the password to your YouTube TV account because then they'll get the app. And then the day that we're like, we've destroyed all of our competition. And where the, where the, one of the two or three big players will start enforcing the password sharing rules and then we'll, we'll make the money.

• 43:57Speaker 09

  Right. That's exactly, I mean, I talked to this lawyer who represents a lot of the big companies and the word he kept using, he's like a very excited lawyer. Like he just kept going consolidation, consolidation. And I was like, you represent very big corporations. Uh, but that's the thing where he's just like, we're, they're just waiting it out. Like Disney's waiting it out. Like they're like, we know that we're fine. They've also, I mean, the big thing I wrote about this today, the big thing that, it's funny, you know, CBS had an investors call today and there've been a few other investors calls in recent weeks. And they're, when it comes to international, NBC, Universal, Warner Media and CBS are like, yeah, we're thinking about it. Like we're, we're definitely in that game and we're considering it. But then on the other end of it, you have Amazon, Netflix and Disney. And they're like, no, no, we don't care about the US. Like we want

• 44:42Speaker 09

  India and Brazil and Mexico and Germany and Japan. Like those are the ones we want, uh, which is why Netflix is investing billions and, you know, in, in different regions. And I was talking to someone today and he went, if you're not already there, you're not going to compete with Amazon in two years. Cause Amazon's going to control everything and you're not going to compete with local streaming services. Like Netflix is trying to break into India and they're spending half a billion dollars this year to do so. And they're still like the fourth most watched service. And the number one most watched streaming service is called Hotstar and Disney bought them. They were just like, yeah, we'll just take it. Like we can't compete with it. We'll, we'll just buy you. Which is like the Google move, right? It's like the very, I'm just going to buy what I can't have or I can't make.

• 45:26Speaker 04

  Like I have a successful product in the United States and now I'm going to take over the world with it. Has not always worked, like that didn't work out for the rideshare companies necessarily, right? Didn't work out for Groupon.

• 45:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I think the, those are all companies that move atoms, not bits. Right? I, we're a big, successful software company and we're just going to like find a new market that we can address with like not necessarily zero marginal cost, but pretty low marginal cost.

• 45:51Speaker 04

  Well, actors, actors are atoms. I mean, I'm guessing in India, they, they do have to produce new things, right?

• 45:59Speaker 09

  Actors are atoms.

• 46:00Nilay Patel?

  You're made of stuff, right?

• 46:02Speaker 09

  Correctly to describe Hollywood.

• 46:06Nilay Patel?

  You're just a collection of molecules, I think. Yeah, yeah, right, but like the movies that you distribute and the software to distribute those movies like, you can just spin it up in a new place. Whereas like Uber was like, now we have to find another million Toyota Camrys and people to drive them.

• 46:20Speaker 04

  Right, but Netflix has to find a million new shows in India to produce, right?

• 46:24Speaker 09

  Which they're going to, I mean, they're going to. The biggest issue that Netflix faces is like Netflix is a general entertainment company, which is fine, except that what they're competing against are people who carry sports. And this is more of an issue internationally than it is here because internationally bundle more often entertainment and sports for a cheaper price versus here, if you want to get entertainment and sports, you're paying like, yeah, fifty five, fifty dollars for YouTube TV or whatever. And even then, you're like still blocked out by like regional sports issues. So it's a whole complicated mess. But internationally, if they're spending and they're working with local talent and they can penetrate a market that is like mobile focused by offering really cheap mobile plans, which is what they're doing,

• 47:06Speaker 09

  that'll probably grow. They're not growing as fast as they want and like Reed Hastings, who's the CEO of Netflix, has addressed this. But they are growing. They just kind of released, they released their 10K and they were, and they kind of looked over a bunch of the stuff and they're like, no, we're fine. Like we're spending a lot, but we do have proof that we're doing well.

• 47:24Nilay Patel?

  We have proof that we're doing well.

• 47:26Speaker 09

  A bunch of analysts just raised, they just hit a 52 week high and like their stock surged. So like they're fine. The advantage Disney has, which they know and they kind of walk around like they know, is that they're Disney and they're like, no one has Star Wars. Like no one has Marvel. It doesn't matter where we launch, people are going to come to us because Disney is worldwide.

• 47:46Nilay Patel?

  But your point about Disney plus not having quite enough stuff after that initial rush is very true. Are they going to start flooding the, the app with new content the way that Netflix does?

• 47:56Speaker 09

  Yeah, I mean, they've addressed it. So I, I, the one thing I keep yelling about to like, My mom, because she'll be like, Disney Plus is kind of boring. And I'm like, listen.

• 48:06Nilay Patel?

  That's why you're here.

• 48:07Speaker 09

  You understand Bob's brilliance.

• 48:08Nilay Patel?

  An audience of dozens to talk to right now.

• 48:11Speaker 09

  No, I mean, so they know they have to put out more stuff. That's why they spend a lot of time on their investors' calls, saying like, yes, we have two Marvel shows, Mandalorian and something else, I can't remember. Another big show coming out at the end of the year. But Disney Plus is not Netflix, and they're not going to be Netflix, they're not trying to be Netflix. Disney, the best way to think of their output is HBO. Not that in terms of content by any means, but HBO usually has one to two big shows a quarter. Like, they have one or two, and they just kind of overlap eventually. That's what Disney's gonna end up doing. Disney is like undergoing changes right now on the plus side, where they're just basically, from my understanding, going to give slots to the studio heads. And basically be like Kevin Feige, who's at Marvel, you get three slots. Kathleen Kennedy at Star Wars, you get two slots.

• 48:55Speaker 09

  And throughout the year, they'll have new shows that come in. And they'll just kind of overlap each other beautifully, if it works out for them. In the way that HBO does, like HBO went from being like, they had a good year, it was like Game of Thrones, Euphoria, Succession, so you just didn't cancel for nine months. You're like, eh, like, there's enough here that I will keep subscribing.

• 49:14Nilay Patel?

  I like the idea that they have literally shipped their org chart in this app. And that like, each one of those boxes is like, a powerful sub-CEO inside of Disney.

• 49:23Speaker 09

  I have this.

• 49:23Nilay Patel?

  And then the Nat Geo person, who's like, "Elon Documentary, what's up?"

• 49:28Speaker 09

  That we stole from Apple.

• 49:30Nilay Patel?

  Here's my time.

• 49:31Speaker 09

  I have this org chart, like, hand-drawn in a notebook. It's, yeah, so I mean, like, they figured it out in the way that, like, their heads of stu- Their studio heads tend to be visionaries.

• 49:41Speaker 09

  Lucasfilm is going through changes.

• 49:46Speaker 09

  Lucasfilm hasn't had a good time, but, you know, like, Bob's big son, Kevin Feige, like, is-

• 49:52Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 49:52Speaker 09

  That's what he is. Is like, producing enough that they're pretty confident.

• 49:57Nilay Patel?

  By the way, Bob is Bob Iger. This is the third time you've referred to Bob without saying his last name or-

• 50:02Speaker 09

  My personal friend.

• 50:05Nilay Patel?

  Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney and the most powerful man in entertainment, or, as we know him, Bob.

• 50:13Speaker 09

  Too many bobs in showbiz these days.

• 50:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but so you're saying Feige is like he's he's winning in that zone, right?

• 50:19Speaker 09

  Yeah, he's figured out and I mean, they're gonna loop in their shows into their movies pretty heavily. So they're gonna go like, okay, there's a scene that happens in Doctor Strange and to really understand it, you have to watch Wandavision, right? Like, that's their whole play, which, by the way, is the same thing that Marvel Comics tried to do in the 90s and nearly bankrupted.

• 50:35Speaker 04

  What is what's so different about this and then the Marvel TV shows on Netflix not so long ago?

• 50:42Speaker 09

  Well, so this is, I mean, this gets into like petty drama that I could write a book about, but Jeff Loeb, who headed up Marvel Entertainment, so he like separated Kevin Feige, who was doing really well, from like people who weren't doing super well. So Jeff Loeb got TV, Marvel TV, and they were fine with it because they didn't care. Netflix was paying a lot of money. So they're like, you do what you want. We don't care. They're not part of our cinematic universe. Then they were like, we're gonna do Disney Plus. This really matters to us. We're quality, not quantity. So they were like, can't deal with the guy who makes really bad TV shows. We're gonna launch this new Marvel TV entertainment landscape that rolls into Marvel Studios, therefore Kevin oversees it.

• 51:19Speaker 03

  Does that mean that the Netflix shows are non-canonical?

• 51:22Speaker 09

  Yeah, I mean, like, they could argue, I mean, they tried to do-

• 51:26Nilay Patel?

  Wow, I feel so betrayed. You just broke Julia. It's all over right now.

• 51:30Speaker 04

  I watched like two episodes.

• 51:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, episode four of The Punisher. The Punisher takes a long walk, stares the ground a while, says, I've punished too many people, has a nap.

• 51:40Speaker 04

  No more punishing for me.

• 51:42Nilay Patel?

  His shows were so-

• 51:43Speaker 03

  I think the rule should be, if it's good, it's canon, and if it's bad, it's not. That should be the whole rule.

• 51:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, I like that.

• 51:52Nilay Patel?

  No, it's fine.

• 51:53Speaker 09

  I mean, it's like, bringing back to the business side of things, it's like, that's their whole goal, is to eventually, you're just gonna be like, I'm so trapped in this Disney universe, that like, it's just gonna be a whole thing. But I mean, they're not gonna do that as much. I think it's just gonna be more of like, we want people to-

• 52:12Nilay Patel?

  Pay us money.

• 52:13Speaker 09

  We want people to keep their Disney Plus descriptions, and we know that if we tease enough of this, that they will return. It's what they do with agents with with network TV. Like, this post-Super Bowl thing used to be like, if, you know, like, let's say it's an ABC moment, they're like, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s gonna tie into this new Avengers movie, catch it after the Super Bowl. And then it like, it increased ratings, then ABC could send up an ace email that was like, our ratings hit a high.

• 52:40Nilay Patel?

  So deeply cynical and I love it very much.

• 52:42Speaker 09

  I get ratings emails every day and I'm like, oh, good for you CBS.

• 52:45Nilay Patel?

  Well, so let's talk about CBS. They, they, your headline was had an early lead. They blew it. They're gonna restart their streaming service.

• 52:51Speaker 09

  Yeah, they didn't do well.

• 52:52Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be called the I.

• 52:54Speaker 09

  No, so this is the greatest thing in the world. I literally have not been able to stop talking about this all day. They're calling this House of Brands.

• 53:03Speaker 09

  Literally, they keep referring to this as House of Brands.

• 53:06Nilay Patel?

  And that's actually the name of the streaming service?

• 53:08Speaker 09

  I have no idea.

• 53:09Nilay Patel?

  House of Brands sounds like a discount mall where you buy cheap cigarettes. I'm just gonna say it.

• 53:15Speaker 09

  And on the investors call, they kept being like, MTV, that's a brand. And I was like, not in 2020.

• 53:23Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 53:24Speaker 09

  But yes, they launched, so basically, the TLDR is that when Viacom and CBS split up, once they got divorced in 2006, everyone was very sad. And by everyone, I mean me.

• 53:37Speaker 09

  CBS lost a lot of like content. And when they, so fast forward to 2014, CBS like, this streaming thing seems to be where people are headed. You know, Netflix is doing okay. So we're gonna launch CBS All Access, which I believe officially launched in 2015. At the time, they didn't really have any competitors besides Netflix and Hulu. Like, that was basically it. But they had a really janky service. Like, the service was terrible. You couldn't even use it. I remember when their first Star Trek show came out, people were like, I can't watch the show. The offerings of like the library catalog, for some reason, weren't very good. And it just wasn't like, there was, there was really no incentive to do it.

• 54:14Speaker 09

  And so CBS All Access kind of was like, eh. I have a, I have a source that estimates they're probably at about five and a half million subscribers total right now.

• 54:24Nilay Patel?

  Wow, after five years.

• 54:25Speaker 09

  After five years, which is like, uh, close to six, which is like an insane low number. Fast forward to last year, CBS and Viacom fall back in love, they get married.

• 54:35Nilay Patel?

  I mean, just to be clear, that was like a year long, literally a succession drama.

• 54:42Speaker 09

  It was personal drama.

• 54:43Nilay Patel?

  There was like rumors the CEO was in secret invol- like, it was nuts, but they're back together now.

• 54:48Speaker 09

  They're right. Listen, there was a wedding. They're back together. And they're like, streaming, really taking off. We have to do more about this. So we're going to rebrand All Access with the Viacom brands. So this is Nickelodeon, it's Comedy Central, MTV, all these kind of BET. All of which have their own streaming services, by the way. Like their own individual streaming services.

• 55:13Nilay Patel?

  That's great.

• 55:14Speaker 09

  That you can get via Amazon Channels. Yeah, so they're like, we have to rebrand this because this is our new big thing. So they're offering, from what we understand, a new version of the service.

• 55:24Nilay Patel?

  Called House of Brands.

• 55:26Speaker 09

  God, I hope so. Called House of Brands is how they're referring to it right now. That is also going to somehow include sports and news in like a weird premium tier. If I sound confused, it's because every source and analyst I spoke to this morning, I asked them if they understood it and they said, nope. Like, I have no idea what CBS just announced.

• 55:48Nilay Patel?

  So CBS, when CBS and Viacom were split.

• 55:51Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 55:52Nilay Patel?

  They were owned by the Red Stones.

• 55:53Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 55:54Nilay Patel?

  The actual holding company was called National Amusements. Which is great, because it started as a movie theater chain. Shouldn't they call the streaming service National Amusements? Their House of Brands?

• 56:06Speaker 09

  They're calling it House of Brands, which is close to House of Mouse.

• 56:11Nilay Patel?

  Brought it all the way back home.

• 56:13Speaker 09

  This is what I do.

• 56:15Speaker 09

  The Disney Wars. No, but like, this is their whole thing. There's no pricing for it. They're going to soft-launch it this year. No idea. This is the best part. When you think of streaming stuff, you think of exclusivity, right? We just talked about how Disney's playing their game. Netflix versions were exclusives, all these types of things. CBS, not doing this. CBS is like, it costs a lot of money, they're on a streaming service, we're going to make these huge deals and we're going to license. So South Park, one of their biggest shows on Comedy Central, HBO Max exclusive. SpongeBob, Netflix is getting a spinoff, and they're going to get a bunch of shows. And the way that they're thinking of streaming, Bob Backish, their CEO, another Bob.

• 56:55Speaker 09

  He's referring to these as rentals. He's like, we rent. them out. We get the IP back. And if they do really well, hopefully people come back to CBS, which is not going to happen. Like, that's like, we know for a fact that doesn't happen. People will just stay on the service. They find something else. This has been Netflix's whole thing. Like, we still have other shows. People have stayed around. So their whole goal is to bring people in with their content, but then license a lot of that content out in order to pay for things.

• 57:23Nilay Patel?

  I'm very excited about this.

• 57:24Speaker 04

  I do. I just like this idea that they are actually trying to make money.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  Because a lot of these are like, we will crush our competition by spending $700 billion.

• 57:36Nilay Patel?

  They're monopoly.

• 57:37Speaker 04

  And we'll make it. We'll make it up on the back end. CBS is like, let's be profitable.

• 57:42Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 57:44Speaker 09

  It's a weird moment. I mean, like,

• 57:45Nilay Patel?

  It's bizarre that that's the riskier strategy.

• 57:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:49Speaker 09

  Well, every, actually, so like, everybody I spoke to, a lot of who consult with these companies are like, the issue with CBS is that they have never been able to take the risk. Like, they've never actually said, yeah, we're all in. If you compare it to like, what other people have said, and I think about this just because it's a recent podcast I was listening to, I was listening to Iger on Bill Simmons, and he was talking about ESPN. And he's like, ESPN is like, fine. They're like, doing fine. We're really happy with it. But ESPN Plus is where we're going to, you know, put a lot of stuff. We're going to figure out rights issues. We're going to figure international stuff. We're going to really bring ESPN Plus up because people are cutting the cord. And Adam Silver, who's the NBA commissioner, just talked about that, I believe, this week, where he was

• 58:30Speaker 09

  like, the NBA, every league is like, losing viewers because people are just not subscribing or they're doing what Dieter does, right? There's like a Super Bowl, and he's like, I'm just going to subscribe to YouTube TV or whatever for the night, and then watch it this way. So they're trying to figure out ways to bring sports to cord cutters, but it's this, it's the weirdest place to be in because of the regional rights. And so they can't offer every game. The way that, you know, Disney can go, we're going to give you every movie. YouTube can't go, or CBS can't go, we're going to give you every basketball game. Because it's like, well, you're going to be blocked out in certain markets. That's just how it works.

• 59:04Speaker 04

  But Google Drive always comes through.

• 59:05Speaker 09

  Google Drive always comes through.

• 59:07Nilay Patel?

  We got to end it here. We've taken up too much of Julia's time. Thank you very much. We will have Julia, our streaming wars correspondent, report from the battlefield regularly. Thanks a lot.

• 59:22Speaker 08

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends. Like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra because it's not just a superior light beer. It's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 59:51Speaker 10

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• 59:57Speaker 06

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• 1:00:01Speaker 10

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• 1:00:16Speaker 10

  Hi, I uh. Let's get you a basket.

• 1:00:22Nilay Patel?

  Paul Miller.

• 1:00:23Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:24Nilay Patel?

  In our time of need.

• 1:00:25Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:00:26Nilay Patel?

  The stability that we need.

• 1:00:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:30Nilay Patel?

  That's a call.

• 1:00:30Speaker 04

  There's a segment I do every week and it's called top 10 LCD betrayals.

• 1:00:35Nilay Patel?

  Ooh. This is very relevant to my interests.

• 1:00:40Speaker 04

  Okay, well, see, that's what you think. And that's what I always would think. Okay, so Tiger is coming back with these, these LCD. And I put LCD in quotes because that's what bugs me about it. So they're handheld games, right? They have controls. They've got a little screen. They look a little bit like a Game Boy Advance. It's hard to describe, but I'm sure everybody's experienced this in their life, right? It's LCD technology in the sense that there's liquid crystal displays, but it's not LCD in the sense that there is a, a grid of pixels like a Game Boy has, you know? And so these games are always stupid and I hated them. And I feel like, you know, when I was a kid, I was pretty tech aware.

• 1:01:24Speaker 04

  Like I would go to the library and read all the computer magazines. So I knew what LCD was. So when I go to Toys R Us and I see an LCD handheld and I, and then I discover that there's like basically your character in the game has like three different positions, you know? It's just like. Anyways, Tiger's coming back with the, uh, the, uh, the, the remaking these, like, there's a Sonic game, X-Men, Transformers, so they've got all the big IP, but the games are trash, and I feel like it just, I feel like it, um, I mean, it bugs me, even like, you know, the Game and Watch guy, that's a similar concept. I don't even like seeing him in Smash, because I just think about these fake, uh, these real LCDs that are just not, it's just not a grid of pixels, it's not good enough.

• 1:02:09Speaker 03

  You are super wrong with all of these. And I only say that because I'm old enough that I had some of these games, and I had the, there was one that was a no-name game that was like the Olympics, and you were like, running on hurdles, and it had three flat buttons, and instead of just punching them, you would like run your fingernails over them to go really, really fast.

• 1:02:27Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:02:27Speaker 03

  And I wore that thing out. Yeah, you're right, these games are trash, but the, the, the, these liquid crystals were like in American homes before, like LCD displays, as you know and love them now. Uh, so like, there's a little bit of nostalgia that's worthwhile. It's been like a nostalgia week, because they also, um, brought back super soakers, they like remade the original super soakers. They're way worse than the originals in terms of, like, they don't, well, I mean, they're way better, they're safer, I'm sure, in various ways. How are the originals dangerous? If you, the, the pump on the originals, you could like lose like the tip of your pinky finger if you were doing it wrong. Like, there, there was like not a whole lot of clearance there. I had a super sucker one on it, I don't recall.

• 1:03:06Speaker 04

  I remember we were like, we dyed the water so that you'd square people, it'd look like.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  Alright, this podcast is completely off the rails. Android 11 is out.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  Alright, well, should we talk about Apple first or Android first? Uh, there's maybe more for Android. We could do, actually, no, that's, that's not true, we can, we can knock Android out. Android 11, they released the developer preview earlier than ever, you can't just go install it like a beta, you gotta flash it, and it's mostly developer-facing stuff, uh, but the stuff that is facing, uh, real humans is, uh, uh, chat heads, bubbles, are making a grand comeback. Uh, there's this like conversation section, which I actually initially got wrong in my announcement post, where they're basically taking a whole bunch of like, all of your chats, and they're putting them in a separate area notifications. They might actually. Finally do real screen recording natively, thank God. And they also are gonna have better sort of app security and permissions.

• 1:03:59Speaker 03

  And the big one is scoped storage, which means that just like on the iPhone, Android apps aren't gonna be able to just look at whatever they want on your storage. They'll only be able to look at their special section unless they get special permission to look at like generalized storage. So in the same way that like, I don't know, on the iPhone, like I need permission to look at this. And the more Android apps have to do that, in the same way that macOS Catalina is constantly asking you if it's allowed to look at the desktop. That's coming for Android. There you go.

• 1:04:30Speaker 03

  Anyway, a bunch of developers are gonna have to like contend with that. And Google's finally just stopping saying, pretty please, update your apps to support this stuff. They're just making them do it because security, I guess.

• 1:04:41Nilay Patel?

  Because some of the scoped storage stuff was already in Android 10, right?

• 1:04:45Speaker 03

  It was in Android 10, but it was in Android 10 is like, hey, we're thinking, we think we ought to do this. And a whole bunch of Android developers went, oh, they're like, okay, okay, well, we'll do it next year. But like, please, please look at this. And now they're like, yo, we're doing this.

• 1:04:59Nilay Patel?

  Wait, are they doing this through the Play Store? You can't issue an update if you don't support this thing? Because they can't.

• 1:05:06Speaker 03

  So it's, it's, this gets into like the wildly complicated territory of the difference between version of Android, the API version of Android and which API version your app targets. In addition to all of that, there is a new complication in Android 11 where you can target the newest and latest API. If you want to use the newest stuff, you need to target that level of API. Like if you want to use the cool new thing in API 27, you have to follow API 27's rules, right? But sometimes like there's like features in it that are annoying or like whatever. And so now they're letting you like dynamically opt in stuff in weird ways. You can like opt in or opt out of certain parts of the API. It's just, it's radically complicated is what I'm getting at.

• 1:05:52Nilay Patel?

  Well, I'm just saying, Apple puts out a new version of iOS.

• 1:05:55Speaker 03

  Yes, and then everyone has to hop to and do what Apple says.

• 1:05:58Nilay Patel?

  Because Apple, because, you know, they'll just put it across the entire install base very quickly.

• 1:06:02Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:06:03Nilay Patel?

  Or if you want to target the newest and greatest phone, which is where probably the spendiest customers are.

• 1:06:07Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:06:08Nilay Patel?

  They'll have it, whatever. You gotta follow the rules. Android has, right, well, Google broadly has Android. It's wildly complicated API situation. It has Play Store approval process, which is another lever it can pull.

• 1:06:22Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:06:22Nilay Patel?

  Right? And then it has Play Services on the phone, which is like yet a third sort of.

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  And it also has ads. If you want to use ads on your app, the Google runs one of the bigger ad networks, and they have different rules there as well, including and especially for apps that are like for kids. They now have the Google Play subscription thing, which is another layer of approval. But the biggest complication of all that's more important than any of this is the vast majority of Android phones are a couple of years old. You know, they don't have the latest and greatest operating system. And so there's literally no incentive for developers to like update to do things like get rid of the side drawer that interferes with the back button of the Pixel, because, you know, half of a percent of users have this stuff.

• 1:07:07Speaker 03

  And so if it doesn't bother 99.5% of your users, like, where's the incentive to like put the effort into update it? I'm not calling Android developers lazy. I'm saying that they're following the incentives that the ecosystem offers them. You know, like, they're putting their time into other things that give, bring them more return.

• 1:07:24Nilay Patel?

  Sure.

• 1:07:24Speaker 03

  And so Google has to do things that like change the incentive structure. And one of those changes is like making scope storage a requirement, which is like, well, okay, now if I, now if I don't do it, my app will break. And that's, they're doing that in part because it's like, it's a privacy and security issue.

• 1:07:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but where is it a requirement? Like, I guess, where in that stack of things where they can issue requirements is it a requirement?

• 1:07:47Speaker 03

  That is, there's like, it's the API level if you want to target, and you want to be, and if you want your app to work, I believe, on Android 11.

• 1:07:56Nilay Patel?

  Okay. And I think that the game there is still, the newest phones will run Android 11. If you want to run on the newest phones, you gotta work with it, right?

• 1:08:03Speaker 03

  Right. Yep. And then if you, but you can, you can target the API and have it still work on like older versions of the OS in some cases, so.

• 1:08:11Nilay Patel?

  Wildly complicated.

• 1:08:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Nilay Patel?

  What else with Android 11?

• 1:08:16Speaker 03

  I mean, that's the big stuff, the big consumer facing stuff. There's a, you know, you could go and look at like Android Police and nine to five Google and they had just a blast of a day, just finding all of the features that weren't technically announced, or at least a bunch of the features that weren't technically announced. So some of my favorites are scrolling screenshots finally coming back, airplane mode, not turning off Bluetooth, which is not, you know, that's been, that's been fine on iOS for a while, but they're doing it here.

• 1:08:44Nilay Patel?

  How do you, how do you ship phones without headphone jacks and not have this?

• 1:08:53Speaker 03

  They are gonna let you maybe pin apps to the share sheet, which is interesting because the share sheet has always been a disaster on Android. It's just always been bad. They tried to like do a bunch of stuff with like machine learning on it. It slowed it down and then they like tried to roll that back. And so you're just like, screw it. You can just like put the app you want there on your own.

• 1:09:13Nilay Patel?

  The story of machine learning.

• 1:09:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:16Nilay Patel?

  We tried to guess what you want, but it turns out you already know.

• 1:09:20Speaker 03

  And then they are updating the Bluetooth stack for controlling Bluetooth devices to a new thing that has the code name Gabaldorsha.

• 1:09:29Nilay Patel?

  Just tell, to tell the Gabaldorsha story.

• 1:09:31Speaker 03

  Gabaldorsha. Gabaldorsha is the son of Swain Fork, his name is Swain Forkbeard. And, you know, that's the son of King Harold, which is the Bluetooth, where Bluetooth comes from. So it's like the successor to Bluetooth.

• 1:09:47Nilay Patel?

  They should have called it Forkbeard.

• 1:09:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:49Speaker 04

  I don't get where Gabaldorsha is the, is the word for Forkbeard?

• 1:09:55Nilay Patel?

  His dad, King Harold, got the nickname Bluetooth.

• 1:09:58Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:09:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. King Forkbeard got the nickname Gabaldorsha, and he did not become a tech standard.

• 1:10:06Speaker 04

  So, so the Bluetooth is gonna be way better now.

• 1:10:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:11Nilay Patel?

  Bluetooth is better next year.

• 1:10:14Nilay Patel?

  It sounds like they're doing a lot.

• 1:10:17Speaker 03

  They're doing a lot, and this is not the main consumer-facing stuff, because they always wait for Google I/O for that. But this is like the stuff that we've been able to glean.

• 1:10:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:27Speaker 03

  And by "we" I mean Android police and 95 Google.

• 1:10:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:29Speaker 03

  And XDA developers.

• 1:10:30Nilay Patel?

  It seems like a lot of stuff is holdover from 10 that they just push back.

• 1:10:34Speaker 03

  There's a bunch of holdover from 10. So like, we, screen recording was in early 10 betas, and then it didn't arrive. These bubbles, same sort of thing, they're like there, but nobody used them. And the scope storage. And then the other holdover from 10 is, in 10, they introduced permission changes for location, where you could, instead of having it be all or nothing, you could do while using the app. Now they're continuing to chase what the iPhone does, and you can grant like a one-time permission for location, just once. And they're also extending that to, I think, like cameras and microphones. And then on top of all of that, if an app just keeps asking you every time you open it for location permission, and you keep saying "no," eventually Android will like figure that out, and they will block the app from asking you.

• 1:11:19Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 1:11:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty good.

• 1:11:22Speaker 04

  See, that's interesting. I have a lot of apps that ask me every time for some permission. And there's an option that you can say "never ask again," but I don't want to click that, because there might be a time when I do want to.

• 1:11:36Nilay Patel?

  This is like a user interface design, like, classic problem.

• 1:11:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know how I would recover that situation where I'd want to.

• 1:11:45Nilay Patel?

  Whenever I screenshot these things, and like, say the dialog text is bad or misleading, like, a bunch of product managers and designers will tweet back at me and be like, "We actually can't change it to the thing you want," because then users will not push it, because they think they can't recover. Right? So if the answer is just "no," people are afraid of that "no." They're like, "What if I want it in the future?"

• 1:12:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:06Nilay Patel?

  So that's why it's always some like wacky text that's like... I forbid you this time, but please gently ask me again. It's always like something like that, right?

• 1:12:15Speaker 04

  I think on Android it's deny or deny and don't ask again. Or I guess there's probably a confirm or yes.

• 1:12:21Nilay Patel?

  Hopefully. I wish the only options were deny and deny, but let me recover. But that's the thing. People talk about it all the time. If you just show the hard no, people won't actually choose it.

• 1:12:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:33Nilay Patel?

  Which I think is interesting. I mean broadly, it just seems like Google's big problem here, I mean, this is your column, is how are they, how are they going to get, I mean, this is the Android problem. Like we're, we're many, many versions in Android and the problem is still, how do you move the ecosystem to the new stuff?

• 1:12:47Speaker 03

  Right. And I, you know, they're trying, the thing they're doing now is they're, they have nicer tools, which is sometimes an incentive. So Kotlin is a great programming language that's modern and it's sort of in the, of the same generation as like Swift. And so that's great. People love that. They, so they've got that. They've got this new thing they call Jetpack, which is like, instead of having 50 ways to do a thing that you want to do on Android, there's like a way and then so you can just follow those standards. So they're improving the ease of coding Android apps. But, you know, when they tried to get people to update their apps for Chrome OS so that you could have Windows that could change size or tablets before that, you know, it didn't, didn't go super well because again,

• 1:13:30Speaker 03

  there's no incentive because how many people actually are you serving by putting all that work in? So at some point, they just have to be like, no, these are the rules. And that's what they're doing a little bit now with, with Android 11.

• 1:13:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Do you want to talk about this Verizon Pixel drama for, for five seconds?

• 1:13:44Speaker 03

  Android Police published a story that said that Verizon wasn't going to carry the Pixel 4A or 5. And then they had to retract it because Verizon said, no, we're, we continue to have a good relationship with Google.

• 1:13:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:55Speaker 03

  It's fine.

• 1:13:56Nilay Patel?

  We're fully committed to Google in 2020, as Verizon said. The fire drill.

• 1:14:00Speaker 03

  The reason it felt like such a big story is legitimate in that it's that no one really believes the Pixel sells well.

• 1:14:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:06Speaker 03

  Right? And, you know, we're on the Pixel 5 when Rick Osterloh came and, you know, took over the hardware division at Google and like consolidated everything. And I, I talked to him. We all talked to Sundar and like number one question was, When are you gonna get serious? What's your, what's your time horizon? And they gave the answer that all tech people give when they don't really know. They said, oh, like five years. In five years, we want this to be big. And like, we're, we're coming up. It's time. And the Pixel is, you know, I'm, I'm holding a Galaxy S20 Ultra in my hand. And it's, what, six months newer than the Pixel, give or take? And it feels three months, or three years ahead, you know?

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

  Like, maybe two years ahead. It's, the, the hardware quality in the Pixel, it's always been like, it's had its charm. And I actually am often charmed by the, the sort of aesthetic of the Pixel. I do actually like it. But fundamentally, they're just like, they are not keeping up with the flagships. And Google needs to either do that, or admit that they're not gonna, and pursue a different strategy. In the way that they did, like, in some of the, some of the Nexus years, where they were like, yeah, yeah. Samsung makes the expensive stuff. We make the stuff for everybody that is, got pure Google software. They should, if they just did that with the Pixel, and they just dropped the prices across the board by like, you know, $250, that'd be great.

• 1:15:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:26Speaker 03

  They're not doing that.

• 1:15:27Nilay Patel?

  If they were just like, the Pixel foray is the Pixel.

• 1:15:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Pixel foray is a headphone jack. Bigger battery. What we think it has.

• 1:15:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:35Nilay Patel?

  Bigger battery, headphone jack. That's all anybody ever wanted.

• 1:15:39Speaker 03

  They always, they always put headphone jacks on the lower end phones. Samsung does it too, with like, the, the, one of the light phones that they just introduced at CES.

• 1:15:46Nilay Patel?

  Cause aux cord. I'm trading down, baby. Poor people. What am I gonna do with all this extra cash? I'm gonna buy a bunch of wired headphones. Let's talk about this Apple thing for one second, cause it's not a lot. There's no news yet. But Mark Gurman, Bloomberg reports, "Apple considers allowing apps like Chrome and Gmail to be set as iOS default." Why are they doing this? Cause of antitrust enforcement. You think so? I know it. I know it in my heart.

• 1:16:09Speaker 03

  Why do you think that?

• 1:16:11Nilay Patel?

  Well, they're getting, they're getting sued in Europe. There's a bunch of saber rattling in the United States, right? There's like, the FTC and DOJ have divvied up the tech companies. There was just a hearing where we're tiled in Sonos, right, or in front of Congress, talking about it. That committee is gonna issue its. Regulations in May, Tile is very unhappy about default app settings. Like if they're now talking about it, they were so religious about it, right? We cannot let you set mail. We cannot let you set another app as the default mail experience on the iPhone. Cause mail is integrated in the operating system. It's a core capability. You talk to them about the browser, it's even more really, it's like it is deeply baked into their ethos of the operating system.

• 1:16:54Speaker 04

  You, you guys all know my, my feelings on antitrust, but I really feel like as a company, you would just like. One of the most famous things that ever happened in antitrust is Microsoft saying like those exact words like. We are baking Internet Explorer. It's a core component of the operating system. So.

• 1:17:14Nilay Patel?

  But that wasn't the thing that actually got them in trouble. The thing that got them in trouble was like. A variety of pricing schemes and strong arm tactics to make sure Netscape wasn't there.

• 1:17:24Speaker 04

  So the Internet Explorer bacon was not the actual.

• 1:17:28Nilay Patel?

  One piece of it, but like, if you look at that case, it was like, it was a, it was a massive range of behavior that was like deemed to be illegal, not just. But that started it, right? Like, did you tie these things together? Do you use your market share in one place? To illegally compete in another was like basically the story, but like. Yeah. And then Microsoft was like to PC vendors, the price of a Windows license skyrockets if you don't bundle in or explore like that's the thing. But yeah, but you're right. It's the most famous.

• 1:17:54Speaker 04

  What if you could pay $50 more for an iPhone where you could set the default apps?

• 1:18:00Nilay Patel?

  I would pay the money.

• 1:18:01Speaker 04

  50, $50 to unlock.

• 1:18:03Nilay Patel?

  I think one thing here that is true is most of these companies, the second there's even like the threat of this stuff. They start responding to it, right? Cause they want to ward off the threat. So even just talking about it. Like makes for better competitive environment, right? Like even just saying, we want to make sure. Cause you don't want the government to do it. I agree with you. The government shouldn't tell Apple how to design the iPhone. Apple shouldn't.

• 1:18:25Speaker 04

  They should just improve their product by allowing us to set a default browser. That would be a nice feature.

• 1:18:30Nilay Patel?

  It would be great. So the government is like waves, like literally rattles the saber. Like committees are doing stuff and then Apple's like, well, we gotta start talking about this. Like, that's a good outcome. I was talking to a smart antitrust person today and their point to me was. Apple is the most responsive to that, right? So like governments around the world are, are doing this stuff. It seems like Apple is the most responsive, like they are making the changes to get out ahead of it. And this person was also like, but if you look like Google is the least responsive. So it's not, it doesn't always work.

• 1:19:02Speaker 04

  Well, I, but I could already set my own default. In fact, I just set my default browser on Android to DuckDuckGo.

• 1:19:10Nilay Patel?

  Sure, on this level, but at the same time, Google is like, huh? Everyone's interested in antitrust? We're gonna go ahead and buy Fitbit. They're just like, what if we just buy another company? Like, right now, like, hey, antitrust regulators, can you go ahead and improve this, like, multi-billion dollar equity? Like, they're not gonna do stuff until they're forced to. So Google in Europe has not unbundled, or unbundled Chrome and Play Services and all that stuff because the European Union forced them to do it. Not because they wanted to, or because they saw the lawsuit and they did it on their own.

• 1:19:45Speaker 04

  But again, they were all along way more open and flexible for users than Apple has ever been on iOS.

• 1:19:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but if you look at the contractual side, right? If you were Samsung and you wanted to ship a Tizen phone, Google would just yank your Play Store license.

• 1:20:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, but if you want to ship an iOS phone, you can't.

• 1:20:06Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:20:08Speaker 04

  You know, like...

• 1:20:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so it's just that.

• 1:20:11Speaker 04

  I understand that Google was doing dramatic things with its Android license. I'm just saying, Apple does not do anything with its iOS license.

• 1:20:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and maybe that's just like a reflection of the two businesses. Like, maybe we're, I think we're saying the same thing in kind of like different ways. Like, the reason Apple is more responsive is because they're just fully in control. So they're like, we do not want anything to disturb our control. So we would rather do it on our own. So we see this threat, we're gonna make our moves ahead of time and retain all the control. Google has like far less control, as we were just talking about. They have this variety of complicated interlocking levers to sort of control what happens, but they don't actually just have one button to push. And so they're just slow roll it and they try to do it contractually. And they end up at a place where the European Union is like, if Samsung wants to ship... Android phone that doesn't have your service, you have to let them. You cannot tie them to a contract that says you can't.

• 1:21:05Nilay Patel?

  So I think we're, it's kind of just like two sides of the same coin in that sense. Like, Google is less willing to let go of its control because it already has such diffuse control. But it's interesting, like, this is all kind of like a sideline to the real question, which is Safari. And if you can set Chrome as a default browser, it kind of doesn't matter if Apple doesn't let another rendering engine on the phone. Which is a whole host of problems.

• 1:21:28Speaker 03

  I've been sitting here waiting to make this devil's advocate argument, just like,

• 1:21:34Speaker 03

  so, Apple doesn't allow alternative web rendering engines on the iPhone. And they will tell you it's probably for like, security and privacy reasons. Because it turns out a web rendering engine can do a lot of nefarious stuff, right? Cookies and tracking and who knows what else. And it's also potentially really like, a security problem for the integrity of the phone itself, which is a thing that Google learned the hard way with Android. They were needing to update the web view for Android so often, that they finally just said, screw it, we're putting it into Google Play Services so that we can just push out updates whenever we need to. So it's no longer, like, the web, the Chrome browser and the rendering engine for Chrome usually gets pushed out via the Google Play Services now, because it's faster and more convenient.

• 1:22:19Speaker 03

  So there might be a case that Apple could say, we will let you set Chrome as your default browser, but it still has to use the iPhone's web rendering engine, because it's faster and it's more secure and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. On Android, it's a little bit more complicated. A bunch of the alternative browsers do in fact use Blink, which is, you know, the Chrome OS, you know, they're Chromium based or whatever. I'm pretty sure Firefox on Android is based on Phoenix, but I actually got to double check that. Don't hold me to that. But, there is potentially a case to be made that you, that you could allow alternative default browsers, but not let those browsers be, you know, a different rendering engine. But it gets super complicated.

• 1:23:04Speaker 03

  So, for example, when you click a link in Twitter, what happens?

• 1:23:07Nilay Patel?

  You cry.

• 1:23:09Speaker 03

  It opens in an in-app browser.

• 1:23:11Nilay Patel?

  The app link that I don't want happens to me.

• 1:23:13Speaker 03

  Basically Safari.

• 1:23:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. On Android, it's the same thing, but you know, on the Samsung phone, for example, the in-app browser is like the Samsung browser, right? Or if I set Edge as my default browser on Android, the in-app browser just becomes Edge, which is really fascinating. So on Apple, those things are a little bit more separated. So for example, if you are logged in on your Chrome browser and you click and you open up an in-app browser in Twitter, well, it just knows that you're logged in. You don't have to do it again.

• 1:23:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:44Speaker 03

  So all these complaints that people have like, "Oh God, I gotta log in again", blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, you actually experience that about half as much on Android as you do on the iPhone.

• 1:23:51Nilay Patel?

  That's wild. I mean, the, how does the world of logins work when, across services, when cookies are illegal, which is like where we're going, is like one of the biggest open conversations there is. I think if they let third-party browsers using the Safari rendering engine be set as default, I would, I would not be like 100% happy. But that is a significant concession, right? That is like, it's still a huge move because the third-party browsers can do a bunch of other stuff that, that right now gets no traction.

• 1:24:25Speaker 03

  The infrastructure is there. Apple doesn't give you like really, really clear access to it in the way you can on Android, but like if you click on a link that is like a Twitter link, it'll open the Twitter app, right?

• 1:24:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:36Speaker 03

  Most of the time in other apps. So like, they know how to direct links to different apps if they want to. So like, if they wanted to, they could let you direct just plain HTTP dot W W W, you know, links to Chrome. They could, they could do it. They have the technology.

• 1:24:51Nilay Patel?

  None of them are as egregious as Mail.

• 1:24:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:53Nilay Patel?

  Like just, just like honestly.

• 1:24:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:57Nilay Patel?

  But you, they have to know. Like Eddie Q has to be like, "I'm sending email", be like, "I, we didn't do a good job of it."

• 1:25:01Speaker 04

  That feeling when you click on somebody's name because you think it's maybe a link to their bio or their Twitter profile and it happens to be an email link, like, "Oh no. Oh no."

• 1:25:12Nilay Patel?

  Why did this happen to me? Like I said, it's just a German report. They're talking about it. I, I hope it happens for, I think everyone would be happy. I think it would improve the phone. I think most people would still use the default app, will be happy. But it's just, the thing that is the most interesting to me is this connection between, "Okay, there's been all this, all this noise, and now this company that desperately wants to retain control is going to give up a slice of it over here so that governments don't actually tell them what to do?" It's not necessarily a bad outcome.

• 1:25:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:42Nilay Patel?

  It's the tension you want that still doesn't require old Johnny FBI to show up at your door.

• 1:25:50Speaker 04

  No, he just threatens you.

• 1:25:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's what you want. Johnny FBI threatens.

• 1:25:55Speaker 04

  He just calls you up and he just breathes into the phone, but he doesn't say anything.

• 1:25:58Nilay Patel?

  Now streaming on Apple TV plus. It's perfect. That's the Vergecast. Thank you for listening. We're back on Tuesday. Brian Silaskey is the CEO of Argo AI, self-driving car company. It's just 30 minutes of saying when our self-driving car companies are happening, or when it's self-driving happening.

• 1:26:12Speaker 04

  I thought you already talked to somebody at.

• 1:26:15Nilay Patel?

  No, we talked to, we've talked to a lot of self-driving CEOs.

• 1:26:17Speaker 04

  Okay, okay.

• 1:26:18Nilay Patel?

  It's always the same. Is it happening? Is it here? When is it happening? But he's really fun. Andy Hawkins is at one of me, and then we're back next week. Chat show, it's just gonna keep happening. We'll talk to you soon. You can tweet at us, by the way. I'm reckless. Paul's future Paul. Dieter's back on. Dieter has a newsletter.

• 1:26:34Speaker 03

  I do. It's at theverge.com/newsletter. It's a processor. It's a newsletter about computers. Wink, wink, wink.

• 1:26:39Nilay Patel?

  Well done. Goodbye. Rock and roll.

• 1:26:42Speaker 04

  Paul.

• 1:27:01Speaker 11

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